Transcripts For CSPAN Heritage Foundation Forum Examines Impact Of Government Polices On The Poor 20170410

Audience at to please make that last little check of your cell phone. Make sure that they will not interrupt the preceding today. We will get started right now. The event today is really designed to celebrate the publication of a new heritage special report on Big Government policies that hurt before and how to address them. Is a very states compassionate country and we have an awful lot of government activities that affect poorer members of our population in one way or another. We have welfares programs shall welfare spending that adds up to well over a trillion dollars these days and i can be in things like health care, direct income support at one time or another. We are not here to talk about those policies today. We want to talk about another set of the Government Policies, those of that are put in place for what seemed to be on the surface very wellmeaning purposes and in fact they made the necessary policies of one kind or another for government they may be necessary policies of one kind or another for government but if you look at the second or Third Order Effects of the policies, they have a negative effect on poor people. The kind of policies we are thinking about our policies that have two main impacts. The first is the impact on prices. The free market is not going to work very well or work at all if government is changing the relative prices of goods or labor or capital and there are lots of programs that government undertakes that have some sort of impact on prices and unfortunately because consumption is a bigger part of people,nditures of four those kinds of policies and to raise the prices of consumer goods tend to hurt for people more than they hurt rich people. And the second set of policies are those of that interfere with the opportunities of people to work. These would be restrictions like occupational licensing or i suppose you could put minimum wages in this category. Things that interfere with the ability of poor people especially to get into the workforce and take care of themselves. That is going to be the focus of our program today. I think youre going to be surprised at how many policies and there are. We identify several dozen in the publication and i think were just scratching the surface. Fortunately we have very imminent people with the to start us off today. Our keynote speaker for the event is at dr. Don boudreaux and don i would say i would have to say is one of the leading economic educators in the United States of america. And im just going to find his actual resume in my list of papers here because i want to tell you he is a senior fellow with the fridge or Kayak Program for advanced study in at the program for advanced study in philosophy concepts. He is a professor of economics, a former chair of the Economics Department at george mason. Free market capitalism at the arcade a center. He specializes in global globalization trade, antitrust economics and economics. He is the author of one of the very few blogs online that i go to every day it is called cafe hiac and i recommended strongly for those of you who want to know what is really going on in the economics world. Speaks were going to have commentary and hopefully a conversation. Steve moore is a visiting fellow here at the Heritage Foundation. He runs our project for Economic Growth that focuses on a broad range of topics including tax reform, budget and Energy Policy. He is a senior economic analyst for cnn and took a leave of absence for his duties as heritage to join the Trump Campaign as a senior economic adviser to then candidate donald trump. He is the author of several books including his most recent fueling freedom exposing the mad war on energy. Please join me in welcoming john boudreau. Thanks, jerry. Im pleased and honored to be. Ere especially with steve when people say that i am an that means iator, no longer do economic research. I dont think that is true but i believe that economists, the world can better use better Economic Education been yet another journal article for putting a curly cue in some esoteric point. I think that is revealed in the study of current public understanding of economics, of the context of public debate and the most National Election are any sign of the state of the publics economic understanding then i think it is incontestable that the state of the economic understanding is pretty poor. It seems to be the worst in my lifetime which unfortunately is very long at this night. Rather long at this point. Economics even at the most they could level is a unique way of thinking about reality. It is not terribly difficult but it does take some effort. It does take some time and willingness to learn a new way of thinking. To use a famous analogy, it takes a willingness at to see beyond what is immediately obvious to look at what is less lenses and to wear those requires it to put those lenses on and use them it requires some effort. Once that effort is put forward, it is not difficult. You wind up seeing a lot about reality that would otherwise remain out of vision. In one sense it is peopleropriate to scold for not understanding economics. We live in a world where we are all busy, we have different jobs and there is a great deal of economic specialization and to spend time learning economics means you spend time away from your job and your family and taking care of personal matters. I cannot scold anyone for learning for not learning even basic economics. It is no less appropriate to scold and economist for not learning carpentry. The factrence is a that i dont know anything about carpentry that does not affect the state of public copper tree of carpentry. The problem with economics, if you dont understand economics you can still make public commentary and the lack of understanding when it is displayed through the voting process, displayed through public commentary process, the results are bad economic policies. My not understanding carpentry business inflict that carpentry on the rest of the world. Peoples lack of understanding inflicts that economics on the rest of the world. I dont have any solutions to the problem. If i did i probably could make a lot of money. I point the finger of blame on my fellow economists. We have done a poor job is the time of adam this of conveying a basic as of economic to ordinary people. Milton friedman think the most notable. , there are atien handful of other excellent economist and excellent public communicators. The basic truths are not out there in the public mind. I tried to distill the basic truths of economics as they are relevant to todays Public Policy debate and ive conveniently will it down to 12. Here are the basic truths of economics as i see it. If these truths were better understood by the general public, the state of the public debate and the date of politics and policy would be better. It would not be perfect but it would be better. These are in no particular order save the first one. Number one, there is no such thing as a free lunch. That means that every benefit have a cost. That does not mean the benefit is worthwhile pursuing or grabbing but it has a cost. Costs oftenthese are unseen. The flip side of that is a lot of costs have benefit and the sound economically, you cant just focus on the benefits you see and ignore the call or see the costs and ignore the benefit. Behind what is the first act. There are several acts in an economic play and it doesnt end after the first act. Number two, as a general rule most of us spend our money more carefully and productively emily who other peoples money. Then we do other peoples money. It does not seem to be obvious to other people. A reigning presumption around many people, mostly people on the political left but not always is if you take money from person a and give it to person b been person b will spend person as money better than person able spend money. Each of us spend our money more carefully and productively than we spend other peoples money. Number three, when the cost has at the cost of inaction right, evil not take the action. Will not take the action. Probably the most fundamental proposition of scientific economics we called the law of demand. It is a fancy way of saying with the cost of taking an action go up, youre more reluctant to do it. You will find some alternative way of pursuing your ends. Number four, there are no fixed a number of jobs. The lump of labor fallacy is indeed a fallacy. People on the left, on the right, in the middle often fall for this lump of labor fallacy. If a these jobs are destroyed, what will people do . I think this is a grotesque fallacy, it is belied by history. One of my favorite statistics is looking at the