It is rare to have an ideological debate about these things. Think asly conservatives, we benefit when we understand the other sides perspective and are not shooting down strawmen on this. Greathat, it is my pleasure to introduce our two panelists for today. We have with us Stephen Moore, a trusted advisor to President Trump at the Heritage Foundation, former colleague at the wall street editorial page. And we have the editor of the author of the book on socialism. The socialist manifesto. They will each make moat Opening Statements and give a rebuttal to each other. We will take questions from the audience, so as you are listening, write down what you would like answered, pass it up to me and we will do a closing statement. Without further ado, lets have Stephen Moore ticket off. Hen by the way, jillian just got back from hong kong. How aboutroposal is we give the Nobel Peace Prize to those Freedom Fighters in hong kong . [applause] stephen second of all, shout out to jennifer and rick. Awesome conference. How many years has this been . Dont they put out an amazing conference . Thank you for bringing me out. I think i have done this five times. Ive always had a great time and who knew there were so many deplorable people here in colorado. [laughter] stephen what am i going to say . Thatistressed by the fact in the land of the free, the United States, the greatest country on earth, latest polls show over half of College Graduates today view socialism has superior to Free Enterprise capitalism. That is distressing for a lot of itsons, one of which am tells you a lot about the sad state of our Education System. The fact that we spend 300,000 it isucate our kids and a huge Public Investment in educating kids, and they come out with this dingbat idea that socialism is superior to capitalism. I was fortunate enough to be friends with milton friedman, the greatest economist of the past 100 years. He used to say what is the enduring lesson of the last century . It is clear to anyone that knows history that socialism, is him, sanderism, bernie it has repressed citizens, caused people to be poor and free capitalism is the key to success. Now we have kids who think we wed more socialism, and so need to do something by the way, i think most people in this room are conservative and thank you for coming to a group that may not necessarily agree with all of your ideas, but we have got to take back our schools. If we allow the left to run our schools, we are going to get kids who dont understand the way the world works. Ckly, my point would need i brought a few slides and tell me when my eight minutes is up and ill stop, but jillian lets do eight minutes and 30 seconds. Well give you a buffer. I dont have a quicker, so could company ok. Weve done a lot of research at heritage and when i was at kato and it shows a linear relationship between the more free you are as a country and by Economic Freedom we mean i think you all know what Economic Freedom is. , propertyrates rights, less regulation, the rule of contract and sound privatization. You can see what you are looking at these charts that show low and behold with this is showing a positive thing. The world has become more free over the last 15 or 20 years and as freedom has emerged, youve seen a reduction in global poverty. I would make the case the single greatest achievement maybe in Human History is what has happened in the last 25 years in terms of through freemarket capitalism at least the Movement Toward freemarket capitalism in places like india and china, we have moved a billion people out of abject poverty. Thatext chart shows Economic Freedom is associated not just with more economic, better Economic Performance but free countries have better environmental improvement. Countries that are rich spend more on protecting the environment. Socialt when shows progress, things like health and other dynamics not just economic but social progress, education and things of that nature, mortality are associated with Economic Freedom. The next chart shows you not only are countries that are richer, a lot richer, they have higher Life Expectancy, Better Health outcomes. Social and economic progress are associated with Economic Freedom finally, lets just talk about the states. This is one of our most powerful arguments for Free Enterprise. Iser taxes, less regulation, you have heard me talk about this before. The big story of what is happening in America Today is the high tax, socialist blue states are getting clobbered by the red states and you can see that in terms of the four biggest states in the country, texas and florida with no income tax and right to work laws and less regulations, literally stealing the assets of the red states like california and new york, which are losing their people. I would stop by saying the evidence is pretty crystalclear that Free Enterprise is the solution to our problems and we need to really think about how we can persuade voters that this is the right solution. Jillian you clocked in at five minutes and 30 seconds. Stephen you can use my extra time, then. All, thank youof to our host for the invitation and the willingness to engage a democraticsocialist in debate. Best of classical liberalism and the best of democratic socialism share common routes and the enlightenment tradition and in an era of growing authoritarianism and narrowmindedness, i am glad to embrace the spirit of free inquiry. I will try to briefly outline a definition of what capitalism definition of what democratic socialism is and what democraticsocialist have accomplished as a political tradition. ll have to speak quickly i might need that eight minutes and 30 seconds. Socialists do not see capitalism as an entirely or even mostly negative historical phenomenon. Emphasize we capitalism isnt merely a market system or freemarket or Free Enterprise system. Weve been using markets for millennia and i believe they serve a crucial role in a future democratic social system, as well. What is capitalism and its origins . Capitalism is a society characterized by wage labor and market dependence. I say that in a pejorative way. That is the definition i will operate from. Before capitalism, feudalism