Transcripts For CSPAN2 Amity Shlaes Great Society 20240713 :

CSPAN2 Amity Shlaes Great Society July 13, 2024

Storytelling to some of the countries leading intellectual cultural institutions. She served as a member of the wall street journal editorial board, columnist for the Financial Times and Bloomberg News and has taught history at the school of business now in addition to her prolific book writing she serves as a president ial scholar for Kings College in the chairs the board of the Calvin Coolidge president ial foundation and a big coup for us chaired the Selection Committee for the Manhattan Institute prize and an award she herself has one. The latest work Great Society, a new history is a stunning achievement. Few decades have been printed on the popular imagination quite as much as the 1960s and so many of us remember the decade for the dramatic and turbulent moments. The assassinations of the kennedys and Martin Luther king junior, the marchmo on washingtn in antiwar protests. Neil armstrong on the moon and fighting in vietnam. The focus is in the drama that played out on Television Screens across the country so much as theb failure to patrol these events and directly show. Indeed a generation of politicians came to realize theb centralized hierarchical and highly regulated model of political economy that dominated postwar america stopped working. Yet more than just the technical failures, she captures the stifling feeling of a country run from the top down. America put up with the machinery and culture of mobilization during the world wars and over the years the Nuclear Cold War but at some point that old american yearning swashbuckling independentminded distrustful of authority was bound to reemerge. This is a vitally important story for our time and we can be grateful she is told with such insight. Im happy to report books will be sold in the back of the room ladies andme gentlemen, amity shlaes. [applause] think you. If you cannot hear me, please let me know. It took about the Great Society deserves great thanks. My thanks to the manhattanth Institute President , the former president who is also here, the vaVice President and for hosting this event id like to thank my publisher, my agent and his colleague that is with us. Id like to think the Coolidge Foundation for supporting me, certain brands including thomas smith, jim pearson who are both here, tim denison and especially Josiah Peterson who worked on the research. Id like to thank my family, my husband and my daughter who are both here tonight. The first sentence is a question, why not socialism. This is a question we askedw ourselves. How to be answered . Is a question you all people want to be able to deliver an answer to. We dont really feel an obligationll to undertake a longterm investment in projects that would open the American Mind to see the challenge and the tragedy of socialism. We want to share the record of the past so that when they come to vote and leave, younger americans recognize that it isnt useful policy. Its november and 2019, educating is a longterm investment. We feel frustrated that the prospect and outright failure in the intellectual entrepreneurship. Politics are much more fun and instant gratification. All of us have some vanity. People remember politicians. They do not always remember educators. So we want to be remembered and sometimes pick shortterm projects for that reason. Ted like to tell you a story of a longterm project. It starts in the 1950s and features a company and the American Public is humiliation of business, shame and intellectual failure, no way around it but the story that ends in the 1980s also reveals him unexpected feedback some of you might know the characters that appreciate hearing about them one more time. The name of the company was General Electric. In the 1950s, General Electric rode high in factories in new york, massachusetts and connecticut and employedd many thousands. It was the Industrial Center in some ways. Every year americans bought more tvs, radios or freezers. It wasnt just the company, it was an icon that served the state program to the tennessee,e valley authority, americans trusted the General Electric just like they trusted the game of baseball a good company that follows rules and the essence. The soviets invaded the u. S. To create a display of progress at moscow and the lemon yellow one must General Electric. Most ge executives at the time, and again we are talking about the late 50s, like the executives of most companies at a time had a view of how capitalism works. The private sector was invincible. It was like a workhorse. What it was supposed to do is serve and they herded the sector like an animal. Threeos or ge or most of ge that sounded just fine. The discontent with the government. The Tennessee Valley authority is the essence of the project and they liked it very much and found that it was one of the customers. They didnt mind surfing the space program. Unions existed by virtue of the ball and they demanded they pay packages, social experiments by the federal government, while American Business that pays out. Maybe expansion of healthcare or the u. S. Could pay that or have a longer leave, that is just a joke, Something Like a longer leave while we could see that,. Too mac. The unions we could pay any load. Stalin was said to have joked the only country rich enough to avoid communism was the United States. [laughter] why should it not be true in the 1960s the average was approaching a record level of 1,000 iindia seem to matter of months before they would pass the landmark but