Want to thank our panelist. [applause]. I can promise you this, that its good as they are a person its better on the page. Enjoy the book. [inaudible conversation] this concludes todays live coverage from the campus of the university of southern california. Will be back with more from the 21st annual Los Angeles Times festival of books tomorrow and our coverage begins at 1 30 p. M. Eastern time. That is 10 30 a. M. On the west coast. You can watch all of our coverage from today starting at midnight eastern time on book tv on cspan two, or or a 9 00 p. M. On the west coast. When i turn in to the weekend its usually authors share their new releases. Watching out fiction authors on book tv is the best television procedures reader. On cspan they can have a longer conversation and delve into their subjects. To be weekend, they bring you author after author and thats the work of fascinating people. I love book to be and im cspan fan. Youre watching book tv on cspan2, television for serious readers. Here is look at prime time tonight. Well kick off an evening on how the welfare system has failed the poor. On afterwards at ten, former congressman recalls the public athlete. At 11, seek olson talks about mount saint helens. Starting at midnight, reair of our air of our first day of coverage the 21st day annual festival of books. That all happens tonight on cspan twos, but tv. [inaudible] good afternoon, walking to the Cato Institute. I appreciate coming out today. This is an important topic, book form for the human cost of welfare by phil harvey and lisa. For those people following us online, a you can follow on twitter at cato events, or human cost of welfare, the u. S. Federal government last year spent 688 billion to fund more than 100 anti poverty programs. State and local governments spent an additional 300 billion on those in other programs. That means the government is spending close to 1 trillion every year fighting poverty. If you want to go all the way back to 1965 when Lyndon Johnson declared war on poverty, we spent 22 or 23 trillion fighting poverty. What had we really accomplished over that period of time . If you use of the census bureaus official poverty numbers poverty rates have barely budged. Even if you use the alternative poverty measures which are more accurate and take into account noncash benefits and things like that, taxation and other things, you find that progress against poverty really stalled out somewhere in the 1970s and has been pretty flat ever since. We are spending more money every year and getting fewer results as bad as that is for taxpayers and for the fiscal Balance Sheet , the real problem is that its better for the People Living in poverty not only are we not spending money and not helping them, many cases we may be making their situation worse. At least that is the case that is argued by phil and lisa in their book. So so we are thrilled to have them with us today to talk about the studies they have done, the people they have talked to, the fantastic opportunity to give an actual voice of People Living in poverty and on welfare to tell their own stories. Were happy to have them with us today and they will tell us about this. Left conversation and then get you involved as well. Phil harvey is the chief sponsor which is an Advocacy Group that he is the author of a number of other books including whatever child be wanted, how social marketing is revolutionizing contraceptive use around the world. And what the government is doing what you dont know about. He writes for the huffington post, forbes another publications and profiles have appeared, quite a crosssection of publications. He is chairman of the board and she works on topics like welfare policy, inequality and civil liberties. She is a bachelors degree from from George Mason University and a masters from university of maryland. She is a consultant and focuses on economic and Public Policy issues. This is a terrific book, there will be assigning later on if you have not bought one already i urge you to do it. In the meantime, lets hear from the authors. [applause]. Thank you for coming out and for being here on what started to be a very rainy day. It is not any longer which is good. My thanks to the Cato Institute for arranging this and making it possible. And a special thanks to michael tanner, michael has written, study, luck should, widely on the subjects of welfare poverty in the United States and his work. Has greatly informed our book. We are especially grateful for him for that. Well talk a little today about the basic issues issues related to welfare and its problems, well talk quickly about the welfare state and the state with the United States is becoming one. The correlation between the rise and welfare and the drop in workforce participation in the United States. The extent to which people on welfare feel trapped and in many cases are trapped in a cycle of welfare and poverty independence. Well discuss briefly the benefit cliff which is one of the principal reasons for that feeling and that sensation of entrapment that so many of those that lisa interviewed expressed. First, lets take a quick look at the relationship between welfare spending and defense stand spending in the United States. It seems to me that given the fact that america spends almost as much as the rest of the world put together on defense that the fact that welfare expenditures are now overtaking have often overtaken are ready and are destined to overtake defense spending even