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>> the book is called "job creation: how it really works and why government doesn't understand it", the co-author is andy puzder. mister puzder, you talk about a certain factor here . >> it's at the time we wrote it back in 2009 it had been 2010. there was a lot of uncertainty in the economy because of actions the president obama was taking so long progressive lines as opposed to conservative economic lines which the business community would have preferred so with respect to tax, energy and regulation there was great uncertainty in the business community about where the government was going and what kind of obstacle it would become. we tried to convey the message that if the

government would provide positive certainty, that we get we could rise out of the recession, that we were still in the recession until june 2009 so we were out of it technically but i don't think people for years that we were out of it really. if youwant the kind of dynamic economic growth you're expecting rising out of a recession, you have to do positive things and give the committee business community certainty you are not going to hurt them. >> what are some of the measurements that go into the effect ? >> the one that we focus on work tax reform, energy policy, regulatory reform and reduced government spending. this was the only trunk agenda item we didn't get was healthcare reform but this was 2009 and 10, not as big an issue as it was today. we didn't know what a negative impact it would have on the economy. >> spending, tax reform, regulatory reform and energy policy you talk about reform in the book, can you give an example of what you would like to see as a former corporate gm? >> when you take it at the

state, local or federal level , i was in california at the time so we can spend the entire segment talking about one 10th of the problems diseases have in california with regulation. on the federal side was a constant influx of new regulation such as at the department of labor . in putting in place new requirements, making it easier to unionize, they were trying to discharge, they had the blacklisting legislation where the blacklisting regulation. relations that were going to require attorneys to disclose the discussions they were having with their employer clients during the course of attempts to unionize. the comment that was called blacklisting. they had an employer standard where they tried to make a voice jointly viable for the employers of their franchisees which would have destroyed the franchise business model, it wouldn't have existed anymore. there were efforts to

increase the $48,000 salary level below which you have to pay overtime so even if you have somebody managing a restaurant and not an incentive-based bonus, which would have urged particular franchise restaurant business, retail businesses in general economically. all this is coming down the pipe that you anticipated that with the progressive expert secretary of labor, secretary of treasury, a very progressive president that we were going to have problems in the next few years and we were trying to save those off to get americans working again. job creation isn't i think what the government envisioned it to be, it isn't something that inevitably occurs. there is a six cycle you can lock into and it's going to go out which was what a lot of the president's advisers thought at the time. larry summers and jason furman, a cop thought coming out of the recession they were going to get four percent gdp. back in 2010 a white house projected four percent adp growth. thinking they were on this coming out of the recession

cycle and what we were trying to say was with these policies you can hit those numbers, without then you can't . >> you right at the unfortunate reality is that federal spending initiatives are intended to expand the power and influence of government rather than improve the economy and create jobs to. >> this is the progressive velocity, the progressive movement starting with wilson and probably the only president who was more progressive than barack obama but the idea has always been to expand government power, to the ability to control the economy in the hands of an elite group of people, political appointees, the bureaucracy and academics and time elected officials rather than having the direction of the economy driven by consumers and purchasing. so i think rahm emanuel said it back. if you don't want a crisis to go to waste so every time there's been a crisis whether it was the early 1900s or the great depression or the recession, there's always this expansion of government

that the solution to our problems when all it really does is prolong those problems because the goal isn't actually to create economic growth, the goal is to expand government , empower this elite group who will redistribute the benefits. the wealth of the nation, more equally. >> which takes every kind of, more equally lower than higher . but instead of raising everybody off, it lowers everybody down. they review that as a more just society. we're trying to say if you get more just society by generating growth.kennedy said all those, we wanted to create a tie that would lift everybody's economic boat, make it easier for working-class people to get to the middle class, making it easier for working-class kids to find jobs, reducing income inequality by reducing everybody's income, not increasing the top and bottom. >> in your book you focus more on deployment rather than unemployment, why is that?

