Course of her career amity has brought her intelligence and feel for storytelling for the intellectual and cultural institutions. She has served as the wall street journal editorial board, columnist for the Financial Times and bloomberg news, taught economic history at the school business. In addition to her prolific book writing she serves as a president ial scholar for king college, the board of the president ial foundation and in a big coup shares the selection for thema Manhattan Institute d award she herself is one. Amitys latest work Great Society, new history is a stunning achievement. Few decades have been imprinted on the popular imagination as much as the 1960s and somebody remember that decade for the dramatic and turbulent moment. The assassination of the kennedys and Martin Luther king jr. The marchch on washington and antiwar protests. Neil armstrong on the moon and fighting vietnam. Amitys focus is not the drama that played out on Television Screens across the country, so much as a failure of washington that control these events and direct the show. Indeed a generation of politicians came to realize the centralized hierarchical and highlych regulated model of political economy that dominated postwar america had stopped working. Yet more than just the technical failures, amity captures the ceiling of the country run from the top down. America put up with the machinery and culture immobilization during the two world wars in the early years of a Nuclear Cold War but at some point the old american yearning, independentminded, mistrustful of authority was bound to reemerge. This is a vitally important story for our time and we can all be grateful amity has told it was insight. I am happy to report the books will be sold in the back of the room, ladies and gentlemen amity shlaes. [applause] thank you. If you cannot hear me let me know. Thank you. A book about the Great Society deserve great thanks. My thanks to the Manhattan Institutean president , the formr president who is also here, the Vice President and planner for hosting this event. I would like to think my publisher jonathan, my agent andrew and his colleague who is with us. And i would like to think the Coolidge Foundation for supporting me and certain friends including thomas, jim, kim and the Kings College and josias who worked on the research. I like to think my family, my husband and my daughter who are here tonight. The first sentence of the book is a question. Why not socialism. This is a question we asked ourselves last night when we watched the president ial debate, how do we answer this, it is a question all commonsense people, all markets people want to bee able to deliver an answer to. We all feel an obligation to undertake the longterm investment in projects that would open american minds so american minds see the challenge in the tragedy of socialism. We want to share the record of the past or the record of venezuela so when they come to vote or lead businesses and families younger americans recognize the not useful policy. But where are we, it is novembea longterm investment and some of us dont have the heart for the long haul, we feel frustrated at the prospect flow outcome and outright failure in our intellectual entrepreneurship, politics are much more fun and instant gratification. All of us have some vanity and people remember politicians, they do not always remember educators. So we journalist and business people, philanthropist, scholars want to be remembered and sometimes we pick shortterm projects for that reason. Tonight i would like to tell you a story of a really long term project, a crazy project, this is the story which starts in the 1950s and features the company, a man in the american public, those are the three characters and itsbl a story oa failing longterm project of humiliation of business shame and intellectual failure no way around it. But the story which ends in the 1980s reveals an unexpected payback of success. Some may know the characters but might appreciate hearing about them one more time, the name of the company was General Electric. In the 1950s General Electric road hi in the factories in new york, massachusetts employed many thousands, it was the Industrial Center in some ways. Every year americans bought more tvs, more radios or more freezers. Ge was not just the company it was an icon, is served as a Space Program and the Tennessee Valley authority, American Trust and General Electric like it was usa gameof baseball. A good company follows rules. The soviets in 1959 invited u. S. To a display about progress in america sent several modern kitchens in the lemon yellow one was generalnd electric. Most ee executives at the time again were talking about the late 50s at most companies at that time had a set view of how capitalism works. The private sector was invincible. It was like a workhorse or a moo cow. What it was supposed to do was to serve as the milk cow for the public sector. The government herded the private sector like a domestic animal. To ge or most of ge that sounded just fine, the milk cow was content with the government. The Tennessee Valley authority was in essence of a government project in ge executives at the top liked it very much. Ex ge found tva was one of its biggest customers. They did not mind serving the Space Program and militaryindustrial complex. Unions existed by virtue of very strong union law and they demanded big pay packages, all right, ge could pay that, social experiments by the federal government, American