Its great to be here with you all to celebrate and discuss an excellent new book by one of the originals and insightful economicic thinkers, amy shlaes. Over the course of her distinguished career, shes got her wideranging intelligence and feel for storytelling to some of the countrys leading intellectual and cultural and technician. She served as a member of the wall street journal editorial board, columnist forle both the Financial Times and Bloomberg News and has taught economic history at the stern school of business. Hi now in addition to her prolific book writing, she serves as a president ial scholar for james college, chairs the board of the Calvin Coolidge president ial foundation and for us at nih hermiachairs the selection comme for the Manhattan Institute cries, an award she herself has won. The latest work a new history is a stunning achievement. Few decades have been printed on the popular quite as much as the 1960s and so many of us remember that decad the decade t dramatic and turbulent moment. The assassinations of the kennedys and Martin Luther king junior. The march on washington and the antiwar protests. Neil armstrong on the moon and fighting in vietnam. The focus though is not a drama that played out on television osreens across the country so much as the failure of washington to control these events and to direct the show. Indeed a generation of politicians came to realize that the centralized hierarchical and highly regulated model of political economies that dominated america have stopped working. More than just the technical failures, she captures the feeling of the country run from the top down. America put up with machinery and culture of mobilization during the two world wars ended in early years of the Nuclear Cold War but at some point that old american yearning independentminded mistrustful authority was bound to reemerge. This is a vitally important story for the time and we can all be grateful she sold it witu such insight. Im happy to report that books will be sold in the back of the rim. Ladies and gentlemen, amy shlaes. [applause] thank you. If you cannot hear me, please let me know. [laughter] thank you. A book about the Great Society deserves great thanks. My thanks to the Manhattan Institute president , the former president is also here, Vice President mendoza and thank you for hosting this event. Id like to think my publisher from harpercollins, my agent and his colleague who is with us. Id like to think the foundation for supporting me, certain friends including jim pearson, kings college. Id like to thank my family, my husband and my daughter who are both here tonight. The first sentence of the book is a question why not socialism. This is the question we asked ourselves last night when we watched the president ial debate. How do we answer it . It is a question all common sense people want to be able to deliver an answer. We all feel the obligation to undertake a longterm investment in projects that open up american minds so they see the challenge and the tragedyse of socialism. We want to share the record of the past for the record ofre venezuela so that when they come to vote or leave businesses and families, younger americans recognize it is not useful policy. But where are we coming this november in 2019, educating is a longterm investment some of us do not have the heart or the long haul. We feel frustrated at the prospect, flow, outcomes and perhaps outright failure in our intellectual entrepreneurship. Politics are much more fun and ends and gratification. All of us have some vanity. People remember politicians. They dont always remember educators. So, we tend to be journalists, philanthropists, business scholars want to pick shortterm projects for that reason. Tonight i would like to tell you the story of a really long term project that starts in the 1950se and features a company, a man and the American Public those are the three characters and it is indeed the story of a failing longterm project, humiliation of business, shame, intellectual failure, no way around it but the story that ends in the 1980s reveals an unexpected feedback. Some of you may know the characters but might appreciate hearing aboutia them one more time. The name of the company was general electorate. In the 1950s, general electorate wrote hi its factories in new york, massachusetts and connecticut and employed many thousands with the industrial center. Americans bought more tvs, radios or freezers and it wasnt just a company, it was an item that served in the Space Program and the Tennessee Valley authority, americans trusted generald electorate just like they trusted the gametr of baseball. The good company that follows rules. As you know thee soviets in 199 invited the u. S. To create a display about the progress of moscow. America sent several modern kitchens and the yellow one was General Electric. Most executives at the time come and again we are talking about the late 50s like the executives of most companies have the time had a set view of how capitalism works. The private sector was invisible. It was like a workhorse for a cow. But it was supposed to do is serve the public sector. The government heard o the sectr like a domestic animal. John maynard keynes noted this at one point. Two ge or most of the g. , that sounded just fine. It was content with the government. The Tennessee Valley authority of the client was the essence of big project and ge executives at the top liked it very much. Ge found that they were one of