was dominant across much of the world. Hundred, people were divided between those who worked the land and a small minority who appropriated through political coercion. Peasants had access to their own lands, however, lords used force to extract a portion of their yield. Innovation encourage because the more they produced, much of it would go to their lords. Crises,m face periodic the black plague killed half the population in europe. Continent the recovered, it was plunged into warfare. The revolt is of the ruling class reasserted its control in Eastern Europe where peasants had their autonomy stripped even further through an extreme system of feudalism called serfdom. It found them to states and criminalized flight. They secured de facto ownership of their lands, the weaker lords became functionaries of a centralized state. , peasantsround stopped the ruling class from extracting greater surplus through brute force but failed to win the legal land rights. Newish lords searching for ways to produce surpluses beyond exploiting a depleted peasantry aid the groundwork for peasant system to one based on the tenant system. Tenants received leases and had incentives to be ever more productive. They kept all their surplus after the run was paid. Tenant farmers were compelled by maximizet to production. This might sound like a small shift but it was a profound transformation. This process created a highly productive Agricultural Sector able to sustain a Large Population not engaged in farming. The majority without property could be forced into wage labor. It was the first market society, the origin of capitalism. We know the misery of Industrial Society and this set into motion advances in humor productivity and social wealth. I would agree with your assessment the last 45 years on a world level including brazil, india, and china. I would attribute a lot of that to the statement is liberalism as opposed to just free market laissezfaire system. Democraticsocialists dont want a break with the present. We think from this new condition of abundance, key aspects of capitalism, the coercion of wage labor, abject poverty and extreme abundance can be done away with. What is democratic socialism in theory . Complete aouldnt system with its crimes, i am not advocating stalinism or other systems. I will focus on defending the world you i believe in, not the caricature of it worldview i believe in, not a caricature of it. We believe in the in alien ability of social rights. Socialism isnt to reject capitalism completely but ask questions. Freedom of press is a good thing, but if we live in a Society Without guarantee literacy, it would be a writing name only. That is our opposition to capitalist society, it isnt due to the democratic rights it extends but the ones it limits. Democratic socialists believe profoundly in the importance of the individual and the idea that our individuality can only be developed in society through valuing liberty and equality, socially providing the Bare Necessities of life. Food, housing, education, health care to allow individual flourishing. Inspired by these ideas, democratic socialism in the United States have shaped the society from the eight hour work week to the struggles against for women suffrage to rights for black americans and so on. Social democrats have been at the forefront of such movements for the past 120 years. God rested on the seventh day. Off,u get the sixth day that is the product of a democraticsocialist led Labor Movement. The democracy we have, the democracy we should aspect and enhance was foisted upon capitalists against their wishes by popular struggle. What is democratic socialism in practice . I think this is a difficult there arebecause contradictions of all sorts but a system theoretically so i will draw on concrete examples. Lets think about democraticsocialists in a party with marxist roots and radical ambition which covered a state governed a state for nearly 40 years, sweden where the social democratic party, the governedrkers party uninterrupted from the 1930s until 1976. They were able to create a society with public guarantees education,ldhood to this day ind europe, social democratic welfare states, the rights of Business Owners have been undermined for the regulation of capital. The societies limit freedom for people to own private property, places that produce goods and tovices, your car or house, do what they will with their private property. For the majority that dont come with a enjoy a greater range of choice and a greater chance to fill their potential. They have this greater freedom not because private property is repelled but the freedom of your own private property is limited. Fundamentally, socialists believe in the rights of working people to the fruits of their own labor. Of course we believe in individual rights and freedoms. Of course there are certain spheres the state should not canr, but our individuality only be developed in a society with a more robust set of democratic iraqis. It is up guarantees. A is obvious to any american person born in fairfield county, connecticut will have vastly different outcomes than someone born in flint, michigan. If the system isnt allowing people to reach their potential, filled with amazing wealth but also explication in poverty and all sorts of misery, how can we make it better . We tried to tame the system at well first, building welfare state to get the basic social rates. Rights. We expand the mandate or trial and error and construct a more Participatory Society like our predecessors in the nordic states did. Otheromplished what societies did with mass movements inspired by democraticsocialist ideas. We pushed to transform unions from their instruments of ing togclass bargain worker cooperatives in a competitive marketplace. If democracy is a good thing when we vote every year at the ballot box, then why not in our workplaces . Jillian one minute over. This will come out of your response. Bhaskar work ownership and not merely the regulation and shaping of capitalist outcomes is the difference between democratic socialism and social democracy. It is my profoundly for future generations will look upon