more as the years go by. In the future that means we have come a very long way indeed to becoming a welfare state because it is now a larger obligation than defense. The next slide shows the correlation between increases in welfare expenditures, this is a particularly steep ink crease, the blue line is the Food Stamp Program which has skyrocketed more than some of the others, but it makes the point. The red line is the percentage of adult americans who are either working or looking for work. This does not prove causation. We do not think the correlation between these items is not entirely coincidental. As mike mentioned, welfare spending at the federal level is near 700 billion per year. Our feeling after doing the research and over 100 interviews with one entree welfare beneficiaries is that the cost to assess taxpayers, while its very, very high it is not as bad as the cost being paid by the beneficiaries of this program. I will explain why we feel that way. Two principal reasons for this sense of being trapped in poverty which people hate and being dependent on the government which people hate, two of the main reasons are the benefit cliff and the culture of the welfare system itself. The benefits cliff is that point perceived by people receiving welfare payments and benefits as the point at which when they are too much money theyre going to lose their benefits, perhaps unpredictably and perhaps suddenly. The rules are there but they are very complicated and hard to figure out. One woman who interviewed and quoting her caseworker said, oh no, earning a little money, we are going to have to cut your benefits. Now that woman is afraid to earn any money at all now. Exactly the opposite of what we think people in poverty want to do themselves and exactly the opposite of what we would like for them to be able to do. I should interject that the cycle of poverty and dependency is not true of all welfare beneficiaries. The safety net for some people works the way its supposed to, you lose a job, you go on food stamps three for five months, you get another job and you go off. That aspect, for those people, the safety works the way its supposed to. I do not think we want to imply that welfare is a trap for everyone for a significant number it is not but we now see more and more people on for three, four, 56 years and that is the population that were particularly concerned about and which is miserable. We have been warned over the years by people who are concerned with welfare issues of the dangers involved and we are seeing some of the dangers taking place today. One of the most articulate spokesperson on the subject, as of franklin roosevelt. He referred to relieve as it was called then as i settle narcotic. I think it a very description, destroyer of the human spirit he said, undermining dignity and respect, we must preserve selfrespect he said, so he understood the dangers and was very concerned about them. How does welfare, why does welfare, why does Financial Dependence on the government have these deeply negative effect . It simply because all of us a font to accomplish things in life. All of us want to be able to say , i did that. I raised a family. I supported my family, got my, got my kids in college, learn to play the saxophone, expressed in many different ways. But we all need earned accomplishment to make our lives worthwhile. That is exactly the element that is missing in the lives of those who depend heavily on welfare. One of the women lisa interviewed expressed this fact extremely well, just want to read her quote because i think it illustrates both the negative side of being independent and the Positive Side of working your way out. I quote, this is a woman in decatur illinois. I remember that first paycheck when i went back to work like it was yesterday. 177, not much right. But it was mine. I took it home and shouted to the kids and it made me feel good inside. My kids, they need they need so many things, diapers, toys, shoes, count close and they need me to provide for them. It gives me a lot of pride to do that instead of them see in mama cashing welfare checks. I think that encapsulates the human part of this dilemma. The answer as the lady from decatur said, for most americans, most most of the time, the answer to the need and the need for earned accomplishment is a job. Not for everybody, but for most people it is paid work. The system, the welfare system is conspicuously bad at getting people out of welfare and into work. One of the people we encounter is a man named to who had been on welfare for many years, he was just angry about this fact. He said you you go to the welfare office, they should post jobs. It should be on the bulletin board, there should be Jobs Available in this community. But they do not. You go in on the bulletin bart board it says need help with food stamps . Need medicaid assistance, nothing about jobs. That is the other aspect of this form of entrapment. The whole system including recruiting, government workers sponsoring bingo nights for seniors to get them to come in and sign up food stamps. There has been some pushback on that recently, been very glad to see that recruiting is taking this business a little too far. Still the psychology of the system is that more welfare, and nothing about jobs and work. The only program that has a job training and job placement component is the program that replaced aid to families with dependent children back in 86. That program has become very small. It is only