Theyre not as good as the fouryear Public Institution degree but that theyre allowing people who are working without degrees to go back, often times in their 30s and get i think theres plenty of public in most places theres plenty of public options. I worked for free for the university of the people, that is essentially free. And just as good as the university of phoenix which is going to charge you a lot of money for exactly the same amount of educationsive convenience. I think the language that would work in america in american politics you hear the plate tall pundits is the fact that these are not this is not private enterprise. This is corporate welfare. Theyre getting the public really known cussing on the fact that theyre just hoovering up Public Resources theyre not really free theyre not really businesses that are standing in competition in the real economy. Theyre just these just like defense contractors with no bid. Theyre just something that are actually just like welfare sucking off the government, and that is a language that most americans will resonate with and will turn the tide, i think rather than focusing just strategically to focus on that, on them taking our money, rather than the fact that the damage it does to the students, which is the ultimate issue but in terms of political tactics focusing on the fact theyre taking taxpayer dollars would the more effective argument. Uhhuh. For me im going to go with one big philosophical transformation, so not necessarily a policy intervention, and then one smaller thing. I think the smaller thing is to close the mismatch between the extent of student loan funding pell grants that are available to people that often are unable, firsttime collegegoers, to Access College opportunity. Close the gap between pll grants following behind and tuition costs rising over time. And then my big philosophical transformation this is something we havent yet touched on but that keeps coming back to me in every conversation i have like this, and that is that as a society we tend to think we can get equality on the cheap. We think that we can do this by tinkering around with policy designs, and not actually challenging the private decisions that all of us make daily in our lives and one of those decisions that i think is still very politically correct it is not theres no public norm. Theres a big public norm against discrimination but theres not a public norm against constantly reaffirming segregated neighborhoods. So the affluent are incentivized to make private decisions to accumulate more wealth to keep their kids in an i live in knew new haven and i see this. The yale faculty and anyone affiliated with yale lives in one specific neighborhood, and there is one specific good school for the entire city of new haven and they all send their kids to that one specific good school. Or they if they cant get into that school, they send them to private education. I think until theres a real norm against private behaviors like that, were just going to keep having the same conversation across generations. In other words ive seen this month progressives, liberals, who believe to their core in equality and they want to do the right thing but then theyll say, bit decided to live in this neighborhood and i decided to send my kid to this school, and i make a little donation to the other school in that neighborhood and i feel okay about it. I think until theres a strong public norm against private behaviors that accumulate wealth and that drives enter generational enter generational wealth accumulation, were not going to get very far. So thats any bigie. If the genie was here and i could wish for anything it would be the similar norm against education would exist against private choices that adduce benefits regularly and that hurt. Dont have a language that these actions actually hurt others. They draw down resources for failing schools. They mean you dont interact with neighbors who have different income levels. They mean you dont even need to see the poor on a regular basis and i think that until we have that conversation, you can tinker around with getting rid of the Home Mortgage interest deduction, tinker around with maybe my other suggestion, increasing pell grants but were not going to get very far. Let me ask a question with that. So sort of bold, lets sort of change even the way were thinking about it. So what would we say as an alternative . Ill give a bit of a personal story. We lived in chicago for 12 years, and we were one of the i guess, black special families that moved back to the hood. And maybe the first couple of month we were there there two two boys coming buy on a bicycle, and we got in a conversation got going to school and he went to school in the local school in the neighborhood. When i asked him about the school he said do not send your children there. So this is a young black boy just broke may heart for him to say it. But he went on to talk about just how challenging it was and that he it was this tenyearolds recommendation, based on his experience, that he should i should not send my children there. So what does one do, then . What does one do with that norm . It doesnt the norm isnt wrong but speaks to the totality of what would need to actually change in order for that conversation. Im not sure exactly and this isnt what i study but why not organize a Community Jump where several families that believe in the value of not just getting your kid up the ladder but of giving them a diverse environment, and teaching them the value of living around people with different means and teaching them value i live in a similar neighborhood, and 90 black and latino, mostly working class, lots of people falling under the asset poverty line, as it were. If i didnt live in that neighborhood i wouldnt have a chance to give me old laptop to to 12yearold kid that lives next door to me. Wouldnt have the chance to interact and say check out the preschool my kid goes to. And people said to us the same thing. Its more criminal in that neighborhood. Your housing value wont appreciate this, this and a third. And you know what . Were fine. And i like it. And