To deal with below 18 meters. Will Prime Minister provide interim advice about risk prioritization and will he also extend the safety fund for 18 meters. We will leave this program at this point puking watch it in its entirety on our website cspan. Org. We take in at the virtual discussion on governing priorities for the next president. Live coverage on cspan2. At this moment in our nations history it will point the way forward for our country and offer a vision for how to revitalize our nation in a postpandemic world. Aei soto americas leaders navigate our nations as tort challenges throughout the course of this year your call that many challenges still lie ahead, aei is wellpositioned to meet these headon by supplying the visionary thinking and actionable policy solutions that our nation needs the aei scholar will promote free people and free markets, increased economic and social mobility, revitalize constitutional order, bolster american civil life and promote americas leadership in the world. On behalf of all of us that 80 i thank you for your support that makes our vital work possible here in the spirit of Irving Kristol who loved his country and believe in the power of ideas, i know that together we can build an even stronger, more resilient and more prosperous america for our generation and for those to come. Thank thank you, dan. Good afternoon, everyone. Im robert doar, speaking to you live from aei headquarters in washington, d. C. On behalf of the entire aei Community Welcome to our annual Irving Kristol award lecture. We would like to thank all of our generous friends who supported this years event including the chevron corporation, exxon mobil, Liberty Mutual and the peter g. Peterson foundation. All of us i could not be happier to honor our dear friend and esteemed colleague the henry chair and political economy doctor nicholas eberstadt. In the four decade since nick first came to us, he at eighth i have grown together in so many ways the access they did a five nick has influenced and shaped the institutes work and today the excellent, the breadth and community of his work stand as great reflections of her most dearly held values. The Irving Kristol award its highest honor given by aei. We named this award in honor of Irving Kristol because he believed in the endurance of American Values and the Eventual Success of the american experiment. Irving was an intellectual anchor of the conservative community picky as Vice President and he mentored a generation of young conservatives. He was also an different ideas that are at the heart of aei. Human dignity, free enterprise, order, liberty for all. Back in the darkest days of the cold war irving were still a young publisher. His magazines were barely profitable and with much of the world under the iron grip of communism and the soviet union and china it wouldve been hard to see how irving could play a major role in the fight for free enterprise. And yet armed with these little magazines, he never lost hope. A Firm Believer in the power of ideas, irving was steadfast in his conviction that with a circulation of a few hundred you could change the world. Today, our values are under attack. That is true. But like a irving, i am an who believes that aeis ideas provide the roadmap for a confident, humane and flourishing america. These ideas will not only indoor, they will prevail. Endured. One reason for my confidence is todays honoree. Since joining aei nick has been one of our most productive and influential scholars. He has changed that we think about issues as diverse as poverty, world hunger, Global Health at the security challenges of the korean peninsula. Nick has been here so long it sometimes feel like hes been here his entire life but thats not true and i have proof. Here in the upper lefthand corner is a young nick lighting up with this Football Team at the Berkeley School in new york. Until about all of you that it gives me some joy to know that before nick turned his attention to the great issues of our time, he spent a little time on the gridiron blocking and tackling and maybe even throwing a forward pass. And here, looking especially dashing, is a senior picture from exeter. The records tell us that nick was, not surprisingly, Student Council president , president of the Economics Club and the winner of the highest award in german and history. Sadly, he didnt continue his football exploits. Nick is a scholar with a moral compass. He is a demographer who never forgot that demography is not the study of human population. It is the study of human people and that is been the driving force of his careers work. Over the years nick has had little time for those who dismiss the innate human inclinations of freedom. Instead he has defended with both academic and moral clarity the emitter can experiment most value. His work is imbued with a deeply self concern for the wellbeing of the most needy among us. In the 1990s nick became a strong critic of chinas one child policy. Not only because he felt it was bad for chinas economy and politics but because it was morally wrong. This speaks to a deeper courage that underlie all of next work. Nick is ever been afraid to defy conventional wisdom. If the evidence leads into conclusion that cassano chose to grid, no fight to daunting. His intellectual rigor example files the very best qualities of our institute. Nick has always said that people are our greatest assets. And if