 This is Mayor Sylvester Turner, and it is my honor to join you today to welcome Boa Brundy, President of the World Economic Forum. Mr. Brundy, welcome to Houston. It is fitting that we are having this important discussion in Houston, a city built on global trade. This city was founded back in 1836, when the Allen Brothers stepped ashore from New York, what started as a trading post of the value, has evolved into the fourth largest city in the United States, and a global city for energy, life sciences, manufacturing, logistics, and aerospace. Nearly 20 percent of the region's economy is tied to exports, more than any other metro area in the United States. And exports support some 330,000 jobs in the region. Showing just how international we are, the Houston region has trade relations with more than 200 countries. More than 30 different countries have trade relations, valued at more than one billion dollars annually. And Houston is not just the energy capital of the world, we are also home to the largest medical complex in the world. The center for manned space flight at the NASA Johnson Space Center, and a growing digital innovation hub, where companies like Microsoft, Google, Verizon, and others have a strong and growing presence. And Houston is a city committed to climate action. A year ago, we released our Climate Action Plan and Resilient Houston Strategy. I am chair of Climate Mayors, the Resilient City Network, and manage the World Energy City Partnership. In Houston, we are building a more sustainable and equitable city. We look forward to working closer with the World Economic Forum in the coming year as the world pursues a green and just recovery. Economies continue to be more interconnected, and we look to improve the lives of all our residents by creating new economic opportunities. And I want to thank the World Affairs Council of Houston for this discussion with Mr. Brenda and the many enlightening educational programs and speakers you host in Houston. Thank you. This is Council of Greater Houston. Welcome to our program. It's been a long time coming, and we're so, so thrilled it's finally here. Together with the Council's Board of Directors, it is our pleasure to bring you this special program with the president of the World Economic Forum, Mr. Borgate-Brenday, in conversation with Bobby Tudor. We want to thank all of you for joining us. As Houston's leader in global education, the World Affairs Council of Greater Houston educates over 10,000 people every year. We're open to everyone, and whether you live here in Houston, in Geneva, or anywhere in between, you can join any of our programs. Just log into our website. And I invite you to visit our website often as we're constantly adding new and exciting programs like this one today. But I would like to mention two programs exclusively. First, we have just opened registration for the Council's Global Policy Institute. This is going to be a six-week study on U.S. Foreign Policy and International Relations, specifically designed for business professionals whose career requires them to have an understanding of foreign policy. And also, next month, join me for my one-on-one conversation with Chelsea Clinton, daughter of former U.S. President Bill Clinton and former U.S. Secretary of State and presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. Now it is my honor to bring you one of our great, great resources in Houston. He is a friend and a vital resource in our economy locally and all across the U.S. in his network. Bob Shirley, thank you for joining us. Thank you to the Houston Business Journal. Welcome. And he will be followed by our friend Bobby Tudor, who is also going to be facilitating our conversation. Thank you. Thanks very much, Mary Ann, and thanks for all the great work you do for the City of Houston with the World Affairs Council. On behalf of myself and the entire staff at HBJ, we'd like to say how proud we are to support the World Affairs Council and to partner together on impactful events like today's discussion. I'm also very proud to report that HBJ turns 50 years old this year, and in an era of decline of the media business, we've never been healthier with now over one million monthly readers across all HBJ platforms. I'm also very pleased to share that two weeks ago we launched a brand new media platform under the HBJ umbrella called Houston Inno. Houston Inno is a media franchise dedicated entirely to covering Houston's tech, innovation, and startup scene as well as the Houston Innovation Ecosystem. You can sign up for those newsletters at the HBJ website. Once again, special thanks to the World Affairs Council for the partnership and for hosting today's meaningful event. Now please join me in welcoming Sandia Bayou, Chief Development Officer at the World Affairs Council of Greater Houston and the driving force behind today's event. Hello and good afternoon everyone. Bob, thank you for that kind introduction. It is my pleasure also today to recognize our event supporters. They are the Mayor Sylvester Turner and the Mayor's Office of Trade and International Development, Houston Business Journal, Houston Airport Systems, 23rd World Petroleum Congress, DX Services, Consular Corps of Houston, the Woodlands Area Economic Development