makes $5.25 an hour plus tips. how did you find him? through some friends of his. i was looking for a guy that is struggling through the economy. that all a suggestion workers of his income status for failing. host: you found them to be typical of minimum wage workers? guest: yes. here is how. he has this difficult situation. he gets off at 1:30 in the morning -- gets up at 1:30 in the morning to make it in time for a 4:00 in the morning shift. he relies on public transportation. it is not very reliable or quick. he spends a lot of time during the day worrying about losing his job and playing -- paying his bills. fee eats a candy bar for lunch. these are things that lower income americans worry about more than they used to and more than other americans do. you say low income americans are worrying about this more than they used to, why is that? there are some basic explanations to start with -- how rough the economy is. we have 11 million people in this country who want to find a job and cannot. that is huge downward pressure on wages. a key eagle in the bottom with -- that keeps people in the bottom constantly competing with other job seekers. thatroblem also is the way the wage system has evolved over time, the value of the minimum wage has decreased. it is getting harder for people in those low-wage jobs to live off of the wages they are earning. are employers more willing to let workers go quicker today? did you find evidence of that? there is evidence in the last three recessions and recoveries that employers have been much more willing to lay people off in the recession and not hire them back. the way that recessions used to work is that people would push their workforce away when they did not have enough money to keep everybody on the table, but when things got better, they would bring them back. that has not been the case now. these the opportunity to get rid workers oroductivity they find ways to get by without as many workers. host: does losing your job because of the economy were you a lot, little, or not at all at lowpresent time for the income workers? 54% say a lot. guest: that is a high number. it is much higher than we saw in the 1970's, it is higher than whites on the recessions in the 1980's, the recessions of the -- it is higher then we saw on the recessions in the 1980's, the recessions of the 1990's. more than a decade has been bad for low-wage workers. the bottom 20 and 40% of the income distribution, income was down double digits in that time. this has been a brutal stretch for the working poor. jim tankersley, since you talked with mr. stewart earlier and this story came out earlier this week, had you followed up with him? exchanged text messages with him. that more to report than 30 people have e-mailed or called to find out how they can help mr. stewart. of peoplemillions like him, but he is a very compelling story. he is a very nice man. more than 30 people have asked how they can help them. i shared the news with him. jim tankersley of "the ," thank you for spending a few moments with us this morning. if you would like to dial in -- democrats, (202) 585-3880. republicans, (202) 585-3881. independents, (202) 585-3882. you can also contribute via @cspanwj. span.ook.com/c-span there are still 11 million americans looking for work who cannot find a job. the unemployment rate is seven .3%, higher than it has been since 1980, except during recessions and they are immediate aftermath. adjusting for inflation, average household income for the poorest 40% of workers has fallen steadily by more than 10%. lower income workers get most of their money from wages as opposed to investments or other capital gains, said an economicst with the liberal economic policy institute. job you think about the security, insecurity in the u.s.? caller: i am 55 years old. i have written a book on the collapse of the middle class. i also have an accounting degree. for 30s been going on years. decade, you have the reagan decade, following that the attack on labor. the collapse of the unions throughout the 1980's and into the 1990's, with bill clinton coming from arkansas. then you get into george bush. host: what is your conclusion? caller: this is class warfare. write, theyat i basically point out that the today isthe system wages. ,t is wages, health care infrastructure. --is anything that is taking and the definition of reaganomics is leaving more money in the hands of corporations, hoping that money will be used to create jobs. host: people are interested in finding their way -- your work. where can i find it? go on amazon.n it is called "taking back the rust belt, one nation at a time. " i live in massachusetts. they just got rid of all of the black american workers, i don't know if you are aware of this or [indiscernible] i am not familiar with what you're talking about. if they hire a foreign worker, they can claim them as a business expense and get them will-- and get back there wages from the government. this was in massachusetts? caller: a company came in here in 2010 and just started firing black people, two people at a time. host: that is tyrone in boston. chart -- do you ever worry that your total income will not be enough to meet your family's expensive -- expenses? in 1971, it was 8%. in 2013, it was 19%. up to 32% in 2012 forward workers -- for workers making less than $35,000. caller: thanks for c-span. i was an engineer. i am out of work 15 years. the visa, it is for six-year stay. who they think have stopped looking, we drifted into a cash society. you have to know the value of every stupid thing. books, cars, all kinds of things. when people in the neighborhood get it out of work, you get good deals and you can quadruple and triple your money. cash only. the government does not get anything. i feel my money -- if i pay taxes, i do not want my money to go to 120 bases all country. this is what is happening. host: family, thank you for calling in. in many stores, around the country, the workers start -- stocking the shelves are at the heart of the season's retail lament. many americans are financially strapped and per. -- projections for holiday sales have grown bleaker by the week. past, thean in years focus is on retail workers as more stores open on thanksgiving day, requiring many more to work on the holiday. even if they have the option of staying home, those stuck at the bottom of the economic wrong long after the recession's and have little choice but to take on extra shifts. forstamps have been cut some, and many were stung by the payroll tax increase. even their own companies have set up food drives to aid a low played employees at individual stores are created help lines advising them how to stretch their food dollars and apply for public assistance. amother of two who works as nine dollar an hour cashier at sears feels left behind by the holiday festivities because she was scheduled to work from seven third -- 7:30 p.m. thanksgiving to 6:00 a.m. friday. am here watching shoppers by all of these items and i cannot buy my children the same project -- products. for retail workers nationwide, pay of in a median about $9.60 an hour, holiday shopping sprees are most often enjoyed by customers on the opposite side of the counter. walmart and their union allies plan to stage protests at some 1500 walmart stores to demand higher pay. moreover, many lawmakers seen the squeeze on incomes nationwide, are pushing an idea give a much- could needed boost to retailers' sales. b, redman oregon -- arby, redman, oregon. can it be any surprise telephonet like to some of this recording. when i was a little girl, i wore one dress a week. a week. to school. .ardboard in my shoes i grew up in a lean area. i felt fortunate. i felt fortunate. you talked about what you call the slant on this reporting. what do you mean by that? like talking't about walmart and its union allies. how many employees are you going to find in those lines protesting walmart? if anybody hasn't learned or wasn't raised with the idea that life is not fair -- one of our was you betters be able to pull your own red wagon because no one will pull up for you. host: tom, ohio, independent line. good morning. caller: thank you for taking my call. on this topic, the minimum wage in the service industry was not met or designed for people to raise families on. it was a starter job. orwas the jobs as children young adults, our parents got us to teach us work ethics. to encourage us to get better jobs. unfortunately, corporations have since moved the jobs that our parents and grandparents have had overseas to where it is cheaper to get it done for three dollars a day than it is to pay a fair wage to the united states. have lost touch with america and turned it into a service industry only. i have lost touch with the one thing that may products here better than what you can get in the rest of the world. that is american pride and loyalty. if you accompany in small-town america, that is a product that was bought by everyone in the town. you cannot say anything bad about the company. it employed everyone and sustained everything in that town. the politicians are not going to becauseat back corporate america is what sponsors their reelection campaigns. what kind of work do you do? caller: i am retired from law enforcement. my wife is a physician. my run for ohio second district because i do not the republican or ies aretic part representing the american citizens. they're representing corporate america. host: thank you for calling in this morning. donald, south bend, indiana. this is an important topic. it boils down to training. congress has to make available funds for people so they can get the training. when they lose their job, so they can train for another job or career, so they can support their family. congress, they do not want to spend their money. people are having difficulty finding high-paying jobs to support their families. this recession is a different type of recession. the jobs that people traditionally go back to after traditional recessions are not there anymore. people need different training to get back into the workforce. wake up andds to help these people. that is all i have to say. thank you. host: donald, what you do for a living? caller: i work for the post office luckily. there is some insecurity in my job. there are a lot of things that are going on as you and your viewers probably know. we are coming back. i feel that her. better than i did last year. we are making profit right now, so we are doing good. you have to keep it in the back of your mind, what would i do if i lost my job? to keepd i make money the money coming in so i can pay my bills? host: thank you for calling. back to jim tankersley's article. in the past 12 months, have you taken training to keep your skills and knowledge up to date? workers, 55% said yes, 45% said no. than $35,000,ess 58% said no. and over, 67% said yes. this is a poll done by "the in september.t" morninger news this from "the wall street journal." narrow budget agreement comes into view. negotiators in congress are moving to a narrow agreement that would scale back spending cuts. eitherkely wouldn't ask party to compromise on its annce on taxes entitlements. senate negotiators are returning early from a recess next week to continue talks with house gop counterpart, paul ryan. the two lawmakers have been mum about their discussions and the building blocks for a deal have come into view because some of the most controversial issues have been taken off the table. senatecans on a house negotiating table have ruled out significant tax increases while democrats have stood fast against any structural changes in benefit programs, such as medicare. that leaves a small set of elements on the table for a deal, which would set a ending level for the rest of the fiscal year and modestly reduce the across-the-board spending cuts known as sequestration that will hit in january. to replace the sequestered cuts, officials said lawmakers are looking at increasing airport security fees, cutting costs in federal employee retirement programs and drawing on revenue from the auction of broadband spectrum. democrats want to count savings from program changes and a farm bill, which is being negotiated in a separate process to offset sequestered cuts. republicans say the savings should go to general deficit reduction. negotiators may try to come to a deal that covers the current and following fiscal years when the cuts our deepest. brian, leominster, massachusetts on our republican line. we are talking about job in security in the u.s. our problem is we need to be more like china. china will not let you bring your country unless you made it there. we need to start making stuff in this country. understand -- i don't know if we need to put terrace on it or what, there are just no jobs anymore. host: what do you do or what did you do for a living? brian is gone. we will never know. here are some twitter comments coming in. employment insecurity because today's businesses focus on cutbacks. survive greatt depression did so by spending. jim -- only the new york times thinks increasing minimum wage is good for retailers. they ignore the increased cost of unproductive workers. laura says the downward pressure on wages -- wages is worldwide. chuck, we need high tariffs on all imports so stuff will be made in the usa. mark, kenosha, wisconsin. independent line. go ahead. all that raising the minimum wage will do is artificially raise inflation. all it does is give the government more tax money in their pocket. you cannot raise just the bottom without all costs going up. when employersp, other have to raise the cost of their employees to match that. it does not do anything but make people feel good. and give the government more tax money cents you are taxed on a you arege -- since taxed on a percentage of your income. hewlett-packard replaces verizon as host of the government website. the department of health and human services signed a contract with hewlett-packard to replace terremark unit as its web hosting provider for the federal health insurance marketplace. keyr datacenter host