thats true, Nick Eberstadt is aeis greatest asset. Nick is also an extraordinary mentor. Is cultivated an entire generation of scholars to carry on our important work. In that tradition following his election will be having a Panel Discussion on a new volume edited by your fall within the compiles advice for the next president ial administration from several skulls. Nick is written a chapter for the book the title restored americas promise. As many of you know we have often given this award to Prime Ministers, Supreme Court justice, spiritual leaders as well as public intellectuals. And from time to time we are lucky to be able to recognize one of our most exceptional scholars. So this is the part of the program where im supposed to puff out my chest and Say Something about how proud i am to present the Irving Kristol award to nick. But i have a better idea. A much better i get. Lets let the people who afford the closest with nick over the years do the honors. The American Enterprise institute has honored itself and its ideals are presenting the Irving Kristol award to nicholas eberstadt. Nick is joining and aei pantheon that includes Ronald Reagan, bernard lewis, thomas soul, michael novak, jeane kirkpatrick, antonin scalia, charles murray, clarence thomas, and many other great thinkers and doers. And, of course, Irving Kristol himself, a friend and mentor to nick whose brilliant insights into american politics and society shine brighter with every passing year. I couldnt be happier that Nick Eberstadt is the artery of this years Irving Kristol lecture in summit. He is so deserving of the auto and epitomizes everything that is wonderful about aei. Everything i learned from Nick Eberstadt is so eye opening, everything from the roots of american poverty to Foreign Policy copies one of the most original thinkers i have ever seen and met. Nicks work helped ignite a National Conversation from the state of the labor force america. Nick called attention to the impact of our failing culture on the welfare of working age man. Nick is a scholars scholar. Erudite, groundbreaking and deep but always accessible, never boring. Like all great Public Policy work his writing pointed to the promise of a better system than one that recognizes and rewards the dignity and longterm benefits of earned income. Nick eberstadt is a numbers guy with a moral compass as he is written, tomography is at the study of human numbers but it is the human characteristics of those numbers that define world events. Honestly, its a little unfair that god granted north korea expert, a pompous call at an renaissance man into the same body. And most important, nicks is a founder in the best way. He adores his beautiful wife, his wonderful kids, he loves and cares for his aei family as his own and he is, to put it deserving, unmentioned. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome the 2020 Irving Kristol award recipient, Nick Eberstadt. Thank you, robert. This offer is also a sentimental pleasure. At aei i am what you leifer. Still enjoying enjoyed extraory privilege of serving here at 35 years and counting. My debts of affection and gratitude to irving himself are immense. Not least, i might not have met mrs. Eberstadt if he had not hired her. Mary and i are just two of the leads of aspiring writers urging without its way to encourage over his long life. Like his remarkable wife come historian gertrude, Irving Kristol is an unforgettable inspiration. I only wish everyone listening could have known them, too. Aei crystal lectures like the boyer lectures that preceded them wrestle with weight issues of the day. But its fair to say no one could have anticipated last year with this prize was awarded, the path on which we now find ourselves. So todays lecture could hardly avoid addressing our Current Crisis. Two very different paths for america lie before us at the end of the covid pandemic. One, is to a future of stagnation and division. The other is to a future of revitalization and hope, and the choice is ours to make. I am going to argue, we can grasp the future that includes National Unity and progress for all. It is entirely doable. We already pretty much know how. We just have to want it and not lose heart. My message is directed especially to younger americans, those of you who dont really remember our country before the Great Recession, before 9 11, before the spread of the new misery. You will be the ones in charge of the american experiment tomorrow, the ones who have to do most of the heavy lifting, revitalizing our nation. Like your forebearers, you will learn firsthand americas amazing capacity to amend its flaws, improve and advance. We have a record at doing this again and again and again. For almost 250 years. Your country, your fellow citizens are worthy of your unalloyed devotion, deservedly actually. Someday you will be able to tell your children why the american future is always worth the struggle. Now my lecture. America is in the midst of its greatest crisis since the second world war. The Novel Coronavirus is a pathogen with which humanity has no previous experience. When we will create a safe and effective vaccine, and how many waves of contagion will roll through our country before covid subsides are at present im answerable questions. Under the pressure of the pandemic, faultlines in a country have been painfully exposed. We enjoyed not only a socioeconomic emergency, but an explosion of