capitalism, the system we have today as a time when life outcomes were accidents of birth. Much the same way we look on other more extreme forms of exploitation we have already done away with with shock and disgust. Is araticsocialist horizon we should move toward. Continue, youe we have a little extra time and i want to make sure we are talking about the same definitions. I got a pretty concise definition of what socialism is for him but what does it mean to you . Stephen it means more government control of the economy. He made a have lot of excellent points. The problem i have with this argument that we just want to move from Free Enterprise more in this direction, but we dont want maoism. We want a middle ground. The idea of not that kind of socialism and ideas like that is saying, we want the good kind of socialism like nordic countries. Thats like saying we want the good venereal disease, not the bad. Toward theu move socialist direction, the more you are giving up your freedom and i loved what you talked about, the rights of individuals. The bill of rights, which is one of the most Important Documents ever written and part of our constitution, is all about safeguarding those rights you are talking about by limiting government. Thats what a bill of rights is. What our founders were worried about was that government would invade these basic fundamental rights you talk about. I wanted to make one other point. Could you put up those charts again because there is one other chart i want to put up. While you are doing that, i will simply say that a lot of people who want more government control of the economy, democraticsocialism, could you move toward the last one . This one. Go back. You mentioned education, health care obviously, we want people to have the highest Quality Health care possible and i actually believe in the rich country we have, we can afford to provide everyone who is a citizen very high Quality Health care. I think we should assure people have that and you mentioned education. Absolutely. Part of a democratic capitalist system is you need a wellinformed electorate who can make good decisions. I showed you this because it is so interesting to me. This is just showing the rate of inflation, the rate of Cost Increases across all sorts of industries. When they do the Consumer Price index, that is made up of thousands and thousands of products and hundreds of hundreds of industries. Some industries have faster rates of inflation than others and what is so interesting about this chart, looking at price increases over the last 20 years. The things traded in the Free Enterprise system and this is one of the reasons free trade is important. When you get competition and private enterprise, look at what has happened to most consumer items. Cars to apparel, furniture, toys, computers, software. These are not for the most part regulated by government and their prices have become more people. Le to look at the left side of the chart and you can see the two industries in america were prices are completely out of control. Surprise, surprise. Education and health care. My question to you all is what do those two industries have in common . Government. You mentioned Public Education and i asked my liberal friends, why do we have the government played such a big role in health care and education . Do you know what they say . To make it more affordable. They are doing a great job of it. The two industries with runaway costs have become least affordable. I will close with this and turn it back over. I think the biggest disgrace in this country is our Public Education system. I really do. [applause] are robbinghink we people who grow up in newark and st. Louis and michigan, detroit, washington im from chicago. Ive gone to the Public Schools in inner cities there. One of you in this room would ever send your kids to those schools. They are incredibly depressing places to go, more like prisons than schools. I live in washington, d. C. And it is the same kind of thing. Why do we tolerate that . We should give every single american child a voucher to go whatever school they want to. Jillian thank you. Bhaskar first of all, i agree we should avoid the no truth cap in fallacy. If im talking to a libertarian and im sharing this contempt discontent with the way society is run, they will agree with me and say the problem is, society isnt capitalist enough. In the same way when you talk about certain socialists with certain socialists about soviets and so forth, they say that is not the same. There are some forms of capitalism that have veered toward ugly authoritarianism. Neither of us defend those systems. It is a constant political battle to safeguard our rights no matter who is in charge,. Lets talk about the distinct state power in the tradition i have come from. Played theot only vital role of achieving political democracy in the early 20th century, but have governed for decades with a peaceful transfer of power. Ther they ruled from mid1930s to 1976, what happened when the sap lost an election to the swedish conservatives . They left power peacefully and regained power about six years later. These countries in the span of a 30 or 40 years of social democratic rule, they made inroads on the rights of capital through roaming regulation and particularly through the power of spectral barging bargaining. Movement, notor necessarily the state, but by theLabor Movement was driving force regulating and making inroads against the power of private property. Individual rights were not trampled, so i think this is a key distinction and point of too,reement between us which is i believe personal freedom can be upheld while still making inroads over certain private property rights, whereas you believe they are intrinsically linked. Indies societies with higher wage economies, with more militant demands from the workers movements, you have what do you have when you have higher wage demands . You have pushes toward capitalintensive technology. You have greater rates of firm failure, but that meant these were more competitive economies. Case of nordic countries, they were economies very much driven around free trade. Tariffs and trade are