elements of healthcare.gov as well as digital juncture used to exchange information between it and state run exchanges. the website, which serves 36 states, has experienced a number of technical problems since launching on october 1. edward, you are on "washington journal." i was replaced by a machine in january. host: what was your job? caller: a greeter, concierge. they would let me go to the other hospitals because i had too many health issues. i had a heart attack and they wanted me to work outdoors. doctors tell you you cannot be out in the cold in the middle of january. they said they could not take me on. finding jobs here in wisconsin is very difficult. -- ii started -- i wrote retired from northwest airlines, but to keep me going, i got a hospital job. you are competing with people coming out of the military. i am 61. that is about it. were when you say he replaced by machine, what did you do and what does the machine do? caller: the machine is a kiosk in and punch in what they're looking for. the machine has been broken, but they move it around different hospitals. it is a cost-cutting measure. they just don't need me anymore. regina, ashland, virginia. what you think? caller: thanks for taking my call. i have to respond to the lady that called from oregon. andrked for a travel agency i got laid off. i work for them for about 10 years and i have been looking for an employment. -- i have been looking for employment. i got a job at burger king. it is $7.25 an hour. i worked my butt off. i have three children. i take on as many hours as i can. at $7.25 ans a week hour, it is nothing. what the other guy said -- everything else is going to go up -- there has to be some stability in our country. i cannot afford the health care thing. i am probably going to end up getting the government medicaid because i am not making the kind of money that i used to make. ridiculous. people think it is so easy to go back into the field that you were once in. from american express to be a travel liaison for their vip, but that is in new york city. weighing the pros and cons to doing that, it was not going to cover all of my expenses for moving. i had to do a lot of things on my own because they're cutting so many things. it is ridiculous. they need to do something to help us out. if they're going to raise minimum wage, at least do something with the real estate market. i live in an apartment and my rent is $925. that is not counting insurance, insurance on your vehicle. they have to do something. you gone back to school or do have schooling or training of any type? be honest with you, i cannot afford it and i do not have the time to. week, i amurs a trying to get what they will give me. i got five extra hours on my check a couple of god and i think god for that. -- i got five extra hours on my check a couple of weeks ago, and i thank god for that. you have to think about -- people are cutting everything we can to survive. they have to do more to help us out. a handout.ooking for if you want american people to be competitive, make it so that it is accessible to us and we can afford it and work around our lives already. working at you are burger king, are you looking for another job russian mark -- another job? of course. i am on my phone, i put in applications daily. i go to career builder, monster.com. i do at least 20 to 25 applications a day. on top of that, you have to look at when can i go in an interview -- and interview for this position. get your weekly schedule so you have to work around that. i definitely do more applications. host: thank you for calling in and sharing your experience. newspaper,ill" plate -- faces deadline on undetectable plastic guns. they will no longer be banned if they do not renew the prohibition. gun-control activists warn that a lapse would allow anyone with a few thousand dollars to build a homemade gun that would be undetectable at airports, government buildings or school. that threat was little more than science fiction when congress thatd the ban 25 years ago pressingael is legislation to renew the law. it has traditionally enjoyed broad support in both parties. congress hits new productivity lows. commerce is on track to beat its own low record of productivity, and acting fewer laws this year than any year -- any point in the last 66 years. it is a continuing slide of productivity that began in 2000 11, after republicans recapture the house majority in the 2010 elections. common ground has alluded the two parties while the legislative to do list piles up. covering 2011-s, 2012, emerged as the least productive two-year legislating. -- legislating period on record. statistics, 52 laws have been enacted through early november. it is the lowest record of activity since at least 1947, when the data collection began. the lowest prior year was 1995 when 88 laws were enacted. back to your calls on job security or insecurity. this is joseph. another caller from massachusetts. i am calling because my son is 31 years old, he works 16 years in the same company that was privately owned. corporate bought in and his pay and benefits were dismissed. with insurance5 to $10 an hour. a year later, there's not a single same employee there. hisannot pay rent, he lost apartment, they repossessed his car. that is why kids are moving on. they are not running home because they want to be free, they're running home because they are broke. there are no jobs. he is working part-time for walmart just at christmas. ont: atlantic, you are "washington journal." atlanta, you are on "washington journal." caller: a lot of corporations are going to start depending on temporary companies to come in and provide them services. there is a large institution here that i am looking at developing for them. companies do not want to see this big tax. a lot of people can be hurt because of the company having to downsize. the way to downsize and save money by not employing these people on the job at the different facilities. a lot of major corporations are going to start cutting back and allow outside companies to come in and provide services for them. for another year, online -- online sellers retained unfair tax advantage. there was a time when it was a way to nurture a fledgling commerce is now a quarter trillion dollar a year juggernaut that can more than fend for itself. a modest exemption would protect the smallest businesses and over time, software and streamlined tax laws could make even that unnecessary. the issue is fair competition. another editorial -- government in slow motion. week, in a fit of fury after they lost the ability to filibuster president obama's republicans threaten to retaliate by slowing things down on capitol hill. democrats will have trouble in a lot of areas because there is going to be a lot of anger, said senator john mccain. a united nations disability treaty was now in danger of being rejected for the second time. it is hard to see how republicans can slow things down more than they have for the last several years. they can prevent committees from meeting and add days of wasted time to every nomination and bill. just after the filibuster vote, senate republicans refused a routine request for unanimous consent to approve several of the president's uncontested nominees. they have refused to take up important legislation to reform andimmigration system punish workplace discrimination against gay and lesbian employees. the house has shown no interest in renewing it. the houses back next week, but the senate will remain on vacation, leaving only a few workdays before the deadline of december 13 to reach an agreement. without one, the government will have to be paid for with another, short-term continuing resolution. flat rock, michigan, republican line. cliff, good morning to you. what do you think? caller: good morning. thank you for taking my call. the manufacturing industry in michigan and the country has been decimated. of free-tradee agreements with countries that have extremely low wages to begin with. we do not have a trade deficit with germany because they have high wages. when we lower our -- when we enter into a free trade agreement with countries where the workers make one dollar hour or two dollars an hour, there is no way that we can compete because they are not going to buy our products are it they cannot afford them. -- by our products. they cannot afford them. it seems to me that is what is happening since the late 1970's. host: what kind of work you do? caller: i drive a truck. is that in association with the auto companies? caller: i haul steel so in a roundabout way, yes. i get paid per weight of steel that i haul. is lower today than it was in 1982. host: thank you for calling in this morning. the obama administration does not lack for nerve or disdain for the law. even as investigations continue into the irs targeting of conservative nonprofit groups, treasury and the irs are introducing a new regulation to restrict the ability of nonprofit groups to participate in elections. treasury's draft of the proposed rule would redefine as political activity a wide range of actions currently undertaken by hundreds )(4)s as long as it is not their primary purpose. the rule amounts to a crackdown on the administration's opponents,-- limiting their ability to talk about their core issues. tell us about job insecurity in your area. caller: good morning. i think i have something interesting to lend. i have been working for 33 years in this country. i have about a order of the million dollars in the bank in this started. since obama took office, tradesmen are suffering severely. have not seen much in the way of pay increases since the early 1980's. i work for a union hall in the washington, d.c. that was all- american when i started and over the last 10 years, we have watched is an influx of el salvadorians come into the country. we're are almost 100% el salvadorian. to -- lentth away way toto reverse -- lent reverse racism. host: what kind of work is a? -- is it? nower: i feel insecure because i am an american who is getting battered. we have an immigration bill on the table. it is difficult. the union hall that i work out of currently, men have not worked -- moved out of the hall for work in over three years. the same guys are sitting on the bench that have been there for three years. we are not getting the work. i think it is corporate greed. we have watched the industry being bled from all angles. there are many angles to this. i am nervous. host: thank you for sharing your experience. lawmaker quits over gun control. a colorado lawmaker facing a possible recall election for her support of gun control legislation has resigned, marking the largest -- the latest victory for state gun rights activists is valid payback for a package of gun bills that passed earlier in the year. the thirdhave been lawmaker this year replaced by a republican and a recall vote, had she stayed in office. our opponents were gathering signatures for a petition and plans to submit them to the secretary of state next week. the first recall vote in the state's history in september claimed the jobs of senate president john morse from colorado springs and angela democraticsing the -- the democrats' edge over republicans in the senate. next call is john, louisville. the man that called in earlier, chris. i agree with chris 100%. , the man called in about el salvador, senator mcconnell push for the free- trade agreements for south america. bill clinton supported free trade, president obama. people, you have got to pay attention. ross perot says -- was right he said you were going to hear a sucking sound when it comes to jobs. even though i am a democrat, i am open to energy. it is creating jobs. as long as there are environmental sanctities. you have to be realistic. i was in the mortgage business, i was lucky and retired. we gave too many loans to people that should not have had them and the restrictions -- we took all of the restrictions off area i blame the american people for not paying attention. they do not vote in primaries. tell your relatives and your friends to get off their rear and and pay attention to who is running. get out and vote. retired, was that because you were financially able to? caller: yes. host: did you make a fair amount of money for the work you did? caller: pretty good. especially towards the end. business, i got in it by a fluke. i had been in advertising. the last four to six years was phenomenal. there were no restrictions. right.ublicans are they gave loans to a lot of people that should never have qualified. we do not have a commonsense approach with our leaders. andle had better wake up pay attention to what is going on. host: thank you for calling in. obama bracelet for health care reit launch. a nervous white house is to relaunch its online health care insurance exchange after a frantic weeks long drive to repair a malfunctioning website that has severely hurt the administration's largest invested he form. online enrollment in federal exchanges for small businesses would be delayed by a year. fordeadline has been set tomorrow for the exchange to be fixed and up and running to allow individuals that use it to select and buy health insurance. that is a little bit from the article. scholar and author has an op-ed this morning in "the wall street journal." the revolutionary -- here's a portion of the op- ed. by the testimony of many that ponders hism, he options, acts decisively, is not afraid of making decisions, but he makes his decisions carefully , having learned to be skeptical of his initial impressions and instincts in facing ethical situations. he is not afraid of criticism and learn from his mistakes. he wants collaborators to challenge him when they think he is wrong. of culture, well read theologically, but more given to literary references and illustrations then to scholarly theological citations in his preaching and catechesis. the pope is concerned about the poor. he knows that poverty in the 24th century takes many forms. they can be found in the his nativeverty of buenos aires, caused by decades of corruption, in deference, and the church's