Transcripts For CSPAN2 Michael Tanner The Inclusive Economy 20240714

Good afternoon. Thank you for taking time out of the speed of the day to join us inside our capitol Hill Briefing entitled the inclusive economy how to bring wealth to americas poor. My name is jeff and im a director of government and external affairs at the Cato Institute, Public Policy Research Organization here in dc dedicated to the pencils of limited government, individual liberty, free markets and peace. Todays discussion is named after a recently published book by the same title as todays event, its available to you on a Registration Table as you came in right outside these doors but for those of you who do not receive a copy on your way in, please feel free to grab one on your way out and if we decide that you would like a copy later feel free to contact us wed be happy to drop one by your office. With us today to discuss this book are two of cato scholars, michael tanner, author of todays book and emily akins, catos director of polling will discuss her Ongoing Research on americans attitudes toward welfare policy, poverty and work. Tanner is a senior fellow at the institute where he had research into a variety of domestic policies with an emphasis on social welfare for healthcare and retirement. He has written numerous books including going for broke, deficits, debt and the entitlement crisis, healthy competition, what is holding the healthcare and how to free it in the poverty of welfare helping others in civil society. His writings have appeared in nearly every major american newspaper including the New York Times, wall street journ journal, Los Angeles Times and the usa today. He has been named by Congressional Quarterly as one of the nations five most influential experts on social security. Emily is a Research Fellow and director of boeing at the Cato Institute where she focuses on Public Opinions, american politics, political psychology and social movements and has authored several indepth survey reports including the state of free speech and intolerance in america. Policing america and the five types of voters. Research appeared in the washington post, politico, wall street journal, usa today, Los Angeles Times and other publications. She earned her phd in Political Science from ucla. With that i will turn over things to michael. Thank you very much. I appreciate you coming out. Its much too nice a day to be in here listening to me. I appreciate the suffering that will go with this. As we talk about a subject i think is not talked about enough in washington and that is poverty and how we should get people out of poverty. We spend a great deal of money fighting poverty maybe not as much as some people like to maybe more than others would like but its quite a bit. If you look at all federally tested programs or programs that say in the definition this is an insight Poverty Program we have about 100 and such insight Poverty Programs at the federal level, 70 odd provide benefits directly to individuals in the other provide benefits to low income communities. They spend about 700 billion at the federal level every year on these programs and another. A billion or so at the state, local levels. Were spending nearly a trillion dollars every year fighting poverty and in fairness these programs have succeeded at some level and do reduce the poverty rate. Poverty rate is lower today because of these programs that would be in the absence of these programs or least you cant prove the counterfactual but we do know they do reduce poverty rates. The question is whether or not simply reducing the poverty rate or making poverty less miserable should be the goal, ultimate goal of our insight poverty politics and because you could take or go to a Community Like [inaudible] up in baltimore where freddie gray was killed or east Fresno California or kentucky where the poorest community and chimeric in america and are these Thriving Communities are the people in these communities flourishing and that ultimately should be the goal for Public Policy is human flourishing, thriving human beings able to become all they can be. If you look at maslows hierarchy of needs we do a reasonable level at the very bottom in the base of the pyramid of hr people have enough food, shelter, clothing and so on to even in the 1960s with large numbers of the port do not have Running Water or electricity or real hunger in america was prevalent. We do have a reasonable job in dealing with those needs. We dont do very good at getting people to rise up to the top of that where there are the masters of their own fate and selfsufficient and in charge of their own lives and control their own destinies and to become all their individual talents will let them be. When i started looking at poverty for this book, inclusive economy i said lets go back to the beginning and strip it down and get away from the sterile debate we have in washington right now which is we spend 98 billion of food stamps and democrats own and say we need to make that 99 under public and say lets cut it back to 97 and assume one change will make a huge difference in peoples lives. Lets strip it down to the beginning. First thing i want to do is look at why people are actually poor and i found there are two competing theories on poverty, if you will, in this country. Both politically and academically get but enough heads between these two theories. On one side is the theory that says if poverty is the result of individual choices and individual decisions by the poor themselves and theres a culture of poverty out