>> tonight i'm pleased to contribute tyler, he's a bloomberg opinion columnist, has written regularly per "the new york times" and contributes to a wide number of newspapers and periodicals. previous books include the complacent class and great stagnation n new book, examines

the tension between lack of trust in big business and argues that corporations despite americans are essential in balance, productive and progressive society by spurring innovation, rewarding talent and hard work and creating on which tech come to dependent. tyler cowen with finance and tech industry, both critics and walter frick, beauty editor of harvard business abuses tyler cowen mounts a compelling defense of the tech industry. there critics and defenders will benefit from reading this book. tyler cowen is joined in conversation by edward luce, national editor for new york times and author of the retreat of western liberalism. join me in welcoming tyler cowen and edward loose. >> thank you very much.

and not a neutral, impersonal -- we have been friends for many years. i can confidently say tyler is not just an example of disagreeing without being disagreeable but disagreeing without being disagreeable and being far more knowledgeable at the end of it. we do agree on something that i will get into productivity but let me emphasize tyler's fraternity. we had a great stagnation. and averages -- a remarkable book, we had the completion of this.

>> high-speed this weekend. but anyway, that is another purpose. one thing i will say, tyler is unusual, most economists wait for the data, they wait for data. when the data comes in they torture it sufficiently until it confesses whatever case that is. tyler cowen has as many books on history as he does on economics. i know a lot of economists, for the intuitive tyler this evening. let's start by imagining a town called 20th-centuryville in pennsylvania or ohio.

there main street has been hollowed out. they got used to shopping at walmart, but walmart is pretty thinly spread because everybody is starting to shelve analyst. they have friends who work in walmart. not particularly happy campers, they got people they know who drive 50 miles to the amazon fulfillment center, always tired, they have permission to take bathroom breaks. why should the people of the town of 20th-centuryville, pennsylvania love big business? >> i have some data actually. in west virginia it is about the same as in sweden. middle america has completely devastated but that is not quite true for the entirety of

it but the most distressed areas are those lacking big business. a lot of those regions will never come back. i don't think there is an answer. west germany never called the germany problem migration deals with. i'm for better policies to encourage migration. i think people a can they want to move to areas where there is more business and that is the case for big business for them. >> what would you say to those covering stories? they might have cost a bit more, the consumer chose walmart and amazon and that is the result of preferences but is there another measure of what makes a community? >> keep in mind most societies face choices.

they can do things and bear transition costs or stay put. we see many countries that decide to stay put or you can bear the transition costs on lower prices for all consumers and as time passes you have a better, healthier, richer, more politically secure factory reducing the size of the surplus and transition costs. the china shop they have reason studies. we overstated how big that is. some of it is automation and some is regional rebalancing. california or new york, capital flows to those places. >> in your book you make a very strong case that even though there is -- >> thank you. >> okay. >> you make a strong -- maybe, i don't know.

if you keep yours down when mine is up. it is working now. you make a strong case that although there is more market concentration you don't see signs of monopolistic behavior in terms of price gouging and so forth by these companies but let me mention a few statistics that might not be exactly precise but roughly. in the home supplies market you have office depot, staples, 80% of the market and confectionery, you have hershey, in car rentals, you think you bought brands but all i joined by her -- enterprise -- washing machines, you have 50 brands but they are owned by maytag. airlines, only four of them. the market, sector by sector, you mention strongly in your book healthcare, health

insurance but the market. the american economy is getting more concentrated. nike, 86%. you are seeing real concentrations of power. why isn't that a bad thing? >> if you look at prices or quantities purchased by consumers what you find is more competition, not less. bigger national brands, amazon and walmart are further examples, large brands are lowering prices so it is not like the old monopolies. what are these sectors where prices have been out of control, basically healthcare and higher education each of which is fairly business impoverished. people allow too many hospital

mergers, the things you buy like confectionery's. i buy chocolate chocolate, the prices over time have done some phenomenally well. if you look at airlines for each individual market there are just as many carriers as before. the number of airlines traveled is going up. we could do better by allowing foreign airlines in us markets. the government restriction on trade i would gladly remove. foreign-born americans are able to fly each year. healthcare aside i don't think the story of rising monopolies, the numbers bear that out. >> we will get to that in a moment but let's get to the heart of the book. when i looked at your numbers about trust in business in america i was delighted to see it is lower than trust in media. it is 2% lower. 8% of americans trust big business and 10% first media because media is owned by big business.

