a prosecution. he said a lot of other things, he said he wouldn't recommend a prosecution, donald trump won't attempt to imprison his successor no matter how much somebody dislikes what he does or comparison to dictators, we are not at that point or anywhere close to it. no reason to issue a pardon, a stand on both a president and clinton. >> hi, everybody, how are you all? i am lily, at the event staff of politics and prose, thank you for being here tonight. if you're standing there, there are a couple more seats over here and in the front my recommend those too. we are clearly filming tonight

so we will be very grateful if you could silence your cell phone, and when we get to you and a please please please line up in our audience mike right there and ask your questions into the microphone. at the end of the night before you go by the crisis of the middle-class constitution, lean it against a bookshelf, we will be very grateful. the crisis of the middle-class constitution is the second book after "the counterinsurgent's constitution: law in the age of small wars". this is a history of the idea of income any quality in constitutional republics, the first constitution doesn't assume the idea of class division, we need to adapt our constitution to work against the class any quality we see. we know how important this is, so important that senator elizabeth warren says every

american needs to read this book. you guys are doing great. and associate professor of law at vanderbilt and center for american progress, during a successful senate campaign, within senior counsel of the united states senate. is writing appears in the new york times, boston globe, politico, we are glad to have him at politics and prose. please join me to welcome him. [applause] >> thank you. i would like to thank c-span for covering this event and thank you for coming today, we have some empty seats on this site and in the front, if you want to come on down there is lots of space, don't be shy. you are going to be shy. i suspect you are skeptical of coming to the stocks call the crisis of the middle-class

constitution. after all what more could possibly be set about economic inequality and the crisis of the middle-class? thin you get here and you see me and are wondering what could be said by someone who looks like he is 12 years old about the topic? i will try to take on this huge task, you might even call it a huge task and it is a hard task and the reason it is so hard is we know a lot about it. everyone who lived through the election of 2016 and we know a lot of people were really upset in last year about economic inequality. both bernie sanders and donald trump relied on economically populist rhetoric and got a lot of support for it. we have seen data on rising economic inequality over the last 30 years, we have seen data on shrinking middle class and insecurity of the middle-class in the last generation as well but i am not an economist. i want to ask a different

question. is economic inequality a constitutional problem? you might be skeptical of that suggestion too. the constitution doesn't say anything about the middle-class. it doesn't say anything about economic equality or any quality explicitly. if anything, the constitution seems it gets in the way of combating economic inequality, take the citizens united decision which enables wealthy people in corporations to disproportionately influence public policy. i think the shrinking middle class and economic inequality are a constitutional problem. let me explain why. for most of the history of western political and constitutional thought, the ancient greeks to the 18th century, constitutional theorists and statesmen were worried about the problems of any quality, economic inequality. they worried if a society was deeply divided into rich and for the rich would oppress the poor, the poor would try to confiscate the wealth of the rich and the

results would be strife, violence and revolution. the founders knew the history, they were steeped in history and they were well aware that economic inequality is a serious source of instability, they knew that if the wealthy took power, it would slowly start to tilt the laws so outcomes would favor them. as john taylor said in 1814, when the rich under the poor it is slow and legal. the people, increasingly angry at rising economic and political inequality would respond but not through some sort of mass uprising. they would look for a leader to help them overthrow the oligarchy. future broadway sensation alexander hamilton, you may have heard of him, he did not give up his shot. he said in the first of the federalist papers, of those men

who overturned the liberties of republics the greatest number have begun their career by paying an obsequious court to the people commencing demagogues and ending tyrants. oligarchy, tierney. citizens confront a dire fate. statesmen and thinkers had two solutions to this problem. the first was to incorporate economic class into the structure of government. in ancient rome there was a patrician senate to the wealthy and tribune of the plebs for the poor. in england the house of lords for the wealthy, house of commons for the poor. i call these class warfare constitutions because they build class conflict into the structure of government. each class have a share in governing and a check on the other. this creates stability. the second solution articulated by aristotle, the best government is a government in

