important to your future, but also to the future of the country, and it affects you i think we are going to have a conversation about this topic. we thought i would throw six or seven slides to get everybody warmed up to this topic. canou look at the chart -- everyone see this chart? red is federal payments to individuals or transfer payments. what you see is back in the early 60's, they used to be 20% of all federal government outlays. it is currently 67%. over the years, we have gone from an economy that use those transfer payments of 20% of the federal budget to 67%.

back in the early 60's, medicare and medicaid combined were .1% of gdp. gdpal security was 2.6% of and discretionary spending was 11 and a half percent of gdp. medicaid arere and 5.6% of gdp, social security is 4.9% and discretionary expenditures has shrunk to six and a half percent of gdp. why is that important? are reallyyments consumption and you do not get that much return on your investment and i want to highlight the blue line. back in the 60's, investments as a percentage of the federal budget was higher than transfer payments. they were 32%. they have gone down to 15%. for the republicans in the audience, if there are any in berkeley, california. [laughter]

i want to remind you that government spending can be a lot more effective than what some of you have been putting out there in the press. what did you get for this blueline? , theot the internet, gps interstate highway system, and we got grants that have moved the needle dramatically on cancer and other diseases. what has been going on for the is thepart of 50 years amount of money we are spending on transfer payments, primarily to seniors, has been crowding out investment in our future. investments in things that brought us the internet in gps, it is been at the expense of children. this chart is the remarkable. what you're looking at is the per capita spending on children and on the elderly as a

percentage of the average worker's salary. what you will see is in 2011, the last year i have good data, $.56 out of every dollar that an american worker made went towards expenditures for the elderly. transfer payments i showed earlier, but only eight cents went to our children. as they have been crowding out other investments, the greater allotment we have been making towards payments for things like medicare and medicaid for the elderly, we also have medicaid for children but as you can see, it does not move the needle much, social security has been at the expense of money that we might be spending on our younger generation. for some reason -- this is kind of sad but i will work around it. the chart you are supposed to be seeing is the united states poverty rate by a group.

what you see and read, president johnson declared a war on poverty. for, the poverty rate seniors has dropped to 30% to 9%. we can all agree that that is a wonderful are competent. acc congressman -- omplishment. the interesting thing is that during that same time. period, the poverty rate for howdren -- maybe we have -- clever. this is what happens when you're over 60, you don't have these technology. [laughter] the poverty rate for children has been on an uptrend. believe it or not, we have made no progress in the last 40 years even though the war on poverty has been declared a success. it has all been for the elderly,

and for children, that poverty rate has not dropped at all. it is pretty amazing. we now have a child poverty rate of 24%. about that. almost one in four of every child grows up below the poverty level. just to show you how horrific 35t is, we have taken the leading economic countries in the world and here's the united states. 34th without 23% poverty rate for children. the only country we beat out is romania. and theorse than latvia other 33 countries. here we are in the united states with all this wealth, all the things we have, and we have the second highest child poverty rate. one in four children in america are growing up in poverty.

i showed you on the first chart how much we have been spending on our seniors and transfer payments relative to investment. the second chart was relative to children. years ofhat 40-50 spending more and more to the elderly has resulted in. this is a little collocated but i think i can do with it. -- complicated, but i think i can do with it. worth ofhe average net age groups in 1993 -- 1983, first of their average network in 2010. constant dollars. for the first time in the history of america, we have a ineration that net worth 2010 was actually less than their net worth in 1983. that is the 29-37-year-old group. 2010 is worthin

less than a 29-year-old in 1983. but look at the elderly. worth nots their net less than it was, it is 150% more. as you can see, or all the elderly, their net worth has gone up dramatically. all the result of the first chart as we continue to spend more and more on the elderly at the expense of the rest of our society. about, i have only talked the size of the economic pie and more of that -- the proportion of how that highest delayed up -- pie is split up. the problem is that there's a the more elderly and less people supporting the elderly. rated a bird rate -- birth

of 3.7 to one. we had more babies born in 1957 with 100 million less people than we have today. it is incredible. we had a hundred 65 million people in the country and in the last 15 years, we never had as many babies born as in 1957. this is as we all know, the baby boom. soldiers came back from world war ii. 1947-57. they do their business with their wives. -- did their business with their wives. 1947 plus 65 equals 2012. in 2012, that baby boom becomes a great boom. let me put it in stark terms. boom.y let me put it in stark terms. everyday, 11,000 people are going to turn seniors. we are creating 11,000 seniors

every day for the next 16 years. 2000 10nly creating adult workers to support those seniors. -- 2000 young adult workers to support the seniors. years, thext 25 people that are actually working to support the retired elderly, they are going to grow by 17%, but the elderly are going to grow hundred 2%. 102%. the over 85 contingent is going to grow by 322%. why does that matter? as longer life goes on, the more we spend on our elderly in the health care system. the average 85-year-old, we spend two times than we do on the average 60 60. the point is we have been shifting more and more of the pie to the elderly, there are

about to be a lot more of the elderly versus the rest of society to support them. and they are living longer. the longer they live, the more they spend each year and this is going to cause us financial problems. but it isput a chart so horrifying that i thought i would talk about it rather than put the chart of itself. if you take what we have promised our seniors, in terms of social security, medicare projections, and medicaid projections, what we have promised them versus the tax revenues we have projected, you get a number that we call the fiscal gap. american government uses very interesting accounting. how may people here are 65 or older? may be don't want to admit it. for those of you that are 65 or older, i would assume that you will get your social security

check next month. according to the government, that will probably not happen. in their accounting system, they do not account for the fact that anybody over 65 will get any payments going forward. that is not considered a liability on their balance sheet. there is not a corporation in america -- maybe enron but they went by the wayside, the payments these seniors get will not exist. if they did exist and you put on a balance sheet and took the present value of that gap, according to an economist from the university of massachusetts, the present value of that gap would make our current debt at $18 trillion, it would make it $205 trillion. i don't know whether this is science. all i know is 205 is a lot more

than 18. if it is a hundred trillion dollars, you see the problem. let me wrap this up in a nutshell. at what we promise current seniors, and you look at the size of the fiscal gap, there is not going to be any money left over for future seniors. that is the young people in the audience. people might think i'm against medicare and social security, i love social security and i love medicare. the problem is i love them so much that i think the younger people in this room should be able get to them and 40 or 50 years. this is not universal. this moving up a generational transfer from the current seniors to the teacher seniors. that is what we are here to talk about. i realize 30-40 years seems like a long way down the road and something we should not worry about.

i take heart from your generation and your thoughts on climate change because that is another ticking time bomb. i'm hoping that i can get a movement started in the greatest movement starting place in the world, berkeley, california. we will have our conversation now. [applause] >> that was great. i think that sets the stage and it also gives new meaning to the old vulcan phrase, live long and prosper. it looks like some people will and others are not and that is the concern we have. it is not even just the case that we are worried that young people will not get social security and medicare, we are also worried that as there is government agencies and states and localities, which have

obligations, as they try to meet these bears obligations or pensions, benefits, medicare, social security, that that is going to elbow aside other side -- other kinds of investments that are necessary for the next generation to succeed. geoffrey canada is the guy who is trying really hard to make sure we do invest in our children. i want to start by talking about why that is so important and first what the problem is. what the other investments look like. and then what we should do about it. tell us a little bit about what the problems are. mr. canada: as i think about this issue, it is clear to me that the numbers that stanley was talking about our one in four children growing up in poverty. it is a disaster.

