[inaudible conversations] >> a look at some of the upcoming book fairs and festivals happening around the country. for more information about upcoming book fairs and festivals and to watch previous festival coverage click the book there's a tab on her website, booktv.org. >> good evening, everyone. i'm joanne myers a map of the

carnegie council i'd like to think our subscribers, guests and c-span's booktv for joining us today. it is my pleasure to welcome gregg easterbrook to this podium. mr. easterbrook will be discussing his most recent book entitled "it's better than it looks: reasons for optimism in an age of fear." since all of you here have received is a bio, for those not in a live audience listening briefly highlight a few things about our guest which you may find interesting. to begin with mr. easterbrook is the author of many wonderful books including the "new york times" bestseller the progress parade, how life gets better while people feel worse. in addition to his books his writings have appeared in the atlantic, the new yorker, science, wired, "wall street journal" and the "los angeles times." and for the football fans among that you may be familiar with the celebrated weekly nfl column, tuesday morning quarterback, now appearing in

the weekly standard. he provides detailed analysis of america's most popular sports and its professional leagues. if you spend a lot of time reading or listening to the news you are bound to find yourself believing that the world is falling apart. it's not just in america where we have fallen prey to the false narrative. it's happening around the globe. yet this account misses something very important. because if you would step back from the headlines and follow the data you would be surprised to learn that the world today is not all doom and gloom. while no one would deny refacing essays a deeply troubling, even existential problems, , it's jut that we may sometimes forget and romanticize a world of times past instead of focusing on the positive development in time presents. still you may argue it's a matter of perspective. but whether you are a pessimist or skeptic, whether you agree or disagree about the reasons for optimism in an age of fear, it's better than it looks in an

argument with considering. please join him in giving a warm welcome to a person who is eternally optimistic about the present and hopeful about the future, our guest this evening gregg easterbrook. thank you for joining us. [applause] >> thanks, joanne. you always start with the jokes let me start with a joke. i live in washington, d.c. this is a joke, making the rounds. donald trump and hillary clinton die on the same day. because they die on the same day they both go before their maker to be judged on the same day. god is sitting on the throne of shimmering gold and this, i got voice, i have to do a god voice, i will make any judgments about the gender of god but the maker is sitting on the throne of shimmering gold and any terms e first former senator from new york and says hillary clinton, what do you believe?

hillary launches into this really long spiel about infrastructure, banks, positive engagement and campaign-finance reform. she is going on and on and it's hard to tell what are subject is that she starts did not all these things about e-mails that land deals and monica lewinsky pictures going on and on. and the like to come time doesn't have the same meaning it has among us mortals are earth so it's hard to really say how long hillary talks let's just say the cherubim, the low baby angels, they all fall asleep under floating clouds. she finally says that in conclusion, everybody steps back to attention and hillary finishes and then she checks her blackberry and sits down. so god says, well, that was inspirational. you've lived a good life. i offer you admission to paradise. hillary clinton is routed by light and she vanishes into heaven. god then turns to the 45th

president of the united states and says, donald trump, what do you believe? and trump gives them that beady-eyed sneer and says i believe you're sitting in my chair. [laughing] that's an actual washington joke that cuts a little too close to home. this is the book i want to talk about, the headline makes it the main point of the book pretty obvious. sometimes when you're doing an intellectual argument it's easiest to start by saying what it isn't. let me start by saying what this isn't. to say it's better than it looks at and to make a case for optimism is not the same as saying that everything is fine. everything is not fine. the world is full of problems. it's a lot of things you should be worried about, a lot of things you should be upset or cynical about. there's a lot of things going on in the wrote you should be angry about. i don't say you shouldn't be

angry or should be cynical. i expect you to be. to jump ahead of it, the difference between optimism and pessimism, is pessimist think the things you should be angry and cynical about are going to overwhelm us. an optimist thinks they can be fixed and that's the main argument of this book, the first you have to see how much the world has improved to the present day and then you have to use the lessons you can draw from that to see how we can fix the problems that face us today. this book is also not a click we should be cheerful or if you want to be cheerful that's great, i hope you are, go around the world with a smile on your face. an optimist can be a cynical person. an optimist can be very upset reading the newspaper. you don't have to be cheerful. but you don't have to -- are feeling should be based, i guess a better way to say is, whether

you feel pessimistic or optimistic about the world has two levels. what is just the choice that you make. you read the news, you decide what the optimistic, angry and depressed? that the choice you make. the news does not dictate those things to you. whatever choice you make ought to be based on a full financial appreciation of what's going on in life. a full financial appreciation is pretty encouraging. i hope i can show you in a few minutes, practically everything we can measure about the united states is positive and has been positive for years if not decades. not the entire world but most of the larger world, most of what we can measure about the larger world is positive and in many cases has been positive for decades. if you acknowledge those things, there's still a lot to worry about and angry about and there will always be people who have terrible circumstances, either individuals depending on where you go in the world, entire

