Transcripts For CSPAN2 JFK And The Reagan Revolution 20161023

Shortest month as if its some politically correct addendum but not as it turns out in the center of it. You just need to pick up todays paper and read whats on the front line. He owned a few people. And set it in motion. Its always struggling with the question of race. Im interested in how my country works. It is important that what were not trying to do is substitute one persons history for another. We are to try to expand. When they said at the end of that sentence that we should be in pursuit of happiness that meant we were a country in the process of becoming and always getting pretty free of debt. Women, he didnt mean africanamericans, he didnt mean a lot of things and he added that because he got bigger so what i think the opening of the africanamerican museum on the mall is not a narrowing of our history, its an expanding of our history. The south had 9 Million People when the civil war started, 4 million of them owned by other people. 45 percent of the staff so that means you can speak about a monolithic south unless youre willing to include and add the africanamerican story and thats all ive done, that democratic to do that so thanks for the compliment. Can burns, documentary filmmaker and author of his newest book, globe Grover Cleveland again, a treasury of american president treated this is book tv on cspan2 at the National Book festival with the upcoming president ial elections, book tv and our companion Network American history tv have teamed up to bring your programs about former president s and president ial races. Now on book tv we bring you Lawrence Kudlow, the author of jfk and the reagan revolution a secret history of american prosperity. Following this program on American History tv on cspan three watch the 1960 president ial debate between incumbent Vice President ial debate president Richard Nixon and john f. Kennedy. [inaudible conversation] good evening everyone. My name is lenny golay and my husband and i are owners of thecorner bookstore and i want to know if you can hear me, we have a new sound system that doesnt work well. Great, wonderful. Were obviously thrilled, honored to be celebrating the publication of jfk and the reagan revolution a secret history of american prosperity. We have the two coauthors with us, a man who needs no introduction, Mister Lawrence kudlow and his coauthor Brian Domitrovic who is the associate professor and chair of the department of history of the Sam Houston State University and the two of them worked on the book together and they will be talking about it together and were so thrilled and so honored to have you both here. Thank you for coming. Ishould mention larry lives across the street and is a regular customer here at the corner bookstore, has been for years. Which makes it so special and so personal. So please welcome me me in joining larry and brian, thank you. [applause] thank you very much. I appreciate it. Are we on both mikes . We welcome cspan, thank you for covering us. Im Lawrence Kudlow and im a local and when random house started organizing this thing , which one . That works. This one doesnt, is not great but we will do what we can. Penguin and random house said a while back when we finally got this thing written and published, its good to have a couple local bookstores. I said a half, how about across the street . He said terrific idea, were going to do a bunch of these around the country, people have been wonderful to us. An oped piece of ours was published in todays wall street journal. This is my coauthor and great friend Brian Domitrovic. Brian by the way is the curator of the head of the Lafferty Center . Associate at the Lafferty Center and a longtime friend of mine. His prior book iconoclast was all about the class wars revival going on and hes a harvard trained historian. As i said before, his historiographer is the glue that held this book together. What i want to do is just read a few excerpts from this thing. You can get a feel for it and brian will then speak on whatever he wishes to speak about and then we will enjoy some wine, cheese, whatever is out there. I want to begin, theo , the under heading to todays oped piece that the journal kindly published by brian and me, return to jfks rising tide model, underneath it says kennedy and reagan both spurred growth to bipartisan tax cuts and and that is just what is needed now. If you take away anything and you may disagree with me, i appreciate with that, i love disagreements. Ive been in thedisagreement business for a long time. Tv and radio so im fine and theres going to be a q and a. Ive used that. But really, the very essence of this book is that first john f. Kennedy and then 20 years later Ronald Reagan both used lower marginal tax rates as well as a sound dollar, revived moribund economies. This is not something from the 18th century and its not something from the 15th injury, this is something from recent times, in the 20th century and our argument is, we have experienced a long dry spell. The last 15 years, frankly under republicans and democrats, president and congress of poor Economic Growth. And thats one of the points we make. You can draw whatever conclusions you want to draw but my intent here was not to write a politicized book, we dont really mention the current election but just raise history. We can learn a lot from history and one of the great things about history is when you forget history, you forget that john f. Kennedy who i would argue was the greatest democratic politician in the last 50 or 60 years, i speak myself as a former democrat. John f. Kennedy was in fact the first