[laughter] >> you can see all of the former vice president's remarks and other speeches from the funerals and memorial services for former first lady barbara bush, senator john mccain, and former president george h.w. bush tonight, beginning at 8:00 p.m. eastern on c-span. >> c-span, where history unfolds daily. in 1979 c-span was created as a public service by america's cable television companies. and today we bring you unfiltered coverage of congress, the white house, the supreme court, and public policy events in washington, d.c. and around the country. c-span is brought to you by your cable or satellite provider. >> this is day two of the "washington journal" series with authors around the country.

we are doing seven days what we think are the most important books of the year. joining us this morning from new york city is oren cass, senior fellow at the manhattan institute and author of a book entitled "the once and future worker." cass, thank you for joining us to talk about the american worker. you write that american workers are in crisis these days. what do you mean by that? mr. cass: good morning, thank you for having me. the focus on the american worker and the crisis that workers are in is really about what has happened in our economy going wek to the 1960's and how really have chosen to take an approach to economic policy that just worries about consumers, living standards, and said, as long as the economy keeps growing, as long as everyone can afford more stuff, as long as our tv's keep getting bigger, we

will be happy. what we lost with that approach is that people really care about work. people need to have good work. they need to be able to support their families with work. for a huge segment of society, that has gone the wrong direction. it has had really big consequences for how people feel about their own lives, what happens with their families and communities. i think we are seeing it now and the experiences we are having is a country. host: part of what you write is at the problem is not so much that public policy has failed, but it succeeded about the right things. you wrote americans are like the classic romantic comedy heroine, who had it all, or so she thought. the prestigious job, elegant apartment, yet she is unhappy. she has pursued the wrong goals and to reach them, sacrificed the things that mattered most. yourhas gone wrong, in view, with public policy that has led to the conditions you

cite these days? mr. cass: if you look at the policies we have chosen in a whole range of areas, what they have done is focus on what we call the economic high. anyone who follows politics or has been involved in policy debates has heard the idea that as long as we grow the pie, everyone can have a bigger slice. that is true. if our gross demented -- gross domestic product gets bigger every year, everyone get some of that. if you have winners and losers, we can take a little from the winners and give it to the losers, but to do that, we have pursued this approach in all of these different areas that says, we do not think it matters if we create really big losers along the way, because we can always redistribute this pie, send them a bigger check, give them bigger government benefits, so we have done those things. gdp has roughly tripled since

the 70's -- 1970's. redistribution to our safety net has quadrupled, but if you look at what is happened, if you take education policy as an example, all we care about his college graduates. we are going to put all of our focus and a high school and preparing people for college, then put all our research -- resources and the subsidizing college for people who go. for the people who succeed and come out the other end with degrees in good careers, they are incredibly productive. some of them are very successful, they earn a lot of money, pay a lot of taxes, but along the way we have left behind everyone for home college is not the right pathway. most americans still do not even earn a community college degree, yet if you are going through high school, not interested in college are likely to succeed in college, we do not have anything sorry, accept a shrug, a and a promise that if things do

not work out for you, at least you have a safety net to fall back on, but that is not what people want or need. bey need a chance to productive contributors, to achieve self-sufficiency for themselves and their families. we need to focus much more on their role as workers and make sure that is workers everyone can still play a constructive role in our economy and society. host: let me jump in and invite the viewers to phone in with questions and comments on the future of the worker, the economy. andalked about education, we will talk about immigration with our guest, oren cass, author of "the once and future worker: a vision for the renewal of work in america." in the how to take part conversation. if you live in the eastern or central time zones, your number is (202) 748-8000. mountain and pacific time zones, that number is (202) 748-8001. if you are a displaced worker in the u.s., call this number --(202) 748-8002.