Partnership, Bilateral Chamber of Commerce, the Woodlands Chamber of Commerce, Maze Business School of Texas A&M University and University of St. Thomas and to all other friends of the Council. Thank you so much. Again, thank you for participation and support. And it is my absolute honor to introduce both of our speakers today, Mr. Borger Brande and Bobby Tudor. If you would allow me, quick words about their accomplishments and I promise you this is just small synopsis of what they have accomplished and yet to accomplish. Borger Brande is the President of the World Economic Forum, an international organization for public-private cooperation, the role that Borger took upon in 2017. Mr. Brande is the former Minister of Norwegian Foreign Affairs, Trade and Industry, Environment as well as the former member of the Norwegian Parliament. Currently, Mr. Brande also participates on various boards, some of them UN High-Level Advisory Group for Every Woman, Every Child, Core Advisory Council on Harvard International Negotiations Program, Board of Directors of P4G, partnering for Green Growth and Global Goals for 2030. Again, these are just very few of current positions. Moderating today is Houston's own Bobby Tudor, who is a partner at Parela-Weinberg Partners. He also serves as the Chairman of Tudor, Bickering and Holt, which combined with Parela-Weinberg Partners in November 2016. They are the leading energy investment and merchant bank formed and employs over 180 individuals in five offices in the U.S., Canada and UK. Again, it was an honor, pleasure, and I've been waiting for this day for months. So Mr. Brande, Mr. Tudor, welcome. It's all yours. Thank you. Thank you, Sandhya and Bob and Marianne and the entire team at the World Affairs Council. It's a great honor and pleasure for me to participate in this discussion with Mr. Brande. So I am going to just jump right into it, if we could. My impression, Borga, of the World Economic Forum is that it's one of those organizations that everyone is heard of, but most people aren't quite sure what it does. Could you please give us sort of a baseline understanding of what is the mission and the goals of the World Economic Forum and perhaps also how that has changed over time? No, thank you so much and thank you for this kind invitation. Best regards here from Geneva, where we are now in the evening and you're right. The World Economic Forum is now 51 years old. It was started in the early 70s as a conference in Davos where the aim was to bring American business people more together with European business people and to see how to enhance the transatlantic cooperation could benefit both of these two continents more. As then, we have evolved a lot. We have become the international organization formally for public-private cooperation. And what does that mean? Let me give an illustration. When Germans are now involved in the trillion of U.S. dollars in stimulus, there will be limited fiscal muscles in the years to come. The many of the most pressing challenges that we are faced with can only be solved if you also mobilize the private sector. I think the last year is a good example. Governments came up with incredible funding for vaccines, but in less than a year, global pharmaceuticals that for many are quite controversial, they said, okay, we'll take on the challenge, we'll produce a vaccine against COVID-19. And in less than a year, we have many effective vaccines out there. And we know it usually takes at least a decade. And many diseases, there's no vaccine against still, like malaria, HIV, AIDS, and etc. So in the future, we can see more of this kind of action where governments and private sector come together and say, we will together figure out the digital transformation. We can also figure out the green transition and transformation that is needed. Well, you've touched on a couple of elements of technology there. And I know that broadly speaking, technology is a big focus of the World Economic Forum. How can the World Economic Forum work to make access to technology? Whether it's the digital economy or vaccines, as you mentioned, or many other pieces of the technology puzzle, how can we make access to this technology more inclusive and more broadly available? And what will be the benefits that would come if we can really do that? It's another good question. I think we have no alternative today. 3.6 billion people on our planet are not connected digitally. So that's almost half of the population. And we know that is a prerequisite for even having a chance to succeed in the years to come. So in this year's Davos, the first one in over 50 years that was not a face-to-face was a digital meeting. We launched this Edison Alliance. The Edison Alliance are hundreds of companies coming together, including Fortune 100 companies, the big names also from the US, saying that that digital divide will have to fix. And there are different ways of doing it. One way of doing it is, of course, with traditional development assistance from developed countries, ODA, to developing countries. But why don't we take now the best business models from the private sector and say, there is also a huge business opportunity to getting 3.6 billion people connected. So of course, there is a cost, but it also