supply side. First supply cider. He was the first pioneer. You have to go back to the 1920s and that was a long time ago but kennedy was responding to very poor Economic Growth during the eisenhower years when there were three recessions and he felt having won by a twister in 1960 that if he didnt produce growth, in fact he talked about five percent growth during the campaign, that he would lose. 1964. So he was looking around for things that would get the economy out of the doldrums. There were three recessions during the eisenhower years. The Unemployment Rate was increasing, up seven percent i will read you a couple excerpts from this book and i hope you get a flavor for what we are talking about. Urgently we have a model to follow as we seek to return our nations Economic Growth. It is the john f. Kennedy Ronald Reagan model. If the model of getting government was trying and two areas of Economic Policy, its called monetary policy. Both kennedy and reagan identified substantially cutting income tax rates, getting the dollar strong and stable as the specific policies that would let the private sector which is to say the real economy thrive. We need that. We need that. Most of us are well aware that reagan was a tax cutter, hes the guy who had to deal with the horrible stagnation, high inflation of the 70s and 80s which came to end in the first years of his presidency. Some of us are aware and correct, weve got bill clinton some of that model fostered prosperity in the decade after Ronald Reagan and a republican congress, clinton cut Capital Gains tax rates and was a proponent of retrade which we think is part medicine. However, it is generally not known or not remembered is what the subject of this book is about that president john f. Kennedy in the early 50s not only used but largely pioneered the exact same model. Kennedy. He came to office during the period in which growth was only a little better than todays and his own credit much the us on one of the largest economic booms in our nations history, using a mix of tax rates and a strong dollar. It was by the way five percent Economic Growth for the years between 1962 and when it ran out of gas and policy changed in 1969. If americans had known this history, we probably would have tried to jfk reagan policy mix years ago. We would have kept tax rates low, maintained a strong dollar, created stagnation for expansion just as we did in the 20th century and yet this history has been obscured. Todays liberals and progressives act as if tax rate and a meaningful dollar are shockingly far right policies that were never put into practice in the 1950s and failed in the 80s and could only work in a dream world. But it was a democratic candidate launched those policies. That by itself i think is a great factoid in this book. Let me read you just a couple of quotes. We were reporting about long radio interview tonight at 11 00 and he actually found the tape of kennedys boston accent, a great, famous speech kennedy made in december 1962, very famous speech which really was the breakthrough of his new policy. In short, it is the paradox of truth that tax rates are too high today and tax revenues to low and the soundest way to raise revenues in the long run is to cut taxes now, for the reason that only. Employment can battle talents the budget and taxes can pay the way to that employment. The purpose of cutting taxes now is not to incur a budget deficit which leads a more prosperous expanding economy which can bring a budget surplus. That was jfk in 1962, december. Now, let me turn the clock forward in this history. Ronald reagan comes into office. I gratefully served as one of his budget deputies a long time ago. On separate 18 1981, a month into his presidency reagan gave a speech to thenation and he announced he was seeking the 10 1010 tax rate cut, 30 percent across the board. Kennedys was roughly the same, 30 percent across the board so we skip over two decades. Heres reagan and Calvin Coolidge cut taxes across the board, government revenues increased. When jack kennedy did it, the economic advisers were all telling him the government would lose revenue and the government would gain revenue. Thats the reality. They made a sizable financial error. Jackkennedys line about it was quote, a rising tide lifts all boats. And this is what we believe the tax proposals we have made our aimed at. That is reagan in almost the identical words of home of john f. Kennedy. Finally, last quote from reagan. Can you cut taxes and fight inflation . By so doing this, i very much believe you can. Let me read you something. Our choice is not between tax reduction on the one hand and the avoidance of large budget deficits on the other. The economy is stifled by restrictive tax rates will never produce enough revenue to balance the budget. Justas it will never produce enough jobs or even enough profit. Heres reagan. John f. Kennedy said this back in 1962 when he was asking for a tax increase. A cut in tax rates across the board and he was proven right. That is reagan. Before that is kennedy. And i just want to say this for the umpteenth time, kennedy the democrats, reagan the republican and its the underwriting of this mornings paper for us, kennedy and reagan both spurred growth through bipartisan tax cuts. Thats what we need now. [applause] so its become something of a career on our critics that claim reagan, blame me, blame arthur lacquered, to blame jack can, to blame a whole lot of people who contributed to this. Im fine with that. Go ahead and blame, i can take it, im very thinskinned at this age. But if you have a 6 and a half rate tax cuts, blame john f. Kennedy. He started