we'll be back nebs wext week. have a great fourth of july holiday. if it's sunday, it's "meet the press." jishs . this is a special edition of "meet the press extra." welcome to "meet the press extra." i'm david gregory. earlier this week we traveled to denver for a meeting of the clinton global initiative america that focused on the future of the economy, including economic challenges in the country. as part of the event, i moderated a special panel discussion with the former president and national business leaders including monty moran, president of the ford foundation, darren walker, former ceo of hewlett-packard, now a global ambassador of opportunity international, carly fiorina, and also founder and

executive director of the freelancers union, sarah horowitz. we discussed issues like income inequality, low wages, economic mobility, and we will bring you that special panel discussion. >> i'm interested in talking to all of you about some of the worries we have about this economy and the role of government in being a partner in meeting some of the challenges. i wanted to start, we came across this picture which i think might be a startling example of government overreach. we're going to put that on the screen for everybody to look at. now, monty, this is at chipotle, and -- >> it's an outwrarage. >> by all accounts, that's a foul, is it not? >> it's outrageous. we just can't accept that. >> my boys would not do that. way back, now you're like a model, but way back in the day when you used to go to mcdonald's, you were never guilty of an egregious act like

that, were you? >> i was trying to think if i always successfully avoided being photographed. >> right. >> committing egregious -- no, i used to go -- i violated all the health department rules. i'd get the fries right out of the -- >> here is the irony of that in case you blame the press. that was the white house photographer that took that picture. it just goes to show you. all right. well, again, welcome, everybody. monty, let me come back and start with you. one of the big worries we have about our workers today is whether they have an opportunity to move up the ladder, and one of the big areas in our politics that's controversial is whether they're earning a liveable wage, whether the minimum wage should be increased. how do you address it and how should it be addressed? >> first part of what you asked i think is more important than the second part which is do they have the ability to move up.

you know, where the minimum wage is is important but i don't think it's as important series what you do when someone comes into the business you know to work at your business. the question is, is the goal of whoever hires them, the business, to keep them at that wage or is the idea that you're going to take that person and empower that person to take advantage of opportunities so that they can rise up and have positions of leadership, positions that make them feel better, positions where they can affect the lives of others. each person at chipotle will be rewarded based on their ability to make the people around them better not just how they themselves perform. and so when you have a system like that, what happens is everyone is invested in the success of other people and so we have a system where 98% of our managers come from crew and we have 9,000 promotions to management positions last year alone from entry level positions. >> we don't have a widespread carly fiorina agreement about that and there is disagreement about whether the government should raise the minimum wage but is it not a widely held view that anybody working hard should

be able to take care of their family, should have adequate child care so they don't risk their job by taking care of a sick child and so forth? do we have to have a liveable wage in america? >> of course, and the philosophy monty described is the same philosophy that holds at mcdonald's and burger king and other great american companies. i think there's no question that if you're making minimum wage, you think you want to make more. on the other hand, the sad truth is that raising the minimum wage will hurt those who are looking for entry level jobs. it hurts women who are frequently last hired and first fired. it hurts african-american youth who have very high unemployment rates. so the question is are we creating an economy where people have the opportunity to get a job and rise? and i think the data is pretty clear, there is way too much crony capitalism in our economy today which helps big business and by the way, let me say, both

parties participate in this, and not enough main street entrepreneurialism which creates these jobs and which this initiative celebrates. >> let's get some different perspectives on the minimum wage, mr. president. >> you could have it so high it would discourage employment, but, you know, when we raised it when i was president, the minimum wage in real dollar terms was at a 40-year low and the labor markets were tight and it wasn't a press event. it contributed to economic growth because you had more people working, they had more spending money, they circulated it at the bottom of the pyramid and i think it added to employment. a lot of data on this now that indicates that if you get a minimum wage much above the median, much above 50% of the median wage, then it could have a depressing impact on employment, and if it's at 50% of the median or a little less, it probably won't, and that's what -- at least that's all the