u. S. Labor force 1950,s. Number of jobs in some 67 years ago, u. S. Labor force was roughly 50 million people. Today the u. S. Labor force is roughly 155 million people. About 150 larger than it was a just to seven years ago. And the amount of joblessness today is a little bit higher, a percentage point or two as it was in 1950. The labor force, the number of people seeking jobs is gone has gone up. We see as women enter the workforce, of a Larger Population enters the workforce, jobs are created. As long as the economy is reasonably free to employ this. Number five, just as there is more than one way to skin a cat, there is more than one way to succeed economically. I have never skin a cat. Ive heard this phrase. Im glad to know academically derek more than one way to do it but i dont know from personal experience but from my reading of economics and economic history that theres obviously more than one way to succeed economically. Businessf pursuing the , if the cost rises, competitive entrepreneurs find other way to conduct business. Dynamic, numeral businesspeople are on the lookout for alternative place to conduct their affairs. Number six, consumption and not production is the ultimate goal for Economic Activity. The ultimate justification is not to employ people, the only justification is for goods and services that make peoples lives better as they judge them. Number seven, dont be misled by number six. Economic growth is caused by, driven by increased production. It is not caused by increased consumption. Increased consumption is a happy result of increased production. Eight, nothing about a political order changes the nature of trade. Any problems that arise when nebraskas trade with korean arise when nebraskas trade with kentuckians. The same benefits also arise. Therefore, when foreigners sell to us, they do so only because they wish to buy from us or invest in our economy. Foreigners are no more willing than we are to accumulate lots of pictures, monochrome pictures of the dead americans dates and statesman but to listen on the trade debate on the left and the right is at the goal of most foreigners is to harm us by sending us of things like cars and electronics in exchange for ever larger pictures of George Washington and abraham lincoln. As much as i admire lincoln and jefferson and ulysses s. Grant, none of us engages in Economic Activity to acquire these pictures. We do it because we want to spend this pieces of money or to invest in them and the same street for the chinese, germans and mexicans and all other foreigners. Deficit isa trade neither a symptom of poor domestic Economic Performance or is it a source of poor Economic Performance. It is usually quite the opposite. I dont think there is any topic now that is more misunderstood at least across the political spectrum than the topic of socalled trade imbalance. As many of youit i hope no in this room but if you dont know a trade deficit or the better term is current account deficit. A trade deficit is offset by a capital account surplus. Deficit,uns a trade that means america is running a capital account surplus. Foreigners are investing more in our country. I fail to see how that can be bad for us i felt to see how a trade deficit reflects poor Economic Performance. I invest, i invest in companies and in sectors that i think have promise. If someone tells me that company ropes, that company has a poor future, i dont rush to invest in it. Number 11, a trade deficit is not necessarily debt. On the right and the left, and economists are to blame for this because of the language we use. They incessantly describe increases in the trade this as increases in americans debt. It is not the same thing. It can become debt of a trade deficit is not but a trade deficit does not necessarily mean that americans are going further into debt. It can mean that but it does not necessarily mean that and the incessant description of the trade deficit as a source of increasing american debt is very dangerous because it leads to this apprehension and misunderstanding about what the 12ure of a trade it number is. And number 12, the most important and scarce resource is the human mind in free markets. Human creativity is what makes our lives and standard of living possible. We talk about Natural Resources theree time but there is no such thing as Natural Resources. Resources are made productive by human creativity. Trying to transform them into goods and services making our lives better. These points given our misguidance to Public Policy if they were better understood. It could guide us away from policies that may be meant to help people but in fact help desk hurt the poor. Poor. Hurt the minimumwage legislation is the poster child for such a misguided policy. It seems so right. This persons pay less money and we think they should pay. The trouble is, as of the cost of taking an action rises, people are less likely to take action. As of the cost of employing low skilled workers goes up, fewer low skilled workers are employed. Until about 20 years ago, there was widespread consensus among economists that minimum wage has negative employment effects. Minimumwage can change the nature of job. Even workers to keep their jobs, some employers will make those workers work harder. The employer becomes less willing to let the worker use worktime to handle personal business. There are a lot of ways to adjust to a minimum wage for an employer standpoint of one of the ways is to employ fewer low skilled workers so it knocks them out of a job and getting paid is zero per hour is worse than getting paid whatever you would be paid if you had a job in the absence of the minimum wage. Even worse is not the loss of current income. That is bad enough but it is the loss of the job experience and job skills that you get when particularly a young person and an unskilled person. And also the distribution of the harm created by the minimum wage is notable. I have a teenage son who was raised in Fairfax County which is a wealthy suburb, good schools. My son has never had trouble getting a job at the minimum wage. When he was 16 he was an unskilled, typical 16yearold. He never had trouble getting a job. The minimum wage is not only strip some low skilled workers of jobs but the low skilled workers that are harmed by this are minorities in the innercity. They are the teenagers who do not have their own personal means of transportation, they are the teens more likely to too a home to babysit stay home to babysit. The employer for completely understandable reasons, when the cost of hiring a worker rises, employers of beer away from those workers. It becomes costly to hire kids like my son, the risk of hiring innercity teens is even greater than hiring teens from Fairfax County or Montgomery County so it is the teens from the inner cities that are harmed the greatest by the minimum wage. There is a raging debate in does at minimum wage to destroy jobs or does it not . The bulk of the evidence still shows is that the minimum wage destroys jobs and that the bulk of those a job losses are among inner cities and especially poor families. The imperial evidence is conclusive. There are people who say the imperial evidence is inconclusive on the matter. The New York Times concluded that the minimum wage has no effect on the number of jobs. You can find if you want evidence in the literature that low Skilled Labor among all goods and services in the world is the one good and service that is immune to the law of demand. When the government pushes up the cost of using it, employers go ok we will pay more and to not attempt to protect our bottom line by adjusting. Ithe second policy deserves repetition that you can protect certain jobs with higher tariffs or other import barriers, no question about it. You raise terrible still, you protect jobs from the u. S. Steel industry. ,hen you raise tariffs on steel foreigners make fewer dollars selling steel to americans and if they make fewer dollars, they buy less exports from america. Buyers have less money to invest in america. Your jobs created by foreign investment. Americans pay higher prices for steel and products made with st eel. Jobs are lost in those other sectors. It is very difficult to find evidence of this in the imperial record. It is very easy to demagogue trade as a source of economic decline. It is pretty clear that trade restrictions raise prices and the bulk of those price increases fall on poor and middleclass families. Rich people pay them to of course of the higher prices are the percentage of a familys the prices ongher trade restrictions fall. You raise is the price of imports with trade restrictions and the percentage of the income of that poor families will pay for Consumer Products will be much higher as a