came there was every single book was to have you hand to sell me so i've already done that to the pandemic i think it's time again. [laughter] thank you all so much. >> and now, more television for serious readers. ...... >> mark and i are going to chat for 20 or 25 minutes or so but then we would love to take questions from you all in the audience. if you have a lot of questions

we'll cult our chat shorter and we'll go right to your questions. for those of you joining us via zoom it would be great if you could write your questions in the q & a box, and i'll monitor those. those joining via youtube live, write your questions in the comment section. those questions will get to us, and please start writing those questions now. especially if you have already had the pleasure and privilege of reading "acknowledge degree knock mick -- angrynomics. let's get start of you mentioned in the book that the work is intended to restore economics over angrynomics. whats to that mean? >> all right. so, there's a great quote from keens was to move economics into dentistry and we meant that

actually figured out how the world works, such a thing that it's like a root canal. you need a root canal, painful you facebook it. nothing special. part of the process and the sense is the desire toning near the world in that way. and that would be nice if we could get -- real limits where you can do that or not but what we have got instead is a world that seems to be making more and more people angry for a variety of different recents and the motivation is on average the world's never been -- we have more resources, we should be able to do more things and yet at the same time we have seen people becoming very angry over -- let's just do america over the past decade or so. the tea party. then after the tea party we begin to the netter version of "black lives matter" and racial protests. then come out of that and we get the lockdown protests over covid. then we have more racial strife. and in spain, antiinequality in

chile, hong kong's democracy protest. the complete breakdown of many european party systems and the department of central parties and the rise of populism, trump, brexit, all of that coming -- our challenge was to try to say why we think this is happening, and ultimately what we can do but it. >> in this distinction between angrynomics verse economics, we know there's a oft angriness out there, but is the point that anger is motivating people to behave in ways that aren't economically sound? why the angrynomics? how is anger changed what we understand to be economics. >> so the way we talk but this in the book, we can talk but that but the middle of the book talks about macro angrynomics. there's an analogy we use in the book which is the capitalistic

economy. they have the same components but the range in different wade, like countries. every country has a capital market, waiver market but very different from each other, and the way you get these things to work, the idea run on -- and over time they accumulate bugs in the software. when you hour -- that's when people get annoyed. when you're commute ircrashes you get very angry because you can't do your work. when the economy crashes at a microand macro revel. it creates outpourings of anger and we try to trace on a macro and microlevel the stresses that produce anger. so we define macro texas angrynomics as the condition that pertains when the economy starts -- perceived to stop filling the majority of citizens and that's the feeling across

the oacd countries, that in a sense it's a rigged game. there's a bunch of insiders, called eleads who have made off with all the cash and advantage, sequestered those for themselves and everybody else is working harder and harder for less and less and that's what we want to take up. and the anger is the way to define the different types of anger expression. >> the way i understood the back was crises are important. there are moments which systems break down but there's actually something much more long-term about the nature of anger that buildings up. so the way i read it, was to say that over the long periods of time, a kind of disconnect happens on the one hand there are these experts who push certain kinds of paradigms, frameworks for underring the way the world works. so there's these dominant

paradigms, and i think your opinion is is -- correct me imi'm wrongone level sometimes the paradigms, as smart as the experts are or think they are the paradigms are just wrong and order people know that. they hear this stuff but paradigms but say that's b.s. that isn't right. that's one thing. you can do that as just expert hubris but then there's this other thing you and eric refer to which is just out and out self-deal big elite, anymore power, with financially on politically. tell me how i'm supposed to make sense of the long-term trends of just bad ideas that the experts aren't smart enough to figure out versus just self-dealing elites. >> so, let's have both simultaneously or environments in which one allows the other to come to prominence, where we are in the moment unfortunately. so take the first one. i'm not sure if they're not

smart enough to understand. the way -- this is interesting that you are calling that because we hint at this but don't expressly said. our feelings but the world, our software for running the economy. it it stuck in a moment in time, usually have a moment of crisis, the 70s the big crisis of inflation, all of the ideas in he 198 another temperature independence of central bank, prices, that's all reflected. we live in a world where we haven't han had inflation for 20 years, the only infrayings is an asset crisis. to what extend can the feelings still run the hardware without softening. so it is more like the world of all things changes but the core instructions stay the same and that creates problems. in terms of the self-dealing this goes back to the fact if i'm going to -- a volatility constraint and blows off. who in a sense gets to weaponize