>> the focus should be how you get people back into jobs, what caused somebody to hire a person because when you got for example, take one of our restaurants. our restaurants are employed by 25 people and most people taken on it that way, restaurants got 25 employees but as you go to concentric circles, we hire people to build those restaurants, to design the restaurants, construction workers put the restaurants together.you've got the farmers and the cattlemen who attend to the herd and grow the crops. the processors take the cattle and across and turn it into food that we get grocery stores and restaurants, guys who drive the trucks delivering food, you've got these concentric circles of restaurants and then all those people they buy close, go to the movies, they send their kids to school, do all the things that help generate economic growth so if you could focus on these core businesses and find a way to cause them to grow, you're going to see real economic growth and all of these

concentric circles overlap with other businesses which is how america went from 13 in the backwoods colonies at the late 1700s to a nation that's all devastated and destroyed in the civil war where hundreds of thousands of americans died 1885 largest economy in the world and by world war i the highest standard of living in the world. this is because of an economic system that relied on individual empower consumers, encourage individuals not only to create economic growth but to keep the methods of that growth to themselves which automatically benefits everybody else cause people as they try and grow and benefit themselves inadvertently smith's invisible hand, benefit everybody else so it's a system that works tremendously well and we saw only putting a court in hourglass, the hourglass of economic growth. when we take the court out. >> so what is tka and what's been your role? >> best larger enterprises,

carl started with a hotdog cart in 1940 and he's the quintessential example of job creation, started with a hotdog cart and went to los angeles in 1941. by the time i met him he had half $1 billion in public companies called pkd restaurants so about 600 restaurants, carl's jr. in the late 80s carl's jr. bought parties. it got in financial trouble in the late 90s and into thousand, i was at thegeneral counsel . they appointed me as ceo, chief executive officer to take the company, sell it or take it into bankruptcy. i realized that would've been a mistake, we had 70, 75,000 people working for the company that would have lost their jobs. franchisees would have lost their investment. i have a great team and the next few years we didn't fix it. i retired april 2 and we had 3800 restaurants in 44 states

and 41 foreign countries. 20 percent of our restaurants are overseas so it was a lot of fun. i am enjoying retirement as 16 years of ceo but it was a fun 16 years. >> are you doing? >> i'm writing a book that i have a publisher towrite a book . it was going to be about how i saw hillary clinton and obama work together to is not destroyed, at least significantly demean the american free enterprise system which created such great opportunity for people. with president trump having been elected i can write about how president trump with the proper support in congress in particular given what's happening lately but with the proper support can bring back that american dream spirit that lifted this nation so high and again, make america great again as he would say. we've got a real potential but i want to talk about, i don't think people know about

woodrow wilson and what he did to the country, his disrespect to the constitution. there are things franklin roosevelt who didn't want the help of the business sector during the great depression. he actually said in a speech that they should leave us alone, they are not constructive and rely on government. how governmentexpanded and may be expanded too much. i don't say government doesn't have a role, it does have a role and it's a constructive role and government can be meaningful but like anything, can be overdone. we seen it overdone lily over the past years . >> andy puzder, why did you withdraw from consideration as labor secretary. >> i didn't have enough votes to confirm. if i had enough votes, i would have stuck it out to the end instead of having this very pleasant conversation in the beautiful paris hotel, i'd be sitting beating mybrains out in washington dc .but there was such a adverse reaction

to divorce being approved as secretary of education, chuck schumer identified me as the target they were going to go after. the press was merciless, dishonest. some other interview we can talk about, the fake news during this confirmation process but i got beat up pretty bad and it made some of the more liberal republicans a little nervous. once you lose three people, you start off losing too. you've got to do that didn't vote for betsy were going to vote for me no matter what i did. use more you are in trouble and the more this piles on, the more the press can focus on this distorted story. and the more nervous made people and the press reported that i hadn't filed my government ethics papers and there must be something wrong because, i was like the first guy to file.