which the middle-class is bigger than the rich and the poor, in which there for the middle-class would govern. he called is a middle constitution. i call it a middle-class constitution, hence the title of the book. this is something of a cheat. the ideas that you don't have that many poor people are rich people, you have a huge middle-class, there isn't much economic inequality, they won't have conflicts between the rich and the poor. as a result you don't need a tribune of the plebs or patrician senate, you don't need this checking system that existed in the class warfare constitutions. the founding generation understood this history and believed america was unique in the history of the world because the distribution of wealth was relatively weak will -- equal. that seems crazy to us but put your back to put yourself in the 18th century. you have a sparsely populated country mostly along the eastern seaboard, but the center of the

world was western europe to the people in the american colleagues - colonies, london and paris. when the people looked across the ocean, the atlantic, they see big differences. no feudalism in america, no hereditary aristocracy unlike europe, even the richest people, the george washingtons, many of you have been to mount vernon down the road, a beautiful home, but nothing compared to the palaces of the dukes and duchesses in england. doesn't compare. america had another thing, vast lands to the west and that meant any white man and it was limited to white men at the time could become a property owner and have a measure of economic independence. let me read you some brief accounts that indicate this. the first from noah webster who you have probably heard of, the creator of our dictionary, webster's dictionary, he said

and equality of property is the soul of the republic. this continues, the people will nab it -- inevitably possess power and freedom. when this is lost, power departs, liberty expires and a commonwealth will inevitably assume some other form. second is charles pinckney, a delegate to the constitutional convention. here is what he said in the 1787. america was not only very different from the inhabitants of any state we are acquainted with in the modern world but also distinct from either the people of greece or rome or any state we are acquainted with among the ancients. believed america is, quote, had a greater equality than to be found among people of any other country and that inequality would continue because, quote, the nation possessed immense tracts of uncultivated land which would ensure there would be few poor and few dependent.

what you see here is a belief that the first, economic equality was necessary to have a republic and second, that american this were relatively economically equal so a republic would be possible. there is good reason to think they might have been right about this. it wasn't just a belief they had. two economic historians, have done extensive work on economic inequality and what they found it in 1774, on the edge of the american revolution the top 1% in america took home 8% of national income, not the same as it was in 1976. in comparison today the top 1% take home more than 20% of national income. a huge difference. williamson and linda conclude in the late 18th century america had the most a gala terry and distribution of wealth of any country it could calculate in the world.

with relative equality as the backdrop, the founding generation adopted our constitution, they didn't make it a class warfare constitution. there is no tribune of the plebs in our system of government, no property requirements for becoming a senator. the framers knew how to write these provisions, they debated things like this in the constitutional convention and their state constitutions but they ultimately rejected them for a federal constitution and this is a radical change. this is what is deeply radical about our constitution. it is not a class warfare constitution. what we have is a middle-class constitution. a constitution based on the assumption that america had and would continue to have relative economic equality. in the course of the 19th century the economy fundamentally changed. industrialization, urbanization, closing of the frontier, the shift from agriculture to wage work in factories, these

developments pressure the economic foundation, during the gilded age, economic inequality was on the rise, economic power was increasing concentrated in a small number of robber barons and plutocrats and people were very worried this was a threat to the republican a threat to our constitutional system. theodore roosevelt said there can be no real political democracy unless there is something approaching economic democracy. i will read a passage from the book to give you a feel for the concern of how the wealthy would corrupt the political system, turning the government away from the republic. this is from the 1880s and 1890s. marcus daily is determined to stop william anders clark. clark like daily with an industrial magnet who owns copper mines, mills, smelters, lumber, banks, retail stores, newspapers and utilities but what he really wanted was to win elected office in montana.

partly he wanted status and power that came with public leadership, partly he wanted to support policies that would improve business holdings, when clark stood for congress, they pasted their hand-picked candidates name under clark's leading to clark's loss in an instant of spectacular fraud. so began montana's or of the copper kinks. over the next two decades cover magnet in montana would engage in some of the most blatant, surprising and shocking efforts of corruption to gain political power in american history. daily canceled business contracts with those who did not support his political aims, started his own newspaper to compete with clark's, the two fought over whether the state capital would be located at a company town or helena which clark supported to block him and gave away cigars, broad rounds of drinks and handed out money in an effort to garner support for one city or the other. clark decided in 1899 that it was his last best chance to get into the senate and he was

