When we are not sending down stroman on this. It is my pleasure to introduce our new panelists if i can find my spot. Moore awith us steve trusted advisor to president trump. At the Heritage Foundation, a anmer colleague and we have editor and the author of a book on socialism. I am not finding my notes. The socialist manifesto. The format for today, we are going to have Opening Statements and do a rebuttal. Im going to ask difficult questions. We are going to take questions from the audience. Write down what you want to have answered and pass it up to me. Then we will do a closing statement. Lets have steve moore kick it off. Hen by the way, jillian just got back from hong kong. How aboutroposal is we give the Nobel Peace Prize to those Freedom Fighters in hong kong . [applause] stephen second of all, shout out to jennifer and rick. Awesome conference. How many years has this been . Dont they put out an amazing conference . Thank you for bringing me out. I think i have done this five times. Ive always had a great time and who knew there were so many deplorable people here in colorado. [laughter] stephen what am i going to say . Thatistressed by the fact in the land of the free, the United States, the greatest country on earth, latest polls show over half of College Graduates today view socialism has superior to Free Enterprise capitalism. That is distressing for a lot of itsons, one of which am tells you a lot about the sad state of our Education System. The fact that we spend 300,000 it isucate our kids and a huge Public Investment in educating kids, and they come out with this dingbat idea that socialism is superior to capitalism. I was fortunate enough to be friends with milton friedman, the greatest economist of the past 100 years. He used to say what is the enduring lesson of the last century . It is clear to anyone that knows history that socialism, is him, sanderism, bernie it has repressed citizens, caused people to be poor and free capitalism is the key to success. Now we have kids who think we wed more socialism, and so need to do something by the way, i think most people in this room are conservative and thank you for coming to a group that may not necessarily agree with all of your ideas, we have got to take back our schools. If we allow the left to run our schools, we are going to get kids who dont understand the way the world works. Quickly, my point would be, i dont have a clicker, but i brought a few slides and tell me when my eight minutes is up and ill stop, but, jillian lets do eight minutes and 30 seconds. Well give you a buffer. ,tephen i dont have a clicker ok. Weve done a lot of research at heritage and when i was at kato and it shows a linear relationship between the more free you are as a country and by Economic Freedom we mean, i think you all know what Economic Freedom is. Lower tax rates, lower government spending, less regulation, the rule of contract and sound money, privatization. Charts that show low and behold, with this is showing a positive thing. The world has become more free over the last 15 or 20 years and that is a good thing. As freedom has emerged, youve seen a reduction in global poverty. I would make the case the single greatest achievement maybe in Human History is what has happened in the last 25 years in terms of through freemarket capitalism, at least the Movement Towards freemarket capitalism in places like india and china, we have moved a billion people out of abject poverty. That is a great improvement in such a short time. The next chart shows that Economic Freedom is associated not just with more economic, better economic performance, but free countries have better environmental improvement. Countries that are rich spend more on protecting the environment. The next one shows when social progress, things like health and other dynamics, not just economic, but social progress, education and things of that nature, mortality are associated with Economic Freedom. The next chart shows you not only are countries that are free richer, a lot richer, they have higher Life Expectancy, Better Health outcomes. Social and economic progress are associated with Economic Freedom. Finally, lets just talk about the states. This is one of our most powerful arguments for Free Enterprise. Lower taxes, less regulation, is, you have heard me talk about this before, the big story of what is happening in America Today is the high tax, socialist blue states are getting clobbered by the red states. And you can see that in terms of the 4 biggest states in the country, texas and florida with no income tax and right to work laws and less regulations, are literally stealing the assets of the red states like california and new york, which are losing their people. I would stop by saying the evidence is pretty crystalclear that Free Enterprise is the solution to our problems, and we need to really think about how we can persuade voters that this is the right solution. Jillian you clocked in and five minutes and 30 seconds. Stephen you can use my extra time, then. Bhaskar first of all, thank you to our host for the invitation and the willingness to engage a democraticsocialist in debate. Both the best of classical liberalism and the best of democratic socialism share common roots in the enlightenment tradition and in an era of growing authoritarianism and narrowmindedness, i am glad to embrace the spirit of free inquiry. I will try to briefly outline a definition of what capitalism is, a definition of what democratic socialism is and what democraticsocialist has accomplished as a political tradition. Ill have to speak quickly. I might need that 8 minutes and 30 seconds. Socialists do not see capitalism as an entirely or even mostly negative historical phenomenon. Crucially, we emphasize