 Good evening to everybody So we have a great conversation tonight. It'll be a lot of fun And it will moderate it and we'll give you lots of opportunity to ask questions because really that's what this is about at the end Of the day So the description of the event is is it true that the rich are getting richer within a system rigged in their favor? If so is wealth redistribution the answer or are we experiencing a cultural shift in which success is punished and The solutions to inequality serve only to widen the gap before we get into just a couple very very quick points I think we can all agree on two things one is there is an increasing gap between the wealthy and the poor We also know that throughout time that ebbs and flows, but we are at a point in which at which It's greater than it has been in the recent past Second I think we can all agree that philanthropy and government Support has not alleviated poverty here or in any other part of the world Rather economic growth probably has alleviated more poverty In the developing world and we've seen any time in the past But the question of inequality is a profound one that exists in our country has been asked since the founding Federalist paper 62 Jimmy Madison talked about regulation as part of the business of government He talked about it, but he also warned about the sagacious and moneyed few who will be able to harvest the benefits of government regulations that is the government legislation he saw might open up opportunities For profit by that sagacious and moneyed few to take advantage of their less informed or less Connected fellow citizens that some of the 1787 version of the argument you've heard from Elizabeth sent Elizabeth Warren Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump to some degree Inequality is a profound thing Alfred Whitehead North Alfred North Whitehead once said that children Before they recognize similarity Recognize difference recognize inequality. It's deep in the human psyche and it matters to us and when it comes to money It matters a lot So should we care about inequality and if so what types of inequality matter most for our attention? My job tonight is to moderate the panel We have two very smart folks and all of you will have an opportunity to the extent you want to participate to participate Let me introduce them I ran Institute Executive Director Yaron Brooke is co-author of the National Best Seller Free Market Revolution and equal as unfair That will be that ladder book will be available for purchase tonight if you'd like to and I think you'll sign won't you? Absolutely you He is the host of the Yaron Brooke show suitably named a live blog talk talk radio podcast and radio show He's been a columnist at Forbes comm his articles have appeared really across the country He has a frequent guest on national radio and television programs and a contributor author to a number of publications He was born and raised in Israel He served as a first sergeant in the Israeli intelligence and earned a bachelor of science in civil engineering from Technion In 1987 he moved stateside and received his MBA and PhD in finance from the University of Texas at Austin He became an American citizen in 2003 Beacon Hill Institute senior economist Jonathan Haughton is a professor of economics at Suffolk University Originally from Ireland He first attended Trinity College Dublin and then earned his PhD in economics from Harvard University Prize-winning teacher. He has taught at Northeastern the University of Maryland Wellesley College and Harvard in addition to over 40 articles and scholarly journals He is the author of handbook on poverty and inequality published by the World Bank in 2009 and also living standards analytics Which is published by Springer in 2011? He has worked taught or presented his research in over 30 countries Most recently in Rwanda where he was part of a team at the National Institute of Statistics Working on a study of the evolution of poverty there. He has been a chartered financial analyst since 2002 I'm going to invite your own first if you don't mind. Okay, come on up. I'm just here I mean we're gonna be here anyway Good evening. Thank you all and thank you for to the photo forum for Putting on this event. They've always been a good friends to to me and to the Institute. So support them Let's keep the photo forum going Should we care about inequality? People seem to care today and and I agree That it seems that inequality is becoming more and more of an issue for Americans. We see this in this election quite vividly But I don't think this is true of our past. I don't think people have always cared as much as they do today about inequality indeed, I think the more America Was focused on the individual the more America was an individualistic country The less people cared about what somebody across the street did and the more they cared about their own ability To achieve to progress to make something of their own lives It's only in recent times as I believe America has become much more collectivized against something you can see very vividly in this election Then we start caring about what those groups do and what those groups do and what those individuals do and what those individuals do And we start thinking in terms of a zero-sum world if they're doing well, it must be at my expense The social pie we again a collectivistic concept as if there's such a thing as a social pie how it's being divided I think there's a very modern concept For America for Americans indeed most opinion polls in the past Although these days we should be suspicious of opinion polls, right? Most opinion polls in the distant past always showed Americans particularly relative to Europeans not caring that much about it As long as they felt free as long as they felt that they if they Succeeded in their life would be rewarded based on how much they produced Americans didn't care about inequality about the gap It's only in more recent times that they've started really caring and I think I think there are two reasons one is this collectivization of our society and A second is that they are now real problems in American in the American economy That are giving people give people the feeling that the system is indeed rigged It could be the fact that it seems at least that it's harder for somebody who is poor to rise up from poverty It could be the fact that the economy is not growing at all So the middle class is really taking a hit because they the middle class tends to do well in a growing economy And it could be that it's because of the growing cronyism That we are seeing coming out of Washington that is when business and government get in bed with one another And I am not here to deny that any of these are problems indeed all of these are serious problems in America Poverty and and the lack of mobility out of poverty economic growth and cronyism are all problems None of them have anything to do with inequality none of them are caused by the gap They might result in a various gap, but then the remedy should be how do we address cronyism? I think that's a legitimate topic to discuss How do we address economic growth? We should definitely be talking about that. How do we increase mobility for the poor? How do we allow them to rise up from poverty? That's important that we should address None of those none of those have anything to do with a gap with a genie coefficient however you want to measure So let's come up with solutions to address All those three problems I I fear though that almost all the solutions proposed To address the three problems Solutions that have to do with redistribution of wealth or for increase the size of government increase regulations increase controls will actually make all three problems worse not better So that often the remedies in the name of inequality Actually cause the underlying problems to be much worse What we should be addressing are the underlying problems and find solutions that actually work. Thank you Well, thank you very much. It's We live in an incredibly unequal society among all the rich countries in the world the US is the most unequal one percent highest earners actually control about 20 percent of all income And about 40 percent of all wealth Now, uh, just to put this in perspective It was estimated that in 2010 the heirs of the walton fortune Six people Had a collective wealth of about 69 billion dollars equivalent to all the wealth of the 130 million low wealth americans It's very difficult to think of a moral scheme of things that says that that's an acceptable state of affairs And I think that that is where the depth of disgust about inequality begins Precisely because we have become so unequal But you might argue there's nothing wrong with inequality if it serves some social purpose And I think uh, there are sort of two ways of saying it might not matter It wouldn't matter too much If the inequality was entirely the result of our efforts and our talents Using something of social value Uh, so people will say well didn't it doesn't bill gates basically deserve what he has made because he has contributed so massively to our society Well, that's all very well. Uh, but let's just not go so there so quickly if bill gates had been born at the beginning of the 19th