tv Worlds Apart RT January 25, 2018 11:30pm-12:01am EST
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display of. authoritarianism reeses. and a lack of real focus and understanding of what the country needs now. you can see this in the health care. area we had really a débâcle with respect to the republicans proposing things that the country really doesn't want the country really once. universal health care not fifty million people uninsured and the republicans seem to not want that but the people do so that's just one example of many things that have gone wrong this year having read many of your articles i assume that you have generally very negative opinion of the american electoral system how it works. if you compare for example mr trump to let's say the obama administration which contributed a great deal to the american government dat on substance do you think he so far has been really so much worse than the rest well doing nothing.
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is not good either when it comes to fiscal policy because you have this true debt of the country which we call the fiscal gap which takes into account all the debts that are off the books and those are growing every year. because the baby boom generation which is very large number is getting closer to collecting its benefits from pensions and health care and as it gets closer to the present value cost the cost in the presence of those future benefits gets larger so we have a debt that's growing around six trillion a year actually our fiscal gap is about two hundred trillion you said that that is you know because if that's not because the terms but. they got worse under obama and got a whole lot worse under bush so every administration for the last six decades has contributed to this problem but the situation is such that if you don't address it
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is. just keeps growing on its own so you're faulting time for not correcting somebody else's mistakes in fact the mistake is all the previous administrations but isn't that a bit of a high order for all there's only a few of you have to you have to take the economic situation the fiscal situation as you find it in if you've got something that people left you well they did a bad job but you have to address it you can't just let things continue to get worse because the bills are getting bigger and bigger for our kids this is also the case in russia that you have a fiscal gap we measure that as one of the early studies we've done here at the guidance institute we measure the fiscal gap it's not quite as big as a share of g.d.p. as it is in the u.s. but it's quite substantial so it all unless you get on top of these problems. they get worse but you know very well that every time you want to get on top of major structural issues there are some you know temporary issues that come into play and
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some very clear focus and one such thing would be. the wrangle over at the budget that we saw in the american senate i know that you. long been critical of the american political system its partisanship the bending habits and i think all of that wasn't just play in that argument do you think the primary issue though was money or was something else let's say the political ambition i think both sides are trying to make political points. up to a point they don't want to really shut down the government and lay off all these people who are working for the government is a very big work force so i think the. the democrats were trying to make a point that we're standing up for immigration and for people that are have come to our country we're more humanitarian republicans are trying to push the point that you have to have secure borders it seems like there should be
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a good compromise but. you know both sides are. each other's throats i mean trumps disposition is to fight as opposed to you know come to a compromise agreement but you know to show that he's really in charge he has the need to say he's one what strikes me about this whole argument is the naked politics of it because both parties use the funding for polities policies that they it really upon to get concessions on the issues that they disagree so nobody argues that the military and the public servants have to be paid but everybody is ok with making their salaries subject to political bargaining do them or compete will see that is a fair game. no i think the i think the public is very unhappy about this this is exactly what they don't like about politicians that they you know there's
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a sensible middle ground and. you do have people in the democratic party that are pretty far to the left and people to the pretty far to the right in the republican party and those two wings of the parties have been. very dominant in determining who gets into congress and who becomes president so you know you have somebody in office right now who's six who's. really appealing to the extreme right and president obama was i think more of a centrist but he was also kind of left of center and people i polo see are pretty far to the left so we don't have most of the public they represented who are much more in the middle that's why i tried to run for president because i felt that neither. candidate that was coming forth was really focused on the middle ground and. undoing and actually going to get anything accomplished in terms of real policy reform but you mention president obama as he also had his own