it. In great fashion. And unfortunately he was tragically assassinated but it went into place, it was defeated, Reagan Reagan bought it and was defeated again and all i want to say is if we have an election year, this book is not about the election but whoever wins, somebody needs to form a bipartisan coalition, reach across the aisle as kennedy did and reagan did. Kennedys top Economic Advisor was a republican treasury secretary doug dillon. We need to do the same thing, thats all i ask. Stop snarking, stop being mean, just look at the facts and read some history and youcan see there is a way out. Of the slump of america unfortunately finds itself in, thats our message and im going to turn it over to my pal Brian Domitrovic. [applause] quest larry and i had a great time writing this book. Alot of it right here in new york city across the street. And a lot of events this book had. I just want into the Jackie Kennedy on asses reservoir, thats down the street, the carolina hotel. A couple of his economic reports that we discussed in this book including reports that said you cut tax rates rather, that was paul samuelson. Of course the Economic Club in new york down in the canyons, not too far from here. One of the things we wanted to do in this book is kind of correct by means of evidence this impression that the tax cut of 1964 was dickensian, that kennedy was some sort of demandside primer and not a supply side. I never understood that given that his tax cut was a cut in marginal tax rate which means its not a dickensian taxcut. Were not sure why the argument had traction so we wanted to identify really important roles that Douglas Dillon, his secretary treasury played in 1962, three and four and what i like to do is read you a president ial memo from the treasury secretary. Usually these things are dry as dust but in the context of what were talking about, when kennedy actually turned on his keynesian advisors, this memo turns out to be important. Kennedy is listening to this advice from his advisers, paul samuelson, jim tobin, all these things that cut government spending, youve got to lose money and get off the Gold Standard. If youre going to have a taxcut, only a temporary taxcut grid going to need to preserve Public Programs in the future, youve got to do that. In 1962 every forecaster is king theres going to be another recession. Dylan writes this memo, john f. Kennedy. He told him about the advice he was getting in your and dylan believed this himself. Ellen wrote to the president that any significant adaptation of government policy aimed at stimulating economic expansion should be presented in a clearcut, simple package with consensus on these points. One, if there is to be a tax cuts, it should be oriented towards improved incentives. It should be of a permanent and reformed character. Reduction centered on lower bracket personal income would be regarded as fiscally loose bread and circuses, although some companion action in this sector would be understandable. Two, a deficit should be presented as the cost of essential tax reform. Overall feeling on expenditures should be announced. It is important that system be financed out of current savings as opposed to Federal Reserve. Three, the government should declare his willingness to allow Interest Rates to rise if combined with demands from the private sector and the government deficit creates a great pressure. And kennedy took every point of that advice. He said yes, im not going to do the spending, im going to stop the monetary looseness, stop reinforcing the Gold Standard. Were going to cut tax rates and rates that matter, the rates that have incentives, the highest rates in the tax code and that will draw capital back to this country, bring bigtime growth and disabled standards because of the demand for the dollar. If i might read one more, you know what . They asked us this afternoon why was kennedys policymaking, his policy in the 1960s, why was it forsaken and why wasnt it a policy all the way through the 1980s . Why did Ronald Reagan have to resurrect it . I think actually unfortunately one of the reasons we did have a stagnation in the 1970s is that john f. Kennedys opponent in the 1960s election became president in 1969 and nixon studiously made sure he didnt do john f. Kennedys policy. So its going off the Gold Standard and raising the Capital Gains tax rate and regulation and spending. So heres an interpretive passage that we write about the 1960s and 70s. The assassination, we right of november 1963 provided an enormous shortterm boost to the cause of the taxcut past and 64. It was fatal to it in the long term. The assassination was so shocking that the opponents of kennedys legislative agenda had to submit on at least one goal out of due respect for the leader. The obvious choice was taxcut. And once that was enacted, all leverage was lost on blocking civil rights and these other legislative initiatives. In the long term however, kennedy after 1963 deprived the taxcut of its principal exponent articulator and enforcer. The cerebral tone kennedy brought to the question of the tax cuts, you just heard about it in the economic new york stage, kennedys commitment thinking through the real economic effects of the tax rate cut while unencumbered by the intellectual paradigms of university economics, the supreme social standing that he had in common with Douglas Dillon and Douglas Dillon alone and the naked ambition that kennedy possessed help them solve the Economic Growth problem of the day and constituted a reason and credibility behind the administrations commitment to seeing the tax cut through. With kennedy gone, the mechanism