groups. there's never going to be time with her isn't someone who is lonely or stressed for money or sick or unhappy. unless there's a second garden of eden, there will never be a time without that. there can be time with basic problems of human life, the materialize, i think we can't a lot close to that than people realize. in order to present the thesis of this book in a timely manner let me do a couple of things. first make a political point. this is not merely about politics. mainly about other things. ask why so many of us are so negative about life, and because this is the carnegie council we will always of course concluded by asking, what does it all mean? the first point i will make is a political one. on the day that the united states elected donald trump

president, 63 million people voted for a guy who told you that the world was falling apart, just to quit if he thinks he said the week before the election. everything in america is always bad. it's always down, down, down. an audience and colorado two days before the election the country is in worse shape it's ever been. on on the day 63 million people believe that can the country was in the best shape that is evident in its history by pretty significant margin. the i think that within a better ship that was on the day of the election. trump aside from everything else has gone pretty well. and yet he was able to convince 63 million people that the country was falling apart. you can say we make this choice, optimistic, as the mystic, that's a personal choice. on some level it is but in november of 2016 it backfired on the country. people's willingness to believe everything was terrible as a factual truth caused us to get

donald trump as president. it wasn't just here. the same sequence of events happen in the united kingdom which voted for brexit in the year since the founding of the european union. there's been no europe on your war. after how many centuries of constant war? there's been prosperity and almost all european union members and yet people were convinced the european union is a horrible thing that we have to get rid of. i argue that the belief that the world is worse than it is an almost a desire to believe that the world is worse than it is, it definitely predates the donald trump, but in 2060 it backfired on his by giving us trump and to a lesser extent also giving us brexit, which may be brexit can be reversed. trump is another matter. there's lots of statistics for a moment of this talk and i will go through as quickly as they can and i will assure you of course as you've already guessed, incredible detail in the book plus citation for

everything. the things we can measure about, i'll talk merely about the united states and western europe. most of these trends apply to most but not all of the world are all fronts the disease including cancer and heart disease are in long-term decline. compared to population size, last year the united states have 75% fewer heart attacks attackp of these that it had just two generations ago. longevity has been steadily rising for more than a century everywhere in the world, and you were in the world. not only is our longevity at record levels, china's is at record levels, afghanistan is longevity is at record levels. everybody was living longer with less disease. the graph of rising longevity looks like an escalator. endlessly going up and there's no reason to think that's going to stop even when terrible things happen and lots of trouble things happen in the united states. you've read about opiate

overdose deaths, terrible trend of public health. even when you take that into account longevity continues to increase. the whole world is writing this longevity increased escalator. all forms of pollution other than greenhouse gases are in long-term decline for years and in some cases for decades. greenhouse gases very important, we'll spend a little time on later, but to quickly summarize in the united states, last 25 years acid rain is down 21% winter smog is down 77%. summer smog is down 22%. this is happening during a time when the united states population rose by 28% we would expect pollution to increase. instead pollution decline. water pollution figures are roughly the same. violent crime is a a generation long cycle of decline. donald trump when his campaign office constantly said there's a crime wave, our cities are living hell. that's what voters wanted to believe. polls showed that for the last

20 years americans have consistently said crime is worse than the previous year. actually its content compared to the previous year. even if you take into account events like the one last in parkland, florida, gun homicides are in a generation long cycle of decline in new york city. making that it was the peak year for gun homicides. there were 3528 gun homicides that you did last year in new york city there were 286 gun homicides, , less than 10% of te number of just 25 years ago. the only number you can tolerate is zero and we are not there yet but the united states and most but not all of the countries of the will violence is declining. criminal violence is declining, so with military presence. war is in a generation long cycle of decline. this may seem hard to believe based on cable news but the frequency and intensity of combat both the declined almost

on a linear basis for 25 years and that's even if you take into account civilian deaths caused directly by combat or indirectly by blockades and similar effects of combat. the last 25 years death from or have declined to about 5% of the rate of deaths from board that prevailed, the rate that prevailed for the previous century. each one of the last 25 years a persons chance, any persons chance cannot my chance and your chance but anybody, anywhere in the world, chance of dying has been the lowest level in yemen history. this is even though the population keeps rising. we normally think of population stresses causing combat. it's not right now and even the world is full of guns, the chances someone will shoot one of them at you goes steadily down. i'm only talking about a time of 25 years. maybe this is due to little time to be sure that in this 25 year time when war has declined my

two favorite statistics for more than 25 years is 30 years, today there are 86% fewer nuclear weapons in the world than the work 30 years ago. the 4000 nuclear weapons that still exist, still plenty to cause the greatest tragedy of all history. 30 years ago would've caused the end-of-life and that's not probably physically possible now but doomsday threat as to con by 86% in just 30 years. we hope it will decline more but you think about u.s.-russian relations, they are so zany i don't know what the proper adjective is to describe them, but whatever the kremlin and the white house are saying to each other today communicating via smart phone rather than by red zone. meanwhile, that you start treaties the required for disassembly and building of new weapons are still being screwed closely observed by both sides.