this is only exceeded by congress i believe. how does that happen? talk us through what it is about big business especially in the abstract that they hate about it and why. >> distrust of big business comes in ways. we are at a time when people trust many institutions less, not just business. a kind of collateral casualty but also real events, business has had some role in this, the financial crisis, income inequality. the role of business or the responsibility is often overstated but you cannot say it has been 0. everything is talked about, every joke made at someone's expense and it is hard for

large-scale institutions to look good. the institution with the highest trust rating is the military and it is striking to me we are at a time the military is not in the news that much, most people don't have contacts with it. and consequently easy to trust. >> it has gone down a lot. business is mistrusted -- is there another element to that? >> some of it is this. you rely on business to do more things precisely because it is highly effective. in contemporary culture, the more you talk about something the easier it is to acquire a negative tag and often we evaluate businesses by the standards of people, that an economy is an impersonal order. they might sell you wonderful

books and pretend to be your friend in advertisements, with you or your family but you need to evaluate them on impersonal terms. how good a job are they doing improving the economy and society and not do they act like a friend, why do they keep me on helpline 23 minutes when it took 5 minutes to fix that problem. resentment toward business grows. >> you mentioned airlines being more monopolistic than you might suppose. individual roots. i'm sure everybody here can share the united horror stories. the feeling is this is not competition in terms of quality of service, we as individuals because of technology and price discovery drive costs lower.

that is what we are after but in terms of competition that is not the competitive market and are you blaming government for that? >> i would say what frustrates us about airlines is they do not have real markets. my colleague wrote about this at great length. airlines created the safest form of transportation ever devised. we take that for granted. flying used to be relatively dangerous. for a long time it has been safer than driving. it is amazing what we had and don't appreciate anymore. >> flying has been relatively safe. i don't feel they are more expensive. >> there are fewer people flying. market trains are more useful, there are more connections. we put fresno to bakersfield high-speed rail in california but other than the trains in this country that are unlikely

to be very important, a burden removed from the system. the american airport system is one of the greatest transportation networks ever devised and it actually works surprisingly well. >> our corporations people, my friend? >> mitt romney said that. corporations aren't people, don't personalize them. the companies try to trick you, we are your friends, buy from us, you are frequent-flier, frequent buyer, frequent stay or, they are tempted collusion. the goal is to make you feel loyal to them but they are not loyal to you. it is a trick. so be a little cold-blooded and ruthless and asked the bottom line question. different areas, how good a job, you will find some sectors but the record is pretty abysmal. higher education has been a

train wreck but for most of the goods and services we consume the record of companies is quite excellent. >> what is it about higher -- why is a trade wreck? where markets go wrong, big businesses acting badly wise it acting badly? what is it about that market that has gone wrong that has been going wrong? >> we don't understand why for profit higher it is so fraudulent. them is easily available government loans and they captured that revenue but that is not all that is. private for-profit certification works well. if you are learning a concrete trade like how to be a hairdresser, that is worth trying for decades but the attempt to use for profit higher ed to give people supposedly normal 4-year

degrees, it hasn't caught on it his been worse than mediocre. >> i would stress for-profit education is a broad concept and higher education is higher than high, it worked wonderfully. your ipad is for profit higher ed, apple, there are plenty of services you pay for that work perfectly well. there is a reason we don't understand a 2 or 4 year degree that seems to go back. >> you mentioned the complacent task and in many cases counterintuitive, silicon valley created a culture of conformity. if you go to any big tech names, that the core looks the same, and it is individualistic, uniform, the

spread to many places. the impact of the technology in their lives. the millennial generation, risk conformity. is silicon valley decreasing entrepreneurialism in terms of the net effect in american society? >> the net effect is positive. it is the most rapidly developing part of the economy. it is easier to do that is mediocre or destructive ways. it will not make you more innovative. that is a significant spillover. and connecting people with common interests, people doing research together or people getting ideas to start companies.

