 I'm really thrilled to be able to be with you here this afternoon. I'm Michael Barr. I'm the dean here at the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy. It's a pleasure to welcome you all here to the Ford School and to welcome those of you who are watching online as well. I'm going to just say a little bit on format before I get to the introductions of our wonderful guest speaker. We're going to have about, I don't know, 40 minutes or so of time for me to ask Gene some questions of informal armchair conversation. And then we're going to open it up to all of you in the audience for questions. If you have a question, please write it down on your index card that's going around. Staff will come pick it up. The questions will make their way to our wonderful students here who will be selecting from among the questions, making sure we have a good distribution of kinds of topics. Those of you who are watching online, you can tweet your questions to hashtag policy talks and we'll integrate those into the questions as well. So I'm thrilled to be able to be sitting here with Gene Sperling. Gene is a leading voice in progressive politics in the United States today. He has served as the top economic advisor, the director of the National Economic Council and top economic advisor to both President Clinton and President Obama. Gene and I have known each other a long time, longer probably than either of us want to admit. 31 years. 31 years. That is a long time. We started working together in the presidential campaign of Michael Dukakis. That is right. Michael Dukakis was, it wasn't his, a lovely human being. Yes. And not much of a presidential campaigner. Don't go negative on Governor Dukakis. Don't go negative on him. A lovely human being. And it was a great experience. And I got to see for the first time then 31 years ago, Gene in action, even as an extremely young man. Gene was already a real star. He's been a hero to me in democratic politics and in policymaking for a long time. Gene has this wonderful ability to pull together deep substantive knowledge in policy with a great political sense of how to get things done and an ability to communicate with the public and the media that enables policy to become accessible to the public. And I think it's really an extraordinary gift to have those three sets of skills in one human being. So I'm grateful that they landed in Gene and not in the opposite of Gene. So I'm going to do, I'm not going to give a more formal introduction. You have Gene's bio in front of you. And I thought I would just start in with a few questions about Gene's history and background. And maybe we'll start with the fact that you're an Ann Arbor boy born and raised. My father and mother met on the train to the University of Michigan. My mother was from Miami, Florida. And she, her mom convinced her, my grandmother convinced her that she could not buy clothes for Michigan in Miami, Florida in 1949. And so they went to New York and they shopped and they got on the train. And she met my dad on the train to Michigan. They went together all four years, married on graduation day. Wow. And my dad went to Michigan Law School and my mom. And then they went to, he went to the Honors Division of the Justice Department for two years. They came back and he, then they had a very glorious life here. He was, my dad just passed away, so we're bragging about him. He won the first, here he won the first case right before Title IX. A constitutional right allowing girls to play on a boy sports team under the Equal Protection Clause for the first time. And he was the originator of Domino's Beats. I mean, he signed the first legal documents for them. But anyways, so they were here and so I was born in Michigan Hospital. We lived here. We still consider this home. We had to do something in the White House once. We all had to do videos of our first jobs. And of course, mine was I was Michigan's ball boy, their basketball team. Happy to talk to you about those years, but for those of you who are more from the community, the CJCubex, Steve Groty, Joe Johnson, Campy Russell years. And I used to get to do the floor at halftime. And I think every time I would give a talk to a new any national economic team or an old economic team, I would always tell them. Because I think when you're in government, you always go for the biggest thing possible. And you often do very good, but it's not what you want. So if somebody said, well, geez, we were trying to get 400,000 kids more head start funding, but we only got 60,000. I would say think of Chrysler Arena. Think of 15,000 little kids in there that are going to have quality preschool because you and think of it emptying out and emptying it three more times. And that was always my way of trying to make people remember how precious it was, you know, everything that you were able to do, even with the pain of what you weren't able to do. I think that's a great message. And Jean, you mentioned obviously mopping the floors, cleaning the floors of Chrysler. I think it's sort of indicative of your work ethic, which is extraordinary. And I know from you that your dad was in town really just a few days before he passed away, was still doing pro bono legal work, which is really phenomenal. What was amazing was he, my father did a lot of different types of law, but he sometimes, but he represented people, workers comp and people hurt on social security disability. And my father was just such a fierce defender against people who tried to say that people on social security disability benefits were cheats and frauds. And he would say in the hundreds of people he'd had come in his office, he never saw one who hadn't worked as hard as they could, tried to work through their disability. And so when he got to be around 70 or so, he just did that. And all he was trying to do was make enough money to pay his secretaries and other people. But he worked right till 86 and to just really bring it home in Ann Arbor, the last thing he did, he was on his death bed and hit, his secretary calls from the office and says, you just won that, you won this case. And the case he won was a case that was the caretaker, case for caretaker son for John Dingell. So that was kind of a special Ann Arbor connection moment. But yes. So yeah, no, the work ethic goes strong. And the two of us don't compare to my mother, so. Yeah, your mother is a force to be reckoned with. She is. And your brother's not much of a slack either. No, my younger brother's the real hero of the family. He may be in here somewhere. He founded the Mosaic Youth Theater Group of Detroit 27 years ago. He was like, I think, one of the youngest people ever when in Michigander of the year, and besides all the honors him and them have won, there are thousands, tens of thousands of young people have very different lives because of what he devoted himself to. And he definitely, I definitely got my comeuppance when I was walking down from Air Force One with President Clinton. And we were coming down in the whole Detroit mayor. Everybody was there. And we got right up there. And President Clinton says, this is my economic advisor, Gene Spirling. And the person says, are you Rick's brother? So I was. That was my, that was the warning shot. So you, you know, people often think that, and then there's just a straight line that leads to becoming director of the National Economic Council for the president. Right. Or they think, oh, there's no path that would ever lead there. And can you say a little bit about, you know, how you meandered your way through your career to get to the positions you've now had? Well, I'd say a couple things, which is, one, what was really interesting to me was after I went to Yale Law School and then I went to Wharton Business School and I was a complete misfit at Wharton Business School because I was the guy who was going to go into policy. Nobody could understand me. And then so they came and they gave like this personality test. They give the whole test. And I came out as tied for the top with an entrepreneurial personality. And I thought about that later. And I realized that while I hadn't gone into business that I, you know, I'd gone to Yale Law School, Wharton Business School. I'd been published in Atlantic. I had done well. And, you know, that first job was, I came on as a volunteer, 28 years old. To the Dukakis campaign. Volunteer. That's how I started there, too, as a volunteer. You'd already been a Rhodes Scholar. And no, it's true. But the point was I lived on, you know, I slept on the floor of a Beacon Hill apartment that had no lights, et cetera. I'd go there with a flashlight at the end. But the truth was I really was excited by it. And I was willing to kind of, you know, go where I had to, do what I had to do. And I wasn't, you know, worried about, you know, the job I get. You know, I hear people a lot of times and they're like, well, I need a paid internship or I need a paid something. And I think, you know, I think a lot of us had that view of, you know, when I was there I used to do 10 hours of law work at night a week for somebody. And that's how I supported myself the first few months. But I think I did, you know, I don't think there was like a clear path. And when I walked, but a couple lessons, I think the Dukakis campaign was an incredible life lesson. And I tell people