all of the research about what it means to actually be in poverty. when it starts, literally at birth, he begin to see changes in these young children who have done absolutely nothing but be born in the wrong zip code or two parents who don't have enough support. we as a society, i think, have unsustainable democracy. you cannot continue this and expect we will remain a democracy. i think it is a crisis. i've spent my entire life trying prove that if children have serious investments, they can end up entering the labor market and being successful. that's as like a funny thing to say but a bunch of people did

not believe that was true. when they thought about poverty and the war on poverty, he thought there was nothing you could do about it. the truth of the matter is that things work. proving that, i think, is really important. the one thing people should understand -- stanley and i have been partners in this, we have schooling through middle and into high school and into college, graduating from college, being very successful. the point of the whole effort was to make sure those young people have a piece of the american dream. in the samerew up time, i was a year ahead of them but as a kid from the 50's, i always believed in conspiracies. [laughter] you, but hereck is where the whole thing got tied together for the first time. i was in graduate school and

someone began to talk to me about social security and life expectancy. did not have a life expectancy long enough to collect social security. , a ripoff. i became happy to see black life expectancy increase, then i saw charts and it looks like they got us again. [laughter] why you should not laugh about this, stan makes his money from understanding things that most people ignore, which i respect. quite a while ago, he showed me housingdata about

in the united states. helaid this data out and pointed not just of the year, but to the month our economy will become undone. thisooking at this the -- stuff saying, america would not let this happen. this would destroy the united dates. -- united states. we decided to go to washington and say to people who should care about this, you are about to destroy this country. just destroy completely. they did nothing. the crisis unfold which we are still living through today. i learned a funny lesson. you should listen to stand. . [laughter] is, the as this data data on housing was that clear

and knowing did anything about that. i'm just determined that for my kids, that we are not going to allow them to get ripped off. i am part of the baby boomer generation, i generation did not care -- does not care what is left and i think that is a disaster. all of this has come together for me. that we want to break from generational poverty, we have done that. we don't know what will happen will happen these kids we take all the money. if stan did not share with you some of the charts -- i guess you did, it will shrink. when you look at something and city to ask how a american

could have children being poisoned in front of our eyes, but nobody doing anything about anand people acting like america we don't have the resources to fix this stuff. and by the way, flint is not even the worst place in michigan for lead poisoning. how could that be? this is going on all over the country. when it comes to policymakers, they simply say we do not have the resources to do this stuff. a lot of this has to do with the state pensions and what is happening with state and city budgets. this is also an entitlement issue. disgraceful it is breast not to be the kind of investments for our kids that give them the same opportunities that stan and i had. that is how i got tied up into this issue. >> let's just talk for a moment and outline some of the ways we might be underinvestment -- under investing. what kind of areas were talking

about? clearly we have a poverty problem where else are we under investing. when you start thinking about medical support for young people, educational support for young people and what is happening with schools and budgets across the country. i'm the first one to argue that money is not the answer to failing schools, it does take money to educate. money to actually educate kids and we are just not prepared to do it. when you think about food up being kids growing exposed to environmental toxins, other diseases, i think social services -- by the way, one of the things we have become clear about is that young people growing up in poverty have lots

of symptoms of more health problems that sibley are being treated. -- simply aren't being treated. it frustrates me when there is a shooting in an upper middle-class community, one of those horrible shootings, the first thing everyone talks about is how the mental health services will be there for the kids and families, they do shootings every day in places in the country and we do absolutely nothing. no one sends mental health to any does give. if you are growing up underneath that kind of stress, which we overseassend soldiers and they are exposed to a year or two of violence, posttraumatic stress happens for decade. you have kids growing up with this. at least as a soldier you get to come back home. the kids are at home. why are we providing any mental

health services to other people. you can employment is another area that we under invest. is anotherployment area that we under invest. we get a lot of kids to stick with our programs for years because we have great arts, sports, and other kinds of -- what i would call high engagement activities for our young people. tennis, you name it. when you are poor, that is seen as a luxury. in most places, illustrious something we can't afford. when you are not poor, you consider that essential for your own kid. that is another area that we have underinvested. >> the of anything else you would add?

mr. druckenmiller: i will never forget as it was unfolding, both sides of the aisle were not going to balance the budget on the back of our seniors so they cut infrastructure spending. is, is all flint michigan and infrastructure problem. ridges, roads. -- bridges and roads. know what caused cancer until about six years ago and how it happened. massive breakthroughs, we can genetically sequence and target drugs. now what is going on, we are having our grants cut to cancer research. so much crowding out. ff mentioned the other main problem. filler this morning talked about medicaid for children -- hillary clinton, this morning, talked about medicaid for children.

i've -- i and you straight. -- i am used to it. just give the kids a bit of the pie because, frankly, to invest in a live, 3, 6-year-old is a your payoff than to invest in an 85 euro. i may feel different in 23 years but those are the main issues i would highlight. [laughter] say that the underinvestment that we have done in higher education for young people. say that afolks college education does not pay when you have to borrow huge amounts of money and there is no guarantee that you are going to earn enough money to actually pay back the bills.

some folks are thinking, maybe these kids cannot get an education, my theory is maybe it should not be so expensive for a poor kid to go to school that we should think that maybe they should not go to school. [applause] somethinghink this is we should put at the top of our priority list. generation, there were schools you could go to that you can afford when you were poor. when i was in college. right? one of those places, city college was free. pay.ne dime to be have to there was this idea that education was the great equalizer and you should not have wealth determined whether or not you had a shot at education. i think that is a real challenge. thinking thatare .hey can afford

>> we had a really good question that i think will help clarify things. why can we not expand the economic pie instead of coming out the one we have in place. proposinghat you are saying that we should reallocate to young people. or this up in else going on to answer the question? i don't last,ler: but if you cut investments and put into expenditures, the economic pie will shrink over the long term and intermediate. the first thing we can do is start investing in our kids and investing in productive things. not paying people like me who is a billionaire social security

checks. it is ridiculous. i do not want to get into my ideas on expanding the economy because they will sound partisan. everyone has different views. i think no question, both sides of the aisle will agree, if you keep spending money on transfer payments and consumption and cut education and cut investing in your infrastructure, your economic growth will unequivocally be slower. it is-, what you not just about that, it is not growing economy. >> tells about what you see with individuals at the harlem children's zone. mr. canada: for the folks who

care about the research, it is probably the most definitive just in terms of some of the real hard outcomes. when stan and i began this initiative, if you were in my office and i was trying to raise money from you all, which i told the dean i would not do. if you so happen to stumble into chart, i would show you a of the incarceration rates in my zone. i would show you manhattan and i would show you what is happening in my 100 blocks. calculated, at a certain number it becomes red. the harlem children's zone looks like one red area. that has been going on all over america. aree kinds of communities

sending huge amounts of money -- spending huge amounts of money, ,ot just on incarceration $60,000 a year, or is a number to keep in mind. cityu go to a new your jail. there are two estimates. the low estimate is 116,000 and a more realistic estimate is $160,000 a year. 12,000 host: when i think about what we have been doing in these communities, it has basically been like a black hole for tax dollars. unemployment is sky high. folks are not working. folks are not contributing. we are paying not just for incarceration, a short education, it goes on and on. now, our college graduation rates are not just higher than blacks and latinos in this country, it is higher

than whites in this country. the idea is that this is where you need -- you really want to fight intergenerational poverty. you have got to get the kids out there and give them a shot. i think that it is not only the , buttional achievement andrceration is almost zero teen pregnancy -- it is one of the best teen pregnancy prevention programs in the kids inhen you look at the zone and kids outside. one of the indicators i think take out theg to kids at the bottom for the last 50 years and get them back into the middle so they have opportunities to become middle-class citizens. [applause] >> what can we do to make sure

communities are investing in the future in this way, and that leads to the larger question, of how did we get to a situation where some of spending those were the elderly, and wires are not more for young people? politicalthe policy -- issues that need to be overcome? >> it started with very good intentions. i showed the chart in the mid-60's when medicaid and we spentwent on, nothing and those are great programs. social security is a great program, but if you want to get into the raw politics of it, there is an organization called the aarp which represents the elderly. when ied getting notices was 50. literally, every month. i can't wait until i am 65 to collect. strongn unbelievably

lobby. to be frank, the elderly vote. children can't vote, but more importantly, the young don't vote. , the youngr reason have not focused on this issue, but the elderly are focused on it because it is directly affecting their pocketbook. druckenmiller: the young are having problems focusing on something 20 to 30 years out. i think that is the raw politics of it and politicians cater to it. the thing that i would add is that when you begin to talk to people about this, there is a belief that these investments that were made simply did not produce any results. folks believe -- we had a war on policy -- poverty and we lost. one of the things that folks are really demonstrating is that you do get a return.