there and that leads the poor to make a series of poor decisions in their lives and those decisions are what trap people in poverty. On the other side of this, you find people on the liberal side of the spectrum say that as far as it goes but you cant ignore the fact that we have a system in the societ a society that ged discrimination is still prevalent. Its quite conservative people like me that leads to economic implications that could lead some people behind and out of the equation and that these things could also cause poverty. The legacy of slavery alone is that africanamericans have been deprived of seven to 10 trillion of capital in the community. Those sort of things cant simply be left behind in the patient. So whos right . Theres truth to both sides of the equation. I dont think that you can strip the floor of the agency and that they are by the whims of fate that nothing they do matters, that they ar are entirely at the mercy of outside forces and they have no consequences. I think that is a very demeaning way to look at the poor. But i also think you have to recognize we all make our choices within certain constraints. And the simple fact is if you are a poor minority child lets say growing up in an area that has jobs where the School System is lousy, where the Police Tackle you every time you step foot outside your door, yo of yu are going to make up ending end up taking that is the combination of the individual choices people make and the context in which the society sets those decisions that ultimately leads to poverty. Looking at all this i said there is some truth in this society and thatside andthat side, butd deadline if you will that we need to look at, and that is the government itself and where the government policy gets in the way of people actually rising out of poverty. How often the government is messing things up on both sides of the equation for the wrong individual choices or enforced the societal discrimination that actually leads people to make the choices they do. So, i identified in the book basically five areas where i think we should be looking to reform policies in order to help people get out of poverty. The first is criminal justice reform. We know that our criminal Justice System is bias against people of the greatest of the way from the over criminalization of an america to the war on drugs. Let us not forget that eric garner in new york was killed for the crime of selling and im taxed cigarettes. We need to look at the over criminalization of society but also the way the Police Interact with people on the street and the way we deal with the rest. We know for example if you are a minority person or live in innercity that youre going to be treated and arrested more likely for drug use than if you are white. And yet they use drugs at approximately the same rate. Once you are arrested we know you will be sentenced more harshly if you are a person of color. We need to look at the way people are treated in prison and look at the problem that stems from having a criminal record when you get out of prison. The fact is if you commit a crime and make a mistake you get a felony conviction and when you are 40yearsold you are still going to have to carry around a criminal record. Its going to prevent you from getting a job that says you have a felony conviction that it can also prevent you from getting housing because landlords ask whether you have a criminal record and it can prevent you from getting Financial Aid to go to school. To get a license for various occupations. In ohio with a heavy Person Training Program to teach people in prison to become farmers that its illegal to get a barbarous license in a felony conviction in the state of ohio. It seems sort of a pointless exercise. But we need to look at all these things. One of the things the conservatives worry a great deal about is women who have children outside marriage pointed to a host of problems from high on the marriage birthrates. They say go to the innercity 67, 68 having children outside of marriage and i would say exactly who are they supposed to marry. Arrows will send pointed out, our criminal Justice System is strict 1. 5 million black men out of the marriage pool because they are tied up in the criminal Justice System which makes it difficult for them to find a job that could allow them to support a family to get the housing and education and all the things i talked about unless you reform will justice, youre not going to be able to deal with things like the marriage birthrates. So thats number one. We need to deal with the system and Vanderbilt University suggested that reform alone could reduce poverty rates by as much as 20 . The single reform. Second, we need to look at the Education System. We are sometimes more likely to be poor than if you go out and finish high school or go on to college. And yet we have a School System today that all too often fails. We have a School System today thabut all too often exists fore benefit of the Teachers Union and the administrator not have the appearancforthe parents andn themselves, that there is very little innovation, very little competition within our School System, very little improvement. And its not just a function of money. We notic know this but baltimor, washington, d. C. , chicago, la are spending more than the School Systems almost anywhere in the country and it getting poorer results. We need to look at the Education System in ways we can bring more innovation and more competition and more control over the way parents operating for their childrens sake than for