enlarges the market amazingly. So you could use the analogy maybe when Americans came up with the Marshall plan after the Second World War. Of course, it was to help Europe, but it wasn't pure altruism because it was also then we need a market to sell our products. So I think we will have to fix that digital divide, 2 billion people in Africa in 2050. If those young people are going to have jobs, it has to be in sectors that we can't even imagine today. And over time, I'm quite tech-optimistic. I think if we use these technologies in the right way, we can also increase the global GDP and prosperity like we've done in the past. It's just hard to figure it out today, but things will change very fast. And we know the numbers, but that's my last point in answering that question. If you look at the 10 largest companies today when it comes to market cap, the 10 largest, 7 out of the 10 did not exist 20 years ago. There are going to be new companies that are not even started in the garage today that are going to be very consequential in the future. And if that company is going to be somewhere close to you, you also have to be digitally savvy. You have to be connected. So that digital divide, we will really have to close to even create somewhere close to a level playing field. So a related topic to that point is just around the whole issue of innovation and the importance of innovation both in developed economies, but frankly even more importantly in emerging economies. So what does the World Economic Forum do to support innovation? How do you think about your role in that context? And in particular as it regards the developing world? So we did five years ago, we initiated a Center for the Fourth Industrial Revolution in San Francisco, U.S. in Presidio. That center has now around 100 people, but what is more important is that we have also established affiliated centers. So this center works with artificial intelligence. It works with the Internet of Things. Also the other key technologies that are needed to succeed in the Fourth Industrial Revolution. So what we have now done with those other centers, we have established a center in Mumbai, in Kigali, in Rwanda, in Johannesburg, in South Africa, in Colombia. Also other emerging economies and developing countries. And what we do then is to make sure that these affiliated centers are populated also with young ambitious people that want to do startups in their country where there is also a skills gap or where they don't have access to the ecosystem that you have if you grow up in Houston or San Francisco. And these centers then form a unique ecosystem where they can connect with the other centers. Of course, the mother center in San Francisco, but also the other affiliated centers. And we are already seeing that these centers are incubators of new companies. So you have Presidio, you have Seedio. You have also then companies now sniffing around at these centers and saying, oh, are there things here that are interesting that we can commercialize and also create jobs? So this is a way for us then to contribute. And we have full support of some of the leading global companies on these affiliated centers. So it is like walking the talk, not talking the talk. You know, I think when most of us think of the World Economic Forum, we think of the World Economic Forum as being an advocate for globalization and an advocate for global trade and cooperation amongst economies and countries. But you could argue that in the last three or four years, the whole notion of the benefits of globalization has been questioned in a way that perhaps it had not been questioned for some period of time. With the argument being that the benefits of globalization have really accrued primarily to the wealthiest nations and even within the wealthiest nations, to the wealthiest portion of the population in those nations. How should we think about that issue from your perspective at the World Economic Forum? And what are the challenges associated with globalization going forward that we need to make sure we are addressing? Well, thank you. That's like a really huge question. So to answer it in not with a speech, but at least I'm going to try for two, three minutes. Of course, there are different views on this. As you know, when I started my economic studies, I had a Swedish professor, Azar Lindbeck, and he used to say in the room with five economists, you probably find eight different opinions. But I think there should be consensus on some of these things. First, I would say though, the World Economic Forum, of course, believes in what works. And I'm coming back to that. We're not repairing what is not broken. And you shouldn't. But there are things that are broken. They we should repair. We're also known for this notion of stakeholder capitalism that some people don't like. We say that we also in a market economy, a social market economy, you have also additional responsibilities to profit. You know, there are those that believe in business of business is business. And I believe that is true, but I also think you have some additional responsibilities. But coming back to the globalization, that's a different discussion. But the whole, of course, legitimacy of a social market economy is also that wealth will