both sides are abiding by the terms of the biggest arms control treaty in the history of the world. day-to-day life goes on. anyway, there's a reason anybody should consider, i still have to go to work in the morning, i sought to make lunch, et cetera. this this is a wonderful trend,e doomsday threat declines every day instead of enlarging them instead of writing every day. the other militant statistic that is a great statistic is that but for all the to for the last 30 years global per capita military spending has declined. as the world gets more crowded, we spent steadily less on bombs and warplanes and warships and we spent in the past. again, there's no guarantee, only 25-30 30 your trend but traditional military buildups and arms races have led to war. now it in an unprecedented time

in industrial air of whether or not any arms races. arms spin is decline in a most every nation. hopefully it will not come hopefully the result will be no war. last united nations that malnutrition was at the lowest level in all of human history. malnutrition last year was 15-20% of the planet, still a huge still a huge number of people considering how large the human family is but just a generation ago malnutrition was 50% of a much smaller human family. now it's down to a smaller number and an expected declinee issue. the reasonably we will run out of food in any conceivable scenario generations to come in the future. the same for primary resources. in the 1970s it was widely believed petroleum and natural gas would be literally exhausted by now. there's so much petroleum that the oversupply is a problem for

financial markets. same thing with natural gas, vain thing with coal. it's almost like gods joke and were because there's so much fossil fuel that were using it to create global warming with. we're not running out of it. they can't trust anybody crazy but it continues to grow almost everywhere in the world. and afford . remember about income and wages, , they were so contentious in the 2000 campaign, 2016 campaign. both donald trump and bernie sanders constantly said the middle class is being pummeled. wages are falling. there are no jobs. on the day trump was elected unemployment was 4.6%. a number that would have caused policymakers of the 1970s to fall to the knees and kiss the ground. the unemployment picture is really good and has been for a number of years but so is the middle class buying power picture. if you look at pretax income,

that's been a tough number for the middle class for about 30 years. if that's the only number you look at, he only number the bernie sanders ever talked about. and it looks pretty bleak. but you don't want your household based on own income. your buying power is based on income minus taxes plus benefits multiplied by consumer prices divided by household size. if you do that equation what you find is ever since the end of world war ii the middle class buying power has risen by just about exactly 3% per year, again almost like an escalator basis, same about every year straight line, if times are good, if times are bad middle-class buying power goes up 3% per year and, of course, you know from mathematics if something goes up 3% per year it takes you 20 secures to double. that is still ongoing. pundits and politicians talk only about income. income is a negative number when you look at wages. all the other numbers are

positive. of course there's no guarantee they will stay that way. the economy is which are good and so unpredictable even if you have a good year it drives you crazy. one reason people feel so worried about the economy is things change so fast, they have change that in the past. you can look at the 1960 that they give some examples from the 19th century with people and organizations, industries, areas of the country forward the changes coming to quickly. there's the one that comes even faster now and that makes you feel uncertain and anxious about the future. but so far the economy is still growing out higher living standards for almost everyone. generations alive today and almost any nation of the world are better off material terms than any generation of the past and are likely although of course not certain but they're likely to be better off in the future as well. most important factor when a

sufficient whereof is the global poverty is declining really fast. if you look at global poverty, 150 is ago 90% of the world live in extreme poverty by the world bank definition of income of $1.90 per day and the statistics located all converted to current dollars to make the comparisons meaningful. sometime in the 1970s the world got to only half the human population living in extreme poverty and those considered an incredible achievement. last year it was 9%. we are down to 9% of the human population living in extreme poverty. this incredible reduction of extreme poverty has occurred as the human family is getting larger and larger and larger and you would've expected extreme poverty to get worse. instead it is lessened. we can't see that from the united states or when you're voting a a brexit, you can't se from the united kingdom. the line i use is great things are happening in the world, just not here.