about it in that way. When you're walking out of there, I'd spent a full year there. So full year, 100 hour weeks. And I got nothing, nothing. You know, there used to be, there was a joke I used to tell during the campaign that was pretty popular, as I would say, well, one of two things is going to happen, which is, you know, Dukakis is going to win. And then everybody back home, and Ann Arbor is going to say, that gene's spiraling. He really, you know, went to this law school, did this, and now he's 29 and he's working in the White House. Wow. What a success. Or Dukakis would lose. I would come back home, as I did, and they would say, wow, look at that spiraling. Never could figure out what he wanted to be, a professional student. He's 29 and here he's living at home. So, you know, that's the, you know, if you can meet with Triumphant Disaster and treat those imposters the same. But I think the thing that, and this is the important lesson I would say, was that I went, you know, two lessons by, or maybe three. One, I learned a lot there. You know, I think so many people focus on, like, getting to the World Series and don't realize that it's bad to get to the World Series and go 0 for 38. I won't say 0 for 18, because that will sound like the three-pointers in the Texas Tech game. But, no, painful. I was there. I was at the game. The, but you know, I mean, in other words, I think people are, what's it going to get you? By being a whole year there, by being in the, like, just the guy in the back of the room in the, you know, the strategy meetings, I learned, you know, three lifetimes to be in a presidential campaign for 10, 11 months, just being there, what you learn almost by osmosis of the timing of the national news cycle, more confusing social media cycle there. So, one, you know, you get those skills. And when I walked out that door thinking I had nothing, that it had been a complete, you know, gamble and I'd lost everything, I remember I was going and I was actually started working with Larry Tribe. And I was supposed to be helping him on his, you know, he was on sabbatical and we were helping him on some of his projects. And instead, you know, I start realizing that every time somebody comes to interview him, I'm taken over. No, Larry, that takes 18. This is a national news thing. You got to say it in 14 seconds. And I'm suddenly like a different person because, you know, I had gained all that knowledge. And when I got hired by Mario Cuomo later, I came in with that knowledge. You could say, oh, well, I wouldn't spend three years with him. He didn't run for president either. So it's not like you're just hitting there, but each time you're kind of gaining the knowledge. So when that moment comes, you really are ready. And I think a lot of people think a lot more about, oh, will this get me somewhere as opposed to will I be ready to soar when I get there. The second thing I would say about that was that I built a reputation there. And you can't imagine how valuable that is. So when I walk out the door, I think I have nothing, except that the way I got the job was Mario Cuomo was that his office called around to people and said, hey, who's a good young person from the Dukakis campaign. And then the third thing, which I really like to say to people, was there was a lot of sucking up to the powers that be among the junior staff. We all would have certain resentment for somebody who didn't seem quite as good to their peers, but they were worried about somebody else. Well, what happened to all of us is most of us were tight knit, and we worked together. And we shared credit, and we worked together. And the people who were our peers were the ones who made all the difference and became so the person who hires me to be Bill Clinton's National Economic Advisor is George Stephanopoulos. George is famous, good looking, all those things now. But when we met in 88, when we met in 88, he wasn't as good looking. When we met in 88, George was a junior communication staffer like we do. And so I do think that that notion of that, when you go through life, are you looking up? Are you looking at your peers? Are you looking at the people below? One, it's a good way to live your life. It's a moral way to live your life. There'll be more people at your funeral. But beyond that, I think it's a smart way to live your life. And it's not, as you say, it's not linear. You can't project. But you want to think about who was in our junior class there, you and me, Susan Rice, National Security Advisor, Sylvia Burwell, OMB Director, HHS Secretary. And so a lot of what happened over that time was a group of people supportive, working together. When I became head of Bill Clinton's presidential economic campaign, I hired Sylvia and then Matthews to be my deputy. So that's what I would tell a lot of times when the interns would come in, because they would always be looking for that moment that they were going to catch somebody's eye. And instead of really looking at this peer group they have and being seen as a good guy and somebody who people want to work with and somebody who people are going to support going forward. That's great. And I think that certainly consists of my experience too. And just I want to do one more meander in your career path. So you were very distinguished working for Bill Clinton and all, but then you went and worked for the West Wing. Yes. So tell us about what it was like first to be working in the West Wing and then to be helping work on what the West Wing works like in Hollywood. Right. Well, first of all, this crowd has been good because nobody's like, you know, like there's been no flutter or flutter through here. A lot of times what happens is I get introduced and they go through my whole resume and the whole crowd's just sitting there stone silent. And then they go, and then he was a consultant on the TV show West Wing for four years and the place goes, whoa. And I'm like, really it's more impressive to you that I consulted on the fake West Wing for four years and then I was in the real West Wing for 11 and 1 1⁄2 years. But when I left, that was another thing. When I left the Clinton administration, you don't know how life's going to go. You don't know the turns it's going to take. And I got that job at a very young age and that was a great thing. But there's also something scary about that. You start thinking I'm a pro athlete. Like it's all downhill after 39 years old or I guess Tiger Woods case, 43 years old. But you see, you don't know what you're going to do. And so I actually took it veered off and actually started a center that worked on education for developing countries for children boys because it was something that didn't exist when I was there and something I thought was needed. And a lot of people would later say, why did you do that? It was off economics. But the way I was thinking to myself was what kind of service am I going to do my whole life? I don't want to, I've always thought having the kind of jobs we've had was the kind of highest service, highest impact. But it's not the only service and it's not the only impact. And so I felt like this was an area where if I didn't get that call to come back in, that I could have a unique impact. And I'll come back to West Wing, but I did want to say the following, which is I don't think, I think you have to have a lot of good luck obviously to get the jobs I've had. And I don't know that you can plan your life around that because I've had two great runs. But boy, I was really close to two other great runs. I was pretty close to John Kerry and Hillary Clinton's campaign too. And so whether you get these big jobs or not is often about issues that go beyond you. Like anything else, it's a bit luck. I do think what you can do, though, is that you can decide that you are going to be a major and important player in an area you care about. And that you can, as I said, get around that group of people who are going to work on that for years. And you can have a great impact. And you can't start off with, well, I'm either going to be Secretary of Commerce or nothing. But you can say today, I want to be a leader in the Green Deal of the future. Now, maybe you're going to be Secretary of Energy. Maybe you're going to be somebody's advisor. But you can build that type of reputation so that you are one of the people, one of the 20 or 30 people maybe in DC that is looked at as somebody who is a go-to person, a thought leader. And so I do think that's what you, of course, everybody would like to get the, they have a dream job. But I do think that you have to find your satisfaction and you have an issue, a cause you care about, some social justice or justice issue you care about, and that you can be an important player in there. And whether it ends up being at a nonprofit job, a think tank, state government, federal government, whether you get the level of your job, you and I both know. I mean, it was great to be national economic advisor. But I did a lot of good things when I was deputy, national economic advisor, and your name's not in the papers much. And I went to help out at Treasury during the financial crisis. And so those things were, I don't look back at those those were the years that I didn't have a principal level job. Those were really important things. I was really affected when I went to Richard Holbrook's