West africa, the organization builds teaching hospitals, tends to the sick and reforms entire health care systems. Today partners in health makes 800. Thousand home visits per year. It provides checkups to a million women around the world. The goal, making sure whether we live or die is not turn on how much we have. On todays bloomberg Big Decisions , dr. Paul farmer. Welcome to blue berke bates decisions welcome to bloomberg Big Decisions. You have a career dedicated to charity and medical science paired which came first . Dr. Farmer probably charity. When i was a kid i thought i wanted to be a doctor. We did not have doctors in the family and i had never been to a doctor but i had this idea, probably from television. The charity part was something i learned from my parents who had limited means at a large family, but were involved in charity. My father, particular, was interested in what, in that day, was called retarded people are retarded citizens. And he drags all of his kids into work. He was also interested in elderly people and frail elderly people. We lived in florida, for some time in a campground. So we knew a lot of snowbirds, as they were called. My parents instilled that in us early on. David so you come at an early age, were exposed to a situation where you have modest means and still, there was charity. Dr. Farmer yes and i see that all of the world. I saw that in haiti in 1983 as a young person before medical school. I lived in a community of squatters. They had been displaced by large hydroelectric dam and i got to see how they interacted with each other and how they look out for each other, especially the most frail. We lived in a bus, eight of us. The bluebird bus. We were the only people we knew who lived in a bus, or kids. And my parents expected us to be mindful of other people who had less than waited. And there who had less than we did. There are people who had didnt did not have intact families. We were not short of food that we were short of Everything Else , and still were encouraged to thing about others. And im very, very close to them. David what took you to duke . Dr. Farmer a scholarship. Looking back, it seems like happenstance. I had High School Guidance counselor who said, if you want to be a doctor you should think about universities where there is a strong focus on medicine. She mentioned only two. I had not heard of either of them, duke and johns hopkins. I looked at a map, she may have mentioned yell. Yale. I saw duke is in North Carolina and we are in florida, so that is closer. In the end, i only managed to fill out one application. David you came from modest means as he grew up, public school. You go to duke. Were you prepared . Dr. Farmer no, i was not prepared at it was so difficult, i cannot believe it, that there could be a calculus class where i would barely get by. I had to study for the first time, really study. No, i was not prepared. I remember when i first heard somebody say, that first year to another student, where did you prep . What does that mean . So it was a cultural shock. Probably the biggest one of my life, which is saying a lot to go to haiti and rwanda and other places like that. I was very poorly prepared. David did you go right into science . Dr. Farmer i went into chemistry, which i loved, special biochemistry. That i took a class called medical anthropology. Why, because it had the m word in it. I took medical ethics, anything with medicine and it. I did my first Serious Research project outside of science. I went to an emergency room, the duke emergency room, they call it participant observation in anthropology. I wrote a paper about how race and class and insurance status altered use of an emergency room. So that his medical anthropology, you can study whatever you want. The idea is you are using a broader perspective to understand why people do the things they do about why they say what they say. David there is applicable aspect to it as well. You found an intellectual, Rudolph Brooke how, who said, reportedly, that politics is nothing but medicine on a large scale. Explain that connection between politics and medicine . Dr. Farmer this is a 19 december tree german figure who some kit a 19th century german figure who some consider the father of medical anthropology. He had been reactionary as a young and privileged man who want into medicine. Study sent to silesia to typhus outbreak and that converted him, that expense of being around People Living in dire poverty. And facing both poverty and disease. That changed him. He became a scholar and physician that to this day, he is admired. David he also became reacquainted, at duke, with haitians caller through a nun. Dr. Farmer yes, i wanted to do a big story for duke publication about the mistreatment of migrant farmworkers by the growers particularly, and their bosses. There was no united farmworkers chapter. There was a friend of united farmworkers chapter. It was one of the people involved, was a nun named sister ileana 12th. I interviewed her for my story. She was out of character for sure. Dewolf. Na i got to know what they were doing around activism and helping migrant farmworkers. It was so pragmatic, the ministry of showing up. They would help with grocery shopping, help with moving people from one place to another. Maybe they had a Court Appointment or something. I was so moved by the practicality of those nuns, and there were several of them, and what they were willing to do to help other people. That