willing to pay legislators whatever it costs. the opening bid for a bribe was $10,000 with may reportedly coming in at 20,001 river, $50,000 per vote. clark's and remarked they would send the old man to the senate or the courthouse. for his part clark said he had never bought a man who wasn't for sale. by some estimates clark spent $431,000 to buy 47 votes in the state legislature and offered $200,000, commenting on the brazen corruption in the election mark twain said of clark he is said to have bought legislature the judges and other men by food, by this example he has so excused in sweden's corruption that in montana it never has an offensive smell. senator william clark took office in washington to have investigations open immediately. after hearing testimony from state legislators and even

montana supreme court justices, clark's agents attempted to bribe the senate investigations committee declared clark's election void. in an amazing maneuver clark resigned and his allies in montana contrived to get the governor out of the state making the lieutenant governor the acting governor, at which point the lieutenant governor appointed clark to silva now -- what clark had been denied. this was the corruption going on in the gilded age. buying politics, shaping political outcomes and the populist and progressives were worried this was going to ruin the constitutional system, the end of the republic. they came up with the most creative solutions. on the economic side the invented antitrust laws, consolidations of corporate power. a constitutional amendment to create an in -- and income tax in order to prevent economic

power from influencing politics, campaign-finance reforms and passed the constitutional amendment from the direction of us senators. these battles continue through the progressive era and into the new deal. after world war 2 remake the idea that economic inequality is a threat to the republic largely disappeared from our national consciousness. i think this happened for three reasons. the first, the new deal largely won the battle over whether the federal government was constitutionally able -- fights over economic policy shifted from constitutional debate to being a debate about regulation. the second change was the cold war from founding through the 19th century and early 20thth century people who came to america, the founders and waves of immigrants afterwards left aristocracies and monarchies to

come to a republic, they knew very well there was a difference between living in a republican living in an aristocracy. after world war ii the contrast shifts and the question is capitalism versus communism. in that contrast, this cut against discussions of equality in the american tradition. the third is we entered a period of prosperity that economists call the great depression, gdp was up, median incomes were up, america's middle class grew larger and larger. we undertook policies that helped make this happen, regulated finance, securities and exchange commission, glass-steagall, we imposed taxes at high rates in this period and invested in our own people to get into the middle class, said a generation to college through the g.i. bill, encourage homeownership, invested in infrastructure like highways they created jobs and growth and put into place programs that would lift up the poor,

medicare, medicaid. in this era economic inequality became less of an issue. i know some of you have been thinking from the very start you have been objecting but what about women, what about african-americans, how many can possibly coexist with the reality of deep any quality between these groups and across these groups? in the book i just wish between two traditions, the first is the one i have been talking about so far, tradition of the middle-class constitution and the idea here is for there to be a republic you have to have relative economic inequality with the political community. this leaves open an important question. the political community, that is a question that has been fiercely contested including violently contested in our history. that over time we can also trace the tradition of inclusion which has expanded the political

community to include women minorities. i think the key thing to think about is what happens when these traditions intersect. when you expand the political community it becomes necessary for all new members of the political community to be able to join the middle-class or else the republic can't succeed. throughout our history statesmen understood this. after the civil war the reconstruction, not just treatment the patient and political rights but 40 acres and a mule, a measure of economic independence. i will read a brief bit from thaddeus stevens, a pennsylvania congressman, one of the leaders of the reconstruction, he proposed a bill confiscating the estates of the top 10% of rebel planters and redistributing that to the freed slaves of the south. here's what he said. without this, as it has never

been a true republican heretofore it had more the features of aristocracy, the southern states had been despotism, not government of the people, impossible than any practical equality of rights can exist, a few thousand men monopolize the property. the larger number of small proprietors the more safe and stable government. after his death, one of his colleagues said he knew a landed aristocracy and landless class are alike dangerous in a republican by a single act of justice could abolish both. the aim of the reconstructions, linking traditions together, inclusivity but also the middle-class, and economic equality. this is a key part of the civil rights movement, the march on washington, martin luther king gave his i have a dream speech, the march for jobs and freedom,

economics and politics. what i is important about this today is we have to understand we expanded the political community, we have to make sure everyone has a chance to join the middle-class. this is a challenge because once again we are in an era of increasing economic inequality and that is why this is a constitutional problem. constitution wasn't designed for any quality but a society of relative equality. looking at the long history of republics i think we have a couple options for how to deal with this going forward. the first is we can try to realign this mismatch of economic equality in constitutional structure just by abandoning economic equality. we could say we want to be an unequal society and embrace the class warfare approach, give up