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government shutdown and i think for a person who is not familiar with the american budgeting process it's really difficult to understand why somebody who would. sub the system in the way that would allow the government to leave paycheck to paycheck is that part of the of the checks and balances because here in russia we do have an issue of death too much power invested in the executive but it seems to me that this is perhaps the the negative sides of the excess of checks and balances yeah it's not a good situ i think that you know the democrats have in the senate the ability to block legislation certain legislation with just forty percent of the senators and they have more than forty percent of the senators there are fifty eight percent for sorry about forty eight out of the hundred senators so they have a more than. forty percent of bloc there's a woman senate that you can block certain kinds of rules laws with more than forty percent. vote so you know how that law came into being is kind of
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a historical curiosity it wasn't in the it's not in the constitution so you know i think both parties feel that they should if they're out of power they should still have some power and maybe it's you know a good thing but anyway the democrats are trying to exercise this ability to have some influence because otherwise they're just sitting there bet you know just complaining for four years and then i mean exercising some influence at the expense of the military and you know your park service as a setter i mean that's not the it's not a very you know it's not a noble way out of the politics it's not necessarily in their interest to try and use that power very much so they stop the government for a couple days but in the end they folded because if exactly what you're saying which is that this is not a good use of power it's not productive to say hey the military in order to protect illegal immigrants are going to be speaking about the illegal immigrants or rather
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children who are abroad illegally or state illegally in the united states we're talking about eight. hundred thousand people there at this point can the american economy afford to lose them because i would assume that many of them would be entering the labor force and they're speaking english why do you think tromp doesn't see the practicality of making money over those of those people for the economy. i think he probably does see that taking children or people who grew up here has as children there was no fault of theirs that they were brought to the u.s. and then throwing them out eight hundred thousand eight hundred thousand is you referring to. that would be very unjust and unfair but we also have another ten or so million . adult illegal immigrants who have been working in the u.s. for quite a while and the idea of acts of deporting them is also something that really you
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know some people want to do that but many people in the u.s. and myself included say that if you're here you should you know you made it you got through the hurdles of getting into the country illegally or whatever. if you've been here and you don't have a criminal record and you're contributing to the country you should be allowed to stay and then we should secure the border so that we don't have this as an ongoing problem and you know making at moral or social argument here are now asking an economic question because from what i understand the american economy now experiences full employment if your child wants to give it an additional push ice you know you would need labor force in the country these people are here because they can make a better living and they're there contributing to the economy so yeah if they let if they were thrown out some americans would you know take their place and have a higher living standard but i think. i think the moral and the economic arguments both tend to say let's leave them here let's and i think the democrat strategy
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would be better if they just said look this guys you're in charge you make the decisions and we'll discuss what you did if you want to throw out a million other million people and cause all that human suffering and misery and that's a very human inhumane thing to do at this point. you know we'll talk about it in the next election so i think. you know they're really pretty much in charge even the senate can block things a little bit but the democrats but not much politically it's not going to work to keep the government shutdown it's just not a strong enough lever to try and get the republicans to do what you may enjoy and economically rational having. covered tom for a while i think it always comes down to a money issue for him whether it is let's say the middle east or any other. policy issue as far as you know has anyone done any assem it so far or how much money it would cost to the american economy if you deport all all those people well it's
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probably about five percent of the workforce we're talking about. a million illegal immigrants if you threw them all out of the country. yeah it would have a big impact in the short run over time the growth rate of the economy would probably come back to work where otherwise i think it's you know i'd like to say it's. that the economic argument would carry sway with him but he's looking at people that are not his same color you have to realize this person is racist at a very deep level so for him he'd say well i'll probably take the cost of throwing out eleven million people that don't look like me and like me and come from places that he things are miserable icicles a cafe have to take a very short break now but we'll get back in just a few moments stay tuned. six
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fifty am and political polarization comes but if they come back then that will. provide the right circumstances that i think vitamin d. just good evening again. here's what people have been saying about rejected in the senate it's full on awesome the only show i go out of my way to you know what it is that really packs a punch oh yeah it is the john oliver of r t america is doing the same thing we are apparently better than nothing. and see people you never heard of love redacted tonight the president of the world bank very. seriously sent us an e-mail.