of the tax cuts that kept the logic and the motor force wrong was gone to , no matter the phenomenal quality of the prosperity it had unleashed. In other words, it didnt take johnson long to undo the best damn policyhe was associated with. And for a lot of Different Reasons related to foreign politics and whatnot. He raise taxrates , he tries to put the individual rate from 70 back to 78 percent and then began to unhinge the dollar and as i said then, this is a bipartisan, nonpartisan book so the next president Richard Nixon who ive met many times, i understand hes a dear friend of mine but as nixon once said to me, when he was out of office in downtown, you dont think much of my economics, do you . I said no sir, i really dont. Nixon raised taxes, nixon unleashed the dollar, unhooked it from any goal or any other monetary discipline and impose a massive regulation on the economy including wage and practical controls so again, in a bipartisan way, democrats and republicans got it right and the democrat andrepublican got it wrong. And now the question is, how to balance to wind up tipping, i cant answer that question. My crystal ball is no better than yours but its important and the other point that brian read which i love, doug dillon was very wealthy banker and his father still in dillon read for many years was on the white shoe in new york. Doug dylan had just about as much money as joe kennedy and john f. Kennedy in very high social circles, higher than the cans and so kennedy could not scarehim down. He had to listen. After all, kennedy would have been in office as treasurer so i thought that was pretty good. Sometimes you got to be able to make people listen to you, whatever it takes. In this case it was money and social standing. Me, i take it any way i can get it and the policy is good policy but the main point here again, a bipartisan book, i want america to coin a phrase, get moving again. Weve got to turn less than two percent growth over a couple decades now back to 3 to 4 percent growth which is what we do historically and to get there were going to have to take strong, remedial action particularly on business tax cuts. To grow the economy five or six percent for several years and it ought to get us back on track. Kennedy and reagan showed proof historically that it can be done. Now, as im an american and i believe in democracy i believe we can get it done. Thats really our story. Im happy to take your questions. Even your criticisms. Yes sir. Thank you and its interesting, ive never been sore associated kennedy with carlisle uncommon policy. I was recently listening to an interview with aias Nicholas Edward staff and he has a book out about the decline of people participating in the workforce, particularly men working age who are not even looking for jobs out of the labor force. Im wondering if this development that you argue is very significant, whether that would in any way limit the effectiveness of a new policy of going to another round of these tax cuts. Itgoes the other way. Prima argues in his piece, there are probably two key issues here. One is the lack of Economic Growth which might create jobs and growth. Once a lower budget deficit . Growth. Want to solve poverty . Growth. Want to employ more people . Growth. There are other issues that raise, federal policies were very small entitlements and other regulations have been a disincentive to work. Thats too bad because we want to get everybody ablebodied to work and i saw the same argument today, leon rennert of the Federal Reserve board was governor made a similar argument how low the Participation Rate is in the backbone of the economy which is the 25 to 54 , their Participation Rates gone down. Know why . Its not growing. Its not creating jobs. You want to look at gigantic brown Unemployment Rates in this country . Its not growing. You want to see the reason why people are cranky . And unhappy and pointing fingers at everybody . We are not growing. Where not growing. I know we did rules and inflation and so forth but its not growth. Nobody complained much in the 60s and 80s and 90s about these subjects and then we stop growing and they complained. Tangential, i always believed in Alan Greenspan with a series of how to control recession and that came out with the fact that he was looking to prove us wrong. It was working and all of a sudden he declared it invalid. Hes a personal friend of mine. We had a caption about how greenspan in our book. He gave a interesting talk in 2002 to about convention. In which he said with all these surpluses weve been running, thats four years of surpluses in the late 90s. We actually can envision a future in which there is not enough Government Debt for the fence to continue its open Market Operations. The cafc downward ratio that the gdp was getting that fast , im ready to believe actually that some of the economic stagnation that arose in the mid2000, this was the kind of survival mechanism on the part of some of these government institutions, i certainly remember visiting the imf in 2008 early that spring and everybody was scared to get death because nobody wanted their business, there was so much cash flushing around the world, nobody was begging inf money and sure enough the crisis came and the imf had another life so i think one of the other benefits of bigtime constant five percent Economic Growth is you clear out some of the nonreal entities, the feds, imf and all these things. These are things that are nonexistent in past prosperity. I think, let me say this, hes a friend and i think hes the super reserve chairman. He served four terms i think. I dont think anybody else has done