good evening everyone. my name is -- my husband and i are the owners of the bookstore, i want to know if you can hear me, we have a new sound system. does it work well? >> he has! >> oh great, wonderful. well, we are obviously thrilled and honored to be celebrating the publication of jfk and the reagan revolution. we have the two coauthors with us. a man who needs no introduction, mr. 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 we are so thrilled and so honored to have you both here, thank you for coming. i should mention also, larry lives across the street and he is a regular customer here. he has been four years. >> for over 20 years! >> that makes it so much more special and so personal. so please join me in welcoming larry and brian, thank you. >> thank you very much, i appreciate it. hurry on both mics? we welcome c-span by the way, thank you for covering this, and we appreciate very much. so yeah it's true i'm larry kudlow. and actually, when the penguin publishing house started organizing this said a world back when we finally got this thing published, it's good to have a couple local bookstores and i said, how about across the street. and he said terrific idea. we're going to do a bunch of these around the country. we've done tons arms tons of media. people have been wonderful to us. a lovely op-ed piece of ours was published in today's wall street journal, this is my coauthor in great friend, brian domitrovic. brian by the way is the curator of the center -- >> senior socialite of the office center. >> and a longtime friend of mine. his prior book, was all about the classical supply side revival going on and he's a harvard trained historian. in fact, as i've said before, his historiography is really the glue that held this entire book together. so would i want to do is just read a few excerpts from this thing, get a feel for it and brine will then speak whatever he wishes to speak about and then will enjoy some wine, cheese, whatever is out there. i want to just begin, this is real simple. the underscore -- the under heading to today's op-ed piece that the journal kindly published by brian and me return to jfk's rising tide model, to give guys really terrible. it says, kennedy and reagan both spurred growth who bipartisan tax cuts, and that is just what is needed now. and the view you take away anything, a may disagree with me and i appreciate this, i love disagreements, i've been in a disagreement business for a long time. tv and radio so that's fine. it is gonna be a q&as or you can come right at us if you want. i'm used to that to as long as it civil. really, the very essence of this book is that first john of kennedy, and then 20 years later ronald reagan, both used lower marginal tax rates, as well as the sound to revive economies. now, this is not something from the 18th century, it's not something from the 15th century, 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, very poor growth. and that's one of the points we make. you can draw whatever conclusions you want to draw, but our intent here was not to write a politicized book. we don't really mention the current election, but to 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 is the greatest democratic politician in the last 50 or 60 years, i speak myself as a former democrat in my long dark past. john f. granted he was in fact the first supply -- first supply side or. he was the pioneer. you have to go all the way back to the 1920s and that was a long time ago. put kennedy was responding to very poor economic growth during the eisenhower years where there were three recessions. i'm kennedy felt, having won by cats whisker in 1960, that if he didn't produce growth, in fact, he talked about 5% growth during his campaign, that he would lose. in 1964. and so he was looking around for things that would get the economy out of the -- there were three recessions during the eisenhower years, and unemployment is gradually rising up to 7%. so, i will just read you a couple of excerpts from this book and i hope you get a flavor for what we are talking about. fortunately, we have a model to follow as we seek to return our nation to economic growth. it is the john f. kennedy ronald reagan model. and is the model of getting the government restrained and modest in its two areas of economic policy, fiscal and monetary policy. both kennedy and reagan identified substitute can occur rutte getting the dollar strong and stable as the specific policy i would let the private sector, which is to say the real economy thrive. we need that. we need at. most of us are well aware that reagan was attacks governor, and he's the guy had to deal with her horrible stop for asian, we growth and high inflation of the 17 is an eighties, which came to end in the first years of his presidency. some of us are even aware that bill clinton used some of that model to foster prosperity in the decade after ronald reagan, with the republican congress. clinton cut capital gains tax rates and by the way was a component of free trade, which we think is part of the mix. however, what is generally not known or at least not remember it is about the subject of this book is about, that president kind of kennedy in the early sixties, not only used the largely pioneered the exact same motto. kennedy. he came to office during a period and wage growth was only a little better than today's, and his own presidency launch the u.s. on one of the greatest and longest economic booms in our nation's history, using the mix of tax rates and a strong dollar. which was by the way 5% economic growth, per year, between 1962 and when it ran out of gas and policies changed in 1969. if americans had known this history, we probably would've tried the jfk reagan policy mix years