all the technologies, rough and bumpy patches, typically we learn how to use them better. that doesn't happen automatically. the press and radio had their patches early on to some extent and still do. not all radio is wonderful but the key is to be focused, intellectual battles have to be rethought all the time, don't blame technologies that value the radios. to take for granted your favorite ideas will reign supreme. when a new step of technology comes along you've got to make your case all over again. people just like that. >> the rate of small business creations load quite markedly and the number of people, roughly speaking, has gone down from 107 americans to fewer than one in 10.

it doesn't explain -- what explains it according to you. big business starts as small business. there is entrepreneurialism and small business creation that succeed and the pipeline seems to be shifting up. does this have to do with market concentration? >> here is the most likely answer. the biggest decline in small business in some of the areas of retail, you are much more likely to buy your retail from a brand and brands are much longer linked. companies like nordstrom have a very good data, as the decades pass they can adjust relatively

effectively compared to the 1980s. more than a stamina dark they are old and antiquated and some dynamic new company comes along. now the establishment uses better data, just keeping up with the markets, and true innovativeness. the biggest retail story is amazon and that is completely new and remarkable. i am not worried retail hasn't progressed at all. >> amazon, correct me if i'm wrong, accounts for the book sales. a lot of those sales are sales that were occurring in here. i carry my ipad, more competitive about that. it touched the trillion dollar valuation.

it is a massive -- with the washington post, it is a powerful company. facebook and social media equally powerful, i guess twitter. but apple of course. these are big enough and they are not competing with each other. they are buying up smaller companies and absorbing whatever technology data related but innovation tends to stop. they are boa constrictors bulging with acquisitions. >> there's a lot that i would challenge. >> my question -- this is no abuse of power going on. >> talk about this company,

look at google, ten other search engines you can use, duck duck go doesn't even collect data on you. it is fine. it is there now. i prefer google. i use google. in china there is no google. google has not stopped innovating. the notion of driverless cars. google is a leading player in that through gmail, which is widely used mail service, you get it for free. google is a major innovator there. youtube was a mess before google took it over and upgraded it. and they get rid of as many copyright violations, it is arguably the greatest educational institution in the world, what wikipedia meant to be.

google hasn't stopped innovating at all. >> you are not in favor of antitrust action. >> not against google. >> what about facebook? >> there are many social network sites. knocking on your neighbor's door believe it or not. there is for night which out of nowhere captured the attention of tens of millions, you can write a blog. and an eye on twitter, and social networking. there is email, a list of contacts in your cell phone. different ways of social networking, we have seen peak facebook. i wouldn't slip them up. >> is a good for amazon, good for america? >> conditionally now but amazon to date has been good for america, absolutely.

i spend so much money on amazon and now whole foods it is embarrassing. i often by 3 books a day and i love browsing in bookstores, sitting in fairfax. keep in mind the number of independent bookstores have been going up. it used to be borders, barnes & noble, borders is gone, barnes & noble dwindling, independent bookstores making a comeback. i am happy about that. they are places to network, independent bookstores, so i understand, we are in an independent bookstore. i'm happy with amazon. >> the state of virginia, maryland, spending taxpayers money to get amazon to live here. a good way of spending taxpayer money. >> i don't think so. amazon would have gone where it had gone anyway. in the broader calculus, small, relative to the benefits of the company.

