if only over the last fifteen years a significant part of that actually is tied into the fact that we have been spending the accumulated surpluses and running them down you know so medicare medicaid is going to be actually functionally insolvent with the next three or four years social security runs out of money in the mid two thousand and thirty s. but in fact if you look at what the expected insolvency date was ten years ago it was four or five years longer so it's been shortening and shorting and shortening as well have been that is true what do we do well there are a couple of things first of all there are the financial solutions number one but i think that the reason i wrote this book is i think this is really both a political and emotional problem and the problem politically is you have a very large aging population demographically there are forty million seniors now in twenty years they're going to be eighty that's going to be almost twenty five percent of the going to take away this notion that is very very difficult to take that away they have an amazingly powerful voices you know and my first point and

what i'd like to see is to motivate the younger people this country to realize that that if they really want to start to address this problem they have to do it by by by becoming more focused and representing themselves with a powerful voice to offset that politicians will listen to what vocal and large voting block when they don't think about tomorrow do they have the twenty five year old who is not signing up for the fordable care act is not thinking that when i'm sixty five i'm not going to get my social security check probably not enough yet but so you know if he's not signing up for it he actually may be doing a financial analysis that says it's not my benefit to shop to sign up for obamacare i mean again keep in mind that's that's sort of representative of the problem obamacare is something which says to a group of the population we're going to give you and we're going to find another group to pay for it i mean the young people are paying for that many things that they don't need and on top of that they're paying a very large price when they're really the the they should be paying the least i mean that's a summons twenty three just graduated from. college you know what is he going to

expect or she's going to expect from medicare medicaid affordable care social security well generically most of the politicians talk about the fact to lower your expectations significantly you really won't know what they are until you get you know into far enough into the future to see what the financial position the united states is but to give you an idea of how bad the numbers are we look at things like the outstanding debt which is now pushing seventeen trillion dollars or almost one hundred percent of g.d.p. however if you actually measure the problem actuarially the problem depending on your some sions varies between my numbers one hundred trillion dollars in the hole doctor call a cough was very very well known to boston university's numbers close to two hundred trillion but what people don't realize is even the g.a.o. the government you know office has a number that is around seventy trillion right now so to put it in perspective the numbers bury between four and probably close to ten times the size of the actually actual measured problem so what can change that. well you've got to slow or again

eliminate that you well know that well you can't and by the way i'm not advocating eliminating i would advocate a couple of things i mean again one of the things about what i've said is this is a very emotional problem i might add vice to young people is to sort of take a step back and try and put this on a principle basis right so nobody argues that there isn't a basic need to provide services to to a fairly large body of the population but that has to be put into the perspective of what you can afford number one number two who should pay for it how you measured payments like so for example i mean you can't hear a politician in washington talk about wealth without meaning in comp. well i think income and wealth are very very separate measures just because you have a high income doesn't mean you're wealthy and vice versa i would argue in a constitutional format that income should be used to pay for the country it's current operations where is because we've accumulated these massive liabilities we

should be thinking of wealth now means testing as a way of doing that and that's sort of i think used to tell you all sane people if you have a little money don't get social security won't get made don't well or contribute and pay part part of that is part of the process of measuring you know when you go to the doctor and that base sold in hours i have a little money i would have no objection to not receiving my social security check i don't have i don't need that check right and you know neither do i and i think there's a there's a range of the population of can probably say that but i think number one there's a very scared portion of the population that's not sure where they stand you know once politicians start going down a road you don't know where it's going to end but again when i started this i mean this is something i've been arguing as you know for thirty some odd years in sort of my family. when i have a child and if you look at your child and realize what you're leaving them as a problem it should make the problem a lot easier to solve you know we now spend almost eleven dollars in social

transfer payments for the elderly to about a dollar for every child a good a good number over the next ten years just in growth terms the amount of incremental dollars we're going to be giving in transfer payments to the elderly is eight hundred almost eight hundred billion but to the children is twenty billion and you know you're asking things about what happens. you know if we're not spending money on infrastructure on education and other things of that ilk basically the united states will become less competitive less efficient which means even the assessment of assumptions about how bad the problem are grow so you really need to put this into perspective. we want to make this economy operate at its best capacity that requires a better allocation of resources number one number two just general fairness issues i just don't think it's fair we've been promised you know that use the word in parliament we've been making promises to ourselves for forty or fifty years and the