the system itself. The system is not the goal ultimately educating children is the goal. Here, this one actually surprised me a little but just how important it is, that is we need to make reform to housing and bring down the cost of housing for low income people. You know, housing picks up a disproportionate amount of poor peoples incomes about 40 on average they poor persons income goes to pay the rent. That is a huge amount when you have other needs as well. At the same time, if you have unaffordable rent, it locks them into lowincome communities and they cant move to an area that had more jobs other schools and yet its often government policy that drives the point beyond the ability of people to afford. Specifically i want to look at things like landuse and zoning laws. Zoning alone could add as much as 50 to the cost of housing in communities like manhattan and San Francisco. The most were explicitly racial. The first in the nation was actually in la and the second was in baltimore, and effectually prohibited you from selling or renting to any family that wasnt in the majority on the block. They copied that within a couple of years and move to birmingham alabama and spread around the country and still has the same effect today of keeping basically people of color and low income people out of the communities where middleclass communitiewere middleclasscommy to prevent lowincome housing and communities. We need to be looking at land use laws and how they are used basically the bar for people from middleclass communities. We need to look at savings. We need to be looking at whether or not we encourage people to say you dont get out of poverty by spending but by saving money. Yet on both sides, we discourage savings in the country. For one thing we make it hard to simply open up a bank account. We are so paranoid about the war on drugs and terror that we set up identification requirements to open a savings account. Did you hear a lot of debate about the voting and s voting at he also neglects the fact that they like the identification to open a bank account. It means you have to cash a check or cant borrow money or whatever you are driven to the alternative is very high rates but you also have to walk around with money in your pocket and think of the problems that causes. On the other end of it the programs are designed to discourage savings and encourage basically if you get a welfare check and spend every penny of it, that is fine with us. Some of that into an account for your kids to go to school some day and we will take away your check. Get a car to get a job to get off welfare we will take away your check. We need to be looking at the programs obviously you need some of sort of testing. We dont want last years Lottery Winner to be on welfare. What we need to be looking at the test to see if they act to discourage people from making their lives better but ultimately should be the goal. Last, something i call inclusive Economic Growth. Its basically the basis for the puppy inclusive economy. We know that nothing gets people off of poverty more so than Economic Growth. A growing economy is more than any government so they can in the end. If you just simply look at history, you go back in history and find that for most of history they were miserable and ruled over by literally slightly less desperately. About 300 years ago, something happened and the wealth increased and declined substantially and its been going on since then. The wealthy lifestyles of many cases. It was modern freemarket capitalism and we need to encourage that today. We know what encourages that with the low regulation and things like that. But we should also recognize that Economic Growth is only going to lift people out of poverty if everybody can participate. If we block the poor people from being part of the economy, they are not going to see the benefit oof that growing a comedy, and that means we need to look at things that get in the way of poor people becoming part of the economy, press the Economic Growth, things like for example, occupational licensing. We have about 25 to 3 of all jobs in America Today requires you from getting the governments permission to practice your profession. And i am not talking about being a doctor or a lawyer or Something Like that. Cosmetologist beautician, braiding hair, being a florist or funeral attendance from all these things require a license from the state and in many cases, its very arduous and it will give you one example. In louisiana if you want to be a florist, you are a single mom trying to get off of welfare, youve done some arranging your friends have told you youre good to get back to take a course that is going to be a months long and find a babysitter every night in order to be able to take the course and you will have to pay for it and for the bucks for it and then a test at the end of the course that is only given twice a year. They will have to find a hotel to stay after night, someone to watch their kids and take the test because god forbid we would get a bad floral display. Can you imagine something worse . We need to be looking at whether or not licensing its reciprocal, whether or not it is necessary, whether you have a criminal record in your past. We need to be looking at all these things and at the same time look at occupational zoning and start a Small Business in your kitchen because if you get the degree and start doing flowers in your kitchen. We need to look at barriers to affordable child care that get in the way. Licensing requirement for education requirements that simply