sometimes, it is not as quick as he would think. sometimes, it takes longer to see what those investments really turn out. when i go on capitol hill, if you really want to see you govern work, go to capitol hill -- government work, go to capitol hill and try to argue on the merits of science. you will be severely disappointed. me, i am just coming in with problems. i am not kidding about that. [laughter] the challenge is that when you talk to people, they honestly don't believe, in many cases, that these problems have the solutions. they just have not seen the evidence, the answer will evidence, that says if it is not some sort of liberal do-gooder, that it is a sound investment. if we continue to have our

social scientists pile on the , that has to be done in a sophisticated enough way that it meets the skeptical audience, and gives some of us ammunition to push back and say there are investments that you can make that actually do pay off and you get a real return on the investment. another example of those kinds of investments, just say. earlynada: investments on childhood have really been clear. increasingly, we're finding that any of the sort of strategies that reduced property in ,amilies have really paid off although folks do not believe that it did. i think that now there is a lot of research saying that the ability of families to get key services, health, mental health, and employment training, it really does pay off.

that evidence is becoming clear. there is increasing evidence that working in a place -- when we decided to work in an hour 100 blocks, there was not a lot of evidence that if you improve the physical and other opportunities in that area, it allowprobably, i think, children to do better. i think that evidence is becoming clearer and clearer that place matters. we should not have places where there is a sense of despair and there is no hope that this place is going to get any better. i think that is also becoming that this place-based strategy, there's evidence is works. >> nutrition affects brain development right from the get-go. mr. druckenmiller: that has been proven now. affects brain development right from the get-go. that has been proven.

you can absolutely invest in those areas to reduce those. >> say a little more about the sense of despair. i think many people don't understand what it is like to be in some of these communities. mr. canada: at the very beginning, if you came to harlem today, he would not have a clue about what i was talking about. we have pictures that we have to show people about what the community actually looks like -- looked like. it looked like some bond out after a war had happened. bed outplace after a warhead happened. rather be inwould the nice places. it is not like kids don't know that growing up in a place where kids don't make it out of those places. i was speaking to a young man, i don't know, samuel, but he was talking about blowing up in an

environment and how it was just normal for kids to go out and .et involved in hustling it is different, but it is all the same stuff. -- doingething illegal something illegal to make enough money to take care of necessities today and maybe tomorrow. that becomes a culture in the place that that is what the expectation is. it goes with a lowered belief that you are going to live. kids who are 14 and 15 and believe they are probably not going to see 20, they do a lot more risky kinds of things than kids who think they have a future. it is much easier for girls to not care if they get pregnant. saying, you are getting out of the space. despair is infectious, meaning you catch it. i got it, and you come in, and after a while, guess what.

these places have names that people have given them that suggests that this is one of those places you don't get out of. harlem was certainly one of those places. this is something we learn -- hope is also infectious. when people begin to see and think -- first of all, we said we were going to change the conditions. we went in to harlem saying we're going to change things, and people's eyes rolled. people began to see the physical change, they could see the change happening. at first, we had to convince people to work with us, and then people came to us and asked if we could come to their block. --t fits with glowing up growing up and having the belief. harlem was the kind of place that is a kid ended up at a place like this, they might get on the front page of time magazine.

it might be this big story, kid makes it out of the hood. we asked someone back when it started, do you know anyone going to college, they might say, i think there is this girl on 117th street. you would have to be a genius to go to college. over 140 kids in college right now. home, youall come know what it looks like to be eight years old in a place that you have got 900 kids from your community in college, and you asked them if you can believe you can go to college, and they say "he is in college." that is what changes what the norm is. why would i think i could go? if the norm is, they are in college, i know i've going to college if he is in college. that becomes real. that becomes the norm.

young people have a different sense now, maybe your brother is in jail, ucla path out of this that doesn't involve you risking your life or imprisonment. you see examples of it. that kind of sense of opportunity, i think, is what has made america great, and in these places, we've got to bring that sense back to these communities. just talk about a few things people have mentioned. presidential candidates are telling us the issue is immigration and if we stopped immigration, we would solve the problem. how do you think about immigration? is it a problem for america? can it be a solution for america? >> i think all of us are the product of immigration.

this country is built on immigration. with regards to this specific , immigration is a huge help. you bring in more population, and you've got more suckers to pay for the older people. this is the way the system works. when you pay a payroll tax if you are working, it's not going to you. you are paying for somebody who worked 40 years ago. it's a minor point, but immigration with regard to this issue is a help, not a hurt. immigration in general, this country was built on immigration. there's not a candidate out there when somebody in their family at some point didn't immigrate. it's just ridiculous. [applause] we see this differently in new york city.

when you see the energy, the economic energy that all of these immigrants bring into the city, i don't think anyone thinks, that's a bad thing we see going on as folks try to figure out what their niche is to climb the american dream. when you look at countries that have failed totally to bring new people into their communities -- if we think about japan, as that group grows older, they are not able to sustain the populace. you have a problem. this thing has consequences. i think right now immigrants are a scapegoat for the fact that we know, a problem growing and sustaining our middle class in america. that is not an immigration problem. problem, and i think it's an easy way to find a scapegoat and say, they are the happening, if we

stopped all of them from coming in. suddenly, we would have all of these jobs appearing back. i think this is one of the more hoprrrid kinds of conversationse have had in this country for quite a while. it reminds me of a time when it was ok to villain eyes others, african-americans, anyone who grew up in the 1960's. of thatere disparaging group. this sounds a lot like that to me. it is a real problem that we haven't addressed fully. >> here's another solution. lift the cap on capital gains, and we will have enough money to solve the problem. true or false? to think theypen should normalize capital gains and it will bring

some money. i think it will be helpful, but it's just a pittance in terms of solving the problem. the funny thing about capital issue,ying it to this the average 60 year old has five times the net worth of the average 30-year-old. people and rich people at a lower rate than the 30-year-old plumber is a direct transfer of wealth, again, from the young to the old. i don't think that is why it was intended. i have invested in businesses for the better part of 40 years. i started a business, and this idea that somebody sitting around collecting dividends and clipping coupons is some kind of great job creator relative to some guy out there working, i think, is a joke. you are talking to somebody who thinks they should raise or

normalize capital gains and dividends, not give them preferential treatment, but it won't solve the problem. it will give you some money, but it won't solve the problem. is one of the complexities, the magnitudes of the amounts of money we are talking about. stanley: let's talk about the defense budget. the defense budget is $700 billion. it's a lot of money, and i don't think that is equal to three years of the growth in entitlements coming up. toyou took defense spending zero, you wouldn't make up for three years in the upcoming growth in entitlements. should we have a defense budget greater than the 18 countries in the world combined? that is what the equal to. probably not. you could find a way to cut a little of the defense budget, but i will say, they already cut it.

gdp.se used to be 6% of it's going to be 0.5% of gdp. you can cut a little defense spending, but these are tiny snippets compared to the big problem. if you want to get at the big problem, you are to have to means test social security. you are going to have to means test medicare. since they have already gotten so much of the pie, i don't have a problem with stopping the coolers. haven't like they already increased their share already. five and seven-year-olds are suffering because of the expenditures we could be using for their future. >> i've got questions hear from students. how do we start a movement? stanley: that's why i'm here. that is their job. >> what are the levers? what should we focus on? how can we get young people to understand this, and how can we avoid a war of all against all?

we don't want young people against seniors. that is not the goal. stanley: that is absolutely not the goal. the first thing to do is to start voting. [applause] i would make this issue a .riority i talk to young people. i have daughters in their early 20's. i was thrilled when gay marriage went through for a couple reasons. and ight it was great, thought maybe they could move onto another issue now that that problem was solved. i got a two-fer when that happened. if you look at the charts i put up there and you are willing to think about your future, this is a big deal. one thing i know about young people, when they show in force and vote on an issue and are loud about it, like they were on gay rights and like they have been on climate, politicians eventually listen. they've got to vote, or politicians won't give a damn.