i think theres value in my childs learning to not hyper segregate himself and i wanted to i guess thats my big kind of if i were to transform something it would be that. I dont know how you do it. Maybe when he gets to regular school age ill have different feelings. But theres its really funny to me how quickly people become pseudo scientific when it comes to their own children. And when it comes to their own decisions about where to live. Theres no science saying that if you send your child to a school that doesnt have the greatest test scores that the bad test scores will rub off an your kids. Theres no science saying that. So why not embrace the actual science, which is that parenting matters, that reading to your kid matters that talking to them matters and regardless of what schools theyre going to. But i think that this conversation is not one that im seeing in the New York Times, not one that im hearing. In fact i hear quite the opposite. The regular messages when we first moved to yale, you need to live in this neighborhood, you need to send your kid to this school. Its not just yale. Its not just yale. Its my example but youre absolutely right. Its everywhere. William . Until we october of these things in structural terms and not individual terms we wont have the change we need. I think it is important that people struggle, as you explained, with your own situation, and how you live your life. That is important for each and every one of us. But change comes when people get together organize, demand that the sim change, and that thats really the issue. I would endorse the suggestions that you made on education and there are thousands of these changes that would make a difference. The freedom budget, black lives matter now has an Economic Program that some people are working on, which i think is very good. We know what needs to change. The question is how to change. So i was thinking, your genie coming here and granting us the wish, anybody here probably not as old as i am but remember ozzie davis play, pearlie victorious you remember the genie, and he turns that racist cracker black and it was such a great image because if white people could understand black reality and just get out of what theyre in well, ozzie davis was great and it was brilliant but thats what id ask of the genie, the problem is stupid white people and scared white people. Mostly scared white people. And until they understand why where their impression comes from and its not from blacks we cant have the kind of changes thats going to make a difference for people of color. So i go for ozzie davis genie and help white americans understand a great deal more about the realities that people here have been describing, that people in the audience know very well. Because academics were always asked for policy advice. Im going out to detroit to be an Expert Witness at a trial against the emergency financial manager in detroit but its not just detroit. Every black city practice dominantly black city in michigan has an emergency financial manager who has taken over from the democratically elected governor, while white cities in as bad shape a lot of white cities in detroit that should have but they dont because theyre white. Sort of basic stuff that has to be fought, got to be understood, has to be seen structurally and has to be changed through collective action. So i want that genie to help me organize the white folks. Thank you. Let me build off of that. With the followup question. What would you say to someone like me, just a concerned citizen talking very high level policy and sometimes when we talk very high level we talk policy and were often asked about policy its much clearer for say a concerned citizen what one can do. So, lets say i this is were done here and i walk off and say incredible, im not a policymaker, i dont know any policymaker, i dont have enough wealth to influence policymaker. What are some things that i can do . Each of us is going to work in ways that seem sensible to us and that are consistent with who we are and we cant tell people you know, that some people here might have been a year ago a man was selling loose cigarettes in Staten Island and got murdered bay cop. Well a year later that is still eric garners reality and the eric garners in across the country, and until we manifest in large enough numbers and with the intensity to change that, it doesnt change. But what we see happening as people get angry as they get organized, de blasio is a decent guy and i think he is making some differences. I think we support the politicians who do good stuff but we also say that its the system that is broken. This is a broken, sick system and it needs changing, and the only way its going to change is through organization. Now, as individuals were each small. We cant do it, as you say just a concerned guy. What are you going to do . But we can give money to the organizations to support the young people who are out there when were not so young anymore and the marching isnt quite as easy for us. We can teach them and give. The a sense of the history of the only changes that matter came through struggle. Frederick douglass, without struggle and thats what we can do. Even if it seems small collectively as we all do it, the world changes and thats basically all the genie could tell you. Its a very good question. I think there are organizations out there that are pushing Economic Justice initiatives. Theres one starting up, i serve on the Advisory Council for it, at the center for community change, for example. A way thats going to reorient and make economic demands. Right . So i think supporting their efforts i think also more broadly, realizing that all of our fateslinked. Whether youre wealthy or not your fate is linked. We as political scientist have begun to say that we have reached levels of income and wealth inequality that make us look more like an oligarch can i than a democracy and the stream levels of wealth inequality and income inequality are hurting the democratic function of our system. Theyre actually contributing to Political Polarization, contributing to spatial sorting so it youve look at