it is crony capitalism, i used to call it crystal city. what is in a name? i want to come to national landing and you need to upgrade the subway stops. that is perfectly justified and you should do that anyway. just to give them forms of cash to come by i wouldn't do it. >> washington dc is a wholly-owned subsidiary of big business. you push back very strongly. there are only $3 billion a year spent on lobbying so big business, procter & gamble spend double that on its advertising alone. and big business thinks it is worth trying to influence washington or is that a measure

of how cheaply washington is bought? >> a bit of both. most of the federal budget voters approve of. keep that in mind. some areas dominated by business, a lot of defense procurement, sometimes dominated by business, numerous cases you could .2, most of the money spent is spent as voters desire, when you look at donald trump, what he is doing on trade i very much disapprove, most american businesses disapproval. what he is doing in terms of predictable in the rule of law most businesses are against. what he is doing or trying to do on immigration most businesses are against. so the idea businesses are pulling all the strings, trying to achieve to his base, trump tweets it often against ceos demonizing them, doesn't approve of that either. it is a mixed picture.

and some areas, most of it voters. >> the biggest single thing trump has done is the tax cut. businesses spent a lot of money on a tax-cut. he hasn't done anything on other things. he made a lot of noise but one area he got something through, concrete, kinetic, was massively beneficial to business and they spend a lot of money. >> we cannot business tax rate to 21%. the oecd average, we brought hours in the range of that, obama administration wanted to cut this tax, 28%. 21% is probably too low, something like 24%. the major thing business did pushed in a direction democrats wanted to move in is mostly the right direction. you can blame business for the overshoot to 21%. trump's advises being lobbied by businesses, 21% is too low and he wanted to be really low

and trump feeling stubbornly it had to be very very low. >> you mention disapprovingly what milton friedman wrote in 1970 where he said they maximize shareholder value. the argument you make which i agree with is profit target like happiness. if you aim for that and that only you are going to miss. if you have other pursuits you are likely to be happier and be profitable with a long-term company is a byproduct. have we reached a point that capitalism must be reformed? >> it depends what you mean by reformed. the competition across a lot of models, john mackey, socially conscious capitalism and other values and missions but i don't think there is any single right answer from all companies.

if you are selling through walmart, your goal should be profit maximization to capture more market share but if you are doing something where you want to do more with the environment for the physical world we need a broader range of conceptions of what a business should be about. you need to make money to stay in business and i think milton was overreacting to people of his time who wouldn't even admit that. he went too far. >> two more questions or one question and one rapidfire round. the other question i wanted to ask getting back to trump. fortune 500 companies strike me as being very different creatures from the trump organization, privately held companies that are not listed

don't have hr departments concerned about political reaction in social media or diverse city or all those things hr departments do. trump prefers to hang out with people like trump. if you look at the mara lago guest list i don't think there are many fortune 500 board members there. there are more private companies. very different creatures and we use one word to describe them. should we be using different terms? should we subdivide what we mean by business? >> we made it too costly. some of that is regulation. some of that, demand of investors or shareholders who focus on measurable numbers, more companies in percentage terms, this is that

accelerating rates. those companies more than before are very concerned with diverse city, some differences are blurring, privately held companies grow larger and more in the public eye and some becoming a bit more like publicly traded companies and liquidity of the markets, privately shared companies, those are not publicly traded stock exchanges but very actively traded before they go public so in some ways we are seeing merging, some ways we are seeing differentiation. the important thing is to keep up a competitive framework where a lot of different kinds of companies have a chance to compete. >> those of you who know tyler, he does rapidfire underrated or overrated which he mentions something and you want to say overrated or underrated and give a quick explanation as to why. comcast.

>> i love comcast. internet service, cable tv which i don't have time to watch, my nba finals are approaching. they lobby local governments to charge a higher price, optimal or desirable. for a long time there were legal restrictions on cable television, travel and television, the future, we have 5g and more active satellite supply of things like television as the market becomes more competitive or in some ways the corporate buildings, how many companies do more good than your cable company? that is a short list and you don't have to buy it. believe it or not there are people in this room who grew up without cable tv and turned out okay. >> that is underrated. >> at least in washington dc.