anger and radicalized violence in our streets. These troubles have historical roots, problems long festering but long ignored. Washington has responded to the pandemic with an unprecedented peacetime mobilization of national resources. Congress has authorized trillions of dollars in spending to support distressed businesses and households, and the Federal Reserve system has committed trillions more, with no into yet in sight. In relation to National Income todays state outlays for the covid crisis are comparable to our geek defense effort in world war ii. Just as in the second world war, we are now embarked upon an enormous expansion of government reach in public debt. Eventually we will achieve our National Objective in the struggle against covid19. Victory in world war ii was followed by Rapid Military demobilization and wholesale dismantling of wartime economic controls. But what of the postpandemic era . How will we demobilize the super welfare state hastily thrown together to prop up shaky businesses and cover shortfalls in personal income . How will we renew Economic Growth so we might among other things cope with our vastly increased public debt . If we simply muddle through, were likely to model into a nightmare, an american future defined by a new socio corporate welfare state, the stagnant politicized economy and the Financial Dependence upon officialdom, both elected and otherwise. In such a future, democracy would be degraded, freedoms lost, divisions inflamed, tomorrows promise squandered. When we settle to such a future, we would be the americans who chose against exceptionalism. We decided that being just another sluggish, demoralized social democracy was good enough for us and for posterity. To steer away from this grave danger we need a very different vision of the future. Such a vision for the a rapid and orderly held down for more silent mobilization of the u. S. Government and its central bank. But simply restoring the precovid status quo antiis not held many of us would be willing to die on. That was a world where the American Dream was already faltering. Where too Many Americans especially younger americans were mired in a previously unfamiliar new misery. As a look beyond covid, we have the opportunity to repair americas prepandemic flaws. We should be seeking a social and economic revitalization of our nation, a bold and thorough overhaul of our public and private ways to spark a dynamic upswing and progress for everyone. Division, the design should be prosperity for all. This can be done and a revitalized america is a prize worth fighting for. Lets start with the longrun implications of the Current Crisis. The bad news is that the pandemic has made the task of revitalizing our nation more difficult. But the good news is its also made the need for such revitalization more difficult to ignore. To prevent collapse of the u. S. Economy and Financial Systems during the nationwide covid lockdown, washington unleashed a tidal wave of public resources. With the economy in free fall, the impulse to act urgently and go big was surely the right call. Yet urgency also met at the single largest state surge in americas history was necessarily improvised. Characterize not only by the intended consequences but unintended. Government transfers now account for much more of the American Family budget than ever before. And will continue to for an indefinite duration. Since the covid indy, public debt is soaring. To what heights is still anyones guess. It will certainly exceed world war ii debt ratios soon and additional rounds of deficit spending may still lie in store. The Congressional Budget Office just projected that the federal debt would be almost twice the size of the u. S. Economy by 2050. 2. 5 times the prepandemic ratio. Apart from japan virtually no country on earth grapples with such a debt burden today. Or in japan in the moment. However, the full dimensions of the governments new role in u. S. Economic life were not revealed by fiscal numbers alone. Of those overlooked the colossal budget item import not only in magnitude but in nature. At the behest of congress and the treasury department, our Federal Reserve system has crossed the rubicon with its new pandemic rescue mandates, the fed readies to the role of managing and even micromanaging the American Economy through credit allocation, potentially lending vast sums that only to Financial Institutions but also directly to firms that judge suitable for government support. The fed already dominates markets for u. S. Treasury debt and mortgage debt as a result of previous lesser crises. Its by no means inconceivable the Current Crisis will propel it to a comparably dominant position in domestic commercial credit. These dramatic estimations of our economy, remember, are the intended consequences of our pandemic measures but host of unintended consequences are also embedded in these policies. They pose direct risk to American Freedom and prosperity the longer the measures remain in force. Consider the special 600 a week pandemic Unemployment Benefits. These came on top of existing Unemployment Benefits regardless of ones wealth or income. The year before the crisis, about onethird of all jobs in the u. S. Were paying less than that 600 a week. When added to regular Unemployment Benefits this push payments for the job was above the median wage level, 36 of the 50 states. Welcome to a world job market which all men