changed my life actually. David was she involved in liberation theology . Dr. Farmer she was. I was starting to read. I grown up catholic and my parents were not interested really in catholicism, it was more of a social up legation for my grandmothers. A social obligation for my grandmothers. It did not mean anything to me until as a young adult i got to meet people like her who were living out of the gospel as they size. As they saw it. And i was impressed then and now. David the Group Partners in health, explain how that came to be . Dr. Farmer we were doing a Health Survey of villages and there were six young haitians who worked on the survey. By the time i graduated from medical school, three of them were dead. Andd you came out of duke went to directions in the same time. Went to haiti and to Harvard Medical School. How did you first go to haiti . Dr. Farmer i wanted to go to west africa and be a doctor. To that end, i said im going to get full write grant. Fulbright grant. But i did not even get an interview. Plan b was haiti. Id won a prize for a paper i wrote at duke. Which seemsand bucks like a lot of money to me. And i went to haiti for year. And i had been there and i had never been able to leave so i applied to Harvard Medical School from haiti and got my acceptance letter there in haiti. 198384 i have been shuttling between harvard and haiti. David what Harvard Medical School and got a phd there. Youre going back half the year or more to haiti. Dr. Farmer that was good smokescreen, the md phd, you did a medical degree at another doctoral degree. Mine was in medical anthropology. And if youre missing from the med school, people would say well he must be doing his phd. And that was highly approved at harvard, to do a phd. On the end apology side if you i was missing, they said he must be doing his rotations at the hospital. Whereas i was really often haiti. By the time they figured it out, it was too late and i had my degree. David this group, partners in health, explain how it came to be. Dr. Farmer the crying need as you mentioned, how could you see Something Like that, some of the things i saw. Just give united how tough this was in those years, we were doing a Health Survey of these villages. And there were six young , my age, who age worked on this survey. By the time i graduated from medical school, three of them were dead. One died of an infection after childbirth. The other two were good friend of mine. Malaria f cerebral one died of cerebral malaria. She had an unusual but well described, the case in. So she wentchotic to a psychiatrist and she died in the waiting room, of cerebral malaria. , thisird guy got typhoid vigorous young man. And he had gone off, his family had taken him to a voodoo practitioner, whatever you want to say. I found him and convinced him that we should take him to a hospital. I remember rolling him, or leaning over him as he was being wheeled into the operating room. And he said, i am scared im going to die. I said to not be silly, you will be fine. The next he was dead. Those three examples have stuck with me. Ways left us in many led us in many ways to start partners in health. The idea being that people should not die of readily treatable disease because they are poor. Over the decades as we grew, we were able to address more and more problems. I mentioned west africa, i finally got there. Before that came peru and rwanda and russian prisons in siberia. It has been very satisfying work. David you went from haiti to peru to russia to west africa. What was that process, just you saw a need and you went for it . Or was there a larger plan . Dr. Farmer we do not have a larger plan. 2003, all those years, it was just happenstance. How to be get to peru . A friend of ours had nourished a lifelong dream of working in peru. He went there to a squatters element squatter settlements on the outskirts of lima and got sick. And it turns out yet tuberculosis. We convinced him to come back to boston. Train, the infecting strain of tuberculosis proved to be multidrugresistant work , and he died of it. That does not happen often in massachusetts, that someone dies of tuberculosis. That was a big wakeup call to pay more attention to the epidemic in peru, sweat led us to russia which led us to russia. We were looking for money in peru and want to george soros. He said im not going to help you in peru. What it you help us in russia . When we went there in the 1990s after the collapse of the soviet union and the collapse of the ruble, it was a mess. With the rise of this property and inequality, there was a rise of petty commonality, thievery. So that prisons got filled up. And when prisons fill up there tend to be big bro kiliss outbreaks. The same in the United States. Big to berkey llosas tuberculosous. The than 20 of all patients diagnosed with it were dying. We worked with our russian colleagues and within one year, the mortality went down to zero more or less and stayed there. Or 15 years david lets talk about the money. One was a significant funder, tom white. In time that went away. What is the process by which you renew and expand your funding. Dr. Farmer i have to think the word for extort nearly painful chronic condition. [laughter] the process and extraordinarily painful chronic condition. The process is that every year we go looking for funds to maintain the work. You see a lot of donors who want to do something new, or look for some magic bullet. And sometimes we avail ourselves of those opportunities