i filed january 3, the problem was the government of all government ethics wouldn't react to my paper. a sat on it for six or seven weeks. in the meantime the president tweeted me up, schumer makes me the target, republicans got nervous and i didn't want the president to suffer a defeat on the senate floor that had my name attached to it. so discretion being the better part of valor. >> you were portrayed or are portrayed as being antiunion, is that a fair moniker? >> i'm very supportive of collective bargaining, i think that you look back to the late 1800s, early 1900s and the union has had great victories with respect to child labor, eight hour workdays. >> eventually workers compensation insurance and retirement, that's the unions had a great victory. i do think that the unions are currently struggling for relevance. >> in the private sector they are down to about .4 percent

representation, in the workforce. for the public and government combined it's only 10.7 and that's 100 year low. it hasn't been that low since 1915, 1916 so are they are struggling to be relevant and they are not focusing on what would create jobs, what would create economic growth. they're trying to focus on things they think will attract members into the union so trying to use government to bring members into the union and i think that can get overdone. so for example, they fight for 15. the $15 minimum wage, there was a report out of the san francisco census that hurts low skilled workers, or the very workers, something like san francisco that a bastion of economic policy. in san francisco, they gone to 13, they're going to 15. our business schools have said it cause restaurant closures to increase 10 percent for every dollar. harvard is not a bastion of conservative economic policy

and in seattle where they went 13, the university of washington, a liberal based school came out and said that the minimum wage increase is just to 13, they're going to 15. already taken down low skilled workers hours nine percent and the private of $125 a week. these people can't afford that. this is low skilled workers, i started out in baskin-robbins. i have a job, talking a lot. i learned about inventory, taking care of customers, showing up on time, the things you learn when you have an entry-level job. they're going to kill these entry-level jobs but it isn't something to talk about on tv because the fbi does something to draw men in and it look like you are helping workers when they are really not yet in that sense i'm against the policy that the

unions are pursuing to generate more union growth but i'm not at all opposed. i think collective bargaining is something workers should absolutely have the right to duplex does corals or parties have restaurants in seattle or san francisco and how would that affect an individual restaurant? >> we do have franchise restaurants in san diego so this is something the franchisees employee the employees and they have to pay these wages but to the extent that it makes it harder to hire people so your labor costs go up cause you got to pay these increased wages. the tendency is to automate, the tendency is to reduce the number of your employees or to reduce their hours inches exactly, one of these restaurant it's exactly what the harvard business school and university of washington study chose happens. i don't need study to tell people that happen. i did it wallstreet journal op-ed and informs . and got severely ridiculed for it and characterized as antiunion although i'm not. i've been trying to convince the restaurant industry and the franchise association to increase, to go for an

increase in the minimum wage, is too low.it could go to nine dollars, a level at which you could increase the minimum wage where it would not kill entry-level jobs. $15 an hour kills jobs, hurts businesses, or to lesser skilled workers, it is bad for the american worker and apparently it's good for union membership but is not good for much else. >> you quote milton friedman in your book job creation, one of the great mistakes is to judge government policies andprograms by their intentions rather than their results . >> that's such a good quote. that's the way every government program should be judged. look at the war on poverty. the intention was to reduce poverty, it hasn't.if we were losing a real war, we would change our tactics to win the war.

we're still going, not only did we go with the same tactics that failed but we put more money into them. this is not a good plan. we have a president willing to change that. if we can getpolitical commitment and energy going, particularly in the senate, we can solve a lot of these problems and make a lot of improvements but we need the senate to get on board . >> what would have been your first action as labor secretary? >> number one i wanted to implement policies that would create jobs in the inner cities. the policies implemented over the past eight years have her job growth in the inner cities. i want to see those entry-level jobs, i want to see people get prepared for the jobs that exist so we would have apprenticeship and internship rams where i would coordinate with the private sector. the government spends about 300 million a year on job training or 300 billion.

excuse me, 30 billion and the private sector spends like300 billion. let's coordinate with the private sector . running around doing crazing things with our money that don't make any sense when the people that have jobs and are willing to train people for those jobs and are looking for people to build those jobs, there's many jobs i consider programmers, welders, construction workers where they can't find the people to fill the jobs. we have 6 million job openings, that's a historic high. there have never been 6 million job openings. we need to get people in the inner cities into the american dream, they need to get into the process, into the system. when i worked at baskin-robbins, my professional career was when the franchisee owner handed me the key and said you are the assistant general manager, you can open in the morning. i opened and i bet it was the cleanest restaurant in america within a half hour. there was such pride and accomplishment that that's the kind of thing that keeps