on being a middle-class nation. what would that mean? we would have to change the constitutional structure at a root level. one house for the rich and one for the poor, we might have to resurrect the tribute of the pledge from rome. a professor at the university of chicago things we should do that. we need a tribune of the plebs. these are pretty outlandish ideas and unlikely to be implemented and probably undesirable. i don't think we want to be a country with fixed economic classes. the second option is we have to rebuild our middle class, reshape our economy and make our politics more democratic. there are a lot of things we could talk about, raising the minimum wage, organizing workers through unions, political movements, political reforms from voting to campaign-finance. bottom line is we have to do things not for economic reasons, not just because they are little tweaks to the system, we need to do these things because what that risk is the core of the constitutional system, the core of what it means to have a

republic. the founders would have understood this. they knew they were building a constitution on top of economic assumptions and that someday conditions would change. i will end with james madison who thought about this problem over the course of his life. in 18 of 29 he sat down to compare the availability to move west with estimates for population growth. he thought it would be 100 years before america had to confront the problem of inequality. the institutions and laws of the country must be adapted and it will require for the task all the wisdom of the wisest patriots. think what we need today, wise patriots to reform the system so we could preserve the republic.

[applause] >> i am happy to answer some questions. we have the microphone up here in the front so feel free to come on up, get in line, questions should have a question mark at the end. if you have questions, that will be terrific. >> your name first. first names are great. >> carolyn. this isn't exactly what you were talking about but something to think of. i always thought the middle-class was sort of a modern. it wasn't in ancient times. the odyssey you had aristocrats and peasants or serfs or

whatever, slaves. we didn't get a middle-class until we had industry and that sort of. how did aristotle come up with this middle idea? >> great question. part of the question is what do we mean by middle-class? this is a hard question because a lot of the time people say the middle-class, what they want to give me a number, a fixed dollar amount. that is a hard thing because in every society and every country, even the same society, same country across time completely changes inflation, lots of changes. dollar amount are difficult. i define middle-class in the book, not the very rich, not very poor, you see people talking in these terms. for aristotle, it is simple to

see there can be a rich and the poor and there could be people in the middle. he doesn't talk much in the politics, the reason why, this would be the best kind of constitution, the middle constitution but when we look around we don't have any societies that are mostly middle-class people, here it is all rich and poor. for him it is very theoretical. we move through history you see people talking about rich or poor and recognize there is a middle but the middle emerges at different times and different places. in florence there is a writer named giannotti to identify the change that happened, leading to the rise of the mediocre. i don't know italian so i am probably mangling that. it means people in the middle. in between rich and poor. there is a sense of that too. james harrington in england in

the 17th century recognized there are these people in the middle. in the 18th century lots of people in early america, they don't say middle-class but middleing people. somewhere in between the wealthy and the poor. the middle-class itself takes prominence in the victorian era as a phrase but the basic idea of it is pretty consistent throughout the political thought of centuries before that. >> let me thank you for a very interesting talk. i have a few questions. i am from the caribbean. i come from a different angle. i was somewhat surprised that

you declared obviously my constitution to be a middle-class constitution. i am sure you know the great political writer who pointed out how the constitution was written in the united states, to protect wealthy interests. granted it was a lot of land, opportunities for people to get in. elsewhere it was written basically to protect certain interests and the issue becomes are those interests really coming -- the chicken coming home to roost. that is the first question. second question would be obviously we do that for myself, just a minute here. you talked about that as you

point out, great income equalization between 1905, and 1980. i grew up in europe. i remember walking -- 18, 19, thinking there is something wrong, coming apart, telling me to get in the bus. i am thinking -- it came to me what had happened. basically what happened in western societies was the largest solidarity mechanisms. ..

demand much more moderate call distribution of. what you think about those issues, do you think, any way, this is not just in the united states. france, dutch in holland.