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welcome back to well to part with laurence kotlikoff a professor of economics at boston. versity professor kotlikoff we were discussing the. difficulty with funding just before the break and trial for his part accused the democrats of trying to steal the limelight from his much vaunted tax bill and i get it from your writing that tom's bragging about how good the tax bill is is not entirely unfounded correct me if i'm wrong but your cultivation showed that it is likely to expand the economy and real wages by about five percent over time there are lots of people who are very critical of that bill of what do you like about it well i think to begin with we should realize that it didn't start with it's not even clear the trump understands the bill or the economics underlying
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it the bill actually was kind of half of the democratic proposal to have a republican proposal nisan the sense that the business tax part was partly designed by a democrat leaning academic economists but anyway over time this pretty good tax reform proposal which was initially called the better way plan evolved into the tax cut and jobs act which i'd give it about a b. minus as a professor for tax reform it's not something that is was not bad for trump that's not better for his this administration but it's. anyway what it's going to do is increase the incentive for companies to invest in the u.s. for american companies not to leave the u.s. and i think that's going to lead to more capital staying in the u.s. and coming into the u.s. and higher real wages and we were kind of high relative to other countries with
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respect to our incentives to invest in the u.s. so that's good the the personal tax reforms are basically kind of revenue neutral and make some sense there are some. decision here to go after states taxpayers in states that didn't vote for trump blue states as opposed to red states so that's pretty mean and nasty and may undermine public education the way it was set up. but the. the basic story is this is a you know quasi i.d.'s and some i decent reform it's going to help the economy but it doesn't. produced in our simulations we actually have a we're simulating this tax reform in what we call the global gaidar model a model we developed here the guider institute with russian economists and directing this team over the last three years so the russian a russian simulation model if you like was used to help pass this refinery you know
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given the current political context and i'm not sure that russian experience ease would be paid what would be there might have tension in the washing it's solid economics and it's based on modeling methodology that was developed in the us and by myself and i hope it long been labeled as some sort of malicious interference but this all started before trump was even on the radar you also pointed out that the bill would not address the projected explosion in the american government debt relative to g.d.p. from seventy seven percent now to one hundred fifty percent in two thousand and fifty and i think you're partially explain to our where would that come from but can you elaborate a little bit more on that so we have you know the true debt which we call the fiscal gap because it incorporates all the off the books liabilities for example paying for my social security benefits i'm now sixty seven all these collecting starting at seventy well that's
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a true obligation of the federal government's not recorded as official debt but it's it's has to be paid same with my health care benefits from the government so unless you start dealing with these this problem the country is going to fall off the cliff fiscally speaking and we're we're bankrupt given our current policy or current policies a path to bankruptcy sky high tax rates to an economy that's i'm going to grow and i think you see signs of this in so far as it's very hard to fund many things in our government like basic research there are cutbacks because the country. he's already understanding that the politicians at the government's broke that it can't . and so we need to really a major tax increase we didn't need a policy that's revenue neutral which is what i. think we have based on the simulations we've done with the global gaidar model we needed something would
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significantly raise revenues and we also need to cut spending so we need to have reforms that fix. in the spending reforms have to come through fixing our pension system fixing our health care says system so everybody's covered but we don't go broke i think everybody knows about the american government debt and yet lots of foreigners are eagerly investing into american securities and bonds doesn't that mean that at the end of the day whatever are the obligations of the american government the its economic commitments they will be bankrolled by a by the foreigners because everybody has a stake in not letting them merican economy go bankrupt well i think i think through the market the traders out there that are setting the interest rate on long term government bonds which is really what you're referring to which is that if things were so bad why would we be able to borrow at such a low long term rate i think those traders don't. either that i don't think they understand all the off the book liabilities or they do understand those liabilities
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they understand we're bankrupt but they think the other traders don't understand it so that we have this kind of curious. equilibrium in the market where everybody is kind of trading on the basis of everybody else getting it wrong or at least not trading because these traders they can lose their jobs if they make a move that is based on the reality but the other traders don't come along if you lose money by yourself you can still keep your job but if you take a position where you you know we really base it on the other. realities and nobody else comes along in the market then you lose in the marketplace and then you lose your job but you know it's no rational what i'm saying is that the marketplace is not rational but over time people will get the truth it will it will come out and we will see the market crash led on purses crash and he discussed irrational
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apologists policy is all fine and. i mean not only in washington but also more broadly i want anybody economics you know the underlying reality is that somebody should have to pay my my benefits you know and it's his are not making enough money to do it that's the basic game over problem here we face and the american economy is not. isolated i mean it's a i think it's the unique economy in the sands of how much exposure for and there is have to it i wonder if there's real hitch here is that while the united states is preaching liberal economics and free market at the end of the day it managed to create the conditions for itself when it is not operating within the frame market conditions because everybody is treating the united states the american economy as something. unique partially because of the value of the role of the dollar as the top and i think it's really the role the dollar helps you. you know think that well