the anger? what's the point. we live in a particular moment where a convergence of digital and other media technology and the end of the old established media monopolies havecracied space for political entrepreneurs to weaponize it. we can taught but trump and twitter but the original example was -- those types of dynamics, when you have a system whereby the -- no longer running as it should and already people are in a grander sense, you're telling me there's no inflation but how many the cost of housing, college, health-care, is going occupy? how think be no inflation? that's quite right. the experience of the expert. a totally different thing archbishop loss of credibility and you have a weaponization of politics which is possible now in a way it wasn't before, which then feeds back and stokes the

anger, and why choose. they're working together. >> that makes sense to me. let me push a little bit more on why i think it is important to choose a little bet even though these are totally speier twined if think about knives never 1980s, 90s issue took econ 101 and we grew up in a neoliberal moment, and with my political view is nodded accordingly when i was told marks are the most efficient way of allocating resources and all ships rise with a rising tide and better to deregulate and globalization is good and we all nodded. all the while that was going on there's all this other evidence, at least pout about the process, wage stagnation and people suffering and i heard that but i could nod as a expert -- in the end it's all going to work out.

maybe i'men idiot but that's a mistake of hubris and then the idea is what we need new paradigms or people but you can see change coming through better ideas. if fundamentally the problem is the norms of leadership have just -- on the left and right have been tossed and it's all but self-dealing now. that's a different -- that's revolution, regime change, man the barricades rather than write a different textbook. know their enter twined but which one is really the issue today? >> if you public but the protestes -- think but the protests the second wave of "black lives matter" and the protests in the u.s., these are claims for moral outrage, you are self-dealing, you are hypocrites. you do not actual live apply the law equally and that. but it varies by area.

i think another way of putting it, rather than the hubris on one side and self-dealing on the other side is as the world has become more integrated and globalize questioned all those things, it's a national human tendency for us to discount information that doesn't go with our -- if you grew up believing the free state guess for you'll defend that argue. even if there's evidence coming the other way and i still defend -- doesn't mean the whole thing is wrong. so, it takes -- i'll throw another quote at you. the problem aren't a lack of new ideas the trouble is escaping from old ones and that combine width the realist use of self-dealing and basically in a sense the software no longer matching the hardware to produce a world in which you get a lot of uncertainty and that leads toward this type of dynamics we see with angrynomics. >> so, let me restate it to make

sure i've get it. the idea is there are bunch of bad ideas out there ideas that have opposite sew lessed before -- objects lessed before people in our recognize and because they're slow respond that creates an opening for in your words tribal identity, tribalism and that kind of anger to be used as a technology that some people will weaponize this. >> you get the trump's weaponnize this stuff and you get in the moment we're in today. >> yes. but it's not just manufactured in the sense it's recallly real things. an example of this. so, you watch american media, let's use that horrible term the many stream meet a. in lockdown everybody so i a half a dozen people -- now you feel the effect of the 2,000 people who were also there

without guns, who were essentially seeing what we see all the time but kind of -- there's a federal reserve study few years back that said 40% of americans would have trouble getting 400 bucks together in an emergency. the emergency started and the jackpot yo. the watching the television and the federal reserve said if you're rich and have safeties don't worry, we'll -- have assets, don't worry. we'll be everything. who has insurance and who doesn't. who is paying the costs and who doesn't. and that is what is real and what is what i is being partially weaponized. we also want to acknowledge and this is absolutely legitimate and the fact that folks like you and i have been tone deaf for so long is a real problem. >> in 2009 during the financial crisis, regardless of my

political views, it made me crazy that in the early part of the first obama administration it seemed that nothing was being done punitively against the banks or the bankers or that when big bonuses were paid out, nothing happened. nothing punitive. made me nuts with anger or moral indignation. seems like this is a fairly extended long-term process. >> absolute limit people pick up little bits of different parts of the information and interpret it in different ways. you can say that for example obama's response and the response of the administration, new administration coming to power, not the establishment democrat, correctly having the ones who built the system to try to bail the system. you end up in a world with basically the old mantra was bail, fail, and send to jail and what we did was bail, nobody failed, and absolutely nobody went to jail. i don't think that obama thought

let's make that a policy argue. but that's the way it ended up and sent a signal to people there's two sets of rules. if i'm small businessman i go to wall. i've a big business i get taxpayer bailouts. this this system we have been running the past decade and a half. >> right. i mean i don't know how deeply we want to go into this but also race is in the american story -- although arguably in the other national contexts, too. race, then suffuses a lot of this discussion about -- involving rage and anger and moral indig nation and alsoing access to prosperity. >> these things -- i would never be foolish enough to reduce race to economic but taken in the context of the united states it has a history and it on drivers.