capitalism isnt merely a market system, or freemarket, or Free Enterprise system. Weve been using markets for millennia, and i believe they serve a crucial role in a future democraticsocialist system as well. What is capitalism and its origins . Capitalism is a society characterized by wage labor and market dependence. I say that in a pejorative way. You dont necessarily have to think so, but that is the definition i will operate from. Before capitalism, feudalism was the dominant system across much of the world. Under it people were divided between those who worked the land and a small minority who appropriated through political coercion. Peasants had access to their own land, thus the means to their own survival, however lords used force to extract a portion of their yield. This didnt encourage innovation because for the obvious reasons, the peasants knew that the more they produced, much of it would go to their lords. Feudalism face periodic crises, the black plague killed half the population. As soon as the continent recovered, it was plunged into warfare. The end result of the revolt is the ruling class reasserted its control in Eastern Europe where peasants had their autonomy stripped even further through an extreme system of feudalism called serfdom. And bounded them to states and criminalized flight. The peasants managed to secure de facto ownership of their to their lordser the weaker lords became , functionaries of a centralized state. A middle ground, peasants stopped the ruling class from extracting greater surplus through brute force but failed to win the legal land rights. English lords searching for new ways to produce surpluses beyond exploiting a depleted peasantry laid the groundwork for a a peasant system to one based on the tenant system. Tenants received leases and had incentives to be ever more productive because they kept all their surplus after the run was paid. Tenant farmers were compelled by the market to maximize production. Farmers began hiring. This might sound like a small shift but it was a profound transformation. This process created a highly productive Agricultural Sector able to sustain a Large Population not engaged in farming. The majority without property could be forced into wage labor. It was the first market society, the origin of capitalism. We know the misery of Industrial Society and this set into motion advances in humor productivity and social wealth. I would agree with your assessment on the last 25 years on a world level including brazil, india, and china. I would attribute a lot of that to that statemanaged liberalism to free market laissezfaire system. Democraticsocialists dont want a break with the present. We think from this new condition of abundance, key aspects of capitalism, the coercion of wage labor, abject poverty and extreme abundance can be done away with. What is democratic socialism in theory . Just as i wouldnt complete a system with its crimes, i am not defending stalinism or other systems. I will focus my limited time on defending the world you i believe in, not the caricature of it. Democraticsocialists believe in inaately ability of lienability of social rights. The goal of socialism isnt to reject capitalism completely but ask questions. Freedom of press is a good thing, but if we live in a Society Without guarantee literacy, it would be a writing name only. That is our opposition to capitalist society, it isnt due to the democratic rights it extends but the ones it limits. Democratic socialists believe profoundly in the importance of the individual and the idea that our individuality can only be developed in society embodying liberty andf equality. A society socially providing the Bare Necessities of life. Food, housing, education, health care and so on to allow individual flourishing. Inspired by these ideals democratic socialism in the , United States have shaped the society, from the 8 hour work week to the struggles against, for women suffrage, to rights for black americans and so on. Social democrats have been at the forefront of such movements for the past 120 years. God rested on the 7th day. If you get the sixth day off, that is the product of a democraticsocialist inspired and led Labor Movement. The democracy we have, the democracy we should aspect and enhance was foisted upon capitalists against their wishes by popular struggle. What is democratic socialism in practice . I think this is a difficult questions because it Computer Systems with all its contradictions and warts, but a system theoretically so i will draw on concrete examples. Lets think about democraticsocialists in a party with marxist roots and radical ambition which covered a state governed a state for nearly 40 years. Im talking about sweden where the socialist Workers Party governed uninterrupted from the 1930s until 1976. They were able to create a society with public guarantees to help with childcare, Education Health care, and to , this day in europe, social democratic welfare states, the rights of Business Owners have been undermined for the regulation of capital. These societies, in other words, limit freedom for people to own private property, places that produce goods and services, your car, your house, your toothbrush, to do what they will with their property. For the majority that dont, they enjoy a greater range of choice and a greater chance to fill their potential. They have this greater freedom , not because private property is repelled, but the freedom of your own private property is limited. Fundamentally, socialists believe in the rights of working people to the fruits of their own labor. Of course we believe in individual rights and freedoms. Of course there are certain spheres the state should not enter, but our individuality can only be