and women can get an above average salary, so long as they do not work. One study estimated spending by pandemic unemployment recipients was 10 higher after the onset of the crisis and before it. Pandemic benefits, in other words, could be a jackpot and you didnt have to be unemployed to take the bonus home. In september 2020 about 12 million americans were looking for work but over twice that number was collecting some form of unemployment insurance. Fortunately we can still rely on a widespread American Work ethic to resist disincentives dangling from pandemic packages. For the sake of the dreams are work ethic search, lets try t to find out how powerful those bad incentives might be over the long run. Then theres the whole new realm of unintended consequences and the fit mission to rescue the u. S. Economy. The fed has announced it would become a player in the corporate debt market and is preparing to lend directly to private concerns of highly favorable terms. Its rationale is that Financial Markets will not suspend sufficient credit to u. S. Business on its own, a premise that is unfalsifiable, openended, and potentially selffulfilling. Leave aside the unavoidable and unavoidably corrupting politicization of the private sector that would occur when every big business wants to become a friend of the fed. And many will need to be. The nation itself promises to end in failure for the assignment is an exercise in adverse selection the mission. The record of industrial policy in other parts of the world, europe, asia, latin america is littered with failures often expensive ones. But at least in those other experiments governments were attempting to pick winners. The feds mandate is to pick losers, Companies Whose debt is not of investment quality. We know already how this movie ends. With misallocation of capital on a massive scale, unnecessarily construction of wealth, ultimately weaker Economic Performance and slower growth. Easy money and low interest loans are procured at the expense of others, at your expense. And the longterm costs are greater than generally appreciated. Since the crash of 2008, for over a decade, the fed has mainly been enforcing near zero Interest Rates and theres no talk of keeping rates near zero for another seven years. That would make nearly two decades of mostly emergency monetary policy. The argument during the Great Recession was of the fetch you do everything to help businesses survive because they were so fragile. But the completely unsurpassed in longterm ultralow Interest Rates is a new breed of businesses that can only survive in the interest environment. Such Zombie Companies scarcely existed 20 years ago but by one estimate now account for nearly a sixth of all security is listed on u. S. Exchanges. Zombie companies, previously unimaginable levels of public debt. Never ending superlow Interest Rates. This in of this sound familiar . Yes. Does this we have seen it all before. In japan during its ongoing lost generation of growth, a saga unfortunately now heading into its second generation. Before covid, japan had been creeping along for three decades on less than 1 a year growth and per capita output, a pace that takes nearly 80 years to double incomes. The specter of chip that japan vacation is already haunting europe. Soon it become it could become at your town. It was not a natural disaster. It was manmade, largely through use of inadequate reform and respond in the face of the major crisis, the bursting of the japanese financial bubble. Japan, you see, kept accepting excuses for extending special emergency budget and banking measures year after year. Should we create Something Like her own japanification, we may not fare as well under it as japan, for we were and are the set by preexisting conditions that did not reflect the japanese. Now, lets take a look at those preexisting conditions. Though the need for revitalizing americas more pressing because of the pandemic, that imperative does not arise from the emergency itself. 40 years ago this month Ronald Reagan concluded his campaign for the presidency with a penetrating question are you better off than you were four years ago . For america today, the question would be, are you better off than you were 40 years ago . If were being honest with ourselves, the unvarnished truth is that growing numbers of americans were not, even before the pandemic. Americas engines from material success and personal advance were already in serious need of repairs. Now, some will find this assessment upon stress. After all, a summary record of National Performance since the reagan years is a marvel. 