>> c-span, where history unfolds daily. created as aan was public service by america's cable television companies. today, we continue to bring you unfiltered coverage of congress, the white house, the supreme eventsand public policy in washington, d.c., and around the country. c-span is brought to you by your cable and satellite provider. this is day 2 of washington journal's office from around the country. we are doing seven days of what we think are some of the most important books of the year. joining us from new york city is oren cass, a senior fellow at the manhattan institute and the author of the future worker. thank you for joining us this morning to talk about the

american worker. you wrote that american workers are -- what do you mean? guest: thank you for having me. the focus on the american worker and the crisis that he is in or that workers are in is that best about what is happening in our economy, going back to the 1960's and how we have chosen to take an approach to economic policy that is just worried about consumers. and just worried about living standards. as long as the economy keeps growing, as long as everybody and tds keepuff getting bigger, we will all be happy. -- what we is that lost is that people care about work. they need to be able to support their families with work. a huge segment of society has gone in the wrong direction. it has had big consequences for

how people feel about their own lives. what happens with their families and their communities. thatnk we are seeing now with what we are expensing with the country. host: you are saying that the policy has succeeded at the wrong things. you say it is like the romantic comedy "heroine." where the woman had all or so she thought. she had an elegant apartment yet she is not happy. she has pursued the wrong goals. and to reach them, she sacrificed the things that mattered most. what has gone wrong in your view with public policy that has led to the conditions that you cite these days? policyif you look at the that we have chosen and the whole range of areas, what they have done is focused on what we call the economic high. -- pie. anyone who is in policy debates -- asrt as long week

we grow the pie, everyone can have a bigger piece. that is true. as it keeps getting bigger, everyone get some of that or you have winners and losers, we can take some from the winners and give it to the losers. but to do that, we pursue this approach in all of these weferent areas that say don't think it matters if we have big losers along the way because we can always redistribute this pie to them. we can always send them a bigger check. we can give them bigger government benefits. we have done those things. gdp has roughly tripled since the 70's. quadrupled.on has if you look at what has happened. , all wehave done is care about is college graduates. we will put all of our focus in high school on preparing people for college. and all of our resources into

subsidizing college for people who go. and for the people who actually succeed and come out the other end with degrees and with careers, they are incredibly productive. some of them are very successful. they earn a lot of money and pay a lot of taxes. but, along the way, we leave behind everybody for whom college is not the right pathway. most americans do not earn a community college degree. if you're someone who is going through high school or interested in college but is not likely to succeed in college, -- we don't have anything for you except for a shrug and i'm sorry. and this safety net. that's not what they want. they need a chance to be productive contributors. to achieve self-sufficiency for themselves and their families. so, we need to focus much more on their role as workers. and making sure that as workers, everybody can still play a

constructive role in our economy and society. host: let me jump in and invite the viewers to phoning with the future of the worker. we talked about education. we will talk about immigration. oren cass is the author of the book the once and future worker. you live in the eastern or central time zone, your phone number is (202) 748-8000. mountain or pacific time zone, (202) 748-8001. if you're a displaced worker, call (202) 748-8003. --(202) 748-8002. i wanted to get some terminology on the table. you use a term called economic piety. one of your recent pieces. what is economic piety refer to

-- what does economic piety refer to? guest: it is the economic pie. it is interesting to look back these ideasry and of gdp and economic growth, we need to measure how big the economy is in focus on that. that, relatively speaking, is a recent idea. it is something that showed up during the great depression, when we were trying to measure exactly whether or not the economy had started growing. it became important during world war ii, which side could make the most stop the fastest. that was a concern. after the war was over, we kept using that as our measure. iskept measuring gdp, which a measure of the total amount of stuff the economy makes, we used that as our measure of well-being. it is an important measure.

when the economy makes more stuff, everybody can have more stuff. we care about living standards. we like having better houses, better cars, bigger tds. and more variety and higher-quality food. those things are important. what has gotten lost along the way is we focused more on that with the question of who got to be involved? as long as the economy keeps doing bigger, as long as it keeps expanding, everyone will be better off we said. we did not figure out who makes the pie. what we have come to learn is the second question of who is getting to be involved is incredibly important. you take this view that i call economic piety, which is as long as everyone gets an applied, they will be happy, as long as they get enough stuff, they will be happy. you end up pursuing policies that don't take into account who is actually remaining relevant to the economy, whether we are building an economy in a society that includes everybody.

