Beyond the headlines. Jim and deborah fallows and steven brill join me to discuss this. And reading, writing, and arithmetic from around the world. Global lessons from the one man who has spent his career studying the best Education Systems from around the globe. What the u. S. Can learn from others. Ticktock, ticktock. Seconds, minutes, hours, days, months, and years. Just what is the nature of time . And are our days truly numbered . I will talk with the brilliant physicist carlo rovelli. Time really goes at a different speeding defending how you move and where you are. But first, here is my take. In september, google will celebrate its 20th birthday. When it was founded in 1998, it was one of many search engines. But it quickly became the chief gateway to the internet and is now one of a handful of Tech Companies that dominate not just the American Economy but also increasingly american life. It recently received a birthday present from the European Union, a record 5 billion fine for violating antitrust laws. That came just a week after the u. K. Slapped facebook with a fine for allowing Cambridge Analytica to mine personal data from as many as 87 million facebook users. The penalty was much smaller, 660,000, but it was the maximum allowed under british law. These punishments are one sign that the era of unbridled faith and optimism in the Technology Industry is coming to an end. As the information revolution took off in the 1990s, we all got caught up in the excitement of the age, along with the novelty of the products and their transformative power. And yet as these revolutionary technologies created new industries, destroyed others and reshaped communities and cities, we simply assumed this was the way of the world and nothing could be done to change it or shape it. That would have been socialiststyle interference with the free market. But the result does not seem to be one that a libertarian would celebrate. We now have a tech economy dominated by just a few mammoth companies that effectively create a barrier to entry of new comers. Then there is the erosion of privacy. Because Technology Companies deal with billions of consumers, any individual is a speck, a tiny data point. For most Technology Companies, the individual consumer is also a product whose information is sold to others for a profit. So he or she is doubly disempowered. Change is likely to come from two directions. Regulatory action in the west will force companies to play by the rules and create new rules that give more control to the individual. In may, the European Union instituted the general Data Protection regulation, which makes it easier for people to know how their data is being used and how to limit that use. Violators can be find up to 4 of their Global Annual sales. Importantly, these rules apply to any Company Working with europeans data. So american Tech Companies have had to change their policies too. The second direction is even more intriguing and comes from the east. Until recently, as an indian entrepreneur pointed out to me, there were just a handful of companies with more than 1 billion users on their platforms. All Companies Based in the United States or china, google facebook, tencent. But now india has a biometric i. D. System. It is the only one of these massive platforms that is publicly owned. That means it does not need to make money off of user data. Its possible to imagine that in india it will become normal to think of data as personal property that individuals can keep, rent, or sell as they wish, in a very open and Democratic Free market. Add innovations in blockchain technology, and we are likely to see even more challenges to the current gatekeepers of the internet in the near future. Change is coming to transform the world of technology. Properly handled, it can produce freer markets, lower barriers for new entrepreneurs, and fresh technologies combined with greater individual empowerment. Now thats something even the technologists in Silicon Valley should be celebrating. For more, go to cnn. Com fareed and read my column. Lets get started. Okay. I want to step away from the fray of minute to minute, second to second news for a moment and talk about the big picture of america. The 30,000foot view. Lets forget about the partisan rancor for a bit and look at what is really going on in the country outside washington, outside the beltway. And i suppose the big question is, is america in decline . Is it headed for trouble . Is it in a nationwide depression of sorts . Or is it vibrant as ever, thriving, growing, innovating . Joining me now are james and deborah fallows, the husband and wife authors of our towns a 100,000mile journey into the heart of america. And steven brill, the author of tailspin the people and forces behind americas 50year fall and those fighting to reverse it. Steven, lets start with you because i think you paint a very important picture that i think people dont adequately understand. Which is that a core element of what has made America Great, the kind of upward mobility, the social mobility, the ability for bright, hardworking poor people to move up has kind of been arrested or stagnated in various ways and for various reasons. So lay out what that problem is. Well, what i decided to do when i set out to write this book was try to understand why it seemed that the core values, the core things that made America Great seemed to be in decline, whether its the ability of washington to get anything done, the kind of bipartisanship we used to enjoy on big issues, whether its the income mobility