>> underrated or overrated, we don't know yet. i have been a skeptic all along but there are many chances to die so far so maybe it is underrated and i think electric cars are going to work and take off. maybe first in china. they are the pioneer and everything elon musk is done with the rocket launchers, that is remarkable. i don't know if it is underrated but it is very impressive. >> ali baba? >> i never use ali baba but internet companies face greater urban density, they have a longer standing history of integrating the physical world with the online world, it is quite remarkable what they have done. they are ahead of amazon and americans underrate that and not sure the chinese do. >> what about pete buttigieg? >> i'm not sure how he is rated.

i've liked what he has seen of him. i like having a mayor be president, someone who is used to solving problems and realizing is not just the voters of their party there working for. i would like to see him be rated. there is a not that i don't know. i'm not rushing to judgment but i see encouraging signs. >> game of thrones. >> my wife and i last week sat down and said it has been so long, we have to try one episode. for the first time we watched one episode. fantastic production values better than most movies. it struck me is too complicated. i didn't care, a mishmash of super contemporary and retro almost vaguely offensively. i love it. i could see how someone could get into it but i will give it a pass. overrated. >> finally, tyler cowen. now, now. underrated? let's go to questions.

we have 24 minutes of questions if you could state who you are and speak clearly into the mic. >> my question, you have been talking about people as consumers. for people to consume they have to have an income. do you think it is reasonable the richest man in the world, jeff bezos, pays his workers nothing at a fulfillment center, they get $10 an hour, $12 an hour, very limited benefits, how many boxes they fill. if it's not enough boxes for 2 hours in a row they are fired. when an amazon fulfillment center comes to an area sometimes it lowers the wages. >> the richest man in the world - most of the people who work for amazon get a better total

offer from amazon than where they work. amazon has hired a lot of people, others are low-wage jobs. for the most part higher than what was there before. that is why people go to work for amazon. >> have you heard of this workplace? a lot of those people don't work for amazon. they work for contractors. >> you are still taking a job better than the other job they could have had. >> thank you. >> tech stocks particularly the behemoths comprise a large portion of the s&p 500 market capitalization and s&p 500 index funds in virtually every 401(k), the products in some cases are using artificial intelligence to the road

privacy or are being used to increase social division, political division and they are running on devices that are electric and are fueling demand for more coal-fired electricity. i am wondering about the tension between betting our retirement incomes on the future profitability of these industries and the other risks they present. and whether solving those other risks will be slowed down as a consequence. >> there are many issues behind your question. i would say our coal industry is dying in any case with or without big tech and they are not the main culprit there. they allow a lot of things to

happen. physical resources being consumed. privacy i consider to be a genuine concern. i'm open to the notion of regulating that more. i haven't seen a good plan that does it effectively. most users don't look at their online privacy. for regulation to work, the people themselves don't care. the people also had the common sense view the greatest threats their privacy our friends, acquaintances, colleagues, rivals and not big tech. and surveillance, when i look at the threats to my privacy, actual concrete people in the world i live in. a lot more we could say about those issues but that is the point i would offer in response. >> how do you think of

generational changes and the trend of the perception of big business? >> currently the data show young people especially skeptical. some of that may stem from having come of a jetta time wage growth is slower than in earlier periods. some of that is an internet age, greater skepticism. young people also care more about more things. that is largely a positive. if you care more about more things your more human usually alienated to more easily have negative or neurotic opinions. when i say neurotic they may be correct. i don't mean that as negative. i think we are correcting a lot of social injustices at a rapid rate. it does mean you will have that.