trickle down. But without any wealth creation, there is definitely no wealth trickling down. Because you can't distribute nothing. There has to be baked a cake. And then you can have a big discussion about how to cut the cake. But coming back to the fact and that we are also defending what works. If you look at the hard facts, go back to 1990, 30 years back. Since 1990, we have doubled the global GDP. The growth in global trade has been 34 times of that growth. So trade has been an engine of growth. At the same time, since 1990, we have gone from 5 billion people on our planet to 7 billion people. But the amount of people living in extreme poverty on our planet has gone down from 42% to 10%. And then people say globalization isn't working. Globalization is just benefiting the rich. Never in the history of humankind have we seen that we have had that low proportion of extreme poverty on our planet. And I know there's very intelligent people listening into this and being part of it there in Houston. And 42% of 5 billion. And no, we have 10% of 7 billion. Just imagine what this has led to when it comes to people having an opportunity for prosperity and opportunities that never were there before. But of course, we have also opened the markets in US and Europe for products from emerging economies and developing countries. And some of these products have out-competed our companies and you have seen jobs being lost and we had to pivot. But in Norway, my home country, 95% of the people worked in the agriculture sector in 1895. Today, they are 2% and today the problem is our production of food. In 1895, there was famine and people left to the US because they hoped for a brighter future. And you could say, oh, what were all these people that were in the agriculture sector going to do? First, no one could say at that time. But they no produce higher up in the value chain and there is prosperity. So let's not then lose the baby with the bathwater. We have to correct globalization. It has to trickle down the wealth. We also have to care about industry workers and those that haven't seen increases in their salaries in Europe, Switzerland, Norway, in the US. But just don't kill the growth machine. So let's talk about growth a bit and the challenges that come with growth. There are obviously a lot of fantastic things that come with growth, but there are also challenges. And one really meaningful one that we here in Houston, Texas, are focused on is increasing global energy demand, while at the same time we are increasingly worried about and focused on the worst effects of climate change that's associated with our global energy system. And you could argue there are other parts of the economy that have similar challenges. Agriculture being a good example of that as well as we seek to feed all these people that are going to be added to the global population between now and 2050. So these are very big challenges that are global in nature. They're not challenges that really can be met by any one individual country or set of policies. How should we be thinking about these big global challenges that truly require international cooperation to be met and clearly can't depend simply on a free market economy as the solution? At least you have to internalize the externalities. You have to put the price on it if you want to continue with something that is also harming other people. So I think personally I think the market economy can still play a crucial role in it, but you have to use the tools that are also given in the market economy treating things fairly and you need a lot of innovation. So I think you're touching on another extremely crucial issue for this century. How can we decouple growth in energy production with growth in CO2 emissions in the future? Because we have two big challenges that we have to deal with at the same time. Let's not forget, and I don't need to preach that to you guys in Houston because you are aware of it, there are 1.6 billion people on our planet that don't even have access to electricity. And how can we sit there then in Geneva or in Houston and say, oh no, we have electricity so we don't care about you because no climate change is such a big challenge. So you just stay out of electricity. Of course, that's not going to happen and it shouldn't happen. So how can we then decouple that growth from the growth in greenhouse gases that we don't want to see increased? And there are, of course, short-term solutions, low-hanging fruit. If we stop net logging trees in the world, that could absorb 20% of the CO2 short-term. So I think we should then stop logging rainforest and et cetera. But then we can't say to a poor farmer in Indonesia or in Brazil, oh, you just stop logging. Then we have to pay for it. And that's relatively cheap compared to other measures. Then we also have other lower hanging opportunities when it comes to energy efficiency in heating, transportation, and et cetera. And then, of course, you have also some new energy sources that are much more competitive today. Last year, 80% of the feed-in in the electrical system globally were from renewables. So if you look back 10 years, solar was not competitive at all. It had to be heavily subsidized. The price of solar has fallen to one-tenth in 10 