century His contribution Well, I'm not quite sure what it would have been if he had been born in rural mali And had not got a primary education. He could have not have made his contribution if if um So I think that the problem is that the The we cannot attribute what everything that people earn to purely their talents We we stand on the shoulders of giants and non giants too and and society is contributing to our Uh, to what we make to what we earn and therefore in effect is contributing to the inequality as well So we are not in an ideal world where the individual In any sense deserves everything they get I think the second justification for inequality might be It provides incentives and if those incentives make people work hard and innovate and take risks To the extent that it actually helps the bulk of the population or the poorest in society as roles would have it That might make sense too But it's very hard to argue that those walton fortunes are contributing Anything of any significance to poor americans or middle class americans or average americans so, uh if it Therefore they were in a world which is unequal and we all accept or believe or not all most of us believe that it is incredibly unfair so, uh Does that matter is there is is is there do we need to begin to do anything about it? Well, I think It enrolls our sense of fair play fair play is very important because we are not individuals Working in little atomistic eddies as we waltz through life We live in society. We interact with with society and if we don't Have trust in the system Well, it it it can cause serious problems joseph stiglitz who Got the Nobel prize in economics and whose book on the price of inequality is of course one of the go to volumes on this subject wrote and he wrote this in In 2012 he said there is always a worry that voters will be attracted To populists and extremists who attack the establishment that has created this unfair system And who make unrealistic promises of change? I wonder Who he now has in mind um, so the problem is that uh number one trust has eroded and that erosion of trust is partly because we don't think the system is fair enough second, I think problem is that uh great inequality Has not trickled down sufficiently to those in the middle There's a sense of which folks have been left behind and to them it looks like a zero sum game It may not be But it feels that way And once it begins to feel that way people's thinking begins to change because what I get you don't get And uh that perception is not completely ungrounded in reality third when we have great inequality we often get unequal politics It With citizens united and other decisions wealthy americans have more influence on the polity Then the average american It's a dollar vote rather than the person to vote sometimes not always let let me not overdo that, but But then politics gets distorted in the interest of a smaller group of people and Sometimes those small groups are things like taxi drivers So we have a system of medallions that was designed in the 1930s and it's completely ridiculous But at least uber is disrupting that particular thing But um, so so it's not always the rich that is is looking out of their interest But disproportionately it tends to be and the bailout of the banking system Didn't force wealthy bankers to take enough of a haircut And and they should have been required Given how bad decisions led in large part to the recession of 2008 2009 So what uh, and yet government is needed government is needed to deal with the public goods that are needed Is needed to set the rules is sometimes needed to regulate Is needed to provide education because not every parent is going to otherwise educate their child Is needed to increase inequality So what do we need to do? We do need to think about the structure of taxation to make it fairer and that in effect is tackling inequality And we do need to spend in such a way that it brings up the people at the bottom More than we're currently doing Thank you. So let me just start with a few questions um So redistribution of wealth if one is thinking about people rising on the basis of their merit And we think about grants that come from government to private actors such as Uh exclusive privileges given to corporations through Uh patent laws um Isn't there a role for government if they're giving patent laws that give you an exclusive use or exclusive property? Isn't there a role for government thinking about distribution of wealth in other ways? And I might start with you your own on that. Sure. No No role for government Yes, government protects a property right. It's called patents government protects The definition of my property around my home. That's called the property. That is a legitimate function of government That isn't it's not doing it to maximize social well-being. It's doing it because of its Responsibility in my view. It's only responsibility which is to protect individual rights. This is an application of that right It has no role in my view in dealing with wealth in any aspect now redistributing not incentivizing not Attempting to create government can't create government can only It can only take can only destroy wealth is not social wealth is individual and We disagree fundamentally on this Bill Gates created trillions and trillions and trillions of wealth. He made 78 billion We got a deal We got an unbelievable deal now. Yes. He was born in the right place at the right time Historically he got in that sense. He got lucky But that's a meaningless idea He was actually born in a particular place in with particular genes with particular parents. He wasn't born in Sri Lanka That's just the reality. It's metaphysical reality And it's what you do with what you're with you're born with which is what matters bill gates So opportunities he took them and we are all better off for it And the fact that he made a lot of money doing it Good for him. That's wonderful that he got rewarded for making our lives better Which is the only way to get rich in a free market not in a coney market, but in a free market So no wealth is created by individuals They get to decide what to do with it the world's and family. I mean think about all those 60 billion dollars sitting in their mattress Of course, it's not sitting in their mattress The world's and family does many things with the 60 billion dollars They invest some of it create new businesses Invest in I you know, I I I visited many water museums They do philanthropy, but more important than the philanthropy they're investors And given that they are one of the few families in the world who actually have stayed up there on the list My guess is they've invested pretty well, which means they've created jobs They've created opportunities for a lot of other people. So I would much rather the 60 or 160 billion Whatever the number is stay in the hands of people who invested well than given to the government to waste So No wealth is individual wealth is created by individuals and that's are created by themselves Of course Bill Gates had employees, you know, he paid them That was a trade He paid them he paid them really well more millionaires were created in microsoft than any company in history Sure, he used the roads who builds who builds the roads Who funds the roads Taxes who pays the taxes those those Billionaires who pay 20 percent get 20 percent of the income also pay 40 percent of the taxes So he built the roads. So he built a big chunk of the road. So Yes, we live in communities and but the way in which we should relate to one another in those communities Is through trading is to win win relationships not by stealing from some To give to others and I consider redistribution of wealth pure theft Theft by majority vote Doesn't make it any less than theft Property rights are a very slippery concept And the problem with property rights Two two issues number one. They are socially determined. Do you have the right to smoke here? Should you have the right to smoke? I do have a right to smoke here, you know They're violating my right 20 20 years ago. You might have had a right to smoke. Do I have a right to clean air? Which right's going to trump and what's what's happened in the smoking example is that over time Day facto the right to smoke has been replaced by the right to clean air now That suggests to me that property rights are not some immutable Item they are actually defined socially and once property rights are considered to be a social construct They are the hand that gives can also to some extent take away Another example a recent example. Do you have the right to not be shadowed by a skyscraper? Do you have a right to light? And This this is not a hypothetical problem Should in fact a company be able to take the windthrob garage here and build a building that's so large That it's going to shadow boston common Well, we've got to define the rights and we haven't defined the rights because much of the time property rights cannot easily be defined And they're certainly not complete. So We're in a world where not only are property rights malleable But they are also incomplete and they can never be complete and they change over time So, uh, if if we put too much faith in property rights property rights, we are exaggerating