research i have been able to find, and i spent a lot of time thinking about this. so i think it should be raised because i don't think that -- and i think all consumers should be prepared to pay for it because i think if somebody works full time and they have kids, they ought to be able to raise their kids without being in poverty. but it just depends on how high it is, whether it's a depressant on employment. >> from the independent worker standpoint, whether it's health care, whether it's a liveable wage, what do you worry most about? >> i think the way we really measure this is a term that we call meaningful independence. that is, you need to be able to work in this new era we're in where freelancing is the new norm and you need to be able to have health insurance and retirement and all of those things that really enable people to be great entrepreneurs, and i think that that matters whether you are a minimum wage worker or a well paid executive, and i think we have to change the frame to say how can we be

meaningfully independent because that's the only way we're going it see an economy that's sustainable. >> our economic discussion on "meet the press extra" continues right after this break. hey. i'm ted and this is rudy. say "hi" rudy. [ barks ] [ chuckles ] i'd do anything to keep this guy happy and healthy. that's why i'm so excited about these new milk-bone brushing chews. whoa, i'm not the only one. it's a brilliant new way to take care of his teeth. clinically proven as effective as brushing. ok, here you go. have you ever seen a dog brush his own teeth? the twist and nub design cleans all the way down to the gum line, even reaching the back teeth.

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we're back with more of our special panel discussion on economic inequality and mobile from the clinton global initiative america. darren, i want to ask you and monty as well, there's a lot of frustration. part of what we -- where there's a lot of worry about the workers, there's also a lot of frustration about workers and it bleeds into our politics where they look up and see you making

$24 million a year. they say such concentration of wealth at the top and they don't feel as much opportunity. >> well, i think we're dancing around the core issue in this country, and that is growing inequality. and regrettably the situation with income inequality reminds me of the situation with climate change, and that is when the data began to demonstrate clearly the evidence, we saw a community of deniers emerge to distract us from a conversation around solutions. the broader context in this country today and why these issues are so contested is because the very idea of inequality is so problematic for public discourse in this country, but at the core of the american dream, our narrative, is the idea of social mobility, and inequality robs this country -- >> but the question is who is supposed to be responsible for closing that gap that's occurring for a lot of reasons?

i think the political divide gets to government has to somehow do something to close that gap. >> i mean, government can, but i think the most important thing is for ceos, executives, to understand that there's an enormous talent pool at entry level positions, enormous pool of talent for people who aren't particularly educated or experienced. and those people have extraordinary character, and at chipotle we try to find that character and bring them in at entry level pogs and quickly move them up through the ranks. we had 9,000 promotions to management and four to executive team dreshther positions and these are people who make extraordinary amounts of money but also oversee as many as 5,000 people each and each of them having come through the ranks wants to deliver that same opportunity to everyone who is coming in and it's a circle. >> carly, is ceo pay something that's hurting morale in a lot of companies if they see a disconnect? >> i think ceo pay has to be

based on the results the company produces and transparent to shareholders but may i say i could not disagree more with my client. it is true, the rich are getting richer, the poor are getting poorer, the middle class are getting stuck in the middle and that is because we have too much crony capitalism in this country proffered by establishment politicians of both parties by the way, not enough main street entrepreneurialism, but it is also true that the policies of this administration have made the rich much richer. federal reserve prints money and the only class that earns a return in the economy is equity. so people who own equity either in their home or in the stock market get richer. people who don't own equity get poorer. we have more americans living in poverty. it doesn't help lift someone out of poverty to put them on food stamps. what lifts someone out of poverty is a job and relief, and there are fewer main street entrepreneurs succeeding today. brookings institute came out with a study, we are destroying more businesses than we are creating in this country for the first time in our history.