the biggest customers. They didnt mind serving in the Space Program or these executives and military Industrial Complex unions existed by virtue off strong wal and they demanded that paid packages. Ge could pay that. Social experiments by the federal government, while American Business couldin pay back. Healthcare,ion of the u. S. Could pay that or perhaps a longer leave for young parents. That is just a joke. [laughter] Something Like the long leave we could pay that, to back. We could pay any. Stalin was said to have joked that the only country rich enough to afford a communism is the united states. [laughter] why should that not be true . Why should it not be true in the 1960s, just some benchmarks for you, the Dow Jones Industrial average was approaching aav record level of 1,008 was only a matter of this eebefore it would pass its landmarks but there was one aging underappreciated executiveunderappreciated execu. He was an older guy. He was a vicer president Labor Relations and the name of this band was rickets who believed growth didnt come when the board paid taxes to the federal government or boy made mac altogether and had these big plans. He believed it plans took place when the lab had an idea and wanted it i to the world. Ideas like delightful, the ge idea. He believed the burden of Government Spending and union demand backed by governments would gradually strangle american competitiveness. Even a little bit of socialism could do damage. The reason the kitchens were better is the longterm investments at the beginning of ge. The high wages and prices would wage them and the russians in the end would make better kitchens. Nobody could quite imagine. That was the scope of the imagination, it was the godgiven right of a pristine Companies Like General Electric, to inspire america to return to old capitalism of edison. The problem with urgent and im going to read a quote from him, the trend has to be changed as we are through with everything we cherish and three with everything we cherish. The younger executives that General Electric found this ludicrous. His superlative irritated them and in public many agreed with the evaluation and described the Vice President as a figure that combined the Kentucky Farm background with the fervor of a washing machine salesman. The other said ge didnt worry. They put the future. They were approaching retirement in 1968 or 1965 he would be out anyhow. But he ran from his recliner in delray beach. Still, he determined to make his longterm investment and saving the future. He wanted to teach americans the gift, the nature, the depth, the preciousness. He spent millions of money explaining the value of markets and the upgraded the midwest or the easthe east and hydrangeas l of the extra social benefits would force the companies eventually to leave one such town such as massachusetts, the industrial center. He warned the people of grass will grow if people dont wake up to the importance of competitive prices, wages and costs. They used new media in that case it would be television to reach the people predicting a tv show some of you have seen called ge theater, to showcase traditional american values. He hired staff including the aging actor to be ge spokesman. Remember, the actor was a union man from a democrat that admired frankun roosevelt and the new deal. Still, i phoned t dont see his, but this actor who was hired pat potential. [laughter] we had our cspan audience. Lets stick with this story. She had a special house with all modern appliances kind of like the ge kitchen for the actor to live in and the actor that was Ronald Reagan and adam smith, john locke and took so with little essays added. He gave little bits like the Manhattan Institute does and hoped they would be read. He wasnt exactly popular across ge either. The younger executives didnt like having something of a western propagandist, and they complained about reagan. But for the few remaining years, they couldnt stop the actor and he was sent all around to hundreds of ge plants to explain all about the future of industry and that the industry might west and so on. He wrote speakers about the dangers of socialism and socializing medicine. Power could innovate faster whether it was free to meet its own decisions and maybe hydropower wasnt the only kind of power in the future of the united states. And soon enough, reagan, the actor, began to take the arguments seriously. He even bought his son some ge stock. The year 1960 has a dark cloud over ge. The propaganda mill. The Justice Department was investigating the company. In 1961 the new attorney general whose name was Robert Kennedy pulled together a strong case they were colluding with other Companies Like westinghouse to fix the high prices on the turbine that sold to the tba. The Justice Department went to court and thent judge sent the e executives to jail. The irony is undeniable. Here was ges Propaganda Department mouthing off about free markets, even as ge cheated the american taxpayer. This was a terrible blow for ge. It looked like the worst hypocrite in the world. Nationwide, people felt betrayed by theli trusted company. It was like the scandal of 1919 when this happened to ge. A national betrayal, ge stock went in the present, and the actor was fired and ge theater was canceled and boulware it only deepened such an adventure. The ge itself even the cooperation as did many other companies and the federal government, the news on boulware mocked them and they didnt turn away from