that you just mentioned, whether its the monetization of our democracy, the inability of people without money to have anything that approaches an equal voice. And what i found was that our core values in many ways had been hijacked. The First Amendment had been used by corporate interests to dominate our politics. Meritocracy itself had some unintended and not good results. So when you hear this, jim fallows, i know you and deborah went out into the country and you saw some surprisingly optimistic things. But youve lived, both of you, in washington on and off. You know this world that steven brill is talking about. How do you make sense of that piece of it . So i think over the years weve talked china, where deb and i used to do live, and have made the point that in china everything is simultaneously true someplace in the country. I think thats the case in the u. S. The u. S. Is not quite as chaotic as china, but we agree that all the pressures steve is talking about are distorting distribution of income, opportunity, the corruption of politics in the past generation. And we feel that is becoming better and better understood. Its an obvious part of politics. Steve has laid it out in his book. Were talking about a part that we think is not as well understood or realized, which is this contrary renewal, reform, dispersed effort across the country of people saying we can find ways to create different opportunities for people whose parents may have worked in giant factories, but these people can have jobs in the Wind Turbine Industry and despite the poisonous rhetoric, cities that voted for trump, citizens and refugees are stipulating the economy, running the civic government. Theyre important civic leaders. There are two americas, but in a different way than we usually talk about. Theres National Politics which is so dispiriting. And theres this other america people are not recognizing of getting things done at the local level. Deborah, describe the journey. What exactly did you guys do . It wasnt 35,000 feet, it was actually 2,500 feet across the country. We were in our small plane for four to five years, not nonstop, but going from this is a tiny single prop plane. A little propeller plane. We would hop from town to town and stay in these towns for one or two to three weeks at a time. And coming in at very low altitude, a soft entry to the town to get a sense of what it was like. And then staying at the motel 6, going around to see a lot of the all kinds of people in the town. We spent time in classrooms in schools, with the mayor, with people who ran the ymca, at brew pubs, in the hospitals, in the clinics with the doctors, to get a sense of, as much as we could, the variety of things, and a sense of the energy or lack thereof that was going on in the communities. And when you looked at it, what did you think was the telltale sign of vitality . Was there something you could look at to say, this is going to be a better story than we might have thought . At the end of the book we have 10 1 2 signs of civics success, the half being whether a craft brew industry, that being a certain type of proxy for urban expansion, some type of entrepreneur. One way or the other, all the signs come down to are there people who view the welfare of that town, that region, the state, as something that matters to hem in the long run. Theyre not just consuming what is there, theyre not just living in their own household and maximizing their own wealth but saying, it matters to make plans 20 years from now to build a Community College in central oregon. Long term proprietary interest in the society. Yes. Everyone is so short term oriented right now. Not really, because the older people in the town are looking to the young people who they want to come to the town to save it, to move it forward. When we come back, im going to ask steve brill how these bottomout forces are going to solve the big topdown problems that we face. When we come back. Who would have thought, who would have guessed . An Energy Company helping cars emit less. Making cars lighter, its a good place to start, advanced oils for those hardworking parts. Fuels that go further so drivers pump less. Improving efficiency is what we do best. Energy lives here. Improving efficiency is what we do best. electronic dance music all the tools you need for every step of the way. Make it, squarespace and we are back with jim and deborah fallows and steve brill, talking about nothing less than the future of america. You heard the fallows perspective, which i characterize as the friedman one from a different column, which is, if you want to be optimistic about this country, stand on your head because everything looks better from the bottom up. But the kind of problems you outline, that the government is deeply partisan, it cant get anything done, we havent built any serious infrastructure for 30 or 40 years, you have a deadlock, you cant get Scientific Research done, you have money problems. These are all big problems that i mean, i hate to say it, but the fact that the mayor of sioux falls is doing a good job, or some community has a good public library, it isnt going to so have these huge problems. I dont agree. I think it will, because i think the Solutions Come from the bottom up, especially when the up is totally paralyzed. And people who see those solutions and are disgusted about the macro picture will start to support political leaders who want to spread those solutions. You dont have to go far from this studio i dont have a prop plane, even to find examples of that. Theres