you in your family, that keeps you in school. the pride that leads you to a better life and a more profitable existence than the two out of gangs, keeps you away from the drugs. it does things that are so meaningful to people that are underestimated. those jobs don't exist in the inner-city because people are afraid to go in. we're not seeing the kind of growth in inner cities that we should see and i think i would've done everything i could try to intercept it. >> i would've took on the regulatory jungle. most people have seen secretary perez as chairman of the democratic party and you can get a good idea what he was doing for the six years he was secretary of labor and the lot needed to be undone. a lot supports the undoing because the department really overreached in a number of areas but we needed to take down and also i would say there's a woman's bureau in the department of labor, i would work with the potential, she's got very good policies with respect to

women, particularly family leave. by the time i graduated from law school and i worked my way through law school, didn't have government or family assistance, my family couldn't help and there was a government program at work that my wife, we had two kids and she was pregnant. i remember what it was like getting to the end of the month and the money didn't make it all way to the end of the month. there are things that i think government can do to help. but if we release the burdens on business and other, better tax rates, better regulatory policy, get rid of this horrifically burdensome healthcare system or insurance system that we have, we might be able to do things with family leave that could genuinely help people. so i think i would have been very happy in the administration doing those things and at the same time help president to generate economic growth which is his focus. nick mulvaney, the office of management and budget started this nonanonymous project,

make america great again economics.'s tax reform, regulatory reform, healthcare reform, or immigration policy, order trade policy, reduce ending. he had a great article on exactly that and i wish i were there helping, this isn't my place to be in my life and i are going to hawaii, she keeps tell me how much better time that we're having that if i stayed in but i feel it's tough to be inthe fight in dc and i'm helping the president every way i can . >> you talked about the reform or healthcare reform, how did the affordable care act affect your franchisees? >> it significantly increased healthcare, health insurance costs for everybody. >> and its, it did not only in industries the cost of labor which labor costs have been going up dramatically but it's also, it also had a dramatic impact on the dollars that people have available to spend because over the past healthcare

costs went up i think seven or eight percent last year or were projected to go up 16 percent or 25percent this year or next year . this is money that people would spend in retail and i wrote an article for the wall street journal last fall about the restaurant, restaurants have gone into a recessionary period and the research shows that if your healthcare insurance premiums went up, you would see 30s percent more likely not to visit the restaurant as much as you did previously so this is, it isn't just restaurant. it people that are looking to buy, maybe a year longer than you might otherwise or getting a new car, anything in retail. people, if you take money out of the system, you're going to retail businesses so

restaurants were hurt by that. it's across the board.the current system has had a devastating impact on businesses but is nowhere near as devastating as it spent on individuals having babies insurance premiums or having to pay these incredible high dockable, don't know where it's going to go next year and they would be very concerned about where the system is taking the cost of healthcare and health insurance. the senate bill is a good solution. i also said it does get behind and it gets rid of government compulsion, it reinvigorate competition into the system and i'm hoping the senators can figure that out and get behind it. >> andy puzder, is it fair in the reading of job creation to say your fear of bureaucrats? >> going back to woodrow wilson he wrote about this extensively. he believed the way the government should be run wasn't by elected officials, it was by a bureaucracy, it was by these professional in the bureaucracy who would execute the functions of government three freely from control by the political system and i think we're seeing a lot of that, there's a lot going on in this fourth branch of government that

beyond the control ofthe president, beyond the control of congress . more beyond the control of the president but certainly beyond the control of congress. and we are seeing things, look at the problems present trump has had trying to get the regulatory state, this bureaucracy under control, you've got all these leaks, you got things coming out that nobody wants to come out. you've got policy going forward that shouldn't be. it's become the bay and congress needs to get it under control. i think the deficit needs to be reduced, need to be gotten under control so the people that are responsive to the american people, the people who answer to them arein charge of what's happening, not a bunch of bureaucrats or academicians .>> can the president and congress make that much of a difference in the economy or does it child along all by itself? >> since the beginning of the year, we had meaningful regulation regulation reform.