Something that's much more subtle than that. But, uh, let's let me go back to an issue Let's say bill gates because it he comes up in these debates quite a lot one might remember that microsoft was brought to court by the department of justice for in effect non-competitive behavior building in little bits of code so that in effect Um browsers like netscape wouldn't work as well on microsoft machines As their own microsoft browsers. So microsoft in a way it did this deliberately It recognized that in a network situation First movers get an enormous advantage And so in effect what they did was they shaded the law And then they laughed all the way to the bank And we might have to ask the question Would we have been better off if bill gates and his company had been more honest? With the public about the way they approach it and I submit that in fact we would have had more choice Rather than the monopolization for which he has been very nicely paid. Thank you So let me continue on that. We're talking about equality of Property rights or commonly held property or exclusive use What about and let me start with you jonathan you you talked about this a little bit You talked about externalities health safety access to light In the context of externalities, how do you think about property rights? Well, I mean an externality in general is where something I do has an unintended consequence on you Now if property rights are well defined and I harm you Then you can sue me Or I can get away with it. It depends how we've organized those property rights The problem is as I mentioned sometimes property rights are not fully definable And the second problem is sometimes the cost of enforcing property rights is too great And this was the insight of ronald coast's Nobel Prize winner in 1960 He he made the argument that if hypothetically property rights are perfectly Defined and and this is important if the cost of negotiation is essentially trivial Then government doesn't need to do anything about externalities the market will solve them But those are two enormous ifs You've got to define the property rights properly and the negotiation has to be cheap and the problem is Remedies and negotiation are rarely cheap Occasionally they are my students sometimes have these parties at night in the dormitory And the neighbors in the dorms don't like the idea of loud music all night So what's the solution you invite the neighbors to the party and the job is done So there are times when we can deal with those externalities I fully accept but there are plenty of times when we cannot And that is what and the greatest externality that we haven't been able to deal with Is the problem of global warming to the extent that it has some And that that is partly caused by human activity The problem that arises is this we could All of us fully agree that we want to reduce our carbon emissions The only problem is I want you to pay for us and you want me to pay for us And we can get caught in a prisoner's dilemma situation Where we end up with a non-optable solution where we know we want to cut back But nobody's willing to to do so and as soon as you begin to pay I feel I'm off the hook and I'll get a free ride And this is one of the biggest problems that politics faces Which is how do you credibly get around this prisoner's dilemma problem? And it's the challenge of externalities again and again So we disagree about property rights I don't believe they're social. I don't believe they're what convention The property right that should determine whether I can smoke in this building Belongs to the owner of the building and the state of massachusetts has no business In telling the owner whether they can allow smoking in their building or not now They are violating the owner's rights by imposing a smoking ban They are violating the owners of the building's rights So rights are not whatever we feel like they are They're not whatever the majority wants them to be They are objective now. I agree that they're not complete in a sense that our legal system Stopped defining property new property rights Sometime around a hundred years ago because The government basically made everything the common 75 percent of all the land western Mississippi is owned by the state The state basically and as a consequence a lot of really interesting legal issues around water rights Around rights over grazing around rights over a lot of things The court stopped talking about them because basically it was all now about politics It was all about social now, but who gets the lobby who has the loudest voice when you have When you have this perspective of rights that is social then rights Rights are put in quote are determined by who has the loudest voice who pounds on the table hardest Who can convince the most people who has the largest pressure group? That's not rights That's a perversion of rights. That's the opposite of rights rights as the declaration of independence understood them to be Is unalienable they cannot be taken away by a majority They are part of what it means to be human And in that context the solution to most externalities almost all externalities is to internalize them. That is To bring private property into greater and greater realms of our lives to privatize the water supply to privatize The lakes and the rivers and everything else if it's my river you don't pollute it We have Detailed legal, you know Remedies of a you're putting your garbage in my backyard. Is that sometimes expensive sure, but you know what? What we're doing today By violating people's rights in mass scale the lobbying that happens The poll the the pressure group economics that we have become we become a pressure group System it's not a system based on rights anymore. It's not a system based on truth anymore It's a system and this is what we're seeing in washington. It's a system based on who has the most pull Who has who can put the most pressure on politicians? Then they get the favors So I think that's a much more expensive system much much more expensive system than a system of Clearly defined property rights in which we arbitrary dispute isn't messy sure But what's going on in washington is much much messier and will not be get cleaned up by the current the new administration So I'm gonna I'll stop there. So I think this is your property rights is crucial to how we view You know how we view how to deal with a lot of these problems So so your own in some ways what you're saying is that in a society of merit That people who earn their wealth deserve to keep it And I guess I'm wondering about intergenerationally how that works out so You know you could say that concentration of wealth over generations leads to greater access to not only high The highest quality education better justice and all the other goodies that come in society From the start of the country people have talked about an estate tax that would stop Intergenerational transfers of wealth so that people would have to all start from the same place. What's your take on that? I'm against it all taxes on wealth all taxes on inheritance For a few reasons one An issue of justice and property rights the wealth is was owned by sam walton Sam walton gets to decide what to do with it. He could burn it And he would have a right to burn it. He could invest it. He could give it to his kids He could give it to charity. He can start a foundation. He could do whatever the hell he wants It's his money. That's what it means to say it says If you start raising inheritance taxes on wealth like that All you do is you start providing these wealthy individuals with incentives to gain the system Which is exactly what happens today. You think well, I'm buffeting is going to pay an inheritance tax Zero because he's gained the system most of it's going to charity now Is is it better for us put a say society's better for us that won buffets money going to into charity or into investments Not clear, but we've decided to rig the system. So it's better that it goes into charity So you don't have a right to to tell somebody who's old who has a lot of money What he can and cannot do with his money. It's his But let me let me let me say something about is Is who incompetent who don't deserve the wealth in a free market lose it very quickly in in the 19th century In new york, there used to be a saying I think it was from short sleeve to short sleeve in two generations Right short sleeves made poverty. You made the money. You left it to your kids and they lose the money That happens all the time for every Walton. There are 20 families where their money is gone disappeared It's and if you look indeed at the fortune 400 richest people in the world that list is very very different today than it was 20 30 years ago because Inherited wealth is not sustainable unless the children live up to it and then finally I have to make a comment about this The Walton family owns has more wealth than 130 million people Which bunny Sanders used a lot in on the campaign trail something similar this room has more wealth Than probably several million people in the united states And the math is very simple My guess is that this room we have a positive and net wealth And millions of people in america have a negative wealth with net wealth So I as