>> book tv covers book fairs and festivals around the done-here's what is coming. theft 2020 festival season kicks knopf january with the rancho mirage writers festival? california. ... >> it is great to be here with you all to celebrate by one of

our countries most original and insightful figures amity shlaes perk over the course of her distinguished career she has brought her wide-ranging intelligence and storytelling with those cultural institutions because she has served as a member of the editorial board, columnist bloomberg news. and now in addition to her book writing the presidential scholar for cake college and chairs the board of the coolidge presidential foundation and chairs the selection committee for the manhattan institute. her great work a great society is a stunning achievement a few decades have them printed on the popular many remember the sixties for their

turbulent moments the assassination of the kennedys and mlk junior the march on washington and antiwar protest. neil armstrong on the moon. but her focus is not the drama playing out on television screens across the country as the failure of washington to control these events and direct the show. generation politicians came to realize the hierarchical highly regulated model that dominated had stopped working yet more than just technical failures to catch the feeling of a country run from the top down america put up with the machinery of culture mobilization during the two world wars and during those earlier years of a nuclear cold war but at some point that old american yearning shoe wash buckling

independent-minded was bound to reemerge. this is a vitally important story for our time we can all be grateful she has told it was such insight i'm happy to report books will be sold in the back of the room ladies and gentleme gentlemen, amity shlaes. [applause] >> thank you. if you cannot hear me please let me know. my thanks to the manhattan institute the former president who is also here vice president and vanessa and the planner for hosting this event thank you to my publisher from harpercollins my agent and his colleague who is with us and

the coolidge foundation for supporting me including thomas smith and from kings college especially josiah peterson and my family and my husband and my daughter who is also here tonight. the first sentence of the book is a question. why not socialism? this is a question we asked ourselves last night when we watch the presidential debate. how do we answer it? it's a question all common sense and markets people want to deliver an answer. we don't really see an obligation to undertake the long-term investment of

projects saw american mind sees the challenge and the tragedy of socialism we want to share the record of the pastore of venezuela so when they come to vote these younger americans recognize what is not useful but where are we? it's november 2019 educating long-term investment for those don't have a heart for the long haul be feel frustrated of the outcomes of the intellectual entrepreneurship politics are much more fun as an application all of us have some vanity people remember politicians they do not remember educators. we journalist and business people and philanthropist and

scholars want to be remembered but sometimes we take short-term projects for that reason so tonight i would like to tell you a story of a really long term project a crazy project that starts in the fifties features a man and a company indeed a story of a failing long-term project a humiliation of business steam one - - shame and intellectual failure and the story ends in the eighties also reveals the unexpected payback. some of you may know the characters but you may appreciate hearing about them one more time general electric. in the 19 sixties general electric rose high the factories new york massachusetts and connecticut - - connecticut and many thousand were employed as the

industrial center perk every year americans bought more tvs and radios or freezers ge was an icon as a space program tennessee valley authority trusted general electric just as if it was a trusted game of baseball. the soviets in 1959 invited the us to talk about progress in moscow at the park america has sent several modern kitchens in the lemon yellow one was general electric. [laughter] most ge executives at the time in the late fifties had a set view of how capitalism worked the private sector was infants like invincible it was like a

workhorse. what it was supposed to do was to serve the government herded the private sector for john maynard keynes milk cow was content with the government tennessee valley with the essence of a government project in ge executive project liked it very much they found it was one of their biggest customers with the military-industrial complex but it existed and they demanded to be paid packages and ge could pay that and social experiments like the federal government and federal business could pay that to make the expansion of healthcare the us could pay

that or perhaps a longer leave for young parents knowing that we could pay that stalin was said to have joked the only country rich enough to afford communism was the united states. [laughter] why should it not be true? in the 19 sixties the dow jones was approaching a record level of 1000 and only a matter of months before it passes the landmark but there is one underappreciated executive who saw things differently. he was vice president / labor relations and his name was

bulware so girls didn't come when they rode out their big plans he believed in a dumpy lab that they have an idea it feels like a ge adl lightbulb. bulware believe the birth the government and union demands backed by government would gradually strangle competitiveness even a little bit of socialism could do damage reason our 1959 kitchens were better the longest term investments at the beginning of ge the goods were affordable otherwise it would have ge uncompetitive

and the russians would make better kitchens nobody could quite imagine japan but that was the scope of the imagination it was in the view of bulware for a pristine company like general electric to inspire america to return to and the problem was urgent to say the current rapid train going - - trend ought to be changed with everything we cherish the younger executive at general electric found bulware ludicrous he was not modern his superlative irritated them and in the public many agreed of this evaluation they see him as a figure like had a kentucky farm background of a washing machine salesman.

