please join me in welcoming rob shapiro, good friend, a thought leader and economist. [applause] >> thank you. thank you for coming out. thank you to my friends that are here, including senior officials under the secretary of state. i also want to acknowledge doug of the senior economic analyst at 9 advisory company -- at my advisory company who did the numbers crunching for this, which is a capacity of mine that has become very rusty. my interest in the issue of what is really happening to the incomes of americans really began in 1988. i was running economic policy in the michael dukakis campaign, and he was making the statement comparing the median income in 1988 and the median income that some significant point in the past, whether it was 10 years or 15 years, and he said the incomes of the american people have stagnated. i went to him, and i said in know, that is really not correct. the median has stagnated, but the incomes of the actual people, as people age, they move from below the median to above the median. you're never really capturing the experience. i spoke

please join me in welcoming rob shapiro, good friend, a thought leader and economist.applause] >> thank you. thank you for coming out. thank you to my friends that are here, including senior officials under the secretary of state. i also want to acknowledge doug of the senior economic analyst at 9 advisory company -- at my advisory company who did the numbers crunching for this, which is a capacity of mine that has become very rusty. my interest in the issue of what is really happening to the incomes of americans really began in 1988. i was running economic policy in the michael dukakis campaign, and he was making the statement comparing the median income in 1988 and the median income that some significant point in the past, whether it was 10 years or 15 years, and he said the incomes of the american people have stagnated. i went to him, and i said in know, that is really not correct. the median has stagnated, but the incomes of the actual people, as people age, they move from below the median to above the median. you're never really capturing the experience. i spoke t

but we are very lucky to have rob shapiro, our good friend edward luce, who is now chief american publishedauthor about his time in india and has recently written one of the more influential or at least highly commentated -- we just feel very lucky that he took time out of his busy schedule. he is in colorado covering the election. many of you know rob shaprio has a long history of leadership here in washington. helping advise bill clinton in 1992 and eventually becoming the undersecretary of commerce for economic affairs in the second clinton term. bob and i -- we have been brought together. it is a subject we are going to talk about today. it is back in early 2005 when ndn was reborn as a think tank from being more of a political organization. i started calling people and visiting people and having lunch with people and try to figure out what was happening in the american economy. it was data that i just couldn't explain. no one did a better job that explains me what he thought was happening. what we have to remember is what is happening with the american economy. we began a collaboration