ago in our slow growth to thousands. we would've kept tax rates low, we would've maintained a strong dollar, we would've traded stagnation for expansion just as we did in the 20th century. and yet, this history has been obscure. today's liberals and progressive act as if tax rates in a meaningful doctor or shockingly far-right policies. they were never put into practice in the 19 sixties and failed in the eighties and could only work in a dream world. but it was democrat kennedy who launched those policies. that by itself i think is a great factoid from this book. let me read cutest a couple of quotes. we were recording a long radio interview with my great pal john bats who is going to arrive tonight at 11:00 and he actually found the tape with kennedys boston accent of his great famous speech that he made in december of 1962. very famous speech which really was the breakthrough of his new policies. in short, it is a paradox truth about tax rates are too high today and tax revenue is too low and the sound is the way to raise revenues in the long run is to cut rates now. the reason is that only full employment can balance the budget and tax return reduction can pave the way to that employment. the purpose of taxing now is not to incur a budget deficit, but to achieve with 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 his and ronald reagan comes into office. i am gratefully served as one of his budget deputies, a long time ago. on february teens, 1981, the month into his presidency, reagan gave a speech to the nation. he announced that he was seeking the ten 10:10 tax rate cut. 30% across the board tax rate. kennedy's roughly the same, 30% across the board. so we skipped over two decades. now, here's reagan. back when he cut taxes across the board, the government's revenues increased. when jack kennedy did it, as economic advisers were all telling him that the government would lose revenue and the government gained revenue is the reality. so they had made quite a sizeable financial error. jack kennedy's line of battle was, quote, a rising tide lifts all boats, and quote. and this is what we believe the tax proposals that we have made our aida aimed at. that is reagan and almost the identical words of john f. kennedy. and finally, last quote from reagan, can you cut taxes and fight inflation by so doing this? well i very much believe you can. let me just read you something. our true choice is not between tax reduction on the one hand, and the avoidance of large budget deficits on the other, an economy stifled by restricted tax rates will never produce -- just as it will never produce enough jobs, her even enough profits. and here's reagan, quote, john f. kennedy said that back in 1962, when he was asking for a tax decrease, a cut in tax raced across the board. and, he was proven right. that is reagan. and before that his kennedy. and i just want to say this for the 200th time, kennedy the democrat, craig in the republican. and as the under heading in this morning paper for us, canadian reagan both spur growth through bipartisan tax cuts. that's just what we need now. [applause] so it has become something of a career, among our critics to blame reagan. to blame me. to blame jack kemp, to blame a whole lot of people contributed to the story, but i'm fine with that. go on and blame i'm a big boy i'm very sick skinned at this point. but get your facts right, if you want to blame blame john f. kennedy. he started it. in great fashion. and unfortunately, he was tragically assassinated, but it went into place, it succeeded reagan borrowed it, it succeeded again. all i want to say is we have an election here, this book is not about the election, but whoever, somebody needs to form a bipartisan coalition. to reach across the aisle as kennedy did and reagan did, and kennedy's top economic adviser was a republican treasury secretary doug dylan. we need to do the same thing, we have to stop yelling, stop cursing, stop snarking, stop being mean, just look at the facts and read some history, and you can see there is a way out of the slump that america finds itself in. that's our message, and i want to turn over to my pal brian. sir laurie and i had a great time writing this book. right here in new york city. across the street. and a lot of events in this book happened in this neighborhood. they just walk past the jackie own nasa's reservoir and the jfk favorite. crash pad that's just down the street at the carlile hotel. so of course the economic club in new york, is right there in the canyons, not too far from here. so one of the things we wanted to do in this book, was kind of correct by means of evidence, this impression that the tax cut of 1964 was keynes ian, that kennedy was some kind of demand side pump primer. one and he really understood that knowing that his cut was a cut in marginal tax rates. we weren't really sure what the argument had traction. so we really wanted to identify, the really important role with douglas dylan, his treasury secretary when he played in 1962 to 1964. and i would like to read you a presidential memo, and usually these things are dry as dust, but in the context of what we are talking about, when kennedy actually turned on his can see in the advisers, this memo turns out to be very important. the all of these people say you have to increase government spending, you have to get off the gold standard. if you have a tax cut, only a temporary tax cut, because we will have to preserve the current tech structure for programs in the future. you have to do that. meanwhile in 1962, they say they're going to be another recession in 13 years. and dylan writes this memo to john f. kennedy. he told him about the advice he was getting in europe, and he believed this himself to all