funeral, where here was a guy who always dreamed of being Secretary of State, never made it, never got his exact dream job. But when you looked at his life over a period of times, all the things he did, all the places he'd be, so I think you can't base on that one thing or base your happiness on whether you get that one thing, but you can decide you're going to make a significant difference in an area. And I think without extraordinary luck, you can be sure that that happens and whether you get the super great job or the great job or the really good job, you can feel that satisfaction. Now, having said all those meaningful things, the West Wing, that was pretty fun. I was, I decided that when Clinton was over, so actually what happens is the West Wing starts in our last year. And of course- We didn't have time to watch it. Whatever, you didn't. No, no, whatever, I mean, it was a narcissistic moment. I mean, it was understood, it was kind of based off the kind of Clinton folks and people used to say, oh, Gene, you're this guy or that guy, and I'd say they're all based on George, so don't kid yourself. But so, Bill Clinton invites them to come to the, come to the State of the Union after party, after the party. So we meet all of them and it's really great because we're excited to be meeting these Hollywood actors, they're excited to be meeting the people they're playing. And then after that, Brad Whitford who played Josh Lyman would keep sending me policy ideas. And of course, so I later thought to myself, well, you know what, if he's sending me policy ideas, why can't I send him an episode idea? So I swear, I got out January 20th, 2001, and that was my project. I worked for like four or six weeks and I wrote out a whole story idea based off something that had happened when we were there. And I sent it in and he sent it to Tom Shlame and he said, and they said, come in for an interview. So I come in, kind of dressed like this. I get to the door, I get to right to the West, I mean to the Warner Brothers lot. And like, of course, I'm gonna date myself, but if you're of my age, all you could think was blazing saddles. This is where they busted out in blazing saddles. And so I get right there and the phone rings and the woman says, I am so sorry, Erin's working camp with you today. And I'm just like, suddenly all the things conservatives said about Hollywood people. I was like, yes, I flew all the way from DC. I'm at the gate and you can't meet. And so the woman knows she probably needs another explanation and she says, well, I guess you'll know in the papers anyways. He was arrested yesterday for bringing illegal mushrooms into the Las Vegas airport. She says, but don't worry. Talk about how life takes its turns. Don't worry, instead of interviewing with him, we're gonna have you have lunch with all the writers. So I go into the commissary and I sit down at this table where they have the writing room and I come in there and Brad Whitford has actually come. So he's sitting right there, there's a spot there. I sit in the open spot. I turn to my left and introduce myself to the first writer on my left and that's how I met my wife, Alison Abner. So moral of the story is that the real West Wing is the best thing in my professional life and the fake West Wing was the best thing in my personal life. I love it, I love it. Well, you obviously had some tremendous experiences working for both President Obama and for President Clinton and it's hard to encapsulate those experiences which were really extraordinary, both in the length of your service and also what you were able to get done. But I wonder if you might pick one lesson you learned from President Clinton and one lesson you learned from President Obama. Well, you know, that's an interesting question, like what is the kind of the lesson that you learn? I mean, look, you know, the people always ask for comparisons between the two and I always say, you know, I'm not gonna tell you whether I love mom or dad more and I'm not even gonna tell you which one's mom and which one's dad. But I will say that what I really had great respect for both of them on was, and it's related to how we set up the National Economic Council, was they really wanted to get it right. Now I'm not putting, I'm not saying, I'm not being naive here. You were in all the meet, you were in the financial crisis meetings, we both were, it's a political environment. But when you have people who want to start by figuring it out, one, figuring it out and two, being willing to listen to the challenge back and forth. And I think that, you know, whether you call it murder boarding, whether you call it all of those things, there is a humility in decision making that I think you have when you're in those jobs which you don't have, which people I think often have too little of. I mean, a lot of times I look at a policy issue out there and what I'm really thinking to myself is, why are those people so sure? Like, you know, I hear people debate, there's a lot of issues people debate right now and I have my view or this view, but the one thing that I'm not is, I'm not sure. And I think that there is a certain humility in your decision making, which is that, and I think it's partly because when you're writing an op-ed or you're going on cable TV or you're writing a policy paper, you know, it's nice to be right, but it's not necessarily the way you get rewarded, you get rewarded by having a strong view that you've articulated, that breaks through, that gets lots of media tweets. When you're there and it's people's lives on the line and you know that the things you do can have enormous consequence on hundreds of thousands or millions of people, it's scary and it should be scary. And I think what both of them did was they treated it like we don't know exactly where the right thing is going to be, but we are going to do everything we can to make sure that when we make that decision, we have, that we've done everything we could. When I was in a little phase where I was reading for revolutionary history, there was a great line once where Washington and them are talking and he kind of says, you know, you cannot guarantee success. You can only guarantee that you have prepared as much as possible for success. And I think that's a little bit in the decision making. And I think that feeling of having everybody around the table, letting everybody speak up, encouraging an active debate, not making anybody feel they will be punished or hurt for disagreeing with the president or strongly disagreeing with the president. I thought that was outstanding and I don't, you know, I think that the way those things were done is often, you know, would be a lesson for a lot of types of decision making, but I think it is that sense of humility about the future, what's the right thing, testing. You know, I can think of many times that I had the most brilliant group of people around cabinet level, member level people around my table in the National Economic Council office. And we came to what seemed like a decision and somebody would call back that night and say, I thought of a flaw. And we'd bring everybody back again. And when you think of terrible decisions that have been made, war and Iraq, et cetera, you know, you have to wonder, was that kind of rigor brought in? Was that kind of challenging? Was that kind of it's okay to disagree with the president? It's okay to argue. I think those are two things I admired a lot about them. And look, I'm not saying you are in a political environment, but there's a difference. And I think this is, I thought what the core of the National Economic Council was, was that you're gonna try to figure out what the best policy is first. And then you're gonna try to figure out how much of that you can design. But you start with what's right and then you say, okay, well, that's ideal. You know, that's ideal. Now what could we practically get done? What is a chance of succeeding? What are the odds? What's the good of proposing an unrealistic thing but setting a tone for the future versus helping people's lives maybe filling up 20 or 30 stadiums but not getting the whole way? So I think I left with really great admiration for both of them. And whatever you think about both of them, boy, they were willing at times to do the hard thing just because it was right. I mean, there were times where we both saw them. And I'm not gonna say it's like the American president when Michael Douglas comes out. It's not fun doing something unpopular. They weren't going, great, I'm gonna do this to save the financial crisis. And David Axelrod's telling me, or George Stephanops is telling me that only 22% of Americans will support what I'm doing. They hate it. They're cursing, they're upset, but they still did it. They still did what was right when they had to. That's great. Let me bring us to some of your current work. There's tons we could talk about about being in government, but maybe we'll turn the conversation now to, you recently wrote a piece in Democracy Journal called Economic Dignity. That is, I think gonna be your next book project. Yes. So, it's a big topic. So a lot of times, if you'll pardon me, policy nerds or policy geeks, like yourself, will focus on the 10-point plan for childcare, or the 15 steps to improve the EITC for under $3 billion. You've decided to take on a pretty