>> the voting rates of young people are about half of people 65 and older.politicians are not stupid. they know who votes, and they are going to focus on the needs and concerns of those who vote. stanley: i don't want to put this as young versus old. i really don't. one of the things i want to do is talk about seniors and future seniors. one of the things i want to do is preserve these programs so they are viable for our young people when they are 65. that's all. let's talk more about the harlem children's. see, ifld you like to you had a way of expanding it around the country? what kind of investments do we need in our cities, and it's mostly the cities, along the lines of what you have pioneered? geoffrey: when president obama decided to replicate our work

and create promise neighborhoods, if you look at his original announcement before he talkedsident, about putting billions of dollars, which was a very modest sum. if you look at what he was able to get through the congress, it was relatively small. it was much less than any of us thought was sufficient to get the job done. i think that the big lift moving forward is to do a couple things. , bute doing good work there are other folks around the country doing good work, also. work.d to celebrate that when of the challenges was, they said it couldn't be done. you couldn't eliminate generational poverty in an area and get kids who weren't going to college to go to college.

people began to say, ok, ok, you can do it, but you are the only one who can do it, which is absolutely not true. this idea that we need to do not a minor investment in kids but to actually put real dollars in there, i think it's worth fighting for. there are folks who are give evidence that these programs matter. i think that is one part. politicians will look at the evidence and say, great, thank you very much. stan has certainly been a major player -- i will tell you an issue where i learned from the guys stand used to work for, george soros. george is very much on the left wing of the democratic party. geoffrey: he is to the left -- stanley: he is to the left of

berkeley. pataki,: when governor a republican, was governor, i have been trying to convince both republicans and democrats to do some investment and youth development -- in youth development and to look at the mandatory minimum sentences before stuff came up about incarceration rates. i was an organizer and an activist, and people knew me. i was yelling and marching, and we got nothing. george called for a meeting with george'shich was that office. george is a democrat. pataki is a republican. i am in the meeting. the meeting is at george's office per george shows up to the meeting 15 minutes late. i was like, how is this going to work? does not apologize. he doesn't say, "i'm sorry i'm

late." he sits down and says, i want three things. him two out of three, not because they shared any political believes, but thought,cause pataki it's probably not a good idea to upset a billionaire. power matters. activist yelling, screaming, marching. with thehink about power levers are to move public policy is something we need to focus on. right now, we have a real crisis in this country. you see it in the electorate. i think the establishment and realize they had a crisis, but people are starting to realize they have a crisis. what i firmly believe is that there will be an opportunity to talk to folks who would never listen to you before and say, there's an answer to what is angry, andybody so

we have the research to back up why this would be a good political investment. by the way, it's going to cost some money to get this stuff done. until we can get folks to realize, there is money in that budget that we could free up to do some of this stuff, i think we are going to continue to think we are a country of scarcity. nothing could be further from the truth. this is a matter of whether or not we are going to do the investment. i am kind of a foolish optimist in the midst of this, but i actually think there's going to be an opportunity to have some of these conversations. this time, we've got a lot more evidence, scientific evidence, of what works. >> that is a heck of a note to end on. we thank you for your optimism. we appreciate it given the presidential campaign we are all watching right now. i just want to end by saying, these are two remarkable people,

and i feel honored that they came across country to be with us to tell us what they are thinking about, and i think what is quite remarkable is that they come from quite different places, do quite different things, and yet have come together with a concern for this issue. i think that's wonderful, and i think it's indicative of the kind of creativity that exists in america to try to solve problems. i think the harlem children's zone is solving problems, and i hope we can work at berkeley and around the country to solve the issues we discussed today with respect to the future investment in young people to make sure that we create a future for them that is worthy for them in am erica. thank you for coming. thank you so much. [applause] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2015] [captioning performed by national captioning institute] which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org]

the need for horses on the farm began to decline radically in the 1930's. it was not until the 1930's that they figured out how to make a rubber tire big enough to fit on the tractor, and starting in the had anand 1940's, you almost complete replacement of horses as the work animals on farms. i do believe one of my books on horses -- i read that in the decade after world war ii, we had something like a horse holocaust, that horses were no longer needed. "q&a," robertt on gordon, professor of economics at northwestern university, discusses his book "the rise and fall of american growth." one thing that often

interests people is the impact of superstorm sandy on the east coast back in 2012. that wiped out the 20th century for many people. the elevators no longer worked in new york. the electricity stopped. you couldn't charge your cell phone. you couldn't pump gas into your car because it required electricity to pump the gas. the power of electricity and the internal combustion engine to make modern life possible is something that people take for granted. at 8:00 p.m.ht eastern on c-span's "q&a." >> tomorrow on c-span, russian journalists discuss the state of russian media under president putin live at 10:00 a.m. eastern. the nsamer director of and cia michael hayden on u.s. intelligence and national security live at noon eastern.

aging expert and author paul irving spoke at town hall los angeles about the current state of aging in the u.s. and around the world. this is about an hour. [applause] >> it's my pleasure to introduce paul irving who is chairman of the milken institute center for public ages. he's also a distinguished scholar and resident at the university of california davis school of gerontology. paul previously served as the milken institute's president and also as an advanced leadership fellow at harvard. previously he was chairman and c.e.o. of minett, and is the author of a wonderful book called "the upside of aging," how long life is changing the world of health, work,

innovation, policy, and purpose. a "wall street journal" expert panelist and regular contributor to the huffington post, paul is also a director of the bank i work for, east west bank. he's a member of american society of aging. encore.org where he serves as vice chair and is also a member of the board of counselors of the u.s.c. davis school. he's got a tremendous, tremendous record of public service and i know that you will be very interested and fascinated by paul's presentation today. please join me in welcoming paul irving. [applause] mr. irving: thank you, gordon. i want to thank town hall. i want to welcome all of you. i see i've got some old friends, partners, and family here.

today we are going to do about a year's worth of work in around 25 minutes. which is going to be a challenge. i want you to bear with me. but i hope what's going to happen is by the time we leave today i will have provoked your interest and some thinking and maybe some table top conversation for your own families and colleagues and workplaces and friends because global aging is changing our lives and is changing the planet, really, as much as anything. that we are experiencing in humanity. so let's go. we know that life spans have about doubled in the last 150 years for almost all of human history life spans were in the rage of 30 to 40 years. we have doubled t that's certainly one of the greatest

accomplishments in the history of mankind. we know that the reasons for that are advancements in sanitation and safety. medical advances, obviously, the advent of antibiotics and the like. but before we go farther, i want to give all of you a test. after all i'm not spending today at u.s.c., i certainly feel that i should at least include some kind of quiz in this process. in 1917, king george v sent a congratulatory tell gram to every citizen of the british empire who was at least 100 years old. does anybody know the answer to how many he sent? guesses? the answer is he sent tell grams -- telegrams to seven men and 17 women. in 2011, this is by the way the

last year that the crown has reported on this, in 2011 q.e. sent telegrams to all the centenarians that year. what i want to see is a show of hands. how many people think she sent 500? 500? 2,500? 5,000? 10,000? 20,000? you can't fall for the last number. the answer is 10,000. by the way, she sent about another 1,000 -- about another 1,000 to a group of people that are reached 105. so this just puts in perspective the kind of progression we are seeing. this gives you a sense of global aging. the map moves from 2015 to 2050. the world gets progressively redder and pinker.