two or 3 of the total welfare package now. So the other programs that have overtaken it they do not have work components. There is one program in the system, one big program, the earned income tax credit which does require work in earning an order to enjoy the benefits. We think that shows the way to greatly improve the system and using that as a model we may be able to come up with ways of making the situation better. Thanks. [applause]. I just have one sly, its pretty simple. First 1i just want to thank everybody for coming out today, its a monday, a great way to start the week talking about interesting ideas. I want to thank michael for happiness and Cato Institute too. I just love get these events and get us together to talk about these. Im delighted to be here. Im going to talk briefly about more the philosophical underpinning on our book. Its based on a philosophical idea. Then i will just speak briefly about the methodology, how we did the book, how i do my travels, and then well open it to questions for michael and you guys. The reason i picked this is because basically the philosophy behind the book is we have the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. What we. What were interested in is the pursuit of happiness. The idea is that while we want to look at his if we have the right to pursue happiness, what does that mean. What is it me to be happy, what is it take for all of us to be happy. Then, once we decide on that, what is the welfare system have to do with that. Well help us be happier or not . Is it helping people leave satisfying lives or not . Thats a question we want a chance with this book. So as far as happiness goes, we are not the first people to come up with the idea that what we do for a living is really essential to happiness. Due to selfactualized, what would do to earn success. Scholars from aristotle to socrates and on have all talked about happiness. They all look at this kind like what do we need. We all know, if i were to ask you, the the first wish i would ask is what you do. Are you an artist, your teacher, are you a writer, are you a policy analyst . That is policy analyst . That is how we identify with who we are. And what were doing with our lives. We agree that we have the right to pursue happiness, if we agree that happiness is tied up with what we do for living in how we earn our way, then what does the welfare system look like under those parameters . Does it help people be happy or not. That is basically the underlying philosophy of this book. So yes, theres a lot of policy in there, theres plenty of charts. While we found out we started looking at welfare programs is they actually put people in a position where youre working for threat weather then and reward. The rules are really strict and very hard to deal with. When you hear about for example a lot of people are on welfare are working, what about the working per theyre working right, theyre being told that they can work a few hours a week or month and they can are so much. If they go over that, you are off the roll. I met a lot of people that have tripped up over those rules. A gift from and aunts, someone someone dying in the family and leaving that money. That suddenly threw them out of the program some of them in a position where they had to get back on, it took several months. So the psychology of work changes when you are on these programs. All of of a sudden the value of the Program Becomes greater than a job that you could get. So for example, you talk a little bit about the welfare cliff and the director of health and Human Services in pennsylvania looked at this and did an example of a woman that would be in this position and what it would look like. He took a mother with two children, single mom living in the suburbs, she would would get cash assistance, food stamps, wic which is additional food for her and her infant, housing, should be on medicaid, and doing the math, adding up adding up the value of all of those benefits he found that you would have to earn close to 59,000 dollars per dollars per year to replace the benefits. Someone wants to go to work in their offered a job and it is not going to cover the value of those benefits, all of the sudden they make a rational decision based on the incentives to not work. Thats scary because maybe in the short term we think thats okay, were helping helping them out ten theyre getting support so thats good because we dont want them not to get support. Were were actually telling them not to go to work. We also do this on the disability system, any of you familiar with anyone on disability you know you are told not to go to work if you arent disability because you have a good chance of losing your benefit. So take people for disabled who would like to work but make work into a risk. Thats the underlying philosophy of this book that we believe that we all have the right to pursue happiness and happiness requires work and success. The welfare welfare system get in the way of that. In a nutshell, if you got that you get the whole premise of the book. Briefly i will tell you that as far as my role in the book, fill in a a lot of policy announcement together but we wanted to do a book that was different than most of the work that comes out of d. C. That is very heavy on policy announcement but may be missing whats it like, how do these policies actually play out in real life are the real people were affected. I traveled out over the country, the south, southwest, southwest, the