big topic, Economic Dignity. Why did you think it was important to do that? Well, you're absolutely right. I mean, the book I wrote in 2005 was the policy nerd, you know, it was a policy nerd Bible, the pro-growth progressive. And I was, you know, I wanted to put down what I thought were a lot of the good thinking of that moment in time, though the world has changed a lot since then. I'd write it differently today. But I think that, you know, partly I have more gray hair, I thought I had more permission now to step back and write something more reflective, but I really wanted to. And I think what I started to feel was that I believe most people who come into public service really come in with good intentions. I feel a little sad that people, I feel sad that people used to say to me is scandal and House of Cards realistic instead of his West Wing realistic. When they said West Wing was realistic, I used to say it was very realistic except that they walk faster, they're funnier and they're better looking. I actually did have my one moment, I had two moments by the way with Barack Obama on West Wing that were memorable to me. One was he said we were in the middle of financial crisis and he calls everybody into a meeting. And so you're actually, things are moving so fast that you actually have a situation where the president's in the oval and we're kind of waiting for a few people to get there. And it's like eight, nine at night, he's exhausted. And he says, God, you've been in the West Wing eight years, isn't it always like this? And I said, I said, well, I said, it's, I said, it's, I said, you know, people used to ask me is the West Wing realistic? And I said, yeah, it was really realistic. It's just that they condensed about nine months into one hour. I said, that's what your presidency in the financial crisis is like. You know, it was condensed in, but to go back, I felt like for all that we were, for all the people do and all the people come in with the best of intentions, I think that I found it was very easy for people to kind of take their eye off the ball. So it's not like I think that people come in and they are, you know, it's scandal or house of cards. I think people come into Washington, most people will put this current White House to the side. Hopefully this historical aberration. But I think most people there have a conviction, a policy view. I think most people I've worked with do. So, but I noticed that what happens over time is that people start to, as I said, take their eye off the ball a little. And it's not, and by that I don't mean they become greedy or about their personal. I think what happens is people start to confuse means for ends. So what happens is, you know, people start saying, are you for trader against it? Are you for deficit reduction against it? Do you believe we can do a 2.8% GDP or 2.2%? And what happens is people start locking in on these things and it starts to, it's not just arguments on cable news. People come into their jobs and they start saying, oh, well this is what we should do. And why? Well because that was a metric or a means that had been something that had been a progressive goal 10 years ago. So it is right now. And I would start to realize, there isn't as much reflection on, hold it. What's the ultimate end goal of what we're trying to do? Shouldn't we step back a little and ask? And I started thinking about that more and more myself for my own decision making. So boy, if I go into this administration, what's gonna be most important and why? And then again, it's not that I think that, oh my God, you had to work on what the end goal of economic policy is because people have no morals or go in there with no anchor. I think there is something about the economic debate that takes your eye off the ball. So you start to, again, when you start to lock in on debating about means, it gets more tribal. It gets more one camp versus the other. So people are debating, are you like a new Democrat or are you a populist Democrat? Or are you for universal programs or are you for targeted programs? And all of these debates are extremely important. I'm not denigrating any of them. But I think people start to lose the idea that that is still a means to an end. And so for me, and I think when you realize that a particular policy, how you feel about fiscal policy or how you feel about trade policy is a means to a larger end. You're more willing to look at new evidence. You're less defensive. I mean, there's a lot of people right now that mostly wanted to debate things that happened in 1990, you know, blank, you know? And so I started feeling more like there's something wrong. There's something wrong with the debate. And one place that it really hit me a little bit was in 2009. Now, if you were in the White House at this point, you realized one thing, which was, you know, the Tea Party feel was already starting to come. The Democrats were already starting to feel it. And it was very, very hard. It was impossible that you were going to get some big, huge second stimulus in 2009. Your own party didn't want to do that. That, I understand. But at the same time, some people started coming to me, members of Congress, I will remain nameless, and say, can you convince President Obama that he shouldn't be doing health care. He should be focusing on the economy. And I think that really was a moment that went off for me, which is it's to the point where people didn't think people's health care was the economy. It was GDP, or it was. And remember, too, there wasn't much chance you were going to be able to do a lot more at that particular moment. It was more that they wanted him just to talk about it. Now, for me, I had been thinking in the eight years off, if I come back, what really matters most? What do you really want to get done? And I would start thinking to myself, OK, on somebody's death bed, what would they think was most important in their economic life? And I'd also think to myself, what is it that we could do for everybody? Not everybody can be dean of the policy school, or just have good fortune, et cetera. What is it that policy should aim for everyone? And I started thinking a lot about health care, but not like we normally think about it, rising cost, et cetera. I started thinking about the pain of a parent not being able to provide for their sick child. I mean, it's extraordinary, right? I mean, we all worry about our kids so much. The idea that there were so many people who went bankrupt or couldn't provide for their child. And so I started thinking to myself, if I'm thinking about someone like their core, their inner self, that's got to be one of the worst things. That should not be allowed. That just should not be allowed. And so for me, I'm coming back, and I'm thinking, I am so glad Barack Obama is taking another shot at health care. I was so proud of Bill and Hillary Clinton for going back and getting the Children's Health Initiative with a CHIP program after we'd failed going back. And now he was going to go back. And yes, that wasn't necessarily going to be in my lane on the economics. But I was devoted. In fact, as you remember, I kind of ended up coordinating the Treasury team on this because I wanted to be so involved. And I think that was the moment where I thought there is something wrong with the way we think of economics. That this fact that we don't actually stop and reflect on what the end goal actually affects how senators and members of congressmen and people in the administration think about what their goal is. And so in 2005, I had written in the pro-growth progressive my second chapter. I'd said, look, we're going to do a lot of economics, but this really is about values. And I put three values down. I said, one, economic dignity. If you work hard, should you be able to raise your children, retire, take care of your parents with dignity? Number two, does everybody have a chance to rise? And three, are we a country where the accident of your birth determines the outcome of your life? And I think that this time, instead of that just being the second chapter, I wanted to really step back and say, let me think a little harder. What actually should our end goal be? And I started realizing that really I didn't need three values, that while I wasn't going to try to write a book, as there are probably some philosophy professors and students here who work on, to go through, what did Kant mean here? Did he steal this from Rousseau? I mean, I'm reading all that, so thank you all for doing that. But that wasn't going to be it. But that I was going to try to understand if it was possible for us to do what was most important for what's kind of most precious, most universal for people, what did that mean? And so I started doing the frame of economic dignity. And it scared me to work on it because, for a couple of reasons, I mean, I feel ashamed a little bit how scared I was to work on it. For bad reasons. I was worried about snark, about writing something that might seem fluffy. I was scared about academics who would say, you're not an expert in social justice or philosophy, or you're not trying to base all of this by starting with where Locke was and going forward. And so I was worried about those things. But as I started talking to people, I started realizing that there was a bit of a hunger. And I also started realizing