percentage of their income them will be percentage of my income or of really rich peoples incomes. My time is the i think i will pass my time actually but just keeping in mind of those 12 or you can rethink the arrangement, you can come up with a few more or convince them. Condense them. If People Better understood those principles, they would better understand Government Policies of that appear on their faith to help people on their face to help the poor are likely to do the opposite. Thank you very much. [applause] i love your 12 iron laws of economics. I think they are fantastic and i want to post those on my wall. Their words to live by. I would just give you five or six examples of policies out there that are meant to help the poor that actually hurt the poor. Then were going to save a few minutes for questions. Let me quickly start by saying about two to three weeks ago President Trump came out with with some increases in the budget in some areas but the military budget, but big reductions in social spending programs. The last couple weeks, i like most of what is in the budget, it makes a lot of sense. I have been defending it. Every time i defended i get called a reporters who say come how can you support these policies . Dont you have any compassion . Dont you believe in meals on wheels at afterschool programs for people and so on. I just wrote my weekly column on the government is not compassionate. The government cannot have compassion. You and i as individuals can have compassion. Im not compassion if i take your money and give it to a poor person. That is what a lot of these policies do. False compassion. With respect to meals on wheels, that is one of my favorite examples. When i debate liberals on tv or on the radio they say, you just dont feel any compassion for these people because you want to cut meals on wheels. I say wait a minute, i participated in meals on wheels. Once every few weeks we make sandwiches and a help deliver meals on wheels to people who are elderly people who cannot get out. It is a great program. I love the meals on wheels program. But there is a sense out there that if government does not do it come it will not get done. And that is not true. There is no reason that the cannotn wheels program, be done by charitable individuals. These programs would probably work better if government were not involved at all. Me just mention a few examples of policies that i think clearly are hurting poor people, not helping them. I will go down the list quickly. First, Energy Policy. I just recently wrote this book on energy revolution. Liberals are against it. They are against fracking. It is horrible, we have to shut down fracking, is going to destroy the planet. They are tried to hold back this energy revolution. One of the things that we found in our book is theirss program out there that liberals love called the lowenergy Energy Assistance program. I dont think we have to have the government subsidizing peoples airconditioning and heating. But we have this program out there and it is because the poor cannot afford to heat their homes and airconditioned. It turns out that program is about 1 billion a year. What we found is that because of fracking, which is substantially reduce the price of natural gas, it used to be 10 and now it is about three dollars, this was a huge reduction in the price of electricity and utility bills for people. What we found is the benefit for poor people from fracking and this huge increase in natural gas is worth about 4 billion a year. Fracking has done four times as much good for low income people as the low income Energy Assistance program. So what do we just get rid of that and have a policy that lowest prices. Thats a good example. The second one is foreign aid. For an aid is a program that is a classic example of good intentions by liberals. Help were people in africa or people who are hungry in the middle east or wherever. Friends inll of your the economics profession who have devised all these wonderful programs, there is zero evidence it has any effect on economic the moment. Isood example of that Economic Development aid to africa over the last 40 years we dont know exactly the number, somewhere between 50 billion and 100 million. But when you look at countries getting the aid, the countries that get the most aid actually felt the actually fell for the behind. Partly because those foreign aid programs created a dependency which actually limits Economic Growth and is not help. If you were to ask the single most important policy to help poor people i dont think there is any question about it that run schools in innercitys are the most devastating thing to lower income people and has created the cycle of poverty. I used to have dinner with him every few months before he died in san francisco. He always said the single most important thing to help poor people was Universal School choice. Just one quick example come in washington dc where we are right now, the average poor resident of this city, mostly blacks and hispanics, could get a better education for happy cost than the Catholic School system. Were spending 20,000 per student. He could give the 10,000 to go to a Catholic School and it would get a better education. The next one is Social Security. That will probably be second that should shock people. Social security helps poor people. Thats a great program. It makes sure what people grow old they do not become destitute. Turns out we ran numbers in fact we just ran these with the actuaries in the Social Security administration. Instead of having the Social Security tax taken from workers every week, every paycheck, what if we just said to percent of a workers paycheck would go into an ira account. They own it and accumulate the interest over the 40 or 45 years that they work. What we found is if you did that compared to Social Security, assume an average rate of return, that the average poor person would not only get a higher benefit from having this individual account, but they would actually be able to leave 1 million for the kids. Chase, me cut to the Social Security has robbed every lowincome family of 1 million. Thats not something youre going to hear a lot, but it happens to be true. Go to make one more point, and that is with respect to progressive taxation. Progressive taxation is oh was is also something we say that helps poor people. Progressive taxation actually does not help poor people. He states that have the highest amount of progressive taxation, states like california and new york and connecticut and massachusetts, actually have had less progress for the Portland States where no income tax or lower taxes. I favorite example of this is something were going to be debating over the next several months and that is the Corporate Tax. The Corporate Tax, we are told that is just a tax on very, very rich people were shareholders and companies, and that is a good way to redistribute income. Gets theout, nobody effects of the things. The effect is connecting the dots. ,hen you have a Corporate Tax the effect of the Corporate Tax is it reduces the amount of iney that businesses invest new machinery, equipment, building plans, hiring workers and so on. There is almost indisputable evidence by my friend of the American Enterprise institute, and this has been duplicated by others, that the frontline victims of this Corporate Tax are not the shareholders of companies, they are workers who get lower wages and salaries because when they have less capital to work with they cannot command the high kinds of wages they need. Ihere are so many areas will conclude by saying good intentions is not good enough. Most of what the left i will give them their due. In most cases they do have good intentions. It is just the results of their policies and of hurting the people theyre supposed to help. I want to add a 13th rule if i could to your excellent list. This is one of my favorites. It goes like this give a man a fish and he needs for a day. Teach a man to fish, and he works for a lifetime. There is so much wisdom in the economics rule. Thank you very much. We just go right to questions because we are running a little behind. In fact, let me ask you a question on trade. There is an argument being made about trade, even among economists who are profree trade. Da d is good, it raises da a. The people in pennsylvania, ohio we nothigan compensating the losers for trade. I wondered how you would respond to that point. Ill may have a few minutes but it could talk for an hour. People talk about the losers from trade, they dont talk but the losers from protectionism. You can save some steel jobs, save jobs in the u. S. Prior industry but putting tariffs on steel or tires. And you can see those jobs are saved. Willhose terrorists destroy jobs