that. When he made his statement, one of the statements about the ability of free markets to function properly at all times, and a lot of people blamed the financial meltdown of 2008 on whats called ultra easy, ultralow Interest Rates that alan was partly responsible for, partly responsible for. I think he made mistakes but i think hes losing his nerve and he testified on some committee and said oh my god, the market didnt work. I think hes now gaining his legs more, realizes that federal regulations played a huge role. I dont want to go deeper on that because its not on the subject but greenspan through 40 years of Economic Policy influence and service was a free market guy and also was a sound money guy. And maybe people in high office shouldnt serve four terms, maybe one or two is enough. How do you feel about gdp. Look, ttp, specific trade is a good idea. But its not been done properly. But a good idea, im a free trader. And will remain so. I think the geopolitics are very good, bringing our allies india and japan closer to the full, australia and serving as a buffer or a warning to china, however you want to put it. And it will lower trade barriers among these countries. Which we need, which is good for growth. There are problems they are where a couple of International Boards that will not reflect the american electorate were so forth that will be used to decide issues and conflicts, im sick of International Boards. I want an american board. And really, i dont want us to be governed by world courts. I want us to be governed by distant institutions like the imf and world bank. Im sure theyre good for employment but as far as im concerned, thats not good. Im sick of 1000 economists at the Federal Reserve board who been done more harm than good. Im sick of devils and that crowd whos done more harm than good and i love exit, i was so much in favor of pulling out of the European Union. I call it magna carta 2. 0. Get rid of people who have a wonderful legacy, i love britain. I love what they just did. The magna carta, parliaments, representative democracy, freedom equals growth. Thats the way i see it and the eu, i put them right in there with the imf and the world bank. You can have it. Im for free trade but i want free trade be governed properly in accordance with american interests in democracy. What do you think of the uk leaving the European Union and the effects. Im in favor of it. Yes sir. I came to work in wall street under the ages of Chesney Martin which as you recall replaced trumans poodle marriner eccles. And i think thats a fair description. Twice with fdr. If my memory serves me. But would you contrast, would you care to contrast the era of Chesney Martin and the public posturing and public statements in comparison to this latterday minstrel show of the fed board of governors and the way they conduct themselves in this day and age. You want to take a lack of that . Sure. Ill Say Something about wild bill martin. The chairman from 1951 to 1969. Its clear that bill martin was trying to do a good job in the 60s. He really had trouble. The famous comment out of the fed was when they take away the principal, they had 91 percent marginal tax rate and 24 progressive brackets going on. The fed had to be extra vigilant and in that context, the United States was losing 2 billion of gold every year because renters were quitting on the us economy so when kennedy reappointed martin, martin was ready to raise Interest Rates in the context of Economic Growth that was inspired by incentive laden tax cuts. I have listened to cell phone conversations that the fed has with martin and lbj. Notice how obsequious martin then got towards lbj. He really folded when lbj asked him for anything. Can you transfer a balance to me which is technically illegal . Id be happy to. So the Federal Reserve chair is trying to be obliging towards the president he served and thats why he was at his best under kennedy. Carter appointed rocher. But the candidates were showboating on a daily basis by individual owners. I dont recall that. I hate that. Ive written about that. It does more harm than good. When i was a child i worked with the Federal Reserve and worked under paul hilger, i was on one of his secretaries of the era. I did some speeches, i did correspondence. Anyway, the chairman was put up at this place. The chairman didnt want anybody to know what he was doing. The good news is hes right. The bad news is he might not have always been true. So it depends on who the president was, car carter wouldnt let rocher dohis job even though he appointed him, reagan didnt. He said do whatever it takes to cut inflation. Right now theres, i dont agree with one of the candidates who believes the whole fed is politicized, i dont agree with that. That makes a lot of mistakes because they have lousy economic metric models and they see the world in the wrong turn. The time is right. If you cut tax rates, open the doors to trade, a lot of things get easier and better. In the back. If we got back to five or six percent growth, that would be the old normal . And todays old normal is 25 fed funds and we are debating today whether we go in september, december 2 moving up to 50 but if we had 5 to 6 percent growth, wouldnt we be going back to the old moral when you are talking about 250 . Higher rates are going to impact the outlook and how do you see that coming out because one, its going to work against you keeping those rates. No, no. If we tax rates again and i think the big issue today is business tax rates which are the greatestobstacle we face , then Interest Rates go up normally. Without any manipulation. Because the economy rises. Real