[laughter] the other executives did not worry they were the future bulware was approaching retirement by 1955 he would be out watching from his recliner in delray beach. [laughter] but still bulware determined to use his final years to make his own long-term investment he wants to teach americans the preciousness of the gift in capitalism spending many a graphing pamphlets to explain the value of work and towns where ge operated with high wages and all the extra social benefits with one such such town in massachusetts and the industrial center and warned the people grass will grow if

they did not wake up to the importance of competitive prices and wages and cost. bulware used new-media of television to reach the people creating a tv show called ge theater to showcase traditional american values he handled staff including the aging actor to be the spokesman a union man a democrat who had mired roosevelt and the new deal i will say his name but he had potential. [laughter] bulware had his special house with modern appliances like the ge kitchen and moscow for the actors to live in and the actor was ronald reagan and adam smith and de tocqueville

he gave two books out and hoped they would be read this actor reagan wasn't popular across ge that the younger executives didn't like having western propaganda and they complained that they could not stop this actor and bulware send reagan all over to the plants to explain the future of industry and as the industry moves west and so on talking about the dangers of socialism and it's a bad idea power innovates faster when they're free to make their own decisions may be that power

was the only kind of power in the future of the united states soon enough reagan began to take arguments seriously he even bought his son some ge stock. in the year 1960 over the propaganda mill. the justice department was investigating and in 1961 the new attorney general robert kennedy, pulled together a strong case that ge was colluding with others like westinghouse to fix high prices the justice department sent the ge executive to jail the irony was undeniable here was the propaganda department mouthing off about free markets even as they cheated the american taxpayer. this was a terrible blow the

company looks like the worst hypocrite nationwide people felt betrayed by their trusted company like the blackstock scandal of 1919 a national betrayal the stock went in the toilet the actor was fired. ge theater was canceled and bulware got pneumonia and then retired to delray beach so this only deepened the sense of failure ge itself deepened the cooperation with the federal government and news on bulware mocked his new efforts american voters did not turn away from socialism they thought social democracy or government sounded nice they voted in johnson as a socializing program he

promised to cure poverty to make america an even better place a great place of an even stronger economy and they did create the beginnings of our national healthcare system of medicare. this year the great society leaders that johnson was only the beginning one of the revisions of the great society in this book is the revision of richard nixon. in my research nixon expanded government as johnson had before him and other presidents just added on with the program upon program of charles murray from the manhattan institute and then laid out a few more the curious about what the great

society would yield by 1980 they were six times the 50 cost by 1980 public assistance was 13 times the cost of 1955 social insurance was 27 times in 1950 level and housing was 129 times the 1950 cost. last night one of the candidate suggested to spend more on housing. [laughter] what happened? the great society failed government expansion did not eradicate poverty. in fact the reduction it was already coming down and had flattened out it would has been a 10 percent and stayed there. the program puts americans into dependence.

and the economy began to flail as it never has before. and the high cost of labor with the policies backed by the government did drive american companies to leave towns. just as bulware predicted the great thriving center of detroit and i write a lot about that in great society the dow jones went below 1000 for the first time in a generation americans believe the ever rising stock market is their birthright and they expect nothing else so if you want to stop and contemplate that in the mid sixties through the aeds we did not pass 1000. imagine if today we had to

wait until 2035 to get to the next barrier. in my book what i learned in writing it is you don't have to be socialist all the way to do damage. in deed bulware was right even a little bit does incredible you do actually get there and sooner than you think. 's you can imagine for decades he was beating himself up of the failure but now one figure was enlightened and did care and that was reagan and he decided to try politics and in 1964 he took the standard ge speech out of the can and gave it on tv america had to choose socialism or not this was

known as the time for choosing speech then he ran for governor of california challenging the great society including the legal department that came out of our program and then put the policies into practice. respect for and it really was no longer the morning after effect. it could be morning in america. the entire chunk of revolution that reagan brought came out of the little bulware pamphlets he had so lovingly prepared. his long-term investment that no one remembered had paid off in ways that is near unimaginable the markets

thrived in the era in which we did get a market i will say there are several lessons of the great society that is one of 12 chapters in the book. first of all the overarching lesson is the book that government is rotten at planning. no matter how much it says. you get a perverse outcome. a philanthropic project that may not turn out to be a complete failure in the end think of that as a plan of your voters and those tens of thousands of meetings most

voters understood what reagan was saying and there was another way for the american worker they emerged in 1880 as the famous blue-collar vote. another point more obvious but worth mentioning is the great society offers a lesson on trusting your own judgment if you suspect a program is not good it probably isn't. if you suspect - - suspected program might be good, invest in it. think of the institutions that inspired you as a child and made the plan for your own institution much of the work that i do is trying to plant in the third final point is individuals matter for her and

there would be a no broken window policy without bulware there is no reagan for so now with a theoretical class of win wine, you may be wrong standing right here in manhattan in 2193 decades after the death of that executive and everyone in this room is raising a glass to the name of bulware. thank you very much. [applause]