make child care so expensive. Here in washington, d. C. , they are working on a law where you have to get a bachelors degree to be a child care worker. You dont have to have a bachelors degree to be a parent. All that is going to make child care more expensive so poor people cant afford to get child care so they cant afford to get a job. When you look at the minimum wage laws and other things that allow people to get in on a chance to become employed or to start a business or to do things that are going to get them out of poverty. I dont pretend that this book will provide utopia and is going to solve every problem of poverty in america, but i do think that it provides an agenda we should all be able to agree on. Its low hanging fruit. These are things democrats, republicans, conservatives and libertarians should all be able to buy into. And i think we will hear some results soon. We showed as policy influencers or simply as good and decent people care about the people in poverty coming and we should want them to rise as far as they can. Im hoping that ive provided an agenda that will do that. Thank you and i look forward to some questions later on. [applause] now we will hear from emily. Thank you. It is a pleasure to be with you this afternoon and be able to present with you brandnew results from the 2019 welfare work survey. I read the book and i was interested in taking a look at what americans thought about the kind of undermining ideas as well as the reforms coming and i will be presenting the results for you today. This is a nationally representative survey on american adult with 2,000 people. It was conducted just this last month by the reputable survey firm that do a lot for the economist, the New York Times. So, first, lets take a look at attitudes towards the origin of wealth and poverty. What are the causes of these things, so among all americans we ask people to give their top three reasons. People said hard work and great, ambition and family connection. What are the causes of poverty, peoples of poor life choices, drugs and alcohol and lack of jobs. What you will notice is americans tend to place more emphasis on factors that are more or less within the purview of an independent person and their decisions but they also factor in external forces that are not within an individual persons decision and external to them. There were some very interesting differences by ideology between liberal and conservative, and i want to highlight those and discuss what that means so when we talk about the welfare policy in general. So, among liberals, what are the top three reasons according to liberals people become wealthy for inheritance and getting lucky, what are these three things and what do they have in common, they are all external forces that have been to a person. It is the delayed gratification what do these three things have in common, they emphasized factors that are within more or less the individuals purview of control within their agency and free will. About the cause of poverty consistent with liberal views of the causes of golf and the reason for the lack of Educational Opportunities that his commission such as racism and sexism and unfair economic systems. Conservatives top three reasons for poverty were poor life choices, the breakdown of families, drugs and alcohol and a lack of work ethics, so consistent with what was said about the cause of wealth and poverty and we focus on individual level positions. These differences and assumptions underlying every debate that you see going on here it comes to social welfare policy, and Economic Policy in general that liberals tend to emphasize the external forces that happen did happen to a person for the individual level positions and the things in the control of the prison. The question is what do you choose to emphasize . It often makes it difficult for us to Reach Agreement when it comes to social welfare policy come anpolicycome and help us b. What do americans think about work . My mom used to say this to me before i would go weed the garden. It is its own reward i didnt appreciate at the time but i appreciate its no it now they e with the sentiment that there is an inherent value in work. This kind of work ethic 80 of americans believe hard work is its own reward and something that is widely shared, ed 5 of the recipients, those individuals receiving the means tested government assistance agree including 69 of n. 80 of conservatives so when it comes to an endorsement of the idea of work, there actually isnt that much disagreement about that. But there are some differences. We ask people if they would be willing if they were looking for a job if they would be willing to do another state to find work. We defined lower income americans are less willing than higher income americans to be able to move to another state. There are differences in preferences. What is more important in your life, planning for the future and getting up things now and taking it one day at a time and living it to the fullest. It is necessary to giv give opis todaget the pinstoday for the fn people earning less than 20,000 a year instead tend to emphasize living each day to the fullest rather than planning for the future and givin getting up thiw is necessary. Once people start earning over 40,000 a year or more, we tend to find people emphasize basically delayed gratification planning for the future so there are some differences there that we thought were interesting. Do they think differently if the current welfare policy . We thought we would take a look at what people actually think about the current state of the Government Social Welfare Program and again these are means tested government assistance programs. They would rather earn their own living. 