not necessarily a left or right issue. Democraticsocialism as Donald Stephen as donald trump has shown. Bhaskar there are times when protecting yourself from an industry, it might be useful to the tariff from time to time or expose industries to competitive pressures. The final thing ill say is when it comes to the Education System, and the United States, weve had a very weird mix of private and public. In our country, there are more costeffective and sufficient efficient means of Health Insurance. In monopolies, it makes sense to serve as ante actor. I think we still want the impetus of innovation but we can do that instead with worker owned and controlled firms. The real question is, what is so particular about the rights of private capitalists as individual capitalists that you defend . If the argument isnt just about markets but about private ownership, then you need to make a case for private ownership as opposed to unleashing the full workingl of every person in america by giving them a proper stake in the place where they spend 40, 50, 60 hours a week. Stephen can i Say Something quickly about that because im sure youve read my piece in the wall street journal about this. I could not agree more. We need to have every single American Worker own a piece. We need to make sure every worker in america becomes a worker owner. There is such a simple way to do that would lead to middleclass people having ownership of the andanies they work for retiring at a much higher rate of Retirement Benefits than under Social Security and that is simply let every single american you can look this up, it was two or three weeks ago in the journal. We talked about an own america plan. That would be to allow anyone under the age of 35 to 10 of their paycheck, rather than the black hole of Social Security, they put it into an individual account, an index fund that owns every stock in america and we found that by the way, when ive done this debate with others, look at Social Security. It is the biggest ripoff for young people ever. We found the average young i think youll subscribe to this idea because you talk about worker capitalism. That would mean every single american would own companies. They would own ge, fedex, google, apple. We found that the average middleclass american would millionith more than 1 in their account because of the erest of compound int over 40 years and they would have a benefit to her three times higher than Social Security and be able to leave 1 million to their heir. How about that idea . Bhaskar ownership implies control. Ownership implies control in that, i think youll find the in the social democrats 1970s when they pursued a wage earner fund, eventually capital role reject that plan once it s power and turns that into democratic control. I think that proposal sounds like a good starting point to me. It sounds like something i would potentially support, but it is something a lot of the powerful interests that keep american capitalism going would reject if, in fact stephen it is actually the democraticsocialist liberal democrats who do not want it. Trump is interested in that idea, paul ryan was interested in it. By liberal democrats who dont want america to own a piece, they want them beholden to the Social Security system. This is the problem with in my opinion, the problem with what youve laid out is you have this vision that politicians are angels. If they were angels but there are not angels. Ive been in washington for 35 years. These are not good people, for the most part. They have their own interests at stake and that is why i always tell young people, why would you want the government will give you this and that for free. The most important thing we have in america, you have to treasure it, safeguard it. Millions of americans have lost their lives to keep it, your freedom and liberty. Dont give it to politicians in washington. Fight for it. More ofle to give up their liberty, more of the decisionmaking to politicians and i dont think that model works out so well for the people you and i both want to help. Jillian i will suss this idea out because i think when we are talking about these systems, capitalism or socialism is how do we have a system that best checks some of the worst impulses of human nature whether it is greed or the tendency toward exploitation . , id like you to explain a little more how your feel your alternative would address those problems more effectively than capitalism . Bhaskar the starting point is coming to start with reality and systems that have worked. Ive seen the successes of are states in europe and the way in which the welfare that were successful in boomwar broom also also ran into problems including different declines in Firm Profitability in the late 1960s and 1970s. There are different ways to approach this problem. You could say the problem was born out of excessive regulations, over strong unions and so forth, and the history of the last 20 or 30 years has been a history of capital being unburdened by those things and finding new ways to innovate and create wealth, or you can say, like those of us on the left, that this showed a structural contradiction or limit of social democracy. It placed more power in the hands of working people but left the structures of society in the hands of capitalists. Capitalists could say, this bargain was working for me in the 1950s and 1960s. Im a swedish capitalist and i like the fact there were less strikes than there was in france. Yes, i am taxed a little more, yes there is more regulation, but for the price of industrial for the price of having stable outcomes, im willing to give this up. But what happens when things start to get tighter and the International Environment changes and there is more International Competition and things like the opec shock and you are not as profitable as before . You have the, ability to say we will withhold investment and that is way capitalists bear their power in society. We all have one vote but we have different economic power so they are able to assert this undemocratic blackmail. The solution of going from social democracy, which works, and we can admit it works even if we dont think it works as well as another system. If i am proposing a social democratic system, and you are proposing a system based on more market competition, maybe your system in your mind euros 5 gdp growth and mine yields 3. 