and to fear its, with the excess cynicism of eroding trust in your institutions that are working well. >> this could be a question for the two of you if you like. >> ask the question. >> so -- >> at the irish border. >> not quite. >> floating around the next candidate for the federal reserve under trump's presidency i believe his name is stephen moore. he originally said he believes people use capitalism to be a more important system than democracy working in this country. i was wondering if this something you agree with and if so why and if not why not? >> my view is capitalism and democracy go together. there is very solid evidence

that democracies grow at higher rates of economic growth. the most successful capitalist nations tends to be democratic. nondemocratic so my wealthy nations have a lot of oil and they see a mix of not so free, wouldn't want to live there whether it is too hot and not too stable. it is all about building growth together. democracy works much better and wealthier societies like canada, australia, the united states. >> wasn't stephen moore a student? >> stephen was at george mason. >> an economist? >> virginia state law that prohibits us from commenting on people. >> that is fair enough. he wasn't a very good student, not a very good economist and the real issue is not what he

thinks about democracy. he has not been put in charge of the federal reserve board. it is monetary policy. the real threat if an institution is independence, better make sure the people running are very very qualified and competent and i have no idea if he is a good student or bad student but i suspect -- >> thank you very much. >> freeland journalist. you mentioned trade and donald trump. a question about the ongoing trade war between the united states and china, you see these massive stable enterprises, huawei supported by -- anti-competitive measures coming to america.

the free market approach would not be doing much or even doing nothing would be appropriate, and they tell us we should be doing that. >> i agree with donald trump we should not be using 5g network. they are supporting that move, challenging the very foundation of the western alliance, with the western alliance i believe completely and free trade, i entertain exceptions for national security that is one of them. i don't think we should have

huawei in critical segment of the communications infrastructure. >> is there a way to explain the lack of trust and big business by playing reasoning from your part of the book, the complacent class which describes a group of people that gets to a good place and spent a lot of energy protecting a good place in society and these businesses provided good stuff so far and positioned to create something good for themselves and we can trust them to do what they have been doing. >> i find it striking that small business pay lower wages, smaller benefits, more likely to be biased toward minorities or not able to accommodate them for reasons of cost and small

business is more popular than big business. at the end of the day there's something about that i don't quite get. >> no way. >> my name is claire, a student in dc. my question, this reminded me of a letter the ceo of black rock wrote about how it is more and more necessary for companies to create a sense of purpose and socially conscious idea of the company and the greater public and i think you said something like purpose is tied to the bottom profit margin and you mentioned that as well. i was thinking do you see something like benefit corporations as a way to combat

what you are describing as this anti-capitalist sentiment growing especially for people my age? >> i would like to see more experimentation, maybe in the old days co-ops didn't work well but now with the internet all things are possible but i would caution a socially conscious this that or the other, it is directly cynical, trying to get good headlines. the clearest example is the investment fund at norway with money from fossil fuel saying they will not invest in any fossil fuel company because they want to be more green. beware hypocrisy. a lot of businesses care about more than that but the ratio of ones that say they do to ones that do is careful there. >> my name is brandon. i want to touch on the comment

about how cheap it is in terms of dollars spent, not the missed metric to see how successful it is and i want to push back a little bit on the idea that what is done popularly is mostly unknown. when you look at all the various financial services, it doesn't take much money for the wall street lobby to compete against consumer groups, the dollars are low. and the senate banking bill moved back productions and dodd-frank, was somewhat known but passed overwhelmingly. >> it might be a good idea, boost economic growth.

and those policies, it is an unpopular policy that is past, politicians do something unpopular. the best way to limit influence, far more money to congress and congressional staff, the scarcity of resources in congress, business comes in and supplies the expertise, sometimes even much of the bill but that is a bad system that much more money to staff of congress so congress would have more expertise and i'm a strong advocate of that that would limit the influence of that. >> to support that idea. >> good evening, professor, navy procurement officer.

and with high-tech r&d, at the early stage. is it worthwhile to make that push to get small business. >> to address that question, there's something fundamentally broken, technology cycles are quite rapid, procurement did so long and the technology cycles 2 or 3 years, china is doing this better than we are. i don't know how to fix it. seems to be one of the most important things to fix. but the recipe for fixing it, we will figure that out. >> the asymmetry of information

in hiring practices, to know how much more people are paid, there is something that reeks of something like collusion between big businesses when setting wages. the idea of paying for market price, limiting employees from being able to negotiate having norms in place staying at a company, and do you have a feel on whether that represents real collusion or inefficient market or contributing to wage growth? >> it is fine to think it should be looked into. there are pending cases. i'm not sure it would be final but these are the companies paying much more than other companies to start at a top tech company, you can have

earnings for your $400,000 a year, you have strong sales. there is an element of collusion. we should consider fixing that. in terms of where that is, the person getting 320 k in their third or fourth year, to me is not that tragic. it may be happening. >> across the rider range of businesses with a few tech companies. >> by far they are the strongest in this company and in rural areas. the best anti-monopoly policy is make it cheaper to move into big cities, retail, dense suburbs like northern virginia, maryland, those policies would do more to fight monopoly than others would do.