our guest, oren cass, in new york city this monday morning is a senior fellow at the manhattan institute. i wanted to get some terminology on the table. you touched a little on this briefly, you talk about economic piety in one of your recent pieces at the manhattan institute. what is economic piety refer to? mr. cass: economic piety is this idea i was just describing of the economic pie. it is interesting to look back through our history and realize these ideas of gdp and economic growth, that we just need to measure how big the economy is an focus on that, relatively speaking, it is a recent idea. it is something that showed up during the great depression when we were trying to measure exactly whether the economy had started growing are not. it became important during world war ii, when which side can make stuff the fastest, that was an existential concern, but after

the war was over we kept using that as our measure. we kept a measuring what we call gdp, a measure of the total amount of stuff the economy makes, we use that as our measure of well-being. certainly it is an important measure. when the economy makes more stuff, everyone can have more stuff. we care a lot about material living standards. we like having better houses, bigger cars, better tds, more variety -- better tv's, more variety and better quality foods. what got lost along the way was the question of who got to be involved. we said as long as the economy keeps getting bigger, as long as this pie keeps expanding, everyone can be better off, but we did not ask who bakes the pie. when we have come to learn, the second question of who is getting to be involved in this growth is actually incredibly important.

if you take this view of what i call economic piety, as long as every one gets enough pie they will be happy, as long as everyone has enough stuff they will be happy, you end up pursuing policies that do not take into account who is actually remaining relevant to the economy, whether we are building an economy in a society that includes everybody. because we never focused on it and were in fact happy to trade that off for policies that would get us more growth faster, we talk about education. when you talk about globalization with trade immigration, you see a similar thing, which is that more trade can be a very good thing. more immigration can be a very good thing, but if you do not pay attention to the workers' what isive, to happening within jobs within the country, you can take it too far, make the wrong decisions, and that is what we have done.

economic piety worked. we got the big gdp, the big slices of pie for everybody, and yet on all of the metrics that matter most, whether people can support themselves, build good lives, form stable families, raise kids who will have opportunity, it turns out getting more stuff does not solve those things. you really need an economy and especially a labor market that is going to let people of all different abilities in all different places still be productive as workers. host: before we go to calls, you do connect all of this to social policy, social problems in the country. u.s. economic policy these past decades affected the social conditions in the country? the importantink thing to understand when we talk about work is that the importance of work and workers is not just some moral or philosophical argument.

i think there are good moral and philosophical reasons to talk about work, too, but in this case we are focusing on tangible things. theirw for individuals, life satisfaction, mental health, self-esteem, are tied closely to whether they have productive work. we know when it comes to family -- especially for men, having work is incredibly important to having family formation, getting married in the first place, and family stability. one thing you see with higher level of unemployment for men is much higher levels of divorce. we know it has incredible effects on children. children raised in households were parents are working tend to have better outcomes in their own lives. even beyond their own parents, children who are raised in communities where the adults are working tend to have much better outcomes in their lives. thatwe moved to a model said we were not as concerned whether everyone was going to be able to work deductively, --

goodctively, could have jobs to support their families, we have done real damage in these other areas as well. part of the problem, it is something of a vicious cycle. when you do not have stable families, opportunities for kids, when you do not have an education system preparing people for productive work, as the next generation grows up, they have an even harder time. we are seeing the second generation that lived through this approach to policy and is growing up in a lot of a majority ofere households do not have all people working full-time, where paymentts on transfer of the government has become widespread. for those kids it will be harder for them to connect to productive work and build families of their own. host: let's take some calls from our guest, oren cass. dee, you have been waiting.

caller: you pretty much answered my question. as far as globalization and people being pitted against one another for the lowest working fee, how do you see it working or -- playing out globally, how do you address the global basis? with automation and people not being able to work, what happens to the surplus of people who were not needed? what happens? it looks dangerous. host: thank you, dee. oren cass? mr. cass: i think you are right that this looks dangerous if we had a situation where people are not needed. the first thing to say is that we have to recognize that is not an acceptable outcome. as we think about our economic policies and our society, how we wanted to look, one of our first principles has to be that everybody does need to be needed. we need to build an economy in a