so, because we never focused on it and we were happy to trade that wouldr policies grow it faster. when we talk about education and immigration, you see a similar thing. goodtrade can be a very thing. more immigration can be a good thing. but, if you don't pay attention to the worker perspective, if you don't pay attention to what is happening to jobs in the country, you can take it too far or make the wrong decision. that is what we have done. economic piety works. we got the big gdp. we got the big these of pie for everybody. -- slice of pie for everybody. on the metrics that matter most, whether they can build good lives or a stable family or kids who will have opportunity, it turns out that just getting more stuff does not solve those

things. you really need an economy and especially a labor market that is going to let places still be productive as workers. host: before we go to calls, you do connect this to social policy. and social problems. how has the u.s. economic policy in the last decade affected social conditions in the country? i think the important thing to understand when we talk about work is the importance of work and workers is not just some sort of moral or philosophical argument. there are good moral and philosophical reasons to talk about. in this case, we are focusing on tangible things. we know that for individuals, their satisfaction, their mental health, their self-esteem, those things are tied closely to whether they have productive work. we know that when it comes to

families, especially for men, credit wek is in important -- incredibly important to family formation and stability. one of the things we see with higher levels of unemployment for men. there are much higher levels of divorce. that has an effect on children. children raised in households whose parents are working tend to have better outcomes in their own lives. even beyond their parents. children raised in communities where the adults are working have much better outcomes in their lives. when we have moved to a model where we were not as concerned if everyone was going to be up to work productively or have families,upport their we have started to do real damage in other areas as well. it sets off something of a vicious cycle. when you don't have stable families, when you don't have opportunities for kids or an education system that is

preparing people for productive work, the next generation, as they grow up, they have a harder time. we are starting to see the second-generation that has lived through this approach to policy and is growing up in communities where significant majorities of the households do not have people working full-time. becomehe government has incredibly widespread. for those kids, as they grow up, it is going to be harder for them to connect to productive work and start to build emily's of their own. host: let's take some calls. from silver spring, maryland. good morning. caller: you pretty much answered my question. globalization and people being pitted against one for the working fee, how do you see it playing out globally? what is your answer on a global

basis? with people not being able to work, what happens to the surplus of people who are not needed? what happens? it looks dangerous. host: thank you. oren cass? guest: i think you are right that this is dangerous if you have a situation where people are not needed. the first thing to say is that we recognize that is not and it -- an acceptable outcome. as we think about how our society, holly wanted to look, one of our principles needs to be that everybody does need to be needed. an economy where everyone is a productive worker. in terms of what that means for policy and as we talk about things like globalization, from my perspective, globalization can be a wonderful thing. the problem is not necessarily with trade.

more trade can be great for an economy. more trade can be great for workers of all kinds. what we have to insist on is that it is balanced trade. what i mean by that is as globalization is proceeded and we do more and more trade, what happens is we have found ourselves importing much more from other countries. and especially from china. and we export to those countries. from the perspective of consumers, that can be a great thing. trade literally means trade. what are you training for what? if we have to send less stuff for other people and other people sent off lots of stuff, that sounds like a great trade if you are a consumer. you get more and cheaper stuff. typically, economists and policymakers have celebrated that. the problem is that from the perspective of workers, that is not such a good trade at all. if you think about the labor market, if you think about the part of the economy where workers are active and we are

seeing what they are going to do, how much are they going to get paid, if you have a situation where other people in other countries are making a lot of the stopper this country, we have lots of new workers coming into the country's economy, we have workers all over the world competing here. but our workers are not getting the same chance to go compete in other places. our workers are knocking the chance to do things to the same degree from other parts of the world. that imbalance is a problem for workers. i think we want to recognize the globalization -- that globalization can be a great thing but it is not automatically a great thing. if we wanted to work for workers , our society and our economy, we have to insist that we have balance. that we are actually doing our work and making as much stuff for the rest of the world as people in other places are making for us. host: we have a line for

displaced workers. we have a displaced worker. rob for morgan. thank you for joining us. tell us your situation. -- rum or gone. .- from oregon they keep joining us. tell us your situation. caller: i was downsized a year and a half ago. one day, they called me into the for costd said that reasons, they were going to terminate my whole department and ship it over to holland. host: what kind of work again? caller: i.t.. computers. host: ok. caller: i am in my upper 50's. i am going around, looking for new positions and there are things happening.