years. Who could have believed that? And who could have believed that wind would fall to one-seventh? So in many countries, those renewables are also more competitive, but there are not enough to solve the energy mix because you have energy security, you have energy access, and then you have the decoupling with the grid. So you need major breakthroughs, too, and you need to realistically have a bridge between a more fossil fuel-based society and a more renewable one. And natural gas will definitely have to play a role there, but also carbon capture and storage. Why don't we think that we can also capture some of the CO2 and use it differently? Why don't we think we're going to have a breakthroughs in green hydrogen? We sent that thing to Mars recently. We have the helicopter flying, and we don't believe that we will see innovations and breakthroughs in energy field. If we put the big money there, like we did with the vaccines, of course we will see it. So I'm genuinely optimistic, but I'm not optimistic if we're not willing to use mechanisms where we then also price some of the behavior that we don't want. So we definitely should not subsidize coal. We generally should incentivize, at least if you want to build something that is heated by fossil fuel, it at least should have and use the best available technology. That's not the case today. There are new coal-fired power plants every week that don't even use the best technology. They should not really be built, though, and definitely not subsidized by taxpayers' money. Well, you're touching on a bit of what some people would call the free rider problem, which is that if certain countries or regions of the world burden their energy systems or their economies with incremental costs, and others don't, then you have effectively shifted economic rent in a really meaningful way to the detriment of those who are making sacrifices and in favor of those who aren't. Yet at the same time, as we mentioned, there are a billion six people in energy poverty who don't have access to electricity at all, and so arguing that they shouldn't have access because the cost of providing clean energy is too high just also doesn't seem the right kind of moral judgment. And so what about this free rider problem and how should we, particularly those of us who lived in the developed world, how should we be thinking about that issue? It's, of course, this is an issue that also creates a lot of anxiety, and it's quite political. I like to look at it in the way that climate change is happening, and we have seen illustrations the last years of what climate change can lead to. I'm not, I've been dealing with this for 20 years, so I'm not saying that the weather events we have seen lately is a result of necessary climate change, but we have seen the force of nature if we don't get it right. And with climate change, I think we're coming to a point where the cost of inaction exceeds the cost of action. So we're not talking about a huge premium here. No one would, in their right mind, would reflect not insuring their house for like fire insurance. If it started to rain a bit, you don't end your fire insurance. We're not that stupid. So I think we all have to think about resilience. When we, at the World Economic Forum, in our annual risk report in 2006, said that two major risks that the world was facing was the pandemic and that the efficiency of antibiotics was coming to a close. People said, oh, you're always coming up with those bad news and why are you worrying and all this. I think we should have continued to put it at the top every year since 2006. Then we put our stuff out there. But with climate change, I think we should then look at it as we have seen the pandemic. If we had invested a little bit more, we could have dealt with it more effectively. And probably we wouldn't, maybe we wouldn't even have seen it if we didn't get that close to between animals and also human beings. If we didn't kill a lot of violent areas, the animals have to have a place to stay and we have to have a place to stay. Maybe it's not that costly. I think nature also is something that we should take care of. And this is my very relaxed, maybe way of also dealing with climate change. I think now it's time to start investing and moving into a green transition. And I think it's doable. It takes global leadership, of course. I think we're seeing part of that leadership. I think, for example, when Secretary Kerry went to China, met with the climate envoy from China, I think they both were saying, okay, this is not a problem in China. You see in Inner Mongolia there's been droughts that has had a huge cost. We have seen better events also in the US. So we're preparing for a future where we're moving more into a green transition. I'm going to use technology to capture, store CO2. That's the way I would look at it. When it comes to this issue, we talk a lot about the responsibilities of the companies, the supply side, if you will. What about the responsibilities of the consumer, the demand side of the equation, if you will, in dealing with climate change? What can we as citizens and as individuals be doing and what role might a group like the World Economic Forum play in helping to address the demand side of the equation? Yeah. No, when