society where everyone can be a productive worker, where they can contribute and support their families and communities. in terms of what that means for policy -- as we talk about globalization, from my perspective, globalization can be a wonderful thing. the problem is not necessarily from trade. more trade can be great for an economy, for workers of all kinds, what we have to insist on is that it is balanced trade. proceeded,ation has has we -- as we have done more and more trade in the international economy, we have found ourselves importing much more from other countries, and especially from china, than we export to those countries. from the perspective of -- of consumers, that can be a great thing. trade literally means trade, what are you trading for what? if we have to send less stuff to other people and other people

send us lots of stuff, that sounds a great trade if you're a consumer. you get more and cheaper stuff. typically economist and policymakers have celebrated that. the problem is that from a perspective of workers, that is not a good trade at all. if you think about the labor market, the part of the economy where workers are active and we are seeing, what are they going to do, how much will they get situationou have a where other people in other countries start making a lot of the stuff for this country, that means we have a lot of new workers coming into the country's economy, workers all over the country competing here, but our workers are not getting the same chance to go compete in other places. our workers are not getting the chance to make things to the same degree for other parts of the world. that imbalance is a hard balance for workers. we want to recognize globalization can be a great thing, but it is not automatically a great thing.

if we want globalization to work for workers, our society, our economy, we have to insist that we have balance, that we are doing as much work, making as much stuff for the rest of the world, as you have people in other places making stuff for us. host: we have a line for displaced workers. we do have a displaced worker, rob, from st. helens, oregon. rob, white of you tell us your situation? i was downsized a year and a half ago. i worked in the i.t. field. one day they called me into the office and said for cost savings they were going to terminate my whole department and ship it over to holland. host: what kind of work? caller: i.t., computers.

upper 50's. i go around looking for new floodons and there was a of these same things happening across this entire field in this area. interviews where people have said, i do not even know why you are applying here. you are qualified to be my boss's boss. you do not fit. i am looking at a situation now where i will have to go back to forol and somehow make it months at a time and spend $10,000 to $20,000 just to make it to my retirement. i do not know what else to do. it just seems hopeless. i go to forums and there are tons of people over 50 in the same position. thank you for calling

and good luck to you. oren cass, what would you say to rob and other people like rob? mr. cass: rob, appreciate you telling that story. i think that is a story that happened to a lot of folks across the economy. it is an incredibly difficult one. especially when workers are later on in their careers. you get this mismatch between the kinds of skills and jobs you are prepared to do, and in a lot of cases, what employers might be looking for. i think there is a narrow question of, what we do for individuals in these situations, and the bigger question of what it means for our economy. for individuals i think we have to recognize that it has always been -- it has all his been the case that these kinds of disruptions will occur, whether it is new companies coming in and putting old companies out of

business, companies moving where they do business, new technologies changing the way companies do business. this kind of disruption is a constant part of our economy. it is on balance a good thing for the economy, but it is a hard thing for the individual workers who are affected by it. going back a little bit to something we were talking about earlier, i think we have to look at our education system and make sure it is one that is flexible for all of the different kinds of situations that folks face. one of the problems with our college for all model we have insisted on is that all of our investment, all of our focus, goes into these two and four year college campuses for people who are barely 20 years old and that is what we think society needs. certainly we do need education programs for those folks, but the range of kinds of educations

and skills people need to learn a different points in their life is much broader and more diverse than that. i think one thing we have to do is say, there are lots of people in all phases of life, from high school up to where rob is, who need that kind of much quicker, shorter, how to find a particular skill in demand right now? put our emphasis on that type of education that gets people into the workforce quickly. at the big picture level, it can be a really good thing for the economy to have this kind of change and disruption and things moving, but we have to make sure it is balanced. if some things we used to do here we do in holland now instead, but we should hope there is something people used to do in holland that they are deciding to do here instead, so that when people lose one job,

they are also coming into an economy where there are other jobs appearing. that is a little bit what we have lost. while we have seen a lot of jobs go away to other countries, we're not seeing jobs that used to be done in those countries come here instead. we really need to make sure both things happen so workers who get disrupted or displaced from where they used to be find an economy where there are other good opportunities as well. minutes have about 35 left with our guest, oren cass, author of the book entitled "the once and future worker: a vision for the renewal of work in america." there is the front cover of the book. our guest has a bachelors in political economy from williams college and a law degree from harvard. oren cass is the domestic policy director for mitt romney's presidential campaign in 2011. will mitt romney be bringing to the u.s. senate in the area of economics in the future -- and the future of the worker?