socialism. Aley thought the socialist theocracy or just the government expansion sound nice. They voted in Linda Johnson and a socialized program. We can call it the outcome of nse Great Society. Johnson promised to cure poverty, to make america an even better place, a great place with an Even Stronger economy, and they did create the beginnings of a National Healthcare system that we are getting now. Medicare. In this era of the Great Societys leaders to strengthen the unions and johnson was only the beginning, one of the revisions of the Great Society. In this book is the revision of richard nixon. In my research, i discovered that nixon expanded the government as johnson had before him in some areas even more rapidly. And other president s just added on if you want to imagine a great process of program upon program of Charles Murray at the Manhattan Institute was the first to layam off an percent of the recent prizewinner, john hogan laid out a few more. Some of you were at that event. Herthe event. Here is the scope t society yielded. By 1980, health and medical costs were six times the cost of the 1950s c cost in constant dollars. By 1980, public assistance costs were 13 times the 1950s cost. Social insurance costs, insurance costs were 27 times the 1950s level and housing costs 129 times their 1950 cost. Remember the call last night, one of the candidates suggested we needed to spend more on housing. So, what happened the Great Society failed. The government expansion did not eradicate poverty. In fact, the reduction in the poverty rate was already coming down to be fast. Fast. It flattened out and we ended up with 10 and it stayed there. The programs shackled americans intoto independence. Ep generally speaking, there was a terrible morning after the fact that involved the Great Society binge. The economy began to flail as it never had before. We know that unemployment went to words 10 , and we know that Interest Rates went past 15 . The high cost of labor, under policies backed by the government, did drive American Companies to leave town. Grass to grow in pittsfield. Just as boulware predicted the Thriving Center of detroit became the rust belt, and i write a lot about that in Great Society. The Dow Jones Industrial average stayed below a thousand for a generation. Today, younger americans believe in ever rising stock market is their birthright. They expect nothing else. So, you want to stop and contemplate the duration from the mid60s until the 80s, even in nominal terms with great inflation, we didnt pass 1,000. Imagine if today we had to wait until 2035 to get to the next trrier. In my book, what i learned in writing it is you dont have to be socialist all the way to do damage. Indeed, the lawyer was right even a little socialism doesnt credible damage. This is not the paradox is the highest road to serfdom. You do eventually get. Sooner than you think. And the whole file you can imagine boulware over decades beating himself up aboutng the failure of his effort at enlightenment. But, as you know, one figure was now in life and yet he did care. That was the actor, reagan, and he decided to try politic politd in 1964, he took his standard ge speech out of the can or at the door and gave it on tv. It practically was word for word. America had to socialism or none. This is what became known as the time for choosing speech. And then running for governor of california where he challenged the Great Society numerous times, including the Legal Department that came out of our poverty program. And keep the policies of ge into practice. Government restraint saving money, fighting expansion of welfare, personal dignity, support, respect from markets and when he did run for president and one time it was 1980, and there really was no longer the morning after a fact of the Great Society. It could be morning in america. The entire revolution reagan brought this morning in america came out of those little boulware pamphlets that lend so lovingly prepared to boulwares longterm investment that no one remembered had paid off in the magnitude of the disney are unimaginable. Markets thrived and we did get a strong rising market. I will stop and say there are several less than from the Great Society. That is one of 12 chapters of the book. First of all, but listen to the overarching lesson of the book is that the government is rotten and planning. No matter how much it spends, you get a perverse outcome. As a philanthropic project that looks like a complete goof or failure in the short or medium term may not turn out to be a complete failure in the end. Sometimes the project is just early and sometimes its good. Think of it in the point of view of the voters who learned about the markets from ge when reagan gave talks in the cafeteria factories. Some of the tens of thousands of meetings between reagan and ge, they understood what reagan was seeing when they spoke as a politician that there was another way for the american worker. Wa the marriage as the famous bluecollar vote. Another point more obvious that itis worth mentioning is that e Great Society offers a less then on trusting your own judgment. If you suspect a program isnt good, it probably isnt. If you suspect a program might be good, invest in it. Think of the institutions that inspired you as a child and leave the plan south for your own institution. Much of the work i do and the Manhattan Institute is trying to plant these seeds. A theoretical speed can be the most fruitful. A third and final point, individuals