we are aware of the conditions and own country doesn't seem so great, progress doesn't seem to be accelerated to us but in china, india, progress is excellent all around you. because the human family has become so large more members of the human family live in those places and here and in western europe combined. polls show when you ask americans and western europeans is developing world poverty getting better or worse, they said by an overwhelming margin that developing world poverty is getting worse, which is the reverse of what's going on. we seem to think the roots of what's going on on a number of topics. americans think crimes getting worse, the economy is falling apart. people believe the reverse of what's happening. one reason is just the relentlessly negative impression given by cable news and social channels which exist to overstate anger and discord and negative news. that's how the call attention to themselves. certainly true that the

president as was called attention to itself by emphasizing the negative triplicate newspapers from the e 1880s and you will see the front page of the papers is all fires and crimes. if you want to flip through and find out what's going on and other nations under the state yet go to the middle of the paper. it's not new that the media emphasizes the negative and now we have these new forms of media all around us quickly getting messages to large numbers of people and they are also emphasizing the negative. people want to believe the worst because they think that optimism means complacency. one of the big messages i tried to get across in this book is optimism is not complacent. optimist don't think lauded off everything will be fine. optimism is the belief problems can be solved. that's the fundamental difference between optimism and pessimism. people sam salmon optimist that

means you have a sunny disposition can you think everything is okay to think it's okay until this presently think it's okay that our school shootings. optimist don't think that's okay because they think there's possible reforms that can do something about this. i'll quickly go through this, you probably heard some of this from other commentators in recent months. if you look at polling data, you and galloped both poll on the question of do think the country is headed in the right direction for the wrong direction? are you satisfied or dissatisfied with how things are changing the united states? from the end of world war ii, to the end of 2004 americans are always positive on that. i like the direction of the country i think things are getting better. people said this in the aftermath of 9/11. since 2004 majority has been consistently negative. this is a 160 eighth consecutive month where americans have told both their unhappy and dissatisfied with condition of

the country despite all those ten one of fax i just told you. what else happened in 2004? at the year that facebook went into business. of course you know that the fact that treatments happen at the same time does not establish that one cause the other. but but i think in this case a t of relations but not just -- lately it's been trending to pile on facebook. i would like to pile on facebook but also to all other similar social media platforms. people commit existence in that time, this thing the iphone came into existence in 2007. it changed not only did it allow people, allow is the wrong word. not only did it enable millions of people to express their opinions quickly which is wonderful, he's got respect the democratization of opinion but also enabled millions to say things that were not in any way fact checked or not in any way

true. and making no distinction whatsoever between things that are true, and that might be true, think that contain a grain of truth and things that are totally made up. most of you probably read the "new york times." there are important when what throw it against the wall. i'm always confident there's been an internal argument at the times about whether this story is fair and reflects the truth. the stuff you see on your phone there's never any internal discussion about what it is that reflects the truth. it's more likely to draw clicks if it's made up and completely full. we had this new medium environment just since 2004 20h the arrival of facebook that natalie emphasizes reasons to feel bad about your life and yourself and your society, but does not backcheck any way whatsoever and what we perceive this? is close to our faces. facebook was written something for your desk, those old computers that sat under desk. even the guys who decide facelifted realize it was going

to go like this right next to the face. that wasn't what they meant with the name. that's what has happened since. we're not only getting a a constant stream of bad news completing an edited, we are holding close to our faces. your "new york times", ," like t or hate it, it sits on the table. if you get up and go some else the "new york times" does not follow you through the house. if you've got the news on on your television set, the television set sits on account of the wall, it doesn't walk behind you as you go through your house. your phone calls you through the house. the bad news purveyor is physically on your person constantly. and so from the same moment that social media came on the scene, we started feeling bad about ourselves and whatever else donald trump is he's the greater self promoter in the world history. he realized that he could use that dynamic to go all the way to the white house and he was successful. let me skip ahead in the interest of time, let's turn to

the implications of my argument because of course we want to do q&a. suppose i'm right that most objective terms are positive for most people and that today's generation lives better than any previous generation of the past, and tomorrow's generation is better, likely to live better than today's generation does. what are the implications of that? suppose i'm right. the fact that things are improving isn't just good luck. positive trends don't come down from out of the sky. there are tangible reasons things are improving. the most primary one i could do a lot the book, the most primary one is reform is much more effective than generally understood. political reforms, social reforms that had to do with how we treat each other at home, social settings in the workplace, technological reforms that have to do with how we build things. reforms are much more effective than we think.

