this is a story i want to tell you about. this is going to be a story that comes from 1935 to the present. that's going to be the title, 1935 to 1916. i want you to walk in -- walk into your brain because i'm not going to use a fancy powerpoint. [laughter] i can do this. anyway, so here's what i want you to walk into your mind, 2016 basically with a few exceptions, gdp, how rich we are getting and what we are producing. a nice steady lineup that's good to be the first part, 1935 to 2016. now i'm going to divide the

story into two time periods of 1980. it will give us an idea how to work with this. okay, so 1935 to 1980. what happens in america. we work on how to build opportunities. you know how we do it? two principal tools. first, we regulate. [applause] we do things like enforce antitrust regulation so big guys don't get to roll over little businesses before they can get started. we put a cop on the beat on wall street. [applause]

we regulate the biggest financial institutions. you want to be a bank, there's going to be new regulation around that. is it safe to put money into bankin thebanks but they becamed businesses. okay, so park number one is regulate. number two, progressive taxation. we tax those at the top and use that money to invest in business opportunities. we invest in education big-time, g.i. bills, returning soldiers from world war ii. we invest it in public education, k-12, state universities. why do we make of these investments in education? we believe if you've got an education you can do anything. we invested in infrastructure.

roads, national highway transportation systems, bridges, power, power to run america. why? because we didn't know what the next great business would be that we were pretty sure that it would be electricity and i'm pretty sure you need roads such you get your goods to the marketing for the 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, we invested in research. we put money into medical research and scientific research, engineering research, behavioral sciences, all kinds of research. why, because we believed in the future. we didn't even know what was going to produce. it was going to produce. we didn't know what we believe

to in this giant pipeline of ideas. ideas that things would permit our children and grandchildren to live a life that we had never even dreamed of so we made those investments and here's the deal, it still gives me goosebumps how much it works. it works so much that the 90% of america, everybody else is in the top 10%. the upper-middle-class, the middle class, the working class, working poor and the poor together dot 70% of all the income growth enough time period. the rich do better but 70% come here's the thing when you look at the data it is all the way

everybody did their. the pie got bigger and everybody got more to meet. we were not perfect, not by any stretch. the gap was there from the first time we measured where african-americans held firmly at the bottom but here's the deal. america was so committed just into basic notion of opportunity that we made changes in the civil rights era in the 1960s and 1970s the black-and-white wealth gap shrank by 30%. so it wasn't by any stretch, but we were on a road and then we have 1980, ronald reagan, trickle-down economics, deregulate, turn the banks loose

and do whatever they want to do. stop enforcing or slow down and forcing the antitrust law. and the stuff about taxes, cut taxes for those at the top and when you cut for those at the top, all of those investments in education, infrastructure, basic research start shrinking and that is exactly what we did. and here is the deal. gdp keeps going up. gdp keeps going up, so how does the 90 percent do? from 1980 to 2016, the answer is 90% am everybody else is at the top 10% got nothing. none of the new income growth. nearly 100% of the new income

growth in america brought 1980 to 2016 had gone to the top 10% in this country. think abou about.com that come e black-and-white wealth gap in the time period has tripled. that is what trickle-down has done for african-american families. and there are people that will say there is a whole lot more food stamps to their used to be. yes and more rent subsidies, true. this is about people that 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 be able to build for themselves and for their kids. 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 badly and working families across the spectrum started giving bad because you know, that gravity will get you every time. [laughter] though, the country keeps getting richer. it happens because of technology, and it didn't happen because of the constitution internationally, you have your eye on the very first step of getting richer. the difference is what is happening and who gets to participate. the story i tell in this book about what happened and why it changes between time one and two is basically a bunch of billionaires and corporate ceos

decided to invest millions, billions of dollars in making sure that washington worked we well. they made a bad investment and it's paying off. [applause] fellow booksellers and thank you for coming to this special event. i know what a long day it has been for you and so i have that much more appreciative to be here with you this evening. i am the president and chief executive officer of simon and schuster. ..