Business could pay b that. Maybe expansion of healthcare, the u. S. Could pay that or perhaps a longer lead forpe youg parents, thats just a joke. Something like a younger leave for a periods, in the early 60s we can pay that too. Stalin was said too have joked that the only country rich enough to afford communism was united states. [laughter] why should it not be true. Why should it not be true, in the 1960s some benchmarks, the Dow Jones Industrial average was approaching a record level of 1000. It seemed only a matter of months before the dow would pass the landmark. But there was one aging underappreciated executive at ge who saw things differently. He was an older guy, he was a Vice President labor relations. In the name of this man was manual. When the board pay taxes towh te federal government or met altogether and rode out big plans, he believed growth took place when a lonely scientist in a dumpy lab had an idea and flaunted the world. Ideas like the lightbulb, the ge idea. He believed that the burden of Government Spending and the burden of union demand backed by government would gradually strangle american competitiveness. Even a little bit of socialism he said could do damage, the reason the 1959 kitchens were better than the russian kitchens, the longterm investment of inventors of the beginning of ge. The reason the company thrived was a good were affordable but the high wages and prices would render geo competitive and the russians would make better pictures. Nobody could quite imagine to pan at this point. That was the scope of the imagination, it was a godgiven assignment in the view of him of a Pristine Company like General Electric, to inspire america to return to old capitalism of edison. The problem was urgent i will read a quote from him, the rapid trend has got to be change, are we through with everything you cherish. The younger executives at ge found him ludicrous. He was not modern. In the public many agreed with his evaluation and Fortune Magazine described him as a figure who combined a Kentucky Farm background with a washing machine salesman. [laughter] the other executives said ge did not worry, they were the future. He was approaching retirement by 1960 or maybe 1965 he would be out anyhow, let him rant from his recliner in delray beach. [laughter] still he determined to use his final years and hours to make his longterm investment saving the future ge in america, he wanted to teach americans the gift of nature and the depth and preciousness of the gift they had in capitalism. He spent millions of ge money making pamphlets explaining the value of markets, he warned towns were ge operated, the midwest or the east that the high wages and all the socialth benefits would force companies to leave and one such town was pittsfield massachusetts, Industrial Center and he warned the people grass will grow here if they did not wake up to the importance of competitive prices, wages and costs. He used new media and that would be television to reach the people creating a tv show called ge theater to showcase traditional american values. He hired staff including aging actor to be ges spokesman. Remember the actor was a union man, a democrat who admired fragrant roosevelt and the new deal. I will not say his name but this actor had potential. [laughter] we have our cspan audience. Lets stick with the story. He had a special ge house with all modern appliances like the ge kitchen in moscow for the actor to live in and to school the actor who was Ronald Reagan and adam smith, john locke with little essays added by henry. He gave little books just like the Manhattan Institute and hopedli they would be red. This actor reagan was not exactly popular across ge either. The younger executives did not like having a western propaganda and they complained about reagan but the few remaining years they could not stop him and his actor and he sent reagan all around to hundreds of ge plants to explain all about the tva and the future of industry in the industry might move west and so on and the actor in him wrote speeches about the dangers of socialism and socializing medicine was a bad idea, the tva was a bad idea and power could innovate faster when it was free to make its own decisions. Maybe hydropower was not the only kind of power in the united states. Soon enough reagan began to take his arguments seriously. He even bought his son ge stock. The year 1960 cast a dark cloud over ge. Him and his propaganda mill. The investigation in 1961 the new attorney general whose name is Robert Kennedy pulled together a strong case who is colluding with westinghouse to fix high prices on the turbines and sold to the tba. The Justice Department went to court and the judge sent the ge executive to jail. The irony was undeniable. Here was ge Propaganda Department mouthing off about free market even as ge cheated the americante taxpayer. This was a terrible blow for ge and boulware. The Company Look Like the wes wt hypocrite in the world. Nationwide they felt the trade by the trust the company like the black sox scandal of 1919 when this happened to ge, National Betrayal stock went in the toilet, the actor was fired, ge theater was canceled and boulware got pneumonia and did retire to delray beach. The years that followed the subject of the Great Society only deepen the senseea of faile for such a venture. Ge itself with cooperation as did many other companies with the federal government, the news on his tv set mocked his old efforts, American Voters did not turned away from