failures to catechized argentina's economic and political leaders. there is the ethical impoverishment of moral relativism, which dumbs down human aspiration, impede, and work for the common good in society, and inevitably leads to social fragmentation and personal unhappiness. a little bit from the peace in "the wall street journal." york, independent line. would you think? caller: let me start by saying happy thanksgiving and happy hanukkah. job insecurity in this country is based upon the redistribution of wealth that was talked about in the communist manifesto. our corporations do not go overseas for financial stress, they went overseas because that is the way the world is going to be. you have to take a country rich and powerful as the united states, take what they have, give to others. we have lost one leg of the stool of survival. shelter, clothing. clothing is already gone. it is made in every other country in the world except here. that is no accident. the communist manifesto mentions anything. many people have not read that book. those of us that have, wonder how they're going to achieve the redistribution of wealth. this is how they're going to do it. want any nation to be able to sustain itself. that is how the global order is going to be brought about. sounds a little off- the-wall, but that is what happens if you take a good look at it. reading on a lot of it. george bush senior, he was a man of prominence. they warned when a man or woman of prominence announces in a world order that things are going to change, they have changed a awful lot. that is the way i look at it. host: bernie, new york. -- chnn this morning gopie leads possible 2016 --. while millionaires playing stadiums built by billionaires is holiday, the nfl front offices will continue to enjoy a tax break that other multibillion-dollar corporations would die for. the league is organized as a 501 (c)(6) tax exempt organization, allowing it to avoid paying taxes on certain activities. the break, dating back to 1942, has outlived its original intent of helping trade associations build the local economy by promoting teens and filling seats at games. that was before the nfl became the media, sports and entertainment juggernaut it is today. from buzz feed this morning, here is an update on syria and syrian refugees. than 1.1 now more million syrian refugee children. most are living in neighboring countries. than 70,000 syrian refugee families live without fathers. 3700 refugee children are either unaccompanied or separated from both parents. in jordan, nearly one in two refugee households rely partly on -- or entirely on income generated by a child. they leave their home once a week or less. it is often a cramped apartment or makeshift shelter. a couple of tweets regarding our topic this morning. a lot of comments about regina in ashland and her comments. caller from virginia keep saying they need to do something. if you are not happy with your situation, you need to do more than the mid-applications. time to cut excessive profits. georgia says the employee is used as a tool to mind greed. -- mine greed. michael says so sad things -- that people think they deserve to be given things. we appreciate everybody participating in that part of our conversation. up next, we are going to talk to ginger gibson of politico. we will be talking about minimum wage and potential increases. followed by michael lotus, the ."-author of "america 3.0 this is "washington journal." ♪ >> on many campuses, women are taught that they are low payinged into fields. they are cheated out of 25% of their salary. they say invisible barriers and all sorts of forces that hold them down and keep them back. does not fit reality. it is distorted. the false claims that support it have been repeated so many times that they have taken on this or of truth. >> her critiques of late 20th century and is him -- feminism have led critics to label her as antifeminist. your questions for christina hoff sommers, live for three hours beginning at noon eastern. join radio talkshow host, mark levin. depth." "in middle or high school student, our student what is the know most important issue congress should address next year. the deadline is january 20. get more info at studentcannot work. ntcam.org. we offer complete gavel-to- -- gavel-to-gavel coverage of the house. c-span, graded by the tv cable industry and funded by your local cable or satellite provider. now, you can watch us in hd. journal"ngton continues. want to welcome ginger gibson. our topic is minimum wage and efforts to raise it. reporter, isional there anything going on in congress to raise the minimum wage? guest: there are some discussions in the senate. it would raise the minimum wage from seven -- $7.25 to $10 and $.10 -- $10.10. those discussions in the senate, backed by democrats, appeared to be growing. there is support to vote on a bill by year's and. end. the big question will be what will happen in the house. host: what will happen in the house? is there effort to push this? they're trying to press republicans saying they support the minimum wage and republicans do not. houseis no sign that republicans would bring the bill to a vote. democrats offered an amendment to a jobs bill that would have raised the minimum wage to nine dollars. the publicans voted against it. they all opposed the amendment. i'm sure you saw the lead story this morning in "the washington post." this is talking specifically about counties in the city of washington, d.c. to increase minimum wage. new jersey voters voted for a constitutional amendment to rage -- raise their minimum wage. they will continue to tie that rate to inflation. california will have one of the highest minimum wages. their governor signed a bill this year that will begin to raise their sports $10. the state of washington also. we see localities. san francisco has a high minimum wage and continues to raise theirs. washington, d.c. has discussed it. seem toe feds don't inclined to address it, a lot of localities are. we wanted your participation in this discussion and we have divided our lines a little differently. if you are a minimum-wage earner, we want to hear from you. is the number you should call. if you are a business owner and you are paying the minimum wage, (202) 585-3881 is the number for you. .ll others, (202) 585-3882 isn't this cyclical? don't we find ourselves waging -- raising the minimum wage? four years ago was the last time the minimum wage was raised. the argument that their support -- the price of goods keep going up and wages do not. we have a larger working poor class that are making money wage and unable -- making minimum wage and unable to buy the goods they need. proposal we of the see from harkin and miller. it would tie minimum wage closer to inflation. say inflation goes up and down, that it would not be able to trend with inflation. we see other things tied to inflation. became a big issue when there were not any in the downturn. host: has history shown that people get laid off with the minimum wage increase? guest: that is the great debate and there are economists on both sides of this issue. the minimum wage historically have not led to a drop in hours or employment levels. is mrs. adjust. this proposal -- businesses adjust. this proposal would introduce tax breaks to try to get them through the initial implementation. ldlot of economists wou tell you it does decrease the number of hours and jobs and the working poor find themselves worse off because employers start cutting hours and hiring less. minimum wage being increased in areas where there is high cost of living? guest: we talked about san francisco having the highest minimum wage. washington d.c. another area. jersey.in new people in the state recognize that. adjustments are coming first and foremost. those who have been hopeful we'll get members of congress -- will get members of congress who will appeal to a wage increase. home state of louisiana has no law when it comes to a minimum wage. what does that mean? federalhatever the government places of that, that is what the states place it at. as the federal minimum wages increase, so has the wages in louisiana. some states tie it explicitly to the federal rate. some set their own. host: ginger gibson is our best. our first call from jimmy in greensboro, north carolina. a business owner. caller: hi. my biggest fear as a small business owner in raising the minimum wage is that than i have to my customers which, they in turn, will say we need to shop around for a lower price. that is the big fear for a small business owner like myself -- extremely small business owner. host: what kind of business? caller: landscape maintenance company. i'm a grass and take care of people's roads and everything. i already pay above our minimum wage in the state. $7.25 in north carolina. i pay $10 per hour. to try to go up to $12 per hour or $50 per hour, then i have to go up prices and then the customer will start shopping for a lower price for their service. i think there has been some addressing of this by members who are supporting this. there is that concern. they are including a $500,000 right off in the bill for equipment and other costs. other costs would allow small businesses to cover what might be an increase in wages by tax breaks. -- you soundoll divided. you pay your workers already more than the minimum wage. he would knowledge that $10 an hour can make a difference. it would be a cost increase to go to $12 per hour or $15. business owners were more divided than the general populace. 47% supported a wage increase to nine dollars per hour. what is au have hit big question therefore a lot of people. reported here in the new york times. all adults do not raise minimum wage. raise. not then it is done by ages as well. it seems to increase a bit as you get older. are most minimum wage workers younger people and people who have parents or other sources of support? or is that a fallacy? guest: there is a little bit of both. a lot of minimum-wage earners live in households that make more than the minimum wage. $50,000 average when you start taking into account all of the teenagers who work summer part- time jobs, people who are dependent, a spouse that might have a full-time job that pays better. there are a significant number of people who are income earners for a household that are making minimum wage that are the working poor. when we look at people who are living at the poverty level or below it, a lot of them are working minimum-wage jobs that would be affected by this change. host: do they account for any potential government support programs when i look at that minimum-wage? there are a number of programs for the working poor. the earned income credit is another thing. we have things in place, opponents say. income tax credit. that is not included in those government programs. those programs help buoy those who are the working poor. the supporters say there is a better way to do this and a better way is to just pay people more instead of having to include that government assistance. antioch,c is in california. what kind of work you do? caller: i'm a clerk in a quick stop. i am happy to have a job. don't give me wrong -- get me wrong. there are a lot of people in antioch do not have a job. antioch was the worst in the country actually, i think. i don't believe we should increase the minimum wage. i believe we should return the minimum wage to the level it was in 1970. it should be approached in that way as opposed to saying this increase. we should take it to where it was as a living wage. that is all i have to say. host: can you survive on what you make on minimum-wage? caller: because i live with family, i am barely able to give i. -- get by. you have people with food stamps and you have earned income tax credits to help with housing. but that is everybody else subsidizing those jobs at a wage that is not capable of having people survive. host: when you say you would like to return to the 1970 wage which was dollar $.20? you mean adjusted for inflation? caller: exactly. that different areas should probably have different wages. expenses are different. host: thank you very much. supporters, like eric, say let's adjust to inflation to the 1970's rate. it would be higher than it is now. orwould put it in the $10 $12 range. there was another study using the number in opposition saying that if you adjust for all of the downturns in inflation and the increases, it would actually be like $5 now. thatis what supporters say the cost of goods, the cost of housing have inflated at a rate that has not kept up with the minimum-wage. the minimum wage has not kept up with it. adjusting for that measure would put them in a better place. host: and. ellicott city, maryland. caller: my thoughts go this way. you have so many businesses leaving these higher states that increase so much in their businesses that they cannot hire people because they cannot afford to keep paying them. the business taxes that people are under. my sister had a job, had a small business in oregon. they ended up closing the business because of what they had to go through. up, i was a girl growing only made two dollars per hour in my very first job. but it was a training time and i was in high school. people have choices. all of the people in all these businesses are leaving. they're going to small states that are more business friendly. these small business companies are already being attacked by increased struggles with the obamacare stuff. don't people use their common sense anymore? you look at the extra insurance rates that people have to pay for small businesses. for most people, minimum-wage is a training wage. this is how it is. i really believe that some people need to think about this and how it affects businesses. let the states decide. host: thank you. a lot of facts out there. a lot of issues on the table. guest: the idea of a training wage. it has been something that has been discussed before. having lower wages for teenagers who are working in part-time jobs, calling it a training wage. supporters say that allows teenagers to continue