where been to interviews "i don't knowid why you are applying here." you could be my boss's boss. i am looking at a situation where i am going to have to go maketo school and somehow it for months at a time. will have to spend tens to 20's of thousands of dollars just to make it to my retirement. it seems hopeless. people better of over 50 in the same position. host: thank you for calling. good luck to you. oren cass, what would you say to rob and people like rob? guest: i appreciate you sharing that story. i think that is a story that is happening to lots of folks across the economy. it is an incredibly difficult

one. especially as workers are later on in their careers, you can get this disconnect between the kinds of jobs and skills you're prepared to do and what employers might be looking for. the narrow question of what do we do for individuals in this situation and then the bigger question of what it means for our economy. for individuals, we have to recognize that it has always been the case and it will always be the case that these kinds of disruptions will occur. whether it is new companies coming in and putting old companies out of business or companies moving where they do business. whether it is new technologies changing the way that companies do business, this kind of disruption is a constant part of our economy. it is a goodance, thing for the economy. it is a very hard thing for the

individual workers were affected by it. so, going back a little bit too something we were talking about earlier, i think we have to look at our education system and make sure that it is one that is flexible for all of the different kinds of situations that folks face. one of the problems that -- with the model we have insisted on is that all of our investment goes into these 2 and 4 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 education and the kinds of skills people need to learn at different points in their lives is much broader and more diverse than that. one thing we have to do is say " there are actually lots of people in all phases of life in high school, up to where rob is who need that kind of quicker,

shorter, how do i find a particular skill that people demand right now?" we need to put emphasis on that kind of education that gets people into the workforce quickly. one thing i will say quickly at the big picture level is that it can be a good thing for the economy to have this kind of change and disruption and things moving. but, again, we have to have -- wee sure it is found worried make sure it is bounce. when they lose one job, -- that is a little bit of what we lost. while a lot of jobs go away to other countries, we are not seeing jobs that used to be done in the other countries be done here instead. we need to make sure both things happen so that the workers can

-- who get disrupted or displaced find an economy where there are good opportunities as well. host: we have five minutes left with our guest. he is oren cass. there is the front cover of the book. he has a bachelor's in political economy and a law degree from harvard. he was the domestic policy director for mitt romney's presidential campaign in 2011 and 2012. what will senator mitt romney be bringing in the area of economics? what does he bring to the table? 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. we have to understand what these economic forces are that play a role in the decision that employers make.

and play a role in what kinds of work are available. and i think he has a really good way of approaching it. 2012, some ofnd these issues that we have been talking about in terms of education, especially in terms of trade imbalances were things that he really push on strongly ouray, look, if we want economies to operate well, then policy has a role to play in that. whatever assume that the market does on its own, it is automatically going to work best for the workers we have here. we have to make sure that the economy is operating within the context of the conditions that are going to produce good outcomes. he has a deep understanding of those things. joins --pe is that he as he joins the senate, he will

be a strong voice on the republican side. on the one hand, defending the incredible power of the free market, but at the same time, emphasizing that we have to pay attention to the results we are getting the markets. -- from the markets. for it is not acceptable our society, it is not acceptable to say let's do something else. we must ask why are we getting the results we are not happy with? and what can we change that would bring better results? host: what do you make a president trump's approach to matters of the economy and the future of the american worker in this country? how is he doing so far? guest: as a candidate, i think he did something important, which is, he started to talk in these terms about work being