socialism, they thought expansion sounded nice. They voted in Lyndon Johnson and a socializing program we can called the Great Society. Johnson promised to cure poverty, make america a better place, a great place with an Even Stronger economy and they did create the beginning of the a Healthcare System that we are getting now, medicare. This error the Great Society leaders did strengthen unions and johnson was only the beginning, the revision of Great Society in this book is a revision of Richard Nixon and in my research i discovered nixon expanding government as johnson had before him and in some areas more rapidly and other president s just added on to imagine a great and crusting process a program upon program, Charles Murray of the Manhattan Institute was the first to layout the numbers in a recent hire prizewinner john laid out a few more and some were at that event. Here is the scope of the greats exciting yielded, by 1980 health and medical costha were six tims since 1950 cost in constant dollars. By 1980 public assistant cost were 13 times the 1950 cost, social insurance cost were 27 times there 1950 level and housing cost were 129 times there 1950 cost you recall last night one of the candidates suggested we need to spend more on housing. [laughter] so what happened, the Great Society failed, the government expansion did not eradicate poverty and in fact the reduction in the poverty rate was already coming down pretty fast flattened out and we ended up with him percent and stayed there. The program shackled america into dependence, generally speaking there was a terrible morning after affect that of all the Great Society bench the economy began to flail as it neveref had before and we know d appointment went towards 10 in Interest Rates went past 15 , the high cost of labor under policies backed by the government did drive American Companies to leave towns and grass to grow and pittsfield. Just as boulware had predicted the prophet. The great driving center of detroit did become the rust belt. And i read about that in Great Society. The Dow Jones Industrial average stayed below a thousand for a generation. Today younger americans believe ever raising stock market is their birthright. They expect nothing else. So if you want to stop and contemplate from the mid 60s until the 80s even a nominal great inflation wea nominal did notie pass 1000. Imagine if today we had to wait till 2035 to get to the next barrier. In my book, what i learned in writing you dont have to be socialist all the way to do damage, indeed boulware was right, even a little socialism does incredible damage. This is not ginos paradox, is height extra, you do eventually get there and sooner than you think. The whole while you can imagine boulware who is decades beating himself up about the failure of his effort of enlightenment, as you know one figure was now enlightened and he didnt care, that was the actor reagan and he decided to try politics in the 1964 he tookndto his standard ge speech out and gave it out on tv. Word for word. America had socialism or not became known as the time for choosing speech in the actor ran for governor of california where he challenged the Great Society numerous times including the Legal Department that came out of our Poverty Program and he put the policies of ge into practice, government was saving money inviting expansion of welfare, personal dignity, support, respect for markets and when he did run for president and one it was 1980 and it was no longer the morning after affect of the Great Society, it could be morning in america. The entire account for resolution that reagan brought that morning in america came out of the pamphlets. That lend the head so lovingly prepared, his longterm investment that no one remembered had pay off in a magnitude that is near unimaginable. Markets thrived in air commenced in which we did get a stronger raising market. I will stop and say there several lessons from the Great Society, one of 12 chapters of the book. First of all, the over arching lesson, government is run now planning. No matter how much it is spendsg you get a perverse outcome. The second lesson a private project, that looks like a complete goof or failure in the short or medium term may not turn out to be a complete failure in the end. Sometimes a project is just early and sometimes early this is good. Think of it from the point of view of the voters who learned about markets from ge when reagan gave talks in the cafeteria of factories, some of the tens of thousands of meetings between reagan and ge did have an effect in those voters understood what reagan was saying when he spoke as a politician but there was another way for the market worker, they emerged in 1980 as reagans famous bluecollar vote. Another point more obvious but worth mentioning is a Great Society offers a lesson on trusting yourer own judgment, if you suspect that a program is not good, it probably is not. If you suspect a program might be good invest in it. Think of the institutions that inspired you as a child and laid the plan for your own institutions. Much of the work that i do it the Manhattan Institute is trying to plant the seeds, a theoretical seed can be the most fruitful seed in the third and final point, individuals matter without Manhattan Institute scholars, individual scholars, there would have been no broken windows. Without boulware no reagan. If you think your name now id like to raise a theoretical glass of wine, one thing remembered for doing this work that