pacific northwest, california, hawaii, all over. I went into soup kitchens, homeless shelters, tent cities, cities, bus stops, where record find people willing to talk. I asked if they be willing to talk to someone willing about welfare. People wanted to talk and showing me what they were living on and how many dollars they were getting every month. So then we took those stories and we added them to our policy analysis. The book is not just a dry food stamps cost this much and this is how it works out. It goes on was stories from the road. We think those are a unique contribution contribution to this field the policy research. We were delighted to do it. I think im done. All open questions for michael, i think a have done when im supposed to do. [applause]. One of the fascinating things about this book is not on. [inaudible] [inaudible] you gain a voice while youre in the system which is, im curious in terms of this what you learned about why people are poor. Essentially few look at the big debate academically right now theres one side that you talk about that is based on racism, sexism, so things so things beyond individual control. Then theres another side that is its bad behavior on part of the poor. They have done bad things in their lives, made mistakes, made bad decisions about why theyre poor. You actually interact with the poor, what did you see in those regards . People are poor because they dont have money. It is very complicated subject. Its everything from bad decisionmaking, certainly i saw people who made bad decisions and ended up in a position where nobody would hire them, or they had addiction issues where they can hold a job all kinds of reasons why people are poor. I dont think theres anyone, i i think the fact that i did my travel during the session made it interesting. I saw people who there is a lot of job loss during that time. People were saying was easy to talk about this but there are no Jobs Available. What am i supposed to do. So that that made it a little more complicated. So i guess the answer is, for many reasons. The vast majority of the people i interviewed would much rather be working. I heard over and over again, i would much rather be doing work and it didnt matter what kind of work, any kind of work than having to be on these programs. Some people say well the people out there that do not want to work. May be i expected to see some of that and im sure its out there but i do not meet people like that. I met people people that were really trying hard and they did not their preference would have been to be working. The war on drugs has been certainly contributed. You make such a strong case in this book is what talk about the marginal tax rate or the fact that people, when they earn a certain amount of money, they start losing benefits and also taxed on the income very quickly. And the fact that discourages work, i think we made that case, many people recall in a study called the work versus welfare tradeoff, which was widely criticized it. And studies confirmed where we were, and your book builds on that work. What would you, though, recommend as an alternative to that . I mean, i know that when we brought up that study, some folks on the left said, well, the answer is, therefore, we have to raise wages, higher minimum wage or more guaranteed benefits of some kind. Other people say it mean wes need to cut welfare benefit as back to a lower level. Some people talked about the earned income tax credit. What do you recommend as an answer . Well, certainly making welfare point toward work is an important part of that. The present system is antiwork. Its almost a war on work. And that is insane. At the very, very least, we ought to be helping people get out of the system, and into paid employment. I did mention the i. I. T. C. Does have the effect of topping up wages and that, i think, is very good. Its a cumbersome system that requires filing an income tax return, basically designed originally to refund to low income people the any federal income tax that had been withheld from their wages, but it now tops up those amounts by considerably more than what has been withheld. Its the right idea because it makes work pay. It has contributed very substantially to getting people out of welfare and into work, and to take a job that may pay seven or eight dollars an hour, but when you get the eitc benefit, its the same again, with the somewhat cumbersome process, as earning 12 or 14 an hour, and that is the right way to go about it. I certainly agree with you, michael, that this plethora of benefits, housing, food, et cetera, is very patronizing, and to the extent we can give people money and let them make their own decisions about their own lives and set their own priorities, that is also a move in the right direction, and that subsidizing wages is one way of doing that. We have seen some states, kansas and missouri and others, coming done the drug testing of recipients, the prohibition on buying seafood with food stamps, or limiting people on tanf to 25 a day, taking out of the cash machine, despite the fact of the high fees that go with banking and so on. You see this sort of punitive approach as being effective or counterproductive . The way that people actually have to live . Its dumb. Yeah. And i guess i would agree with phil. People arent just because they can make good decisions, they will mick good decisions and dont need a lot of patronizing in order to do that. And it doesnt seem to be working very well in the