but two weeks ago the boston federal reserve looked at net family wealth or net assets versus liabilities now families in boston. now your obvious white family, a misleading argument. a bunch of super rich people in boston so pushes it up a bit. like the median. your middle family income in boston singhly is $247,000 a year. your black family in boston is eight bucks. let me say that again. eight dollars. you do not get those types of inequalities unless you have serious institutions pushing things in this direction for many years at a time, redlining and property, access to credit, natural to access the financial system, policing is one part of that. so this is tied into it and the particular form of anger, and moral outrage, which i think is

utterly justified in the united states today is what we see in the current protest. >> in the book you and eric have a number of very interesting proposals. i guess we'll call them policy proposals for national wealth funds, dual interest raise, direct transfers to household income, which i think are quite novel and provocative' persuasive. but how would that then play out against what you just said? we -- the new deal and new great society. we have had pushes like this which then again get filtered through race and other kinds of biases that still lead to important parts of the pop laying not benefiting. there is some way that these new pre pose sals could get around that? >> so, what we tried to do is take that into account. who is this good for? this book is for basically everybody who is interested in

this question. it's written as a dialogue because the way we wrote the book, i was we recorded on siri. used a couple of phones and ache did a bunch of reading and i did and we talked the book. then got siri to tracked and an irishman and scotts moan siri had a hard time and it sounded horrible. sounded like two rich white guys telling everyone we have the solutions and we know what's going on and just have to fix it and that's it. so we hated it. we put it back into dialogue format and tried to open it and detech any fie it but we has proposals which are tacky and inside the beltway negative. >> i'll say they're accessible which is -- >> we did try to explain that. i'll partly blame haleck because he is a geek. you say green new deal to people, 20% of the country

switches off. just the very term new deal is itself politically toxic. also says something about the lack of bipartisanship and genuine new ideas that can reach across political ideas that the last good thing the democratics can point to happened 80 years ago, decarbonization is overwhelming but you'll say new deal it throws up things and it's dead before it starts. not based on increasing tackation, that make a real difference to the assets that people who don't have assets could accrue over a lifetime if not shorter that could make serious comment inequality and also are likely to get people on the left to say, yeah, short of revolution that's not bad. so that's why we ended up with those in particular. but unless your actually arguing

things that aren't going to get attention but people listen, there's no point in saying them. >> i want to explore how these proposals -- whether it's for dual interest rate order national wealth fund, direct transfers to households income, how do those translated into a new kind of politics? may have to do with what our idea of politics is. one view people vote their pocketbooks which is plausible but maybe a dust view is that people want to feel something. they want their dignity re-affirmed. want to feel something, and -- >> interest raise. >> your point if i have it right is we're locked into this politic of techy answers which

people don't want to hear or vague, empty slogans versus the raw meat of negative zero sum xenophobic identity and none of those of is good. so what is the kind of new politics that's going to reshape the fissures existing. >> whoa here's why we like national wealth funds. people hear of sovereign health funds and think of norway with oil and all these dollars, be a buy assets and put enemy a fund. makes more -- now, without get doing much into this technical side, if you in vest in stocks they reallied 6% a year. i you invest in bonds now they're negative. so, why would you ever buy bonds? every time there's a financial crisis, the government's cost was negativity. you want to by bonds. why don't we rather than private equity just issue more bonds

because people want them when their negative, buy them and put them in a completely fund miling away from politicians and then over ten years if you did that for 20% of the u.s. gdp and bought those assets you would have a multitrillion dollar wealth fund which you could give to people for college, reforming health-care, you could really make a difference in the things that actually make a difference in people's lives and that's the type of thing, because it is can't -- doing what the fed does but without doing it in such way the asset holders benefit, then you have multiple election cycles your creating an institution which has bipartisan support. that is how you engender a politics because you have things that people can basically see as real assets. they make a difference that last more than six months or blow up