believe that any significant adaptation of government aimed at stimulating economic expansion, should be presented in a clear cut single package with consensus on these points. one of their is to be a tax cut, it should be oriented towards improved business incentives. it should be of a permanent and reformed character, reduction centered on lower bracket personal incomes would be regarded as fiscally loose circus is, although some companion action in the sector, would be understandable. to a deficit should be presented at as a cost of a essential tax reform. ceilings on expenditure should be announced. it is very important, that deficits be financed out of current savings, instead of federal reserves. the government should declare that they're willing to allow interest rates to rise, as demands from the public sector create pressures. and kennedy took every point of that advice. he said yeah, i will not do the spending, i will stop the monetary looseness, i will stop the trying to work on the gold standard, and i will cut tax rates especially the ones that matter. and that will draw capital back to this country, and bring growth and save the gold standard there. so if i could be the able to read one more passage. and a lot of people asked us this afternoon, why was kennedy's policy makes his policy in the 1960 why was it forsaken the? why wasn't the policy all the way through the 19 eighties? why did we have a stagflation in the 19 seventies? and unfortunately one of the reasons we did have this in the 1970s is that john f. kennedy's opponent in the 1960 election, he became president in 1969. and nixon studiously make sure he didn't do john of kennedy's policy. the kind of reverse the policy, and he took you know basically deregulation and spending. so here is an interpretive passage that we write about the 19 sixties and seventies. the assassination, of november 1963 provided an enormous short term boost to the cause of tax cut, passed in 1964. it was fatal to it in the long term, the assassination was so shocking, that the opponents of kennedy's legislative agenda, had to submit at least one kennedy goal out of due for the risks out of respect for the slain leader. once that was enacted, the all the leverage was lost on blocking civil rights. in the long term, kennedy's absence after 1963, deprived the tax cut of its principal exponent, or particular enforcer. the tone that kennedy brought to the tax cut, and you just heard about that, kennedy's commitment to thinking through the real economic effects of the tax rate cuts while unencumbered, by the paradigms of the university economics. flawless they were. this supreme association that he had with dylan, and the ambition that kennedy possesses, help them to solve the economic growth problem of his day, and it had reason and credibility behind the administration's commitment, to seeing the cat tax cut through. with kennedy gone, the mechanism that then it kept it strong was gone to. no matter the phenomenal quality of the prosperity it had unleashed. go so the it didn't take long. >> in other words, it didn't take johnson long to undo the best and policy he was associated with. and for a lot of different reasons related to the war, and politics and whatnot, he raised tax rates and he managed to put the rate from 70 to 78%. and he began to unhinge the dollar, and as i said, this is a bipartisan, nonpartisan book, so the next president richard nixon. i've mentioned it many times, and his family is dear friends of mine. but as nixon once said to me, when he was out of office and downtown, it's like you don't think much of my economics do you? and i said no sue no sir i really don't. so nixon raise taxes, and nixon that unleashed the dollar, unhooked it from any gold or any other monetary discipline, and imposed a massive regulation on the economy. so again, in a bipartisan way, a democrat and republican got it right, and we had a democrat and a republican who got it wrong. and now the question is, how is the balance going to wind up tipping? and i can't answer that question. i don't have a crystal ball. but it's important. the other point that brian red, which i love really, this is that doug dylan, he is a very wealthy banker, his father clarence dylan founded the old dylan reid. and for many years that was among the widest of the wide shoe of investment banks in new york. and doug dylan had just about as much money as joe kennedy and john f. kennedy, and travels in high social circles. in fact even higher than the kennedys. so kennedy could not stare him down. he had to listen when dylan spoke. after all kennedy put him in office as treasury secretary. and sometimes you have to be able to make people listen to you, whatever it takes and in this case it was money and social standing. may i take it anywhere i can get it, and good policy is good policy. but the main point here again, this is not a partisan bipartisan book, i wanted america to get moving again, to coin a phrase. we have to turn less than 2% growth over a couple of decades, back to three or 4% growth, and that's what we do historically. to get there, we are going to have to take strong remedial actions, particularly on business tax cuts, to grow the economy at five or 6% for several years, in order to get us back on track. kennedy and reagan, showed proof that historically that it can be done. it can be done. so since our love america, believe in democracy, i believe we can get it done and we will see. that's really our story. look happy to take your questions. happy to take them. even your criticisms. >> yes. >> thank you, it was interesting and i never before associated kennedy with the economic carlile policy. the my question is, i was recently listening to an interview with a