promise has been it's somebody else's expense i don't think that's appropriate you know again another point i think it's almost like taxation without representation gets right the monarchy the british monarchy taxed its. you know unrepresented tax payers you know centuries ago that led to this country and they did it across the ocean of space we're doing across an ocean of time how come the socialist countries make it work. well you can as they do that well i think the socialist countries in various ways have much lower trajectories of income and growth and are far less vibrant you know they probably are those same amount of age we do some of them live long longer than we do but his age the only measure of you know how you know life expectancy be only measure you know look i'm not saying we don't put enough money into medical research for example probably it gets diverted a lot of the a lot of the infrastructure for the last forty years more or less thirty percent of

federal revenue streams went to pay for so so you're for social programs and thirty percent on average went to pay for infrastructure at this point it's almost seventy percent going to pay for social transfer programs and we're down to fifteen percent on infrastructure is there any think you're talking this political figure not even representative ryan basically comes out and by the way as a as does the president we we're not going to touch the promises and i'm going to use that in quotations to people over fifty five that's the class that has to be part of the solution if you don't solve the problem with them participating in finding ways to both reduce the programs and make them more efficient then there really is going to be a headache of such massive proportions that there really is so you know have to appeal to those over fifty five on the fairness question that iraq i think most people would accept fairness don't you i think i think most of us would accept fairness and i think most of us when you couch this in in an intergenerational

format it's not only looking at yourself but looking at us and this country is. you know generous to a fault in many ways you put it if you put it in the right way you'll get at the bulk of another interesting number almost twenty five percent of young people of young people in this country are children living below the poverty line of the thirty five largest industrial countries were like second or third worst i mean we don't look at our children we're telling them we want you to help pay for us to help ease our retirement but we don't understand that our retirements will be a lot better the more we help our children evolve in time space education and everything else in the interest of time going affordable care work i think affordable care can work it done correctly but i guess i wouldn't i would not carve affordable care out it belongs is part and parcel of of the benefit and social structure we want to deliver you know children are going to help protect their with

us but you know nobody wants to look at times at how our paying for leaving leaving the obligations again and letting them build up for the future to solve is a real problem you make a lot of sense nail are you optimistic person you should be pessimistic. i would say i'm hopeful but i think we have a lot of problems and i think the longer we wait on that let me put my financial hat on when you when you value an asset or a liability use present value the the change in the value of these liabilities stream just going forward from year to year is growing at almost three or four trillion dollars a year and it could be hard to pending on on on on on certain assumptions right the longer we wait the more the problem grows the heart of the solution to the problem becomes and the more painful becomes we have a very vibrant country where creative. we attract people i mean i mean in the store

i used to work for the central bank of norway. they used to say we want to come to norway it's where a rich country they're very wealthy by the way you know deficit they'll have a great time i always ask every one of them where do you want to live and not one of them never said nor they always want to live in the united states this country attracts people because we encourage success we were awarded success we were encouraged dreams we were award dreams we have to get this right if we don't get it right look we've been saying when you do hear this in public we're going to be the first generation to leave our children worse off than we would them been than we were and that's again i think that's a very very sad statement we should be shooting to make sure our children. are far better off in every way than we are is there any place you a country going to a point there is that right well norway's a good start norway is a country with no deficit it's free you have to serve well you know the kinds of weather you want to go down the global warming argument but you know that i. actually warmer than new york city it's actually still moderated by the by the goal

a dream so when the conference call but you know it's really hard to get up at ten in the morning and have it still dark and then when you walk out for coffee at two thirty in the afternoon it's it's dark and when that one is on the all the time in the summer time. you've been there i've been there a few times yeah it's a beautiful country and i'm so anxious to revisit you make too much sense it scares me thank you very much for an e-mail grossman and the book is generation w t f how will any old skin stop the mushrooming toss in social security medicaid and medicare and if i might it's on it's on imus on it will be on our on the i store so ok amazon on the i stores when we go back to dream of and the band in the movie stephen cohen and we'll talk about russia and the united states don't go away. why is the price of gold so high. demand global demand do you think oldest money.

know the value of the only place we have to live of the water that we need to survive it's not compared to i mean gold we're not going to eat gold we're not going to be told. we're not going to drink what clearly what amal is and is in a desperate economic situation absolutely right what we're wrong to do is say therefore any kind of economic development from the outside is going to be a benefit their only purpose is to extract as much money as possible to feed into the global financial system. with we are part of the geo political economic system that's extremely exploited. first was a question whether mining should even be carried out altogether can it be done in a way which doesn't destroy people's lives resources environment and so on you know

those are pretty serious questions mining it's not a what a moment problem it's happening in asia in africa and south america in central america in mexico and it's even happening in canada and the united states. compared to any other large nationwide institution i would say in the bank is almost free from all those mistakes. significant number of mistakes happen and we try to rectify it we try to put in the system. detect any fault any any problem that exists in the system. so that you can check that from your head office what's going on in the villages and the demote branches we work could all. be

a single diligent. microcredit program so we have. eight and a half million borrowers ninety seven percent of the women are all connected to the system. the bog areas and romanians are here to bring on doorsteps across the u.k. according to british tabloids the same tabloids of course failed to mention the j.p. morgan banks kidding on our financial system for years and then collecting big big bonuses from shaking down and scalping the population do the tabloids report this.