important. and people caring about their experience as workers. i think, typically both the democrat and republican parties were very focused on this economic piety. that the goal is to grow the economy as fast as we can and redistribute to take care of the losers. and we are going to fight about how to grow the economy passes. redistribution to do. that is what we will talk about. and candidate trump did not sound like that, did not sell my democrats or republicans on that. a big part of his success was that he was talking about a different set of problems. he was talking about what economic piety had missed and what was important to a lot of folks who were being left behind. i think, as president, some of the policy areas he is focused on have been important ones. but, i think, unfortunately, on the execution side, we have not seen a lot of policy reform that

is going to move us forward. that is where there is a german is a lot of work to do great how do we do good policies -- get the policies in place that are going to turn the ship a little bit? host: in stratford, connecticut, good morning. you're on with oren cass. caller: can you hear me? good morning. fascinating discussion. this characterization of irredeemable, deplorables always struck me as a class warfare of the wealthy and powerful and working forces. referencecording the to policy execution being ifferent from policy goals, am looking at this government shutdown and it is framed, entirely in the perspective of how does it impact federal workers. how does it impact federal recipients and programs?

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 age wage for folks at the lower end of the economic scale. for democrats, those are democrat votes. you get people who are going to be legally, or illegally voting. and, therefore -- the conventional wisdom for republicans is cheap labor. small business and everybody is happy. is that how you view this dynamic question mark -- is that how you view this dynamic? guest: the immigration issue is such a fascinating one and such a mess. it has been for a very long time. in part, because of some of the dynamics that you just described. that, you know, from a

perspective offrom the perspectf business, having access to more cheaper workers is always a good from the left of politicalere is a calculation and a humanitarian calculation, both of which argues strongly for having relatively open borders. now in some extreme cases, completely open borders. , ifith the trade question you look at this just from our perspective as consumers, that has proved to make a lot of sense. from theok at it perspective of workers, it becomes more complicated and a question of balance. immigration is not necessarily a good thing or a bad thing. what we have to look at is what we are worried about is workers, what we are worried about is our labor market and the kinds of jobs in the wages they pay, is

where do we have imbalances in our labor market? if one of the things we are most concerned about is a significant imbalance for less skilled american workers right now. if looking ahead, we are more worried about that and more worried about are there going to be enough good jobs. how do we make sure there are good jobs for less skilled workers in this country? it cannot be that part of the answer is to add more less skilled workers. debate,the immigration may be more than any other, comes down to priorities. if what you think is most important is economic growth, then you might say as much immigration as possible. mostat you think is important is the humanitarian concern, then you would look at it through that lens. if you think what is most important is making sure we have good activities for workers and you are concerned about less skilled workers, both for

themselves, families, communities, and the economy as well, then having a lot of less skilled immigration does not make sense and you would say we have to move to the kind of system that other developed countries like canada and australia have, which says yes we want to be welcome to immigrants. we think immigration strengthens our country, but skill level matters. given where our economy is, we want to be encouraging immigration and restricting less skilled immigrants entering the workforce host:. from the pages of the once and future worker, the immigration debate is about america's priority. if gdp rose is the goal that all forms of immigration might make sense. if reducing consumer prices is the goal, then inviting enough workers to work for as little as possible might be the right choice. if lowering -- the economic case for unskilled immigration collapses.

"the once and future worker" by our guest, oren cass joining us from new york. let's take a call from barney in north carolina. here is an intelligent in the 21st century. he is talking about the balance of trade. that stuff is not important. it is all about stuff. ok?

the middle of the 19th 1845, a man said id file you -- id file you -- i every --ell me that if if other countries flood our shores with useful goods, that we are the worse for it. this country, even more so with allp, of course, that with of the other countries in the world, are operating on the mercantilist system, or that presumption should that there has to be a balance of trade. the biggest imbalance, the more your deficit goes up, the better off you are. host: thanks for calling.