45 . Welfare recipients would prefer to stay on welfare. Why dont we ask welfare recipients themselves, here we see 65 say that they would ther earn their own living and not receive welfare. Non recipients, the third category you can see they actually dont know. They are split half and half. There is a major divide where liberals believe they want to earn their own living and conservatives believe they prefer to stay on welfare. 54 of americans say Welfare Benefits do more to help people stand on their own 2 feet and then to encourage them to stay poor. Welfare recipients 68 believe that these benefits help the tot back on their feet. There is a considerable ideological divide where liberals think that it helps people get back up again. One thing to keep in mind that these questions youll notice if you study a lot of Public Opinion is people answer these questions accordingly to whether they like or dislike social Welfare Programs. If they like them they will always give you a positive answer and if they dislike them they will give you a negative answer kind of regardless of what they think is actually true. So this i thought was an interesting question to get beyond that a little bit. What you think the Welfare Programs actually do, what do they actually accomplish . 60 say that they provide for people t basic needs while they are poor. 39 believe that they help people climb out of poverty. And this is a fairly noncontroversial view. Welfare recipients, previous recipients and non recipients as well as different demographic groups tend to believe that these Welfare Programs are just providing for the basic needs rather than actually helping to lift people up. I think this raises the question do we want more from our antiPoverty Program and to lift people up. 72 of democrats and 80 of republicans and how often do you get people in that much agreement. People agree with you are doing right now is an effective. What if we were to spend unlimited amounts of money. Every social Welfare Program anyone ever thought of what if we tried it and implemented it. Would that be enough to eliminate poverty, though we found 72 that even if the government were willing to spend an unlimited amount of money, it doesnt know enough about how to actually solve the root causes of poverty to solve the problem. It wasnt for how to accomplish that and you have a majority 50 of welfare recipients who feel this way as well as majority of democrats and republicans. To spend money to solve this problem this might be why we found 70 of americans thought when asked to choose that it would be better to spend our resources on trying to eliminate the causes of poverty rather than to spend the money that we have on social Welfare Programs precipitated the need for people to get back on their feet if people would rather focus on trying to eliminate the root causes. They agree that it would be better to focus the Government Resources and time and money on trying to illuminate the causes. What would be more to help people get out of poverty, 70 of americans say more Economic Growth would be the best way to reduce poverty. 29 felt like that more welfare spending would be the right way to go so we are seeing a consistent pattern where people actually want her to be a social safety net to some degree to be able to help people when they needed but at the same time theres a desire to try to reduce the need for it to begin with. We decided to investigate how inclusive is the economy the government cant control the decisions but what they can control it has the policy for and these are things we can take a look at. They rate the conditions as bad in their neighborhood. Now predictably welfare recipients were more likely than the non recipients to say finding Affordable Housing, finding good jobs, finding a decent education and moving it financially was not good in their particular neighborhood. These are things that in many ways the government can directly affect and in some cases making it worse like Affordable Housing for instance. How much housing can be put in a particular Community Look at San Francisco, look at the exorbitant housing prices. They are not meeting the demands of the people who live there because they are refusing to build enough housing. We talked about this earlier and asked people has a lack of credentials or license ever prevented you or someone you know from doing a job they were capable of doing . Being a tour guide, occupational license to be a tour guide, to arrangtoarrange flowers, to brar and we see that 45 and 46 of welfare recipients and unemployed americans prospectively see that this is prevented them or someone they know from work that a pretty large share. Taking a look at occupational licensing would have to at least chip away at a little bit at these numbers here. Though it is worth us taking a look at it. The criminal record has prevented them from finding work. They wont hire you if you have a criminal conviction on your record so how di do you provider your self, provide for your family, provide for your children if this bothers you everywhere you go. That could be a whole other discussion but lets just take a look at one thing we asked about in the survey. A considerable percentage of the mass incarceration over the past several decades had been due to drug offenses drug felony but if we were to categorize the drug offenses from being felonies