twenty fourteen olympics with this police line why is this so special as the russian resort prepares to welcome the world power the games should be in the city's present and future what more sochi will bring you this is the moment they replace you from a very cold and snowy windy mountainous tough beyond the olympics. but . today on our team. welcome to politicking with larry king catarina vended who vote the editor and publisher of the nation and stephen cohen russian studies professor emeritus at n.y.u. they are by the way celebrating their twenty fifth wedding anniversary congratulations thank you catarina you don't use the name cohen the. you know our daughter is cohen i just think i had

a life before steve though i can't remember it sometimes and i thought i'd keep the name that i've made my own and i was getting some big current guys to remain one of the what do you make of obama's sinking ratings what do i make of that for the long trajectory of the perspective of a nation which is not about so much the war room day to day but about trying to think through the big ideas of our time and infuse contemporary politics a little history larry i think you know these presidents go up and down and obama's ratings not in great form of course but i think some of the punditry is a little overwrought a little hysterical about how he's thinking stephen though there is a second term curse there's a new stephen. you've got to understand what we have this rule at home that i'm not allowed to say a word about american politics for fear of violating the wifely law and but you

know it's interesting about president obama i grew up in the segregated south. and when i voted for obama the first time to me it felt like such an act of historical justice. but i have to go on to say that as a professor of politics and history i see president obama as one of the great presidential candidates but i don't yet see him as a leader as you and i would remember some of the american presidents who clearly were of the leaders are i think the second term though it is sometimes a curse as you say larry offers him a second opportunity and oddly enough though he was elected to be a domestic affairs president his great opportunity at the moment seemed to be abroad in reaching a nonmilitary settlement in syria and possibly finding

a solution to this vexing problem of iran's desire to build nuclear weapons so it's going to be a fascinating remainder of his second term and i think what historians are asking themselves is will he leave office as a leader or just as the first african-american president of the united states i think that's what historians are asking themselves catarina he has not and i'll get stephen's viewpoint obviously on this because that's his expertise with your thoughts on his relationship with mr putin. i think it's a very difficult one because us russian relations are at a difficult point i do think that what we saw in august larry was an extraordinary moment when we saw the possibility of a renewed u.s. russian relationship because of finding of nonmilitary alternative to syria the the military the chemical weapons issue in syria and we still don't know the full story

but there's no question that whether it was putin or a foreign minister sergei lavrov that the russians played a critical role in extricating the united states from what i believe could have been a terribly damaging military strike policy in syria what strikes me larry in the nation has been for one hundred forty eight years for seeking nonmilitary alternatives to conflict and it strikes me that we should be making more of how we can dismantle and destroy weapons of mass destruction chemical weapons without war because one of the great debacle is in my mind larry in the nation was one of the few media outlets to oppose the iraq war in two thousand and three is that we need in this current time to find nonmilitary alternative so the us russian relationship is going through difficult times steve will say more but as you look at nato expansion which is so off the radar in this country is discussion from the russian

perspective they ask after the end of the cold war why do we need this nato expansion why can't we find new ways of relating and respecting the dignity of each country obviously russia has internal problems personally as someone who spent many years in the ninety's working eighty's and ninety's working on russian women's feminist movements u.s. ties to those to see russia regress in terms of women's rights rights has been painful to watch but you know each country finds its own way larry and we found our own way in our own rights through social movements stephen was your view of the relationship. well i hope you don't mind the reference point there already but you and i have been through decades of this when i was on your broadcast many many years ago when it was still the cold war. we were discussing similar issues so we have to ask ourselves in what sense did the cold war really end with the

soviet union and i have a very harsh opinion of the way the american mainstream media particular the print media has reacted to russia since the end of the soviet union i think it's been in some ways less subject even less balanced than the media was the american media was during the cold war one of the aspects of that has been this utter demonization of russian president putin now he is not a democrat ears authoritarian but this presentation of and as some kind of stalin or saddam as as as a as a bloodthirsty imperialist man simply doesn't match his record in thirteen years. when obama came to power. he wanted what he called a reset with russia and maybe it failed maybe it succeeded but it ended and there's