that there wasn't much out there. So that if I wrote something like this, even if somebody said, no, you got it wrong, it's really a different conception of freedom that should be our angle. Or your three pillars of economic dignity are wrong. I realized that would be doing some good, because I'd be at least starting a conversation. And I think when I think about writing a book, I think to myself a little, when I was that 28 or 29-year-old, would I have benefited from reading that? And I think to myself, yeah, if the first time I was going in the White House, I'd read a book that was kind of asking me, what's your ultimate goal as a human being for economic policy in a way that fit the kind of frame in the US, I thought that would be worth doing. And so I wrote the piece 9,000 words, pretty long piece in the democracy journal, too, to get it out there. And I've been really touched by the reaction and have agreed to do a book since then. So let's try and unpack that a little bit. Your concept of economic dignity, you talked about three pillars in the piece and just now. And maybe I'm going to ask you to pause on each one and say a little bit more. So the first pillar I'm going to read just so I get it right, the first pillar is having the capacity to care for family and experience its greatest joys. That's not usual icono speech. Well, what did you mean by that? And why is that the first of these pillars? So I think the kind of basic goods that you need for a kind of middle class life, American dream life is kind of the common way this is done. Huey Long had his chicken in every pot and et cetera. And FDR, as many people know, used one of his last inaugural speeches to do a second economic bill of rights. President Obama had kind of a list, a square deal. And those were usually like, OK, health care, retirement, all things that are incredibly important. But I felt that if I was going to ask about this, that it was worth, again, stepping back a little and kind of saying, why? And not just kind of doing a list of goods, which is I felt most times what people did in this situation. Here's the five things you have to have. You should have a right to those five things, and we're done. We'll see you later. And so I think what I started to think a little was, and again, this is the part where you're just writing from your heart. You're not basing it anywhere. You're just deciding you're going to put your heart out there. If people shoot at it, that's fine, or not fine, but you'll live with that. Which was, I have always, it touches and moves me as a human being that for all the amazing things I've seen and done, or you've seen other people do, people who've been heads of state, or been billionaires, or great athletes, whatever you do, what is it in life that kind of matters to you as much as the birth of your child? Or worrying about your kids? And I'm not trying to do traditional family here. Me, of all people, I've got two children who are my actual godchildren, and then my son is inherited. So believe me, I mean it in the broadest sense, the people you love. And so what gets me a little is, well, we kind of accept that you can't have pure economic equality, and yet there is a kind of natural equality that's incredibly beautiful, which is that you can be the billionaire, or you can be the lowest person in that billionaire's office. But the birth of your child, how you take care of your parents, happiness of your family, feeling that you can provide and take care, that's the deepest thing. And you think to yourself, well, that is this beautiful equality, and yet it's not actually actualized. Because even though that's so achievable, economic deprivation takes that away. So you can't really say, well, we all got to enjoy it the same, because half the people in this country are having babies and going to work two days later. Some of them are dying in childbirth. Some of them are going through enormous stress and trauma, or they didn't have good nutrition, they didn't have things. And I started to think about, these are things that a country like the United States is be so easy for people to have. And thinking about it from a basis of not just do you have enough goods, but are you actually able to enjoy the greatest joys of family and loving? And it made me think about things somewhat different. And again, it's not that you become for or against something, but maybe you prioritize something different. For me, it made me think of health care less through just the recipient and more through the person who provides or can't provide, who can't take care or can't take care. It made me think of paid family leave. That seemed to me like a nice issue, but there were other things. But when you start thinking about the importance in life of being there for your parents, or being there for someone you love who has cancer, of being able to spend time for your child, those are maybe some of the greatest joys in life, or even the time off when you're grieving. Most important things in life. And they are unbelievably economic. You go to your average company in this country and there is bereavement leave if you are an executive, but not for other people. So if your wife or your kid passes away, worst thing that can happen in life, worst thing that happened in life, we don't have. So I started to think about this more as not a set of goods, but maybe an evolving discussion. And I think the thing I struggle with a little is that we all love to kind of say, gosh, look at that person. His mom swept the floors for 80 hours a week, et cetera. That troubles me a little, right? I mean, if some of the people here want to work 80 hours a week so that they can be a tenured professor or a national economic advisor, that's a choice you make. But the idea that some people have to work so hard, they make a certain income, but it's the price of their income that they're not able to have those joys. So that to me was, I think, a richer way to think about it, and also goes more, I think, to not looking at things as just a set of goods, but in terms of your inner worth, what's most important to you did our economic lives. Remember, I'm not writing dignity general. I'm talking about economic dignity. Did we have an economic system that prevented economic deprivation from keeping people from enjoying that which is most important, most important to their inner self that we can easily afford and have for everyone? So the second main pillar of economic dignity that you talk about is the pursuit of purpose. And I wonder if you could say a little bit more about what you mean by that and why that is so essential. So actually, it's pursuit of potential and purpose. And I said pursuit. Again, I can't pretend that we can have economic dignity for everyone where everybody gets to reach your potential. But I do feel like this is an area where when you look at the core values of the country, there is a strong instinct and a huge gap between what we idealize and what we have. And I also think it's an area that we are really ignoring at our peril. So one, you can go to Washington and you can go to a speech and you can go from Paul Ryan to Bernie Sanders. And they will both say at the beginning, the accident of your birth shouldn't determine the outcome of your life. I mean, that's a pretty strong value. And yet that value is not realized in terms, we know that and we know it's kind of a cruel joke to say that when we know that if you're born into the top bottom 10 or 20%, bottom 20% you have like a seven, eight, nine percent chance of graduating from a four-year college. We know graduating from a four-year college is probably the single thing that will move you up the economic ladder. And we know that's due to the accident of your birth. And so without government policy, without actions, that's not the case. That's sad how much we as a country have worked at that and not achieved it and we have to stay at that. But the other part is the kind of second chances. You know, one of the things I mentioned a little in the article and I'll mention more in the book is the United States was one of the first countries to get rid of debt prisons. Which is kind of a nice thing about, you know, I mean, this is a period of time where we had slavery when women couldn't vote or have rights. So it's not, you know, this is not make America great again. But it's a, but you know, one thing that Martin Luther King did which I always thought was so powerful is instead of writing off a period, he would more say, here were the values, here were the values of the framers. And instead of disparage them and say, here they are, those are great values. Now let's look at where we are as a country and make people feel that cognitive dissonance between what we espouse and where we are. So we are a country of first chance, we talk about first chances, we talk about accident of birth, we don't live it up, we don't live through it. And second chances is very much the same as well. So in not having debt prisons, you know, it really was. We shouldn't kill a person's potential because they went into debt once. If you read the language, the speeches on bankruptcy in the early 19th century, they're talking, we use the phrase a fresh start. We glamorize people who moved west, we glamorize the pilgrims, we glamorize people who had had bad starts, who had second