there was underappreciated executives that saw things differently. He was an older guy, he was the Vice President and Labor Relations and his name was boulware. He believed it didnt come when the board paid taxes to the federal government are met altogether and wrote out a big ooans he believed it took place on a lonely scientist in his lab had an idea and wanted the world, ideas like the light bulb. Ge idea. Boulware believed the burden of Government Spending and union demand backed by government would gradually strangle american competitiveness. Even a little bit of socialism he said could do damage. The reason the kitchens were better than the russian tensions as the old Term Investments at the beginning of ge. The reason the companies strive is they were unaffordable but the wages and prices would render them and competitive and the russians would think that her kitchens. Nobody could imagine japan at this point that was the scope of the imagination into view of boulware for a Pristine Company like General Electric to inspire america to return to old capitalism and the problem with urgent. Or we are through with everything we cherish. The younger executives at the General Electric found him records. His superlative irritated them and in public many agreed with this evaluation you figure that combined a Kentucky Farm background with the fervor of a washington machine salesman. [laughter] the other executives said ge didnt worry, they were the future. Boulware was approaching retirement by 1960 or maybe 1965 he would be out. Still he was determined to use his final hours to make his own longterm investment. He wanted to teach the gift, the nature, the precious gift of capitalism. He explained the value of gmarkets. They would leave one such town and he warned them grass will grow if they didnt wake up to the importance of the competitive prices and costs. He used to new media in his case to the television to reach the people creating a tv show some of you have seen called ge theater showcase traditional american values. He hired staff including the aging actor to pge spokesman. Remember, the actor was the union men, a democrat that a buyeadmired Franklin Roosevelt d the new deal. Still, i wont say his name yet, but the actor that was hired have potential. [laughter] we have our cspan on the. So whats with their story. For the actor to live in and boulware the actor who was Ronald Reagan and adam smith, john locke and tocqueville with essays by henry he gave little books like the Manhattan Institute does andou hoped that they would be read. This actor wasnt exactly popular across ge either. R the executives didnt like the propaganda but for the few tremaining years, they couldnt stop and they were sent around to hundreds of plants to explain the future of the industry and so on and the dangers of nesocialism. Maybe hydropower wasnt the only power in the future of the United States and soon enough, the actor began to take the arguments seriously. He even brought his son some stock. They cast a dark cloud over ge. The Justice Department was investigating the company. The new attorney general whose name was Robert Kennedy pulled together a strong case to fix high prices on the turbines have sold their its about the free market even as ge cheated the american taxpayer. Its like the sox scandal when it happened to ge and National Strategy fired and canceled and then retired to delray beach. Ge is solved as did many other in the federal government the news with other efforts. They thought social democracy sounded nice. Johnson promised toon cure povey to make america a better place. This year they did strengthen unions one of the provisions of Great Society in this book is the revision of richard nixon. They expanded the government as johnson had before him in some areas. They were six times the cost in constant dollars. By 1980 it was 13 times the 1950 cost. Social insurance costs were 27 times the level and housing costs 129 times the 1950 cost. Ug they wanted to spend more in housing so the Great Society field. The programs shackled americans and generally speaking there was a terrible morningafter effects that followed the Great Society, the economy began to flail as it never had before. We know that unemployment went towards 10 and Interest Rates went past 15 . The high cost of labor under the policies backed by the government did drive American Companies to leave town and the grass to grow in pittsfield, just as boulware predicted. The center of detroit did become the rust belt and i write a lot about that and the Great Society. They stayed below a thousand for a generation. Today they be needed in the ever rising stock market as their birthright. They expect nothing else. Ehe imagine if today we had to wait until 2035 to get to the next barrier. You dont have to be a socialist all the way to do damage. Indeed, he was right on even a little socialism does incredible damage. You do eventually get there and in fact sooner than you think you. The whole layout you can imagine boulware beating himself up about the failure of his effort and enlightenment, but as you know, one figure was now enlightened, and he did care, that was the actor reagan and he decided to try politics in the 1964 he took his standard ge speech out of the can or desk drawer and gave it on tv basically word for word. America had to choose socialism or not. This is what became known as the time for choosing and then the actor ran for governor of california where he challenged the Great Society is numerous times including the Legal Department that came out of our