matter without Manhattan Institute scholars, individual scholars, there would have been no broken window policies. Without boulware, no reagan. If you think that now i would like to raise a theoretical glass of wine. Remember him doing this work that you may be wrong. Im standing right here in manhattan in 2019 with you three decades after the death of that ge executive. And everyone in this room is raising a mental glass to reagan, the Public Policy work, and also most of all, we are raising our glass to the name of boulware. Thank you very much. [applause] now raise your glass, really. Its time to take a few questions. Yes sir. When i think of a Great Society there are twsociety thes that come to mind. O lbj and the revolution in america. The civil rights, the riots in the street, lbj the response to it was a Great Society. Helping blacks get out of poverty, helping blacks overcome the suicidal that was donation societal discrimination. What i remember about the racial strife in society is that lbj was abandoned by people that opposed the vietnam war. The only people that stuck with him as the my question to you is what about the civil rights revolution in america . How could that not be in your book and how can we explain the Great Society without talking about the Race Relations and to change it is a minute and a very extensively. This is just one chapter. The book looks at civil rights law, so we have the civil rights act, which came before, as you know, the Voting Rights act. And basically, the early rights are great and important and revolutionary. And without them, we wouldnt be where we are. The later law particularly following the howard diversity speech of president johnson was more about benefits than the positive rights of what people get. And i argue, and theres plenty of evidence for that is that e those benefits didnt help for people white or black. They kind of kept them poor. For example, today, we had the hillbilliology book tha but hass pathologies in addition to poverty. In the 1960s, we had an abolition of all in order to improve butpe it didnt help it just makes life harder and accustomed people to getting benefits. So, i divide in this book i marked the divide as Johnson Howard university speech. Ijo think johnson got ahead. And i do have the very idle just say then we can move on, i have a long treatment of the 1964 convention at which the mississippi delegation was not seated, and the decision of kind of betrayal of organized to turn away those people because they needed to both of the regular mississippi party. Im very excited to read your book. It seems like a rightful success. Another book that is also excellent. There seems to be two schools of thought about the Great Society welfare state. The first is that it was bad and counterproductive the second, is more moderate and more accommodation at th and centriss that it basically does enough or about enough, and if you include credits into tax poverty rates, since the 1960s, you will see that a lot of the programs helped reduce poverty and we shouldnt accept the leftwing narrative that we need to do so much more and there is so much more transfers to embrace the scandinavian or european tight welfare system. European tight welfare system. Centrist order centerright point of view that is basically enough transfers now so kind of accept the Great Society. That is an important question. When youpo cant poverty you can count with benefits or without. Are they for when you go without cause there are a lot of poor people, so what are we doing, i would argue that we are anesthetizing people. Onepl of the things o on that is bigger becoming so accustomed, they dont see a way out. They dont see an opportunity to work. They dont believe they can work. So, think it is destructive even iif it keeps people quiet. Clearly some of the benefits of 1960s particularly the money that flowed in from the office of Economic Opportunity to do that he was meant to calm people so they would rio not right. It didnt work because the money got caught in bureaucratic traps and people were angry about the genuine problems, such as the bigotry of the police in los angeles. But, i dont think you can buy out people. I do believe we would be stronger if we had a menu of opportunity rather than an element. Nick gillespie. I am partway through the book pk which im enjoying, and i also have learned how to pronounce allemule. Can you talk about the relevance of the book today about redistribution and growing the welfare state, because we are going through a spasm which is kind of new right now. I mean, the people saying we need to be redistributing things much more. And just to make it more complicated, what is the role of being in the cold war versus 30 years out of the cold war, and how communism has both an alternative model in the thread to the american flag, how does that play into arguments about giving back the message. Can i answer the second first . It relates to to it davitts towards socialism. Younger people today have nothing to compare to. They have not served in the military by and large. They havent seen a lot. And so, they love the idea. Younger people in the 1960s, and by because a chapter on the iran statement so that would be like 1940. So they were more less naive. They were still naive, but they were less naive because the world was closer, because communism was closer, because their older brother was in the korean conflict. So now we have massive naivete to deal with and that is a