what does he bring to the table? mr. cass: i think this is an area where he brings a tremendous amount of expertise as someone who has spent a lot of his life in the business world. he understands what these economic forces are that play a role in the decisions and players make, that play a role in what kinds of work are available. really good way of approaching it. 2012, some of these issues we have been talking about in terms of education, especially in terms of trade imbalances, are things he really pushed on very if wely to say, look, want our economy here to operate well and work for all kinds of workers, then policy has a role to play in the. -- that. we cannot assume what the market

does on its own will automatically work best for the workers here. the economyake sure is operating within the context of conditions that will produce good outcomes. i think he has a deep understanding of those things. my hope is that as he joins the senate he will be a strong voice on the republican side, on the one hand, defending the power and freedom of free markets, but emphasizing we have to pay attention to the results we are getting from those markets. that if the result the market is giving us is not one that is acceptable for our society, the answer is not to jump in and say, let's just order the market to do something else, because that is not how things work in the business world. we have to ask why are we getting these results we are not happy with, and what can we change that would bring us toward better results? host: what do you make so far

president trump's approach to matters of the economy and the future of the american worker? how is he doing so far? as a candidate i think president trump did something really important, which is that he started to talk in these terms about work and being really important and about people caring about their experience as workers. think typically both democrat and republican parties were focused on this economic piety, this idea that our two goals are to grow the economy as fast as we can and redistribute, take care of the losers. and we will fight about how to grow the economy fastest, how much distribute -- redistribution to do, but that is what we talk about. candidate trump did not sound like that, did not sound like democrats or republicans on that. i think a big part of his successes that he was talking about a different set of

problems. whats talking about economic piety has missed and what is really important to a lot of folks who were being left behind. i think as president, some of the policy areas he has focused on have been important ones, but i think import -- unfortunately on the execution side, we have not seen a lot of effective policy reform that is going to move us forward. that is where there is still a tremendous amount of work to do, how to we actually get good policies in place that are going to start to turn the ship a little bit? int: let's hear from jerry stratford, connecticut. caller: good morning. can you hear me, sir? fascinating discussion. this characterization of irredeemable deplorables always struck me not as a race, rather than a class warfare of the rich and powerful versus working forces in this nation.

you referenced policy execution being different than policy goals, the current administration. i am looking at this government shutdown and it is framed entirely in the perspective of, how does it impact federal workers, the recipients of federal programs, but nobody is characterizing it as the failure of the federal government to stop the flow of cheap labor coming into the country, and in the process undermining the wage rates for folks at the lower end of the economic scale. forentional wisdom is, democrats, those are democrat votes. you are going to get people here, they will be legally or illegally, voting, and therefore, keep the floodgates open. conventional wisdom is republicans, it is cheap labor, keep your wage rates down for small businesses and everyone is happy. is that your understanding?

is that how you view this dynamic? mr. cass: thanks for that question. i think the immigration issue is such a fascinating one and such a mess and has been for a very long time, in part because of some of those dynamics you just described. from the perspective of business, having access to more, cheaper workers is always a good thing. id from the left of center, think there is both a political calculation and a humanitarian calculation, both of which argue strongly for having relatively open borders. now in some extreme cases, completely open borders. question, ifrade you look at this just from our perspective as consumers, that has proved to make a lot of sense. if you look at it from the perspective of workers, it

becomes a lot more complicated and a question of balance. immigration is not necessarily a good thing or bad thing. what we have to look at if what we are worried about his our labor market, the kinds of jobs than the wages they pay, is worried we have imbalances in our labor market? if one of the things we are concerned about is a significant imbalance for less skilled american workers right now, and if looking ahead we are even more worried about the, and, are there going to be enough good jobs will there be enough good jobs for less skilled workers in this country, it cannot be that part of the answer is to add more less skilled workers. i think the immigration debate, maybe more than any other, comes down to priorities. if what you think most important is economic growth, no matter how you get it, you might say