as well. But the big challenges really keeping medical systems going. And that requires a steady input. We have toevery week think about how we are going to find money to make it run. David you get grants from big philanthropies, he mentioned george soros. The gates foundation. Do they ask for evidence that would indicate why their money is being well spent . Dr. Farmer i think, especially the gates foundation, they do ask those questions. They are toughminded about it. To appeal to those funders who really do have to you really do have to do all your homework and presented properly and provide ample followup. But that does not really address the need for the Ongoing Operations funds. That is the real nightmare. David you have a dream or a goal of how big partners in health could become or should become . Dr. Farmer yes, a lot bigger. And none of the places where we work are we doing enough, even haiti. There are plenty of places where we would like to work, but do not, because we know we will get caught in this trap, holding the bag. You build a hospital, start putting, you thing about the staff and the stuff and of the space and the systems that would make it work right. And youre going to still be holding the bag after the initial enthusiasm of donors wears off. David what can you tell us about that u. S. Health care system . Dr. Farmer the primary weakness is we do not attend enough to preventing adverse outcomes among those who are already sick. David give us a diagnosis of Global Health right now. If you look at the globe, where do we have the most pressing needs . Where we underinvested . Dr. Farmer if i were to give a global report card on Global Health, i would say we made a lot of progress that we started with low aspirations of a colonial medicine, international health, that we have to redouble our efforts. Grateful to these large foundations like the gates foundations and that they changed the discussion by making resources available, or becoming major players. Then came a couple of other welcome developments. I do not seeas this coming, but i was happy to be involved in part of it. President george w. Bush changed the formula by investing u. S. Taxpayer dollars in aids treatment. That step and another one, the creation of the global fund to fight aids, to recklessness and malaria, they may have been narrowly focused on two or three illnesses, but they changed the discussion substantially. David take the two examples you have given, the gates foundation, private on the one hand and george w. Bush and what happened with africa. What is it tell you between the intersection between public and private in dealing with Global Health equity . Dr. Farmer it tells me we are insane not to integrate public and private. We did not come to this quickly. It took us a decade of working in haiti to say, to look around and say, the hospital that we have built, which is a private ngo hospital, is answering a great need. But look at all these public clinics and hospitals around that are really shuttered, that are not working. So we decided, again as a collective, that we would direct all of our attention to public facilities, hospitals, clinics, whatever. In rwanda, the yield on that was in normas was enormous. The hospitals in the northern part of rwanda, a beautiful hospital. Partners in health built it. It cost 4. 3 million, which is not a lot for what i 150 bed hospital. That would not even get you a starbucks building in new york. It,in one year of building the Rwandan Government was paying 70 of the salaries. And allows you to go deep build up, to take those private resources, private capital can move more quickly than public capital. David some of the places, some of the governments, that need helps the most are not the most attractive governments. How do you strike that balance . Do you only go to governments where you say we can limit their human rights record or do you have to be selective . Dr. Farmer you have to be selective but we do not just go to governments where there is an enlightened leadership. We focus, usually, on the burden of disease. Like, wheres the problem greatest . If you looked at a wealthy country, and industrialized country, like russia. And looked at those numbers on tuberculosis outcomes, those are as bad as the poorest place. We found, there, in russia in the 1990s, really wonderful leaders inside the prison system. With rwanda we knew what we were getting into. We knew we would have a government focused on health disparities. They told us that from the beginning and they have been. That is not the case in some places. Haiti has gone through have any coups in the time we have been there, how many ministers of health . A lot. But we have voice found enlightened government officials somewhere in the bureaucracy. David from what you have learned around the world, haiti, peru, russia, what can you tell us about the u. S. Health care system . Dr. Farmer i think most markets note we spent a really big fraction of our gdp on health care. Over 18 , i think. And theres no doubt that we are not getting value for that kind of investment. And there are a lot of reasons for that. Theres a week Health System here. The system itself. 