places its been tried. It tends to get passed and then immediately rescinded. I know you do describe yourself in the book as being, at least open to the idea of a guaranteed National Income to replace the current pile of welfare programs we have. One of the big problems i trying to make the numbers work. We did a study here, and then found we couldnt find a way to make the numbers work, but is that something youre open to . Yes. I mean, there are two kinds, and i think we need to distinguish, the system which was then i think called negative income tax, which touched freedman. The freed moneyed, which topped up peoples wages. Turn out to be a work killer, and for the very simple reason that if you were making 9,000 and the established level is 12,000, the government gives you 3,000, you have no incentive to make the 3,000 yourself because youll end up with the same amount of money anyway. A straight cash benefits, i think, the purest form is the Charles Murray plan in his book in our hands, which is to give everybody 10 every adult in america 10,000 a year, and ingnoth else. This is affordable if you dont give it to the truly wealthy, and i think that distinction does have to be made because if youre giving 10,000 a year to millionaires, it and everybody in between, it does cost too much. But we havent really tested this at all well, and i agree with you, michael has written a good deal about this, and some experiments, and just giving people money and letting them make their own decisions, murray sets up some interesting hypotheticals. He says 10,000 daz year, three or four of you want to get together and rent a shack by the on the beach and spend the rest of your life surfing, you can do that. Nobody is going to tell you how to spend the money. There are no incentives to work, no disincentives to work no incentives to have children and that is entirely neutral. My reservation about that, having found the power of the relationship between work and happiness, in to in doing this book is too many people wouldnt work, and even though that would be their own choice, theres no guiding hand telling them not to work, but people who arent working generally arent as happy as people who are. So i have that concern. But i do think we should test it. It does seem that the studies done in the 1970s by the mrdc did show at least with the negative income tax it did have a discouraging effect on work because of the marginal tax rate problem. Measure riff suggested 20,000 tax free and then start taxing above that but still have problems witch marginal tax rate and if you try to give to 10,000 to everybody, its 4 trillion, which is truly unaffordable so making the numbers work overcomes the their rhythm what are the other approaches . One of the big things on the republican side now is to consolidate the programs and block grant them to the state, paul ryan wants to do it with a small number of programs. Marco rubio suggested although he didnt set out the details but almost everything, giving them to the state in terms of a block grant and then having standard states had to meet to continue to qualify. Would that be an approach that you think you would be in favor of . What did you hear at that meeting in South Carolina . Oh. I was on the Advisory Council for paul ryans poverty summit in South Carolina in january, where six of the republican president ial candidates came and talked about poverty for half day, which was really cool. I mean, paul ryan had some energy in the room. Unfortunately the six candidates that came are no longer in the race, and even though the on the democratic side they were invited but chose not to attend. So i dont know where we stand with all that. Was there. Thats right, kashich was there. One left standing. But in terms of the block grants to the states, in my reading of how these things play out the 1996 welfare reform was supposed to be welfare to work, you were supposed to be given encouragement and ways to get a job and the whole idea was that we would end welfare so we can get everybody to work, and then a lot of those programs were sort of turned over to the states for enforcement and what happens on the state level is that all of a sudden year dealing with real people, and lo and behold, waiver started happening and you fine anything something comes with rules from washington but when it gets to iowa or Washington State the state is dealing with the population of people only welfare and they adjust accordingly. So i have some concerns about that. But i do like the idea of giving states more control. On the flipside, im kind of schizophrenic on this because i think that overall the states do deal with their actual populations. When you hear kashich talk about people in his state, or bush or whatever, their populations they adjust their programs to meet their people so if they had more freedom maybe theyd do it better but ive seen they tend to loosen requirements thats right than tight them. One thing well find is interesting questions from the audience. Before i turn it over to them, let me give you chance to defend yourselves against what i think will be a criticism of your book, and that is that theres a certain amount of victim blaming going on, that its essentially you take a poor person, living in the inner city, theyve had terrible schooling because the inner city schools are by and large lousy. Theyre dealing with the criminal justice system, the war on drugs, as you said. Theres no jobs certainly in their neighborhood. You