30 years ago we won the cold war and became the planets sole superpower. The title we still hold. Over that same period with triple a private wealth, adding almost 75 75 trillion of reat worth, nearly a quarter of a Million Dollars per american man, woman and child. Even now in the midst of the pandemic stock markets are near alltime highs. Never before has the world seen a system that could generate so much power and prosperity. But during our unipolar moment a strange new sickness was quietly eating away at our nation. For the most part, our elites, deciders and prescribers, didnt notice kicker wasnt was infecm or the people they knew. But in the middle of our crisis that ailment can no longer be neglected. Call it the new misery social affliction from americas second gilded age. Allow sentence of the new misery abound, although our nation has never been so rich, never have so many been living on poverty benefits. Health and longevity for young and middleaged parents are vastly better than at earlier times, never had so many children been living as forfeited with just a mother, just the father or sometimes just grandparents. Although our economy is the lipid full employment on the eve of the pandemic, our work rate for prime age american men mirrored levels from the tail end of the great depression. And although our National Network has been soaring for decades, net worth for households in the bottom half was actually lower when the pandemic it than when the berlin wall fell 30 years earlier. No one can look at such result and claim that a a rising tides lifting all ships here but what accounts for these mystical contradictions . The conventional diagnosis is structural economic change in our age of globalization and technological disruption. There is proof here, but it is not the whole story or even most of the story. The modern americans become evermore ensnared in a tangle of pathologies that predates the latest globalization. Many people are still in denial about this fact. Danielle Patrick Moynihan coined the phrase in a single night and 65 report on the crisis of the black family in america. Moynihan warned that family breakdown and its ramifications illegitimacy, absent fathers, welfare dependence and more were undermining social and economic progress for black americans and would limit the gains that civil rights reforms seemed to promise. The moynihan report got many things right, but we now know it was wrong on one critical point. Since the christ aftertaste the crisis like respect to the sages of injustice, africanamericans have withstood slavery, subsequent institutional discrimination, and continuing racial prejudice, moynihan believed it was unique, and awful aberration, not a preview of the american future. Yet far from constituting a tragic exception, the social turmoil that moynihan described proved to be prefiguration of trends in store for citizens with no such legacy of racebased mistreatment. Births out of marriage, family breakdown and welfare depend on more common today nationwide than among black americans back when moynihan sounded the alarm. The tangle of pathologies is rampant noun in yankee New Hampshire where where a third f births are out of wedlock. 14 childrens lives lives in a singleparent home, and 35 are being raised on poverty benefits. Even predominantly mormon utah is no longer a new to these pathologies. Nearly one baby and five and beehive state is born to an unwed mother and a quarter of its children live in means tested homes krein in our nationwide tangle. Back in 196518898 black men wasnt holding down a job. Last year this supposedly booming economy, the corresponding rate for men of all sbdcs was even higher. Over 90 million American Adults ethnicities now have criminal arrest records. Yet we dont pay much attention, and social pathologies go mainstream theres a temptation to normalize them i defining deviancy down. Another fateful moynihan in sight. There were other ways we normalize them with this behavior. When postwar Economic Growth they cant its long slow down, america entered into a new social compact with the poor half of its people. Called our modern declaration of dependence. In this ugly deal, americans tried to buy social peace by underwriting improvements on how the other half lives. To welfare and debt. No matter what they say or how they posture, both Political Parties are complicit in this arrangement, which is why it is continued for decades. Between 19852017, the share of americans in homes depending upon how the benefits more than doubled, and americas means tested citizenry nearly tripled. In effect, nearly all our population increased since the reagan era was of means tested americans. Welfare dependency in america has a new face. These programs are no longer just for Vulnerable Women and children. Grown men in the prime of life traditionally societies providers are now a major constituency for public aid. In 2017, over one in for prime age american men took poverty condition benefits, triple puh her in 1985. If we add in payments from our highly problematic disability programs, even more were on some form of government dole. Yet, in all the commentary on the endangered american middle class, rising welfare dependence is hardly ever mentioned. What a curious oversight. Plainly, middle class is defined not by a pay grade or rather by a mentality. You could have low income and still consider yourself middleclass, but if you seek and accept Public Benefits eligible only to the poor, your membership in the middle class is in jeopardy, and you probably know it. As large portions of america became increasingly dependent on means tested public largess, such spending now averages around 6000 per recipient. Americans finances also grew strangely to carry us picked the numbers are shocking. Precarious. Nearly three and eight American Homes today are rentals. Most are too near a hand to mouth existence. In 2019 half of all renters had a net worth of under 6000 over half of ranking seniors had less than 7000 to their name. Nearly half of all email headed rencher families had less than 2000 in net worth. Moreover, rather renters or homeowners the lord have been a saw its mean net worth fall between 19892019 by a sixth, or even