oren cass in new york, speak to us about trade issues, especially the current situation with the so-called trade wars that are happening and the approach the administration is taking to that issue and its impact on the worker. stated theey standard case exactly right. that was a perfect illustration of economic piety, where he said it is all about stuff. second of all, as he said, 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. everybody likes more stuff. intuitively you realize that is not quite right. stuff is important, but stuff is not the only thing were the most important thing. a concrete example when you are talking about trade and this

idea of balanced trade is to think about what trades do 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 an extra $50 billion of airplanes from us, and in return it is going to send us $50 billion of cars. that is the trade. cars for airplanes. if you are a u.s. auto manufacturer, you would not like that trade, but if you are an airplane manufacturer you would love it. from the perspective of workers, you would say that is fine. you might have less employment in the auto sector and more in the airplane sector. you would still expect the economy to be healthy. the question becomes what if we change the trade? what if we move toward this idea of people sending us stuff and what if china wants to send us

$50 billion of cars and in return we send them $50 billion of treasury bonds? treasury bonds of the u.s. government's debt. it is literally and i are you that says -- it is literally an o.u. that says we are not giving anything now but we promise to give you 50 billion dollars of stuff with interest. so if you're not sending stuff back you are sending back assets , treasury bonds, real estate. if you have a relationship where we say we want the stuff and we will send back an i.o.u. instead, and this is how trade policy has worked, as a consumer of stuff you might be happy. that is not a good arrangement for workers because you have stopped making the cars. you are more of the cars from china and there is nothing else you started making instead. that is not a good deal for

workers in the short run. if you step back and think about the u.s. economy, it is not a good choice for the u.s. economy. it is not a good choice for consumers. you are putting the economy on a lower trajectory. your building up debt. you are weakening our capacity to make things. you are weakening the industries where we might be more productive over time. while economic theory has said for a long time that is great, let them send us stuff, it is not actually great. it is a narrowminded view of what it takes to be a flourishing society and to have a strong economy. seriouslye the view -- if you take the worker abuse seriously and realize that is important what we care about in this country, then it is not enough to have people send us stuff. we need to make sure we are making stuff year. host: pat in new jersey.

cap is a displaced worker. what is your situation? caller: minas similar to the man who called before. 70's an i.t. worker in the -- in the 1970's. we were told our future was in knowledge jobs. we all went that route and we -- we were forced not once but twice to import workers. you are displacing americans who have to transfer their knowledge and be given a get -- a discharge slip. how do you expect to maintain a consumer driven economy were not enough consumers have an income source? who is going to buy these products from china if americans cannot afford them? host: interesting point from pat. guest: that is another important dimension.

even when you talk about the consumer perspective, it is important to a consumer driven economy that you have consumers who are also workers, who are earning money they can spend. one thing we have tried to do and have been fairly successful in doing is making up for that cap through redistribution. throughgap redistribution. you have workers are not able to earn enough, we spend more than $1 trillion a year redistributing money toward lower income households. a tremendous amount of that goes toward health care spending but there is also a large disability program to transfer money to households where folks are on disability so they are not working at all. there is a large food stamp program to transfer resources to spend on food. there is a large housing program.

the direction we have been going is to keep doing that. to say the economy is not producing enough wages for lower income households. biggereep creating programs to transfer the money to them to allow them to buy things. i think we are seeing two problems with that. one is that from a consumption perspective, you end up with all of the consumption weighted on the basis of your transfer programs. one way to understand the incredible growth in our health care sector and how that has become such an important part of our economy is because that is the form we have choose and -- chosen to do transfers in. and if you're a low income healthld, if you have a care need, there is close to a blank check from the government to spend on health care. if what you need is a car to get to work or to do renovations to your house or to consume in

other parts of the economy, we say we do not have any help. behavior in the economy if we say consumption will be more and more about the programs we want to offer. the second problem, which is even larger, is just that it is not an adequate model. you can make sure people have enough stuff with that kind of redistribution, but they are not necessarily going to be satisfied in how they feel about their own lives, they will be less likely to build healthy families. they will have more trouble raising kids who will find opportunity themselves. communities that become increasingly reliant on transfers instead of productive work are ones where you have more crime, hiring addiction rate, and all kinds of other problems flowing from those things. this is the theme we keep coming