do to the area the area where freddy gray was killed in baltimore, for example, theres not even a fastfood store in that entire neighborhood. No supermarket. Simply no Employment Opportunities around there. A then youre saying, okay, get a job. Pull yourself up by your boot straps. Is that fair charge to put on that poor person, to do that, and arent you in that sense somehow saying that theyre behaving badly by not doing that . Well, what was the i lost my train of thought. As far as the job situation in inner cities, we dade book event in baltimore and had a bunch of people in the audience talking about how they wished that there were more jobs there for people to have and that was an issue. They also agreed that theyd rather be working, so even those who arent able to find jobs, those folks would rather be working. Its not that theyre living there because they choose to live in the inner city neighborhoods that dont have any Jobs Available. And still the idea that they do want to work is still there. Number two when i traveled around the country, i met people that i would ask why they wouldnt move for work, because at that time, north dakota has zero up unemployment or something ridiculous, and i would meet people in alabama and say what about moving for work . I did it growing up. And benefits kind of hold you back because its hard to get off those benefits and move to another state and you have to reapply, and it gets very complicated. So, as far as blaming the victim, think thats exactly what were not doing. Were saying we care very deeply about these people and that they have just as much right to happiness as we do. Why do they have anymore or less right to the same things that we have . I have the right to happiness. They do, too. So, to banish them or leave them, ignore them and say you live in a poor neighborhood, too bad for you, i think phil and i are arguing very strongly that we care about them a lot and want them to be happy, and we believe their happiness will come from them working. The worst thing, it seems to me, that you can do to somebody is to put them in a situation where theyre going to be in a perpetual cycle of dependency and poverty. Thats cruel, and we shouldnt do it. The best thing that you can do in this context, it seems to me, is make work more attractive. Theres little to be said for doing more to create dependency that doesnt lead to satisfying lives. It leads exactly the other way. So, i dont see any blaming the victim there. It seems to me that the idea that simply providing more benefits to people is going to be good for them and what we found is that it is not. Really important point. All right. Lets go to the audience. We have microphones that will come around, identify yourself. As they approach you with the microphone, and then please keep it to a question and not a speech. Im an economist. I want to get out of here alive. What happens if you cut all of it and went back to 1960. Is this a political issue . Im thinking in terms this is where i get the civil society, theres the family, there are other safety nets that arent uncle sam. What would this look like if you got rid of everything . Im not running for office. I think its a fair question, frankly, and in many respects, there would be pluses, but let us say right off there would be destitution one thing is to eliminate real debt constitution in the country. We dont happen people starving in the streets and i dont think three would be because we end everything because americans give away 350 billion a year to private charities, and in great deal more of that if we had no welfare, a great deal more of that would go to poverty, and less probably to the the simplephone any and museums and universities so that society would adjust but there would be a period that would be rough for some people. I do think that private philanthropy could be taking that much, much more of the welfare issue, and one recommendation we discuss the book is giving people a tax credit for donating to a list of several thousand charities, always the problem picking the charities but instead of giving money to the government for food stamps you could give it to the charity of your choice for assisting the poor, and they would have to use it for something related to that purpose. I think that would be a good move. A couple more things i would add to that. Theres a very robust underground economy so there is people are not necessarily living on food stamps. Theyre living on food stamps and then trading and bartering and doing things. You have to keep that in mind. Number two, part of your savings would be a vast array of Government Employees that administer all these programs. So theyd all lose their jobs which would mean more up employment but we would free up money that wasnt directly going towards support anyway. Consumption data, look at what the poor actually spend as opposed to what their income is, some cases its seven times higher in terms of consumption. So its significant. The other interesting thing in regard to what phil said, you look at poverty rates prior to 1965 they were coming down steadily, and they continue to come down through the early 1970s, and then they leveled off. Since then. You can argue even when the 65 to mid70s whether thats due to welfare spending orsive rights act which brought africanamericans into the labor force or Womens Movement which improved womens earning. Not a whole lot of evidence to suggest that additional welfare spending today