to work part time when they are still dependent on their parents, they are still in school, and it allows those jobs to continue. theg argument against minimum-wage increase is that many of those teenagers would lose their jobs. it would drive teenage unemployment up. opponents to the training wages say this child exploitation. you get a 17-year-old to get the same job a 22-year-old could do but you get to pay them less. you will probably see another round of discussions. --t: gary tweets in rick is a business owner in monticello, kentucky. caller: good morning. my comment is that minimum-wage was never designed to be a living wage. wageum wage is a starter where you get your foot in the door and you gain some work experience. people consider that they are going to get a bigger piece of the pie if we raise the minimum wage and the pie will never get bigger. a business owner has to keep his wages within a certain percentage so if you force me to raise my wages, then i am going to have to raise my prices and in turn, it will halt inflation and the person making more money on minimum-wage will not be able to buy anymore with their money than they would have before. the flaw is that people try to live on minimum-wage, which is impossible. is norstand that there other job opportunity for people and it is very frustrating, but a person who has worked at a place for several years should not continue to make minimum wage. they should make more than minimum-wage because of their experience and their proven honesty and dependability and they become a more valuable employee and only a full would fire someone with a couple years experience and not pay them more money than to replace them with someone who has no work experience. host: what kind of business do you want? caller: i am an electrical contractor. we often times use people to carry material up floors to the tradesmen. deliver things, go to the parts house. they learn what the different material items are. they rapidly increase. if you work two years with me, you should be making double minimum-wage. if you work for years with may, you should be making quadruple minimum-wage. but i cannot hire someone with no work experience whatsoever and not start them out at minimum-wage. host: thank you, sir. guest: he makes an excellent point. a study found that two thirds of those who start on minimum-wage have their wages increased within the first 12 months of the job. employers have an incentive to raise wages as they go and people gain more experience and that that offsets the low minimum-wage and the inability to live on the current minimum- wage. i think that he makes the point that we are hearing from a lot of business owners that when you start increasing the minimum wage, they're going to have to increase prices to offset it and that is the strongest argument that they are making against those proposals. host: warner robins, georgia. business owner. caller: hello. that gentleman who spoke just before me actually said what i was going to say. schoolpeople out of high or in high school and some people from college to do a job that most of these people have never had a job or they have no experience and they can easily -- they don't deserve more because i have to train them. once a train them, then i give them increases based upon whether they are a productive individual or not. if they are not, i have a 90 day probationary. which i don't have to keep them. many of them finds a job too demanding, they have to be there on time, they have to be honest, they have to make sure that they don't make mistakes. if they don't do those things, it is not worthwhile to try to keep them. if you raise that the minimum wage enough, you'll end up with what we have now -- with upwards of 50% of people who are not employed because they are -- because they have no experience and they cannot do the jobs. host: what kind of business? laboratory -- a medical laboratory that picks up doctors offices and other institutions and delivers reports. host: how many employees? guestcaller: 10. host: how many make minimum wage? caller: only one now. ourvolume is off because business is not as productive as it once was. individual that this -- it looks like we will be able to keep them and then he will make more money in the future as he becomes more productive. host: thank you. guest: i think we are hearing a lot of the same concerns. business owners want to be able to decide their wages, to do their own step increases, and to control these factors. that is going to be a strong argument going forward in debating this issue. a lot of things play into the minimum-wage, job training -- we touched on that. people are coming into his business who are inexperienced. that is the other discussion. federal job training programs. we hear the president talk about these. we hear members of congress talk about, how do you train people to do high income jobs as the lower wage jobs disappear or jobs are not at a level where people can live on? --st: bill king tweets in and e-mail from oak ridge, tennessee -- guest: it is all interconnected and intertwined. that is an excellent point. you raise the wages, i raise the price of goods, things become more expensive. the arguer argument is that if you don't raise the wage, how can i buy your sandwich or your lawn care or have your laboratory system to your medical expenses? -- a risingwage tide argument, that when you do that the businesses will have more customers and they will need to raise the prices. wage worker from cherryville, tennessee. what kind of work you do? steve, are you with us? caller: yes, i'm sorry. host: what kind of work you do? caller: i'm retired. host: you called in on the minimum-wage line. caller: that's true. i wanted to go back to suggest that we go back to the 1970's when nixon proposed wage controls. that would keese the cost of living down -- keep the cost of living down. we get to the point where we are paying three cents for a pill and getting $15 out of it -- i think that should be stopped. i think everything should be based on the targets that the corporation makes. thank you. kate is in dayton, ohio. what are your thoughts? caller: i thought the two gentleman from georgia and kentucky made really great points. training, whether they are doing the training, and they were honorable employers. if people gain more skills, they paid the more. this.l people are like i on at that, that is beautiful. abouted to ask your guest could there be to minimum-wage standards? based on profit margins? you have six walton family members making more than $150 million. could there be to federal minimum standards? one for small business -- based on profit margin -- and one for people like walmart who make exorbitant amounts of profits? could that happen? , i met anted to ask worker about 15 years ago working at a nursing home in southeastern ohio and she was making below minimum and i started looking up federal minimum standards. at that point, ohio and kansas and the probably were other states were trumping federal minimum standards. is that still going on? guest: there are still a number payinges that are more than the federal minimum wage. they cannot pay below it. wageange in the minimum- happened in the mid to late- 1990's. everyone had to adhere to the federal level. i don't believe they can still pay below. your question about to minimum wages is something that we have seen discussed in washington dc earlier this year. the district council voted to have a second minimum-wage for certain types of retailers and it was no secret that it was targeted at walmart, which is building a number of stores in the district. they were going to peg the minimum-wage to profits, to the size of the store. out, the only two stores in the district it would have applied to his walmart and macy's downtown. walmart said if you do this, we won't build a walmart here in town. we will go somewhere else. the mayor vetoed that. that law does not exist. we have seen an attempt to do it. it does not seem to have much support on a national level, to try to do a two-tiered minimum- wage. as we have seen, municipalities and states are moving ahead without the federal government to change the minimum-wage. that attempt is something we could start to see at a more local level. host: we have divided our phone lines a little bit differently. if you elect to participate. minimum-wage workers, (202) 585- 3880. business owners am a (202) 585- 3881. .ll others, (202) 585-3882 we will leave those numbers so you can dial in on the correct number. this is an e-mail from ed. guest: that is a very good question. i think that supporters of raising the minimum wage would tell you that it is unsustainable at a certain point. there is a balance needed. sure, you don't want to pay minimum-wage earners $2 per hour -- no one could live on that. but trying to pay them $20 per hour would be unsustainable. watch these debates over the minimum-wage start to bubble to the surface, we know earlier this month senate democrats at a luncheon with some white house economic officials then there was a discussion, where do you go? do you go to $9? $10? the eight dollar range? before the election? after the election? there are a lot of factors that go into this discussion. a lot of elements they are building on. that is where they are trying to find the best equilibrium. it looks like $10 is where they're going to land on this proposal. hadfferent group of people a different session -- they may have had a different conclusion. another tweet -- guest: a big retailer whose executives are making millions of dollars tells you that they cannot raise the minimum wage because it would drive their prices up and someone says, why not cut your pay $5 million? raise your minimum-wage. that is a discussion that always bubbles to the surface. crash, whenth the we talked about executive pay, bank pay, that thought is still a lot more in the forefront than the last time we had the minimum-wage discussion. host: shannon is in florida. what kind of business? caller: commercial fishermen. ago, fuel was only $.70 per gallon. i could fill up my vessel for $20. now it is almost $80 to fill up my vessel. the price of the fish that i catch is not gone up more than maybe $.10. it is not really feasible to made -- raise the minimum wage to placate the masses because it gives the masses a sense of self security when you are talking about all of our good things -- good paying jobs. that it takes higher education backgrounds. they have all gone overseas. what kind of wages you pay your employees? caller: minimum-wage. that is the thing. it is hard to keep an employee admin wage when you do not know what you are going to catch. if we don't get on the fish, we don't get paid usually it is a percentage of the catch. it used to be that i would pay a third to the vessel, a third to myself, a third to the mate. now, i can't pay that. there was no way with fuel going up as it is. host: what is the solution? caller: no solution. go out of business or fish by myself. with the laws that we have here in florida -- they are not raising the price of fish because right across the state line in alabama, they can so use gill racks which is highly profitable. you don't have to use as much gas, your catch can be , in about ar more 10th of the time. was that up happening they end up getting the fish from 40 miles away, 30 miles away and we are stuck floating with their hands that are limited to 14 foot in size. fish,ses you to chase burn a lot of gas, when they can send out a net and just wait and the fish come through, they pull the men, the make a profit. it keeps the fish artificially low. the fish has not changed in price from gas going from one dollar per gallon to five dollars per gallon. the fish were still the same price. host: thank you. guest: i think he illustrates the complexity of the economics involved in the minimum-wage. forprice of gas has gone up him to run his business. the price of gas has gone up for his employees to get to work. there are a lot of elements here. there are a lot of things present in different directions. stay line regulations. nets and fish. for his business, that is it. for a person who is cutting grass, it can be other elements, other factors. insurances, other things they have to deal with. there are a lot of moving parts. --t: ron tweets in guest: walmart always becomes the center of this discussion. you cannot talk about wages in this country without talking about walmart. pr push,doing a big talking about their wages, how they're helping their employees. strident walmart supporters who think they are doing a lot of good in helping their employees get jobs and have training and move up the chain if they can. employing people who would otherwise not be able to have jobs. a lot of walmart detractors who say they could be paying their workers more and they are a profitable business and they should be doing so. host: do you have any idea what percentage of walmart workers are minimum-wage? guest: i don't know that. i know it was discussed during the debate in d.c. they made the case that quite a few of the workers make more than minimum wage. there are step increases as they go along. there are a number who do make minimum-wage or who are just above it. it is the other discussion. $.10 more someone than the minimum wage, it is pretty close. mcdonald's is the other very popular example. right at the center of this debate. host: supposedly, this can be a protest at walmarts across the nation. black friday. there are a number of workers for his second year who will protest the wages that walmart pays. some are organizing. some of the traditional unions are pairing up. walmart workers are not unionized. they're getting some help from those who have run unions to protest. we saw factory workers to it earlier this year. a lot of mcdonald's employees walked out of a job. we will see that again this year. one more walmart -- daniel: from bristol, virginia. calling from bristol, virginia. caller: it is so nice to listen to an intelligent lady like ginger. may be the solution amount of profits