what you see is that aging is a phenomenon certainly across all of north america, across all of europe. much of asia. and much of latin america. in fact, actually the only areas of the world that aren't aging rapidly are some parts of the middle east and some parts of sub-saharan africa. aging is not only something that's occurring in front of our eyes, but frankly, is a permanent fixture for many of us. how many boomers do we have in the room? baby boomers? so baby boomers have been kind of led to believe not only are we the most important generation but also the generation that represents an exception. that for some reason we are the demographic bulk moving through the snake. when we are done things revert to normal. nothing could be farther from the truth when it comes to aging. aging is a continuing process that will progress as years go on. here's another way to look at the same thing. this gives you a sense of

progression. 2015 to 2050, this by the way is net of the kinds of advances in medical science and bioscience that we are seeing every day. i'll talk a little bit about later. to put it in perspective, when social security was introduced in 1935, life spans in the united states averaged 61.7 years. social security, an import from germany, was used as a program to take care of those who were exceptions. the outliers who for some reason outlived life span norms. boy have things changed. this is another thing we are experiencing. obviously highly relevant to us in los angeles. people are not only getting older, but the older population is getting more diverse. that continues as you continue to spread beyond 2050. so the great challenges of aging are health, financial security, and purpose. let me talk about health to begin with. so, we know with our aging population that we have a serious challenge with chronic disease. obviously with alzheimer's and other forms of dementia. our calculus is that fully

loaded the cost of chronic disease to the united states every year is in the range of $1.3 trillion. again, that takes into account not just disease care but takes into account economic losses. productivity and absenteeism and presenteeism, etc. the cost of chronic disease much of which is disease that we can impede, defer, places an extraordinary and growing charge on our population. by the way, let me say that the most powerful -- most powerful part of this is the opportunity that we have to improve prevention and wellness. about 4%, 4.5% of our federal health budget. we spend all of our money on treatment and care.

we know we spent spend a lot of time fighting about the legitimacy or illegitimacy of obamacare and the like. what we know is investment in programs to affect obesity, mitigate smoking, it's going to have massive impacts. we have to think about why we don't invest more in them. alzheimer's, this is by the way just a medical care number. $226 billion in 2015. a growing number. we know about 50% of people over 85 suffer alzheimer's or some other form of dementia. that kind of connection between increasing longevity on the one hand anti-risks of dementia on the other -- and the risks of dementia on the other provide a great challenge to all of us. focus on this last number. there is some disagreement. this is a fidelity member. $220,000 is the estimated amount that a 65-year-old couple will spend between now and death. out of pocket on health care. here's the next slide. this is why that's important. in the united states -- i'm going to focus on the u.s. for purposes of this conversation. but obviously these are challenges not just in the u.s. but many other parts of the world. a majority of pre-retirees in our country, you can see the pie

chart, have less than $100,000 in financial assets. do you remember the number that i talked about in the last slide? $220 in medical expenses -- $220,000 in medical expenses alone. not housing, food, travel, transportation. $100,000 in financial assets. houston, we have a problem. so, there's good news and this is where i want to focus this going forward. and the good news is the culture of aging is changing. i bet if i had time to spend with each one of you what i'd find is that your attitudes are different than they may have been earlier in your lives. frankly different than those attitudes that might have existed with your parents and grandparents.

the majority of baby boomers want to continue to work or work past age 65. that's a very good thing. why? because work is good for your health. and it's good for your wealth. traditional retirement can elevate a wide range of health risks. it is not good to move to a beach to play shuffleboard, to hang out in a rec center and wait to die. it is good to remain engaged and active and purposeful and productive. that's one of the things that we have to try to promote, all of us, and to live it and i'll talk a little bit about how much difference that makes in just a second here. this is research done by a woman, a prominent researcher at yale university, found in a study she did that people who had a positive self image of aging and sense of purpose in their lives lived an average of 7.5 years longer than those who didn't. this is a more important life extension factor than body mass index or smoking.

if you want to live longer and live well, you want your family to live longer and live well, look in the mirror, change your attitudes about, in my case no hair, but it may be white hair, and i don't know why we lost our slide here, here we go. i'll go back, but the point is that this sense of purpose is not just soft. it's manifested in these kinds of numbers and this kind of research. rush medical center in chicago found people had a sense of purpose in their lives were 2.4 times more likely to remain free of alzheimer's. this is kind of the traditional view, right? you get to the end whenever the end is. and you have the party. and you get the gold watch and

go off into the sunset if you're in new york or boston. less true in los angeles. you probably have a house on the beach somewhere in florida. you go down to live with a bunch of people your old age and you don't have much to do. well, fortunately that's changing. ed glazer who is an e-con professor at harvard says the retirement boom seems like soft money of an aberration. the current rise of the working elderly is a reversion to form. sun city was developed by a really smart guy and opened just post-war as we all know. by wait the day it opened 100,000 people lined up to see the new housing product that dell webb had developed. dell webb was a smart guy. instead of buying expensive property in the urban core that involved mixed use and intergenerational engagement, he figured he would buy worthless desert land, put up -- create this new norm, and invest a lot of money in marketing. boy, was he smart in doing it. this is not what people want anymore. aarp data shows that today about 90% of people over 50 years of

old want to age in community and in place. so the question becomes, how do we change our urban environments and ensure not only intergenerational engagement but the kind of health infrastructure, housing education, work, and all the rest that keeps us vibrant, engaged, and connected. my friend at the "new york times," david, terrific guys who is interested in this subject, said this, i just love david's quote. retirement and disengagement should be managed with a warning label saying, this is something you may not want to consume. people who were innovative in their earlier lives can remain innovative and do more important work as they get older. people who were prominent can become even more prominent as age progresses.

people who were creative and took risks on stage can take even more creative risks as they move along in life. people who were explorers can continue to explore. explore new ways. mickes, mick jagger, was wrong. mick did in fact say i'd rather be dead than singing "satisfaction" when i'm 45. here's mick strutting at 72 and doing it more effectively than

he did at 22. how is all this manifesting? this is coffman foundation data from 2012-2013. the business creation, despite all the hyperbole every day. more business creation is coming out of middle-aged and older people than out of younger people. this by the way continues to progress. and not surprisingly in many ways those businesses are more successful. why? because older entrepreneurs had been bumped around. they have wisdom and judgment and experience. and the perspective of -- here we are. we need to move forward. and the perspective that creates more successful businesses. by the way, this is so important because we know that job creation comes from small and small and medium-sized enterprises. not from large businesses. the opportunity for older people and encouragement for older people to begin new businesses couldn't be more important for them and couldn't be more important for the broader

society. older people are returning to school in new ways. and the advent of new programs, both on campus and online, create a phenomenal new opportunities and i think this is one of my messages, not just university leaders, who should be embracing a more diverse -- age diverse, but to older people, that the opportunity to refresh skills, learn new skills, reinvent, repurpose is important. academic institutions, these connections don't just provide information, they expand relationship networks. one of the challenges oftentimes as we move along in our lives is our relationship networks become static. we end up hanging out with the same people that we have hung out with for years. young people bumped into new people all the time. that creates ideas. new ventures. so the opportunity for older people to engage in new educational programs just couldn't be more important for them. again for the broader society.

encore.org, which many' a proud proud board a member and metlife foundation did a study on older people who were interested in what we define as encore careers. these are careers involving purpose, passion. oftentimes a paycheck. we actually have an encore fellow sitting in our room. the notion is this potential to deploy the skills, the experience, the wisdom and judgment exposures we have had in new ways to improve the world. what encore and metlife found is 31 million adults, older adults, who were interested in these kinds of careers, nine million were already doing them. again, a phenomenal opportunity to deploy this extraordinary human capital asset that we have. for any economists in the room, we talk a lot about kind of the expectations of retirement and the economic charge that that places on society. what we should be thinking is

not that we have a necessarily underutilized human capital asset, we have an incredibly abundant human capital asset that's ready to be deployed to continue and grow productivity and frankly to improve the world. older adults volunteer, this is data that comes from the white house conference on aging that was held earlier this year, 20-plus million older adults, volunteering, 75 billion in contribution to the economy through their volunteer work. and by the way, many people think this underestimates the actual numbers. so let's turn for a second to economics. again we are just touching on a range of subjects that each one of these could be an hour conversation. oxford economics and aarp did some analysis on the size of our longevity economy. products and services and

related economic output for those 50-plus in the united states. what they found was if the longevity economy was a country, based on g.d.p., it would have the third largest g.d.p. in the world after the u.s. and china. and again what's the opportunity here? when i'm speaking to young people, one of the things i say is, if you want to -- a green field, if you want an opportunity to get involved in something that presents more exciting opportunities, think about the intersection of demography and innovation. at the intersection of demographic change and innovation is where economic growth occurs, and there could be no more exciting opportunity in that regard than the opportunity to serve older adults. this is just some ideas. it ranges, obviously, from digital health tools and range of technology options to, frankly, even things like the sharing economy. uber and lyft and others are thinking how they could represent that last mile in