chances. And yet we're terrible as a country on this. We're really bad. We spend less money to wonk out. You look at any OECD study, we spend less money on helping people when they're dislocated. The fact that we have shrinking unionization hurts. In Sweden and Germany and other places, a lot of the kind of training that happens is negotiated through, is either government or negotiated through union contracts. We don't really do any of those things. And now I think we're really starting to see, this is a central assault on the dignity of so many people. I think when you look at the number of people coming from prison who do not get, who I think never got a first chance often and then don't get a second chance, if you look at people, you talk about the accidents of birth, how about accidents of the economy? Right, like people choose to work for pet.com or Facebook, they weren't geniuses. Some people got lucky, some people chose the right place, some people didn't. So it's not lack of value, it's often just bad luck, you're in the wrong place in the wrong time, you're in the wrong community at the wrong time. And we do so little. Right now, when you look at manufacturing communities, people spiral down, we have nothing in our toolbox policy-wise to deal with this. And it's okay, it goes on every year. And now, I'm not gonna try to do a direct causal link, but it is hard to believe that the rise of so-called death of despair, of the suicides at that age, of the fact that for one of the first times in advanced country, you're seeing a certain group of people in our country having lower life expectancy. It is hard to believe that it does not have something to do with people feeling a loss of purpose and potential. And I think the reason it gets ignored too much in a serious way, and when I say serious way, if you think of a lot of the big policy ideas out there right now, they're not really in this area. They're not really about making sure everybody gets a second bite at the apple. They're good important things, but not this area, particularly, and I think we will, I think we're missing something very fundamental in people's spirit, that they want to continually, all of us, want to have a sense of purpose and potential. And I think the more we ignore this, we're hurt as a country, and what I was gonna say is the reason why I think both sides are not too good on this is that Republicans talk the talk on this, but then they want less government for everything. But these are areas where the private sector isn't going to help somebody who's been dislocated in a community that's spiraling down. There's no incentive for them. They probably get sued if they did it. I mean, they don't have, government has to step in in those situations, and then on, I think the progressive side, I think there's been a little bit too, I think there was a view which has a lot of fairness, which is that in the 90s, perhaps those of us in the Clinton administration were too focused on human capital, investing in people. We weren't looking enough at the structural problems in the economy. And I think the people who raised those issues then have turned out to be right. And I think we all acknowledge that, at least it has developed that way, terms of monopoly power, restrictions on the people competing for jobs, the non-compete issue that our good friend, the late Alan Kruger was working on. I think these are all important issues. But now I think people have gone too far. They've started to, I think, almost denigrate the importance of investing in people. And so I wanna say to those who's on the progressive side, it's not a choice. We should focus on structural inequality. We should focus on where there's too much market power, concentration of power, but that's not a reason to not have a really robust policy about helping people find new careers, helping people find new jobs, not just economically, but for their sense of purpose and potential. So let me ask you to talk a little bit about the third pillar and then I'm gonna open it up to questions and maybe we'll go to 530 instead of 520. But the third pillar is being able to participate in the economy with respect and not domination or humiliation. So I wanna say that while you can pick and choose aspects of my definition of economic dignity, you can't not take this part. No, and I wanna say why. Because number one and number two are so important to people. People that can, it's so important to provide for your family. It's so important to have a job for some people or have a sense of potential that they will, that they can be put in a situation where they have to achieve essentially or try to achieve the first two by accepting situations that are humiliating, exploitative. And so you have to have a limit. You have to have a protection of dignity in this third bucket or you are, or I don't think you can say that you've really achieved having a definition of economic dignity. So when you look at kind of the classic definition with all the different interpretations, but Kant's kind of notion that you should not treat a person as a pure means to an end, but as an end in themselves. When we look at this normally, we often think about this as limits on the power of government. You think of the Eighth Amendment's cruel and unusual clause. No matter how terrible, horrible you are, UN declaration on human rights, on torture, on, so those are all some of the manifestations people would think of the concept of dignity. And in a way what they are is they're saying that there is something so essential, so precious, so priceless about being a human being that even if we're at war, even if you have committed a heinous crime, there are certain, there's a sphere of dignity that we're not going to let the state impinge on. And I think that to have an economic dignity view, you also have to look at and say that there is a sphere of dignity that we're not going to let the market or the freedom to contract impinge on. And you're saying basically, and I think in the economic context, that is really based around the understanding of the power imbalances in the labor market. So in Les Miserables, right? You see a woman sell her hair, sell her teeth, ultimately herself, anything for a child, right? Anything for her child. And obviously, you don't really have to use a theatrical example. It plays out across the world in the United States all the time. You look at the people who worked in the mines, you look at the things that Mother Jones, not the magazine, but the actual Mother Jones was exposing at the time. I mean, these were situations of people going through quasi-slavery, utter humiliation, utter domination. But they were doing it because they ultimately wanted to support their family. And so the desperation for the first element will lead a person to do almost anything. And if the price of number one, the price of being able to care for family and have its joys is utter exploitation, that's, then you fail. And so when you look to me at the progressive era, the progressive era was kind of the place where people said, finally started to say, there need to be limits on the market. That we, when you look at how the Supreme Court switches on minimum wage, it's a recognition of power and balance. And I think it's interesting that you see that as the first accomplishments really at the progressive era. You don't get the more affirmative views of economic dignity, more to the new deal. But you also see it playing out in our lives today. Look at the Me Too movement. And this is one of the reasons why I like having economic dignity as a goal instead of a metric, which I talk about why it's not GDP. But I think when you have a metric like GDP, all sorts of economic pain become invisible. You don't see them, you don't count them. I'm kind of, you know, people ask me, are there things you feel bad about? I'll tell you one thing I feel bad about from our days. I don't know why we never had a meeting about domestic workers. Really, God bless Ai Jin Pu. God bless her. God bless the National Domestic Care Alliance. I mean, God bless them. Why? They weren't really unionizable, organizable, they didn't really come in there. They had jobs, they weren't affecting the job market, et cetera. And yet, you look now and you realize there are whole classes of workers who suffer a loss of economic dignity, where it doesn't show up in any metric. But by not, but by having economic dignity as your goal, it forces those issues up the agenda. And into the economic sphere, remember, the people they were saying pre-existing condition protection, healthcare, was not an economic issue. Well, it is to a human being. It is to a parent. It is to a family member. So whether the price for you pursuing your potential was sexual harassment is a pretty big damn issue. And I think you talk about pursuit of potential. It was interesting. You see it throughout the economic classes, right? So you see women who have lower economics, lower education suffer the worst silently. And now perhaps there's a little more attention to ensuring people have economic power, dignity, more protection, but often were left out. But you also, in rather high form, also saw people who had all the education and all the advantages. And they had such a strong desire to pursue their potential, to pursue their purpose, that they were