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gee the if the u.s. isn't bad fiscal shape it can print a lot of money and the rest of the world will keep taking it but there's a limit to that you know there's a limit to how much many countries are gotten into trouble in the past and printed money to try and pay for their bills but ultimately obviously it's too to inflation and we saw this with the british pound you know the british empire was dominant and at some point. it became less dominant broke up and then the pal no it was no longer the currency of the world dominating currency if you look at the long term projections again coming from this really terrific guide our model that is a global model so you have all the demographic changes and all the regions of the world that were seventy regions in the world all the fiscal policies if you simulate. the rest of the world catching up in terms of productivity with the u.s. in this framework you see that over time the u.s. is going to become a minor player in the world economy because it's going to be dominated and this is
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very interesting by china by india but also by the middle east and sub-saharan africa if those regions are do catch up in terms of productivity levels and that's a very big if but you see at the end of the century that the biggest region in the world economically speaking is not china or india it's actually sub-saharan africa . and then it's india and then it's middle east and then it's china and the u.s. is down at about five percent of world g.d.p. from about sixteen percent now so the long run picture is one of the us lou you know becoming like germany to the world economy and that's driven by you know very interesting the fact is that the un is projecting a population explosion in terms of the world population mostly concentrated in sub-saharan africa in the middle east and this is going to produce a an increase in population of the world by one china in the next twenty years and
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by three china's over the course of the century so all these factors are going to go through time i agree with you it's not going to be tomorrow but through time people are going to wake up to the fact that the u.s. is in very bad fiscal shape that its economic dominance isn't eval and evidently going to decline just china alone is going to overtake the u.s. has got a bigger g.d.p. right now than the u.s. and i think you made several attempts to get into the white house to try to change the system from within and you have very detailed proposals that took me a whole evening just to understand. simple ones well i mean they they are very detailed and you know it takes. not only time but i think it takes effort to understand what you're talking about and i think today's politics especially in the united states seems to favor people who offer very simple and sometimes very dramatic solutions does it mean that people like yourself. will
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always be poised to lose to some demagogues who have politically benefiting by the fiscally unsubstantiated policies i think it's very difficult to deal with a democrat demagogue who demagogues. method of is to find somebody to blame and say well it's the immigrants who are china no matter what the facts or. that are causing our country not to grow in terms of living standard at the radio used to grow and it requires somebody to say well look you know the facts are different you know one of the things we saw in this entire campaign leading up to trump selection was very little discussion of the facts the politicians were just exchanging insults with each other was very good at that but nobody said look you know you may be the smartest person in the world in your area of cheating people in the real estate market but when it comes to actually understand economics you have no background because i don't want to say it was actually not at all useful was the
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campaign truly exceptional because i think there is always an element of that there regardless of whether it's a presidential campaign a let's say congressional race there seems to be a lesser demand for. political inflight is very entertaining. and having somebody like obama is a great speaker and just very inspirational is that's attractive. but there's also something that's attractive which is having somebody actually knows what's wrong and how to fix it i'm not saying i'm the only one who's wrong by that i think any you know a good economist could possibly have won that election had the press paid and the attention to that person so our situation is that yes praise attention to people who seem interested and exciting enough for the people and this is ultimately a question of how you run a democracy and what is a democracy i mean it's a very pretty look at marathon and in france i mean you know does he have the. he's
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a very attractive person physically no i think he's a good speaker from what i gather but he's not. he basically got elected by saying the political parties are bankrupt we need some real change and real analysis somebody who actually thinking more deeply about how to fix things a new direction and let's go that was the name of his party. i think has oppressed spent some attention given some attention of my campaign it's possible that i could have taken off like work on the in in france you know maybe not maybe maybe she said you know maybe the probably would not be interested in somebody who's clearly looks like an academic and sounds like an academic and you know when i tried it once again that same two thousand and twenty well you know it's under the right circumstances possibly and the problem. is this kind of what we call a catch twenty two would emerge it's
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a you know it's it's. you know if the press had paid attention i would have gotten a lot of campaign contributions and then i would have been viewed as a wobble kind of heat and got more attention so. but they said well you don't have any money and i said why don't have any money because you're all writing about the so that's what we mean by catch twenty two well as a consequence we have to leave it there i really appreciate your being on our program and to our viewers please keep the conversation going on our social media pages and i hope to see you again same place same time here on worlds apart.
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zia's says holland kentucky. over all of these moves them voices people were going to st danny's leave only. a co money city with almost no coal mines left. the jobs are gone all the coal miners are fed ex that was a laugh to see these people a survivor of a while disappearing before their eyes. i remember thinking when i was younger that if anything ever happened to the coal mines here that it would become a ghost town but i never thought in the million years i would see that and it's happened it's happened to. apply to many clubs over the years so i know the game inside guides. football isn't
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only about what happens on the pitch for the final school it's about the passion from the fans it's the age of the superman to just kill the narrowness and spend two to twenty million one fly a. book it's an experience like nothing else going to because i want to share what i think of what i know about the beautiful guy a great so will transfer. and thinks it's going to. that. was. was.
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the u.s. school turkey to deescalate its military operation in syria one korea says there is a trust crisis in its relationship with washington. and now we're looking at another just russia in northwestern syria because turkey has taken its eye off the ball isis and going after. at this time. the weapons have been provided to the white b.g. by the united states and. reading the trust prices. on the trust is missing at the u.s. national security agency removed the words on the state trust and from its official mission statement online i don't see this playing a threat the media in germany highlights fears within the government were rising in this.
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