an individual because I have a positive net wealth have more wealth than hundreds of thousands Maybe even millions of people in us never mind in the world because they're negative No wealth and you know a lot of those people negative net wealthers the students who have large Student debt. Yeah, that's all that's nice math But what does it mean it means a sam walton created huge amounts of wealth And a lot of us don't a lot of us spend more than we save a lot of us going to debt So we should penalize sam walton for being such a great businessman or his children Who seem to be taking care of his wealth quite well for the sake of People who are just starting out good for them, you know, hopefully there'll be sam walton one day Sam walton is dead We're not taxing sam walton really Except to sort of the shadow effect When he's gone, he's gone and that's it at least in my book And we'll agree on that And the real question The the more fun I think there are two question two issues I'm hearing here one is It's relatively impractical to tax inheritance Because Warren Buffett won't pay it Because he's found ways around it And I think that that's a real impediment to the extent to which is a practical matter We can tax inheritance On the other hand I up to now have not inherited anything but my A great aunt of mine died a couple of weeks ago and It turns out that she's left me some money But it's in Ireland So I'm sorry to say that after the first $30,000 I'll be paying taxes of about 30% That in my opinion is as it should be And there's absolutely no reason why I should be the only beneficiary of somebody who Has died she did not in her lifetime Think about leaving money for me She did not change her behavior Because she loves her nephew and all the other nephews and nieces It's a little difficult to see where socially Somehow rather something has been gained By not in a sense taxing some of her inheritance So I think that philosophically I don't see the problem But I see a practical problem of pushing this very far And that's that's that's where the difficulties really rise More than philosophically, but In the united states at least The proposals for taxing wealth have been relatively modest proposals I think here's the other difference If government is going to raise money and it must because it's got Plenty to do Is this a better or worse way to raise money than some of the other possible ways to raise money? And I would argue that attacks on wealth and especially by the way attacks on property Immovable property as opposed to reproducible property is a very efficient way of raising taxes And is one of the better ways of funding the government that we do need So let me let me go back to a report from brookings institution that was released I believe in january of this year where they said that boston has the highest income inequality in the country of any city in the country It was number one. We're number one By the same token springfield massachusetts was 64th The difference is that boston has created an enormous wealth In springfield has created very very little wealth So i want to ask a question Is equality or greater equality Um a good thing Even if it comes at the cost of substantial growth beyond I don't think equality is a good thing Ever under any circumstances equality of of we're talking about economic equality. I don't see what the point is. We're all unequal. We're all different Some of us have chosen professions where we're not going to make a lot of money teachers, right? We're just not going to make a lot of money. We could have both pretty smart as my guests We could have gone to wall so we could have made a lot of money We prefer the benefit of doing this kind of stuff to millions of dollars in the bank It's a choice who we made other people are driven By money some people are driven by wanting to start a company some people have ideas to change the world We're just going to be different I think we need to embrace inequality inequality is a feature of freedom It's not a bug It's a feature And the underlying what's to me important at the base is freedom The freedom of the individual to do as he sees fit to pursue the values that are necessary for his life for his happiness for his success If if that means making a lot of money is part of the way good for you If that means not making a lot of money part of the way fine the point is that The government's responsibility is not to try to figure out how much money is enough that each one of us should have Or this guy made too much. We should take some by what standard there is no standard There is no moral standard to say how much I mean, I've never found somebody that says oh the genie coefficient of 2.37. That's just right. There is no right. It's always going to be too much for those who want more equality I don't care about inequality inequality is just a reflection of what we do with our lives What I want is the government to protect us from cooks and frauds and leave us alone other than that But arbitrary disputes when it comes to property rights But let us live our lives and if we happen to make a lot of money Good because as I said the only way to make a lot of money is by making everybody's life better off including our own right so Either economically and certainly morally I think the idea of of the government Striving to what some equality go look perfect equality Complete equality is one of most evil ideas in human history The idea that we should all be equal in outcome Is maybe the most evil idea in human history and every time it's attempted The result is the same Millions and millions of people die because it's the only way to achieve any kind of equality It's not possible because of the fact that we're different. So what's the right level? I say the right level is Whatever level freedom produces whatever level Is produced when we're left alone Free of controls and manipulations and redistribution Jonathan Let me just if I could just go back to the question for a second on springfield vs. Boston because it's something I was trying to get at that you're on gut in part But I'd like to go back to you and I think the thing that offends people or what they get They find unacceptable about inequality is the stickiness at the bottom Right and this is let's again go back to springfield where there's very little growth And we see a stickiness where the bottom 20% do not move out of the bottom 20% and that offends the sensibility of fairness It's in all of us And Boston instead there is great inequality, but it's huge growth And I just want how you look at that and how you look at the mobility from the bottom piece You know part of this I think is an issue of what is the relevant unit of analysis Worldwide in the last 30 years. We've seen a remarkable reduction in inequality. This is you know This is one of the most fantastic periods of human history We have reduced the number of desperately poor people by not millions billions of people It's truly astonishing. So if we are true globalists We actually are perfectly in a position to say actually what's the problem But then let's come down. It's not worldwide that we elect the president It's in the united states or the governor in massachusetts or the mayor in boston So the question really is what is the relevant unit? And I think the relevant unit for much practical purposes is the unit with which you begin to compare yourself Now in the I would I think there are two things one of the The flip side of the inequality in boston is that quite a lot of people have been left behind The wealth downtown does not easily spread to some of the poorer parts of boston Boston proper or the greater boston area So I think that uh, we cannot quite so easily say that the inequality in boston has somehow rather been good for all bostonians because that link is tenuous to put it mildly Now where does that leave a place like springfield? It seems that springfield doesn't necessarily need more inequality what it does need is better schools It does need roads that work. It does need public transport that get people around it does need A government in the city that welcomes businesses and makes it easy for them to set up These are the things that would help and those are policies that you would want anyway So I don't think the springfield issue is an inequality or non inequality issue. I think it's uh economic development is being badly done in springfield It's also a practical, you know, it can be overcome if you've got the right things Pittsburgh was once steel city, but of course it hasn't made steel for decades A lot of nonsense is being talked about in recent election about how these Ex steel workers somehow rather voted for trump. Well, they're all dead or retired They uh, but the cities can remake themselves, but not every city can and in places like michigan and springfield fits in this too. It has proved difficult in laurel in in The I'm not so convinced that just letting the private sector rip will be enough. In fact, I'm sure it won't be enough Uh, and I see a more proactive role for governments in providing the conditions that make it worth actually investing And one of the main things one of the main things that governments are needed for is to finance education No, I use