170 needs a heart transplant or any major surgical procedures, we have that covered. On biotech development, new therapeutics, the americans arewe are way ahead in many ways. The system itself is weak, however. Ie of the primary weaknesses would say the primary weaknessis we do not attend enough to preventing adverse outcomes among those who are already sick. What we need . What we learned in haiti and rwanda, if you have Community Health workers who actually help people in their homes or places of work, youre going to get improved clinical outcomes. One of the reasons in the United States we work with navajo nation, is because we do not have to argue about that with them. They have had immunity Health Workers for decades, 60 or 70 years. So we knew we would not have to go through the same arguments. It was about financing these petty small salaries. These are underpaid people. And there should be literally millions of them in the United States, helping move care from hospitals and even clinics, home. We are starting to hear that here in the United States as well. David really . Dr. Farmer yes. Some of the major funders, mentioned to the gates foundation. Warren buffett, other people who have paid attention to this, are saying hey, how should we do this in the United States . David as you look at Global Health equity, what gives you hope and what makes you angry . Attend i tend to need to be helpful. Every time we turn our attention to an intractable problem it has proven quite tractable. But it needs resources. I need to be hopeful. The angry side as, if these interventions work why is it so hard to find the resources to address the problems . That makes me angry still. I think back to those young people in haiti, my friends, who died, untimely. I am sad about it more than angry now. But it is still an outrageous thing to see some young people die of malaria, typhoid and in childbirth. And there is cause for a negation indignation. David dr. Paul farmer, thank you. David he was only six years old when the iron curtain separated him from his parents leaving him home in romania when they were visiting the United States. After years of forced child labor and communist indoctrination, a congresswoman from ohio learned of his case and took it to president eisenhower, who secured his release in a spy swap bringing him to the United States as a young celebrity who didnt know a word of english. Peter georgescu just learned english and went on to princeton and Stanford Business school. Moving to the world of madison avenue in the days of mad men. He started as a researcher at young and rubicam and rose to become chairman and ceo of the advertising giant. Now, georgescu has a new mission. Having seen the worst socialism has to offer, and what capitalism at its best can mean for those in need, hes urging corporations to return to pursuing the best for all their stakeholders shareholders, workers, customers and society at large. On todays Big Decisions, Peter Georgescu. Welcome to bloomberg Big Decisions. Great to have you here. Theres a lot of talk about socialism these days. It strikes me you have a personal experience with socialism going way back in your childhood. Tell us about it. Peter well, i was prepared for socialism by being born in just as the Second World War started and i arrived in 1939, just as the war got to be big and real. I was born from romanian parents, both of them, one educated in london. My father became a petroleum engineer, came to romania, became general manager of the Largest Oil Field in romania which is owned by standard oil in new jersey. Exxon. The germans came into romania and the nazi supervising regime put him in jail. My father worked for the ss from prison. Oss. My motherhe oss. D as a courier for the he faced a firing squad but received a lastminute reprieve. Anyway we all survived the war. We got together in 45. I was six years old. My brother, myself, my parents. Normal, wonderful family life. I learned how to ride a bike from my father. A year full of joy and happiness. And then in early 1947, my father goes to new york and for what was to be a two week sort of major worldwide Managers Meeting of exxon. And they go, but just at the time, the communists took over. The russians greeted a coup in the entire eastern europe. David the iron curtain essentially fell. Peter the iron curtain comes down at that moment and it is an iron curtain as we know because thats how socialism work. Total control. While in new york, my fathers friends from war days who started the cia by now tells them, in romania, the communists have my father, mother on a list to be arrested and exterminated. So they convinced them to stay in new york. Lucky for all of us, because in fact, during that period in the early communist takeover romania, they gathered some 300,000 business leaders, religious leaders, anybody who was a potential threat or perceived to be a potential threat was rounded up. And within two years they are all dead. My grandfather was one of them. They arrested him almost 80 years of age, put him in prison and murdered him there. Shortly after they arrested him, they took my brother, myself and my grandmother to a small town close to the russian border. The guise was when they took us over, they said youre going to meet your parents. Were taking you to new york. They took us. My grandmother under house arrest. So she stayed there, couldnt move out and didnt for about four years, five years close to five years. And and then my brother and i were taken to work at 6 00 in the morning. We worked until about 6 00 at night. David how old were you at that point . Peter i was just north of ten. I cant remember the exact time and date but i was about 10 or so. David thinking back, why did they do this . Why were you a threat to the communist regime in romania . Peter its interesting you ask the question. It was a reprisal. Reprisal against my parents, because in addition to work, we also went to interrogation sessions. Brainwashing sessions. Really all it was it was to tell us just how awful our parents were. There are evil people. They are unpatriotic against romania. They are trying to harm the country. They are just indecent people people harmful to the nation and to the world. David did they make any inroads with you psychologically . They were trying to say they left you behind. They are awful people, right . Peter the irony of saying they are awful people but you have to suffer here. And my job was for the first two years to clean sewers, because i was small enough to fit in the underground passages. And then i worked digging holes for electric poles and walked on high tension wires. But the irony of that didnt seem to turn into reality for them. So we did that six days a week you see. And on sundays you slept because thats all there was to do to be able to survive. David how did you come to the United States given that situation . There was no way out. Peter in new york, fate worked in a totally different way. So what happened in new york is that the soviets and the russians particularly send a romanian diplomat to tell my father if you want to see your kids alive again youre going to spy for us. So my father and mother spent a sleepless night, and that morning, my father went to the fbi and told them the story. They said, please become a double agent. Dad said ive seen that play before. It never works well. Eventually i cant do something or i dont want to do something. They will kill the kids anyway. Anyway eventually they agreed. They said, go to the press with this story. David they went to the press. Dr. Farmer they went to the press. And they were afraid. The fbi was afraid that maybe the story would take off every little town in america. You find in 1953 theres a story of the georgescu boys in the family being blackmailed. One of the people who read this story was a woman. She was an amazing woman. She was a congresswoman not from new york. From ohio. She picks up the phone and says mr. Georgescu ill get your boys out of romania. I am Frances Payne bolton. Im a congresswoman from ohio. She also happened to be, not only the only congresswoman i believe in congress, but also the chairperson of the Foreign Relations committee in congress. You can imagine in 1953 what she must have been like. [laughter] she was a force of nature. And so it took her a year. She ended up in eisenhowers office and said mr. President , and by the way she helped him become president so she had some chits with ike. She said, weve got to get the boys out of romania. So they concocted a plan. Some people including the cia to trade us for a bunch of russian spies. So on april 13th, a date i remember, i landed with my father at idyllwild airport with my brother. I was 15 years old. I was kind of skinny but fully grown. I was a young man by then for sure. I didnt speak a word of english other than cocacola. And i hadnt gone to school since fifth grade. David you were famous. Peter my goodness, when i landed at Idlewild Airport now kennedy there were probably 200 reporters and flashing lights. It was a circus. It was unbelievable. We got off the plane and we want on every show you can imagine. We were on the ed sullivan show, good morning america, you name it. David you didnt speak english when you came here. How did you get from here to exeter . Peter well we arrived in april as i said. The principal of the school reads this story and says, ill keep a place for the young boy. My dad says, but sir you remember he, he doesnt speak english. He hadnt gone to school for four years. He said oh, i know, i read this story. But he learned other things there. Help him learn english then come in august to exeter. Lets have dinner and well go from there. So i try. I work hard to learn english. I watch a lot of i love lucy, i tried to imitate ricardos accent which was not difficult at the time. We ended up for dinner with the principal william gurdon saltonstall. He likes me. I dont remember the chitchat of the conversation but whatever it was, he likes me. I remember the punch line, at the end of the dinner. He said, young man if you can pass your courses on your own with no consideration for your background, you get to stay. Otherwise, ill find the right school for you. Is that ok . I had no clue what he was talking about. I thought a school was a school, but i was smart enough to say yes, sir. So now i am at exeter. And i did pass the courses. Barely, but i did. In three years i was able to get into princeton. David you went to princeton and then stanford. George i went to Stanford Business school as well. David how jarring must it have been to go from that existence in romania over the course of very few years, to now having a stanford mba . How jarring was it . What did it tell you about this country . Peter well i tell you it started the sense of gratitude began to emerge in my mind. Gratitude. I love that word because so many people did so many wonderful things. Why did francis bolton, congresswoman from ohio, reach out to my father . Why did the principal of exeter say, i will keep the place for you . It made no sense. They did it because they could. They did it because they cared and they reached out. It was a culture of reaching out to people to help each