which are serious crimes and follow you from the rest of your life and your record to civil offenses it doesnt follow you every time you are applying for a new job for housing etc. But if you have a drug conviction, that it does follow you around. We find 55 of the majority of americans favor re categorizing drug offenses for felonies to civil offenses. And i think that is pretty interesting as he finding their. What about housing . Have expensive housing costs prevented you from moving to a better location . Here you can see it is highly correlated with income, but notice once you get to about 60,000 a year come and that is that the Median Income about 66,000 a year statistically people feel like they are able to get a decent neighborhood. Think about k12 education you are assigned a school didnt have to go there. One way would be to move to a better location. Sometimes it is too expensive to do that to some extent, we cant all live in the hamptons, but we should be able to expect that people should be able to live in a decent neighborhood with a good school that are safe and decent to some extent the government does have a role to play which is the government controlled the supply of housing. Whether you can build or not build more apartment buildings, condos, houses tomtoms etc. Would you favor or oppose building more apartment buildings and condos in your community 59 favored this and i was a little surprised because i thought it might be thought in my backyard in other peoples backyard that would be fine. 71 favor you have to ask yourself especially in expensive cities like San Francisco and new york where it is really difficult for regular people working regular jobs and a regular salary to afford decent housing why it is housing just becoming extravagantly expensive, it isnt because they are not building enough housing. If my taste interest would prevent cities from following the will of the american voter. Shifting to education 85 of americans currently have children in k12 education send them to public school. This is a Gallup Survey that according to our survey we found that only 44 of americans would prefer to send their kids to public school. Instead, the majority, 55 would prefer to send their children to private school but often it is expensive since the property to is that we pay either in mortgages or higher cost go towards that local school so its hard for people to pay that and on top of that paid the private school tuition. Is there anything that can be done for the people, the majority of people the paper to have more options. I should also mention that this is a broad view of pickering to go to private school shared across most demographics the majority of welfare recipientdep that paid for public school, bu. And the opportunity to send children to private school using vouchers. 58 of americans would support a proposal that would give families a choice to enroll their children in private schools instead with the government helping to pay the tuition. And this is broadly favored 67 of welfare recipients favor this as well a 68 of republicans and democrats are split about half and half. This is a proposal michael discusses in his book proposal has been made to offer a tax credit for people and businesses to donate toward scholarship to help parents send their children to private school as they choose. Its also broadly popular with 61 favoring the tax credit including the same share of welfare recipients, the majority of democrats and 69 of republicans. So, what im hoping to demonstrate is a lot of these reforms and obviously much more research to be done to the the idea of the agenda that focuses on inclusive Economic Growth that wants to reduce the need for government means tested assistance to begin with the one to earn their living in one way to address this is to look at reforms to housing to make it less expensive, reforming education to allow people choices to be able to send their kids to school with the best education they are prevented from being able to provide for themselves and for their family as well as looking again at occupational licensing and seeing if this is truly proportionate to the need for the reason of having the license. And putting this all together, the goal is to enhance the human flourishing, to allow people to reach their own potential, to go as far as their own talent and dreaming of hard work to take them that is the work behind this and we see that americans are generally supportive of this kind of conversation moving forward. Thank you. [applause] thank you, emily. We have about ten minutes left to open the floor to discussion. I suspect there will be lots of questions. We have a microphone somewhere in the room. If you would please just wait when you are called on to the microphones of online viewers can hear the questions and we will go ahead and start in the second row appear. Health insurance for private schools which would jack up the tuition if they thought they could depend but both are good ideas. I would give her back to the work on education for cato. And another 90 you could use that money for the technical things of that nature i think another thing is that its not just a tax credit towards education are you talking about the second proposal for the scholarship it would allow private individuals like i could do this or this and other businesses. I want to contribute to a fund to allow you to send your child to a private school if you want. Then it goes into a little account. You can allow employers to say we want you to be able to have the choice