2, but this isnt the gulags and red lines, we are talking about the difference. We figure ways to take this blackmail and extra power away from capital because we think there is a different system that better aligns the needs of working class people with this broader Structure Society and because we think had a moral and wage labor, being forced to work with someone is a andtruct under duress unacceptable. That is a moral and ethical distinction so if we start from the starting point, we figure out how to alleviate exploitation in ways that dont create new forms of oppression but this is a constant struggle and politics. Edmund burke says, and i dont often quote him, but a line that is apt, the only thing worse the existing tyranny is failure to overturn that tyranny. We have had decades of experience tinkering and experience in state power that hasnt yielded disastrous outcomes and works did yields, the slowmoving disaster of 5 versus 3. 2 gdp growth. Lian i wanted to ask you when i am talking to my friends on the far left, their big critique is they feel the capitalist system in the United States is rigged against them. It is not really a free market, it is big as this is exercising political power, hiring expensive lobbyists and lawyers, using licensing regimes to block people out of business. What would you do to reform that . Is that possible within the Current System or is it too far gone . Democraticsocialism we dont have stephen that stephen we dont have free market capitalism in america. We probably have more than most and it is the reason everyone in the world wants to come here, even people from the nordic countries, but the fact is you make a good point. What tends to happen is when corporations get a lot of power, you know this, what is the first thing they do . They run to washington for protection. This is why we want to divorce politics from business. You make some good points about the power of these Big Companies but the best way of regulating that power is through competition. Letting people compete with these big powers and oftentimes, you knock them off their perch and that is a good thing. Ive seen washington ive seen this so many times. Ive been in the swamp for 25, 30 years. Alliances, you get an between you Big Government and big business that is free marketd is not capitalism. I am for Small Businesses and for a lot of things you are saying that you are for. I just think the way to do it is let people be free and not run the government to make these decisions for us. Jillian i will start having you pass a questions but i have a question for you. I thought one of the most interesting statements from your book is the equation of socialism with stalinism, a among rhetorica conservatives is wrong and not only outside of russia. I wanted to give you a chance to address that because it is difficult historically to the sect or draw distinctions between socialism and the places like russia and china, some of the places in latin america where it has gone poorly. For me whatplain has gone wrong with the socialist projects in those places and how that differs from what you are proposing . Bhaskar fundamentally, a lot of the failures to solve with the soviet union resulted from a few sources. When was the extreme under development of russia, the country ravaged by world war, civil war and at a low level development. It was compounded by a shift toward forced collectivization, which was based on misunderstandings of agriculture, and also on a very inept form of central planning. Ofs combined with a lack existing free Civil Society, lack of existing liberal and democratic freedoms lead to a country where you could say that during the first 20, 30 years of the soviet union, extreme political repression but a degree of catchup. Eventually, you had a system it,h was as some people put all funds and no fingers. It is capable of doing things like mass machinations or road projects, but unable to innovate and stay competitive and the fact there were shortages that certain decisions were politicized, which furthered the enhanced role of the bureaucracy. What i reject also in capitalism is the role of private capitalistsin the stephen what do you mean by unaccountable . A company is unaccountable . In a capitalist system you said unaccountable. Bhaskar if i am working for you, if i am the average worker in the United States, i dont have a union. I dont have access very limited access compared to other countries, if you are also for expanding freedom for private enterprise, you should be for expanding freedom for workers to join unions as easily as other countries. In the United States, we have the solidarity strike which means if i work at a hotel down the street and it is on strike, i cant go on strike for solidarity. I am primarily talking about at the point of production, the way in which most of our workplaces are run. I think we can have a system where we still have a division of labor and set tasks and differential wages, but were average workers can elect their management to terms, in which we can subject more decisionmaking to collective processes. Just like in the soviet union or without a free Civil Society, news of a famine cannot spread. What happens to wells fargo and other companies when malfeasance destroyed our economy 12 years ago. Along withican the politicians of america. Stephen i dont have a problem with unions. If people want to join a union, i believe in the right of one of our basic First Amendment rights is the right of association so if workers want and collectively bargain with their employer, i have no problem with that whatsoever but i have a big problem with forcing every worker in that company to join the union. Do you think are you against right to work laws . When i showed you the blue states or the red states, the onlys with forced unionism creating about half as many jobs as the states without forced unionism. Bhaskar in the context of the u. S. , the right to work