getting people to the doctor's office or to their work environments. so the longevity economy presents a wonderful opportunity for not only for economic growth, for our country, but for new products and services as i often say, a door that can fit a 25-year-old may not be able to fit a wheelchair, but a door that can fit a wheelchair can always fit a 25-year-old. architects need to think in new ways. designers, city planners. think about uber and the autonomous car. how many people in the audience have parent or have had a parent where the keys had to be taken away? we live in southern california where we know how important that is. think of the potential of autonomous cars. think of the potential of this

initiative that google has taken on and others are following quickly. that would enable us to remain mobile for the rest of our lives. regardless of capacity. huge potential change in society. because i have limited time i want to leave you with a few thoughts. first about millennials. we think of aging that those of us in my generation and even in the generation before, the silent generation, would be most interested in. i tell younger people that they should be more focused on changes in aging and what longevity means to them than we are. why? first of all, the millennials, this is people between late teens and mid 30's, the largest, most diverse population in the united states. it is the least financially secure. a generation that we have, much less financially secure than early boomers or x-ers were at

the same times in their lives. 56% you can see living paycheck to paycheck. negative savings rate, 26% living at home with their parents. homeownership rates extraordinarily low. why is that important? because these people -- these young people have the prospect of potentially much longer lives. i was speaking to one of my colleagues earlier about what longevity science is doing. we all know we are living in the generation after which the human genome was coded. used to cost a couple billion dollars, now it's almost free. massive advances are being made in longevity science. there's speculation that ranges from life extension that's just a couple years to people who speculate. there are actual scientists who speculate that lives of 200 years are likely in a generation. i discount that. i discount that, but i do believe that longer lives are it

ahead. what that means is the definition of life course, wait people have looked at their lives, this is certainly true for us, but very much true for our kids, kind of a look in the rear-view mirror, how did grandma and grandpa and great grandma and great grandpa live their lives just isn't relevant anymore. that's hard to fathom because it worked for almost all of human history. we could look back and say, life course was designed based on a series of patterns and practices. that were developed by prior generations. generations to come are going to reinvent life. what that means is going back to school multiple times. means preparing for multiple careers. and when i'm speaking on college campuses to young people, i see eyes glazing over, how many of you are in relationships? about half the people in the room raise their hands. i say, how does a 90-year marriage strike you? that creates conversation. so even companies like google, so we all know google for

search. we all know google for search. we now see google as created this new holding company called alphabet which it's broken out its search business. one of google's businesses is called calico. run by a very smart guy named mark levinson, who used to be chairman and c.e.o. of genetek. he's got people at google working on radically extending lives. you see others here, buck institute. this is again something that's proliferating across the united states and the world. will they succeed? i don't know. i'm not a bioscientist.

will they accomplish some improvements? yes. do i hope that they focus as much or more on the extension of health span as life span? boy, do i hope that. it's not just about longer lives, it's about better and healthier lives. the point is, the narrative, the expectations, the culture, is just changing. what i want you to think about, culture is changing for boomers, x-ers, millennials and generations to come. for all of you, savings and investment are for more than a life of leisure. golf is just wonderful. if there are any golfers in the room, i don't mean to insult anybody. i will tell you that work and focus on personal health and learning and philanthropy and purpose are not just drivers of the better world, they are drivers of personal health. ageism must be challenged to enable productivity and purpose. we know that ageism is still rife in our society. it's remarkable because you think it's the one characteristic, it's the only

acceptable ism that still exists, it's ironic because it's the one characteristic we all have in common if we are lucky. so we need to enable people to continue to work. we need employers to think in new ways about transitional retirement. shared work arrangements. part-time arrangements. the other kinds of things that kind can accommodate human capital across the life span in new ways. by the way, i'll say for any employers in the room, there's increasing evidence, research based data, that suggests that intergenerational work forces outperform same-age work force of any age. older younger workers bring phenomenal short-term memory. energy, creativity. disruption. older workers bring -- disruption i mean that in a positive way. older workers bring balance and multisectorial cross problems. and the mentorship, the opportunities to connect older people and young people are

remarkable. moving either expressly or by implication, older people out of your workplace, is not good for business. let me tell you, some of the smartest employers in the united states now, have work going on in the back of their shops. rather than matching two ph.d.s from computers science from stanford who are 30, they are putting a 30-year-old and 65-year-old together recognizing the power of that connection. so we need to address ageism. we need to take it on. we need to talk about it. and this is, i think, one of the great social challenges of our time. we need to increase our investment in prevention and wellness. talked about lengthening health span. if we don't succeed in tackling chronic disease, succeed in deferring dementias, alzheimer's, and other forms of

dementia, the public cost -- we do not have. despite all the political hyperbole, we do not have a social security problem in the united states. it's easily fixable. it will be fixed. what we have is we have a medicare and medicaid challenge and it is massive. massive. we can do remarkable things to reduce it if we have will. those remarkable things are principally focused on prevention and wellness. some of that requires personal accountability and responsibility. some of it requires policy change. some of it requires change in the workplace. something we have to focus on. longevity economy presents a compelling opportunity for innovation, investment in economic growth for investors in the room, if you go back and look over the last 10 years or so at the companies that have experienced the greatest levels of growth, what you'll see is a remarkable connection between them and the aging population. as people age, as they remain in workplaces longer, higher tax revenues, increased consumerism, changing tastes, yes, some

people call it the "best exotic mare gold hotel" phenomenal or -- "the best exotic marigold hotel" phenomenon or "the intern," but it's bigger than that. the longevity economy is an investment economy opportunity and to benefit the people across the age spectrum will change lives forever my friend, mark friedman, who runs encore says the upside of aging amounts to a human capital windfall, capable of turning dependent ratios into a new source of abundance. not just the opportunity for more fulfilling lives but the key to solving many of the social problems that ail us as a nation. one of the benefits of aging is perspective. even old rivals can get together and do things that are productive with each other. and guess what? sometimes, sometimes later in

life we can do the most important work of our lives and we can change the world. so john guard next wonderful person who many of us read and care about and think about, professor at stanford, founder of common cause, experience corps, and form h.e.w. secretary said we are continually faced with a series of great opportunities, brilliantly disguised as insoluble problems. aging can be a great, great challenge. and it can be a huge problem. akin to climate change. this will be a problem, by the way, not just for the united states but for populations across the world. but if we can figure out a way to engage our older adults, keep them healthier, keep them active longer, will not only dramatically reduce public costs but remarkably improve lives. thank you. [applause]

>> thank you so much. mr. irving: if i had more time -- >> we'll give "q&a" time. raise your hand, and lindsay will bring your microphone to you. >> thank you. how did you get from being an attorney to becoming a specialist on aging? mr. irving: it's a great question. i'll give you the rider's digest digest version as my old partner knows. i finished a stint as the c.e.o. of and i suppose my choice was to go back and do what hi done for 30 years or so, to do deals. i was a guy who did m and a work and corporate finance work. but for some reason i felt something missing in my life that i wanted to do something that was contributing in some kind of different way.