about where you sent your kids to school if you want to send them to a private school we will put this amount of money into funding for you that only you have access to. So i think that was the idea behind this as opposed to the more where theres a tax credit and that isnt what this is. The broadbased educational premise you dont have to take 100100 of it and headed towards tuition. You can use a variety of purposes. Good question. Other questions. Yes. In the front, third row back in the second row back. Im sure you know arizona signed into law the legislation about the licensing and allowing that to be transferred from other states and be eligible in arizona for employment. For an appointment. Its is that a good first step,s that what typical licensing where if you are licensed to be a florist in Oklahoma County you can move to arizona and you dont have to get a license again to do that. Also, florida is looking at places right now to sort of force the licensing boards to decide whether or not a criminal conviction really should bar you from ever having a license in the field and thingthat field a. So, there is a number of pieces moving ahead in the states to do that is permanently going to be a state function but its also something that should be looked at in terms of a think i saw a hand in the back of the room. I have a question regarding the Research Behind the liberals versus conservatives point of view on the cause of poverty so you mentioned that they tend to talk about the outside forces and conservatives tend to face individual characteristics. Have you ever been more Granular Research on looking at the conservatives are people of color versus conservative non color and see if there are any differences there . Itll be available soon when we publish it. What i would recall because there is a lot of data, i would recall there are less differences about the racial groups. If i recall correctly, it was more the combination of one of e external factor when you look at the africanamerican latino men, women etc. When you get the ideological groups it makes it easier to describe it is like external or internal forces between the two. Any other questions . I will ask the last question i suppose. Is there anything the federal government can do in particular, congress, to incentivize the states to reform their occupational licensing that he would find acceptable . Again these are state laws that are not likely to see the federal Licensing Bureau determining what they should do in every state in the union. I dont think we should go there. Many of the reforms that took ud of our criminal justice but is heavily state oriented, education is a state responsibility. The licensing laws are state responsibility for local and the zoning law is the same way. I would like to see them push back on this, but a lot of what the federal government doe doess contingent were to be made contingent on the states taking action for example in the zoning wall, we know under the secretary carson, theyve been looking at the idea that the subsidies would only reform the zoning law and the idea of chasing your tail off where the community can jack up the price of housing to the unreasonable zoning and give a bigger subsidy to help lowincome people move into these unreasonably. That sort of thing can be done and you could do something at the occupational level as well. I know they published a report on the occupational licensing was terrific and they had some suggestions as well. One thing i would also just added and conclude is that i think you definitely see this as Public Opinion research that there is a tendency for people to judge Public Policy when it comes to antiPoverty Programs by the perceived intentions of people talking about it rather than the efficacy or the outcomes of the policies themselves. So a lot of times what we see is if you care about poverty as an issue and you truly have empathy and compassion, often times people feel like they are supposed to see increased spending on the program and people find that not a priority for them and should decrease spending for the program and people in the middle see no change i think we should move away from the fram that frame it think it is the right frame we should be thinking about. What we are talking about now is a compassionate approach i think if you demonstrate that you truly care about the issue and that you are committed to try to reduce poverty from this kind of deep moral motivation, then when you talk about the growth policy and these other reforms, i think people would be more going to listen then somebody that doesnt care because if you just want to move onto another subject. I think that is the hard thing and if we could shift the frame away from increased, decreased spending on programs can we focus on a progrowth agenda and here are the pillars about the agenda i think that is going to be a more effective strategy going forward. The social justice i justices someones idea of limited government on the other side and they are not exclusive. You can pursue a limited government agenda that actually achieve social justice and that is what i try to do in this book. Thank you both very much. Lets give them a round of applause. [applause] thank you, everybody for coming. Tonight im pleased to contribute tyler, hes a Bloomberg Opinion columnist, has written regularly per the New York Times and contributes to a wide number of newspapers and periodicals. Previous books include the complacent class and great stagnation n new book, examines the tension between lack of trust in big