problem. Another factor, another parallel between the period and that, i would say we are liberated because of the progressives can call for socialism and talk about socialism, then we can talk about socialism without being labeled. Without involving the soviet union and so on. I tried to do a good job. I wanted to say one other thing, in the book i tried to capture the romance of socialism. You think about when people go on up trip, they go to a latin American Country and they see more social democracy or they fall in love with scandinavia or outrage in the book i have a character who goes on a trip that is intellectual, its called looking for socialism. In the character is tom hayden, recently Peter Collier died and peter gave me a picture of a comb that he had that tom hayden gave me that was made from the fuselage of a downed american jet. It was a north vietnamese knickknack of pride that said hundreds american plane down. Someone gave that comb made a fuselage of a downed american plane to tom hayden who gave it to Peter Collier. So toms trip is very romantic trip, he meets a girl and so on and absolutely intellectually lazy, crazy and sad because he does not see the reality in hanoi at all, he probably got away of our bombing. Im wondering whether johnson called a halt at the time. There was a halt because he did not want to be blamed fort bombing tom hayden. But thats the story of the romance of socialism which is so present today and toms own confusion. At the end of the chapter he decides that socialism is wonderful because its never finished and as long as its not finished, no one may criticize it. That is the beauty of it. I believe we have time for one more question. My question is whether there is a society that is ever successfully woken from socialist anastasia, is there a model that we might follow to walk back socialist tendencies . I dont want to Say Something bad has to happen before we wake up but thats the usual pattern, the country gets knocked on the head, the country inflates and then regroups, that is most countries. I do believe americans love business in the more young people we can exposed tone traditional common sense ideas, im talking about for age, daca or reading books that they virtually do not get to read in high school or reading about Calvin Coolidge, they respond with great excitement, i hope he will permit me too plug my foundation for a nanosecond per drama scholarship for Academic Merit at the foundation. Its like the specialized high schools in new york were the road scholarship, is really about Academic Merit and is quite a serious competition. We only have four scholarships a year because of very expensive, its a full ride to college and we already have 15000 kids who have registered to apply for four scholarships this year. What do those kids want, they want the money, they want independence from their parents, they want to not have to fill out the faster. A lot of them also like the idea of doing them ont their own. I think its important for us to send signals to young people that you will be rewarded for enterprise, for trying and doing things on your own and going your own way, currently our system does not particular do that, its more the reward system trying to figure out what you can get from the point of view of a 17yearold. I think its easy to change the political culture if you focus on 16 20 yearolds and show them whats in it for them and also play to their natural wisdom which they have and say that we understand that you might think this in you might not be wrong. I encourage all of you please join me in thinking amity shlaes. I encourage all of you to buy a book, by copy for a friend, buy a copy for your enemy. [laughter] all of them will be enriched by reading this wonderful wonderful book. [applause] television has changed since cspan began 41 years ago. But our mission continues, to provide an unfiltered view of government. Already this year we brought to primary election coverage, the president ial impeachment process and the federal response to the coronavirus, you can watch all of cspan Public Affairs programming on television, online or listen on our free radio app and be part of the National Conversation through cspan daily washing Washington Journal Program or through our media feed, cspan created by private industry, americas Television Company as a Public Service and brought to you today by the television provider. Cspan washington journal live everyday with news and policy issues that impact you. Coming up tuesday morning, the executive director of the National Conference of state legislatures tim story discusses the 2 trillion coronavirus ag d package means for state and the state response to the crisis. Then doctor of Nyu Langone Health and sirius xm doctor radio talk about the latest development in u. S. Effort to combat the pandemic. Ann taylor, president of international, labor union that represents more than 300,000 workers and the hospitality industry, how the coronavirus pandemic is impacting his members. Watch cspan washington journal, live at seven eastern tuesday morning. Join the discussion. Next number tv mary gray looks at the workforce that drives large tech Companies Like amazon, google and over with her book ghost work and Later University of texas professor michael lind on how democracy are being impacted by new classwork. Welcome everybody, thank you very much for coming. Im glad to see you all here. My name av
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