elsewhere. Is more difficult to see where those jobs are destroyed but you can be sure there are jobs elsewhere. I dont know why we should protect these people in the still industry from the forces of economic competition at the expense of the people in other industries. Protectionism has losers. Second thing i would say is there is nothing unique about trade that causes economic disruption, about international trade. Any kind of change in Consumer Spending patterns causes some jobs to decline, be destroyed. Other jobs to be created. When people complain about the job losses from trade what theyre really complaining about is job losses from economic competition, entrepreneurial innovation and dynamism. The polioe example is vaccine, which is one of the Great Success stories of humanity. Polio is no longer a problem for people who were vaccinated against olio. But think of all the jobs that were destroyed. People who work in wheelchair families wheelchair factories, making iron lung machines. Nothing particularly to do with international trade, but we understand that is how societies progress. It is the same thing with trade across international borders. It does destroy some jobs. A great other jobs. But so does any economic change, any entrepreneurial innovation to destroys jobs and creates others. If you really want to say we dont want any jobs to be destroyed, then you cannot stop with trade agreements. We want to freeze all Economic Activity where it is. , that try to do that would put us on the road to serfdom. I want to follow up on that. [inaudible] hold on. You have two options and what is protectionism and it protects steel jobs, and the other is freetrade and maybe lose steel jobs, if it is just a tradeoff, what does it matter . It is a loss to force workers who have been in the Steel Industry and had those skills for 20 years now waste their time learning new skills to get a new job in a new profession. Why should i prefer free trade over protectionism . Because trade does not increase the number of jobs, as some trade proponents mistakenly say. Which rate does it shift jobs over time from industries in which we have a comparative disadvantage to those in which we have a comparative advantage. Overtime trade was jobs to where workers are more productive. When workers are more productive, their wages and standard of living is higher. If we protect steel jobs from competition, then what we do is cement jobs in industries that overtime are less productive. Then the jobs that we are preventing from being traded, because those industries are more productive. Let me add one thing. This is a good time to be having this debate because with the new age of Artificial Intelligence and Automated Vehicles and so on , the structural changes to the economy that are coming in the next decade ago to be credibly disruptive, and i mean that in the positive sense. The other night a few weeks ago i had to give a speech in philadelphia and i drove back late at night back to bc to dc. There are not a lot of cars at 11 00 at night. I had never seen this before, a caravan of about seven trucks. , they were like a train running one after the other. When i passed it i looked in the calves of the truck. Out of those trucks, dino how many drivers there were . One. One. There were people in the calves of the others, but they were moving forward like a train. One out ofan 11 males today are employed driving a vehicle. 10 years and now it will be close because everything will be automated. That will cause huge disruption. This isresting thing is hardly the first time we have seen these kinds of disruptive technologies. Probably the most Disruptive Technology in history was the tractor. , onehundred 20 years ago out of three americans was growing food. Of 100 for two out more food than we can possibly eat. This is the big topic today, disruptive technologies. Robotics is going to change factories. What you have to say about that . I think it is something we should embrace. We always say we want the world to be better for all children. Thats the way you leave a better life for children. To let workers and other resources move into more dynamic and productive places. The best way to handle the disruptions i think are some of the things you mentioned. Laura Corporate Taxes. That will increase. A business creation. Get rid of a lot of occupational licensing restrictions. ,et rid of the minimum wage because that prevents the krishna jobs. There is a lot you can do to make the economy more adaptive, more quick to absorb into new industries, resources release from once displaced by trade or by innovation. We should not do is cement things in place. Do you think were going to see the end of work . No. As long as human beings have unmet needs we will have the need for human beings to work. When less question and we have to wrap up. Last question then we have to wrap up. How are we on time . We have to stop. Dont vote and generally dont engage in policy debate. So who in the republic looks after the poor . Who actually looks after the policies you just recommended . Imagine what are the main fallacies we hear today, especially from the white house, is buying american, hire a merican. Can you speak a little about that . Does made in america even matter . I think that definitely hurts the poor. On that last point, we see these labels, they dont mean anything anymore. The only correct label is made on earth. [laughter] i stole that, but it is great. Made in what the label means it doesnt mean its made in china or america. Even relatively simple products like clothing they contain inputs and ideas from all over the world. Label just happens to be the place where code or your cell phone or glasses were last assembled. It is meaningless. But it appears to have meaning it does not have. In terms of your question your question is person who comes to mind rand paul. I think he gets this. He is more of a libertarian. Is apropos to what we were talking about. Its a perfect example of government intentions run a monk. Run amok. The two industries in america with most rapid increases in prices are health care and education. Those of the industries with a price system doesnt work well because you have the government operating them. When you ask a liberal, y do we have the government involved in health care and education . What is the answer . To make it more affordable. Theyre doing a great job. I think the lesson here will conclude with this, government intentions are not enough, good intentions are not good enough. We have to look at the policy resolved. In way too many cases posted that are supposed to help the poor actually hurt them and add sothe the left is assessed with income inequality. Some of the work we have done shows liberal policies actually increase income inequality, not reverse. Thank you, that was a fantastic presentation. We will move forward with our second panel. [applause] [captions Copyright National cable satellite corp. 2017] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. Visit ncicap. Org] ok. As we are transitioning the panels i will briefly set the stage. Im going to intro what we are going to focus on. I work here at the Heritage Foundation. Essentially what were going to be doing is were going to focus on certain areas, specifically that affect the poor in terms of their intentions to help. This chart demonstrates the Household Spending as a percentage of aftertax income. You can see, it really does hammer home the point that some of these policies really are affecting the poor. Lets just look at housing. The lowest income households spent nearly 60 of their aftertax income on housing. That is compared to 26 for high think im earners for highest income earners. Programs likeof rent control and various regulations against your use of private property as well as government takings for Economic Development. These are all programs hurting. Another one is energy. You can see it on the list as well. These are things that are really impacting prices as well. Leading to families having to choose between not eating for a day, paying the energy bill, or ordering medical coverage to pay the medical bill. Im going to briefly introduce them. Marlorst speaker will be lewis. Research chiefly includes areas in science, economics, law, and the politics of Global Warming. He has been published in the washington times, forms, national review, investors business daily, among various other publications. Hes appeared on various Television Programs including the Oprah Winfrey program. Hes is great where provided counterpoints to al truth. An inconvenient ill youtube it. Its already 10 years ago. Well, its probably fantastic. Next were going to have ronald utt. Author of recently published 1812, guns of of iron and the forging of the american navy. He was the Senior Research fellow here at the Heritage Foundation. He wrote on housing, transportation, privatization, urban revitalization, land use and Growth Management. In the 1970s he was the director of the Housing Finance division. 