the word finance. I didn't say provide because I'm a big believer in the equivalent of choice um And I think that It's really sad that here in massachusetts. We have rejected the expansion of charter schools It's precisely cities like springfield that would have been potentially major beneficiaries of changes like that And I said something about I didn't want to go to Yeah, let me just say something about stickiness I mean, I do think that the stickiness at the bottom is a real problem But I think again, we tip because we look at inequality We're looking for the wrong solutions in my view the stickiness at the bottom is caused by things like minimum wages Which should be zero things like Licensing laws that penalize young people Penalized poor people want to start businesses or in california need a license to shampoo hair. Who do you think that hurts? Who do you think that helps it helps nobody and it hurts the young poor person who's trying to get that first job And ultimately if the economy grows fast We all benefit and the poor benefit disproportionately if the economy to get the economy growing fast. I don't think it's a mystery I don't think it's a mystery anyway It's massive deregulation and massive tax cuts always always in every example in history always produce great economic growth And when great economic growth happens the poor rise up and and I love this the last this is a point we agree on The last 30 years have seen close to two billion people come out of poverty This is amazing Not because of foreign aid not because of charity But because certain countries have freed up their markets have allowed entrepreneurs to create jobs have deregulated and and Basically allowed for property rights whether it's china whether it's india whether it's taiwan south korea south korea North korea used to be equally poor And now one is fabulously rich and one is dirt poor Why because one adopted a market economy and the other one refused to do so. We know how to create wealth Let's get on with it. But let's not get too excited about deregulation My recollection is that one of the causes of banking crisis was deregulation that uh And lack of prudential supervision and we've backed off that precisely because banks left alone can be somewhat Irresponsible especially if they are too big to fail And then we end up with a greater good, which is we can't let them fail So we I'm gonna stop you guys there because of the arm wrestling match right after this But I do want to get to questions. So if you have a question, please raise your hand There's a microphone right here if you'd like to come to it. Would that be okay? Or do you want to shout it? Is that better? Well, they're trying to tape this trying to tape it. So they're trying to tape it No, I think quite the contrary I think they they thought exactly like me Um The revolution was to to bring about individual freedom to this country. The revolution was about Individual rights not about group rights. Not about the collective rights. Not about making America great again. It was about To empower the individual to live his life so he could pursue his happiness And if you as a group or as individuals want to go help a particular individual a particular group You have the freedom to do it what the founders What the founders ideas prohibited is that you get together and force me to do something I don't want to do And I don't want to help the particular group. You want to help you help them. I'll help the groups I want to help So this country was founded on private charity not on welfare system not on redistribution of wealth But on on private now very quickly they abandoned those ideas But those those were the founding ideas of this country. There were ideas of individualism the pursuit of individual Individual happiness. So let me just restate that if I could let me just Let me let me just restate the question and ask jonathan if you could If you could comment on that quickly because we do have a number of folks there there So this country was founded in some ways on The tea party right that they don't want taxation without representation. So implicit in that is the argument They accepted taxation. They just wanted to have it be Represented by people elected by them. That's the question jonathan Well bunch of the founding fathers owned slaves and they certainly didn't want representation by shock horror women But leaving that aside They wanted to create quote a more perfect union Because in effect like it or not, they were not just a bunch of free atoms that could live alone They needed a society Because there are advantages to banding together to deal with indeed property rights and legal rights and and trade And it has to be paid for and you'd rather make your own decisions than not But it was more fundamentally a nationalist movement I believe than seeking freedom and there's a bit of a revisionist history on the freedom seeking bit I mean you've got to remember that the pilgrim fathers came over to the united states supposedly seeking freedom And then they hanged mary dyer because she was a quaker and So I think that the early years of European involvement in north america were a lot more complex than just seeking Individual freedoms. In fact, it was much more to deal with a collectivity And that's why they also thought about founding universities, for example Couple for mr. Houghton So I want to make sure that you're not advocating socialism are you the anti-american unamerican immoral system That would lead us to ruin. You're not advocating socialism Well define what you see as socialism and then I'll tell you if that's what I buy into You didn't define it because if you're going to avoid the question that tells me a lot No, I don't think I'm I'm I'm a huge believer in markets I think there are lots of ways in which markets have made us Very wealthy and there are lots of ways in which it They need to be more unfettered but I also believe that it is as much That we owe it to all young people To give them a reasonable chance. We cannot have complete equality Because we are so different But it is reasonable to feel that we as a as a society as a collection of individuals however you want to think of it Do in fact try to ensure that people get an opportunity to get a decent education to get an opportunity to do things And when they make mistakes, we help pick them up to some extent And one of the biggest mistakes that people make is inadequate provision for old age And if they don't provide adequately for old age, what are we going to do? Allow the begging on the streets that was once rampant Let people die because they haven't been had the foresight to provide themselves with medical care Well in both those cases. I think government has a strong role Uh, exactly how that role has to be fulfilled. We can debate. I wouldn't call that socialism I would call it providing a basic social safety net, but if that's What socialism is Then That's a different definition. Do you have a quick second question? Yeah, I'll give it to mr. Brook then There was this reference to global warming or climate change However, we wanted to put it and I didn't see here you respond directly But this is another scheme, of course from the left and I invite you to tee off on that one, mr. Brook I was avoiding it on purpose because I was avoiding it on purpose because I I don't want to get into the long debate Which should be a long debate about whether it's happening If it's happening as a man made if it's man made as a catastrophic if it's catastrophic When is it catastrophic? Which is a very complex issue for another time generally my belief is If it's if the world it doesn't there doesn't seem to be anything catastrophic happening There doesn't seem to be any real scientific projections about something catastrophic happening in the future Behavior will have to change by certain people in some places The real redistribution of wealth we were talking about redistribution of wealth about Because of climate change the real redistribution of wealth is in my view the real And the real evil of this Is that what we are demanding in a sense is that Africa and asia stay poor So that we can feel good about our environmental record The fact is that asia and africa will not become rich unless they use carbon fuels And they need carbon fuels in order to become rich It's the cheapest form of energy by far. Nothing comes close And and they're poor. They have nothing. I mean real I mean, you know more about this than I do because you you and rwanda. I mean, they're really poor To deny them use of carbon fuels it to make us feel good about affecting the planet Is a moral travesty in my view. So and and to ask Everything that carbon is that the carbon fuels make possible. I mean half this building is made from something related to petroleum I think it's sad that we demonized fossil fuels and fossil fuels are one of the greatest human inventions in a sense of our use of them ever and if Are more responsible for the rise and stand of living than probably any other single factor Material out there in the world. So but I really don't want to get into a whole debate about global warming because it's a complex issue You'll have to come back for that. Yes. Yeah, there you go Could you