other. There was a lot of good things were happening around our time. And i was the beneficiary. Today i can look in the mirror, and i know i am the best Peter Georgescu that i can ever be. And only in america can you do that. David you started in advertising . Why advertising . Peter i was intrigued by people. David why advertising . Peter i was destined to be in the oil business. In fact, before i went to stanford, exxon international, because they knew me and knew my father, said, just graduate from business school, you got a job. By accident i was in the placement directors office, as a friend, because i already had a job. And he said i was going to go interview with this guy. I said, why would i do that . Because only one person signed up. And we need him to come back to stanford, and keep interviewing. [laughter] so you are going to be very interesting. I said, i will do that for you. You are a good friend. I asked what business he was in . Advertising. Perfect, i know nothing about it. Anyway, i interviewed with this guy, and he convinced me. He said, you have to start with research, and he described what research meant. You have to understand people, care for people, size them up and make sure that whatever the client or producer offers this customer, it makes sense to them. Take people very seriously. I was intrigued by that. David you climbed up through the ranks becoming chairman and ceo, but most of what we know now about madison avenue in the 1960s comes from mad men. Is it accurate . Peter well, it is interesting. Mad men, only to this degree i met my wife, who was the head of a portion of the research department. She was a year younger than i, but she went directly to work, and ended up at Young Rubicam in research, so that is where we met. I married my boss. I thought, im an immigrant guy, marrying your boss is a good thing. [laughter] that is how my world really started. David what was it about advertising you came to love . You must have loved it to done to have done as well as she did. Peter the research. The lucky start for me was getting to do the research. I understood that the entire Business World revolves around the customer. Theres always a customer, and i learned to respect the people. I learned to respect the average citizen who is the average customer of american business. David advertising grew and young and rubicam grew. When you were there, but also under your leadership. Acquisitions. You ultimately went public. What was that like . Peter interestingly, Young Rubicam, the Advertising Company was in a sweet spot. The advertising people were really the partners to our clients. We created all kinds of tools. We created the only still today when i was ceo, we began to put together the only really enduring study of what a brand is, and how you keep a brand strong and so forth and we created, like, small agencies around the client. It was team ford, team colgate. We went to a client, they never knew who was in the room, but we provided them with an integrated Marketing Communication program, but then we had to go public because in the 1990s, all the agencies were part of conglomerates and holding companies. We were the only private company, and it was clear to me i could not make any acquisitions. We needed to bolster our international presence. I left in 2000. I was 60 years old. And i sold my stock and disappeared. Two years later, what happened to the business was tragic. In the dotcom bust, they had to protect their multiples, so they fired a ton of people. They fired all the intellectual capital that provided the opportunity for people like me to go to the Corner Office and become my clients best partners. David given the way things have gone, with algorithms, was it inevitable that you could not invest in the intellectual capital . Peter i dont think it was inevitable at all. It is not what happens to you that defines who you are. It is how you respond, and we responded badly. We should have protected the business. We had a unique advantage. We had a differentiation. After i left, they broke all that apart because it was easy to control financial silos stand than an integrated company, which is more difficult to run. David it feels like the large Advertising Companies will have a hard time attracting the Peter Georgescus around the corner. Peter when i was there, y r hired 57 mbas every year. I bet you could hunt the halls of madison avenue, you are unlikely to find mbas. David and yet, in this digital world, a brand is arguably more important than ever to try to sort through the multiplicity. Of outlets. Who is doing that work . Peter again, the advertising and pr companies, direct Marketing Companies are part of it, but they are the executioner of the Communication Strategies being developed by someone else. Today, it is the combination of clients working together with consulting companies. The bains, mckinseys david you are concerned about capitalism. Why . Peter we have a crisis. We have great inequality. David youve had in many ways a remarkable life, but one particular way is you have seen the extremes of socialism and very, very successful capitalism, the full gamut. You are the author of a book. Capitalists, arise you are concerned about capitalism, why . Peter america built the largest economic engine in the world, which was americas middle class. For the world, enterprise capitalism lifted hundreds of millions of people out of abject poverty to a much more humane standard of living. All