as i always say to people, some of those people say to me was it hard to walkway from the money? i say to people, look, if you had a good corporate practice, you were always the poorest guy in the room, so nothing has changed. so i was fortunate enough to have opportunity to spend a year at harvard university. i did a fellowship at harvard with 19 other people. this was an extraordinary group of people who had led other organizations by and large, and had been philanthropically involved, socially involved throughout their lives. here we were, this is a group of people between 55 and 70 or so, called the harvard advance leadership initiative. and we were wandering the campus for a year trying to figure out our own pathways to new work. and i thought to myself if it's this challenging for all of us, these are people we had the former minister of health of switzerland and the former transportation secretary of the united states and corporate

c.e.o.'s and others, if it's this challenging for all of us, understanding the value of this cohort, how much it would be for others. i had this incredible sense of desire to contribute, desire to do things that could help the world and yet this kind of challenge and understanding that it was possible. so we were kind of pioneers. that led me to think about the potential of older people as a human capital asset. i honest believe the distinguishing characteristic in countries and in companies is human capital. financial capital is extraordinarily important. social capital, rule of law, etc. extraordinarily important. the distinguishing characteristic, certainly true in a law firm and i think it's true in most enterprises, certainly true in what i do now, distinguishing characteristic is the human beings that come in the door every day. i just had this notion that

there was this wonderful potential opportunity to engage people for their own good and for the good of the broader society. that's how i got absorbed. interesting stuff. >> in order for people to age in place you're going to need caregivers. i'm volunteer state president for aarp california, and that's one of our main priorities. in your opinion, what would be some of the policy priorities in order to meet this gap? mr. irving: it's an incredibly important question. as you know, there are about 50 million caregivers in the united states paid and unpaid. some of the least understood and respected people with the most challenging work that we can do. among other things, there are a lot of wonderful people, who are working on this. one of the things that we need to do is look at compensation and reimbursement. we need to professionalize care giving and uplift t we need to

connect caregivers who oftentimes are involved in the loneliest work that exists and don't have ongoing education, professional associations, connections. there's so much we can do. but i would say for all of us if you know a caregiver, say thank you. most of us will be caregivers at some time in our lives. and many of us will be caregivers for many years. we need to figure out ways to get people paid through both public programs and private initiative entrepreneurship. and we need to figure out a way to connect caregivers, educate them, professionalize them, and uplift them. it's really important. >> isn't there going to be a collision between the technologically advanced millennials coming in to the marketplace really without a

place to go in a way, and the baby boomers who are not quite technologically advanced but want to stay on and keep working and will block these millennials coming in? i'm not thinking value judgment. isn't there going to be a collision with a limited number of resources available to solve both problems? mr. irving: i would say two things. first of all the operating assumption which is incorrect is that older adults aren't technologically proficient. they use technology at about the same rates at younger people. people don't understand that. it's true. they use it in different ways. they engage in social media on different sites than younger people, but they are about as technologically absorbed and adept.

that's the first thing. second thing is is that in this kind of intergenerational clash that people oftentimes talk about, shouldn't we -- let me ask the question in a different way. shouldn't we insist that older people leave the workplace to make room for younger people, there are people who ask me that. i want to respond to it to get it out. so, it operates on a false economic theory. a static economic theory. an economic theory that is very similar to the economic theory employed to impede the progression of women in the workplace. that is is if we simply add -- retain a population or add a new population, zero sum gain. don't some people lose their jobs? what it fails to understand is economies are dynamic. what happens is you keep people working, they continue to pay taxes, they continue to consume. the economy grows. the more involvement we have in the economy, the better it is for everyone. so we might be able to point at specific examples wherefore some reason older people and younger

people slash, but on a macrolevel, there is no question that retaining older people in the work force is not just good for older people, it's good for younger people as well. bigger, more robust economy, more longevity economy that i talked about. mentorship and intergenerational strength. and again economic growth. on the technology side, i just told you that i think the -- there are assumptions about the capability interest, technology inefficiency of older people is not true. \[inaudible/] mr. irving: to me that's an argument for lifelong learning. i had a conversation with a group of young people who were

engineering students. this was not too long ago on our campus at u.s.c. and i said to them, understanding this prospect of much longer lives and the rapid level of technology -- technological change, the things they are learning today will be as arcane as the flat earth by the time they are in their third or fourth job. for all of us, whether you are 18 or 38 or 58 or 78, continuing learn something a really, really important characteristic of successful longevity. we have to kind of change the narrative, change the norm that suggests that college -- i mentioned i spent some time at harvard university. harvard university opened its doors in 1636. in 1636 it made a tremendous amount of sense to say we are not going to design a program around people who are 50 years old. or 60 years old. or 70 years old with life spans that time. we haven't changed those norms. i went to law school, we are teaching the same thing in law school today in the same way that they taught 100 years ago at harvard.

universities have to change. challenge university presidents on point, some listen, some don't, but to say you have a difficult financial model. you're trying to revise. college has gotten too expensive for a lot of young people. young people are in extraordinarily levels of debt. if you have a consumer market, think of education as a consumer opportunity, if you have a consumer market, that ranges between 18 and 80, why are you just going to focus that market on people between 18 and 26 or 27? i'm not discounting the substance like continuing education programs that hover around the periphery. why shouldn't the 45-year-old who decides that he or she wants to dig in and go get a ph.d., i promise it won't happen in most departments in the united states, why shouldn't that person be able to do that, excel based on their experience,

intensity, and focus, and drive compete for tenure and have more productivity scholarship, more productive years of scholarship in teaching than a person in their 20's might have had two generations ago? we have to change our thinking about institutions. again, workplaces, educational institutions. health institutions. this cuts across all of society. i hope i have answered. i have taken your question in a different direction. my point is younger people need to stay technologically proficient. older people do, too. i know young people who are engineers and computer scientists today that say five years out of school they feel like they lost their edge. you know what? they need to stay fresh and so do we. >> this has been a very informative and exciting presentation. i'd like to congratulate you on engaging all of us.

my question is, life expectancy is oftentimes a function of the zip code you live in. so i would like you to comment on what are we doing to reduce that gap between those who live in the right zip code and those who don't? and that seems to me to be a very important issue as our country becomes even more diverse than what it is today. mr. irving: it's an extraordinarily important question. your question is, what are we doing? my answer is nowhere near enough. what do we need to do? we need to ensure that we don't have food deserts in urban environments in the united states where people are shopping -- because there is no other option, at liquor stores and quick serve restaurants. as a result experiencing obesity and ultimately ending up in the

pandemic we know, the pandemic of type two diabetes. smoking, we have made great strides. we live in california where relatively few -- how many people -- smokers do we have in the room? nobody's going to answer. the good news is is we made a lot of progress. about, depending on whose numbers you believe, around 17, 18, believe it or not despite all the litigation, advertising, about 17%, 18% of american adults still smoke. in poverty communities, carl, it can be as much as 30%. that's cancer. that's heart disease. that's challenges with high blood pressure. there are things that we can do that are extraordinarily simple. i remember tomorrow friedman not too long ago runs the c.d.c., extraordinary public servant, who said if he could do one thing to change public health in the united states, what would it

do? it would be to measure blood pressure. it's a two-minute process. incredibly easy. we could be embedding this in schools, shopping centers, and workplaces. there is a lot we can do. we need to understand the stakes. we need to pay more attention to it. for those who care about communities of color, poverty communities, etc., the answers are pretty easy. for those who don't care, they should understand they care about their wallet. if they care about the public cost of public health that investment in these kinds of things, in healthy food, in safe streets where people can walk and get exercise, the impacts of exercise are just -- walking. remarkable public health impacts. if people don't live in safe neighborhoods, they can't walk. decent food, no smoking, little bit of walking, time with family. and productivity, engagements,

some activity above the neck remarkable outcomes associated with that. >> how do we incentivize companies to hire people in their 60's and 70's even on a part-time basis? many don't. many don't even look -- when they see the age, they say, sorry. mr. irving: i think, again, david, that's a product of a misunderstanding about the capacity, the capability of older adults and what older adults bring to the workplace. this is why research is so important at this stage of my life i have become incredibly data driven because i realize that i can make an impassioned plea to people who may agree with my politics, may agree with my social concerns, but unless i can demonstrate a case based on data and research, it's hard to

change hearts and minds. again, as i suggested, intergenerational work forces will outperform. this is very much akin to. so work that's going on around employee health. the person who runs the robin wood foundation, another extraordinary public servant, is in regular discussion now with people who run private equity funds. why is she in regular discussion with people who run private equity funds? because she can make the case, and she makes a compelling case, that health, good employee health is not just the right thing to do, it's a strategy. it's a competitive advantage. again improving productivity. reducing absenteeism. improving engagement. these same kinds of things exist for older workers. i think -- look, we are in the first -- or ageism, first or second inning of a nine-inning game. we are in the very early stages of it.

think of this as being the early sages of the civil rights movement. by the way, the civil rights act of 1964 didn't end racism and bias. the modern women's movement. we still don't have pay equivalence. we are in a very, very long game to change hearts and minds about aging. i think you begin to see progress. and it's something all of us need to speak about. by the way, i would say this. my friend, alan goodman, started a wonderful organization, might have heard of it, called the conversation project. conversation project is kind of a table top conversation about death. and about the inputs that people want. life planning and health choices, personal choices at the end of life. if you haven't read it, a book being mortalized. wonderful book about the end of life care and choices. but we haven't started a conversation about age.