we have fewer small businesses starting, more failing. the woman who wants to open a beauty salon in her home, the lawn services company, these are the kinds of small businesses this create jobs. they're independent entrepreneurs. >> so can i just say for sure, you know, we are living in a freelance nation, and the best way to understand this and why to me it's so hopeful and exciting is that i think we have the best example of a freelancer on this panel. in fact, we have the freelancer in chief right here. this is somebody who left the most amazing government job to pursue meaningful things, entrepreneurially has created this wonderful organization. has time to think and write, spend time with his wonderful family to show us that this is something that has to be a role model for all of us, that we can start leading these lives. >> president clinton, just what we've introduced here, because

you have written about this, you wrote about it in a book last year, what role does government play in trying to close that gap between rich and poor at a time of such limited social mow billi built? >> first of all, let me back up and say, i don't think government can do this alone because it's private economy, and the one thing i think the conservatives are often right about halfway -- i'll tell you what i mean -- is that culture really matters and if you don't have a good culture in a workplace, if you don't have somebody committed to giving people a chance at mobility, if you don't have somebody committed to sharing the gains of the company in a fair way, the government can't fix all that. i do believe you need a proper child development, you need a strategy to keep kids out of poverty, you need a strategy to prepare them.

i think that given the transition we're going through in health care, the fact that we are spending 18% almost of gdp on health care and only giving health care sw between 82% and 84% of our people through insurance and all these countries we're competing with who have achieved more social mobility and higher median incomes than we have and had weathered the financial crisis better than we do spend somewhere between 9.5% and 11.8% of gdp. we're spotting them $1 trillion a year that we would save for reinvestment. government matters. you have to have good, efficient systems. you have to have competitive financing systems, and you have to have investment that cannot be made privately. for example, in major infrastructure projects, including 21st century infrastructure like universal access to broadband.

culture matters. i recommend all of you, so we don't get too carried away here, read my favorite management book written in 1997 called "plain talk" by the conservative republican who started nucor steel. wages as a percentage of corporate revenues are at more than a 50-year low. can iverson started nuc or steel and built it into the third biggest steel company in america without an office building. they rented space in an office park. he had 22 people in the central office occupying 12,000 square feet and four management layers and every employee in the company had the number of the president and the chairman but couldn't talk to them unless they talked to the other two people above them first. they earned 65% of the industry wage but they got weekly

production bonuses that gave them incomes of 130% to 200% of the industry average. they all got education supplements for their kids and eventually for their spouses and themselves which they still do. and they had a no layoff policy so that everybody took a hit if they earned less money this year than last year. that was culture. he was a conservative republican. he didn't want the government doing it, but we have gotten to the point now where the shareholders matter, even activist shareholders that demand companies like dow chemical sell profitable divisions to give them their money this year and nobody cares about the workers. it's wrong. >> i just would like to be clear that while i applaud the idea of low wage jobs for young people as an entry point into the marketplace, that is not the basis of the american economy in the future. >> i agree. >> at least i hope it is not.

>> i agree. >> we must focus on higher level jobs, higher skill jobs, higher wage jobs, and that means we must invest in the american worker. >> so how does that happen -- how do we get more nimble, ca y carly? >> and we have to invest in those industries and those employers that will provide higher paying jobs. so, for example, energy is an industry that provides higher paying work but we're crushing companies because of policies. the whole sentence says the scientists say that a single nation acting alone can have no impact at all. so are we going to sacrifice other people's lives and livelihoods at the alter of ideology? >> no, we should work in partnership with china and with other -- >> but who is doing that? >> and other polluters. we have the capacity to do it. >> but we're not doing it. we're crushing coal production in west virginia which will have no impact on global warming at all except that we are crushing