come closer to the microphone? Yes, I'm hoping to hear from both of you a short argument based on On ethics or on morality for what is bad or okay with inequality I think dr. Broke you briefly talked about something professor Houghton. We haven't really heard what is morally wrong with inequality Did you get the question? Yes, I did Uh, I made the case at the beginning that I find I cannot see a Moral case Jonathan. Let me restate the question. Yeah, the question was Your own earlier had talked about the moral dimensions of inequality and made his case And he said I'd like to have give you an opportunity to talk about the moral dimensions of inequality. What does it actually mean? I'm personally much more concerned about poverty than inequality but The money is at the top And there's a good reason why we tax Better off people Proportionately more than less well off people and that is that we need to pay for what government does and it strikes me that If there's a moral case, it's a it's probably a utilitarian case based on the idea that An extra dollar for somebody who's poor is more valuable than an extra dollar for bill gates And he will suffer less if we take a hundred dollars there than if we take a hundred dollars from a poor person Now that implies that's that's a very slippery argument because it implies that you we can compare our utility but Whatever we do we are implicitly making those value judgments Even if it's not explicit it's implicit and so any Form of taxation is making some judgments and I would argue that a judgment where proportionately we tax the rich more heavily is more appropriate than either proportional taxation or taxing the poor more heavily and Let's put it that way. Would you really favor taxing the poor more heavily than the rich? Seems to me that once we put it that way one sees that that's sufficiently absurd That indeed there is a moral case if you want to add this one progressive taxation The part I don't really guess is is inequality is a relative measure So if everybody had bill gates as wealth and five people had significantly more wealth than bill gates You would have inequality, but it doesn't sound like you would have a problem with that I don't have a problem when inequality is being created by Incentives that That that that help encourage growth and development and I don't have a problem with inequality which really does reflect people's Efforts the problem is that some of that inequality is not due to the individual now uh, yarn may say that a fair amount of it is due to government And I'm I'm willing to but cronyism for example, and I'm willing to accept not only accept I I I fully accept that that's that's often true But the question you asked was is there a moral case now the moral case Is not a moral case saying I envy that wealth and I want to chop off that wealth because it'll make me feel good It's not really what's going on here. I have no desire to do that good for him however I see someone else down here who is struggling who has mental illness and needs care who is Retired and has no money to live on who has Who who's a eight-year-old child whose parents don't have the means to send them to school and I say to myself how Who's whose welfare do I need to put first? Taking some from somebody who has a great deal Or ignoring somebody who's struggling mightily And I would argue that morally that's not a difficult choice I think that's a really good question. You've clarified something That's important here, which is it's less about individual utility in Jonathan's view It's much more about social morality that we would not accept To see someone who's Elderly out in the streets or someone with mental illness who's without care And that's a more of a social judgment is I think your perspective I said, yeah So I think this is I mean this is the core of the issue. This is really where where the disagreement lies Because I disagree. I mean I disagree the Jonathan or any of us have them all right to decide What's right? Morality is about it's not about taking care of the poor Morality is about taking care of yourself. Morality is about making rational choices about how you Need to live your life. It's about maximizing your own Flourishing in or you domineer in avastartillian terms. It's about how to make the most of your life Now if you decide that it's part of that you want to participate in helping those people That can't take care of themselves or or or born poor or whatever then you do it But if you decide that you don't want to do that because A thousand reasons you might have that you don't want to do it You don't have a right to make me do it You don't have a right to pull a gun out And force me and curse me to engage in activities that I don't want to do even if you think it's morally perfect What matters is my view not what The group thinks I should do so This is the difference between a morality that is focused on Whatever it takes to help those people and if we need to sacrifice somebody over here in order to help them So be it Versus a morality. It says no. I need to take care of myself I need to make my life the best that it could be and if I want to help those people I'll choose to help those people You don't have a right to force me to help anybody and who gets to the side and which people now we can all agree On the mentally mentally handicapped kid and maybe the elderly person But then it's not only them right we that that's those groups slowly grow and they keep going and now It's people who lost their jobs and steal companies and it's people who this and people who that it's an ever It's a never-ending group once you start that kind of Utilitarian Politicking of who we're going to steal from Is a question right that we we we debate politically who are we going to give the money to Becomes a big debate politically that whole system is anti american in my view It it should be scrapped and we should start over Okay, now you are too fine gentleman and um, I don't want to regulate you However, there are a number of people here who are standing up to ask questions So let me give you one a tight leash. Please Thank you so much to professor. It's a very interesting debate Actually, I want I came to ask one question But the issue of socials and definition of socials and came up Then I'm going to and professor hoffman tried Give his definition But 25 years ago when I was when I was Studying English I read from readers digest it to professor and two thinkers gave My questions based on this thing two things I have read the number one is one person gave the definition of Socialism, I'm just trying to give the answer based on my Memory socialism is everyone has everything but nobody has anything That was what I read And now I will Know to the question the question is also one thinker in the readers digest said this As society country will not collapse because it is poor but because There is a large inequality so if There is a large inequality in a society country Don't you think that it has an impact on its stability progress? No And but it but or more finally I would say it depends it depends on what caused the inequality If the inequality is caused by some people rigging the system By aristocrats stealing all the wealth and keeping it to themselves Then you have a french revolution and you had guillotines and and it gets very very ugly and part of The stress I think we feel today about the world and in the elections is that the american people are starting to feel like the systems rigged Just beyond justly we can debate that but they feel like the system's rigged So if the system's rigged, let's unrigged. I'm all for unrigging and I I think the way to unrig it is to get government out of our Life so there's no reason to lobby but let's unrig it But let's not blame the inequality inequality in places like america in the 19th century, which was very high higher than it is today Inequality in hong kong inequality in many places does not result in social unrest uh inequality like In places where the rich have stolen their wealth That's where you get unrest and just the definition of socialism definition of socialism is when the state owns the means of production That's the traditional definition of socialism and then there's all kinds of shades of that but that's basically the definition I'm Reminded of that old saw that capitalism is the system where a man Exploits man and with socialism. It's just the opposite um, but um Drive it a shimmer, huh? I'm an advertisement I think there is an important piece that's missing here and that is the role of of monopolies, you know, it's interesting that um It's it's not just government that may be behind some some of the unfair inequality, but uh adam smith writing nearly 250 years ago said even at sort of social functions when business people get together No time passes before they begin to talk about ways that they can combine and rip off the public He said it more elegantly than that But uh, it's it's quite interesting if you look at lists of the type of things that the department of justice looks at It's very often companies trying to buy other companies and create monopolies They my students gave me a number of cases and a recent problem said that One company recently tried to