very significant amount of votes. how do you think this is, we have a lot of optimism. thank you. >> great questions. so, on first question, a little bit of background, century ago historian charles we'd, wrote a book, economic interpretation of the constitution. very famous. in the book he alerred that the constitution was. he went through in great detail showing different interests of all the particular people at constitutional convention, trying to link that up to outcomes of the constitution. this thesis which really sticks with us i think a lot of people in the historical imagination, was actually decisively debunked by historians in the 1950s. who went back you through all the evidence and -- and on specific claim that the constitution was rigged by the founders to serve their own personal interests there isn't

much to that. but the broader claim still a very powerful one, that the constitution was rigged by people to try to establish a more aristocrat i can form of government. but i think challenge we have to ask yourselves thinking about the constitution that way, why didn't they rig it more? just think about that. the whole history of governments before that, included things like property qualifications for members of upper houses, like the senate. imagine a designing a system that way. 1780 constitution of massachusetts, longest constitution in history of the world written by john adams had property qualifications in it for the governor, for the senators, it was deeply aristocratic. these designs were debated throughout the colonies and they

were rejected. that is radical change. some were radically rejected. one of the things that you see consistently in the reports, the notes from constitutional convention is referring to the people who were absent at the constitutional convention. that is the people. and they knew what the people wanted. they knew what the people believed, this was actually equal and they couldn't rig the system more without running afoul of what the people would accept and what the people really wanted. so the founding generation, the people who ratified the constitution, when they were embracing it, were not embracing a document that they thought was rigged for the system. you don't see people federal its making argument this is a great constitution because it enstretches the elite and will overthrow all the power of the people. what they say, this is a great constitution because every aspect of it drews some directly, some indirectly from

the great fountain the people, the great part of the democracy. everything is rooted in that. so there was a sense at this time that that was a real constraint, a real, thing that people believed. and so that is why they didn't rig it more. that is the way we think about it. the baseline isn't how we think about democracy today. baseline for them is looking at 2,000 years of history and looking at the european experience. on that background i think it is quite radical document. to your second question, how do we think about the changes we need today, there are a lot of things. we could go into into thighs. in washington there are policy experts into each of these areas. we talk about things like minimum wage, to lift wages up. redistributive mechanisms, taxes, transfer programs but there are front end things can do, scholars calling predib shun. thinking how the economy runs so

it generates more equal distribution of wealth. antitrust for progressive as i suggest in the book one of the ways they thought about this. the idea if you have a nation of small business owners, small proprietors, what you have is not massive concentration of wealth in the few, you have it distributed across everyone. antitrust was part of that. what is is interesting if you go back look at louis brandeis or roosevelt and others when they talk about antitrust, they talk about it in constitutional terms. it is essential to break up consolidations of power to preserve our republic, preserve our constitutional system. >> thanks for your talk. as we're speaking i found myself sort of thinking throughout you know, what happens if we take this interpretation and sort of flip it on its head. so i heard the argument advanced that a certain amount of inequality is good in a society.

you see that in the argument, there is incentive and some economic driver, having opportunity to move from one class to another motivates people to work. in fact having another class provides that incentive. i'm curious how you would approach that, perhaps the other alternative interpretation would be not that equality was presup he posed from the framing of the constitution, but inequality was presupposed or good thing or certain amount, of what is good and too much is a large field for debate. similarly i recall being in elementary school having been taught time and time again how our own legislature mirrors that of the upper house, lower house, so on as oppose to being different. in fact modeled on the same thought process involves a upper and lower class. i am kind of curious, what your thought process is in terms of we take the argument, look flip

the concavity of it. look at mirror image and what is inequality's role in it? >> thank you for the question. start with second part, thinking about the roman case, i stress again, the key difference actually between our system and prior systems it doesn't build in class directly into the structure of government. this is a hard thing to tell in some cases because we think of the senate maybe as the roman senate or house of lords. we think of house of commons as the house of representatives but there is a big difference how people thought of these overtime and the shift, the radical thing james madison explains in the federalist papers is that our, actually see this throughout the debates in ratification of the constitution, is that our system of separation of powers is not based on checking and balancing classes. it is based on checking and balancing just different institutions.