reforms in the past have almost always lead to improved outcomes. so i both spent some time trying to derive what the licensor would be from the reforms that event successful in air pollution, health, discrimination, et cetera and dancing how do you apply this to the problems of today. i have a on climate change, totally real, scientifically confirmed. the question whether it's happening is that why did he shoot the question is what do we do about it? i have chapter showing how you can take the lessons of air pollution control from the past and apply them to greenhouse gases, fundamentally an air pollution problem. how would you use the successful lesson from acid rain and smoke apply to global warming. i have chapter inequality. i think inequality which would have to be the super bowl of sociological issues and i think, i'm sorry to mix metaphors, i think all roads lead to some version of universal basic income. exactly what it will be i don't

know, very expensive, for a couple can become the change society. i think all roads, at least all the rows you want to go down lead to some version of that concept. and i spent a chapter looking at other types of sociological reforms having to do both with money and the way we treat each other that have been successful, once that it failed, taking lessons from the ones that it succeeded, finding the red flags of the ones that a failed and think thinking about how we would apply them to inequality. my poor finding is that optimism is the best argument for reform -- core. if you're an optimist and look at the past and say things were a lot worse and then they get better, so let's reform things again because there's reasonable reason to believe that reforms will be successful. that's the optimistic lesson you draw from especially from the postwar era and the western world but from the postwar era most you're in the world.

once we address climate change, inequality, i think we can fix those things, wonder why we didn't do it sooner. some of the problem come along that will seem daunting and we'll figure out a way to fix that, too. i'll tell you one less thing and then of the questions. originally the title of this book was the arrow of history. this morning the "boston globe" refer to this book as the arrow of history. they're using the original title, not the published title. my public affairs books thought, this is jamie, sitting by two, of the original title was come sound too much like an academic tome. they were right about that. i think they came up with a better title than that. why did i called the arrow of history? the original title was a plan something said by franklin roosevelt's shortly before he died. this is a 1945 fdr quote. fdr was the most accomplished

reformer of the last century and he said, and just in the original title change the were trained to era because i thought it sounded classier. wittingly roosevelt said the great fact to remember is that the trend of civilization is forever upward. fdr was right then and he's right today. we forgot this great fact. we need to remember it those who have full appreciation of our own lives and argue for the next round of reforms to come. thanks. [applause] >> i have to thank you for gun at the drumbeat of dispersants are the a lot of questions, and i would invite you to come to the microphone on either side and please introduce yourself and keep your questions break into the point. if that ranks you get at you and tell them where you are. let's start over here. >> tell them i changed the title to "it's better than it looks." >> inequality is on everybody's

mind i think. much of it seems to be driven by the onrush of artificial intelligence, not only from the viewpoint of eliminating driving jobs in our country and so one that anybody but an article recently where indian economists are very concerned that those call-center jobs that been so important in the country will begin disappearing. can you say some comforting words about what artificial intelligence is not going to -- >> ongoing -- i i can be indirectly comforting on that. the indian call center question is a great winter i've a lifelong association with atlantic monthly, which is a wonderful publication, my favorite publication. i i wish "the atlantic monthly" could follow you from room to room because it's a great publication. around 1980, i'm doing that the from memory, 80, 81, they ran an article about how horrifyingly awful it was to work in a tnt

operators switching center, switching telephone calls -- a tnt. it was dehumanizing, boring. you were timed at how quickly it's which calls for it sounded awful. that article ended with the call for higher wages and better working conditions for at&t switching center workers. although jobs were eliminated. at&t doesn't have any switching center workers anymore. it's all done by computer. that's coming for a lot of professions, call centers in india. it hasn't come for white-collar professionals yet but it may be. the semi-comforting thought that i can give is if you look at the past, people have had the same worry about technological change in the past a lot. i sit in the book 100 years ago when 88% of americans worked in agriculture. it the carnegie council was meeting, when energy is ago and 80% of americans work in

agriculture, by the year 2018 only 1.5% of americans would work in agriculture you take we will all be of jobs go there would be no food. everything will collapse. we have record employment at every possible level anybody is better off. there's plenty of food and farmers are happier than it ever been before. the same thing is going to happen with almost every application of technology but because the economy is so unpredictable and so turbulent, i can't be sure of that. you can be sure that your nobody can be sure of it. we take this huge gamble with society that economic change the mostly lead to better things most people. so far that's almost always been the pattern. there is no guarantee that that pattern will continue. it's possible that they the katrina to be a horrible mistake or could just be another innovation that makes life better like past innovations.