but the company or corporation makes should be tied into the minimum- wage. for that particular company. and allention walmart the commercial retailers that pay low wages and make a profit. and yet there low-wage employees and up on taxpayers subsidizing them in different programs. let the companies subsidize those people in different programs. the way to do that is to spread the profits with the employees. that is my comment. thank you very much. guest: i think we are hearing the argument we spoke about earlier. the earned income tax credit, the benefits for the working poor, housing assistance in a lot of places, states that do other supplemental health care, subsidies for health insurance. that is the case. instead of these companies paying these people for these programs, the american taxpayers as a whole are already subsidizing people who are the working poor and that by raising the minimum wage, that would curtail the need for those programs and allow companies to pay people instead of the government. host: sean, this tweet -- the consumer price index is a hot topic in d.c. to right now. they are talking about the way it is changing -- calculated. veteran benefits, social security benefits, -- it is done by the price of goods in the store. they send people out on a regular basis to write down how much a gallon of milk costs, a loaf of bread. which are also regionalized, so you could change it based on the city or the state that you were -- you can to the different rates -- are used in a lot of federal measures. they want to make it so it does not increase as quickly by changing the weight is calculated. there were some discussion about tying the weight -- rate like that. host: this tweet -- guest: that is the argument against having a federal change. the woman who called in earlier and said there was a period of time where she thought states could have a lower wage, we talked about states who do not have a minimum wage and just have the federal level. when we start discussing this, they are not talking about california. california has the higher minimum wage. they are discussing about the states who opt not to have a higher minimum wage or opt to not have one at all need a push to have it it it realigned. --t: quagmire tweets guest: that is the central key of this debate. some think that you can rage the minimum-wage -- raise the minimum wage. some think that when you raise the wage, it will drive more inflation, that it will become cyclical, a growing problem. there is not 100% agreement across the board on that one. we have seen the comments on both quarters debate that one. host: a final question from a viewer. why should i not be allowed to sell my later for what i deem proper? market a great free- argument. if you want to sell your labor for $2 per hour, why should the federal government be able to stop you? the federal government says that is great, but we have to stop people from getting exploited. while you might want to sell your labor for two dollars per our, there would be people who want to -- don't want to sell their labor for two dollars per hour but who have no other choice. we heard from business owners who said, i pay my employees more than minimum wage because of value them. if you took away the minimum- wage entirely, there would still be lots of people who would pay about the current rate, about the proposed rate. the other side is that there would be a lot of people who would not. host: what are the prospects for legislative action on the minimum-wage? we will see a senate vote in a couple of weeks. they work in december. early in january, maybe. they are not really doing much. -- not much moving moving out of the halls of congress to the president's decks. -- desk. they are mostly working on their wish lists. host: ginger gibson, congressional reporter with "political. o." we will continue looking at america's economic situation. we will turn to the state-of- the-art in the states. arts in thethe states. every weekend since 1998, booktv has brought you the top nonfiction authors, including hannah rosen. women'snk increasingly identities are tied up to the work in a way which we may not like. it disturbing and unnatural. it is in fact true. when i look at someone like marissa mayer who was recently chosen to be the ceo of yahoo!, when she was visibly pregnant, and then was asked how much maternity leave do you want to take? and she said basically none. the fact that such women exist is not the way i would do it. i took plenty of maternity leave. but i feel like that is a growing number -- that is the kind of woman that there can be space for and the fact that there are some stay-at-home dads who are very happy stay-at-home they do not entirely all live in portland, oregon -- that is ok too. >> we are the only television network is -- devoted exclusively to nonfiction books. we are marking 15 years of booktv on c-span 2. pat nixon traveled abroad more than any first lady before her. she company the president to the soviet union, china, europe, and egypt. she even took a solo trip to africa. watch our program, saturday at 7:00 p.m. eastern on c-span. 19 74, vice 9, president ford was sworn in as president of the united states. mrs. ford was wearing this dress. she was less than excited about becoming first lady. president ford encouraged her, saying we can do this. she resolved that if i'm going to have to do this, i am going to have fun doing it. the fund for her started almost immediately. within 10 days, she had a state dinner to entertain king hussein of jordan. it was something she had to prepare for his role of first lady. she hit the ground running. ford, monday betty night and nine a clock eastern live on c-span. >> "washington journal" continues. host: a new book out, "america 3.0." one of the co-authors is michael lotus. he joins the washington journal from chicago. what do you mean when you talk about 3.0? my co-author and i basically break down american history into three segments. trying to make sense of it. we look at america 1.0 as the era of preindustrial america, agricultural america, small-town america, america of the founding era. america 2.0 is the industrial era. exit he scum of factories, railroads, automobiles, and so one. the world we all grew up in. we use america 3.0 as the short term to describe the economy and the political order that is developing and that is going to be coming in the future and has already started to chick chick today. host: what is that future? guest: what we think is going to be happening is that the current political situation we have with a very powerful centralized national government is not going to be sustainable. it has made commitments it cannot keep. we have $70 billion in debt. we have obligations -- $17 billion in debt. we have obligations we cannot sustain. the arrangements that have worked for a couple of generations are going to break down. the positive side, the technology that is, how long it's going to make it possible for us to have a much more decentralized arrangement where people and businesses were be very productive. the type of work forces we had in the 20th century, where b had tens of thousands of people working for businesses, are likely to break down. , or the concept of a job you have a particular place you go every day for year after year after year, even that seemingly very basic idea may be breaking down as well. it is going to be a major change. we are not psychologically or institutionally prepared for this. our work has been to get people thinking about some of these major changes that may be happening so that we can adapt to them rather than have it come along as a crisis. host: why are you predicting these trends? guest: let's take a look at what is happening right now. the the three major efforts to create a welfare state were social security, medicare, and now the affordable care act, also known as obamacare. social security worked pretty well for many many decades and even though it is on track to run out of money, it was a reasonably successful program. medicare was a popular program, but it was too six at -- expensive from the outcome. it is headed toward a crisis unless we make a change. look at what has happened with this effort. the attempt to run won six of the economy from washington dc and direct it through tens of thousands of pages the regulation is a bridge too far. that way of running things does not work anymore. example of the contemporary failure of the 20th century governance model. i hope we draw the right lessons from that. the way to do things that actually works is to decentralized decision-making, empower individuals to run their own minds. if the government is going to help people, do it on a helping individuals and giving them a premium support or vouchers of some kind of let them by the things they need competitively, including health care. host: chapter eight: domestic policy. you touched on this. if you explained it a little bit further. guest: the and -- the entire concept of a job is going away. how would the concept of what we know is a job go away in your view? guest: let's step back and look at how things were in preindustrial america, in the preindustrial world, and see where we might be going to read at the time of the founding, you had most people working on farms or small businesses. there were a certain number of people who were wage laborers. after the american revolution and moving in to settle in the midwest, the country was carved up into 160 acre units that were enough for one family farm to be sustained on your it people owned their own capital. they work for themselves. that was the ideal. it was often the reality. as we move to industrial america, you had huge aggregations of capital. that railroads, steel mills, automobile factories. you had businesses that handled information before the computer area where you had huge typing pools and handling paper. he would large enterprises and people were no longer employed by themselves were no longer had much prospect of doing that. there have always been large -- lots of self-employed people. the bulk of the work force was employed by somebody else. i think we are heading into in the future and we are seeing more and more of this now is that we are moving toward a model where more people are self-employed or working in smaller start upscale businesses. showedas a study that and we cite it in our book -- the biggest source of employment is self-employment. at the same time, almost everything the government does has pushed back and made it harder for people to do that. even in the teeth of government opposition to this trend, it is an increasingly accelerating trend. i think we will see people doing more and more work either on a contract basis or individual basis and also some of the technology we talk about. if we are right about 3-d printing becoming a dispersed and localized manufacturing. we will have a return to manufacturing in america then we may be expected. it won't be that we will have factories. we will have manufacturing dispersed all around the country. different than what we came up seeing is normal. is america 3.0 all about technology? guest: no it is not. one of the things we're trying to address in the book is the concern that many people have -- mostly conservatives, but i suppose people all across the political spectrum -- the sense that the country is in decline. our best days are over. america used to be great, and it is not so great anymore. while there are certainly reasons to think that, we think that is a misunderstanding of the condition we are in right now. i think we are in a transitional. , not a. of decline -- i think we are in a transitional period, not a period of decline. millions of people left their way of life they had known for generations and moved into the cities. 100big cities of america years ago were dirty, dangerous places. it took our great grandparents huge amount of effort, political effort and practical effort, to clean things up and turn the united states into the developed country it became. it is not just the technology. what we think the transition we are going through now is similar. the technology will enable us to do it a lot of good things. , themerican culture underlying culture, is quite distinct from the rest of the world. i think that that factor is something that is underappreciated and something that we rely on a lot. host: is this a natural transition? guest: i'm not sure what you mean by natural. i think to some degree it is inevitable. if technology advances eponymously to some degree, then yes it is. we see millions of people throughout the economy constantly working to improve things. new technology coming along all the time. as technology changes, it changes the culture, it changes the way people do with each element islagging always the law and the political situation. it is very difficult to change those things. to a certain degree, this is a natural progression. i will also mention something else. yourself finding depressed by the political news, it is a good idea to look at the news about changes in medical technology and other types of technology. all caps of thrilling changes, really great things seem to be happening. it is a good way to cheer yourself up. host: why? see, forthink we will example in medicine, we see all kinds of breakthroughs and cures for cancer and extending people's lives and having people be healthier for longer. these are great things. if we can make them available and create an economy that will allow masses of people to have access to these things, you will have happier, healthier, longer lives. that is coming out of the private economy and through technological change. host: could you give us some time frames on america 1.0, 2.0, and 3.0? what years are we talking about? 