it comes to the individual family and individuals, I think we're all making our own kind of reflections and decisions on that. What the World Economic Forum can do is that we do have companies that have now committed to going net zero in 2030 instead of 2040. We have this net zero alliance of Fortune 100 COs. I think we now have like 30 of them that have committed to this. But we also have seen, of course, that many of the big investors in the world, money talks. So when Larry thinks that the largest investor in the world black rock will not invest in coal anymore, that has an effect on the stock price and it has an effect on this kind of investment. So I strongly believe in the market, in the sense that if you start to internalize the externalities and use the market efficiencies, you also see a change over time. But at the same time, I know I'm talking more in a personal capacity, we cannot say that oil and gas is not going to be there as part of the energy mix in the years to come because it is going to be there. But we have to get smarter about it. We have to then start with coal that emits twice as much as natural gas. So natural gas can be a very natural bridge. We'll also then work with the oil and gas sector to also see other more cost-effective ways of capture CO2, storage CO2. What will the energy mix in the years to come? Because we also have a responsibility that is broader also for those that are, as you mentioned, in energy poverty situation. Of course, then India would say, if they were represented there, oh, it's easier for you to say that you will face out coal. We don't have that much oil. We don't have that much natural gas. But we have a lot of coal and we have a lot of people that don't have electricity and they're living in 40 degrees Celsius. That's pretty hot and we do need an AC. So there are a lot of dilemmas here. Let's switch gears a bit and talk about the impacts of this pandemic that we've just been through and the outlook for us over the course of the next several years. What would you describe as some of the significant global economic impacts from COVID-19 and which of those would you expect to sort of revert to business as usual and which of those would you expect are going to result in longer-term systemic change? I don't have a good question. After the financial crisis in 2008 and the fall of Lehman and all that, we kind of returned back to the old economy partly. I think after COVID, I think the new economy is there because it's accelerated a lot of changes. Just look at the e-commerce that grew with more than 40%. A lot of habits have changed. I think if we know are able to roll out the vaccines globally fast and you don't have new variants brewing somewhere that the existing vaccines will not be able to fight. I think we can be in a situation where we by next year will be in a more normal situation. But COVID also learned us a lesson. COVID anywhere is COVID everywhere. Of course, we cannot be happy. US is vaccinated. Europe is not as good. But by the summer, most of us will also be vaccinated. But we haven't fought this pandemic before. We fought it everywhere. And this vaccine nationalism is a little bit hollow because it doesn't work. It's a little bit like climate change. You can say, oh, I'm super good. We only have electrical cars in our country. But it doesn't matter if everyone else is not doing well. So on the economic side, though, we are already seeing much better numbers. We do expect that many countries, for example, China and the US, the two largest economies in the world, are more than 40% of the global GDP. So you guys are still doing pretty well. 5% of the global population, 22% of the global GDPs. I think you still can be quite proud of yourself. Those two countries will by the end of the year probably be in a pre-COVID GDP situation. Maybe China even will exceed the pre-COVID level on their GDP also per capita. Other nations will only fully recover in 2022. But I think we will see a slightly different economic thinking also in the years to come. And that's coming back to your question also about the globalization. The global value chains, I think we went probably a little bit too far not thinking about resilience when it comes to global value chains. You know, one ship in the Suez Canal can stop a lot of things in Europe for the next week. That is not a resilience. 80% of the world's antibiotics are produced in one country. 90% of the world's blood plasma is produced in another country. And then 90% of all, I was being a bit delicate on the origin of those two countries as you maybe noticed. I will be more disclosing the third one. 90% of the world's semiconductors are produced in Taiwan and in South Korea. I think here we will have to think a little bit differently. I think we all do have to have a bit of a vaccine production. We do all have to produce, of course, at least the G7 economies, semiconductors. So we have to adjust a bit. But the big change, I think, is the new technologies. I think it's just unbelievable what we will see also on, for example, synthetic biology. Just the new vaccines now can maybe be effective even against cancer. So those nations that are going to come out of this decade as a prosperous one have to have world-leading