it i know we are coming to an end, or close to an end here, if i could give all of you some homework, the homework i'd like to give you is to go home to your families and friends and to your kids and have a conversation with them about what your later lives should look like and what their later lives might look like. michael eisner, who was the chairman and c.e.o. of disney started a foundation focused on kids, now focused on kids and older adults. michael said something in a session with me not too long ago i thought was extraordinarily insightful. he said when you meet a new child, when you meet somebody's kid, you kind of get down at their level to have a conversation and you ask them whether they are interested in sports or dance or what their hobbies r oftentimes the conversation -- and oftentimes the conversation leads to the

following question, what do you want to do when you grow up? michael said, it's the wrong question. he said the question should be, what do you want to do when you get old? and i just thought it was a wonderful way to ask ourselves this question about what aging should be for each one of us and for our community and our broader society. >> one question i got for you. economically. united states is controlled by 1% of the people. and people are working 24/7 just to support a family. we are talking about sitting with the children in the house and asking them, when do they have the time to do that because they go to work at 6:00 in the morning and come back at 10:00 at night. and we have -- we are creating not leaders, just followers.

mr. irving: i wish i had an easy answer. it's a discussion we could have. i will say this. it raises an important point that's directly related to what i work on. that is for those of us the former lawyers and doctors and indian chiefs who have the luxury of doing other things in our lives, the pathways are relatively simple. for those for example involved in physical work, that may be back breaking work, the notion of continuing that work in 60's, 70's, 80's may be an impossible. that's why it's so important we democratize, lower case d, democratize this notion so that ongoing education can occur in high schools and community colleges and people can have the opportunity when they have time off, and they oftentimes don't, maybe nights, weekend, early mornings, maybe online, to learn

new things. there was a question earlier about care giving. we have a massive need for caregivers. is it possible that somebody who was involved in construction work could be involved at some later time of life in some aspect of care giving where we have incredible need? that's going to require education, transitions, etc. we have to -- we can't just have this conversation at town hall. we can't just have it at 555 south lower. we have to have this conversation in south l.a. and we have to have this conversation in communities not just across the united states but across the world. you're very right. >> last question. >> hi, do you think there would be a time where the medical community and the holistic community will ever come together? so many people who are getting

older in the medical community, they are on so many pharmaceuticals, how can they have a bright mind or try to go forward in a vital way? where the doctors don't want to go -- which is age-old medicines that has helped a lot of people, especially in l.a., and who help them live vital lives in more of a healthy way, nutrition, and herbs, yoga. is that ever going to happen? is that happening in the old retirement communities, insures wise, too? mr. irving: i get the question. i think we are seeing slow progress. at the end of the day incentives matter. the medical profession reimbursement matters, what you reimburse for matters. obamacare for the first time physicians can be reimbursed for end of life conversations. never happened before. you were 85, you had your annual check up, your doctor ran out of the office you said, doc, i want

to have a conversation about what i want to do. do i want to have a do not resuscitate? but the doctor was off to his or her next appointment. today those conversations can occur reimbursed. we now see kind of a slow, slow coming together of east and west medicine. there actually are a number of physicians who embrace very much modern western medicine and some embed some notions for example, traditional chinese medicine, and other concepts. i think as a general proposition, this notion of prevention and wellness is becoming more powerful, but we all need to talk about it again as priorities. the medical profession was trained to treat. it wasn't trained to prevent. public health officials who are

wonderful are not the people who are in offices with patients every day. rather than having conversations about, which we should about diet and exercise and nutrition and potentially health alternatives, we have conversations about cutting and slicing and all the rest because that's what we trained our doctors to do. we need to revise the medical training system. good news s. by the way, a.m.a. is actually interested in this. a.m.a. is taking this on. it's a long transition. this requires advocacy, requires discussion with one's own doctor, right? should i self-education, one of the great things about the internet is the opportunity to know a lot more about disease and about wellness. the negative thing is the internet oftentimes equally values information from the mayo clinic and from joe's health garage.

if there is such a thing as joe's health garage. i don't mean to be impugning it. but you get my point. so we have to treat people to be smart consumers of health information. again, these culture change is really hard. it requires policy and practice change at the top. it requires movement building. a change in public narrative at the bottom. that stuff doesn't happy easily. it happens over time. >> please join me in thanking mr. irving. [applause] >> american history tv on c-span3, this weekend. jeffrey rosen talks about the influence of former chief justice john marshall. >> adams payment -- famously said, my gift of john marshall to the people of the united states was the proudest act of my life. marshall has been widely praised for transforming the supreme

court into what his biographer called the dominant force in american life. america"00, on "real -- >> the shuttle heading towards an imaginary target in space. >> the 1981 nasa documentary, "space shuttle." sunday morning at 10:00 eastern on "road to the white house: rewind." forpresidential campaign richard nixon. >> i am excited that i will test my ability to lead in the fires of the primaries. , a panel of authors on their recent book chronicling mexican-american civil rights

from the 1930's to the 1970's. >> this coalition of labor unions, mexican-american civil rights leaders, and religious authorities came together to protest the program and accelerated congress' decision to terminate it the next year. ofhink this was a moment blossoming for the chicano movement. >> for the complete schedule, go to c-span.org. >> consumer advocates from across the country are in washington, d.c., for the consumer federation of america conference. we will take you there for discussions about the sharing economy and the future of marketing. tomorrow, a look at the terror attacks in brussels and the threat posed by european citizens returning home after fighting with isis.

c-span a.m. eastern on three. >> earlier on "washington journal," we talked about the fight against isis and jihadist terrorism. this is about an hour. nues. host: we are back this morning with a roundtable discussion about the fight against isis. joining us is kurt volker, the former ambassador to nato and the executive director director of the mccain institute for international leadership. also with us is michael breen, the ceo of the truman security project. inc. you for being here. i will ask both of you for this question. what is the significance of the terrorist attack in brussels? >> it is a human tragedy. and the continuing pain that

europe and other parts of the world are experiencing -- it is an important moment for europeans and for us as well. to step back and look at how we have done since 2014, the brussels attack. how have we done with the improvements we have made to the security systems? there are still differences in the level of security in the united states? they have a good plan. but they've only implemented about half of those. so there have been legal reforms training but that has only been done by some departments. sharing of the information, particularly what they collect about airline passengers. eurozone, europe is only as strong as the weakest link. there are a lot of phone our

abilities and it is a good time for european leaders to bring everybody to the table to try to broker a compromise as quickly as they can. the deadlock is not serving them well. kurt: it is clear that isis is intent on attacking europe. that is one observation. that means if we don't deal with this soon, we will have a friend in europe. these things are connected. the islamic state in syria the front in europe. the second thing is, as michael was saying, europe has not done a good job on getting a handle on the disenfranchised radicalized situation in the eu. i think they need to come to the realization that they need to have a more secure footing when dealing with isis. host: i want to share a couple

of headlines to the point that you are making. specifically, the issue of open borders in europe and dealing with what is happening in syria. the wall street journal -- suicide bomber. one of these bombers was caught at the border in turkey. they say they have got the guy and they say, he has no direct connection to isis. he just has a criminal record and turkey lets them go. and inside the wall street journal, the brussels bombings as itccelerated u.s. blows off the last remaining stage route for the third fair for militants who carried out the deadly attacks. there is a connection between syria and the groups in europe. they are a disfranchised community. they will create even more

disenfranchised communities. i don't buy the line that there is one route out of syria and it is called turkey. there are plenty of ways that they can get out. and isis will not be deterred. host: what do you think? michael: i think that is clear. it is absolutely clear. pass out.o one as we analyze this, we have to be thinking about, dealing with the refugee crisis in a way that is -- if you have seen the level of description -- of destruction that we have seen, rubble -- these refugees have nowhere to go. i was recently in jordan and it is a refugee camp. it is a humanitarian crisis on a scale that we haven't seen since the second world war. and it is mostly women and children