is lowering poverty significantly. We no longer have the Michael Harrington style where a third of americans didnt have running water. That sort of stuff is gone. But theres a question whether we are actually lifting people out of poverty now with the programs we have. Gentleman in the blue. Identify yourself. Im jim lampert, a friend of the author one author. What consideration have you did you give or might you give to things that would stimulate job creation, both by the private sector, and the old new dealer type public works projects and that kind of thing . Have you to me, from what i am familiar with, its really difficult to find employment under the circumstances of the low income very low income black areas and people now losing their jobs because of the outflow of jobs to other countries. So did you give consideration to that, that instead of trying to give people an incentive to find jobs, giving incentives or put some kind of pressure on the private sector to create plenty or jobs for the people we have, and the federal government in a time of very low interest rates. The short answer, jim, is, yes. We have a series of recommendations basically to make it easier for business, particularly small business, to create jobs. Theres an awful lot of policy now, government policy now, that inhibits job creation. The regulations on small manufacturing businesses, for example, are estimated to be Something Like 15 or thousands per employee, simple regulatory requirements. We have a number of recommendations about that. We have almost absolute sweeping recommendations about idiotic licensing requirements. This is a lot of a lot of that is state originated but it when you have to license things like flower arranging and hair braiding and taking care of horses teeth and other things that requires that you go to some college, some Training Course that costs a thousand dollars, these are stopping people from getting new businesses started, and new businesses are one of the lifebloods of our economy. So, we have a number of recommendations about that. As to the availability of work, one of the positive things that lisa mentioned just a minute ago is that people are finding work and not telling anybody about it. At least half the people she talked to we think this is indicative of the total population were working off the books. Theres a big underground economy out there, and in the way thats good news because that means that people want to work and theyre finding ways of working, almost bartering and exchanging as lisa said. But well, let me stop there. Those are some of the principle things we suggest to make more jobs. The licensing is an area of broad bipartisan agreement, something that even the white house has spoken out on. In fact about 30 of all occupations in america now require some sort of license, permit, or state approval in order to participate in. Funeral attendants require a state license, and just dont die unapproved or something. Up here in front, then move to the back next. Hi. Gary merritt. Thank you, phil and lisa. Very provocative. Loing forward to getting further into the book and finding the narrative having to do with how we got here with respect to misbegotten political processes and concepts embodied in the law that brought us to this place. I suppose there will be a narrative arc on that. So, we have had president s who are republican with different types of senate and house arrangements, and all mixtures of things since franklin roosevelt. And yet this has happened. Republican, democrat. So, do you if you can understand how we got to here, it might be those people could be rallied around the idea that it hasnt worked out the way they wanted, and become part of a constituenty to change things. Phil instead of griping about it. I think the wail we got here the way we got here is fairly straightforward. As society becomes wealthier, people are more and more, you can say, embarrassed there are poor among us, or they are simply more concerned, or they simply realize that we can afford programs to assist the poor so people need food, we get food stamps. People need medical care, we get medicaid and so on. I dont think theres anything terribly mysterious about that. It is odd when you ponder it a bit that in all of the relatively prosperous western democracies, including the famous scandanavia, which is always used as an example, of how government in this regard can work as they became wealthier, instead of thinking, well, now the whole society is wealthier, so fewer people are going to need welfare, and decided instead that as society becomes wealthier, well use more of our wealth to help the poor, even though they need it less than they did before. But that happened here, and it has happened in all the western democracies. I dont think its terribly mysterious. And the differences there are differences, right and left, that is between conservative and liberal views of all this, but that i dont think thats quite what you are asking. Just concerned that even with republicans, the decisionmaking, legislative [inaudible] well take two questions. Thank you. Jerald chandler. Would you agree that poverty is rather misleading because its actually a government assistance level and we that decreased poverty, used the word destitution before. We certainly decreased that. And what were actually doing is keep raising the level to that government assistance is allowed. Well, its a fair point. A number of scholars have hypothetically