in a situation where they were able to be abused and harassed. And feel incredible pain that their sense of pursuing their potential was taken away by this exploitation at the job. So I think you can pick parts, but you have to have number three in. Because if not, then you can have a system where people are, the price of pursuing your potential and caring for your family creates such an economic desperation that you have such a weak power balance that you can sense lose that sense of dignity. And I'll just say one thing before we go. If you actually think about what in your economic life you talk about most at your kitchen table with your spouse, boyfriend, girlfriend, partner, whatever, it is probably whether you feel at work you're being treated with respect. I mean, just think about it. You probably spend more time on that. And I'm not saying there's a government solution for every person who's mean to you at work, or bad bosses, et cetera. But it is worth noting that when you ask what's most important, that is probably the number one thing people spend in their work life is whether they feel they are treated with respect and dignity at work. So why, if that's what's most important on your deathbed and your kitchen table, why should that be outside the arena of being a first tier economic issue? That's great. A lot to wrestle with. Let me turn it over to our students and they're gonna introduce themselves and then they have collected your questions for asking. Hello, my name is Malika Begum. I'm a first year MPP student. I'm interested in international economic development. And I would like to thank you for joining us here today. Malika, you have like finals in seven hours or something, don't you? Like, don't you all? Like, I really touched any of you are here at this late day, but go ahead, I'm sorry. No problem. We are happy to have you here. The first question here I have asks, given the power of television to change minds, how would you pitch an episode of The West Wing to get the public to understand the importance of economic dignity and what we'd need to change to make it happen? Well, I think that the issue I was just raising would be a pretty good example because I think the issue of the people who are invisible, that are limitation on economic metrics. And really, let me be clear. Growth is important. Productivity growth is important. GDP is important. They're just not end goals in themselves. They're means. You want strong growth because you're hoping it's going to lead to human fulfillment. I mean, love John F. Kennedy, but a rising tide lifts all boats is the worst statement because your goal is that a rising tide will lift all boats. It's not an automatic assumption and it doesn't discuss what it actually means. And so I think that what I would have dramatized a little, I think I would dramatize is everybody getting together to have a meeting on gig workers. And they're all talking about the Uber drivers and Instacart. Why are they all talking about it? I hate to say this because it affects yuppie life in America. And so people have become aware more of that. And I think it would be great at that point to have somebody go, you think this issue just came up? Why was this issue, how about contract workers in construction in Texas who have high death levels? How about domestic care workers who have one person they report to, almost no legal protections? We don't even have systems set up for people who have nannies to provide them health care in a way, all these things. And I think that would be pretty powerful because if you care about the economic dignity of all workers and all people, why did it take the gig economy to really make people focus on what was a pretty large problem for a lot of people who just weren't really at the table? Hi, my name is Apri Salmalale. I'm first year MPP student too. This question comes to us from Twitter. Do you see room for further expansion of the federal child tax credit? If so, what type of expansion? Well, I think this is an issue I spend a lot of time on and I also want to make 1.2, which doesn't make it as much. Right now there's a lot of discussion about having bigger goals, which I think is wonderful. And when Michael and I came into government, Democrats had been out of the White House for 20 of 24 years and we'd only gotten once for four years because the president was a crook and was on the way to being impeached. Really wasn't a great 24 year record. And I think you now have people coming in who want to talk more about health care as a right, who want to be for the, you know, have more of our dialogue, particularly in the progressive side, be about your ultimate vision and goal. And I think that that is, I think that is a great thing and I think it provides fresh energy. Now, that said, I don't know if being more woke would have made it easier to do much the last six years of Bill Clinton's presidency when Republicans controlled both houses of Congress for the last six years. So it was hard. But the thing I want to say is that these aren't necessarily either ors. You can have a great vision and you aim to get there. And if you can't get there in one step, if you can't get there in one 60 yard pass, then you run, you know, 10 plays up the middle for six yards till you get there. Now the reason I'm saying this in terms of the child tax credit is Bill Clinton ran on, and I think this was a very much a dignity message at a time when you were still overcoming the Reagan era and the real denigration of people who got public, any kind of public support. Clinton said, well, if you work full time, you shouldn't have to raise your kids with dignity. It's very much a kind of a unifying message and it worked. It made a lot of people who would not normally support a program that went mostly to lower income people, mostly to people of often single women of color. Because it put it in a value frame of if you work full time, you should not have the indignity of raising your children in poverty. And we got a major increase in 93 for families two and more. And then in 97 in the budget agreement, we couldn't get more, so we snuck more in. We got a child, I'll tell you what happened, we had a child tax credit. They wouldn't make it refundable. And I can explain this more to people at another time, but by how you stacked it, we ended up increasing the EITC by another big amount. But the important thing about that was that Clinton, and this kind of argues for the benefits of both the big vision and how the power of taking steps can matter, he had a bigger vision. This wasn't a public handout. This was making sure work paid. He did not get all the way there, but he won the public message in a way that when 2001 came in and the Bush tax cut went through, there got to be a little more of a fundability. And then Nancy Pelosi and Rosa DeLauro pushed for a little more in 07, and then Obama came in. So here's a question. A single parent with two kids making $17,000, how much more did they get today than they did before Bill Clinton was elected president? It's a pretty amazing number, $7,100. Now, that's huge. Even the most, I think Kamala Harris has the most ambitious proposal out there, and it's 6,000, 7,000. So the fact was you had a vision and you had a goal, and you did not have a Congress or government that could do it all at once. But over time, you have, by people digging in, two administrations digging in the trenches, in negotiations, have done something that's relatively extraordinary, not enough, but probably 10, 11, 12 million people are out of poverty because of it. So the question then is what more do you want to do there? And I think there's a few different elements, and again, we could do a whole session on this, but I'll just mention them. One is Bill Clinton put in the first, it wasn't for children, but it's the EITC for an individual who didn't have dependent children. Now I wanna say, this doesn't mean you don't have children, it just means you're not dependent children on your tax code. It's only like $500. So now that's gone up 7,000, which is wonderful, but if you're a single person, or you're maybe taking care of your nephew and nieces, but they're not people you put on, you get nothing. So one of the things I think there's greater consensus on is, let's increase the earned income tax credit for individual people who don't have dependent children. And as I always say, that doesn't mean you're ignoring that woman or dad who's got two kids living and they're pretty poor right now, because they're gonna be 40 or 45 someday and their kids aren't gonna be on their tax records and this will help them. Secondly is I think what people call the child allowance. And that is the view that at the very bottom the way refundability works is that once you get to a certain level, 12, 13, $14,000, the child tax credit and the EITC become powerful. But for some reason, you can only make three, four, 5,000 a year, you get very little. So I think the second big push is, do you need a bigger child allowance or more pure refundability for the lowest income families? And of course, that creates the issue, why are they or are they not? And I think many of us feel that there's a lot of people in difficult circumstances. I am somebody who believes in a compact, I believe people should do what they can, but there are people for various