back to. it turns out the stuff is not enough. it is not enough to have a model where some people are successful and we send stuffed everybody else. when you to make sure we have a model for the economy where people, wherever they are, whatever they can do, have an opportunity to be productive workers and earn their own way in life. host: take what we have been talking about and put it in context with this story in the "washington times." the headline says help wanted -- not enough people to fill jobs. they are making the point that the economy is running so hot businesses cannot find people to fill their want ads. people the6 million labor market says were unemployed at that point. they make the point that the bureau of labor statistics shows the openings included more than 20,000 jobs in the i.t. sector,

more than 38,000 jobs in real estate leasing, 40,000 in education, including state and local government jobs. can you put that in context for us? guest: the economy at the moment is doing well. the stock market is showing signs of trouble. the labor market and the real economy are clearly booming. we are headed toward the top of the business cycle, meaning that as we compare it to the recession five or 10 years ago, we have made incredible progress. we are seeing that when you have a booming economy and you have tight and you have a labor market, lots of employers who are 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 recession. obviously we are doing better now than we were.

to understand what has been happening in our economy coming up to compare one boom to another boom. you have to compare now to 2007, before the recession, or how were we doing in 2000 before the burst or the late 1980's before that recession hit. you find each boom has been a little weaker than the one before it. we are not seeing wages grow as rapidly as we had in prior booms. in terms, especially for the share of men working full times, we have a much higher share of men without work. each boom we find we have more men who are not working and our current figure, close to 19% of prime age men, men between 25 25 percent of those men do not have full-time

work. by comparison, if you go back to the great before recession, that would be the worst figure on record. by the standard of before the great recession, the share of men without work looks like them worst recession year we have ever had. things feel great compared to the recession, but the way to see what happened, i describe the metaphor is bumps on a downward slope. if you picture a kid sledding down a hill and there are jumps on the hill, every time they hit a jump they go up and they scream and they are excited. then they land lower down and then they hit the jump and they are excited and they end up lower down. you can go off a lot of great jumps but still end up at the bottom of the hill. that is what we have been doing. we are at a high right now but no better than 2007. no better than 2000. we have not made any of the changes we would need to switch

from a downward trajectory to an upward trajectory. we should not feel more confident that we have gotten things fixed now when we would've had a right to feel during those previous periods when obviously we did not have things figured out. host: stephen is on the line from roanoke, virginia. what would you like to say? o things iere are tw would like to touch on. one is the h-1b visa program. people use the shortage of technical people to justify importation. it has been my personal experience that we do have people who are scientists and engineers already. they are not in their 20's. i am in my late 50's. encountered huge age discrimination the last three years trying to find a job. then i turn around and hear

there are not enough scientists and engineers. both cannot be true. businesses use this perceived -- asge as an increase to an excuse to import cheap labor from overseas or to retain grad students here once they have finished, and then i have to spend three years searching for the most minimal job. i was lucky to find one but i am working way under my capabilities, but i feel lucky to have any job at all. a lot of these online hiring services like some you do not want me to say by name, 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're not in your 20's or willing to work to cheap, businesses do not want you could -- businesses do not want you. host: oren cass. the h-1b visa program is

an example of the layers upon layers of broken system we have dealt. built out of the mess our immigration system is. the answer when we talk about higher skilled immigration is to say we like the idea of high -- of having higher skilled immigration moving to the country where they can contribute innovation, but we our to do that just for immigration system, just for people choosing to live here. we do not want to do that through a program where specific companies try to game the system to bring in particular people to lower their cost. unfortunately, we've created the h-1b system as a band-aid on a very broken system. it has a lot of these problems of its own. the right way to approach the

bigger question is to say when we have more skilled people they'reo the country, are going to cause displacement and disruption. we know they're going to do it in a way that creates a lot more economic activity, that creates a lot more opportunity for other workers of all kinds. in the long run, we think that will be healthy for the economy. we want to do it in that general economy wide way. not with something like in h-1b visa that allows individual foranies to make the case why they need to bring in a particular worker, and that workers then tied to their company. it is a symptom of a much more broken system. host: oren cass, you have a chapter in the book on the environment and the economy. right balance between protecting the environment but also growing the economy, protecting workers. how do you see that?