1987, president reagan appointed him to leave his efforts on privatization of federal activities. Hes the editor of several books, 21st century highways, how privatization can help solve the ever such a crisis, and a guide to smart growth. Guy,ly, an allaround good darren. Onderful guy, he wasjoining heritage policy counsel for the United States chamber focusing on food and Agricultural Policy and regulatory reform. For nearly seven years he worked desk he worked extensively on Property Rights, environmental policy. He has appeared on cnn, quoted in usa today, washington journal, washington times. He is an attorney. [laughter] so, we will forgive you for that, dan. Will just bring up marlo right now. Marlo thank you very much for the kind introduction and dredging up agent history. That was a fun moment. Recently passed the 10th anniversary of al gores hesnconvenient truth, so back, although he has less power than he had hoped to have even just a few months ago, for obvious reasons. What im going to talk about is how Big Government Climate Policies hurt the poor. Quotere, im pleased to from an alum of the Heritage Foundation who was briefly with the Trump Administration and who is coming back, and that is david chrysler. The thing to understand about Climate Policy is that almost are either policies explicit or implicit taxes on carbonbased energy. Screen an see under on your screen, david said it so well, hydrocarbon fuels provide 87 of energy in the United States. A tax on Carbon Dioxide driveup energy costs. These Higher Energy costs work their way to the economy reason cost reduction, reducing income and reducing employment. David and nick and kevin and others have done numerous studies of trade programs, which is an implicit carbon tax, or they have actually looked at the effects of carbon taxes set at various levels. For example, one study they did was a carbon tax set at the social tax of carbon as calculated by the obama administration. Another study they did was, lets translate the Clean Power Plan of the Environmental Protection agency into a carbon tax. Or lets look at the Energy Information administrations analysis of the Clean Power Plan and then plug that into our own model. Heritage has its own model based Administrations National Energy Systems model. And that the effects are always the same. That is of carbon price being debated today which is nowhere near as extreme as it could get lois have the same basic. You reduce cumulative gdp growth by Something Like 2. 5 trillion over the next decade and a half. You raise the cost of gasoline by about 30 . Cumulativethe purchasing power of a family of four over a decade by 28,000. Growth,ce employment especially in the manufacturing sector, cumulatively by about one million jobs over a decade. So, the people who are hurt the most, obviously, are the people who were the first to lose their job, and that is usually people at the lower end of the economic ladder. Pointsthe most obvious maybe this should be added as the 14th law is that energy taxes are regressive. All of these Climate Policies that increase the cost of energy. Thats because people at the lower end of the economic spectrum spend a higher percentage of their income on necessities like energy and food. The chart i pulled out of a study that came out a by roger called the social benefits of carbon. Shows that if you are a family earning within 50,000 a year, you spend typically only about 4 of your income on energyrelated expenses. But if youre owning only earning up to 25,000 a year, now youre spending over 10 of your income on energyrelated items. About you are only making 10,000, which may be people who are just starting out, young people and so on, then all of a sudden it is nearly one third of your income is energyrelated. Gas, utilities and so on. So, one of the obvious points here is that if you really care about poor people, you should want to ensure that government gets out of the way as much as possible so that energy is as cheap as possible. Not that you should subsidize energy, because that is an investment decision. But that you should not artificially increase the price of energy. Propertyoned this fuel poverty problem. This is an enormous problem. It was thought to only exist in europe but it exists in the United States today. Erally millions of people because energyrelated expenses make up more than 10 of their expenses they have to make painful tradeoffs between heating and eating. This is one chart that tries to howe how many people many low income families have to make these sorts of tradeoffs. You go without food, you see been meal in order to pay your utility bill. Or you skip health care back months. You dont go to the doctor even know you feel sick. Or you fail to pay the rent. And so on. These are real, painful choices for millions of people. Folksll super tend the who pretend that these Climate Policies are just a great take business opportunity, well, they are if youre in the ultimate Energy Industry alternate Energy Industry and you are guaranteed a market. But it is not a Great Big Business opportunity for people on the edge. Wonderful data that , it was ad this week piece in the wall street journal. Im sure steve has read it. Anyway, what he pointed out was that in germany, which is often look to looked to as a model for what the United States Energy Policy should be, because they have a program to subsidize solar energy and wind energy beenthough germany has building more coal power plants than the United States. The reason for that is that wind and solar are intermittent energies. The wind is not always blowing and the sun is not always shiny. , germany has had to build a lot of coal plants, which is very hard for them to explain in terms of being good stewards of the climate. Event, with the system has done is increase the price increase the cost of electricity to about three times the u. S. Average rate. 330,consequence of that, last year in germany had their electricity shut off because they could not afford to pay the bill. So, one of the things that we scarebout in the climate is that heat spells will become more frequent and severe and people are going to drop like flies. To this extent, what they say is correct. When the average temperature of the planet increases, heat spells will become more frequent and severe. By how much . Who knows. But here is what is interesting from an actual Empirical Data standpoint. Over the last 40 years, even though air temperatures have increased, and a lot of that is simply due to the growth of urban heat islands. In theually people United States voluntarily exposed themselves to much more climatic warming than Climate Change is producing, just by moving from the rust belt to the sun belt. Millions of elderly people when they retire experience probably four times as much climatic warming when thanmove to sun belt areas the United States has experienced as a whole in a century. Worried not get too about small changes in global temperature. But the point of this graph that im showing you is that heatrelated mortality in United States has declined decade by decade over the last 40 years. The progress continues. Why is that . Its because more and more people have air conditioning. Of the population, especially who live in any kind of warm population, now have air conditioning. Airconditioning is probably the single greatest protection against Global Warming of any technology in the world. But if you raise the price of electricity, there are some thele who will decide in hot, sweltering summer that they simply cannot afford to run the because that is one electricity prices peaked and it is more expensive. So you dont want to have people put in the position of the have to choose between airconditioning their homes and paying the rent. But that is what can happen if we get europeanstyle electric prices. Is a climaterelated policy where you might think, this can only benefit the poor. There can be no downside. That is fuel economy standards. After all, the point of fuel economy standards one point of it is to make driving less expensive because you are stretching your fuel dollar. Instead of going 10 miles a gallon, now youre going 20 or ultimately they wanted to go 54. 5, that is the goal of the obama administrations fuel economy standards. On average everyone should be byng 54. 