asked, will we continue providing welfare when byriz can afford second homes and sailboats . And it is an interesting question because the lifestyle of most poor americans today exceed middle american standards of 50 or 60 or 70 years ago. I mean, having running water, hot and cold running water, indoor plumbing, a television set, telephone, microwave, and a computer, would have looked very, very good to my parents when they were young. Thats quite a long time ago. But relative poverty is a very deeply engrained belief in american society, and i think in western society generally, and as long as there are people who are conspicuously more poor than most people, i think that the concern will continue to exist. Even though in absolute terms you could argue it doesnt. That gentleman has had his hand up for a while over there. Im steven shopping with basic income action, and i was pleased to hear you mention charles measurery and negative income income maintenance experiments from the 6. So i want to see if youre following the discourse about basic income in europe and canada and many other places where this idea of a guaranteed floor is gaining enormous support. There while be a referendum in switzerland a couple of weeks, pilot programs launched in holland and england and canada. There have been pilot programs in india and na i wonder if you could comment on this and if it might provide insight on what were doing. I think around the world people are its a sign of the wealth in the world, that we are at a point where we are considering a basic income for all citizens, and thats wonderful news. We have looked at various phil already talked about it some but our concern is basically this its sort of at war with the idea that people need to be working to be happy. If you just give them money and they can choose four guys get together and get a beach house, nothing wrong with that, but we have a certain of philosophical question what does that mean . The minute you start putting rules on it and say you have to work, were right back to what were doing now. Its very interesting and phil and i i would agree were excited to see those studies. There needs to be a lot more research and its fascinate that different places are reaching that point at the same time, and im just excited that we have that kind of ability. I mean, having grown up in a developing world and see how different it is now, we have meat a lot of progress. Theres a lot of problems all over the world, but, wow, the fact that countries like as varieds a you just mentioned is looking its i think is awesome. Give us some data to begin to look at results as we see it come out. Finland is another place. Switzerland is going to lose the referendum. Its the nature of swiss democracy, lose anything the first time its proposed. The netherlands, we should have data within a couple of years and canada trying to figure out how to device their proposeed expert. So we dont really have data yet or these things arent really in place yet in these places. Were still talking about it but it will provide some Interesting Data whether or not this is good. Also looks to whether there are sort of addon tossing more benefits into the pile or talking about replacing the existing system which is what the finns seem to be moving towards and their approach. The swiss we have no idea because they left it up to the federal council to develop so thats one reason why its going to probably lose. So, lets finish it up. David bose with the last question of the afternoon. I actually have two questions. Which may or may not be related. Number one, i was monitoring the twitter feed on the event, and somebody posted a question there asking, was there any rigor or sampling to the interviews you did and are you trying to presents them as representative of something . My own question would be, if im a person who knows a fair amount about welfare, has read a book or two, study or two, what is the most original or valuable thing i would get out of this book . They may be related. So, as far as rigor, no, there was not a scientific sampling done by state as to who i talked to. I would refer to as random sampling because i walked around and ran into people. So, as far as that, that would be my answer. I interviewed whoever would talk to me, wherever i went. I walked into different situations. From indian reservations to tent cities in seattle where homeless live. It i think it was representative of the country, which was really important to me. Argued pretty hard for going all over the different regions because i thought it was important. But, no, i didnt take five women and five men from each state and give ages and do anything like that. And then i dont remember the second question. Whats the most different takeway, why is this book different than the 25050 25050 books on welfare. Because we wrote it no. The most surprising thing to me i think it comes through in the book pretty strongly is the importance, the central importance, of work to a decent life. I as a libertarian, abhor patronizing other people, and if it werent nor fact our welfare system is incredibly patronizing right now, i wouldnt be suggesting things that also seem patronizing, but it does seem to me and i think this emerges from the book and it is very controversial but it seems to me that human beings are happier when they work and even when they are forced to work. Even if they dont feel like working. There are those of us who make our own mountains, sometimes i