laws enfeeble a labor music assaulted by capital. And mostcountries countries of the world that havent larger and more powerful labor music movements, certain things that exist in the u. S. Labor dont really exist in other countries. For example, automatic deductions and things like that. In other countries, you can be covered by an agreement and to stop doubt. Very few workers to stop doubt because their unions are more engaged and they feel more a part. You believe in them joining union even if they dont want to . Bhaskar i think the act of unionizing shouldnt be a one time thing either way. As individuals, you might not want people tops out because of problems of the free rider problem but the worker should have the chance to advocate with other workers for decertification. To make it easier to unionize like you can in other countries, but make it easier to decertify too. Jillian with that, i will switch over to audience questions. I will begin with one for step hen. Income inequality, is it in hurriedly in desirable inherently undesirable . Stephen of course. The focus on income inequality is wrong. It is not the right problem to focus on. The fact we have bill gates and Warren Buffett and people like lebron james and people who make millions and billions of dollars is not a problem. Bill gates and steve jobs and fred smith, they build great companies. They achieved the american dream. What is wrong with that . Theyve employed hundreds of thousands of people. People like that are awesome and give back to their communities. There being rich does not make you and i poorer. That is what we love about the Free Enterprise system. I had a conversation with bernie a few weeks ago and he said yeah, ive become rich but how did i become rich . I became rich by giving people things they wanted. Nobody put a gun to anyones head and said you had to go to home depot. He had an incredible entrepreneurial idea that made everybody better off, so i think our focus should really be, how do we raise the Living Standards of the people at the bottom because the american dream. To achieve better economic outcomes for people at the bottom. The single most important thing, we have to talk about every single day every single child white,ica for the black, asian, whatever their economic background, they should all have the ability to go to a good school. Why do we tolerate the fact that these kids go to horrible government run schools . Who are those schools run by . Oft i believe has become one the most evil institutions in america, the teachers unions. They advocate for themselves and not the kids. Jillian would you care to respond to that . Bhaskar by every independent measure, what is the most effective country Education System in the world . It is finland and finlands Education Minister is literally a marxist. She might be a step to my left. Public schools can be done very well. I was a beneficiary of a public full system. It was her aggressively funded by property taxes but it was a. Ystem tha part of the reasons certain schools are underperforming has to do with the wider context of poverty and neglect people are growing up in. It is difficult to perform well if you are going to school hungry. The problem with our schools is we need a more consistent system of federal funding and federal standards for our schools and not this retreat to voucherization, which potentially is just the retreat ofo really small systems petty hierarchies were certain people have access to better goods than others. Education is one thing that should be universal and should be equal. I think it should be universal. I just think it is not fair that i got to go to a great high incomeand these low blacks and my oriented minorities go to these crappy high schools. Some of this is family backgrounds, no doubt. Some kids who grow up in fatherless homes have severe disadvantages. The welfare state is the other reason we have so much poverty in america. It has created poverty, not alleviated it. We have great evidence that when thoseke those many of same kids, ive worked with a lot of those kids in washington, d. C. Who weve given vouchers to to go to Catholic Schools, jewish schools, private schools, and they do very well. Their performance i remember one of the kids who i got to know very well and we had he way, the only program in eight years that barack obama wanted to get rid of was a Voucher Program for lowincome people in washington, d. C. I remember one of the black parents said to me why does barack obama want to get rid of this program . His kids go to the best one of the best schools in the country. They said why shouldnt my kids be able to go to that school . Way, barackthe obama lives in Public Housing too. Why should only rich people be able to go . Bhaskar any child should be able to go to school with the same opportunity. The culture of poverty myth is largely a myth. I brought the example of finland up. Finland is a country that completely banned private education. Jew, teacherlim, kid religion after 4 00 p. M. When they are home. That would be the system i would be in favor of. Stephen you are in favor of banning Public Private schools . Bhaskar im in favor of high quality Public Education and there is a sphere for religion and that sphere is in Civil Society and private life, but just like i am not in favor of a draft overseas, i am not in favor of Catholic Schools in the United States. Jillian im getting quite a few questions for you about if we are trying to collect devise or orrease Public Ownership ownership of Business Private industry. What would that look like and what would that happen to the people who resist this . In your book, you were talking about the example of a pasta Bottle Company for the sauce. How does this play out when it is a politically divisive issue and you wouldnt have people who are Business Owners necessarily getting on board with it . What is your policy on the use of force . There are winners and losers in any transformation but winners and losers need to be carried out by democratic means and with means that respect certain peoples in alienable rights. Unalienable rights. Awould say there is possibility that within