yes, as much immigration as possible. if what you think most important is the humanitarian concern, you would look at it through that lens. if a you think is most important is we have good outcomes for workers in this country, and are especially concerned about less skilled workers in this country, for themselves, families, communities and the economy, been having a lot of less skilled immigration does not make sense. we have to move to the type of system that other developed countries like canada and australia have, which says yes, we want to be welcomed -- welcoming to immigrants, but skill level road really matters -- skill of a really matters. be restricting how many less skilled immigrants we have entering the workforce. host: from the pages of "the once and future worker," by oren

cass, it is ultimately about priorities. if gdp is the growth, -- welcoming as many workers willing to -- again, the pages from the once and future worker by our guest, oren cass in new york. it is barney in thomasville, north carolina. yes, here is an in the 21stman century. 22nd century, isn't it. he is talking about the balance of trade. one of the most boring concepts ever devised by the mind of man.

he says that stuff is not important, but it is all about stuff, ok. as of the middle of the 19th century, about 1845, a man named at, said i defyi that other me countries with all manner of useful goods that we are the worst for it. this country even more so with but with allrse, the other countries on the world

come are operating with the mercantilist system, or that presumption, that there has to be this balance of trade which said the biggest imbalance, the more your deficit goes up, the better off you are. for calling, barney. oren cass, speak to us more about trade issues. especially the current situation with the so-called trade wars happening in the approach the administration is taking to that issue and its impact on the worker. barney stated the standard case right. that is a perfect example of economic piety. he said first of all, it is all about stuff. and the second of all, the standard economic view for a long time was that, if other countries want to flood us with more stuff, we should be

delighted with that because everybody likes more stuff. intuitively you realize, but is not quite right. stuff is important, but it is not the only thing more most important thing. a concrete example when you are talking about trade and this idea of balanced trade is to think, what trades we want to have occurring? in one example you can imagine the united states is a leading producer of airplanes. let's say china decides it wants to buy and next to $50 million of airplanes from us and in return it is going to send us $50 billion in cars. trade, cars for airplanes. a car manufacturer, you would not like it, but if you were an airline

manufacturer, you would love it. you would still expect the economy to be very healthy. the question becomes, what if we change the trade? what if we move towards this idea of people sending us stuff? what if china wants to send us $50 billion in cars, and in return we send them $50 billion of treasury bonds? treasury bonds are the u.s. government's debt. it is literally an iou which says we are not giving you anything now, but we promise to give you $50 billion of stuff someday with interest. if we make that trade -- because china is not going to send us the cars for free. you have to send something back. if you are not sending stuff, you are sending assets, treasury bonds, real estate. if you have a relationship where you say, great, we are going to and this is iou,

how u.s. trade policy has worked for a very long time, as a consumer of stuff you may be very happy, but it is not a good arrangement for workers because you have now stopped making cars here. you are getting cars from china and there is something else you started making its bed -- instead. if you think of the u.s. economy, it is not a good choice. even for a good choice consumers in the long run because you are putting the economy on a lower trajectory, building debt, weakening our thecity to make things, industries where we could be leading innovation over time. while economic theory has said, that is great, let them send us stuff, it is not great. it is a narrowminded view of what it takes to be a

flourishing society and what it takes to have a strong economy. if you take the view -- the ander view seriously, realize that is important to what we care about in this actually it is not enough to have people send us stuff. we need to make sure we're making stuff here, too. host: pat is a displaced worker. what is your situation? caller: minus similar to the man who called before, an i.t. worker. was in the 1970's when i high school we were told our future was knowledge jobs, so we all went to that route. then we were forced not once but twice to import workers. you are importing high skilled workers, displacing americans who have to transfer their and then be given a discharge slip. how do expect to maintain a

consumer driven economy when not enough consumers have an income source? who was going to boil these products coming from china if americans cannot afford them -- who is going to buy these products coming from china if americans cannot afford them? from the consumer perspective, it is important to a consumer driven economy that you have consumers were also workers, who were earning money they can then spend. one thing we have tried to do and been fairly successful in doing is making up for that gap through redistribution. even if workers are not able to do as much -- burn as much with their job -- we spend more than $1 trillion a year from the federal government redistributing money towards lower income households. a tremendous amount of that goes toward health care spending, but