the minute the cycle goes. >> that makes sense. i guess if they're these kinds of transfers -- won't call them transfers but there's new wealth being generated, through investment and money is being allocated, i would think that if there's a sense of solidarity in society, then as a citizen i would feel this is great. i'm really happy that this is happening. if there's tribal identities, though issue might say, that poor guy, he, she is lazy. i would is -- or that welfare mom which is racialized when it was deployed for earlier american politics, to what extent are the proposals vulnerable to the angry attitude, the tribal attitude versus what i hope is a more solidarity take on citizenship? >> well, the thing the key word

is citizen. part of the problem is over 30 years the concept has been emptied of all value. you're a consumer rather than a citizen, and to a real -- you need to get people a stake in their society which is something else being eviscerated and the politics you're talking about exactly with weaponized that way. let's do a counterfactual. when was it right across the ocd that these types of reactionary he protest movements were in abeyance? in the mid to late 90s. 94 -- all falling down. that is when it was the only one and all he was doing was telling them to not pay the taxes because the didn't pay taxes. real wages were rising. for the first time in decade. when you actually change the american money in people's pockets is works wonders. not the only thing that's going

on. if you can take african-american families in boston and forget community banking. really see the asset balance in boston society, make houses they're able to buy that you can lend against, borrow against, yes, some people will definitely feel that is against their interests, about the majority of us will benefit from the fact it's leafing to a belt -- leading to a better and more prosperous society when i look at polls around the "black lives matter," i've heartened because i seems theout public, whether it's a combination of body counts on youtube what you see police doing in protests, et cetera, but you saw the opinion polls move of the the majority is now with the protesters and that's a structural -- you're innovate putting this one back in the box and you can do that. you can have these types of moments that change the

conversation, that change the way that we think about these things. that is tied up in a whole set of questions about economics and equity and access and justice and dignity. >> i agree. i hope you can tell and the audience can tell this book got me thinking. a its really a great read. we have a lot of questions from the audience so let's turn to them if that's okay with you. chris asks do you do a bigger 500 year cycle going on here? are we living at time when we are due for massive reset because the paradigms have revealed their limitations? >> i agree with a lot of that and i haven't read the book but i do get very suspicious when people suddenly declare experiment e themselves expert economic historians and declare

thing about cycles. can draw any color line you want to or data set. i think the -- one of the richest people around, there are limits to how much a few at the top can take. i don't read these interventions as analyses of the world. i read them as mia cup pa for what he have done you look at the business website the value and look at ray and other big senior -- declarations on inequality and i think this is recognition the system is bust, and that we want to edge towards a solution because they understand that angrynomics in sense is the normal and wealth gathering can't survive it. >> makes sense. i'll shut up, you got me going

now. 'll shut up and let the audience talk. barbara asked: what is the trajectory from austerity to angrynomic? is the change due to endogenous factor. one of this mow important factors that led you from writing the previous back to this book. >> thank you, barbara, great question. i would say everything ultimately is endogenous, most of what the thinking outside coming in. the financial crisis was endogenous to the balance sheets of dodgy banks. and in that since it's basically being the failure to change the business model that led to the crash of 2008. we kept the same hardware, we didn't really change anything, and then we make it everything is fine, don't worry. we'll do a bit of belt tighten and it will be fine and it wasn't fine. and quantitative easing works in

the inequality because essential he the people still getting -- have assets, the 20% and above. when we started to see he anger -- i did a piece called global trumpism that started to identify that this is the working out of the sort of global trumpism moment if you want to put that way. that is the trajectory between the two. >> excellent. the question: rather brood question. whether and under which conditions can anger be productive? >> a good one with make distinction between anger, tribal temperature that can be weaponized. an example from doing an ibm watson big data analysis of news reports talking about angerment one thing that came up all the time is sports fans. if you look at sports fans they spend most time being angry