the next 10 to 15 years in this country, about 15 plus percent of our gdp in the Health Care Industry could be socialized and turned into medicare for all. That is a large chunk of the economy and a big shift. If you work at one of these companies, you should be worried about your job and the transition. That is why Bernie Sanders health care plan, which by far is the most serious and taking these issues headon, has a clause about it Just Transition for workers in those sectors. If you are a private Health Insurance ceo, your life might go from being spectacularly wealthy to being middleclass like the rest of us. There are a few losers in this process, but the losers arent being thrown in prison. These losers are instead knocked down a few pegs to the level of everyone else. And there are far more winners winners among uninsured, millions of people dying of preventable diseases over the decades, or have a lower Life Expectancy than europe and other advanced industrial countries. Stephen ive got to address health care because i think it one, wehology number have big problems in the way we pay for health care but ladies and gentlemen, we have by far the best Health Care System and medical Service System in the world. No country comes close. How do we know this . Kings and political leaders from all over the world when they get sick, what do they do . They come to the United States for care. The quality of care in the United States with some exceptions is exceptional and the way we deal with diseases, whether it is cancer, Heart Disease if you look at the last 80 blockbuster drugs that have come onto the market that have dealt with crippling diseases and sometimes fatal diseases, 60 of them have been developed in the united dates of america. How is it these other socialist countries have low costs . It is simple. They free ride on our system. If we went to a socialized system, the problem is who will develop the next generation of drugs and vaccines to deal with ms, lou gehrigs disease, alzheimers . Even in medicare, medicare costs you guys at the journal have done great reports. Than people in the private system because there is a cost shift. Medicare shifts the cost on to the private insurance market. That means you are not going to save money by putting everybody in the medicare system because now, who will you shift the extra cost to . Costs will go up. We have a lot of problems with our Healthcare System and it is true our Health Care Costs are rising at a dramatic level but i would say it is because of too much government and not too little. Jillian one more question before we wrap this up. I will ask it and a variation to you. On the left, there seems to be in people with an affinity towards marxism, a divide. People who think it is about economic disparity and people who think it is about gender and race and many other ways it plays out in the system. What is your opinion about that . Where do you stand on that debate and what is your solution to greater equity . Bhaskar being a socialist, i oppose oppression of all types. That ifit is obvious you are talking about the conditions of black americans in this country, and you are talking about giving these moree more economic power, rights, you are talking about redistributing power from large corporations, from others redistributing wealth and through various programs, and that involves class. It is obvious to me that class is an underlying thing. Yourin this room, a lot of life outcomes are determined by how much cash you have in your pocket. There are deeper struggles against oppression we will fight over many years, but i think class is the most important underlying thing and beyond that, it is a galvanizing glue that can unite people across this country. Cant build a Political Coalition if you are going to say that 35 of the country roughly, white males are all the enemy. That seems like a surefire way to assure a public and republican majority. There is a quote that goes, of course you say you want women to men, but men arent equal to men and i think the democraticsocialist ideal is a society in which we all band together and unite and move forward, and not just argue over who has it worse or better off. I think that politics is represented by Bernie Sanders and others who can actually win a majority in this country and not just for the divide up electoral map. Theian my variation on question to you would be, for better or for worse, the discussion on the left is about inequity and specifically about how inequity affects people from different racial or gender groups. What is the capitalist answer to that problem . How do you defend it and bring people back on board on the right . Like i said my friend walter williams, who has written a great book about the state against blacks, if you want a great answer to your question, read that book. All sorts of Government Policies where did slavery come from . It wasnt a private sector slavery came from government. Where did jim crow laws come from . Government. Walter williams would say probably the single worst thing that ever happened to the black family he would say, the black family survived slavery, jim crow laws, all sorts of discrimination laws. The one thing the black family could not survive was the welfare state and the welfare state has probably in the single biggest detriment to black advancement in this country. Replace dont want to fathers with the state and that is what we did. One last point, and by the way, this has been a great debate. He did a great job. That was really good. [applause] stephen an old saying, i wrote a book about 10 years ago called it is Getting Better all the time. It is just the history of the last hundred years. If you want to get the book, you can look at the statistics. Health,pens in terms of environmental improvement, and not just economic improvement are people at the top of the big story has been the Economic Advancement of people at the bottom. Core, thee to be United States is a pretty good place to be poor in. The average person has significantly higher Living Standards than the average Living Standard of medical class people in most countries middleclass people in