guest: that is a good question. this isrecognizing that a place where there are real trade-offs and we have to find a balance. if you think back to 1970, when we put many of our environmental laws into effect, that is when we created the epa, created the clean air act, that was a time when we had an incredibly strong industrial economy that was dominating the world and very serious pollution problems. we put in place these laws that tried to swing the pendulum back to put someuld like limits on the industrial economy and growth in industry so we can start to improve the environment . the good news is that worked tremendously. we have made incredible gains in environmental quality. pollution in the air is down by two thirds.

one of the things i find most remarkable is that brussels, the capital of the european union, would be the city -- the single dirtiest city in the united states if it was here. that is how clean we have managed to make our air. later is 45 or 50 years and we have not made any changes to our policy. we continue to turn the dial further and further, to crank the ratchet tighter. if youday we still say want to try to expand an industrial facility or build a new one or try to get approval for an infrastructure project, we will have incredibly stringent environmental requirements led to make the project unattractive. that is not the right balance to strike. desperately in need of those kinds of jobs. we know communities want those kinds of jobs.

when you see cities and states throwing tax breaks that companies to get them to come invest, when you see them begging the federal government to come to infrastructure projects, what they're saying is we see the value of having these things here is higher than the cost. get our environmental laws say the opposite. i think we have to remember the importance of environmental quality. we do not want to go back to the 1970's. we have to say that right now, given where we are, the trade-off we should make is a different one. right now we are willing to slow our environmental gains. toyou tell us we're going have to go back to the environmental quality of 10 years ago, that was pretty great. we would be willing to except that if it means we get more investment in heavy industry, in natural resource use, and infrastructure. that 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 for our guest. florida, you are on the air with oren cass. good morning. caller: good morning. thank you. i have not had a chance to read your book but i wanted to ask a question about wages and the cheap wages that are affecting the very things you mentioned in terms of being able to afford housing, etc., and all of those things as well as immigrants .oming into our country i do not know if you address --ther a minimum living wage what with the effect of a living some of theerms of

things you mentioned in terms of the trillions of dollars spent on health care, housing, food stamps. taking some of the resources from gains that would limit the government from paying out so ofh money in terms subsidizing corporation by keeping the minimum wage low and how would that affect subsidizing some of the smaller businesses that we need in terms of tax incentives. ofloyment is needed in terms lower wages. host: let's hear from our guest. guest: i'm glad you asked that question. andink that is a topic policy choices that are important to talk about in this context. it is find a talk about all of these broader policy areas, the

environment, education, trade, immigration, but what can we do to get wages higher. raising thenk minimum wage to a living wage is the right answer. the reason for that is because that benefits the people who get the higher wage. it hurts the people who employers choose not to hire at that wage because 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 essentially 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 important. we need more of them. we need to encourage them to happen. when you say we will have a $15 an hour minimum wage, you are

saying we do not want those partnerships of they are not worth $15 an hour. you're going to lose a lot of potentially valuable partnerships if you do that. the policy approach i favor instead, and i think the question got to this a little bit, is what is called a wage subsidy. the idea of a wage subsidy is you look at low-wage workers in particular, and say if you are earning a low hourly wage, we are going to put more money into that paycheck from the government. just like we take money out of ,ach paycheck for payroll taxes if you look at each paycheck and that little line which means fica, the amount taken out for social security and medicare, we could have a line that paycheck that says work credit and could put more money in. or a nine dollar an hour job could become an hour job. ofyou subsidize work instead

setting some a high minimum wage, you get the same effect. you get more money into people's paychecks but instead of discouraging these partnerships between workers and employers, you encourage it. you say to the worker that even if the employer was not going to be able to offer u.s. high a , we can help get your wage up to that level. you say to the employer, even if you were going to have trouble finding workers at the wage you could afford to pay them, we are going to help make that work. if you do that, you encourage more less skilled people to come into the labor market and work and you encourage employers to offer more jobs and build businesses that will use those workers, and you get more money into those paychecks, into their households. then you have to ask how are we going to pay for it?