>> i remember coming here from england about 40 years ago speech could introduce yourself? >> what? >> could introduce yourself? >> anthony, science guardian. i remember coming here 40 or even longer years ago, having studied economics in england and hoping are expecting that the work week would rapidly go down from 40 hours a week to 36 hours to 30, and it didn't happen. it went in the opposite direction it seems. you have lights come into the labor market and more work being done than ever for longer hours. how can you say that's a positive trend that will reverse in some way? may maybe technology will have s limitations and replacing people. i don't know. i just wonder what your optimism is based on? >> well, here's 380 pages of answer to you, but i think the

main trend in that case, is a look at any point in the past, i think the way to frame this issue is to ask yourself, you came to the united states four years ago did you say? >> yes. >> go back 40 years in the past and become an average person, average american, average briton then. would you prefer to live that life with health care of that time, the queue negations been? would you to live with a number of nuclear warheads that were in the world 40 years ago? is that the like you would prefer our would you prefer the life of today, even knowing that the electricity has all kinds of problems including that -- that's how i friend issued. >> i'm going to ask one factual check. you say that there are fewer nuclear missiles around but, in fact, they seem to be 475 missiles ringing three states pointed out russia, each with 1.

the total i felt something like 6000. i i heard i think you said 4000. are we sure that the number has gone down and the power has gone to? >> yes, that's an atomic scientist in me. they're the ones of public the doomsday clock. their total was 66,000 come now they say there are 4000. if the s.t.a.r.t. treaty continue to be observed that number will go down. somewhat more, not to the level of total disarmament, total disarmament is a controversial concept in and of itself. but u.s. and russian have really observed that treaty very nicely. international treaties are better than once of the pastor when the rather treaty that ended world war i were adored by all parties. treaties of nuclear disarmament have been followed by all parties. the chinese so far as we know have not been cheating on their into. they are not parties to the s.t.a.r.t. treaty but there's a lot of cheating potential and so far as we know they have not been cheating.

>> my name is ed holbrooke from mercy college. first of all thanks for your talk. pretty optimistic, yet i'm not convinced. the reason is because you've given us a a list of material reasons for which we should all be happy, but yet spiritually or psychologically seems like the trend is going in a different direction. you started with a joke about god, so i -- >> opened the door. >> i'll finish with a quote by god. not only bread feeds the human soul. i'm wondering whether we should not start a discussion about a more sort of religious or value-oriented approach instead of solely a material approach? >> materialism may be bad for our souls, but in this book i have concentrated exclusively of things that can objectively be measured. i have not ventured into question of what we think of

subjectively about the quality of our lives. a different subject. >> my name is larry bridwell and i recently visited my brother who lives in san diego, and his wife told me do not go to downtown san diego because i i could get hepatitis from the homeless. and the homeless, a case can be made economically the most successful place in the world since 1945 has been california. but this homeless situation is all the way from sacramento to san diego, every step, almost every city. so what does it say, and then in the case of my two nephews, their living at home because they can't afford to leave the house. so you say everything has gotten positive but the california i

grew up in was a foot free fancy, everybody could get housing, and now a real serious problem throughout the entire state. so i'm not sure about this optimism, especially when it comes to housing. >> well, you're talking about the most expensive housing market in the united states and in part of the world when you talk up the coast of california. i think i begin by saying i'm not claiming that everything is fine for everyone. if you've got nephews that are having trouble getting out of the house, i certainly don't claim that that's exactly how they were hoping to live. within any family you can always find someone, thanks not going how the hoped for. >> let me ask you a question. why do you think people want to believe donald trump, that everything was so bad? >> the want to believe is a very

puzzling question. i propose in this book there are four basic ways of knowing. one is certainty. the site is 93,000,000 miles from earth. where certain of that. there's nothing to talk about. another is faith versus doubt. we can neither prove nor disprove the existence of god. we can speculate, based on current knowledge the question of does god exist is impossible to answer or to refute. made at some point in future it will be but this is a category of knowing where we just, although it is his wonderment. then there's the third category that his opinion what beer taste bascom who should've won the super bowl, whose the best basketball player. impossible. there's no right or wrong answer. there's only your opinion. and then there's what you want to believe. and what you want to believe is stronger than all other categories of knowing combined. the strongest possible kind of

early is what you want to believe. and 63 million people in the fall of 2016 wanted to believe that everything about america is bad, bad, bad, down, down, down, terrible, terrible comfortable. it wasn't just that they were not crazy but hillary clinton was not the world's best candidate. we all know that. she could've done a much better job. it wasn't just that they didn't think she was the world's best candidate. people want to believe the turn was falling apart. people who voted for brexit in the uk by and large wanted to believe the european union was a terrible thing for citizens and great britain. why do people want to believe this? why do people want to believe that things? i wish i did answer. it was the eye content that i think since adjusted on the want to be, i want to talk about subjective, not subjective. this thought line has been an american culture not for decades but for centuries. i start one chapter, i've a

chapter on why people want to believe bad things. it's speculative because i don't think you can what peoples in the motivations are. but i but i start that chapter y citing great works of literature nonfiction books, novels and plays that said america was about to fall apart, the said anthony was coming unglued in the world was ending and citing the reasons that they said, big reason that was constantly side was illegal immigration, illegal immigrants pouring into the country ruining our culture. how terrible everything was and how great in the past back in those good old days, you can ever figure out exactly when or where the work but there were good old days back in the past and the good old days ending. i described these books that getting names and, of course, the apart against what the trick is, , and then i tell you their names and all the books and plays and novels and other works of art that are referred to our all the least half a century old and many of them are more than one century old.