>> there were riots in the streets. lbj with a great society helping blacks in poverty helping them to overcome so what i remember about the great society is that lbj was abandoned from those from the vietnam war. and the naacp. my question to you where's the civil rights revolution in

america? how do we explain the great society without. >> it is in my book very extensively. this is just one chapter. the book looks at civil rights law and the civil rights act which comes before the voting rights act. and the early rights and important and revolutionary and without them we would not be where we are. particularly following the howard university speech for what people get to argue that those benefits didn't help poor people but they kept them for for example today we have a book that is so important appellation oh my gosh what can we do that kind of

struggling group and its pathologies in addition to poverty. in the 19 sixties we have an appellation law but it didn't have one - - helping appellation just made life harder there and i do have a long treatment that the mississippi delegation was not seated and that decision was a betrayal by organized labor to turn away those people because they had to vote with the regular mississippi party.

>> i'm excited to be one - - read your book it seems like a rightful successor but there seems to be two schools of thought of the welfare state but first it was counterproductive and second more common and if you include transfers and tax credits you will see they help to reach poverty and we should not accept so much more of the scandinavian or european so basically enough transfers now

and you can count that with benefits are without so when you go without what are we doing? i would argue we are anesthetizing people they are so accustomed they don't see an opportunity to work and they don't believe they can work. so it's a drug even if they keep people quiet clearly some of the benefits of the sixties particularly the money flowing from the office of economic opportunity was meant to call people not to riot. because it was caught and bureaucratic traps because they were worried about problems. but i don't think you can buy

out people that we would be stronger if we had opportunity rather than entitlements. >> im with reason i am glad to learn how to pronounce the mule. [laughter] talk about the relevance of your book about redistribution and growing the welfare sector because it is new right now people to redistribute things much more and then to make it more complicated the goal in the cold war versus 30 years and how communism has an

alternative model and the threat. how does that play into arguments? >> and answer the second first? it relates to attitudes of socialism so younger people today have nothing to compare to they have not served in the military by a large. they have not seen a lot so they love that idea my book has a chapter from 1940. they were less naïve they were still naïve but less because the war was closer and communism was closer and their older brother was in the korean conflict. so now we have massive naïveté to deal with and that's a

problem so another parallel between that. i will say i think we are a bit liberated because they can call for socialism and talk about it that we can't without being labeled. doesn't have to do with moscow but a number of progressives who make foolish errors very few are actual traders their fatal problem is that they were wrong about their ideas domestically. so we can talk about socialism now also without it involving the soviet union so in the book i try to so young people today when they go on a trip

whether scandinavia or social democracy it is called looking for socialism and his intellectual and so recently peter collier died and he gave me a picture that he had that tom hayden gave him it was the fuselage of the american jet the north vietnamese knickknack that said hundreds of american planes down and someone gave that comb made out of the downed american planes fuselage to tom hayden who gave it to peter collier he said he's very romantic and needs a girl and absolutely intellectually he doesn't see the reality at all although he

probably had gotten away. i am wondering but that is the story of the romance and he decides if socialism is wonderful because it never finished and as long as it's not finished that's the beauty of it. >> one more question. >> is there one that has ever successfully broken from socialist anesthesia or a model to follow to walk back?

>> i don't want to say something bad has to happen before we wake up at that usual pattern the country is knocked on the head and then be groups. but i do believe americans look in the more young people we can exposed to traditional common sense ideas. and reading books they don't get to read about in high school and let me plug my foundation three of the skeletal ships are out of merit like specialized high schools in new york about academic merit and it is a

quite serious competition we only have four scholarships because they are very expensive for a full ride to college we already have 15000 kids who have registered to apply for four scholarships what do they want? they want the money they don't want to have to fill out the fafsa but a lot of them also like the idea of doing things on their own. it's important for all of us to send signals to young people you will be rewarded for enterprise and trying and doing things on your own s'more were the rewards system so i think it's quite easy to change the political culture if you focus on and also play to their natural wisdom.

[applause] i encourage all of you to buy a book a friend, your enemy all of them will be enriched by a reading this wonderful book. [applause] [inaudible conversations] >> certainly as an individual could not understand how we get past the idea of what

whiteness means and it hinges upon the notions of superiority and notions of greater depth of humanity. but i think there is a huge body of work that we need to grapple with and one of the challenges, similar to the question of patriarchy. one of the challenges is we spend our entire lives to be taught to value certain things and think a particular way and as americans one piece of that is that mythology that we are innocent and that's what makes you virtuous and that combination is really difficult as we try to address

inequality. and then to become defensiveness as opposed to the truth grappling with issues this was the virtues of mythology of the history makes it very hard to confront and even the mythologies of our personal history. so i think certainly a piece of it our lives were cast to tell the story of the greater truth and that sensitivity that leans toward memphis and the notion that history serves us and with those aspects because he want to develop

this society in a way that is honest about the heroes that are more inclusive and decent and useful. >> from the director of programs with a historical society we have aul