the president, one house of legislature, another house of legislature. the whole idea it is not about classes. what they say is, why would it ever be about classes? we don't have classes here we would need to check against each other. that is something you see said in these debates. on broader question about inequality, you know the idea here there isn't perfect equality. there was not perfect equality at the time of the founding. far from it. there are big differences but the differences are not extreme. not huge extreme levels you would see either in europe at the time or really even see today. i think that is the idea. that there has to be a range that is brought in. one thing i will say about this how culturally this is important. so you talked a little bit about the need to spur people to act but the other side of this is what it takes to have a virtuous citizenry. one of the things that is surprising i think to a lot of

modern eras, when you modern generation, they were skeptical of commerce. they were skeptical of commerce because they thought it would destroy virtue. one thing about the middle class, everyone is a similar to each other and measure of economic independence, and both of those things they thought developed kinds of virtues for people to be equal citizens in a republic. that is another way of thinking about the same set of ideas, that this is really different world where they have different considerations. things like virtue are at the forefront of your minds. >> good evening. a lot of examples gave at the time of founding america was premised on the idea of equality had to do with property ownership. do you have any examples aside from that that show this idea of economic equality was kind of built into the system? also, do you think property ownership still needs to be part of the constitution or part of the conversation today when

talking about restoring the middle class? >> so, most of the founders talk quite a bit about property. the reason is because property was the primary mode of wealth at the time. there was a lot of land, property available here in america. so property is really core to how people think about this. you see it the throughout the writings of basically everyone of the founders. maybe most famous is jefferson who says, when he gets rid of the end tail, which is a way to link property to your descendants over time, if you watch it down, the "downton abbey," the first season, end tails, make property law professors giddy with delight, that pop culture has the end tail. when jefferson tried to get rid of the end tail, and succeeded he laid the axe to pseudoaristocracy. property distribution was the

way that aristocracy developed over time. that is a big part of it. there is a sense other people in the time of the founding who weren't just farmers. there was artisan labor. the idea people owners of their own work. they are independents, they act separately. there was sommer chants. there was a merchant set of people. comparison in what merchants made between america and europe was pretty stark. by one account the wealthiest merchant in america had wealth levels at about 50,000 british pounds compared to in london where the wealthiest merchants were around 800,000 pounds. factor of 10 plus in thinking about just the differences among merchants. so i think even in the cases where we're not talking about just farmers and agricultural land, there were stark differences between america and europe. >> thanks for a great presentation.

>> thank you. >> wondering about the role of political populism in relation to inequality, sort of historically, especially in the present text. themes like populism ought to potentially be sort of a process that society goes through to sort of react to realizing inequality. maybe it doesn't always work that way, i don't know but historically can you say that it typically works that way? and if that is true, given that now we have inequality rising, rising inequality, we have rising pop youism, does that talk about hope for the out fur. >> you see populism in the comes

in times of fear of inequality, fear of changing economy. jacksonians are populists when there is big changes in commerce. one scholar calls this period of market revolution. the expanding of commerce in the 1820s. jacksonian populism is result of that. a group of people also we can populist with a small p, knights of labor, farmers alliance, a wide variety of these groups organized and really tried to change the nature of the economy, doing some things i suggested, antitrust, income taxes but in fact the populists from that period presage many of the 20th centuries goals. they petitioned for eight-hour work day. stopping child labor. women getting paid equally. this is way back in the late 19th century.

there was populists, not all populists but there was a strand much populists tried to unite african-americans and white working classes people in the south even. they organized them. they pushed hard to try to link across race in order to push back against what they saw as a planter era aristocracy that was keeping down both races. that effort failed obviously. but, there is a lot of populism at different times to push back against this. so one of the things i think is most striking in researching the book, how money change happened because of real grassroots action. part of leaders always. there were always leaders, teddy roosevelt and others but there was massive mobilization on the ground. so one example of this is united states pass as corporate tax in 1895. this is partly in response to the panic of 1893 and a massive

depression follows. people get organized. they are angry. there is marching in the streets. there is violence. this element of populism, leads to economic change. not advocating for violence certainly but the idea people really engaged can push political actors to be responsive to their needs. it really drove a lot of progressive changes both on the economic side and on the political side. >> hi. my name is bonnie and you spoke about arris to the tell, talking about the great middle class as it was at that time. as i recall he wrote about having serious doubts about a democracy because he said that a democracy leads to tyranny and, so, what was important to him

was education and that the educated people be the ones to be in the hierarchy, the ruling hierarchy but -- ruling hierarchy. so you haven't said anything about education. you have talked about owning property, kind of inequality of wages and everything. what is the connection with education since we're mindful of the fact that the current person who is sometimes sits in the white house said i just love uneducated people because they are the ones who vote for me? your thoughts? >> so he had hecation, well, multiple ways you can think about education in the context of the system. but the first is you might have a link between education and the middle class, or the education and economics. so some people think, define the middle class based on education. that gets back to the