things from the 19th century great authors protecting america was right on the verge of falling apart. hasn't happened but this thought has been in our collective consciousness pretty much the entire time the country has existed. >> susan goebbels, we internationalize this conversation, america is one thing but every day we read about syria, for example, where half the population has had to flee. the rohingya and myanmar, there were terrible things going on and many, many people unfortunately are insecure, have lost their homes, have lost family members, are feeling terrible and often don't have enough to eat, don't have proper healthcare or anything. now, we read about this everyday and it must be true.

how do you balance all of this? >> that's a good question. obviously, as i i sit that are horrible things happening in the world and we were taught talkit your film in a moment ago. if you look at the human family, the human family those of its members are doing pretty well but there are members of the human family that terrible things are happening too. syria is one, myanmar is one, parts of africa horrible things are happening. how do you balance of them? i will say this, within our own families if most of the family is doing pretty well and the few, one member or few members are not doing well, the numbers are doing pretty well generally get together and try to help the other family. the same is exactly true with the human family. we should do more, surrey with tight help them by dropping bombs on them. amazingly it hasn't worked. there are many places you can find about the what we should be doing more than we do and we

should be doing constructive things, not dropping bombs. on the pacifist but i just think if you're going to be objective you look at syria, libya. dropping bombs does not work. it's not a solution to political problems so we should help the other members of the human family. >> what are we doing, doing with what's actually going on? >> i have a chapter on why democracy usually defeats dictatorship and i go into some of the species in that chapter. >> just under reasons to believe speedy please introduce yourself. >> george. under reasons to believe things are bad, i just wonder if you had a chance to look at something that i i can't member what i thought that said misery doesn't have revolution but rising expectations does. i don't know if you've had a chance to look at that or if it's useful at all. >> there are a number of social scientists who work in the field and the one i like is a woman

named carol graham who's at brookings at the universe of maryland and should provide a great deal of documentation on exactly that point. people base their feelings of happiness or unhappiness about the society, based on whether they think that life will improve in the future not based on how their lives are today. we had so much improvement in the united states and also the european union in the postwar era, it's just not, our houses are twice as big as a used to be if you look in the aggregate square footage of houses. it's not realistic to think the next generation of houses will be twice as they begin. the thought that our material existence is going to continue to improve with the previous space is not a realistic thought. maybe this causes people to feel badly about their lives even in the house they're living in a perfectly good. that impression maybe stretching of the parts of the world. in the sense you want the entire world to have the diseases of affluence. they may be diseases but their diseases we want everybody to have.

>> cheryl perlman. i'm very intrigued about this discussion and i'm also thinking about this is the time, this is now, these are the things that are impacting us, there is a trend towards pessimism but then i think about the world and the evolution and i say well, there was world war ii. where was the optimism that are? like you said, it was your family, family members. this was banded together to make sure that the west of tomorrow. so i think that every generation has its war and its speedy of course, of course. >> but thank you. >> sure. >> i have one more question. do you think the two-party system exacerbates the speedy yes, but could you speak to that for a moment? >> in that chapter i just mentioned on democracy, my favorite democracy thirst is a

guy named larry diamond at stanford and ice site some of his work about, 2. what is the united states has to be the beacon to the world of democracy we're not doing every good job in the last ten years in inspiring the world democratically. secondly, how would you clean up our own house so we are more democratic here? what obvious one is direct election of the president the electoral college was a great idea in 18th century. it's not the 18th century anymore and it's not just that donald trump wouldn't be president if we didn't have the electoral college have a lot of of the faults of our presidential elections that are totally unrelated to trump would not have happened. diamond has a 30 30 about breag up the party duopoly so it's easier for there to be third parties and independent candidates switching to ranked choice voting which works in maine and san francisco and a small number of places it's been tried and it would be great if the work everywhere, how to

revise primaries. he's got a bunch of theirs about how to improve the quality of democracy in the united states, and i roll the drums for them pretty big in this book. >> john richardson. i'm just curious about how you approach which is something good about the dark ages or the black death? because most of us who speedy they were bad. >> reduced or anything back for the net, we don't discuss the black death for the dark ages. we discussed greek and roman civilization but if it's been enough of the current although i guess i should stop looking for greek algorithms, roman quotes. >> welcome i would cut of hope we're going uphill since the black death. [inaudible] >> -- civilization was progressing --