more, depending on which measure of inflation one prefers. Despite decades of swallowing national wealth, these americans are far more leveraged today than in the reagan era. Personal debts and loans have eaten away their net worth. To make matters worse, American Voters dont want to pay for the means tested benefits bolstering recipients Living Standards so weve been borrowing money to cover them. Actually this is true for all our social entitlement programs. Not just those earmarked for those willing to call themselves for. That is the meaning of the past four decades of near continuous budget deficits of the unprecedented run up in peacetime public debt in the era when transfer payments came to dominate our public finances. Since public debts are taxes postponed, we are consuming entitlements we are unwilling to pay for, and instead taxing future workers for them, including workers not yet born. The fecklessness of our deluge keynesianism was perhaps most nakedly revealed it our last budget before the pandemic when washington ran a deficit of nearly 1 trillion at the top of the business cycle. Our innovation and finances find an echoing the national economy. Dynamism seems to be steadily ebbing. True, americas top corporations are still world leaders, the envy of regulators in other lands. These giant gladiators cast a long shadow, maybe that is why we dont always notice what is going on in the rest of the private arena. Simply put, there is less creative destruction, the lifeblood of free enterprise, the ratio of new startups to existing businesses has been falling for over 40 years. I company the decline of partnership has been a continuing drop in labor market churn, switching jobs. While that may sound good, its partly a vote of noconfidence and opportunities elsewhere. Structurally, American Business is increasingly great and topheavy dominated by older, larger corporations with easy access to capital at rates Small Businesses cant obtain, and aided by sixers and regulatory little firms cant afford. By selfimportant jarred sticks sticks, we see increasing market concentration yardsticks and decreasing knowledge diffusion. More laggards falling behind on the learning curve. This is not a recipe for improved productivity. It should not surprise that our decade of growth after the Great Recession was the weakest snapback ever recorded. As we look beyond covid, work prospects are not so auspicious. Warning lights of both social and institutional. Economic progress in the modern economy depends on Human Resources and Business Climate. Yet over the past generation, despite our renowned and unaccountably expensive healthcare system, weve peeked out barely one extra year of Life Expectancy per decade with some slight decline since 2014 partly because of americas unpredicted opioid crisis. After leading the world in educational advance for a century, and more, following the civil war, americas progress and attainment suddenly through a gear. For over a generation its been just limping along as others surpasses in mean years of education. In this hard to argue that americas Business Climate has improved in the 21st century, tax cuts notwithstanding, many indicators show some drop in americas quality of institutions and policies over the past two decades. Endlessly change these trends, post Covid America is in danger of distinctly slower Economic Growth than we are as yet accustomed to, even as public debt looms. We could find ourselves closer and closer to her own japanification, one more unpleasant than the original. If we are to redeem the promise of the american future, we need to prepare right now to achieve a philosophy from the future of stagnation, dependence and division. In some, the problems facing our country today are serious. Describing them closely, however, does not make them hopeless. No. It details what we need to fix, repair and improve. Revitalize america is ours for the asking. The burden of revitalizing our nation will fall mainly on the shoulders of todays younger americans so i would like a word with you, please. You arrived at a surprisingly unsettled juncture in our National History and youre an American Experience has been an important respect unlike any before. Youve inherited our american sense of fair play with grownups think too much that violates it. Youve watched too often as people calling the shots seem to place your interests, the interest of our common future, last. You use people who should be protecting others, instead gaming the system for themselves. You are connected to everything but you are so isolated. You resonate with irony, but irony doesnt feel that place or meaning where many a purpose are supposed to go. Our culture, our society, our nation, none of these asks enough of you. What i have in mind for you is a big ask, a world changing ask. The National Renewal of the great country that needs you. I dont have a plan to show you, a plan wont bring our fractured nation after nation together for purpose. We need vision, vision right now of where we want to take our nation tomorrow. We must envision a more dynamic rapidly advancing and selfreliant america, an america that can generate prosperity for all, an america with both more freedom and stronger families and communities than present. An american which are citizens are Less Beholden to infantilizing handouts come more fully in charge of the own pursuit of happiness. The arithmetic of