5 miles an hour 2025. Isnt that a great savings . Except there is no such thing as a free lunch. Fuelsavingor technology. It raises the cost of vehicles by several thousand dollars. Lowincome households, in order to buy a new car typically need financing. They need to get a car loan. The car loan is based on a formula that has to do with the price of the vehicle and therefore, how much money you have to pay per month to repay your loan, and how much income you have for month. Per month. It is roughly that if the car payment exceeds 40 of your monthly income you do not qualify for the loan. The good folks at the National Auto Dealers Association did a study it is already a couple years old, but it should be considered by the Trump Administration as it reassesses the obama administrations lastminute fuel economy decision in november 30, 2016. But what they calculated was the cost to meet the fuel economy standards in 2025 would have the result of pricing about 7 million americans out of financing for a new car. That means these people would be priced out of the market for a new car. I suppose you could say, well they could always buy a used car. Thats like saying, let them eat cake. What is it that only the rich should have the opportunity to purchase a new car . I think darren is going to cover this. Here is just a slide i think is very funny. The future is here. 1930s a photo from the which showed in certain places in the midwest there were already dedicated pumps to put ethanol in gasoline. But the point is rather obvious. Tell me if you are not going to cover it, darren. The ethanol that mandate, the renewable fuel standard, is a Central Planning scheme. Look, lenin and stalin at least had the intellectual humility to stop at fiveyear plans. This was a 17 year plan. As a result, 40 of u. S. crop is in effect free allocated to be burned in gasoline tanks. This artificially raises the price for corn, hence the for corn. Corn is one of the three main food staples in the world. Corn, rice and soy. Compete for staples customers and land. When you raise the price of corn, you end up having repercussions throughout the global food system. Slide had here was just a from a study by the center for regulatory solutions, that is part of the Small Business and after printer should counsel. They calculate for example that just in california over about 20 , that the increases in food prices and also because ethanol impairs fuel economy, the increases in fuel purchases would another cost depress labor income by 18 billion. I dont think at the goats to the rest of it. You basically get the point. Heres a book that i think is wonderful. Also, read steves book. Thesis,s the same basic although in different ways. Its the moral case for fossil fuels. What our epstein argues in this book is people producing and using fossil fuels did not take a safe climate and make it dangerous. The ticket dangerous climate and made it dramatically safer. This is one of my favorite charts that he sites. By as put together researcher at the interior department. It basically shows that in the 1920s, 427,000 people in the world damaged perished from famine. Because famine reduced peoples access to food and water. Time, over one third of all the Greenhouse Gas emissions ever released entered the atmosphere, the world warmed up by almost one degree, yet faminerelated deaths declined by 99. 8 . If you look at it in terms of mortality rates, death per million, it was 99. 9 . This shows the fossil fuelbased civilization is highly sustainable. If it wasnt, this chart will be going in the other direction. You dont get a 99. 9 reduction from an Unsustainable Energy system. Guess imere is i about to run out of time, so i should wrap up. My point is the main reason for this is that affordable, reliable, Plentiful Energy made the whole global Food Production system way more productive. Think of all the machinery that is used in farms today. They all run on fossil fuels. Irrigation systems all run on fossil fuels. Think about all the electrification and data management. A lot of that depends on fossil fuelgenerated electricity. Think about the transport of food from farms to cities or from fruit surplus areas to food deficit areas. Or just think about wealth in general. Wealth creation that allows for humanitarian assistance in the case of natural disasters. All of these capabilities and technologies are supported by fossil fuels. If we want to keep progress like that continuing, we should want to make sure that energy is as affordable as possible and not artificially raise the cost, which is what these policies are intended to do. I guess one more graph i will show, because this is really unbelievable. This is a chart put together by our good friend steve at the u. S. Changer of Commerce Institute for 21st century energy. And it shows what would be required to meet the Emission Reduction requirement for 2050 under the paris agreement. Is that in order to meet that target, todays developing countries will have to dramatically decreased their currentase their projection of fossil fuels. Right now. If we assume that somehow miraculously developed countries like the United States reduce their emissions to zero by 2050, in order for the world to meet the paris agreements goal midcentury, todays developing countries will have to cut their Current Carbon backside emissions by 35 . If developed countries only reduced by 80 by 2050, the developing countries will have to cut their current emissions almost in half. We are talking about an area of the world where more than one billion of people do not even have electricity. The potential for humanitarian disaster here for harming the poor, if countries are serious about implementing this program, is bad. With that, i will turn it over to ron. Thank you. [applause] ron thank you for the introduction and thank you for inviting me. I was here for different times in the past. More times than you, probably. I finally got it right and they let me stay and ashley retired. Actually retired. Let me begin let me do this ok. Am i up . There we go. Howbegin by a quote do i get thta ah, there we go. Wrong button. Anyway, let me begin from a quote froma cover letter of a report that was submitted, created in written in 1991. To president letter bush, which is where the report was being submitted, jack kemp wrote, the commissions disturbing conclusion is discriminatory and unnecessary regulation constitute formidable barriers to Affordable Housing, raising costs by 20 to 35 in some communities. As a result, many lowerincome young families cannot find housing the other places of work and elderly couples cannot afford to live close to their relatives. This was done 26 years ago. The kemp commission. Have things gotten better . Absolutely not. Despite the fact that, who could be afford against Affordable Housing . In fact, many people are opposed to it. As i said, it has only gotten ofse, largely because additional zoning in the United States that has occurred over that period. Not iteason it is has gotten worse is in large part due to the embrace of the Environmental Community over restrictive zoning, in what i call the war against the suburbs. Ut 20 years ago of smart the rise theth, which restored smalltown feel of 1920s america. People lived much more closer to each other. They walked to work, the bicycle to work or took trolleys. Thats what they tried to do. Americans prefer to live somewhere else. ,ost want a singlefamily house a little bit of privacy. Thats the american jury in. Usually in the suburbs. Dream. Is the american this disturbed progresses because people were behaving in ways they thought were irresponsible. They were using a land we could use for parks, agriculture. They were driving long distances to work. Driving long distances to buy food and go to restaurants and Wasting Energy and polluting the environment. And so, they began to look for ways to restrict people into tighter communities. By doing this, they used zoning essentially to discourage the expansion of suburban housing. Going back to who could be opposed to Affordable Housing about in support of this, 64 of the households in america who happened to be homeowners. The thing about restricting land is that anytime you restrict the supply something, the price rises. If you were existing homeowner, what is happening is his government regulations are enriching you. Your equity in that home rises. Presume people realize these restrictions are worth a lot of money to them. So, anyone who has an existing home is opposed to competition and new homes. Is people whove are essentially largely voting, the property owners, are the ones content to keep the system going. That is why it has been so difficult to alter it. 64 of american households are already homeowners. So, what do we care about the other people . People who have not moved into the community yet that youre giving out dont get the vote in that community anyway. So you have a real problem here and it is getting worse. Ort i call antisprawl landuse regulations that have become increasingly popular in the last 20 to 30 years. 