[inaudible] >> i wouldn't claim to be knowledgeable on whether you could say that civilization was progressing during the dark ages. if you look at charts, several modern economists have done charts of, you can do it when are two ways can the reduction of poverty per capita or the increase of prosperity per capita, and both of them changed very little from the greeks and the romans until about the year 1800. and then started to accelerate in an amazing way. obviously, we're much better at building things and we used to be and were much better at finding and using resources than we used to be. that's only one of many things that has to happen for a good society, but boy, are we better at that than we used to be. >> i would like to invite you all to continue the conversation. you've given us a lot of good things to think about so i thank

you very much for "it's better than it looks." thank you. [applause] [inaudible conversations] >> here's a look at some of the books that are being published this week.

>> look for these titles in bookstores this coming week and watch are many other authors in the near future on booktv on c-span2. >> it's important to remember, which i think is often misunderstood, they didn't come to congress for the most part with the intent of reforming congress. as i talked to dozens of these members and asked what motivated you to run for congress in the first place, they did not cite the need reforming the seniority system for to redistribute powr among the subcommittees or changing the motion to recommit. that was not the reason. they were not aware of the

earlier reform efforts for the most part, that universal group or mccarthys marauders or select committee for the extensive reform proposals of the democratic study group. they did know about that. that wasn't their motive. their motive for running over and over i found as i talk to them was to end the war in vietnam. that's why they came to washington. and within four months they passed a a resolution in the caucus offered by bob carr i cut off funding for the war in vietnam. so by the standards it was quite a successful group. let's remember that, why they felt so strongly about that. they came to washington at a time when the public criticism, the public attitude towards government was extremely negative. they came in the wake of watergate the watergate hearings and the, investigations, the resignation and then the surprising pardon. they came after years almost a decade of horrendous divisive

war in vietnam. they came at a time as congress was just beginning to claw back some of the powers that it has abandoned to "the imperial presidency" during most of the mid-20th century and they passed the war powers resolution in 1973 and the budget control act in 1974. they had, in fact, tried to pass more extensive internal reforms to make the institution more responsive one pick the past the legislative reform act in 1946, and i considered the best subcommittee bill of rights. 73 but there was still a huge backlog of reform that had not occurred before this group had arrived and, in fact, the major efforts in the early '70s, the select committee that were created under julie hansen and other dick boling failed, and they failed in large part

because, although the democratic caucus since the late 1950s had increasingly had a liberal tinge to it, the caucus itself was pretty much controlled by the conservative coalition. that was the coalition of seven democrats which is recent democratic party was the dominant party, the reason the democratic party controls the congress for 58 at a 62 years between 1934-1994, it was the reason, sorry, 32 and 1994. when four. when that is a good. that's why i'm not a political scientist. that conservative coalition of seven democrats and republicans was able to squelch most of the progressive legislation much legislation and certainly the reform of the house rules that would've reform the house and democratize the house. that conservative coalition was then double that in the democratic caucus by the reverence to the seniority

system which gave itself a reform from 1910, which gave chairmanships based purely upon how long you were alive if you had a pulse you were the chairman. the notion there was to award chairmanships on a dispassionate basis so that you didn't just select people who agree with the speaker urges the person who was able to win support from the committee on ways and means that the committee assignments. it was an independent way. as time change of people living longer it evolved into system that rewarded that region of the country where people are most likely to be reelected and that was the one party south. so by the time the mid-\60{l1}s{l0}\'60{l1}s{l0} rolls around the chairmanships are disproportionately in the hands of southern conservatives who in some cases are voting 75-80% of the time with republicans. you had this enormous tension going within the democratic caucus between the seniority system which held up legislation

that affect caucus was increasingly sympathetic towards passing. in addition to this, much of what was going on in the congress at that time was very difficult for the average person to discern. people don't remember, there was not television coverage. you couldn't go and flip on television since he was being debated on the house floor but they're also not things like written committee report and subcommittee markups and full committee markups were held in secrets again no idea, it wasn't even a recorded vote in committees can subcommittees and committee of the whole house through most of the 1960s. so congress was a pretty closed process, pretty elitist process dominated by a group that increasingly was out of touch and out of step with the very group that was the majority the democratic caucus. >> you can watch this and other programs online at booktv.org.

.. er david cameron testifies about global security. >> c-span, where history >> history unfolds daily. in 1979, c-span was created as a public service by america's cable television companies, and today we continue to bring you unfiltered coverage of congress, the white house, the supreme court and public policy events in washington, d.c. and around the country. c-span is brought to you by your cable or