american revitalization depends first and foremost on a broad consisting of swing of national productivity. The Supreme Court for rising Living Standards. Reversing our anemic performance is crucial to instilling the confidence that will help dispel the new misery. Its important to recognize that we already know much of what has to be done. We need more and Better Research both public and private, from defense to infrastructure to climate. Scientific advances in breakthroughs make the pressing task before us a little easier. Like any resource, funds for research and develop can be used unwisely. Biden revitalizing america, we would be investing much more heavily in this aspect of americas future. Israel, south korea, taiwan, sweden, all devote more of their economies to r d. We used to lead the world here. We should want to again. We need more and better education and training, much more. Had we only maintained our former temple of progress, americas working age population would have nearly two two addil years of schooling today, even more for younger adults. This shortfall has lowered current use output by trillions of dollars a year, and skewed the distribution of opportunities unforgiving only. In what economists call a americas race between technology and education, liking education makes for labor displacement with lagging wages for the less skilled to boot. Should we really be surprised by whats happened to our nations employment and earnings profiles since a great slow down in educational progress . More and better education will make for more work and better wages. Increased opportunity and the return of that welcome and invigorating churn. Americas of the big innovation problem is the sclerosis, complacency and rent sinking in our private sector, especially in big business. America cannot succeed unless a lot of its firms fail including its largest ones. Bankruptcy and reallocation of resources to more productive ends of the mothers milk of Dynamic Growth and competitive markets. They should be no room for corporate welfare in a revitalize america. Bring on the corporate Zombie Apocalypse took america will strive thrive from it. Lets also say its created a a distraction for the increasingly essential but bloated government dominated sectors, health and education. Dependency for mens helplessness and incapacity, ways Human Potential and kills dreams. A a revitalize america must offr a pathway from dependency back to selfreliant. This will be easy as with Dynamic Growth but in any case will require rethinking our sprawling, largely dysfunctional social welfare system. To the fullest extent possible, social welfare arrangements should be reconfigured on a work first principle with active implement our job seeking conditioning other benefits. Do you know whats a Great Network . It is service for others but also helps complete you. Most old americans know this and thanks to healthy aging, a horizon for such service are wider than ever before. Of course a host of unintended consequences could attend subsidizing employment. So introducing a work first principle bears careful consideration and will unavoidably create problems on its own. But pursued correctly, we are likely to be trading a set of problems for decidedly smaller if this brings us to demography, the vital factor that makes there as the plight of the shrinking atomized society. The two most important demographic questions for revitalize america concerned family and immigration. Some truths about the family for so obvious that would take an expert to miss them. Family is the basic Building Block of society and nation, so the help of her country depends on the health of our families. Without presuming the solomonic wisdom to judge any Single Family situation or circumstance, we can convert prefer more intact families to pure, greater to a lesser numbers of lasting committed marriages. More to fewer children born within marriage, more time at home, not less for parents and children. We also know that bonds of kinship are the first and still strongest safety net our species has developed. We think we can fractured damas on welfare systems and weve learned through sad experience that the state is a highly imperfect substitute for the father, and a possible substitute for the mother. Family revival would powerfully buttressed national revival. It will come on its own organic schedule, embedded by recovered socialism, and maybe even one of those and some great awakenings to which america seem so providentially prone. Government can shear this project on and amid its own antifamily bias, but ultimately this is a project for the american heart. Immigration has been a great defining blessing for our nation. Current and future immigrants will play an Important Role in revitalizing america. People who risked everything to come to our country to start a new life and body the american spirit. Thats what immigrants generally make such fine americans. Our american creed seems especially suited to molding newcomers into loyal and productive citizens. There is an argument for favoring highly suit skilled immigrants in the future and it has merit. But the grid and ambition and family values of immigrants with little formal education should have a place in our country, too. Talent and entrepreneurial drive do not always arrive with academic credentials. That said, immigration, like globalization, must work for americans, not the other