1970sd, oregon in the drew essentially lines through all other cities in the state and said no growth can take place outside this battery. This boundary. It must be limited to agricultural purposes. All residential and commercial had to go within the growth boundaries. Portland went from being a very affordable place to being unaffordable. Thate finally realized referendums which are popular were used to undo and modify the growth boundaries so there is now some relief. Another way of restricting land is through service areas. Stafford county limits growth around the 95 corridor because they are not extending the sewage or water system beyond what they call the Growth Management area. A strong Property Rights state, so they cannot really prevent people from building outside. What we live is by rick development. But that has to take place on a minimum size. You have to have a septic system and a well. They are buying their way out of these restrictive regulations and those who cannot are stuck in the corridor. Another way to do this moving isto the next is ok through simple zonig. Large lots. Loudoun county, these is the residence who had already got into Loudoun County were getting upset that more people wanted to come to Loudoun County. They were not happy with this because they wanted a certain level of policy and lack of digestion will more people were following them because it was a Pleasant Place to live. Reserved thetially western portion of the county going out to West Virginia with large lot zoning. That meant the place is limited to either fiveacre lots, 10 acre lots, or 25 acre lots. So essentially they protected from the people who wanted to actually move there. There were unintended consequences. You cannot stop people from getting married in one thing to have a family and having children in getting their own houses. Population growth is inexorable, and so is housing. So what they have done is they have leapfrogged into West Virginia. When of the fastestgrowing washington suburbs is berkeley county, West Virginia. The people moving their are moving there are living in virginia or washington dc, and are driving probably 40 miles further to commute to work. Other ways of limiting housing growth, limiting it just to people who can buy their way out, you also determine what amenities must be in the house. You have some communities where all the housing must be brick facade or solid brick, which makes it more expensive. Lawnst be stopped must be sodded. And square footage. You arel imited to not of limitinglar form housing growth in virginia at your not allowed to have impact fees. Anytime someone wants to be zone their land for development a say instancesses you have where the price to get a zone 25,000,se would be which of course the developer will pass along to the buyer, making housing more affordable. We do this by measuring what we call the median multiple. This is the ratio in any community of the median home price to the Median Income. Myider my colleague colleague considers anything over a multiple of three is not affordable. That is, Affordable Housing is if you can buy a house, a median house, at three times your income, which is traditionally what it has been in the United States. What has happened is the national average, which had been up to recently about 3. 0, is now 3. 9 throughout the country. From ery genetically very dramatically from one community to the other. If you can see, we have some examples in california. Beinga is probably very progressive has the most severe land use regulations. They have had them since the 1960s and 1970s to disgorge growth, or at least force people into cities and prevent them from going into the suburbs. When we talk about before the housing as a multiple of three, in san jose, the median house costs 1 million. The median multiple is almost 10 times the Median Income in that very prosperous community. You think about all the young at m. I. T. ,are coding all excited to get a job at google or someplace. Theyre getting what hundred 20,000, they realize they can getting 120,000, they can only get an apartment. We are seeing the same thing in los angeles and san diego. They have strict regulations. Is 5. 5 timesltiple your income. Many people of modest income are priced out of the market. Let me wrap up. Years later, a professor at m. I. T. Did a study of this. Was these costs are driven in large part but artificial scarcity for landuse regulation. Thank you. [applause] thank you. Thanks for coming today. This is a really important product project for us. I have worked in a lot of these regulatory areas that have been discussed. Policy. Agricultural clear each time i was working on this issue areas, there are so many policies and regulations that drive up the price for consumers. How the reality is anytime a policy drives up the price for consumers, especially when it comes to need items like housing, gasoline, other energy it is going to be aggressive. You can safely assume it is good to be the case and it will have a disproportionate impact on the poor. That is one of the themes of this particular panel. I want to focus on food and agriculture. Two are a classic example of cronyism. Another is a classic example of arrogance. Cronyism. First, it is a program that would make a soviet central planner blush. The federal Sugar Program. Central planning 101. Everything you can imagine essential planning it is applied to the central Sugar Program. It limits how much sugar can be sold. It limits the import into the country for sugar. The purpose of the program is to reduce the sugar supply and to drive up the price of sugar. , this is notlarify an unattended consequence of the program. It is actually the goal of the program. Which of course, theyre going to have an aggressive impact on the poor and all of us. So why do we have this federal Sugar Program . Why would you want to artificially drive up the price of sugar . Help a very small number of Sugar Growers and harvesters that exist. A lot of policymakers are helping these and the cost to consumers is throughput. 5 4 billion a year. Sugar programs is a nocost program . Year is a4 billion a cost. Just because it doesnt cost taxpayers money doesnt mean it doesnt cost consumers money. At the expense of the poor were going to have to help these cronies. It will have disproportional impact on the poor, that is ok. It comes at the expense of the much larger sugar using industry which is the confectioners and other food manufacturers including stable products like bread. Generally speaking we pay about double the price of sugar compared to the real price, at least the manufacturers do and it gets passed on to consumers. It risks jobs as well. A farmer commerce report came out. This is from the sceneunseen issue that was a discussed before. For everyone sugar and harvesting job that we saved through higher sugar prices, unity you lose the three confectionery manufacturing jobs. Another thing is the catfish program. You will never look at cash fish at catfish the same way again. The fda as a general rule inspects seafood but in 2008 in the farm bill there was a special division were catfish were not being expected being inspected by the fda. Create a trade protection scheme to help the catfish farmers that were being beat up by foreign competition. Recall,as far as i thoseish crisis of 2008 catfish crisis of 2008. Catfish is considered a lowrisk food. The Accountability Office has repeatedly issuing reports issued reports criticizing this program. Hit ofy give congress a what to do. Responsibility for inspecting catfish should not be assigned to the fda. Their quote in one of the reports is this program shifting inspection to the fda is going to increase cost and will not improve safety. So why is this a trade protection scheme . That yout works is have Companies Providing catfish to the u. S. But what is going to happen is these other countries are going to have to create a regulatory scheme that full into the fdas new regulatory scheme. It takes years to do this. Some countries may not bother to create a that regulatory scheme. For that time theres going to be a monopoly for the domestic catfish farmers of america. But the Senate Passed legislation last year a Congressional Review Act house did notthe pass of the Congressional Review Act resolution even though 220 members begged leadership to pass. The resolution would have in fact kill the program. 