maps from then 1970s versus today youre much more likely to police in counties with other people of similar political persuasions. It has meant that the parties have pulled further and further apart. Its more difficult to get compromise legislation through. The ach achievement notwithstanding its extremely hard to eek out political broad consensus on legislation and conditions of extreme polarization and that polarization i think has everything to do with wealth polarization and income inequality. They track each other. If you look at Political Polarization and income inequality they track neatly. So i think by realizing that were kind of all in this boat together and if were all in an oligarchic boat, how safe are any of our achievements . Right . When we are you see this in tax dynamics all the time. When you are forced to pay for emergency healthcare of somebody else, or when you are forced to pay for failing schools over there and youre paying in new haven its not uncommon for somebody to own a regular old house and be paying 35,000 in property taxes. Because the poverty over there i might be able to keep it over there and live in a different neighborhood but im going be taxed for it. Im going to be paying for it. So i think until we have that broader conversation that we have really reached levels of racial and classbased inequality that are just simply not sustainable for the Democratic Health of our nation. I think that can be a sort of broader mental transformation that makes people realize okay, its in my interests to support bringing people above the asset poverty line. Im of the small little policies from universal preschool to an Early Childhood to paid family leave to Something Like a nest egg for every american when theyre born that they can accrue and everybody can have, by virtue of being born to this rich country have a nest egg a Sovereign Wealth Fund where we all own one share by virtue of our citizenship. I can go on and on literally probably not in a thousand but maybe a hundred different policies getting rid of the cap on Social Security and on fica taxation. To save our pension system, our public pension system. Rather than raising the retirement age as william mentioned. But iles recognize you dont get those thousand changes without a social movement behind it. Id like to ask my panelists what you think because we had this moment with obama wall occupy well street a couple years ago and it passed and seemed like there was a potential for some real policy change or political change from that, and now that seems to have slipped beyond our grasp. So that is i assume what youre talking about in terms of social movements william but what could we have done differently or do differently now . Im stumped. Thats a great question. I think the way things are going, that we talked about the shrinking middle class and again, Something Like the statistics are 25 of young white people born after 1970 to middle class families dropped out of the middle class. Its 37 for africanamericans born into the middle class have dropped out. So this slink shhh rinking of the middle class as impacted black people and has impacted white people, too and with the globalization, the loss of jobs that factory jobs that people without skills, without education could do, those jobs going abroad to the global south, with technological changes that have taken even accountants, paralegals theres a lot in the Information Processing arena where processing can do so much. Even retail trade with amazon and having stuff delivered to your door, people are working in warehouses at very low wages under horrible conditions. We dont see them. Theyre preparing this stuff that you buy but you dont see the exploitation. The better jobs, the unionized jobs the jobs with protection, with lifetime security, have been disappearing. The public sector, the attack on teachers and saying that poverty is no excuse just because a kid comes to school hungry and goes to a place where theres no room to study and prepare for school the next day. That none of this matters. Its the fault of the parents. Its the fault of the teachers. Were interesting were in this period that is a very dramatically different period than the post war period. The technology, the globalization, the financialization, so many of us are in debt and that the debt is dominating our lives and the inability to get out of that debt. This is stronger in europe because the euro has created problems for the peripheral countries, greece, and others, and in america were actually doing better than these countries, but were not doing well. And so were in a very different historical period, and it is my sense that, especially the young people know this and we will see i was thinking as you were talking when i was in college, the vietnam war was just starting, and a group of us antiwar activists before there was an Antiwar Movement every week would go to a different dormitory a different fraternity and explain that kennedy had sent socalled helpers to train the south but what was really going on this was going to it was very frustrating because we never thought we would get anywhere. But as things developed more people joined the Antiwar Movement. The same with the Civil Rights Movement. When the kids sat down at the counters but things, i think we are entering a period where were in a period where thats going to happen. It has to happen because what is happening to so many people in this country is not good, and its the inequality that you both were talking about. It is more extreme than any year not since 1929 but since 1928 as you pointed out once the depression started the rich lost a lot but the difference was this time around, the federal government gave it all back to them. And that is why the ruling class did not have the same interests as the new deal did in dealing with the system to create a demand ask create jobs and so on because with globalization everybody is trying to do it through exports to somebody else but unless the martians are going to buy a lot of stuff china cant keep experting because we cant keep buying it. So youre working with a very ser