Interest Rates will go up. And all the fed has to do is let that happen, follow the market. Thats what ive always wanted the fed to do. In the 80s and 90s, when we had great prosperity, the average Interest Rate was 10 years about six percent. Now one and a half or something. The reason rates are low today, the economy is terrible. Theres greater deflation and stagnation, those are the biggest reasons why we have low rates, particular five, 10, seven years. All these jockeys, i love them all. They just dont understand that. Markets control rates, the fan control one or two rates at the bottom. It helps the economy to have a five or six percent Interest Rate. The good thing, but youve got that tax rate there. I come back and im happy with this photography today. Shes a liberal, shes a democrat but i agree with what she said. My point is wait until you cut tax rates. Then let Interest Rates go up normally. Everybody will be happy. America will be happy. I want america to be happy and americas not happy right now. Its part of the reason we wrote this book, america is crazy, i hate that. I want america to be in a good mood. I need. Part of that has to the look, if you didnt have any way chives for 15 years youd be in a bad mood too. I get that. Byebye if you look at the actual statistics, the top one percent have done so great either. Winds shift here and the Manhattan Institute has done work on this. Top one percent today , Market Income is right where it was at about the year 2000 , 2005. Weve got mass downturns, lost 50 percent of the top one percent and back only 35 percent. I dont want to dwell on that. One of the reasons we need tax cuts is a new dose of kennedy, reagan religion. It will make people happier. It will. And less crime and more job opportunities. We can figure out a way to do immigration without killing people. I get very into this because i think that in many ways hopefully the debate is putting the cart before the horse. We may be putting the horse before the cart, the horses the growth rate that will pull everything out. Its not small potatoes, real lives are at stake. My friend Arthur Laffer says hes a kennedy democrat and a reagan republican, ill buy that. Ill buy that. Yes. Peter. From an economic standpoint, can you talk a little bit more about goals and how this relates to this and also king dollar . All right. Ive been saying it for about 25 years. I dont know if we have to go back to control the Reference Point anymore. I would personally preferwhat my friends wayne angel and Manley Johnson did. Heller from San Francisco. Bob heller from San Francisco. Alan greenspan, you could use a Market Basket of commodities and 25 commodities and thats judging the value of the dollar. Inflation is rising, the market is rallying, you got a tight percent of the dollar. Thats loose enough. Thats what i would, i dont know, im an old gold guide. I just think you probably have to make the basket a little bit larger and were never going to have balanced payment transfers. Again, i can do Market Operations and they used to literally move gold from one country to another and sell balanced payment accounts. They dont do that anymore. Im trying to make you bothhappy and give you both a magic wand. And specific policy actions that you think would be, you only get three. You dont have three obviously but three policy pics that you would implement right now whether its inflation, regulatory, cooperating, divisional taxes, what would be the three things you would wish for . Ill take those. We always talk about the five pillars of reaganomics, low taxes area right. Im going to say you can eliminate one of those. You dont need to worry about spending. Spending will naturally fall if you cut tax rates and the dollar strong and stable again and have a real regulatory mode. We had those three things, a demand for the private sector would be so great people would jump off welfare. They would get out of obamacare. They would go into the real economy if you would lower tax rates. The investment that would come from getting this revelation out of the way, spending would really plummet like it did in the 1990s. I believe that. At least in the shared gdp, that comes down when yougrow. Each point of proposal , thats two percent cbo baseline is worth 3 trillion in lower deficit. I would say, my view is the single most important thing to do is business tax rates for large and small companies. 15 percent, its a very good number. 15 percent is a good start. You wont get it, its a good start. Work on it and you might get 20. Its the single best thing we could do and i think also, obamacare must be repealed and rewritten. It turns out it is, and the new york fed says its costing jobs. I think thats probably right. And i dont want to lose the freetrade. I understand deals must be enforced, absolutely and weve been lax on that. But free trade is a good thing, not a bad thing. It helps both sides and ive always believed and you know this, robert and i Work Together for many years. Daytoday and talking and so forth. Americans should have the freedom to purchase the best quality goods, for the lowest available price anywhere around. I believe that and im still going to believe that and im never going to give up on that. This is cheap and steel, and some actions have to be taken but as far as the generic points, its not going to move me on that. Kennedy was for big free trade. Yes. Yes sir. You believe that the quality operates as a barrier at all to growth or do you believe that inequality runs rampant . I put it the other way. Let growth run rampant. And i think that any qualities, this stuff only happens when the economy