developed in a society with a more robust set of democratic guarantees. It is obvious to any american that a person born in fairfield county, connecticut will have vastly different life outcomes than someone born in flint, michigan. If the system isnt allowing people to reach their potential, if it is filled with amazing wealth but also explication in poverty, and misery, how can we make it better . We tried to tame the system at first. Tried to build the welfare state to get the basic guarantee of social rights. We expand the mandate or trial and error and construct a more participatory society, like our predecessors in the nordic states did. We accomplished what other societies accomplished with mass movements inspired by democraticsocialist ideas. Guaranteeing rights outside of the market. We pushed to transform unions from mere instruments of workingclass bargaining within capitalism to worker cooperatives in a competitive marketplace. If democracy is a good thing when we vote every year at the ballot box, then why not in our workplaces . This last sphere jillian one minute over. This will come out of your response. Bhaskar work ownership and not merely the regulation and shaping of capitalist outcomes is the difference between democratic socialism and social democracy. In summation, to conclude, it is my profound belief that future generations will look upon capitalism, the system we have today, as a time when life outcomes were accidents of birth with shock and di disgust much the same way we look on other more extreme forms of exploitation we have already done away with with shock and disgust. Democraticsocialist is a horizon we should move toward. Jillian before we continue, you have a little extra time and i want to make sure we are talking about the same definitions. I got a pretty concise definition of what socialism is from him, but what the socialism mean to you . Stephen it means more government control of the economy. The problem i have, he made a lot of excellent points. The problem i have with this kind of argument that we just want to move from Free Enterprise more in this direction, but we dont want maoism. We want somewhere in this middle ground. The idea is not that kind of socialism. Ideas like that is saying, we want the good kind of socialism like nordic countries. Thats like saying we want the good venereal disease, not the bad. The more you move towards the socialist direction, the more you are giving up your freedom. And i loved what you talked about, the rights of individuals. The bill of rights, which is one of the most Important Documents ever written, which is part of our constitution, is all about safeguarding those rights you are talking about by limiting government. Thats what a bill of rights is. What our founders were worried about was that government would invade these basic fundamental rights that you talked about. I wanted to make one other point. Could you put up those charts again, because there is one other chart i want to put up. While you are doing that, i will simply say that a lot of people who want more government control of the economy, socialism, democratic socialism could you move toward the last one . This one. Go back. You mentioned education, health care, obviously, we want people to have the highest quality of health care possible. And i actually believe in the rich country we have, we can afford to provide everyone who is a citizen very high Quality Health care. I think we should assure that people have that. And you mentioned education. Absolutely. Part of a democratic capitalist system is you need a wellinformed electorate who can make good decisions. I showed you this because it is so interesting to me. This is just showing the rate of inflation, the rate of Cost Increases across all sorts of industries. When they do the Consumer Price index, that is made up of thousands and thousands of products and hundreds of hundreds of industries. Some industries have faster rates of inflation than others and what is so interesting about , this chart, looking at price increases over the last 20 years. You can see the things traded in the Free Enterprise system and , this is one of the reasons free trade is important. When you get competition and private enterprise, look at what has happened to most consumer items. Everything from cars to apparel, furniture, toys, computers, test software, these are not for the most part regulated by government and their prices have become more affordable to people. Look at the left side of the chart and you can see the two industries in america were prices are completely out of control. Surprise, surprise. Education and health care. My question to you all is what do those two industries have in common . Government. You mentioned Public Education , and i asked my liberal friends, why do we have the government play such a big role in health care and education . Do you know what they say . To make it more affordable. They are doing a great job of it. The two industries with runaway costs have become least affordable. I will close by saying this and turn it back over. I think the biggest disgrace in this country is our Public Education system. I really do. I think we are robbing people who grow up in newark and st. Lewis, and michigan, and detroit, and washington. Im from chicago. Ive gone to the Public Schools in inner cities there, one of not one of you in this room would ever send your kids to those schools. They are incredibly depressing places to go, more like prisons than schools. I live in washington, d. C. And it is the same kind of thing. Why do we tolerate that . We should give every single american child a voucher to go any school they want to. [applause] jillian thank you. Bhaskar first of all, i agree we should avoid the n