scholar, who has a book out about the kind of people participating in the workforce, the men who are working age you are not even looking for jobs. just out of the labor force. and i'm wondering if this development, that he argues is very significant, whether that wouldn't anyway, limit the effectiveness of a new policy. you know of going to another round of these sorts of tax cuts? >> it goes the other way than as a friend argues in his piece, you know there are two key issues here. one is the lack of economic growth. you want to create jobs? growth. you want to lower budget deficits? grow. you want to solve help property? grow. now you want to employ more people? grow. now there are other policies regarding some entitlements and other regulations, and you know there's been a disincentive to work. that is too bad because we want to get everybody who's able bodied to work. and i saw the same argument today. the federal reserve board made a similar argument about how low the participation rate is in the backbone of the economy. which is the 25 to 54-year-old and that's gone down. do you know why? we're not growing. we're not creating jobs. do you want to look at gigantic black and brown unemployment rates in this country? we are not growing there. do you want to see the people that the reason why people are cranky and unhappy and pointing fingers at everybody? because we're not growing. we are not growing. i know we need rules, immigration and so forth, but what is this about growth? nobody complain much in the sixties, and the eighties and nineties about the subjects. when we stop growing, they complain. yes ma'am? >> this is tangential, and i always believed in alan green spent, and his theories of how to control the recessions, and then several years ago it came out that what he did was wrong? how come it looked as if it was working, and then all the sudden it was invalid it? >> do you want to answer that one? he is a personal friend of mine. >> we had a little caption about alan green span in our book, and if he gave an interesting talk in 2002, i think it was and that was at a bond convention. in which he said, with all these surpluses we've been running, and this was four straight years of surplus in the late 90s, so we can envision a future in which there is not enough government debt to continue essentially open market operations. and the cascade down of the gdp, that that was going down fast. and i'm ready to believe that some of the economic stagnation that arose in the mid 2000s, was a survival mechanism, on the part of these governmental institutions, and i remember visiting the imf in 2008, early that spring, and everyone was scared to death because nobody wanted their business. there was so much cash going around the business, nobody was begging the imf for money. and certainly and crisis came and the imf had another 50-year lease on life. so, i think the other thing is to you clear out some of the non entities, the and about will happen in the midst of happy prosperity mass prosperity. >> i think you know as for all, and he's a friend of mine, and i think he's a superb federal reserve chairman. he served four terms i think. and i don't think anybody else is done that. the and when he made his statement, it's a statement about the ability of markets are free markets. or to function properly at all times, and a lot of people blamed the financial meltdown of 2008 on what is called ultra easy ultra low interest rates. and that alan was partly responsible for i think he made mistakes but i think he's losing his nerve and he testified some coming and said oh my god, the market didn't work the way we thought it would. i think he's not gaining his legs more and realizes that government regulation played a huge role, and i don't want to go deeper on that because it's not our subject but green span through 40 years of economic policy influence and service was a free market guy and also was a sound money guy. maybe people in higher offense shouldn't serve for terms, maybe one or two is enough. yes ma'am. >> well, look. tpp, pacific trade is a good idea, a good idea. but, it's not been done up properly. but a good idea, i'm a free trader. and will remain so. i think the geopolitics are very good bringing our allies in and serving as either a warning to china, depending on how you want to put it. and it will lower trade barriers among these countries which we need, which is good for growth. there are also problems where there are a couple of international boards that will not reflect the american electorate or so forth, that will be used to decide issues and conflicts. i am sick of international boards. i'm sick of them. i want an american board, you know? i really don't want us to be governed by world courts, i don't want us to be governed by distant institutions like the imf and the world bank. i'm sure they are good for employment and phds, but as far as i'm concerned, that's all the good for. i'm sick of 1000 economists that the federal reserve board who had done more harm in my den good in my humble opinion, sick of devils and all that cause that done more harm than good my peanut and i love brexit, i was so much in favor of brexit. a lot of the european union. totally in favor of it. i call it magnate carter two point oh. it gives british people, which that's a wonderful legacy, i love britain, i love what they just did. magnet cara, parliament, representing your democracies, freedom equals growth. that's the way i see it. and the eu, i put them right in there with the imf and the world bank and all of those. you can have them. so all for free trade, but i want free trade to be governed properly in accordance with american interest and democracy. yes ma'am. >> what do you think of the uk leaving