is sour. Its a resentment. I dont like that. First of all, in america, a free country and representative democracy, we all must start and all be treated equal under the law, same story. We must all have equal opportunity. But in a free economy and a free country, we dont all and at the same place. Were going to do better than others, some are. And i have no truck with the redistribution of wealth and in my opinion, you may disagree but i dont see any real evidence that the socalled inequality. I think its vastly exaggerated when you look at various statistical studies that we all go through but inequality causes slow growth is unproven. Unproven. In fact, most of the or some of the Northern European countries have shaken that off and their cutting taxes to deregulate labor markets and i resent you becoming a multibillionaire if i started social Media Operations where you wear dark woods over your head. I may hate it from the fashion standpoint. But thats the way you want to dress. And we discovered, this terrific social media and others and he gets rich and by the way, the 30,000 people who work for him get rich, they all own Stock Options and im fine with that. I have no problem with that. Lets give them a chance and thats what an open free market is the best path to prosperity. You talk a little bit about the coolidge tax cuts and was that effective, was that a precedent that he used in the second, are you aware of any situation either in the us or a foreign country in which tax cuts were not effective in spurring growth . Is there any contrary precedent . About the coolidge tax cut, the tax of 1920s, yes. Income tax rates went up 11 full during world war i from the time of simmons to seven percent and by 1920, james grand has written about this eloquently in his book the Great Depression, by 1920 there essentially was an investment strike in this country. There was no investment to be measured in housing and track and station maintenance among many other categories. While Municipal Bonds were selling like crazy because they were exempt from taxation so there was this big portfolio shift that the Nations Capital out of the economy into the public purse. And so harding and coolidge under the guidance of Andrew Mellon and the treasury secretary who was reading the memos of his three democratic predecessors, all of wilsons secretary treasuries says we created a monster. You have to cut tax rates and this is back when democrats were beholden to their position as tax rate cutters and there was this series of rate cuts that put the top rate of the income tax down 73 to 85 and kennedy referred to that and dylan referred to that and mccain referred to that and said we dont want to do that because it was the Great Depression of 1930s. Its going to be tax cuts that dont work. There is the case of Foreign Countries that are really lost by the Exchange Rate to the dollar. The dollar goes like this all the time. Have a currency war and theyre trying to make a brave monetary policy, you can neutralize the effect of good fiscal policy so there areexamples , japan might be one. Certain countries in Eastern Europe that had good low tax rate systems but investment doesnt move in the right direction because theres no guidance from the leader of voluntary policy in the United States. Walter gave a speech about this in a year and a half ago. He said weve got to move out to rural faith monetary policy, and International Currency cooperation. Very important, they just had a g 20 meeting, there was no headline. Its more progress to solve global warming. I dont want to get into that. Maybe the reasons for and against it but the pressing issue for the g 20 in the economic terms was currency. You dont have currency wars, rate balance, currency manipulations. We are as guilty if not more so than anybody. Thats what hes referring to. In the old days, those tax cuts would come around agreements and one of those agreements in the Bretton Woods lasted in the country. We need to do that. We need to do that. Right now this is more out, yes sir. Whats your Artificial Intelligence and whats the productivitys effect on middleclass jobs . The only way we will know that the economy is incapable of creating a lot of jobs is a low tax rate and a really strong currency and a little regulation. Until we get the circumstances, we should not look for other causes of our unemployment problems so i fully expect there to be an abundance of jobs with a full technological revolution. Theres an argument floating around about this that i just dont like. Basically the argument is that advanced High Technology breakthroughs along with the automation that goes along with that are necessarily bad for the economy and jobs. So heres the case where they should look back at history. Every time weve had tax raising this, we had one in, after the civil war. In the 1920s were full of Technology Breakthroughs in electricity, radio and so forth. The 1960s with examples in our book of breakthroughs. Intel started in the 60s and of course the most famous is the 80s and 90s. Employmentexploded. Now, at the turn of the last century, the makers were fine and i agree with that. On the other hand, henry ford and rent wrestling created tens of millions of jobs with products that were cheap enough where tens of millions of more people would buy cars. Think of that. They would put carmakers out of business. The buggy makers lost out. We moved the whole country from the farms to the industry in the cities. We did great, okay . Microsoft, apple, there are huge companies, people forget that. The only person getting rich was will jobs, nonsense. You go to Seattle Washington