1.0, you can trace from the first european settlements here through the founding era. -- a good hinge moment might be the american civil war. there's a lot of overlap. the early development of industrial america was already underway for many years while we were still primarily a farming and agriculture economy. america 2.0 was really taking off in the late 19th century, peaked in the mid- 20th century. we mentioned that the golden moment of industrial america was in our military victory in the second world war. america became the arsenal of democracy. the government, big labor, big business work together to do big things. the manhattan project, building tens of thousands of aircraft, thousands of ships, and moving men overseas, the heroic achievements of industrial america. the american people have a lot of confidence in those big institutions for some decades after that. what we see now is that america 2.0 was fading away and america 3.0 is already developing. the internet is a foundational factor. just as the railroad and the steam engines of the mid to 19th century were foundational elements of america 2.0. it took a couple of generations for those to fully transform society. host: your background is as a lawyer. guest: that is correct. host: you are writing about economics. guest: we talk about lot too. and we talk about anthropology and sociology and history. without about it much of things in the book. some of it is about the law. i think it is important to understand -- let me back up. one of the things that my co- author and i were finding is that various things we were reading about and interested in were not cross pollinating with each other. the people who are interested in say the legal history of the united states and how it responds to changes in technology or people who were interested in technology, entrepreneurship, people who are interested in some of the cultural things that we found ourselves interested in just because of the way things academics work -- they were not responding to each other. peoplehed out to various who wrote books that we were interested in and got in touch with them. we decided if we did not do this, we were nonspecialists. you point out i am a lawyer, not a historian. arehe nonspecialists who interested, the academics are not going to have an incentive to do it. we decided to take the conversation and the research we had been having for many years and combine it and generate this book. we have had a pretty interesting, positive response to it. host: who is your co-author, james bennett? guest: he is an entrepreneur and a business consultant and author and a writer. he is the person who popularized the term "anglo sphere." on thehe expert relationship of the english- speaking countries and english- speaking world and history. he had a book about that some years ago. host: why do you spend a good amount of time in america 3.0 talking about our english and germanic traditions? guest: ok. one of the factors -- let me back up. wrote hiscqueville famous book on history in america, he made the comment that if you want to understand the country, you should go back as far as you can to understand the roots of that country and where it came from. he went back to the founding of america by the puritans. it was about as far back as the records allowed him to go. at some anthropology that has been worked on by a frenchman. a very interesting writer. that the family structure in different countries, the culture that shaped those countries because of the way their families lived in organized their affairs has a big impact on the political and economic lives of those countries to last for centuries, that is quite distinct. we found that the english- speaking world as he describes it has a particular type of nuclear family that is the most individualistic and freedom minded versus equality minded type of people in the world. this is still measured by survey data that we see to this day. people, one of the conundrums of american history -- people say, why didn't america, this big developed country become more socialistic in the mid-20th century? that has not been aligned with the type of individualistic, enterprising society that we built because of the underlying culture that we have. we don't have extended family networks to fall back on, like people do and many other countries. people from other countries come to the united states or the england and say they're cold and lonesome unselfish year. overcritical, but there is some truth to it. is advantage we have had that we are extraordinarily good at forming voluntary networks of association for business form sports to teams or whatever it might be. much more so than many people in other parts of the world. we wanted to make sure we highlighted this in the book. it is not the only thing that made america what it was. i think it is an underappreciated factor that we are putting on the table by talking about it in the book. host: what potential changes do you see to government organizations with america 3.0? guest: we think of the current, centralized federal government is going to be increasingly unable to meet its obligations and increasingly expensive. we think there will be some basic reform at that level. we speculate that the federal government will to some extent devolved some of its functions to state or associations of states. the different parts of the country do have different intrusive for a more or more supportive government. new england and the upper midwest would probably favor a -- a stronger welfare state. texas and parts of the south would be much more of a free- for-all. much more libertarian in their orientation. we think that the federal government, because of the burden that has taken on an because it has become increasingly difficult to govern -- 400 million by 2050. we think that will break down. is that theoncerns reforms are not going to happen before these that come due and people who need what they rely on, that the money is not going to be there. book, that we the have a resolution of this, all of these obligations that once, and do payouts to people and change the regime that way. hopefully we can work out something politically before there is a real crisis where checks are bouncing to people. host: our guest, michael lotus. co-author of "america 3.0." he is in chicago. judy is in idaho falls, idaho. caller: what i would like to ask the gentleman is what he proposes, self-employment or small businesses -- many of these are going to fail and you seem to be transferring the risk to the individual while taking away the government safety net and i would like to know how you plan to handle that. i would remind you that in america 1.0 and in the early days of 2.0, there was a lot of starvation and a lot of hardship, substandard housing and such things. how do you plan to deal with that? a smallhe idea that business is a riskier than a big business may be so. big businesses of mass layoffs. a large institutions can fail. general motors had been -- would have been in the bankruptcy court if the government had not bailed out. size is not necessarily security. it is frequently am roche of security. en the turn of the -- a mirag of security. technology lagged behind. there is no particular reason why we were reserved to a dirty and dangerous country. as far as a safety net, i don't think anybody is talking about abandoning a safety net. what we're talking about is whether the expense and centralization and bureaucracy is sustainable. the point is to have a safety net that each individual person wants to move to a community where december the want to live in -- where there will be regional rather than national. chosenafety net can be at an expense they can tolerate. what we have now is not and be sustainable. -- not going to be sustainable. of course we want to have a safety net. of course there are ups and downs in the economy. of course you don't want your fellow citizens to go hungry. the question is what is going to work in the future? the model we have now is not working. exhibit a is the affordable care act. host: a tweet -- guest: that is a misrepresentation. both of the book and what i have said. reasons no particular that we will revert to "mad max" -- violent anarchy. the question is how we will best organize ourselves and is organize our public sector to be productive and to take care of the people who need help. to point to the federal government that we have now and to openly say that it is not able to do what it says it is going to do is not to advocate a return to some imaginary science-fiction scenario of violent anarchy, it is a complete misrepresentation. host: ruby is in richmond, virginia. a democrat. caller: i plan to read your book. in thents worked automobile industry and they knew it was not going to last long. they sent me to college. i see what you are talking about. i don't know what my grandchildren are going to do. it is probably going to see something that i cannot imagine. guest: that is a terrific point. here is the thing. when this big change in the economy, big change in our society -- people cling to what they know. that makes sense. you don't want to walk into a darkened room and not know what is going to happen. when the country was founded, if you told the founders that in 100 half of the people will not be growing the food anymore. to do?e they all going it would be unimaginable to them. your parents were smart to help you move out of the world you were in. the auto industry had piqued by the time they were working. they were adding lots and lots of new workers. that hadsomething already passed its prime as a source of employment. it is an astute comment and i appreciate it. lotus got his degree at the university of chicago. guest: i have worked in large law firms and i work in a small law practice now. what you have seen in some of the things i have been talking about have had an impact. technology has reduced the need for some of the less cognitive aspects of the job. with less things people reviewing documents physically and things like that. change, asslow to big as those changes are compared to manufacturing or more technologically-oriented businesses. there you have transformative change. in the law, you have someone with a law license looking at your problem. you can streamline that and facilitate it, the basics cannot change the way manufacturing and health care can change. joe tweetscan hero in, it sounds like he is describing usa version three would be broken up into five or six sub nations. guest: that is a good question. it gives me a chance to clarify. we are not advocating breaking up the united states. that would be a terrible idea. the founders knew breaking up the country would be a disaster. that is why they wrote a constitution to make a permanent union of the states. the founders also recognized the different regions of the country are quite different. having a federal government with a lighter hand would permit thele in different areas of country to govern themselves the way they want. handed have a heavy- central government, it simply is not going to work. the core functions of the federal government has to stay the same. national defense of a -- it is inconceivable we would have more than one custodian of our nuclear weapons. trade zone inside the country. having the federal government and its court system guarantee people's civil rights and civil liberties. as far as retirement programs and regulation of business, we could move that out of washington, regionalize it and do it on that basis. the new england that her ration or the state of california -- if it were made -- the new england nation or the state of california -- if it were made into many states, is a huge country. it one point oh thinking or 2.0 thinking that we are still divided by the -- 1.0 2.0 thinking that we are still divided by the geographical boundaries we are divided by? much two point oh thinking as it is ordinary unwillingness to see -- 2.0 thinking as it is ordinary unwillingness to cede things differently. -- see things differently. rings in theed past. massachusetts broke off from s in the past.ing there are quite distinct communities around los angeles and the western part of the are moret is -- that agricultural. you can turn those into separate government. host: philip is in tucson on the republican line. caller: hi. my comment is that the gentleman speaking spoke about the fact that technology -- the force of technology -- is moving us forward. a job of a truck running the highways or mcdonald's or farming, i do not know if it requires more people than a few years ago. technology, every day, is eliminating jobs. the bottom line, how are we going to move it forward? people have to take a lot of responsibility for themselves. they cannot rely on the government to pick up the load for everything. very importanta point and i am glad you asked. that newrn is always technology eliminates jobs and what are people going to do? hadong as we have technology, which is back to the stone age, we have had new ways of doing things that reduced existing types of jobs. we have had extremely rapid technological progress and whole ways of life have gone away. people in america mostly worked on family farms and small scale businesses 150 or 200 years ago. most of those jobs went away. there were jobs in railroads and steel mills and automate factoring and manufacturing electronics. you had retailers like seals roebuck thatars employed the enormous amounts of people. people are assets. people are creative. you need to free them up and lift some of the regulatory and tax burdens on them so that they can find the needs of people and satisfy them with products and services. i will not tell you with absolute clarity that i can tell you what people will be doing in 20 or 30 years. host: adrian tweets in the mud these changes do not happen by chance. economics and politics are guided. do not agree with adrian particularly. we are all speaking english. the people tweeting and calling in are speaking english. many of our ancestors came here not speaking english, but they adapted to the american style of marriage when you do not have your parents picking your spouse. the american style of inheritance where no one is entitled to any particular thing from their parents. you cannot rely on your uncles and cousins to protect you and you -- and they cannot expect anything from you. we