there is also a very large disability program to transfer folksto households where are on disability and so they are not working at all. there is a very large food stamp program to redistribute forces to -- resources to spend on food. the direction we have been going is to keep doing that. if the economy is not producing enough wages for lower income households, let's keep creating more and bigger programs to transfer the money to them to allow them to buy things. i think we are seeing two problems with that. one, from a consumption perspective, you end up with on thetion weighted basis of your transfer program. one way to understand the incredible growth in our health care sector and why that has become such an important part of our economy, is because that is the form we have chosen to do

transfers in. even if you are a low income , if you have health care needs there is close to a blank check from the government for health care. on the other hand if what you need is a car to get to work or do renovations to your house, or to consume in other parts of the economy, we say sorry, we have no help for you. we say consumption is going to be more and more about the types of programs we want to offer. is second problem, which larger, it is not an adequate model. you can make sure people have , but they are not necessarily going to be satisfied in how they feel about their lives. they are going to be less likely to build healthy families. they will have more trouble

building healthy kids to find opportunities themselves. of becomes increasingly reliant on transfers and set of productive work are likely to be ones where you have higher crime, higher addiction rates, and other problems flowing from those. this is the same we keep coming back to. it turns out stuff is not enough. it is not enough to have a model work some people are really successful in the economy, and we send stuff to everybody else. we need to make sure we have a model for the economy where people, wherever they are, whatever they can do, can have an opportunity to be productive workers and earn their own way in life. take what we have been talking about and put this in context. help wanted.says, not enough people to fill jobs. they're making the point the economy is running so hot that

people cannot find businesses to fill their want ads. millions of openings since october. the labor department said unemployed are actively seeking jobs. they made actual point that the bureau of labor statistics shows the openings included more than 20,000 jobs in the i.t. sector, more than 38000 and real estate leasing, 40,000 in education, including state and local government jobs. can you put that in context for us? mr. cass: the economy at the moment is doing really well. the stock market is showing signs of trouble, but the labor market and the real economy are clearly booming. it is toward the top of a business cycle, meaning as we compare it to where we were in the recession five or 10 years ago, we have made incredible progress and we are seeing that when you have a booming economy,

growth, a tight labor market, lots of employers trying to hire people, that is a great thing for workers. the problem is, it is not right to compare how we are doing now to how we were doing in the depth of the recession. obviously we are doing better now than th -- then. you have to compare now to how we were doing in 2007, before the recession, or 2000 before burst, or thebble late 1980's before that recession hit. each boom has been a little weak er than the one before it. we are not seeing wages grow as much as we have in prior booms. especially for men. for the share of men working full time, we have a much higher

share of men without work. in fact, each boom we find we have more men were not working. our current figure, close to 19% of prime age men, between the ages of 25 and 54, almost 20% of those men do not have full-time work. go back toon, if you the period before the record, that is the worst figure on record. before the great recession, the share of men without work looks like the worst recession year we have ever had. things feel great compared to the recession, but the way to see what has happened, i described the metaphor of bumps on a downward slope. if you picture a kid sledding down a hill and there are jumps on the hill, they go up and scream and are excited, then they go a little lower down.

you can go off a lot of great jumps and still end up on the bottom of the hill. that is what we have been doing. we are at a high right now, but no better than 2007. we have not made any of the underlying changes we would need to switch from a downward trajectory to an upward trajectory. we should not feel any more confident that we have really weten things fixed now than would have a right to feel during those previous periods. the linephen is on from roanoke, virginia for oren cass. what would you like to say? caller: there are two things i would like to touch on. one is that h-1b visa program. this alleged shortage of technical people in this country to justify importation. it has been my personal experience that we do have

engineersientists and already. they are not in their 20's. i am in my late 50's. i have faced huge age discrimination trying to find a job, then i turn around and here there are not enough scientists and engineers. both cannot be true. businesses use this perceived shortage as an excuse to import cheap labor from overseas or retain graduate students. i had to spend three years looking for the most minimal job. but ilucky to find one, am working way under my capabilities in my present employment, but i feel lucky to have any job at all. a lot of these online hiring services like -- they are thinly veiled mechanisms for implementing the most vicious age discrimination in hiring.