way around. Our National Sovereignty is nonnegotiable. We americans get to choose who is invited to our land. No one else. My own preference is for fahrenheit immigration quotas, but whatever the level, immigration should be legal immigration. Illegal immigration is that only an affront to our rule of law, it is an affront to our democracy because it circumvents the will of the people. Americas immigration process is badly broken, so let us americans it. I key indicator of our National Revitalization will be wealth transfer the bottom half in our country. We should want to see their net worth rolling. In fact, growing a good deal faster than with the country as a whole. And my by wealth, i mean privae assets in the own immediate possession, things like bank accounts, homes, college funds, 401 k s. Economists can make the case that payouts from our National Social insurance system, social security, should be counted as personal wealth. Theoretically, this is an unassailable argument but some take this to mean we shouldnt worry too much about tangible private assets for the less welltodo. If we took that logic to its conclusion, we would be counting the valve of future footstep use as well, too. Theres a a world of difference between a monthly check from the government and the financial stake you put together for managing your own affairs. Freed people deserve better than life on allowance money and a debit card. A revitalize america can provide the framework of which anyone can build their own wealth come with help of more work, better wages and constantly improving opportunities and skills. But personal responsibility is the other element. Establishing credit worthiness is up to you. Financial discipline, thrift and other money habits determine a families savings, consistently accumulate savings with the basis of personal wealth and economic freedom. As a practical matter, family stability is central a Household Wealth prospects. The struggle to save and get ahead is so much harder in homes with just one parent. And even in a revitalize america that reality is not going to change. Our government will need to discipline its budget, too. Unlike keynes, who argued government should run surpluses in good times to balance out deficits in bad times, we find an excuse every year to spend more than we bring in. Treat each and every year as an emergency for the federal budget, in the excuse will become a prophecy. The path to japanification is paid with superhigh deficits and superlow Interest Rates. And revitalize america, ours will be a future positive Interest Rates and low budget deficits. Taxes will have to be higher, too, at least for a generation. Since in a revitalize america we will cease spending our childrens inheritance, but future generations will bless us with this. And if we obtain Dynamic Growth, the tax bite shouldnt smart quite as much. In modern times, affluent democracies that undertake farreaching reforms usually do so only after their governments face forcing crises. In the famous thatcherism run out of other peoples money. America does not yet have that luxury. We are backstopped by over 100 trillion in private wealth, plus the privilege of printing the worlds currency. Independence, our freedom, means know what else is going to make us carry out the farreaching initially painful tests of revitalization. Selfreliance means we have 21 revitalization, to hunger for it into account should all by ourselves we have to want when it do so before our backs are to the wall and is no remaining margin for error . Theres a magnificent american future ahead just waiting to be built. Lets get to work. The entire aei Community Joins me in congratulating doctor Nick Eberstadt as the 2020 winner of the Irving Kristol award. And that please join us back your at 1 05 p. M. For the president ial priorities panel. This virtual discussion hosted by the American Enterprise institute on converting priorities for the next president taking a break. Why would wait for the panelists to return heres a portion of todays washington journal. Bradford joined to stuff her discussion of his Political Forces that shape the 2016 election continue to change america if the title of the book pitchfork populism. Your book covers topics from globalization to race, the media, even bipartisanship. What do you think its a most important force shaping this country right now less than four weeks before election day . Probably our National Identity which i characterized as a split personality. Bothth parts of which are very legitimate, deeply rooted all the way back to colonial days between rugged individualist on the one side and collective us on the other and theres this duality between the two that plays out in so many different aspects of her life and our politics. Defined populism as well as pitchfork populism. Yeah. The United States has a long history of populist movements. Different economic populism efforts anda agrarian populism and a lot of things as a detailed go back as far as the 1700s. Populism, but this is different. I call it pitchfork population because it evokes the image like the frankenstein movies where the townsfolk are upset with grievance and resentment and they storm the castle with pitchforks and torches. Trying to vent their anger. Populism. Se its not normally populism empowers the people to be able to fulfill their aims and objectives. In this case, donald trump founded a cohort that