reasons who struggle and if they have children, we should do more. And then I think the third issue is just whether we need to just raise this whole concept up into the middle classes more so that the earned income tax credit and the child tax credit recognize more that while we wanna help the working poor out most that middle income families are struggling. And I think that there's about to be a proposal coming out of the Senate with Sherrod Brown and Michael Bennett and all have worked on. And I think what they're really trying to do is create a expanded child EITC credit that will fill all these holes so that if Democrats gain power again and they repeal the Bush, parts of the Bush tax cut that there will be actually a pretty detailed plan that people could put in that would be a real lift up for people who are you might say working poor, struggling lower middle class, but even to be honest, a lot of the struggling middle class who as we see often don't have enough money to even get through a single emergency. Okay, so the next question asks with the imminent threat of automation, do you believe a universal basic income as proposed by Andrew Yang could be part of the solution to ease the displacement of many Americans? So, you know, if you struggle through my piece, you'll find that I'm... It's not a struggle. If you relish going through the piece. I, you know, I think that a lot of the people who support universal basic income do do so out of the sense of the kind of economic dignity I'm talking about. But I think there's no question that what I'm proposing ends up being an alternative path. I talk in fact about UBED instead of UBI, universal basic economic dignity. And I think it's for a couple of reasons. One is that when I look at the things you have to do for economic dignity in our country, I don't believe all of it can just be through an income grant. You look at the deprivation of economic dignity for people. I mean, much of it is healthcare. It is violent neighborhoods. It is lack of affordable housing. These are things that require government policy. Well, the universal basic income is so large and it goes to absolutely everybody whether they need it or not. That I worry that it will crowd out the other things that are most needed for economic dignity. And, you know, there's a lot of big proposals out there. But this one actually costs almost as much as all the spending of the US government combined. And there's a reason why a lot of libertarians like this proposal, they are hoping that that it does crowd out the rest of government. So Charles Murray to AI supports this because he hopes this will lead to the end of social security and Medicare, et cetera. So that's one concern I have as well intention as it is. A second I have is if we had this world of the robots taking over and there were less jobs and we had the surplus of money that we could give, I would rather give to what I call double dignity jobs. So when people say there might not be enough jobs, it bothers me when people say that because it's like, well, there's less need for people with to put together this widget or do this service. Okay, I get that. But does that mean that if we now had less private sector jobs but we had a huge surplus of wealth that the way we would do it is just hand everybody a certain amount, I would say, what are all the jobs we really need in our country that are important to giving other people dignity? So right now, you can go place after place where our country is disgracefully, woefully short in jobs that are needed. How about people who have children with autism in their family doing everything they can? We get very little support, very little support to those families. Terrible, horrible, just crazy. Like what kind, I mean, it makes me feel bad about our country, so okay, well, if your child's born with a disability, tough luck, where they have, I don't even wanna say disability, just a challenge, they need more help. You could have an army of people who were trained who could help those families. And the point, and look at, I'm here right now to help my mother, 88 years old, Alzheimer's, dementia, but we can do it right. How many families can do it right? How many? Not many, not many. Maybe in this room, maybe here, not many. So if I have this resources, I wanna help give people meaningful, dignified jobs bringing dignity to other people. If you're pretty well off and your kid's not doing well, you get a tutor for them. You get individualized attention for them. There are so many jobs that are needed that are important to giving people first chances, second chances, dignity. So my view is that if we had this, I would not write everybody a check and pretend that there weren't other jobs needed. I would use that resources to create an army of double dignity jobs helping children who need extra help, helping families who need extra help. And what's great about those jobs is almost all of those jobs are skilled jobs. They're interesting jobs. They are jobs that meet Martin Luther King's view of a dignified job, something that's serving other people. So I have great admiration for the heart of the people who are for universal basic income, but if that situation comes where there's less jobs, I would rather put people to work on the jobs that maybe the market's not demanding, but economic dignity for other people is demanding. This will be the last question that we have time for. What is the best way for Democrats to deflect the socialist label in the 2020 campaign? So this is something I think my article speaks right to, which is we should focus less on, we should focus on what the end goal for people is. Look at what happened on pre-existing conditions. It's a great example. Pre-existing conditions for a while was like Obama's socialist affordable care act. That's what it was. And the focus was on the delivery system. For me, when I look at policy, I look much more, what's your goal for impacting people's lives? So I hated Howard Schultz's line that Medicare for all was un-American. Like if you could actually have a solution that would give everybody healthcare, that's un-American. On the other hand, I also don't like the people who suggest that that's the only way that you can have healthcare as a right. Again, the policy is the means towards the end. The end goal is healthcare should be a right, it should be for everybody. And I have a little bit of humility about what the best way to do that is. I think other people should too. And I think it's great to have the argument, but I think both policy-wise and the way we talk about things, if we focus on what that end goal is for people, what the impact. I think that's the right way to policy and you're open to different ways to get there, but you insist on the goal. But I also think it's the right way for people to talk about it. And to go back to pre-existing conditions, once it stopped being about Obama doing a socialist takeover and people just focused on, do you think that because somebody in your family has a pre-existing condition that you should be able to be bankrupt with super high costs, do you believe that women should have to pay much more than men for healthcare because they have babies and men don't? When you started focusing on what the end goal is, Democrats and progressives and people who believed in this started winning overwhelmingly. So that's a great example where when it was the ACA versus this, it was subject to who did better on Fox News or a progressive outlet and defining it. When it actually came to, whether you're a Democrat, Republican, right, left, libertarian, whatever, do you think that if your child has a disability or your spouse has a hard condition, that that means you should never be able to change jobs and start your own business because your healthcare would skyrocket? Does it mean that if you got laid off the next day that your one job, one pink slip, and one away from financial devastation, when you put it in those terms, overwhelming number of Americans said, that's unacceptable, do something to fix it. Now, right now, Affordable Care Act's doing better because at least that's a solution to fix it and nobody else has come up with a different one. So I again think if people talk, look, I didn't do my piece to be like an economic frame for this campaign or but I do think that if you talk about the things that are more universal to dignity, to people, can they retire with dignity? How do people live their own lives? Should they be able to take care of their kids? Everybody knows somebody who, I don't know many people who don't have a family member, a close friend, a relative who is going through something like that. When it becomes about them and about their dignity and about their respect and fairness to them, then I think people will want solutions and at least people on our side, God bless them, are trying hard to do solutions and I'll be happy when the conservative side is joining in not just making ideological comments about socialism or markets, but actually joining in saying, hey, people are demanding a fix. They're demanding protection for preexisting conditions. If we don't like their proposal, then what's ours? That will be progress. And I can see why Gene Sperling is so good at what he does. Please join me in thanking Gene for a great conversation. Thank you.