>> i'm steve silverberg, an employment lawyer and represent workers, victims of big business. and the non-aspect of big business, i don't want to see black-and-white but if government didn't stop business from polluting would they just pollute away? because it saves them money? if unions didn't stop business from paying low wages, left to their own devices would they take into account socially conscious chapters? you said they can tend to be your friends but are not really, are they more socially conscious than they were or is the bottom line profit maximization, pretty much -- >> there are a number of different issues. the clean air act of 1970 was a very good thing by orders of magnitude. there is a carbon issue we

should address but even regular old air pollution the tighter standards would pass the cross benefit test. the claim is not to let big business do whatever it wants. my claim is if you look empirically at the performance of big business in many areas, how much the actual reality is much more positive than the public rhetoric. >> because they are forced to do it? >> you want institutions strong enough to clean up the earth, like toyota has done. that is a reason big business is good but insofar as they have policy goals, directly liable. agents pass with certain goals.

>> corporations are more productive than ever, why are wages still stagnant? i am not talking about a small percentage of population that earns $300,000 a year. >> wages are growing at a slower rate than they used to. i talk about that in my book great stagnation, it is too bureaucratic. in some regards of liberating businesses, we need more scientific breakthroughs, more government funding of science, greater competition in science, progress is slowing down and

business is partly at fault. that is absolutely a criticism of business. >> we have about a minute each for questions and answers. >> i want to comment on income inequality, business doesn't have a responsibility for growing income inequality. are there opportunities for business to work on that problem or should the solution to the problem be government to income transfers or whatever, income transfers? >> a huge question. there are two kinds of income inequality. what is the thinning out in the middle which is the failure of the education and training system which i hope business will do a better job fixing. a lot of that risks on actual growth which are not this is.

the people at the top are earning so much more. a lot of that is globalization. product bought in china and the like. i don't think i'll income inequality is bad. some stems from that. that is my fraction of a minute response. there is much more. >> i had a question about healthcare. healthcare and capitalism don't work well. we see every democratic candidate coming up with their own medicare for all plan with slight nuances. do you see that market and what can be done? >> it is easy to answer. my favorite healthcare system is singapore's which is mandatory savings and catastrophic, i don't think we will ever get there, to single-payer periods. they are happy with it and don't want to give it up.

this strong inertia and status quo. we have to fix piecemeal what we had with greater costs control. we are willing to take more risks to do that. we have healthcare process, 18% of gdp and outcomes are pretty mixed with income education. >> i am daughter of a book last year called termite of the fate which the financial times. there are two statistics and ask you to comment on them. india has been growing at the fastest rate in the world for several years.

statistics on happiness just came out and happiness just collapsed with 160 countries. the first question is the link between growth and happiness, and economic growth is always associated with well-being. other statistics come from washington that is more shocking than that and between chevy chase, two steps from where we are, the difference in living standard of - 30 years. absolutely shocking. 9 miles apart, you could have this difference. the question to you does the government have any responsibility in relationship

to those? >>-30/2. >> don't trust the data. in the short run they are highly correlated. in the long run they are massively correlated. people want to move to wealthier countries. retirees aside people want to go to canada, australia, us, united kingdom, denmark, germany, not the other way around. it is a tight connection only over longer time horizon. thank you for coming. [applause] >> china is a deserving business and it is really like that. >> we have copies of the book available at our register. to the right of the table, thank you. >> thanks a lot.

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