communities. >> wait a minute -- >> culture matters in government, too, and it's a big unaccountable bureaucracy. >> and who had the smallest government workforce since eisenhower? me. >> that's right. you declared the era of big government over. >> yeah, but not -- i didn't declare the area of weak government that had nobody at home at the s.e.c. before the financial crisis. >> i agree with that, too. i agree with that, too. >> so let me just say something about all this stuff. >> i do agree with the president. >> if we are trying to crush energy, we are doing a poor job of it. the unemployment rate in north dakota is 3.6%. >> well, look at new york. >> and texas is doing oil and gas but they also generate on a good day 25% of electricity from wind. in other words, people that live -- we need to live in the real world here. people are scared of fracking, carly, who live in states that have never dealt with it. i was governor of a state with a lot of natural gas, but you can

sure have a lot of meth an releases and a lot of pollution of that land around if you don't do it right. i mean, i think we need to, you know, not get carried away here. we need to figure out practically what we have to do to work 20g9 together on this. we need to describe the world as it is. people, if you live in a place and you're worried about the water table and you heard all this stories about the gas wells getting on fire and you never regulated gas, you would be scared of it, too. we can do this. >> absolutely. and some level of regulation is absolutely required. it's gone too far in too many industries so it's become crony capitalism where big companies profit and small companies get crushed. i mean, you're right about the s.e.c., but look at what's happened with dodd/frank. dodd/frank took ten banks too big to fail, made them five banks too big to fail with record bonuses being paid all around and meanwhile community banking is slowly closing up shop as you demonstrated in your opening remarks and guess what? community banks loan to small

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step toward dealing with this kind of income inequality that's really affecting workers. >> understand how talented the group of people is in the united states who don't have education and who don't have much experience and also the immigrant population. understand how talented they are and that they have characteristics that you can't train but they have these fundamental characteristics that will allow them to be incredibly powerful future workers in our country if we only empower them. >> darren? >> ronald reagan reminded us the best investment we can make is in infrastructure. we desperately need a massive investment in infrastructure in this country. it creates good jobs, sustainable jobs, and it provides hope, which is at the core of the american narrative. we need hope and optimism. >> the one prescription, karly, for dealing with this kind of income inequality? >> encourage main street entrepreneurialism. at opportunity international, we've loaned out $6 billion,

$150 at a time and have created 10 million jobs, 93% of our clients are women. why do i tell that story? because entrepreneurialism is almost a natural human instinct but it has to be encouraged. seed capital, support, tools, energy, all of the initiative that is the clinton global initiative invests in. it has always been the hope of this country, it is still the hope of this country, and everything that goes on in washington, complicated tax codes, complicated regulatory structures, they help big business, but they crush little business. >> we're back with more on this "meet the press extra" in just a minute. ♪ make every day, her day with a full menu of appetizers and entrées crafted with care and designed to delight. fancy feast. love served daily.

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back now with a few final thoughts and what president clinton thinks needs to be done about income inequality in the country. >> we should help self-employed people and small businesses to develop creative options like

what you do to solve things like big companies in the 'sifts u50 to do for their workers. we should have the government focus on infrastructure r & d and preparing people and we should incentivize companies to do what chipotle does. you have to have tighter labor markets and a different job mix to lift median income, but you also have to have a culture that really values the workers more. and i think it's really important. there's almost no creative thinking going on here at the national level about how we instead -- the government can't regulate all this. you can't make people do the right thing but if somebody is doing something that's really empowering people, we should think about how it can be rewarded and incentivized. >> and apparently you have to raise that sneeze guard to keep certain somebodies from reaching

in to get that extra hot salsa. >> he didn't make it, my arms are longer. >> my thanks to president clinton and all the panelists in denver. thanks for joining us for "meet the press extra." i'm david gregory. if it's sunday, it's "meet the press." gaining strength. the iraqi army is building up its fire power against isis militants. right now most of the troops' efforts are set on saddam hussein's hometown. also, do not send your children. that's the message from president obama. he's talking to parents of unaccompanied minors crossing the u.s. border illegally. now the president is asking congress for $2 billion to help send these kids back home. also, fired then rehired. the police chief in a small south carolina town who