the european union -- >> i'm in favor of it. >> sorry, i came to work at wall street and as you recall, replaced crewman's fool morocco's and i think that's a fair description. >> that's fdr's brutal. would you contrast, would you care to contrast the era of -- and the public posturing and public statements in comparison to this latter day minstrel show of the fed board of governors and the way they conduct themselves in this day and age? there is a difference, isn't there? >> i have a thought, but i want my partner to insert. >> i'll say something about bill martin, the federal reserve chairman from 1951 to 1969. it's clear that bill martin was trying to do a good job, in the fifties, he really had trouble and when the famous comment under the fed of that area where they said the punchbowl, that's because we had 91% marginal tax rates and 24 brackets going up, the fed had to be extra vigilant and in that context, the united states was losing two billion dollars of its gold every year because foreigners were just quoting on the u.s. economy. so when kennedy reappointed martin, martin was ready to raise interest rates in the context of economic growth that was inspired by tax cuts. i have listened to some telephone conversations that the fed has of martin and lbj and i've noticed how obsequious martin then got towards lbj. he really kind of folded when lbj asked him for anything. hey, can you transfer a balance from, which is technically illegal. sure thing mister president, i'd be happy to. so, the federal reserve chair was trying to be a obliging towards the presidency served and that's why he was at his best under kennedy. >> and reagan. >> you know, carter appointed -- >> but again, this constant showboating on a daily basis by the individual governors, i don't recall that in my youth years. >> i hate, that afrin about that. it does more harm than good. >> thank, you that's where i wanted to hear. >> when i was a child, i worked for the federal reserve and actually work under paul volker, i was one of his secretaries or clerks or whatever they were called. i did some speeches, i did his correspondence. anyway, he is chairman when put up with it. and just basically -- by the way, he is chairman and didn't know what he was doing. the good news is he did it right. the bad news is, it might have not always been so. so it depends on who the president is. carter wouldn't let him do his job even though he appointed him. reagan did. reagan said, do whatever it takes to get rid of the inflation and volker did. right now, there's something about that. i don't agree with one of the candidates who believes that the whole fat is politicized. i don't agree with that. fred makes a lot of mistakes because they have lousy economic measures and they see the world often in wrong ways. but i don't know. brian is right, you cut tax rates, open the doors to trade, a lot of things get easier and better. >> yes, in the back. >> so larry, if we got back to five or 6% growth, that be the old normal and today's normal is 25 fed funds and were debating today whether we go in september or december, moving up to 50. if we had five to 6% growth, wouldn't we be going back to the old normal and we talking about 3:50, so higher rates are going to impact that outlook and how do you see that playing out because one is going to work against you to get those rates? >> no. if we slash tax rates again, and i think the big issue today is business and tax rates, which is one of the greatest ours obstacle we face. then, interest rates will go up normally. without any manipulation, because the economy rises and real interest rates will go up and all the fed has to do is let that happen. follow the market, that's what i've always wanted to fed to do. in the eighties and nineties, when we had great prosperity, average interest rates, let's take the ten years, is about 6%. so it's not one and a half or so. the reason rates are low today is because the economy is terrible. in fact, there is greater deflation and secondly stagnation. those are the biggest reasons why we have low rates in seven, ten, 30 rates. fed doesn't control those rates. all these jockeys, god love him all, come on cnbc, they just don't understand that. that doesn't control rates, the market controls rates. in fact, controls one or two rates at the most. a healthy economy will have a five or 6% interest rate. it'll be a good thing, but you have to cut taxes first. so cutting back, i'm very happy with -- today, she's a conservative, she's a liberal, she's a democrat, i agree with what he said. it's not top tech on here. my point is, wait until you cut tax rates. and then, let interest rates go up normally. and it'll be great, everybody will be happy. america will be happy. i want america to be happy. america is not happy now, that's part of the reason we put this book out, americas cranky, i hate that. i just hate that. i want america to be in a good mood. i mean it! and part of that -- look, if you didn't have any wage hikes for 15 years, you get a bad mood to. i get that. and by the, way if you look at the actual statistics, the top 1% hasn't done so brady's are. second win ship here in the manhattan institute has done a lot of work on this. top 1% today, all in, marketing come his what it was about two year 2000, 2005. it got smashed during the downturn, lost 50% the top 1% and kept back only 35%. fascinating. anyway, i do want to dwell on that but i'm just saying, one of the reasons we need tax cuts, sound money a new dose of kennedy, reagan religion is it will make people happier. it will. and you'll have less crime, and more job opportunities. and we can afford civil rights laws and we can figure out a way to do immigration without killing people. you follow me? i