against other fans for being insufficiently loyal. it's a kind of anger solidarity. that tends to be a response in the wider world to a sense of increased uncertainty. so if you think the micro -- the gig economy, zero contract, the fact that 18 million americans work on at-will contracts on hourly with no -- very few rights. that's where the brunt of the covid shock will be. that's where you see anger generated. what makes it good or bad? when you have the other side of anger, basically moral outrage. that is the -- be listened to. should we listen to hedge funds scream budget the value of assets gore dow or airlines who spend it on bybacks when they should have cash reserves. that's nonsense and makes people angry. the real signal i who is we have

a huge part of the labor market with so few protections. if those people are angry they're something you should his. to an example the book is iceland. iceland, a thousand person debt to gdp, people were angry. what really got them angry was when they found out their entire elite was banking offshore. that's when they got angry. that was the signal for we need to fundamentally change. so it is how you modulate what angers is telling you. the difference between northerly outraged and tribalism which is norm regulation and that is how we play it out in the book. >> seems that successful political leaders, they navigate their way through different kinds of anger. i'm thinking of, say, ronald reagan, the reagan revolution. so he gets a bunch of people to vote seemingly against their economic interests by hitting --

by accessing their anger about the state and an overly intrucetive state or by accessing their attitudes about race. we could argue -- he is tapping one kind of anger in order to create a revolution, and bill clinton, and you could trace it along and doing that and tapping the angerren cozy are created with new anger created. >> that's exactly it. if you look at less angry societies, who would not be -- they tend to be more authoritarian. but also equality about business. one author looks at profit disperserral. very few firms run on carn. and they dominate the stock market and everyone else is

in -- huge number your better off buying treasure bills than investment in firms. so there's equality in businesses as well. as well as income inequality and these compound to -- a lack of control, a lack of ability to set terms of your own employment for precariousness of your own investments and it's correct that 20% are making 80% of the cash. that seems to be the fundamental driver of this and it's not just but income inequality. it's inequality amongst businesses and races. it's all compounding. >> let's go to a question from douglas. he writes: did you address the effect of campaign contributions and what policies get enacted and the rigging of the system? so broadly if you have self-dealing people in positions of power, how do you get them

out of power? >> we do not a address that. we're trying to do in a very short book is set up dialogues between an hedge fund manager and essentially what we think went wrong, what is being generated and what went wrong what to do. this is one part that it is germane to the out but i don't address. i don't want to talk about it because it's not my field. >> a question but the intellectual differences between you and eric. an audience member rite's about apart from quibbles over metrics what's the difference between you, mark, and eric with respect to solutions to the accumulated bug-of-capitalism? are you on the same track or different? >> we're broadly on the same track, and there's more going -- maybe not the way it came out. the way we measured things in

different ways. eric thinks inequality -- just been talking about -- are fundmentally important and thinks there's a whole bun of other things going on that are very important as well and i'm sympathetic to that but i'm a nailer on he head guy and that's where that comes out. one thing eric is very interested in which i alluded to is concentration and this is something we see -- the elizabeth warren campaign is about it. consolidation of firms right across the board, much more levels of competition which leads to price fixing, more investment, et cetera, et cetera. all of which are dill tearous to consumer which is cash strapped and too much debt, it's. , i eric says i -- income inequality and profit distribution and just look at the way the corporate governance was. think bybacks are big deal.

he doesn't. not because they're not bad but because if you see bybacks, next week corporate america will figure out of new way, quite legally, who is going to -- so if you just focus on that rather than the bigger problem of corporate governance you're missing the trick. so that's the way in which we disagree. >> would it be -- i'm wondering, it would be fair for me to say your focused more on the issue of fairness rather than egalitarianism? where does fairness come into the discussion as oppose -- >> i'm more naturally an equal tarean and eric is fairness. the distinction, you can do the equality of outcomes versus equality of opportunity and that might work as well. let's tile to talk but eye quality of opportunity and the opportunities you're saying do produce the outcomes you want. otherwise it is just a house of

cards. i focus more on outcomes. >> moving into the details of some of the proposals, christopher asks -- excuse me if this is anens shy know. no apology need christopher because i'm interested, too. how is the proposed sovereign wealth fund different from the social security trust fund? that make sense? >> yeah, absolutely. you're not buying bonds and you're not buying u.s. government bonds. the global reserve asset. you're trying to pick up equity, equity is long-term premium 6% which is awesome when you consider the growth rates on average are 2%. the reason the get rich is the -- so the solution is tax capital at 80%. never going to happen. my sluice is why can't we all get a bit of r rather than worry