conversation earlier about how we think about what is the middle class. there is another idea we have, largely 20th century idea but there is element in the 19th century, but education was best, only way to move forward into the middle class. there is a book about called the raise between education and technology which suggests that education is the way to stay ahead of technological changes and still be able to be successful in the new economy. so we can think about education on economic side of the ledger. political, constitutional side of the ledger, a number of people throughout history believe education was very important for having a virtuous citizenry. for having citizens who understood their duties, understood their responsiblities in the society. so education was a key component of that but they also thought education was important for uniting us as a people. many of the founding generation advocated, for example, for a national university. james madison at one point

thought this was good because it would build social harmony across all peoples. in 1870s, land grant colleges, to build economic opportunity to build educated citizenry throughout the west and growing expanse of the country. education plays a role in many of these different dimensions and it an important one. i will add one other thing how education can be experienceal and lead to virtue. in guilded age, populists many thought the answer to the problems much their period, basically the creation of the corporation, that is what they thought as one big innovations, they're owners, shareholders, wage workers was not socialism. it wasn't national ownership. it was creating cooperatives and the idea of the cooperative that workers would both be owners and

workers but they would share in governing the cooperative and governing the corporation. that would train them in the process of making hard choices, learning how the institution ran and these would be kind of virtues good for education of a middle class person but also of a citizen who has to deliberate on national questions where there are tradeoffs and where there are real challenges as well. there is different kinds of waives to think about education in that concept. >> we'll take these last few questions. >> thank you for coming here. i was a bit disappointed not bringing up scandinavia where they established something with equality. welfare system, how support such a thing when only thing americans think about is producing taxes?

i think that is very important point. welfare. >> [inaudible] >> welfare. i believe that a lot of americans think welfare system is useless thing, and you did not mention welfare. just want you to comment on this. >> so when we talk about inequality there are a few different things we should talk about. one is the difference between, we'll split it up. talk about three categoriries. we can talk about the poor, talk about the middle and the rich. there were times in our history the biggest problems were between the poor and middle. great depression, after world war ii, great '50s and '60s, there was a lot of

poverty in america. desperate poverty. there was a divide between the poor and middle, even though we were equal in society. a lot of policy things helped solve the problem. we mentioned medicare, medicaid talks, programs of the great society were hugely important to alleviate poverty. these programs likely succeeded doing so. another problem we can talk about in inequality is the difference between the very rich and everyone else. that is actually more where today there is, the problem is that we see a greater and greater share of the, economists tell us of wealth going to wealthiest people in our society. that is a thing that leads to possibilities of oligarchy, aristocracy we've been talking about. there is a important component to play at the end, but at the moment i think some of the biggest threats to our republic the threat of oligarchky more than anything else. >> thank you very much for

coming. my name is sterling. i'm looking forward to reading your book. what is the impact of technology on wealth inequality? since i have the microphone i can't help myself. march madness is going on. a few of these basketball players go on to the pros. they will make incredible amount of money. the difference between using an example of george washington, george washington and now, as i see it, one of the main differences is technology. so my question is, the impact of technology on wealth inequality? >> so i think there is a lot of things that impact inequality. as i started, i'm not an economist. i won't pretend to choose which ones are the most important or rank them or anything like that. but technology has got to be part of the story here and the reason why is, we have become more productive through technology but when that happens, people lose jobs. and the question is, can the

people go back and get retrained or reskilled or other jobs? great example we're all probably aware of that looms large in our future is most states, one, if not number one job is driving. driving trucks especially. we have self-driving cars. in a few years, we may have self-driving trucks. we may have them everywhere. that will be a lot of people who lose their livelihoods potentially over technological innovation that has great promise in a variety of, variety of other a reason has. for example, fewer accidents potentially. more productivity for people being able to drive all night long. machine can drive all night long. doesn't need to sleep or take breaks. so there is a challenge of how we deal in a world of increasing technology, that some people will be very deeply disproportionately impacted by this. i think we see that all over america in that it is very, very

hard to figure out how you can retrain or reskill for new jobs of the future. but that is one of our big challenges. that is a core part of what people today, i talk about the wisest patriots need to think about. how will we confront challenges of the future head on and try to solve them. [applause] i mentioned at the start. i will hang out here to sign some books. if you get them, come on up. we'll, we'll do that right now. [inaudible conversations].