buy up the only other company in the u.s. That produces machines. So crops So what's going to happen next? They'd raise the price and begin to squeeze out competitors. Um, and It's good for the department of justice to say that's not fair play. That's not competitive. That's not what we want So I think that uh fairness is not purely the unfair bit of inequality is not purely government driven It's also driven by the practice of private industry when it doesn't have some watchful eye Excellent. So we also have to have a debate on antitrust and monopolies Indeed Please go ahead. We're having a gen die here. Yeah, we can build it up Because I know he has the answer Which is could you come closer to the microphone, please? I I think um How do you redistribute wealth to avoid? Optibly to avoid the moral hazard of people relying on the dole Like the elderly people who don't say it because they they think they're going to be bailed out by a failing system I know you have the answer Insurance of any type and social security is a form of insurance Has two fundamental problems depending on how it's done. One is a problem of adverse selection Only the bad cases the people who are going to retire early want to sign up And the second problem is moral hazard meaning that the insurance changes people's behavior So if you know that you are going to be insured in old age, then you don't provide for it yourself If you know that a hospital is going to treat you when you're You've been hit by a car Then you don't buy health insurance because you're going to be covered now That's the problem with insurance But why do we have insurance in the first place? We have insurance because People do get hit by a car and are we really going to say that? No, sorry, you don't have insurance We're going to let you die Are we really going to say to old people? You know 30 years ago when you sold your you you sold your wild oats and you didn't make enough provision for old age so now Just go and die like the parable of the talents Where the one who wasted his his his talents is going to be allowed to simply fade away That it seems to me is not the type of society Which we need which I would want to live in and the reason is that fundamentally The world has become sufficiently complex and that unless we can support others and others us That's what insurance is about We would be in a nasty brutal and short Sort of I just have to comment so security is not insurance So security is a is a pyramid scheme that taxes young people for the sake of older people And it works as long as there's a youthful large generation and very small retirees It fails when the reverse happens as it happens. It's it's it's a standard pyramid scheme And and so is Medicare the same thing But but but let me make a point about insurance when it's real insurance That is when you have insurance markets Then there are mechanisms that the market creates in order to get rid of the more hazard problems. For example, large deductibles I don't I'm not careless in my home because I have fire insurance I don't I'm not neutral about whether my home Boone's done and I don't drive carelessly because I have auto insurance Insurance shouldn't cover your first dollar Insurance should cover the emergency the catastrophic risk and therefore you behave because you've got that deductible So there are mechanisms and with health insurance if we had high deductibles You would get rid of again the same kind of moral hazard problems in the same with retirement You should be able to buy with time and insurance in an insurance market There are plans like this. They called the you know, certain types of life insurance Uh When government steps in it prices everybody else out And we stop thinking and we stop worrying about these things and it creates massive moral hazard I'd like to first say that I'm very happy that I came today My question comes from two statements that were mentioned during this debate today The first one was that wealth is generated when Um when you generate happiness or I'll even include Creating value The second statement was mentioned that you both are two intellectuals and that if you had gone to wall street instead of becoming teachers It this would have been a different route So my question is that should the wealth be distributed To the tools of society such as teachers that create value And enable members of society to be in positions in educated positions Where they can generate wealth Do you understand? Sure. Um No Again, I don't believe in anybody sitting on top Figuring out how wealth should be distributed. Well, it should be distributed based on the values that we have The fact is that as good of a teacher as I think I am Bill Gates created a lot more value than I did. He changed the world And so does Steve Jobs and so does most entrepreneurs on wall street. I see When I teach I maybe touch a few thousand lives I think I have a big impact, but a few thousand lives they touch billions of lives Good for them and they make a lot more money and there are a lot of teachers and there are only a few billionaires So no, I believe we get in a free market and we don't have a free market education I think teachers will be paid better if we did but in in a free market We get based on what the market values our services as being and if if our services are valued very high You know the internet might create a situation where a few great teachers Because they can teach using a platform that reaches millions will become indeed millionaires and billionaires because they'll have a platform to reach You know millions of people but the fact is the way schools are structured today. No, you're never going to become rich from teaching And and nobody should intercede and say I know better than the marketplace I know how values should be distributed. That is a very dangerous beginning and that's central planning and it never works I'm with him on this one I chose to be a university professor. I knew that I wouldn't become super rich. I love my job I'm very content. I wouldn't have it any other way Maybe it's just because the two of us are crazy immigrants But I think that uh, and I think that so that's that's the the first answer now if we believe that the poor quality of American high schools and Is due to the fact that we're not paying enough to either motivate the teachers or to attract good teachers then in some ways that's something for for the for the towns to finance their schools to grapple with and I You know as a parent I regret the relatively poor quality of American schools And I think it doesn't augur well for the future and that's I actually are my wife's French. Our daughter Went to France for her high school a state-provided school that actually was a good deal better than she would have got here But that's another day's conversation However, let me take issue with one thing that Jaron raises and that is the notion that somehow or other We can link the social contribution of somebody to their wage in a reasonably Accurate way. I'm not in the slightest bit convinced about that We're in a world where much of the work we do is on is teamwork for example when a team produces a job of work How do you separate out? The individual contributions and then how do you compensate people for their contributions? How do you how do you tell the dancer from the dance? it's it's it's Basically not possible much of the time and therefore a significant element of compensation Is not this simple. I produced my marginal product to use the economic term and that's what I got paid It's much more subtle than that and and the way that we motivate people is not purely by paying them it's also in 101 other ways by by by recognizing what they do by Flattering them by But but one thing's for sure if in my department at Suffolk University the economics department if we were to Substantially alter the wage structure so that people like me got lots and some of my colleagues got a lot less I might be happy But most of the hard workers would be So unhappy that they would begin to withdraw from the labor force And it's not enough to want to motivate the people at the top We've got to motivate all the way down through the distribution And that requires greater subtlety and how we how we pay people Jonathan year on I want you to take a look at four very nice faces over here and they're waiting to ask your questions So I'm going to keep one minute each and please make your questions very brief because we have 12 minutes 11 minutes So my question has to do with the role of funding governments and models for for taxation Dr. Rombrook you had said earlier that Wealth redistribution is is theft and you had also said that the proper role for a government Is to protect the rights of individuals and I'd like to extend a question to both you What would be a ideal system for collecting revenue for government and is it a Is it a flat tax? Would it be a graduated tax for the Well to pay more would it be voluntary? What is the ideal system from both your perspectives? What's sure so let so let me stop by let me stop by saying that a government That I would look at right that my government would be much smaller than this today And I don't mean much smaller. I mean much smaller like 80 90 