a debate who caused this reset or what you and i larry used to call detente they got all these new words but it's the same thing who caused it and moscow blames washington washington blames moscow but here's what's interesting and katrina made the point and the point was made to us to katrina and i me when we were in moscow last week by some of our friends that were before putin came forward with this plan that syria would turn its chemical weapons over to the united nations for total destruction. and that was putin's doing he compelled syria is partial ally to do this at that moment we were on the verge of a either war against syria or if you remember obama was begging congress to authorize a military strike and it looked like congress even the democratic party was not

going to give it to him which would have been the collapse of obama's presidency down i mean it would have been a total humiliation for obama at home and abroad so in that sense putin kind of saved obama politically and oddly when we were in moscow a guy we know who works for putin said you haven't find me and i said what for and he said for saving your president i mean he was joking but there's some truth in it so where are we now yeah now these two leaders obama and putin have a chance to build on that they're building on two blocks they're building on syria they're building in iran but you know better than i know that there's enormous opposition to that collaboration here in the united states partly by the congenitally and the russian lobby partly by the pro israeli as they call themselves a lot so this struggle now is under way there but i did three of them day dream see yeah katrina obama has to worry but mr putin can do things by

edict. president obama and his secretary of state john kerry have turned to congress at this critical moment larry and said please don't start imposing more sanctions on iran it will undermine it will sabotage the potential of a historic diplomatic agreement that will make the world more secure that is in the end if we verify and monitor it carefully in the united states is national security interest you know it always pains me larry is that you see hardliners on both sides uniting and the people's voices don't get heard peace doesn't get achieved and i'm not talking just you know touchy feely i'm talking about the real possibilities of a resurgence of tough minded real in our national security diplomacy and i have found that very encouraging in these last months especially post syria so of course

obama has to work with congress but i wish we could have and there are some good people but too often the special interests whether it's on cuba or whether it's on russia or whether it's on the middle east special interest in congress don't represent the majority views of people in this country and that disconnect is a much longer tail which is another program i hope larry and when we when we have a lot more time in the future on a do a little more and is stephen what is the what are the people over a rush of global. you know there are a lot of people in russia one hundred forty five million and turkey or majority russian. or i actually don't know their area i think there they were puzzled to begin with russians are a little bit racist they have not had much experience with black people.

and so they were puzzled that americans would elect a black person as president at the same time many of them saw this as a confirmation of american democracy that it was really possible for america to overcome its history of slavery and segregation as a president they are puzzled because they don't understand what we call the separation and division of power you mentioned earlier that putin can do things by edict that's a little bit of an exaggeration but not much of one and often they don't understand why obama wants something whether it's this kind of health care or a treaty with russia and he can't get it because they think of congress as something it can do their parliament which they see as a kind of puppet institution manipulated but i think generally that they are interested in obama. in a very serious way but they don't have very firm views and in the end don't forget

this larry overwhelmingly russians are patriots so they will judge obama in the end about. as to whether they've been fair and decent and just was russia or not as we would judge i'm not one here stephen could dream we're out of time but i want to do a lot more on this summer to call on both of you next couple weeks thank you both very much a adreno than a bottle and stephen cohen thanks for being with us on politicking with larry king . the beginning of the long politic night moxon the fades from island life. in sin that enough temptation. the darkness last for six months.

more polar bears than people. and it's as easy to hire a rifle as a scooter. because the island is so in a special there are no indigenous people but there are all those who do choose this frozen life. this era is could be right and. if you are. on their way to antarctica the crew of the i can to make sure that if face many challenges. here you have to look out for yourself crashing on to rocks trapped in pack ice in extreme conditions anything can happen and article always comes up with surprises you have to keep your eyes open because if there's always something going wrong the ship carries huge reserves of water food fuel as well as helicopters and people able to survive extreme conditions they're ready for anything even an

apocalypse she's really an incredible ship calling all antarctica stations this is academic a field that of radio check please respond. unexplored antarctica what is it in this icy expanse that attracts the people who come here. and now i only go to the dock. and enter into. a new generation of polar explorers is coming. we have a new group of specialists here now all of them are young how are they going to get along with each other and i don't know. who. i used to be a bureaucrat. seriously. what adventures await in this mysterious lend weight of a minute what to eat and what are they actually doing it on talk to go. cross

talk rules in effect get into can jump in anytime you want.

coming up on our team new statistics are out on the number of deaths caused by u.s. drone strikes this is the future of the drone program is revealed we'll talk all things you wavy. and there's a new man in charge of new york city but will mayor bill de blasio keep the current controversial stop and frisk program in place or make major changes we've got a report from the big apple coming up and before you ship or receive that new digital package here how the n.s.a. might be getting your mail before you do plus encrypting your e-mail might become a bit more challenging now that the n.s.a. is racing to stay ahead of you by building quantum of computers that's later in the show.