other countries. I think freedom and free market capitalism are the way to do it and one of the things that strikes me when i give talks on College Campuses and try to persuade people about the benefits of free market capitalism, some of the kids agree with it and some dont, but the kids who come up to me after im done speaking and say they you know what, these are the immigrants who came into this country from other countries. They say i dont understand my colleagues. Why do they want to socialize medicine . Why do they want to socialize education . Thisthink, i come to country to get away from those policies so lets not chase losers. Lets do it the right way. Jillian weve got a few minutes left but i would like to get your closing thoughts. Bhaskar one interesting thing about these debates i have on the right, and i appreciate the debate, i appreciate the invitation, is that often, people with more libertarian inclinations are of the opinion that theyve been losers in this battle. The u. S. Has a large welfare state, that it has all these onerous regulations and things like that and the last decade since the new deal, we have been of Free Enterprise running against the barriers of the welfare state. For us on the left, we think about the last 100 plus years of American History as a history of an underdeveloped welfare state, which isnt universal, which has inefficiencies in part we think instead of having one party rooted in the Labor Movement or workingclass like in other countries and another party rooted in industrial s or Christian Democratic Party and so on, we have what some socialists call the most enthusiastic capitalism party on the country and the second most enthusiastic capitalist party on the planet. To me, the solution to a lot of our problems, but not all of our problems in society, includes guaranteeing a bedrock of social rights which can be done efficiently through the use of a universal state that is governed by certain norms and rules and so on. This wouldnt be a guaranteed outcome of either efficiency or a better life for people, but i think it could be a starting point. Sphere of the commanding height of the economy, there are things that government can do well. There are other sectors we want more competition, where we need things from failures to keep us going. The question is, what should the price of failure be . If you are a worker at a firm that is moving into a new sector and you fail, and your innovation fails, what should happen toinnovation fails, thent should happen to you . I think you should fall on the net of the welfare state, be retrained and going to another sector. As think it is in many ways why the systems you saw in other countries and elsewhere were more effective and efficient even from the standpoint of economic efficiency in the 1950s and 1970s. It out for the affiliate in innovation. Unions were the Strom Thurmond american italism makes corporations allows corporations to a certain extent to be lazy. You have lowwage workers without rights and without guarantees pushing them to be more dynamic. What i would say is fundamentally, we can have a society in which we secure a bedrock of social rights, and tie this to worker ownership and fair production. Worker ownership means not just shareholding, but in fact means being able to elect your board, it means taking o home not just a fixed salary, but dividends. This is a true ownership society. But it means asking questions about the nature of freedom and the nature of democracy that libertarians simply do not want to ask. All right. We will have to leave it at that. Thanks to you guys for staying and listening and thanks to both my panelists for this important discussion. Announcer friday, discussion about updating the 1996 Communications Decency act, which gives websites immunity from liability for what users post. We will be live at 10 00 a. M. Eastern on cspan. At noon, the Heritage Foundation hosts its forum on the rebounding rebuilding americas military project, focused on the u. S. Army. Cspan 2, retired general jim mattis talks about his new book, call sign chaos, looking at his life and career in the military. Saturday on book tv, our interview with a disability rights attorney and author. In her book, she details becoming the first death lined graduate of Harvard Law School lind graduate of Harvard Law School. Most students can expect teachers to teach them. I could not do that. I had to think, what are the potential unknowns how can i find those unknowns . This process of trying to identify unknowns and figure them out and come up with solutions. At 10 00 p. M. On afterwards, an American University professor talks about his book, how to be an antiracist. He is interviewed by a Princeton University professor. Evendont think wellmeaning people, people who are trying to be part of the movement against racism, recognize really that the history of this term. Eugenicists were classified as racists. They said, im not racist. When jim crow segregationists were charged with being racist, they said im not racist. Now today even white nationalists are saying, i am not racist. No matter whether they are in the white house or planning the next mass shooting. Announcer at 11 00 p. M. , jim mattis recounts his military career and his thoughts on leadership in his book, call sign chaos, learning to lead. Cspan 2. Tv on in 2020 . S your vision studentcam is asking students what issue they most want candidates to address in the campaign . This is the video documentary competition for middle and high school students. A 5,000 grand prize as an award. Students are asked to produce a Short Documentary including cspan video and reflecting differing points of view. Information to help you get started is on our website. Joint chiefs of staff chair general Joseph Dunford discussed u. S. Foreign strategy at the council of foreign relations. In a conversation with david sanger of the new york times, general dunford talked about the strategy has changed since his tenure as the joint chiefs of staff chair. This is one hour. [applause] ut the strategy has changed since his tenure as the joint chiefs of staff chair. This is one hour. [applause]