who is getting diminishing slices of g. we can jump into another question i just saw here they want to address which is this is from seth. wouldn't a state run fund -- politicians in order to hike up the assets and the wealth fund making politicians into bankers. you could if you design it badly but you can design it in a passive fund that basically buys abu dhabi 0.25% of everything, and completely independent board that has nothing to do with any election cycle and then mandates to disburse in -- keep them away from it. that's more a design question than an political economy question, i think. >> presumably that wealth fund can invest in domestic companies

, equity position in apple or whomever else. >> exactly. another one we talk about, our angle in basic income issues is if you think about the stock market just now, it's the -- apple and -- the 20% of the stock market and the other ones of going and everybody else in a tail. now oh do they make money? we're using a platform, every key stroke is dat and dat becomes something you can sell. why are you giving it up for free? shouldn't be have a data dividend? we're actually the fuel for profit engines. if we were talking to sprint or t-mobile, and they wanted 5g. we'll sell you the spectrum. it's 15-year lease, cost you x billion. when it comes to individuals, facebook, you keep giving them

the fuel, so we should license our data and get a stake in firms that its equivalent to an equity stake because we're giving them something they use but it's our asset, it's actually your information. that's a pure asset based response to the inequality these fins generate that getses part of the upside we get because they make so much money. >> on the data dividend i think there's a disperspective. it's the capitalism argument that says there's something fundamentally wrong and intrusive about companies whether it's amazon or facebook or google -- not just accessing our personal information but weaponizing it. using this personal information to understand our deepest, most emotions and then manipulating us. if one agrees with that argue; no need for you agree but one could say that it's just inappropriate to put people in the position of selling this and

legitimizing this kind of corporate access to one's personal data. like saying you can sell yourself into slavery. i was a little uncomfortable with the dat dividend. >> what's the alternative? you're not going to nationalize these firms. so you might as well take stake. one way -- you could buy super expensive just now or you can basically make sure that what they use as their profit -- there's an element one of my more liberal moments, eric and i disagree on this one. i'm much more on he surveillance capitalism stuff. >> the regulation is the answer. >> well, maybe. anyway, the way eric thinks he doesn't care. he doesn't care you do whatever you want. i love the convenience factor.

you give me things i deeply value and i'm willing to give you've my damp. if people are willing to make the tradeoff, the counterfactual is uncontinuable. you're doing it anyway. might as well get the money for it. >> let's turn to a slightly different angle. would national infrastructure projected be used to restart economies of companies by investing in things like railways or energy or whichever infrastructure target. >> absolutely. you could use the profit from a citizens wealth fund to help you do this which would be good. and i'm not against other reform proposals. shoutout for another book. you want to really technical version of this with far more detail' proposals look at the economics of belonging. it's u net factors and to think

but infrastructure, let's get to something -- the covid moment. everybody -- everybody loves mass transportation senate what bow? train? confident getting back on a train? what happens as we entrepeneur to dough industry our natural infrastructure you get more on a multi human viral trap missions and we have to deal with much more frequently. then it's not clear we love public transportation is as tenable as it was even though i'm a huge fan of it. what can we do? in the united states i believe a third if not more of all carbon emissions comes from buildings because we build badly. if you want to retool an interwork force, funnel them into electrical and h vac engineers with probably cost less than the fed guaranteed in financial assets over the past three months.

they haven't spend it, only guaranteed it. buying stuff on the balance sheet but what we have shown in the crisis, everywhere except the united states you can't just basically pay 80% of wages for an indifferent it in indefinite period and lock down the economy, everybody was able to -- everybody was able to do this and what that tells us, that fiscal con trains on doing those type of investments is way less. if you told me six months ago that boris johnson, the would be doing what we call helicopter money to save the british economy right than trying another quantitative easing would would give you long odds. he is showing the scope for that type of investments is far better than we thought. >> moving to a more fish sol cav