it does not seem to matter how much education you get. if you are not in your 20's are willing to work to cheap -- dirt cheap, businesses do not want to. mr. cass: the h-1b visa program of thenteresting example layers upon layers of broken system we have built because of the lyrical mess our immigration system is. aboutswer when we talk immigration, we like the idea of people moving to the country where they bring their skills and are able to start new businesses that contribute to but we want to do that through our immigration system, through people choosing to live here. we do not want to do that for a program where specific companies

try to game the system to bring in particular people to lower their costs. unfortunately, we have created the h-1b system as a band-aid on a very broken system. own.s problems of its the right way to approach the bigger question is to say, when we have more higher skilled people coming to the country, they are going to cause displacement and disruption, too, but we know they will do it in a way that creates a lot more economic activity, more activity for other workers of all kinds. in the long run we think that will be healthy for the economy, but we want to do it in the general economy wide way, not something like an h-1b visa which allows individual companies to make the case for ay they need to bring in

particular worker. it is a system of a much more broken system. host: you have a chapter about the environment and the economy. betweenthe balance protecting the environment but also growing the economy, protecting workers? mr. cass: that is a really good question. recognizing this is a place where there are trade-offs and we have to find a balance. to 1970 whenback we put many of our environmental laws into effect, that is when we created the epa, the clean air act and so forth, that is a time when we had an incredibly strong industrial economy that was dominating the world's -- world, and very serious pollution problems. we put in place these laws that ,ry to swing the pendulum back

to say, we would like to put limits on the industrial economy and growth, so we can improve the environment. the good news is that that worked tremendously. we have made tremendous gains and environmental quality. pollution is down by roughly 2/3, depending how you measure it. what i find remarkable, brussels, the capital of the be then union, would single dirtiest city in the united states if it was here. that is how clean we have managed to make our air. now it is almost 50 years later and we have not made any changes to our policy. we continue to turn that dial further and further, to crank the ratchet even tighter. if youday we still say, want to expand in industrial facilities, if you want to build a new one, get approval for an

infrastructure project, we will have stringent environmental requirements i can make the project really unattractive. that is not the right balance to strike. we know we are desperately in need of those kinds of jobs. we know communities want those types of jobs. and statese cities throwing tax fix it companies to get them to come invest, when you see them begging the government for infrastructure projects, what they are saying is, we think the value of having these things here is much higher than the cost, yet environmental laws say the opposite. to what allave times remember the importance of environmental quality. we certainly do not want to go but we have to say that right now, given where we are, the trade-off we should make is a different one. we are willing to slow down our environmental gains.

if you told us we would have to go back to the environmental quality of 10 years ago, that , and wety great, too would be willing to accept that if it meant we got more investment in heavy industry and natural resource use and infrastructure. those things have value and we want to recognize that value instead of only prioritizing the environment. host: we have time for a few more calls. you are on with oren cass. good morning. caller: good morning. thank you, mr. cass. i have not had a chance to read your book, but it want to ask a question about wages and the , what you mentioned in terms of families being able as welld housing, etc.,

as immigrants coming into our country with cheap wages. i do not know if in your book a minimums whether in terms ofng wage, the trillions of dollars spent on health care, housing, food stamps, etc. taking some of the resources, gains, that would limit the government from paying out so much money in terms of subsidizing corporations, by keeping the minimum wage low. overall --hat affect some of the smaller businesses in terms of tax incentives, where employment is needed in terms of slower wages? host: thank you.