take that as a given. that is the ocean we swim in. in terms of politics, there are political choices. for example, one of the things we talk about in the book is the loss of privacy and the government's intrusive involvement with our lives. that technology is not going to change. it is up to us to take the political steps to change the laws and protect ourselves. she cannot lump all of those things together. host: gold cup 45 tweets in, i just ordered your book. -- many of us have too many have no historical context for our beliefs. do tos that going to manufacturing? is going torinting be transformative. for example, think about medication. if you can make medication that is personalized for a person because of their health history and dna and you can 3-d print that medicine in your home and the ingredients are there and through the internet you are getting the direction of what to make, that will be a big break of -- a big break to people. there is one example. as far as manufacturing things for use in the home, things are simply -- there are things we will not have to go to the store for anymore. people will tailor what they may can use for their own needs and wants. how is this going to play out in terms of what people may can sell is tough for me to predict. it will be at least as big as moving from handcraft to manufacturing. host: from twitter, is there a taggertr named dagbet -- dagneykt u galt in america 2.0? >> this is america. we are much more interested in our neighbors' well-being than rand's characters were. host: kalvin, new york city, independent line. , newe go ahead -- calvin york city, independent line. please go ahead. about: i hear you talking 3.0.2.0, you always talk about these watersheds after a particular war. a lot of these changes are more conscious than you believe. , the american economy is falling back into a southern antebellum economy where the wealth is concentrated in a few places and everybody else is spending for themselves. when the investor revolution actually came up, a lot of people of color left that situation and moved up north. them, but four times as many caucasians moved up there with them because the economy in -- south was so guest: so backwards. i am not sure where you are going with this, but i will respond to it. things that causes that is if you have an economy that has become uncompetitive, the way that people can gain wealth is through access to political power and using access to the law and the tax code to insulate themselves. what we see is the wealthiest counties in the country are the ones right around d.c. the power the federal government has to influence the economy is far out of proportion. that is a big factor in what drives the inequality we are seeing. as far as and antebellum type a economy, i do not think we are moving to anything like a slave- type economy. i do not see the american people returning to a condition of subjugation that the african- americans lived under back in the day. when the southern economy stagnated, people moved to where the work was. millions of people moved from the south to the factories of the north. they left the life they knew and adapted to new conditions. we are going to adapt to the changes we are facing now. host: 10 minutes left with our guest, michael lotus. bill is in kansas city. hi, bill. caller: happy thanksgiving, everyone. i wanted to talk to you about the development of the country. we started with freelance and free labor and it did a lot to land and freeree labor and it did a lot to make this country wealthy. i am talking about taking the land from the indians. economics made sure all of the citizens had equal rights and corporations did not overrun those rights. the federal government had to step and to ensure those rights for you to compete and for you to grow your business without paying a huge financial giant and to keep them from wiping out your assets. it is the role of the federal check individuals financially. also, i do like the fact that you were saying individual merit and efforts in business will play a part in the future. i do like that heart of it. -- part of it. i want to remind people that you would not have safe airways and roadways. cut you off. i think you misunderstand me. if people say the federal government is too powerful, too expensive, and too intrusive, they think you mean get rid of it entirely and return to a complete state of anarchy. we have antitrust laws to prevent businesses from colluding with each other to fix prices, the kind of thing you are talking about. we should continue to do that. the federal government does that and should continue to do that. the point you made about freelance -- free land and slave labor and taking land away from the indians, there is a lot about that. the people coming in here were able to see the empty continent for a low cost. there is no disputing that. the contribution the slave labor force made is a somewhat disputed thing. it is not clear how much surplus was developed. to some extent, it did. about the united states is that even though the slave system was a big part of our economy and many people ended up from it, we fighting a war and losing 6000 american lives and ending slavery in the united states. we are a country that has political and moral principles. from time to time, if there is enough at stake we will act on those things. differinguple of opinions on your book. this is well saying michael lotus represents failed philosophy of greed and selfishness. larry says we need much less direction from the incompetent boobs in d.c. guest: that is interesting. you have two polar views from those 2 tweets. i am not talking about the philosophy of greed. you can look at data and see which countries have people who are more focused on their own immediate family versus other things. whether you like that about the united states or deplore that, that is how we are by comparison with the rest of the world. as far as the booths in d.c. -- d.c., the people there are not stupid. many of them are well- intentioned. they are there lobbying for advantages for themselves. it is a mistake to undercut the people in d.c. as somehow mistaken or foolish. i do not think that is right at all. host: john is in louisiana on our republican line. caller: i went to the indiana university, purdue, just off the road. i am 70 years old, retired. i was raised by parents who came up during the depression. if you cannot afford something, do not buy it. richt live the life of the and famous until you are rich and famous. accountability and responsibility are 2 big words that have been replaced by me and now. i believe in the constitution as the bulwark of protecting the individual. i will make my own decisions. i will be responsible for them. i would like to have your comment on that off-line. i basically agree with you that the constitution is a critical factor in the well- being of the country. it is a well-done constitution. our bill of rights is the envy of the world that we should not change. it is interesting that you say people should change their approach to things. they have a different moral orientation. predictnot venture to when moral transformation of the country might occur. it is hard enough to reject transformation on technology. america had great transformations of religious sentiment. there was a social gospel movement where people got aggressive politics because of their religious beliefs. i do not know what steps people can take to cause a moral transfer -- transformation to make people feel more responsible to themselves. i do not rule out that unexpected can happen and religious outbreaks happen and societies can be changed by them. you would be full hearty to try to guess when those things are -- going topen any happen. what can you say about decline? guest: china is presented as a challenge to the united states. china is a large country that is developing rapidly. hope they are very successful at that. the chinese have serious problems with lucian in the country might we had 150 years ago, 100 -- problems with like wen in the country had 150 years ago, 100 years ago. if we are right about read the printing and localized many fact during, -- about 3-d printing and lows allies -- localized manufacturing, that is what the chinese to. i do not think we will be displaced either chinese as a world power. and try to impose our culture on other people. cultural things that make the political and economic systems work are deeply rooted and you cannot change them by military force. we should be hesitant to try to undertake nationbuilding type projects. host: how would the military be affected by america 3.0? guest: the cutting-edge of technology is driven by military technology. we will see investment in 3-d ledting, some of it being by the military. spare parts by machines could be manufactured on the spot without having a huge inventory. it becomes embedded in everything we use, in our clothing. we will see the military take the lead on that. we will be able to monitor people and know if a guy has been wounded. he can be taken care of on the battlefield. all kinds of things will impact the military. one of the things we hope will happen is that we will reform the tilt german process, -- process.e procurement we have proposals in the book for that. for michaelall b.j. in ohio. go ahead. there have been more thatand legislation control our people. in time, we will recognize that the legal system is not the moral system. you are on point with a lot of things in how you are talking about how america is growing. been disastrous and will continue to be unless we start to localized. every level of government is passing laws and registration. every law creates a criminal act. thank you for your time. guest: i am in general agreement with you. we will be choked to death right away. i do think we are overregulated. on businessrd in and individuals that is excessive and should be pushed back -- we have a burden on businesses and individuals that is excessive and should be pushed back. we have some things we have to do. environmentale an protection agency or something like it. you need to do a cost-benefit analysis on the things that they do. limited gains in terms of making the country a cleaner, safer place. i agree with the crux of what you said. host: will there he retirement in america 3.0, or will we work until we die? guest: i hope there will be retirement. one of the things we think is going to happen is we think the cost of living and the cost of the basic things we need could come down very, very sharply. houses using 3- d printing happen and we can disperse ourselves to cheaper places to live, if we have local power generation, which is get theing, if we can cost of living down very sharply and it is a lot easier to save some money and live on a small sum when we retire, that should be something easy to do. 3.0. america why america's greatest days are yet to come. the authors are james bennett and michael lotus. mr. lotus has been with us from chicago. one more segment on "washington and we will turn our attention to the arts. >> it was shocking. i saw it, that look that he had on his face. i could close my eyes and see him on the stretcher right now. i could see him putting his hand up erie it i could see his eyes. i could close my eyes -- put his hand up. i could see his eyes. i will never forget the first case, when you need to reality of what is going on. there was this initial sort of triage. we get the report and we see him and he goes into the tent and everybody starts to work. we got pulled in, myself and my colleague who wrote the forward. we both got pulled in because the other team wanted us to begin right away. they did not want us to be bystanders. they said you guys have to get involved right away. once they did at and they pulled us in, it was like a joke -- that and they pulled us in, it was like a joke. you have to be a surgeon. you have to be a care provider. you have to dismiss your emotion and you have to tuck that away, what you are feeling and just work. you have one objective. you have to save this guy's life. you have to stop the leading and get him back home to his family. >> in his first book, he uses his military experience to write about physicians working in afghanistan. tonight at 8:00 p.m. on c-span's "q & a." problems this numbers and this experience problem. consider it a success at bunker hill. they went off to canada to regroup. washington says, i know exactly where they are coming back. he comes back to new york city and he knows he cannot ace them treat he has to use espionage. he has to use guerrilla warfare. he has to be able to anticipate them. he needsy logical that a spy force. he needs his own cia. he has this huge espionage background. he is a noted dive from the french-indian war. y from the french- indian war. he tells talmage, this is what we need to do. how a little-known spy ring may have saved the revolution. sunday night at 9:00 on "after ," on booktv. talk about theo state-of-the-art s america and the government's rolled in the arts. in the arts with randy cohen. what do you do? guest: we try to get more arts in the schools and more support for our organizations. host: and sunil iyengar. nationalith the endowment for the arts. what do you do? our mission is to advance arts. your this is from the nea, organization. the revenue comes from our and income. earned comes from income. point two percent comes from the federal 1.2% comes from the federal government. guest: that shows you how decentralized the arts wondering structure is. orut 7% comes from federal local or state government subsidies. only about 1% from the federal government. essentially, arts organizations are agile in getting funding from various sources. make up the lion's share of our funding whether it is through earned income or individual donations. the people are funding the arts. given thosecohen, figures we just saw, a small percentage comes from the government. why is government funding necessary? guest: obviously, there is the financial piece. the is an important part of revenue picture. it is a mosaic of revenue streams, as you can see. real value is in the leveraging aspect that government investment brings. when government invests in the arts, that attracts the private sector. the proof is over the last 50 years. we have seen the arts industry go from 70 arts organizations to 95 arts organizations. when the agency was created, it had a whole match requirement. you needed to match that with non-federal dollars. state arts has a agency. private sector financing -- philanthropy has gone up. an important financial piece. it is the leveraging and the leadership that has a huge impact. grant system is set up so that we require matches from -- for nearly all of our grants. .e require a one to one match dollars have to come in from that project in relation to the dollars we invest. host: appropriations for federal entities funding. 