get very into this because i think that in many ways, a whole political debate today is putting the cart before the horse. he put the horse before the cart, the horses the growth rate that will pull everything out. so this is not small potatoes, real lives are at stake. i don't know what i am, my friend arthur says he is a candidate democrat and a reagan republican, all by that. how by that. >> yes, peter. from an economic standpoint, can you talk a little bit about gold and how this relates to this and also king dollar? >> all right, i'm guilty of king dollar. i've been saying it for about 25 years i'm gonna keep on saying. i don't know if we have to go back to the gold reference point anymore. i would personally prefer what my friends with wayne angel and miley johnson did and howler from san francisco, about how her. and green span. you could use a market basket of commodities. 25 commodities, and that's charging the value of the dollar so the inflation is rising and of the market rallies, that tells you you have to do something, you have to tighten it all. if it's falling, that tells you you should probably loosen up. that's what i would use. i don't know that i am an old cold guy, i just think nowadays, probably have to make the basket a little larger and we're never going to have balance of payment transfers and gold. and the fed, open market operations and poker, they used to literally move gold from one country to another to sell the accounts, it was fascinating. we don't do that anymore. all right, robert. >> i have to make you both happy and give you each a magic wand and three picks. specific policy action, you can get three though. and you don't -- three policy picks that you would implement right now, whether it's immigration, regulatory, taxes, capital gain, whatever. what would be the three things that you would wish for? >> i think that. i always talked about the five pillars of reagan all mix, with, i'm going to say you can eliminate one of the five. you actually don't need to worry about spending. spending will naturally fall if you cut tax rates, get the dollar strong and stable again and have real regulatory rollback. if you had those three things, the demand for the private sector would be so great, people would just jump out of welfare, they would get out of obamacare, they would just go into the real economy, if you had low tax rates. the advancement would come from ten dollars and getting this regulation out of the way, the spending would just start to bloom like it did in the 1990s. >> i like it. i've always believed that. at least as the deficits come down. by the way, each point of growth above the 2% cbo baseline his we are close to three trillion dollars and lower deficit, but you know all this. i would say, my view is, the single most important thing to do is to slash business tax rates. just slash them. 15% is a very good number. i'm going to abolish the corporate tax. but 15% is a good start. and you won't get, it but it's a good start. he can work on any might get 20. the single best thing you can do. and i think also, obamacare must be repealed and we win. completely rewritten. turns out, the new york fed its says it's costing jobs and i think that's probably right. and, i don't want to lose the free trade path. i understand, deals must be enforced, absolutely. and we did laps on that but free trade is a good thing, not a bad thing. it helps both sides. i always believed, and you know this. robert and i worked together for many years. day-to-day and just talking and so forth. americans should have the freedom to purchase the best quality goods at the lowest available prices anywhere around the world. i believe that i'm still gonna believe that. i'm never gonna give up on that. chinese, you know liberal cheat and steal and some actions have to be taken, but as far as the generic point it's not going to move me on that and kennedy was a big free trade person. yes go ahead kaiser. >> do you believe that inequality plays or operates as a barrier to growth, or do you believe that let the quality run rapid. >> no i put it the other way i let growth run rampant. i think this inequality stuff, only happens when the economy is sour, and it's a resentment. i don't like that. first of all, in america, as a free country and a representative of democracy, we almost start at the same line. we must all be treated equally under the law at the same starting point. we must all have equal opportunity at the same starting line when but in a free economy in a free country we don't know and at the same place at the finish line. some are going to do better than others. and that's a good thing not a bad thing. and i have no problem with the re-distribution exists. and i do not see any real evidence of so-called inequality. i think it's vastly exaggerated when you look at certain statistical studies. but the case that inequality causes slow growth, is unproven. it's unproven. in fact, some of the northern european countries have shaken that off and they're paying taxes and deregulating labor markets. and i don't think you know i don't resent you, becoming a multi billionaire. by starting a social media operation. but you know? i might hate it even if you are dark could serve your head i might hate as a stash as a fashion point but if that's what you want to dress? and you discover this terrific social media, and a person gets rich, and the 30,000 people that work for him gets rich and because they know i have no problem with that. just give the rest of us a chance. and that's why i open free market, and capitalism i think that's a road to prosperity. okay at the back. >> can you talk about the coolidge tax cuts and was that effective and without a precedent that can be used and also