let's hear from our guest. mr. cass: i am glad you asked that question. that is a topic and policy choices that are really important to talk about in this context. it is fine to talk about these broader policy areas -- environment, trade, immigration, but what can we do directly to get wages higher? i do not think raising the minimum wage way up to a living wage is the answer. the reason for that, that benefits the people who get the higher wage, but it hurts the people who employers choose not becauseat that wage, they cannot earn money paying wages that high. one of the things that is important to recognize about the labor market is that when you create a job in the labor market you are creating a partnership between a worker who can provide

value to an employer and an employer who can make use of that worker. those partnerships are incredibly important. we need more of them. we need to encourage them to happen. say we will have a $15 an hour minimum wage, you are essentially saying we do not want those partnerships unless they are worth $15 an hour. you are going to lose potentially valuable partnerships if you do that. -- policy i favor instead the question got to this a little bit, is what is called a wage subsidy. the idea of a wage subsidy is that you look at low-wage workers in particular and same, if you are earning a low hourly wage, we will put more money into that paycheck from the government. just like we take money out of each paycheck for taxes, you look your paycheck and see that little line that says, fica, the

money taken out for social security and medicare, we can have a line that says were credit, and put a lot more much line thatays -- a says work credit. an eight dollar an hour job could become a $12 an hour job. you get the same effect. you get more money into people's' paychecks. but instead of discouraging these partnerships from forming, you encourage it. even if the employer could not offer you as high a wages you wanted, we can help get your wage up to that level. if say to the employer, even you were going to have trouble finding workers at the wage you could afford to pay them, we will help make that work. you encourage,

more less skilled people to come into the labor market and work. you encourage employers to offer more jobs and build businesses that will use those workers, and you get more money into those folks' paychecks. you ask, fine, but how are we going to pay for that? for the most part, from the safety net we already have. more than $1 trillion a year transferring money to lower income households, but we do almost all of it in ways that either ignore work or discourage work. if you start working, you lose the benefit. i think a lot of those programs we still need. there are still people who need that kind of support, but instead of doing it all that way, if we said let's do 80% that type of safety net, but have 20% of it focused on work, on encouraging work, giving people to -- giving money to

people who are working, we could fund that program. instead of transferring benefits, we could connect people to jobs and start moving up in the economy. a much betters approach than raising the minimum wage, to start getting wages higher, but do it in a way that encourages work instead of telling employers, do not even bother hiring these folks. host: let's get one more phone call. alex is an illinois. good morning. caller: good morning. one issue has been trickle-down economics. they have been pushing that since reagan. that is everything trickles down.

the middle class has been stagnant ever since -- it should be trickle up, not trickle down. host: final comments from our guest in new york? mr. cass: trickle-down economics is apply-side economics, key part of this economic piety we have been talking about. it is this idea that the goal of cutting taxes, trying to encourage more investment and more business, is to get economic growth, to get the economy to grow bigger. the view from the right of center, from republicans, has been, if you do that it will automatically benefit everybody. it does not automatically benefit everybody. that is one of the key challenges conservatives have to grapple with. we want to economic growth, we like free markets for a lot of really important reasons, but we also care about the outcomes.

if we are not getting the right outcomes for our society, we have to do more. we have to find ways to make the labor market work better. the problem for the left of center has been, when the economic growth has not been benefiting everybody, the answer has been, we need to collect more in taxes from the people it does benefit, and give that to people it does not benefit, but that is not enough. that does not actually solve the problems that they have. the way we need to approach focus, the way we need to policy is on the labor market. how can we build the labor market and the society that is going to work for workers of all kinds? let worker support their families and communities. we can get the growth, prosperity, that i think we all really want at the end of the day. host: our guest in new york has been oren cass, senior fellow at

the manhattan institute and author of this book entitled "the once and future worker: a vision for the renewal of work in america." thanks a lot for your time this morning and for them to our of conversation on the future of work in this country. appreciate it. mr. cass: it was my pleasure, thank you. [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2018] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] announcer: join washington journal for authors week featuring one-hour segments with a new author beginning at 8:30 imes are in. on tuesday, author juan williams discusses his book "what do you have to lose?" on wednesday, islanders it was talks about -- alan dershowitz talks about his book. "squeezed: why our families can't afford america." matters: how modern feminism lost touch with science, love, and common sense."

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