question -- philosophic one. not sure we can fix these problems, policy, if we don't do the hard work of articulating shared philosophy what business is really for in life and society. that touches on me question about solidarity. do we need a new philosophy that can motivate people in and if so, what and how. >> the $64,000 question. in a way my challenge is this. i think that what is really held back reform is politics is this idea that these things -- there's a problem. we have a policy, an peace corps. that's what you saw in both the clinton campaign and the warren campaign and it doesn't sum to a politicked but the problem what do you mean by senate so, people say you need some kind of project, things that people can

believe inch absolutely. if we think but the successful reformist projected in 20th 20th century it's not as if the social democrats in sweden came couple with a giant plan with multimedia trying to get people to invest. they said it's very simple. survival and fairness. that's it. that's all we're asking for. and here are some things we need to do to our economy to ensure that those outcomes become normalized for everyone. that is relatively uncontroversial. we sort of -- either make it technical and a list of endless policies under the sun or some kind of transformative grand narrative like green new deal which unfortunately alienates half the people. so why not just do stuff that is relative and noncontroversial and makes a big difference and then build on it. already.

>> i agree, the $64,000 question. there are a few different questions about the eu and the euro. bet let me good with this one. there is really any alternative to the euro? our 19 floating currencies. is that a bad idea? i would add, what about the eu in general? what's the future of the euro and the eu? >> the eu in a by a is the most likely place for these things to be tried and in fact they're already doing it. dual some rates, check. helicopter, check, right. so welfare fund get quietly looked at in some places because in a take, take germany. they need to manage the decarbon izeddation slash green fund and they make diesel. why not use a vehicle like this. like a special investment vehicle for the whole economy if

you want to put it that way. those things are there. on the euro itself this downside is the hotel california. you he can check in but you can't check out with destroying half your savings, capital night and eurozone. i think events moved us to a different position now and the recent german proposal being fought by the -- shows the writing is on the wall for this not telling us what to do and here's why. essentially you have a couple of things that happen last year, the china -- said to germany. i you don't -- you stop huawei we'll stop bake your cars cars - stop buying your cars and the germanned went -- now you have, if trump win, the america that will tax the hell out of europe, over cars, they said because we're the people who company -- the companies around the world

aren't paying taxes we don't care anymore. that just -- so the world is moving into these spheres and europe basically can no longer pretend to be this apolitical place that doesn't have its own debt instrument, that doesn't have a euro thannized currency d. nationalized current simple it is per capita the wealthy u.s. part of the world but politically consecutive disunified. it's going to be sort of a recognition amongst those states that it is in their interests to mutualize that just the debt but assets but a if they don't they'll be caught in a world between the united states and china and that's not a good place to be particularly if your intent on selling them stuff. europe sees the need to go from an asset to a liability and there are baby steps. >> is that possible without a

strong european identity among individuals, the citizenry of the various countries. >> think but the american experience. born in revolution, have a central bank and abolish it and then have tons of currency and local banking and it's all a mess in the 19th century. all the civil war that brings the green bank and dent get to a central bank until 40 years later. let's start with the con sent of central bank and then see how we get with the other stuff. to other stuff has been in abeyance for years and it's difficult. no one is denying that but the alternative is efractionallization and massive destruction of wealth, or you've make a place with a lot of assets going for it into something more than itself and is i think about we see now, particularly with france and germ enough recognize --

>> you feel the electorate buys that position as much as -- >> not yet. basically the weaponization, to populist moment is very much where we are but there's no solution in national populism for these questions. you can trite it but ill will fail. >> and a lot of of value destruction. >> the virtue of not being able to get out of the euro is the fact that poppist can't destroy it without destroying themselves and enthey've destroy themselves you move on. >> i wonder giving the nihilistic moment we're in, there may be a certain passion of self-destruction among some political leaders. >> here's what could do this if the fastest growing party in the polls in italy is the -- forget the league. these guys are actual fascists. they might do something crazy

like bring in a new leader and all that stuff. what would make them come to power would be eu saying, okay, italy, i could know you haven't grown in 20 years and you debt has gone to 160% of independence and an 8% debt beau others covid and you haven't drone a lot. now tighten your belts. if you do an austerity -- those guys win it bit i think europe knows that. >> we just have a couple more minutes to try to get a last few questions in. there's a question from chris but climate change, chris asks, do you think three could be bipartisan support climate change when it's framed as national security question in some way to get support for climate change for mediation? >> we their biggest solar farm in the out. already in texas. run by the -- electricity from