the way to pay for it is from the safety net we have. as i said earlier we spend more than one join dollars a year transferring money to lower income households. we do almost all of it in ways that ignore work or discourage work. if you start working, you will lose the benefit. i think a lot of those programs we still need. there are a lot of people who need that support. instead of doing all that way, we said let's do 80%, that kind of safety net, but let's have 20% of it focused on work, i'm giving money to people who are working, we could fund this kind of program and instead of transferring benefits to people every year to help them get by, we have a safety net that started to help connect people to jobs and helped start moving up in the economy.

i think that is a much better approach than raising the minimum wage to start getting paychecks hire. do it in a way that encourages work instead of telling employers do not bother hiring these folks. host: let's grab one more call. alex is in illinois. caller: good morning. problems with the the economy has been trickle-down economics. they have been pushing this series since ronald reagan that everything trickles down. it is not done anything for the middle class. that has been stagnant ever since. i think it is the other way .round it should be trickle up and not trickle-down. i want to see what you thought about that? economics ore down what people who like it would call supply-side economics is a key part of this economic piety we've been talking about.

of idea that the goal cutting taxes, of 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 that if you do that it is going to automatically benefit everybody. i think as the caller said, it is pretty clear that does not automatically benefit everybody. that is one of the key challenges conservatives have to grapple with. we want economic growth, we want free markets for a lot of important reasons, but we also care about the outcome. if we are not getting the right outcome as far as society, then we will have to do more. we will have to find ways to make the labor market work better. on the flipside, 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 doesn't. that is not enough. that does not solve the problems they have. the way we need to approach things and focus public policy is to focus on the labor market and to say how can we build a labor market and a society that is going to work for workers of all kinds, that is going to let workers support their families and communities. if we do that, we will get a lot of those outcomes. we will get the growth. will get the prosperity we all want at the end of the day. host: our guest in new york has been oren cass, a senior fellow at the manhattan institute and author of this book entitled "the once and future worker." thanks a lot for your time and for an hour of conversation on

announcer: this week, join washington journal for authors week. tuesday, the author discusses his book, "what the hell to you have to lose." on wednesday, rshowitz talks about the case against impeaching trump. on thursday, "why families can't afford america." matters: how feminism lost touch with common sense." "the view from flyover country." sunday, "american overdose." join us each morning this week on "washington journal." saturday at 8:00 p.m. eastern, conversations with retiring

members of congress. duncan,skam, john discuss losing reelection bids and reflect on their time in congress. devices,ld go on our and yet jefferson wrote this 14 years after here at the declaration of independence. he said the ground is to be gained by inches. we must be content with what we can get from time to time and press forward. it takes time to persuade men even to do what is for their own good. , we culturally need to step back and say, look, these things take time. we're going to take small steps to get there. >> we have spent trillions on these wars. the war in afghanistan, it is 18 years. i think it is just ridiculous. these wars and our foreign policy has caused us to have more enemies.

they have done more harm than good. >> in the congress of the united states, in house of representatives, even with the reforms nancy pelosi has pledged to accept based on my counterparts, i believe there is just too much power in too few hands. i fear that is not going to change. watch conversations with retiring members of congress saturday at 8:00 p.m. eastern on c-span and c-span.org. listen with the free c-span radio app. of the c-span bus recently traveled to florida asking folks, what does it mean to be american? >> it means having the opportunity, access to a . -- a new life.

being a person who believes in others and wants to be helpful, wants to have the potential to go as far as you can and help bring someone else up as you go. >> freedom of speech. now more than ever. we should continue to encourage young adults to express their opinions and do what they need to do to make the changes we need for our country. it means being able to have the opportunity and the chance to pursue your dreams and your goals. i am from this community, born and raised. i want to accomplish something for my city so i can better serve my city. that is what america provides. , i get ton american run for office and represent my friends and neighbors and make policies about what is good for our americans. for me, it is great to be an

american because it gives me the freedom to be what i want to be, to become whatever i think of becoming. thank you. >> i am an elected city commissioner. my has taught me a great deal about our government and it has taught me that to be an american means to understand and cherish our constitution. one of the propensities that the geniuses that wrote our constitution understood is that power aggregates. to divide power to allow individuals to continue to have freedom and liberty. that freedom and liberty is a central in allowing your particular human energy to make a positive impact on your community. that is what i think about being an american. >> voices from the road on c-span.