school systems and have to use a lot of resources to be on top of the new technologies. And those that are on top of the new technologies also going to be the most prosperous ones. So let's talk about the Davos Summit, if you will, and what you call the Davos Manifesto, this fourth industrial revolution notion. Describe for us what the basis is, if you will, for that theory. Yeah. So this is coming a little bit back also to the stakeholder capitalism theory. So the World Economic Forum also believes that companies do have responsibility, of course, to its shareholders that owns the company. Of course, they own the company. But a foresighted company would also care about its employees. The human capital is more and more important. The most talented of the young talents, I think, would not like to join a company that is not also doing well on areas and values that they do put a lot of emphasis on. Just seeing Silicon Valley, the challenges some of them have, also with the most talented developers of algal rhythms, if they're not also taking privacy and etc. seriously. Then we also believe that a company has a responsibility for where it is based in its local community. But also, I think a company today has responsibility for complying with the strictest thinking when it comes to fighting corruption, when it also comes to human rights and other values that we do put high. I think we all should also, it's not like a big superpower of a company should also take responsibility on broader issues. But we're not saying that this should be like in the law or whatever. We're just trying to say that we also see companies, for example, that take gender equality more seriously, also tend to be more profitable. Companies that also care about their employees also have a tendency of being more profitable. So, it should be common sense. But as we know, common sense is not always that common. Many times it is, but not always. And we touched on this earlier, but a connected thought here is that even in the most prosperous countries, the divide between the haves and the have nots has not narrowed much in the last decade or so. If anything, it's perhaps widened. And you could argue that that is quite specifically what has led to sort of this notion of economic nationalism that we're seeing in much of Europe and certainly have seen in the U.S. How do we address this sort of widening divide, if you will, even in the developed world that is putting such pressure, if you will, on the notion of globalization? That's, I think, the third biggest issue in this decade that we have to get that thing right. As I said, the legitimacy of a social market economy, the market economic system that we have today is also that if you have to be able to live on your salary. So, the American dream, of course, was in the 50s, you got a job, you were able then to pay for your house, even in the suburb, you had OK schools for your kids. And every year you saw a little bit better income. And if you were hardworking and paid back to society and all that, you were doing OK. What we have seen is that it has been a shrinking middle class during the last decades. And is this like a priori given that it has to be like this? I feel no. I'm biased. But if you look at the Nordic economies together, they would be together the 10th largest economy in the world. Not so impressive because if you took California in itself or maybe Texas, it would be something similar. But anyway, if you look at the Nordic still, 30, 40 million people, 10th largest economy in the world, there you have not seen an increase in the genie coefficient, like the thing showing that the inequalities are growing. These are open market economies, but they have a system for making sure that wealth is trickling down without killing growth. And I think this is the thing that you're grappling with in the US, because if you then say, oh, we have to look into the tax system, you have to look into other things, oh, then it's killing growth. And there I agree. If it kills growth, there is nothing to share. But there needs to be also mechanisms that carefully can make sure that the American dream is a real one. And I would say that if you looked at the Ronald Reagan or a Nixon or a Bill Clinton, they did not grow up in very rich American families. They grew up in very challenging times and also in challenging situations. But they did go to a public school close to them where it was okay. They got an okay education and they were talented and they could pursue their life. I think one of the biggest challenges now, and of course I'm totally biased, but in the Nordic countries, 99.5% of the kids go to public schools. Both my sons went to public schools. I went to public schools. They're not doing badly. They go to nice universities. No, but they went with also daughter kids in the street and all this and everyone got a very good education. Not as good as if you pay 100,000 US dollars, live on Manhattan and send them to a very expensive private school, but good enough to get a good start in life and you have a fair chance to succeed. So you also lose a lot of talent in countries where you don't have good primary, secondary education. There are some really potential Einstein's going around there that you have to invest