>> that's a look at some of events booktv will be covering this week. many of these events are open to

the public. look for them to air in the near future on booktv on c-span2. >> hearsay so i want to tell you about. this will be a story that goes from 1935 to the present. that will be the timeline. 1935-1960. the first thing of what you do lock in your brain about this is i will accept that powerpoint, it will be like interpretive dance. [laughing] i can do this. i can so do this, right? watch me. anyway, so here's the first fact i want you to lock in your mind. basically with few exceptions gdp, how rich were getting him how much we are producing kind of goes up every year. this is just a nice steady line up. that's going to be the first part, 1935 to 2016.

now i'm going to divide this story into total time. and i will break it at 1980. it will give us an idea of how to work with it. 1935-1980, what happens in america? and the answer is what happens in america is we work on how to build opportunity. how to build opportunity. do you know how we do it? with two principal tools. the first one, come with a children's ears it's a nasty word, is we regulate. [laughing] [applause] >> we really do. we do things like we enforce antitrust regulations pics of big guys don't get to roll over little businesses before they can get started. we put a cop on the beat on wal

street, right? to try to keep it level out there. [applause] we regulate the biggest financial institutions, right? you want to be a bank? there's going to be some regulation about that. maybe it's a different money in banks that banks became regulated businesses. part one is we regulate, and part two, progressive taxation. we taxed those at the top and we used that money to invest in building opportunities, more opportunities. how did we do it? we invested in education big time, g.i. bills to thank returning soldiers from world war ii. we invested in public education, k-12. we invested in state universities. why did we make all these investment in education? if you got an education, you could do anything.

we invested in infrastructure. rhodes, national highway, transportation system, bridges, power. power to rule america. why? because we didn't know what the great next business would be that we are pretty darn sure you would need electricity, right? and pretty darn sure you would need roads so you can get your goods to market so that your workers could get to you. so we made those investments together so those good businesses could grow here in america and those good jobs could grow here in america. the third thing we did, what made us such a remarkable people, we invested in research. we put money into medical research, scientific research and engineering research and behavioral sciences research, all kinds of research. why? because we believe in the future. we didn't know what that research was going to produce.

we didn't know what we believed that if we built this giant pipeline of ideas, ideas, that things would come from that it would permit our children and grandchildren to live lives that we had never even dreamed of. so we made those investments, and here's the deal. it worked. i mean, it worked. it still gives me goosebumps how much it worked. i'll tell you how much it worked. it worked so much that the 90% of america, everybody outside the top 10%, the uppe upper-middle-class, the middle class, the working class can the working poor and the poor for, together got 70% of all the income growth in that time. okay, the rich did better, i get it, but 70%, here's the thing, when you scratch to the data

it's every all the way, everybody did better. the pipe got bigger and everybody got more to eat. now look, we were not perfect, not by any stretch. the wealth gap was there for the first time we measured when african-americans held firmly at the bottom but he was the deal. america was so committed just to the basic notion of opportunity that we made changes come in the civil rights era in the 1960s and 1970s, the black-white wealth gap shrank by 30% in about a 15 year period. so we were not bigger not by any stretch but we were on a road. and then we hit 1980. ronald reagan, trickle-down

economics, deregulate, turn the banks lose to do whatever they want to do, stop enforcing or slow down on enforcing the antitrust laws. all, and that stuff about taxes, cut taxes for those at the top. and when you cut taxes for those at the top, all those investments in education, infrastructure, in basic research starts shrinking up. and that is exactly what we did. and here's the deal. gdp has gone right. gdp keeps going up. so how did the 90% do from 1980-2016, the answer is the 90%, everybody outside the top 10% got nothing. none of the new income growth, zip.

nearly 100% of the new income growth in america from 1980-2016 has gone to the top 10% in this country. think about that. and the black-white wealth gap in that period of time has tripled. yeah, that's what trickle-down has done for african american families. and look, there are people -- there's a whole lot more food stamps than there used to be. yeah. and subsidies, true. but this is about people who want a chance to earn a living. people who want to be able to build something for themselves. people who want to be able to get out there and work and have some security and to be able to build for themselves and for their kids.

and that, that part is just gone. and now here comes the real twist of the knife. it didn't have to happen. it didn't happen that the middle class started doing really, really badly in working families across the spectrum started and really badly. because of gravity. you know, that dan gravity will get you every time, you know? it's like you go light it will come back down, you know? no. the country keeps getting which you pick it didn't happen because technology and it didn't happen because of competition international. you ha have to keep your eye on that very first step, we are getting richer. richer richer richer. the difference is what's happening, who is getting to participate in the enrichment. no, the story i tell in this book about what happened, what the changes between timeline and time to is basically a bunch of

billionaires and corporate ceos decided to invest millions -- billions of dollars, in making sure that washington worked well for them. and make that investment and it paid off. >> we are pleased to join by journalist and author gary heunge pictures his book, it's called "another day in the death of america: a chronicle of ten short lives." november 23, 2013, why is that it significant? >> guest: it's not, that's all point. it's a day after the 50th anniversary of jfk is assassination, but for me it was a random day that i chose in order to make the statistic real.