220 by the way with more than enough to pass the resolution. The leadership can explain why they decided to protect cronyism and to not allow for a vote when you had that many legislatures wanting a vote. President obama in the 2014 program. Lled for this everyone hates of this program even catfish take this program. It reduces the supply of a protein that is extremely important and begin hurting the poor. Exampleing to my third s. It is a tax on sweets and beverages. In far left havens like merkley, sentences to and boulder, colorado have passed soda taxes. The Philadelphia City Council Approved a sugar, suite and beverage tax and that taxes targets at night is. Diet sodas. The whole point of a soda tax is it to reduce consumption. They reduced consumption by driving up prices. They will say that a tax is not on the can number but the distributor. Guess what, the distributors are going to tax on the cost pass on the cost to the retailers who caps on the cost to the customers. As people in the city of philadelphia know, that is what happens. There is incredible sticker. Hock going on in philadelphia one of the things about this, what happens is the low income populations tend to drink sugar sweetened beverages more than other household. What you are not going to see is a tax on creme brulee. Or in boulder, colorado, a trail mix attack tax. It is just arrogant, it is not any business of the government even if people are pounding cocacola every day, having takes a soda, the diet is very complex. Whondividuals, someone drinks a sugar sweetened beverage could have a much healthier diet because we might set off what we eat in one meal with what we have in another meal. We may exercise why someone else will not. World should tell us what is healthy and what is not . And it is not as if people dont have enough information to make informed decisions through private gain. If anyone hasnt noticed, the guide into is pretty big in this country. Cronyism is a common theme around many of these 23 policies identified in the support. In this report. The government is taking a strong winner at the expense of everybody else and part of everybody else is the poor. [applause] we have a few minutes for questions if anybody out there have a question, raise your hand. We will call an you and bring a microphone to you. Thank you. Im not sure people know what a small amount of Sugar Growers make political contributions to their representatives who then intervene to pass laws or create a program that provides those rovers with higher prices than a protected market. I wonder if corruption would be a better word to use to describe a program like this. Are we not perhaps a sugarcoating it a bit . I wouldnt say it is corruption. It is part of our process. We believe in contributions and freeze beach. What happens in a lot of these issues and particularly in agriculture and the Sugar Program, it is the idea of concentrated benefits and is first cost. The politicians know these Sugar Growers really care about this program and they are going to adopt policies to pay for this particular narrow interest because of the cost are not seen by everybody else and is spread across the whole population. Immerse billion to can every year does not mean much to us. I think that is one of the problems especially for someone like me who works in agriculture where the agriculture interest in particular have this benefit of really caring about handouts inappropriately for taxpayers. It is hard for the tax tears to have the power or have influence to sway legislators to act accordingly any other questio. One thing i wanted to cover. You included in your piece, one of the miracles that the free market has given us ever the free years is what we call the gig economy. Particularly in housing, someone who is a lower middle income person who utilizes websites like airbnb, things that allow them to make significant money just by renting out their space. Maybe did touch on how some of orse local municipalities states or federal policies are infringing on someones right to do that . , what happens is that particularly with airbnb, the Hotel Industry argue that one advantage they have is it that they are not paying occupancy taxes and we are and occupancy taxes in a hotel in big cities is anywhere from 10 15 from what the room rate is and they are arguing that airbnb people are offering the same Service Without paying the same tax. Many communities are requiring airbnb people to register with their activity and they are tracking that down because a lot of this takes place you pointed out to in your community is doing it so it is easy to find out who should be paid taxes. They are taxing it, whether they are taxing it out of this i dont know. It has worked so well and been that the vessel that they are thinking about moving from their on to a longterm rental instead of weekend rental where if you have a spare house you can basic become a rooming house or a stubborn or a spare room. Become a boarding house effectively and this is also if that takes off it is also going to become a regulatory issue because most communities, especially in the suburb limit the number of unrelated household they can live in a particular household. You could have all your Adult Children live in your house and they could all have different cars but you cannot have different adults who are not related to you in this communities. You could see that could very well be the next regulatory issue are regulatory battle in the housing area. Just want to say this report does have a section on the home sharing issue actually. We have a couple of questions here. We only have time for one more unfortunately. You guys can fight it out. I apologize if you cover this for i came in but the new administration has a great deal of emphasis on american manufacturing, american product importance of preserving american jobs. It is decidedly antiin antiimport policy as best. Could you address what the potential effects on potentially low income consumers would be of cracking down on imports . For wish you had been here don boudreauxs brilliant destruction of that policy but i hesitate to try to summarize what he said but it is not a terrorist is a tax and when you tax import you make them more costly. This will harm consumers but it will also harm manufacturers who use of this import. Best of those imports for the production of other goods. And if it reduces the sales of goods in the United States, then they have less money to invest in the ninth date and it just inhibits job creation because it means that resources are not flowing to people who can use them most sufficiently and so there will be some very visible winners and invisible losers. That is why the political system perversely prefers such policies even though econ 101 or one of the thatiron laws tell this is the way to reduce human welfare. E human just to add that, with the infrastructure or graham to be announced soon, 1 trillion over 10 years. Infrastructure programs become big targets of the buy american. There are a lot of by american stuff in the highway program. Communities are putting in light rail now and probably ours. Nobody in america makes trolley cars. They are imported from shackles zecholsivakia andlist mock y then have to be reassembled. They say the one fly in the ointment of approval of the Keystone Pipeline is at this by american aspect. Trade wars are the top of the struggle. One more question before we take a break. Commentlly love to your about only living in philadelphia and having to pay the sugar tax on fresca and diet coke. Going back on the sugars that city, we are probably the only two who were around back when that whole thing got started. It was during the Reagan Administration and what it particularly did they dont mention in the paper is about the whole Caribbean Basin Initiative that Ronald Reagan was advancing was at the notion to try to make the islands in the caribbean selfsufficient. Up doing was freezing them out of our sugar market which meant we then had to give them more for an eight. Foreign aid. The whole thing was so goofy. Youre attacking american tax players best payers and the poor. Taxpayers and the poor. To the point about the soda tax mentioned, we are basically going to create a black market for fresca. Thanks a lot. Lets give a round of applause to our panel and we will have to brakes. Breaks. All month, we are featuring our studentcam winners in cspans video documentary competition for middle and high school students. This year, students told us the most urgent issue for the new president and congress. Our second Prize Middle School winners are three eighth graders from concord, massachusetts. Charlotte lisa, caroline drapeau, and cara fritz, eighth graders at Nashoba Brooks School in concord, massachusetts their documentary is entitled gauging the wage gap. 10,786 is a lot of money that could purchase roughly 2000 starbucks coffees, and 75 luxury handbags