them. where are the wind fathoms? in the republican heartland, what is a problem -- this is a discussion of technocrats telling people what to do. it's bunch of people driving freund priuses on the east coast lecturing this is a moral problem and these people are wrong for living in a car car carbon economy. coal is defunction. britain that not generated any electricity from coal for three months and have no intention of switching them back on unless we have. to the transition is already happening the problem is per needlessly pollitt siding i by turning into a moral recruit of shows on the right said versus the wrong side of the carbon transition. >> let's go to one more. we didn't talk a lot about technology and demographics which is really interesting discussions in the book. but darrin sweeney asks to what

degree does ubi provide silicon valley with a method of replacing workers with automation. >> you're talking my language. i've been deep his suspicious of uvi for a long time because of the -- think but who is proposing an idea. if the people making the robot telling you use should be suspicious. i don't bide the end of work stuff but in conversations sometimes i keep it with the ubi advocates i realize that these are not necessary conditions. we're talking about if uvi and steve has just crow died one it's minimum wage plus. rather than being a politically contested minimum it is a -- once you do that you force unproductive labor intensive jobs out, you force businesses to invest more in capital, not leads to a shift in composition of employment and income goes up there's no reason for that to change the -- the wealth

generated inch fact it should be positive. that version goes back to men city and the version of the state as the employer of last resort. a lot of ways to do it that are not the silicon valley version and that's the ones i thinking interesting. >> i bells to some extent he issue isn't whether the total amount of jobs destroyed but the nature of jobs could change and we're seeing them change and what does that transition look like? not so much what are we going to do with all this free time but how is that dislocation handled and enter generationally. >> absolutely. >> maybe time for one last question. and it's one that showed up in several difference audience men how much bad is recession going to be? another great recession or something short of that?

how bad will things be in next few years. >> nobody knows. let's be perfectly honest. because we haven't lived that future yet. and the wonderful thing about the way that we think about the economy, at least i do, is the -- bring in cannes. how you can about the future -- if you think the next three year its well be awful you'll not do any investment which make this future guaranteed to be awful. these socially contingent expectations of the future. there are real -- cases whether the out cheated the crisis basically allowing people to become unemployed is better than the long run when all of the costs the out never covers and you're innovate trying to preserve jobs which covid now destroyed. there will be a redeployment of capitol and labor markets will just and net on knelt the united states is better because it

didn't do the -- not the applause able argument. another plausible argument. european economies can control the environment. we don't know how that will play out and anyone who tells you they too is basically selling a book. >> and among citizens, the electorate, one of your opinions is it depped on their aim if the notion of the future is contingent on how old they and are how long the future and is it's underscored so critically thought the dialogue if want to thank you for this great conversation. i want to thank both you and eric for a really terrific book and lastly i want to thank the audience for your great questions. these are really challenging times but this kind of kissing find not just enriching but provides cause for optimism that

people are thing creative live and thing about very different kinds of solutions from what we have seen in the past. thanks, mark. >> thank you very much. great dialogue. >> tonight, professor ball looks at recommend in terms of this great-great grandfather, klu klux klan member. susan eisenhower and judy gold on free speech and censorship. find more information at booktv.org or consult your program guide. >> he mesh enterprise institute in washington, dc michael strain, director over institutes economic policy studies argued the majority of americans are better off than their current

political debates make it seem. here's a portion of that event. >> innovates trying to diminish or to suing coat -- sugar coat or ignore the real problems. i'm trying to be accurate about the broad picture of the american experience. how american life is experienced by typical people, by most people in most circumstances. i think that we are focusing so much on these pockets of real struggle that we are confusing those pockets of struggle for the common experience facing people, and i think the american people keep hearing that their experience is the same as the experience of people in places who are really suffering and really struggling. i don't want to deny that suffering or struggle. i do want to say those are atypical situations and that the common experiences that much more positive than the narrative

suggests. >> to watch the rest of the program visit our website, booktv.org. search for michael strain or the title of the book "the american dream is not dead." using the search box at the top of the page. -ment: ... stretching from union square to astor place after 93 years the strand is a soul survivor ran by third-generation owner nancy ãwe want to thank all of you for your support, that our loyal community of book lovers, authors like morgan, wouldn't