are you aware of any situation in the u.s. or foreign countries that felt the tax cuts do not they're not effective in gross. is there any country president? >> about the coolidge tax cuts, that's in the 1920s, yes income tax rates went up 11 full during world war one to the top 77% and by 1920 and this is been written about so eloquently, in about the depression, but in 1920 there was an investment strike in this country and there was no no investment that could be a recorded in housing or among any other categories, but municipal bonds were selling like crazy, because they were exempt from taxation. there was this big portfolio shift in the nation's capital, and out of the economy into the public purse. so harding and coolidge, and the treasury secretary, who was reading the memos of his three democratic predecessors, they said we created a monster. you have to cut tax rates. and this is when democrats were beholding to individuals. so there was these series of rate cuts, and yes kennedy referred to that, and the kentuckians referred to that they said we don't want to do that, because then you know it feels like tax cuts that don't work, and there is a case of foreign countries, that are really tossed by their exchange rate to the cut to the dollar. you know if the dollar goes up and down all the time, and they have a currency war, or trying to make a great monetary policy, it could neutralize the effect of good fiscal policy, so there's examples like japan might be one of them, and certain countries in eastern europe that have good flat low rate taxes sums. but investment just does not move in the right direction, because there is no guidance from the leader of the monetary currency in the united states. >> there was a speech given about this, about a year a year and a half ago, and they said we have to move back to a rules based monetary policy. and international currency cooperation. . . very important. we have neither. they just had a g20 meeting, and there was no headline coming out of the g20 meeting. more progress to solve global warming. i want to get into that but there may be reasons for and. against it but the pressing issue for the g20, in economic terms, is currency. we are having currency wars breaking out, the currency manipulations. and we are as guilty if more so than anybody, and that is what is being referred to. in the old days those guys would sit down and hammer agreements, and one of the agreements lasted half a century or something. but we need to do that. we need to do that. it's war out there. >> what is your thought on artificial intelligence? and a double the productivity affect our middle class jobs >> do you want take that? >> i think the only way that we will know, the economy is incapable of creating a lot of jobs, is if we have low tax rates, and really strong currency and low regulation. until we get those circumstances, we should not look for other causes of our unemployment problems. i fully expect, that there will be an abundance of jobs when we get tax cuts, and yes. >> there is an argument floating around about this, but i just don't like it. the basic argument is, that advanced high technology breakthroughs, along with the automation goes along with that, and the will baffle the economy and jobs. so the here's a case where, they should look back at history. every time we have had tech breakthroughs in this country, we had one in the you know after the civil war, with the railroads and so forth, and in the 1920s they were full of technology breakthroughs and so forth. and the 1960s, and we have some examples in our book, about breakthroughs. . and of course, the most famous is in the eighties 90s. but employment exploded. at the turn of the last century, we were in a bind i agree with you, except that, on the other hand henry ford, and -- they created tens of millions of jobs, for products that were cheap enough, for tens of millions of more people to buy cars. think about that. >> they put the harness makers out of today at a business. they move them they put them out of business. >> we move the industry from the farms to the cities. do you agree? and microsoft, apple, you know there are huge companies, people forget that. that's the only person getting the riches bill gates, that's nonsense, you go to seattle washington, and you know it was really nothing and now it probably has more millionaires per capita than any place in the world. wide a few high tech companies did very well. so you may go through patches of this but a through bots are not going to take over the world. and jobs upon you know as they said, give us economic freedom, and great things will happen. i will just bet on. it i'm in a bit on. it economic freedom produces great things. so this political freedom. >> one more question. >> one more question okay. well you are very kind to come, you feel the joint up, and we are going to sign some books for you, and we are very grateful. >> thank you. the [applause]. next on history bookshelf, peggy granddaddy, who worked for president ronald reagan after he left the white house, and return to california, talks about her book the president will see you now. stories and lessons from ronald reagan's final years. the ronald reagan presidential library hosted this event in march of 2017. >> today's event is a little different than what we've done in the past, for those of you or maybe all of us in this room, who has ever wondered who is ronald reagan? not what did he accomplish, or how did he change the world, but who is ronald reagan the man? he was the person away from the photos, the interviews and the many other dimensions of the public that they see. the reading of peggy grande book, the preswi

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