you may be wrong, im standing in manhattan in 2019 with you three decades after the death of the ge executive and everyone in this room is raising a mental glass to reagan, his Public Policy work and most of all were raising a glass to the name of boulware. Thank you very much. [applause] i michael myers, what i think about the greek society, two things come to mind, lbj in the revolution of america, the civil rights revolution. The rise in the street in lbjs response to that to agree society. Helping blacks get out of poverty and overcome based on race. What i remember about society and the lbj was abandoned by people in the vietnam war. The only people who stuck with him was naacp in terms of civil rights agenda. The question. My question what about the revolution how can that not be in your book and how can we explain the Great Society without talking about racial issues. It is in my book and very extensively, this was just one chapter. The book looks at civil rights law so we have the Civil Rights Act which came before the Voting Rights act and basically the early rights are great and important and revolutionary. The later laws following the Howard University speech of president johnson were more about benefits, what people get and i argue theres plenty of evidence for that those benefits did not help poor people white or black. They kept them poor and for example we have the hillbilly eligible that is so important, appalachia, what can we do what kind of struggling group and pathology in addition to poverty. In the 1960s we had an appalachian law in order to improve appalachia but it did not help it just made life harder and accustomed to people getting benefits. So in this book i mark the divide and johnsons Howard University speech and i think johnson got ahead. I do have a very all say it we can move on. I have a long treatment of the 1964 convention at which the mississippi delegation was not seated in the decision betrayal by organized labor with johnson to turn away those people because they needed the vote of the regular mississippi party. Hi im excited to read your book, it seems like a rightful success or two, rather book was also excellent. There seems to be two schools of thought on the pogo right about the Great Society in the welfare state. First it was batted counterproductive and second more modern were accommodation. It basically does enough or about enough and if you include transfers and tax credits into poverty rates since 1960s you will see a lot of these programs help to reduce poverty and we should not accept the leftwing narrative that we need to do so much more in tax so much martin so much more transfers and embrace scandinavian or european welfare system. Avian or european where you come down on the centerright point of view that there is basically enough transfers in it except agree society. Thank you thats an important question. When you count poverty you can count with benefits or without. Ours are when you go without theres a lot of poor people. So what are we doing, i would argue were anesthetizing people. They are becoming so accustom, they dont see a way out or an opportunity to work and they dont believe they can work so i think its destructive even if it keeps people quiet. Clearly some of the benefits of the 1960s and particularly the money that flowed in chapter four from Economic Opportunity to the city was meant to calm people so they would not write. It did not work because the money got caught in bureaucratic traps and people were angry about genuine problems such as the bigotry of the police in los angeles. But i dont think you compile people, i do believe would be stronger if we had opportunity rather than entitlements. Hi, amity part way through your book which im enjoying, and also glad to learn how to pronounce his first name. [laughter] could you talk a bit about the relevance of your book to contemporary debates about redistribution and growing the welfare because were going to a spasm which is really kind of knew right now and people say we need to be redistributing things much more and to make it more complicated, what is the role of being in the cold war versus 30 year out of the cold war and how communism as both an alternative model and a threat to the market way of life, how does that play into arguments about getting benefits. Cannot answer the second, the second question relates attitudes towards socialism. Younger people have nothing to compare to, they have not served in the military by and large, they have not seen a lot. So they love an idea and younger people in the 1960s in my book has a chapter, that would be if you were born in 1940 or self, they were less naive they were still naive but less naive because the war was closer and communism was closer in their older brother was in the korean conflict. So now we have massive naive to deal with and thats a problem. Another factor in another parallel during that period i will say i think were getting liberated because if progressives can call for socialism and talk about socialism then we can talk about socialism without being able. This is not have to do with moscow, a number of progressives who make foolish errors in my book and very few are actual traders, their problem in a fatal terrible problem was they were wrong about their ideas domestically. So we can talk about socialism without involving the soviet union and so on. Was there Something Else . I tried to do a good job i want to say one other thing, in the book i tried to capture the romance