812 million went to the smithsonian. 812 millionion -- $ went to the smithsonian. the national endowment for the --s, 146 million dollars $146 million. pay -- 40% of our budget goes to state arts agencies. every state has a state arts agency for grants in their own states or arts related projects. doy may prod -- partner to and arts initiative. that is the way the money gets spent. 60% is from grantmaking. the numbers uput on the screen because we want you to participate. we have divided our numbers a little differently to get a sense of where people are coming from. we have divided them by age. for those of you who are 18-30 and want to talk about arts in america and the federal government's role in those arts, 202-585-3880 is the number for you to call. .f you are 40-50, 202-585-3881 and if you are 50 and over, 202- 585-3882. ?re these museums guest: we are talking about the nonprofit arts sector. your symphony, your dance organizations, your arts education organizations. that is where the government dollars are typically invested to basically make sure that we all have access to the arts. we can all participate. arts are a very localized industry. it is a very labor-intensive industry. because of its labor-intensive nest, it can be costly. it canr-intensiveness, be costly. as you saw in the last chart, $50 for a symphony think it -- take it is just a portion of the cost of that organization. a drop new survey finds in arts attendance. in the washington post, the formal arts are in freefall. guest: both of those articles referred to the survey of the arts, which we conduct with to the u.s. census bureau to get a handle on how americans [indiscernible] the arts in all of its complexity. forms, thererts has been a reduced uptake in terms of attendance, where people are going to see certain live events. the important point to make is that you have to understand that this is what our survey is trying to do. engagement, how people engage in the arts. it is not just going to arts events. it can take the form of creating art on one's own. it can take the form of engaging in art with electronic and digital media. ,hen you look at the numbers that chart shows a decline 2008en 2000 and eight -- and 2012. 70% of all americans engaged in the arts through electronic media. host: give us an example of what you mean. might electronic media mean they went online to view an exhibit through a museum web portal or some other source. they went to look at a performing arts at committee. -- they wently online to look at a performing website. -- wouldld that in q that include britney spears on y outube? although -- we have to be attuned at what is going on in the for- profit sector. the numbers are not tilted toward profit or nonprofit. it is the levels of various types of arts activities. we have an eye toward that. we are doing work looking at how the arts contributed to the gdp. that is not done to the nonprofit sector alone. that is an important engine of economic growth. guest: it is interesting how technology is evolving and how people are engaging in the arts. the washington national opera has struggled with attendance over the last couple of years. a yearnedy center, twice they do operate in the outfield. performances.l there is a live simulcast on the big screen. 20,000 people show up for that. to engagebled us differently in the arts. in the last dozen years, the umber of music and cd stores ofe dropped in -- number music and cd stores have dropped in half. but people have not stopped looking -- listening to music. there are a lot of people engaging differently in the arts. tv --st popular shows on everybody can dance, everybody can saying. inst: we found out that one three people did some kind of social dancing in the last year. we want to understand how americans value the arts in their lives. how can they help it to grow. it is important in their own sphere. crucial because a lot of arts organizations are starting to realize they have done brilliant work trying to reach audiences that they do not get through traditional means and traditional formats. whether that is through electronic media or a more formal setting than a typical concert hall or theater, there is a great hybrid work going on to reach more audiences in general. socialhen you say dancing, does that mean making a fool of your self? self -- yourself? guest: absolutely. people may not know they are engaging in some kind of cultural act dimity. -- cultural activity. guest: should the government be supporting your dancing at your cousin's wedding? that requires public and private sector investment to make the arts successful. it makes communities better places to live and attracts people to our communities. engaged in the arts are performing better academically. what is the big priority these days? jobs. there are a lot of committee benefits that go with this. this is a central issue for communities. getting back to why the government should have an interest in this, it has to do with access and serving all americans, bringing the great achievements of art throughout the ages from the past to the present to the future. see declines in certain types of live attendance, if you look at ethnic groups,- you are seeing greater attendance than ever before. for example, african americans going to hispanic, latin music concerts at higher rates than ever before. latin americans going to visual arts festivals and higher rates. there is growth that may not be reflected in the aggregate. is important to know how these different sectors of america are responding to the arts. the genius of the studies that have evolved over 30 years that are the gold standard. capturing the different ways people participate personally. the federal government tracks volunteerism in this country. americans, it is the number one place they choose to volunteer. music.on americans play that might be at a faith-based institution or somewhere else. demand forgrowing the arts. how about education tackle the number of -- how about education? the number of college arts gone to about 133 a year. guest: you have put up a slide. if you look at the left, a very important point. it is the percentage of 13-17- year-olds who did not graduate from high school. where do you see the lowest bar? it is comparing at risk youth and comparing whether they had a high volume of arts activities in their school or whether they didn't. it turns out that only 4% of those in the lower socio- highmic status group had arts experience and did not graduate from high school. we see the overall for all levelsregardless of ses is about 7%. better with all kids regardless of socioeconomic status. we see the percentage of eighth raters who land on earning a bachelors degree of wood ash gradersraders -- eighth who plan on earning a bachelors degree. we see it over and over again. academic civil and social which tells us the arts are a significant contributor to positive outcome the a few elite, socially, cognitively. contributed to positive outcomes socially, cognitively. randy coheniyengar, our guests. charles and baltimore, 32 years old, our first caller. question is int regard to the chart you were just showing. elementary schools, the arts are being completely phased out. in baltimore, seventh graders do not have any type of art. i do not know if that is the case nationwide. that is not a good change. there is a lot of spending for museums. on a policy level, what is being done to change that. thank you. guest: there is a lot of effort being put toward keeping the arts in the schools. though baltimore experience you describe in your community is what we are seeing nationally as well. we are seeing a general decrease in the amount of education -- arts education available to students that is being consumed. even more worrisome is that if you look at the lower income communities and title i schools, you see a much more rapid drop- off in arts education. put that together with the data sunil was just talking about. students who are engaged in the arts are getting that are grade- point averages. it is not just the elite communities. it cuts across all socioeconomic strata. we are trying to keep the arts as part of the curriculum. it is a constant battle. too often, the arts are the first thing that gets lopped off. democratic -- the demographic subgroups. we are seeing those discrepancies persist for various groups in lower socioeconomic status. , in its charter going back to 1965, it is clear in the legislation that the nea is intended to promote artistic excellence and arts education throughout the country. we try to do that with the department of education and elsewhere. it is a challenging time right now. we want to make sure nobody is denied access to an excellent arts education. our: patch is in arizona on over 50 line. why is money not available to those parts of the arts community? host: are you a writer or a painter? caller: we could not get funding for any arts, nor could we get facilities to hold meetings. we have individuals here in scottsdale like the mustangs. we have the arizona state poetry society. that group belongs to the national poetry society. there are a lot of people involved. no one can get any money. host: thank you, pat. sunil iyengar, do you want to start? researcher, we are exceedingly interested in all of these arts groups and artists. we have done studies on writing and the visual arts components. it is reflected in our survey results. writing fellowships. this is one of the few instances funds individuals. i just want to make sure we understand that that is is invested inea and continues to promote. pat was interested in a grant for writing poetry or sponsoring poetry -- guest: we are interested in promoting and getting the word out for our grant and fellowship programs. guest: the individual artists has grown to 730,000. only numeral 3.5% of every 3.5% of every- dollar spent goes to fund the arts. just maintained $.11, we would be talking about more than $140 million. every state has a state arts agency. that is another source to check out. jan says we are a title i school, but no way our arts-is it parents would allow those are grounds to be cut. -- arts parents would allow those funds to be cut. extent does the -- the federal government is supporting a particular art. there was a whole panel process. ofis not really the picture some person sitting upstairs in a tall building making these decisions willy-nilly. reviewwere brought in to each and every one of these applications. not just people in the arts and culture industry, makeay people who do not a living in the arts. .t is a rigorous process is on the line. caller: i am a textile artist. so much of what we know now is due to the fact that somebody preserved this history of historical things and the way people live. bs and that kind of channel is one of the only channels that if you do not have the money to have cable, you have pbs. channelsne of the only you can watch to see an artist explaining the process. host: do you hope to make a living as an artist? caller: this is a question we bring up a lot. you really have to be an entrepreneur. i am not so tied down to one medium where i am so driven to be a painter that i have nailed down having to make a living in that field. i am interested in arts history. people who have a drive to create will find a way to make it. .ost: sunil iyengar many american artists do some kind of textile or fabric work. did as something randy great job of outlining. 1/3 of them are self- employed. they have much higher self employment rates than the general workforce. this is something we take very serious and because artists are at the leading edge of where the economy is going right now. think, i will start up my own business. artists have been doing this for years. fostering great works of imagination, creativity, ingenuity on par with some of the great processes of invention that america has done throughout the century. these three to get tweets and quickly. note that arts is not just recreational. i want you to respond to, mr. cohen. people.e arts for rich the arts are mostly a one -- 1%- er thing. nothing could be further from the truth. at has been one of the big benefits of the national endowment for the arts. go back 50 years when the agency was created. see anwanted to go opera, you were headed to chicago or new york. now you can access the arts in communities across the country. host: randy cohen is with the americans for the arts group. sunil iyengar is with the national endowment for the arts. thanks for being with us on this friday. enjoy the rest of your holiday weekend. [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2013] ourere is a look at schedule. c-span's first ladies series continues with a look at florence harding. sugar policy and the health-care law. >> girls are sure change in school and dropped other adolescents and then channeled into low-paying fields. they are cheated out of 25% of their salary and face invisible barriers and all kinds of forces that keep them back, keep them out of the high echelons of power. this picture is distorted. it is the false claims that supported have been repeated so many times they have taken on an auro of truth. >>

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