which, i dont want to be offensive here but i used to travel that route. Nothing was Congress City but now it has more millionaires per capita than any nation in the world. Why . The company did very well. We may go through patches of this but robots are not going to take over the world. Jobs will do. Give us Economic Freedom and great things will happen. Just bet on it. Economic freedom uses great things, so does political freedom. One more question . Well, you are very kind for having me. Brian and i are going to sign some books for you, we are very grateful. [applause] if you like programs about political history, cspans American History airs road to the right white house rewind at 10 am eastern. In a few minutes, turn the channel to cspan three to watch archival coverage of the 1960 president ial debate between income and Vice President Richard Nixon and massachusetts senator john f. Kennedy. Thats starting now on our companion network, American History tv on cspan three. Tv takes hundreds of other programs across the country all year long. Heres a look at some of the events youre covering this week. One day in connecticut, new haven museum bbc anchor lauren trevelyan will provide history of the gun manufacturer the winchester repeating arms factory and share her connection to its inception. On tuesday, a panel of president ial biographers including david meredith, jonathan alter, jacob and weisberg will discuss their respective biographies of president obama, clinton, carter and reagan at the New York University law school in manhattan. And on wednesday, we are back in new york, the museum of Natural History where astrophysicists Neil Degrasse tyson and j richard. Share their thoughts about the universe. Also that evening in new york, National Book Award Winning biographer deidra baer will recall the wife of denies crime boss al capone at an event hosted by the museum of the american gangster. Next sunday at the San Francisco jazz festival in San Francisco at the annual american book awards according to the awards author the for Columbus Foundation recognizes outstanding literary achievement from the entire spectrum of americas diverse literary community. This is a look at some of the author programs tv is covering this week. Many of these events are open to the public. Look for them to air in the near future on tv on cspan2. My earliest memories were the refugee, i came to the United States when i was four years old and my first memory was from pennsylvania being taken away from my parents and given away to a white sponsor family because that was the only way to leave the refugee camp. And its always stayed with me, this idea that even though i dont remember the war myself, its been imprinted on me i can invisible stance between my shoulder blades. My parents survived for decades of war and famine and even though they spoke to that comedy exuded the force of that memory for their actions and their feelings and so did everyone else in the vietnamese american Refugee Community i grew up in and as an american boy growing up, i was cognizant of the fact that the vietnam war was something important to both the american Refugee Community as a whole but americans only saw one side of the story. Apocalypse now for example when i saw when i was 10 years old, much younger than age, scarred me for life. Why a novel . My whole life is very under interesting frankly whereas the novel is my revenge on hollywood, Francis Ford Coppola and also my attempt to also tell the history of the vietnam war and the story of the vietnam war, the fact that most americans never heard of before which is that their own allies, their own friends, south vietnamese experience this and my narrator is a spy and hes also giving us a communist perspective and then when he arrives in the United States, he is telling the, hes giving us the viewpoint of how the vietnamese see American Culture which is not necessarily in a positive light. Theres a very satirical dimension of novel as well as i get white people to think about what white culture looks like the people from outside this country. But i think the topic has been hard and soft for me which is why i had to write another Nonfiction Book about it, nothing ever dies, vietnam and the memory of war which is my attempt to situate the vietnam war in a larger context of hundred years of american warfare is been waged in the pacific since 1898 when the United States left the philippines, guam, puerto rico, hawaii and the vietnam war and now iraq and afghanistan as an extension of the century Long Campaign and thats really why i needed to turn to nonfiction. I couldnt say those kinds of things in the novel. Go back to that for one second, one of the contextual questions i had is whether your experience writing the novel did anything to reform your sense of the vietnam war. Definitely so because i wrote the novel to criticize everybody. Theres something for everybody, just like in his novel. I criticize the communists, south vietnamese, americans and i think the theme of the novel is sympathy with a sympathizer and what i took away from that is the easiest thing to do in war or conflict is to sympathize with our own side. And the virtue and the flaw of my character is that he sympathizes with everybody which makes him a great spy and is also going to lead to his downfall. Thats what i learned from writing the novel is if we have any hope forward for peace and reconciliation and things like that, it really requires an expansion of sympathy and empathy jan are owned closed community to a larger human community. Watch this and other programs online booktv. Org. [inaudible conversation]