of socialism. When you think about young people going on a trip, they go to a latin American Country and they see more social democracy or following love was scandinavia or outrage. In the book i have a character who goes on a trip that is intellectual towards looking for socialism. And they character is tom hayden and recently Peter Collier died and peter gave me a picture of a comb he had that tom hayden gave me that was made from a downed american jet. It was a north vietnamese knickknack of pride and bragging the said hundreds of american planes down and someone gave back home of a downed american plane to tom hayden who gave it to Peter Collier so toms trip is a very romantic trip, he meets a girl and absolutely intellectually lazy, crazy and sad because he does not see the reality in hanoi at all he had probably gotten away of our bombing and im wondering whether johnson called a halt at that time because he did not want toon be blamed for bombing tom hayden. But thats the story of the romance of socialism which is so presenthe today and toms own confusion. The end of the chapter he decides that socialism is wonderful because its never finished and as long as its not finished no one may criticize it. It. Is the beauty of we have time for one more question. That was great. My question is whether there is a society that was successfully woken from socialist anesthesia, is there a model that we might follow to walk back socialist tendencies . I dont want to Say Something bad has to happen before we wake up but that the usual pattern, the country gets knocked on the head in the country inflates in the country regroups. I do believe americans on business in the more young people we can expose to traditional common sense ideas im talking about for age or daca or reading books that the imports we dont get to read in high school and learning about calvin coolidge, i see they respond with great excitement and i hope will permit you to and we have a scholarship for applicant mike merritt its more like the Rhodes Scholarship that is about Academic Merit and quite a serious competition and we only have four scholarships e year because of very expensive is a full ride to college and we already have 15000 kids who have registered to apply for four scholarships this year. What do those kids want, they want the money and they want independence from their parents and not have to fill out the fafsa. But a lot of them also like the idea of doing things on your own. Its important for us to send signals to young people that you will be rewarded for enterprise and trying and doing things on your own and going your own way. Currently our system does not do that. Reward system of how you can figure out about what you can get from the point of view. Its quite easy to change the if you focus on the 16 20yearold and show them whats in it for them and play to their natural wisdom which they have and say we understand you might think this and you might not be wrong. [applause] i encourage you to buy a book bio copy for your friend, by copy for your enemy. All will be enriched by reading the wonderful wonderful book. [inaudible conversations] [shouting] the speedway was a big it was the big event that started often worldwide fame that people know indianapolis because of racing. With a healthy sport and a healthy track i dont think itll ever change. He was one of the most famous authors to come out and indiana up until kurt, and i described him as really helping to define the rest of the country what a hoosier was. So he helped introduce indiana to the rest of the country and he love them for that. Sees humacspan city is on td explain the american city. This beacon retaken to indianapolis with the help of spectrum cable partners. Today at noon eastern on cspan2 book tv local authors on the city history including the speech Robert F Kennedy made to an indianapolis crowd following the death of Martin Luther king. Martin luther king dedicated his life. Kennedy had no prepared text from his Campaign Speech and there was kind of what my going to say here pretty could speak to people directly and give them bad news and be counted upon to do the right thing. So it was decided that kennedy would come to broadway street to address the crowd that gathered there. Sunday at 2 00 p. M. On American History tv on cspan3 will visit just under different Historic Sites around town including the home of benjamin harrison. The great sense that you have as you walk through the space is how understated it is. Its not ostentatious, but anything is deeply of quality and its here since character through and through. Understated but of quality. Watch cspan city tour of indianapolis has retaken the history and literary scene. Book tv covers bookers and festivals around the country, here is whats coming up, the 2020 festival season will kick off in january with Rancho Mirage writer festival in california and then in georgia. In march book tv visits arizona for the tucson festival of books. Later that month the virginia festival will take place in charlottesville. For more information about upcoming bookers and festivals and to watch the previous festival coverage click the book for tab on a website, booktv. Org. [inaudible conversations] welcome my name is jason, im the director of the public library, thank you for joining us, i have to say it is really wonderful to see a bunch of people in your house, now that its been able to reopen and have you all here
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