Poverty Program and he put the policies and practice. They were saving money, fighting expansion of welfare, personalpa dignity, support, respect for markets and when he did run for president and he won, it was 1980 and was no longer the morning after the fact of the reeat society. It could be morning in america. The entire resolution reagan brought this morning in america came around to give those pamphlets. The longterm investment if no one remembered had paid off in the magnitude that was near unimaginable. Markets thrived and we did get a strongly rising market. There were several lessons and that is one of 12 chapters in the book. First of all, the overarching lesson of the book is that the government is rotten and planning no matter how much it spends you get a perverse lesson. The private project that looks like a complete goof of failure may not turn out to be a complete failure in the end. Sometimes it is just early and sometimes that is good. Think of it from the point of view of the voters who learned about markets from when reagan gave talks in the cafeteria of factories. Some attempted tens of thousands of meetings and understood what reagan was saying when he spoke as a publication that there was another way for the American Worker they emerged as the famous bluecollar vote. Another plaintiff more obvious that that is worth mentioning is the society offers a lesson on trusting your own judgment. If you suspect a program is not that it probably isnt. If you suspect a program might be good, invest in it. Because the institutions that inspired you as a child and leave a the plan for your own institutions. Much of the work i do is trying to plant the seed. A theoretical seed can be the most fruitful. The third and final point, individuals matter without the individual scholars, there would have been no broken windows policy, without boulware, no Ronald Reagan. Now i would like to raise a theoretical glass of wine. Im standing right here in manhattan with you three decades after the death of that obscure ge executives and everyone in this room is raising a glass to the Public Policy work but also most of all we are raising our class to the name of boulware. Thank you very much. [applause] shes kindly agreed to take a few questions. Yes sir. [inaudible] when i think of the Great Society two things come to mind, lbj and the race revolution in america, civil rights the solution to the riots in the streets. Helping blacks get out of poverty, helping them overcome discrimination based on race. What i remember was that obj was abandoned by people and the only people that stuck with him as the naacp. My question to you is what about the civil rights revolution in america and how can it not be in your book and how can we explore the Great Society. It is in my book very inexpensively. The book looks at the civil rights law so we have this act that came before the Voting Rights act and basically the early right are great and important and revolutionary and without them, we wouldnt be where we are. Particularly following the Howard University speech of president johnson was one of benefits, but people get. Those benefits didnt help poor people, white or black. Thethe kind of kept them poor. For example today we have the hillbilliology book thats so important. What can we do kind of struggling through the pathologies. In the 1960s we had an appellation law but it didnt help that just made life harder. I mark the divide as they speech i think that he got ahead in bible say there is a treatment in the convention at which the mississippi delegation was not defeated into the decision of the betrayal of organized labor with johnson to turn away those people because they needed to go to the regular mississippi par party. There seems to base two schools of thought first is that it was counterproductive in the seconds that there was more moderate and accommodation. You will see a lot of the programs helped reduce poverty. We need to embrace more of their system. Where do you come down on the point of view without the boost basically transfers here panic thats a very important question and you can count up with benefits or without. When you go without, there are a lot of poor people. I would argue that we are enough of advising people. They are becoming so accustomed they dont see their way outward in opportunity to work or believe they can work so i think its destructive even if it keeps people quiet. Some of the benefits, particularly the money that flowed in chapter for was meant to calm people so they wouldnt write. The money got trapped in but i dont think you can buy out people. We would be stronger if we had a menu of opportunity rather than the entitlement im partway through your book which i am enjoying and im so glad to learn how to pronounce lemule. [laughter] can you talk a bit about the relevance of your book to the contemporary debates about redistribution because we are going through a spasm that his new. To make it more complicated, what is the role of being in the cold war versus 30 years out and how communism as both an alternative model and a threat, how does that play into arguments about getting panic i answer the second question first. I think also attitudes towards socialism comes out younger people today have nothing to compare to the heavens serve in the military by and large. My book has a chapter on the statements of that would be. Because the older brother was in the korean conflict, so now we have these massive naivete to deal with and that is involved in ano

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