under present trump and even since the election we had very meaningful increase in business optimism. so has their better result in the economy, there are 620,000 more people working from february 2 june of this year. according to the bureau of labor statistics. last year was 47,000. of those 620,000 people there are all 1 million more people working full-time jobs, 400,000 fewer people working part-time jobs, more people working, the jobs are better. we're seeing claims for unemployment insurance at a 44 year low going back to the early 1970s when there were 68 million fewer people in the population and i'm talking the number of people filing claims for unemployment insurance. we seem median household income increase more since january, january was just to the first three months of the year increase $1300. during the entire 7 and a

half years of the obama recovery increased $1000 that we see more of an increase in income through the beginning of this year than we saw through 7 and a half years of the supposed recovery, this is by research. we see household wealth get household net worth historic highs, it's the highest in 27 billion higher than it was before the recession. we've seen job openings at a record high at 6 million. you've seen how many, i can't remember the number but it's maybe 20, 30, record highs in the new york stock exchange in the stock market. the stock market hit highs. the stock market prices go up when businesses and investors are enthusiastic about the future. don't invest on the past, they don't even invest on the present. they invest on where they believe are going to go and we are heading historic highs almost every week, we had another one before yesterday. i was picking yesterday so i didn't keep track.

we're seeing real dynamic economic improvement since president obama, since president trump was inaugurated and that's just with regulatory reform. can you imagine the kind of growth we will see if we can do tax reform, healthcare reform, infrastructure spending? if he can implement the policies he says he wants to implement , that his entire cabinet and particularly director mulvaney are advocating that we implement. were going to easily see three percent. this is been under promise and try to over perform, three percent wasn't under promise. we will have to wait and see what he can execute these policies, if we can get in play, we are going to see dynamic economicgrowth and i sure hope the senate wakes up and smell the roses. >> . >> guys on our team, they have to realize it's a team sport.they don't seem to be aware that it's a team sport. weneed that kind of commitment to policy,

commitment to our objectives , commitment to fulfill the problem we made as republicans, we need a commitment the democrats had in 2008 and so far i'm not seeing it.>> your co-author? >> is an economist with westmont college at the time we wrote the book and now teaching in san diego. a real good guy, has a number of books out there and we had a lot of fun writing the books. >> the book came out in 2009 2010. >> is it still relevant today? >> is a matter of fact it's very relevant today. it really talks a lot about how businesses grow and develop, it isn't so much a book for 2010. it's a book for people that wonder how governments use particularly progresses in government view the jobs and how they can help the economy and how conservatives and how conservative economic principles work much better to generate growth and helping the economy and why, not just that's true, that's an easy statement to make but

it explains i think briefly why that's true. and i think that's important for people to understand. you don't learn it at the school,it's not something you're going to teach economics west . >> final question mister puzder. how do you get your opinion beyond the opinion page of the wall street journal, beyond the libertarian convention? >> i'm writing a book and i'm really it is a lot of fun to write. it can be frustrating at times. i wake up at 6:00 in the morning the first thing i want to do is run to the computer. the other way as i go on television, i'm on foxbusiness, cnbc, i've gone on nbc a few times since the election which i enjoyed because i get to reach an audience that different than the audience i reach on fox4nownews.com foxbusiness port cnbc. when people ask me to come talk , if i'm able to, i go

and do it. it's an important message to get out, means a lot. america has given a lot to me. i wanted to give back to the country which is why i was willing to serve as secretary of labor. it's not an easy thing to do, it would have been easier to retire and spend time with my wife and kids and write is what i'm ending up doing. there isn't a country in the history of the world where working-class people like me could aspire to the level of success i've achieved any rational chance of achieving it. where there wasn't even a path that you could get on that could lead you to this kind of success and personal fulfillment. that's a word we need to get out and get red doing the interview with you, i hope that reaches people as well. >> job creation is the name of the book, the subtitle "job creation: how it really works and why government doesn't understand it". andy puzder is the co-author. this is book tv on c-span2. >> book tv has attended

freedom fest, a libertarian conference several times. if you are interested from hearing from other authors, go to our website, booktv.org and type freedom fest into the search bar. you will be able to see other interviews online. >> you are watching book tv on c-span2 with top nonfiction books and authors every weekend. book tv: television for serious readers. >>. [music] [applause]