in. Then I think we also have to be willing in a careful way to adjust the tax system in a way that you still, if you're successful, good for you, you still keep a major portion of what you earn, but you also have to pay an insurance in that respect. You want to pay an insurance, so the legitimacy of a system that is unparalleled in creating growth is kept. But I think we have gone too, the pendulum has maybe gone too far in one direction and it was maybe too far in the other direction. This of course very potentially political, but that's my honest answer. Thank you. So when you think about the Davos Summit going forward, you've touched on a lot of issues here that are very sort of current and in some sense new. How will that be incorporated to how you think about the Davos Summit and the questions that the world's leaders will be wrestling with at your summit? So also the World Economic Forum has evolved a lot. We used to be like this Davos event. It's still of course very important, but we have no many digital summits. We have 18 platforms where companies work together in smaller communities and they do projects together and all that. But for our Davos meeting, that is the most well-known one, we will have to address now the green transition coming up. We will have to also put first and foremost also the digital transformation, the impact of the new economies, how to make sure that the new technologies are also working in the interests of humankind. And then I think your last question related to inclusion, skills gaps, jobs, gender equality, how to secure a more inclusive growth. I think that the big question now is that how do we get a growth? Because we need growth moving forward, but it has to be more inclusive, more sustainable. We also touched on that, the decoupling piece. And then it has also to also of course be creating jobs. So these are the things that we have to build in and we have to use the best algorithms, the best economic theories to make sure that we create the right environment for this to succeed. We have an interesting question from Patel here just regarding Houston specifically. And Houston is a very sort of unique community in many ways. It's the most diverse large city in America. Immigration continues to play a really, really important role in our economy where the energy capital of the world, we have the world's largest port. You heard a lot of that in the beginning. What would your advice be for us to, as we think about kind of collaborative partnerships and working with convening forces like the World Economic Forum to make sure that Houston continues to grow and emerge. Sometimes we feel in Houston, like the perception of Houston is not actually consistent with the reality of Houston, but Houston would love to be a World Economic Forum hub, for example, and think we should be. What would your advice for us be in that regard? No, I'm happy to investigate if you could even have a Center for the Forty Industrial Revolution in Houston. I really love Houston, and I love it so much that when I was foreign minister, I fought the finance minister every year because the finance minister wanted to close our consulate general in Houston. I know that the consulate general is with us too. She used to be in San Francisco, excellent. And I think that Houston, in my view, energy will be incredibly important also the whole century. Energy will, of course, also change. Houston will change, but it is like a metropole. It's international. It's a melting pot. I'm happy to also see how we can strengthen the collaboration between Houston and the World Economic Forum in the years to come. You have incredible companies there that we'd also like to work even closer with. Texas is very vibrant, though. I think there are other places in the U.S. that is not growing as fast as you guys. So you can have a pretty good life there in Houston, Texas. As we can have here in Geneva, though. We certainly agree with you there. Well, this has been fantastic. Thank you so much for joining us. Thank for the work that you do with the World Economic Forum and the role that that institution plays in trying to solve some of these most vexing problems in the world today. But it's been certainly a pleasure to have you with us and we thank you. Mary Ann, with that, I think I will turn it back to you. Oh, well, thank you so much. I am just trying to get my video back on. Oh, gentlemen, thank you for such a stimulating conversation. So informative. It's great to have a view from the World Economic Forum perspective. And Bobby, thank you. We can't thank you enough for facilitating our conversation. Thanks to both of you. And also thanks to our wonderful Mayor Turner, the Houston Business Journal, all of our sponsors, our VIP guests who joined us in the reception. This program is recorded. We will be sending that to you. So you have a copy of that. And thanks to all of you who have joined us. We really strive hard to bring you great programming. This is just a prime example of that programming. We appreciate you joining us. We look forward to hosting you all another time soon for a great program on global perspectives and local conversations. Good afternoon, everyone, and have a great week. Bye-bye. Thank you so much. Thank you.