percent smaller than this today I mean three to four percent of GDP instead of 20 percent of GDP like it was in the 19th century So I believe in a government that does military police Military police and judiciary and that's it So you wouldn't have to raise a lot of money and at that point how you raise it become I think a less significant now In my idea of society that money would be raised voluntarily And I know everybody's going to chuck out but but I believe that would work Because people would be so wealthy it would be easy and it would be very little that would have to be funded But if I had to have a taxation in the meantime I think either a flat income tax a very simple no deductions no exclusions no Government manipulating our social behavior Through the tax code. So you make x you pay y that's it Or a consumption tax which economically I think would be far superior to to uh, you know If you tax something you get less of it if you tax work you get less work So I'd rather touch consumption than production. So A number of years ago. I did a study of zaire at the time The government collected 3% of GDP 25 percent of kids went to primary school. The rest were not able to do so That's what you get when you don't have much government you get Continued poverty you get people who are left behind whose opportunities get are so closely tied to what their parents did That in fact you're you're excluding a lot of the talent and you're not nurturing and building up the talent that you need for a vibrant economy that I'll stop there Next question Hi, my question for both talents. We didn't exercise Resented So i'm just wondering now what kind of questions or conversations should the young students be having today those in privileged situations so that We I think the problem is not acknowledging that there's inequality. It's just what questions should they be having so that we can bring both sides together Is it is that resentment still an issue that's hurting you? You want to start with that? Yeah, I I heard about half of it. So I think I think I got it. I apologize You know, I I think that you should stop feeling guilty about the circumstances in which you're born You're born to a wealthy family or to a good family or to a so-called privileged family. I hate the term privilege You know make the most of your life. I I think that's the point I think too many people are born into those situations They on the one hand they might feel guilty and therefore they don't make the most of it or on the other hand They they just cruise through life because life is too easy for them. And again, they don't make the most of it So I don't care what Position you were born in life You're in my view moral responsibility to yourself Is to dig deep and you know make the most of the one life you have on this earth I think we agree that you live once that's it Make the most of it live the fullest most complete most flourishing life that you can live With whatever circumstances you have if if you landed up having money Then take advantage of it and make the most of that circumstance, right? If you don't then you're gonna have to make the money then go work hard to make the money But live that's the thing. I think too many people cruise in life too many people drift in life and that's sad It's a waste of life My mother went to college Her father went to college His father went to college. In fact, we can trace back College graduates to the middle of the 18th century Am I privileged? Yes and no I grew up in a home with lots of books where of course I went to college It would be unthinkable not to go to college Should I be guilty about it? Probably not. I'm not sure that that's a very productive thing But I should be cognizant of us And I think that one of the problems that we worry about my wife and I just have one daughter And while we're not particularly rich Her life financially will be rather easy and Potentially and we worry That in fact leaving too much money to her Would take away from the incentives would and and the appeal to moral behavior From an argument that put so much emphasis on monetary incentives is is a slight contradiction in my mind How do you ensure that in fact people do live that life? Now I'm not sure that this appeal to morality quite does it unless there's a little spur of guilt actually And a little bit of guilt Doesn't hurt So don't feel too guilty I Grew up in a quaker family Thank you for taking my question I have a question for Mr. Jonathan When you say that the government has to do this balancing act of taking from one person giving it to the other um At what point does this Individual from whom you're taking have the incentive to create more because if if you're taking and not even allowing the Inheritance to be passed on to the next generation so they can use that as a springboard At what point does this individual stop creating? Because there's no incentive left Well, let's not push the argument to no incentive left Nobody's arguing for Taxation that's so punitive that it would get rid of these incentives and the early 1980s the tax rates in the u.s Reached over 90 percent in some cases and that was clearly Terribly destructive people spent far too much of their time trying to figure out how to get around it But economists teach that actually there are two effects going on if if I tax somebody there is Both an income effect and a substitution effect With the higher tax I take home less pay And as a result I might actually work harder so curiously enough the The effect of taxing people's income Has remarkably little effect on the typical american male full-time workers Amount of work that they do and the taxes do matter But they don't matter as much as one might think for wide swathes of the population The the the uh, who was it who said was it colbert or someone the the art of taxation Is to collect as many feathers as you can with a minimum of clucking from the goose And that's really what we're trying to do here And and then so what you want to steal without them complaining about it. That's exactly right. That's the great That's the genius of pay as you earn So then what is the incentive? For the person who's receiving To do better and hustle and and make you know Some struggle to make ends meet Yeah, let's I might have to not take that question because we do have one person right behind you just want to be fair Sorry about that For each of you if you had to pick a single policy to move towards the center on so for you to pick One area where you think we should have less government And for you to pick one area where if you had to create a welfare program you would do so That would most effectively Reduce poverty. What would each of you do so you want me to pick something on the pro welfare side? Yes, so I would pick if it was on the pro welfare side, I would pick the minimum guaranteed income Universal minimum by guaranteed income It's a it's a but but but only if at the same time you would abolish every single other welfare program in existence I would even at the same time make it large enough So that you could then voucher education and voucher healthcare and get rid of medicare Medicaid get rid of everything and just have a guaranteed minimum income I think it's far more efficient if you're going to do redistribution That's the far more efficient and you rely on markets then through the voucher system To deal with it. So that would be I would move in that direction. How would you determine? I I have a student a phd student who's examining exactly this question. The numbers don't add up It's very hard. It just you would have to have sky high taxation in order to provide a minimum income that would not just cover Food and clothing, but potentially health insurance and education as well paying for it. Anyway, so it has to come from somewhere Anyway, we can discuss What would I Do to roll back I mentioned things like taxi medallions. I do think there's a lot of regulation The regulation of barbers you have to do 800 hours before you can cut people's hair in massachusetts One of those classic examples of pretty useless regulation I think that we were talking earlier about Pricing of water I think water and that needs to be priced to the market if it's scarce you pay more Otherwise less But in california Aaron says that there are the the water police who drive around making counting how many times you've been watering your lawns That's ridiculous. So I think that there are plenty of things where Some of this regulation and supervision goes overboard Another thing ethanol subsidies were a complete nonsense And a real waste by any standards The problem Is that once you begin to delve into legislation you find there's a surprising amount of stuff that's put in there Because some member of congress has some bright idea that they want to bring back to their constituency That is the reality of politics, but it's a horror to most economists and it doesn't do a whole lot That if I had a broom I'd sweep a lot of that away Thank you So jennifer bonardi who runs this great show is coming up in just a second or you're gonna speak from there I have a question. Just you have a question. Oh my goodness. We're in trouble. Yeah Who thinks this was the best debate they've seen all year?