you have to do is think about china and india, throughout latin america and so forth. So it works. The question for capitalism is an issue of the choice of governance, and what i mean by governance what do you want capitalists to do . For the first 40 years, capitalism was asked to serve not only the shareholder, but the workers and society as well, and society also gave corporations advantages. Like limited liability and also much preferential treatments on taxation versus ordinary income, and that compact ended in the mid1980s. In the mid1980s, there is a new governance which says the shareholder now becomes prime. It was about maximizing shortterm shareholder value, and when you maximize something, it is a zerosum game. There are winners and everybody else is a loser. In this case, everybody else was the workers. Now we have a crisis. We have great inequality. For 40 years, business made sure that their workers, their employees had flat salaries. For 40 years. Its a tragedy, and that affected what happened in the communities. Education, which was paid by real estate taxes, became horrible and not sustainable. Close to 60 of American Homes have to borrow money to put food on the table. So we have to change. And theres a little bit of hope coming here, because we see that business recognizes this issue, and the Business Roundtable, the most Prestigious Organization of capitalism, just months ago, said society has to be taken into consideration. I have worked with the Business Roundtable as an outside consultant and i was thrilled at the courageous thing they did. David you referred to the Business Roundtable with their new statement of principles as courageous. Jamie dimon has talked about this. Other people have talked about it, but is it broadly accepted in the csuite enough that it will actually change . Peter i think that jamie dimon and alex gorsky deserve tremendous credit. The two of them are leaders, and 170 of 180 or so corporations that belong to the Business Roundtable signed up for this. So this is a really serious endorsement of a different version of capitalism, but that is just the beginning of principles. Now, other institutions must come in. One of them is, for example, is just capital. And i am a director. We do many things, but importantly, we measure the justness of corporations. We are creating specific areas of what it means, stakeholder capitalism. Example with workers, what do you do . Well, you have to pay more. I dont mean wealth transfer. I mean pay people out of the incremental value of what they produce. Have them share in the value of what they produce. Turn them from a cost, which shareholder primacy says people are a cost, to say people, employees, are the Value Creators of the 21st century. David we have the broad, systemic change you are talking about without the government . Peter government can help a great deal, but what i learned from romania, and i watched them very carefully for a long time, is government cannot manage capitalism. The government cannot legislate justness. Capitalism must adopt justness and fairness, and it must produce the great work and the great results. Capitalists can do that. We need capitalism. We are not going to compete with china by having the government run businesses. We are going to die. David do we have the time to allow the sorts of changes you are describing . You and i both know we are losing a good part of a generation who are coming from broken homes and are not prepared for the 21st century. Peter lets solve the problem. Lets change the governance and say we demand inclusive growth. The Founding Fathers created this vision that said basically all people are created equal, and they said all these people have an inalienable right to the pursuit of happiness. In contemporary terms, what that means is basically, each person has one vote and that we have equality not of income but equality of opportunity. We need to think of our problems as americas problems. All of our kids are our kids. We must look after all of them. And that is why inclusive prosperity makes sense. If we want democracy, we have to act as a democracy, so it is up to us as people to do that. We capitalists must commit to doing the right thing. To have the right governance. So myself and lots of other good people are working to say stakeholder capitalism must win. It must capture all of us business. It must capture the imagination of all of our people. It must partner with government to make sure that the guardrails are in place. We must hold business accountable for their actions. David Peter Georgescu, thank you so much. Peter thank you. Beyond the routine checkups. Beyond the notsoroutine cases. Comcast business is helping doctors provide care in whole new ways. All working with a new generation of technologies powered by our gigspeed network. Because beyond technology. There is human ingenuity. Every day, comcast business is helping businesses go beyond the expected. To do the extraordinary. Take your business beyond. His father died when he was four and his mother had to move the family to a rough neighborhood in the south bronx, where he did not fit in either on the streets at night or at an elite private school. His mother moved into a military boarding school in pennsylvania. He found his calling as a leader in military school, going onto johns hopkins, to oxford on a scholarship, and to Deutsche Bank before volunteering for a tour in northern afghanistan. In the United States, he turned