a converted zipper factory in queens that i write about, where a veteran of the iraq war, who went to harvard, a harvard graduate, decided to start a Job Training Program where he takes people who are sales clerks or theyre out of work baristas, people with average incomes of 18,000 a year, if they have incomes. And he has a Job Training Program for them where they learn to be coders, computer coders. And 11 months later, its a free program, they graduate into jobs averaging 85,000 a year in the tech industry. Now, that can be done. All right. I still remain somewhat skeptical that with all these microefforts, the estimates are we need to spend something on the range of 3 trillion to rebuild american infrastructure to make the economy competitive. Actually a little more. More. So where is the money going to come from . First, exactly what steve is describing around new york is what weve seen in mississippi, in south carolina, in fresno, all of the other places. Our experience is exactly the same on that. I can imagine two futures. Here is the future i hope for, which is that the accumulation of real world, real time experiments happening in thousands of places right now, will produce both ideas and sort of identify problems and produce leaders who will say, ive done this in brooklyn, ive done this in fresno, ive done this in minnesota, and these people will have more influence on National Politics. Thats one future i hope is the case, that National Politics will be leavened in a positive way by this constructive effort from the bottom up. The other possibility is that National Politics remains in crisis and then at least its better if we have this healthy local fabric than if we dont. So one way or the other, its worth paying attention to this part of america thats been missed in the national media, which i think in different ways were all trying to do. The one thing i would add is, if you look at the 2016 election, what is Crystal Clear is that people were frustrated and disheartened with government. Now, they decided to choose, you know, the same person who convinced people that they should enroll in Trump University to solve their problems. But i think that the country is learning that lesson, that you really need people who are qualified, who are prepared, and who have the kinds of answers to the problems that plague america that we need. And the 40 who still support trump . 40 means theres 60 . So i dont think you can thread the needle with 70 votes in the Electoral College with 70,000 votes scattered among three states every time. The other thing ill add is, you ask wheres the money. Were undertaxed in this country. The tax burden for wealthy people in this country, and even for the middle class, is way below what it is in any other developed country. But there isnt the political will to do that. Well, you know, if enough water mains break at the same time and enough bridges collapse at the same time and enough of the power grid goes out at the same time, we will understand that its an emergency. We have a slow moving emergency with infrastructure that is fast accelerating. And people will get disgusted. Deborah, let me ask you, when you talk to these people, you know, at the local level, what did they what was their feeling about National Politics . Were they sort of hoping that they could then go on and run it . Were they deeply frustrated . When we went into the towns that we visited, we never asked people about National Politics. We went in asking about, whats your town like, whats going on here, what drives you, what do you need, what are your problems, how did you fix them. And National Politics did not come up, either from certainly not from us or from the people we talked to except for a very few times. We started this in 2013, and it was really about 2016, at the time of the conventions, that people started talking about National Politics. And it really felt to us like there was a distinct disconnect. The energy, the drive, the thoughtfulness, was about what can we do locally, how can i have an impact on my town. Then there was this other thing that was National Politics, which if you ask that question, youll get an answer like you can hear on any cable news show. But it wasnt what was driving the energy of the pineapple. And it felt more like when you go to make your national vote, are you republican or democrat. Youre what youve always been. Or its so no matter what youre doing day to day on the ground, when it came time to vote, you were tribal and you just voted for your tribe . Exactly, yes. Which has become more and more bitter. You were mentioning texas. We saw very conservative areas in kansas, columbus city, ohio, people voted themselves tax increases to improve the library, improve the downtown city infrastructure. If people can have confidence in their leaders, there is a willingness to say, yes, we should do our part. We have to close it on that. One thing i can say is that the hopeful note is that these books, and very different ways, illuminate america so much more interestingly than the kind of focus on washington politics. So thank you for writing these terrific books. Next on gps, the United States has an education problem. If you dont believe me, listen to my next guest. Hes been studying Education Systems around the world for decades and he says the u. S. Has a lot of learning to do. That story when we come back. Alright guys lets go lets do this directions to the Greek Theater beep can i get a connection . Can i get can i get a connection . Can i get a connection . People confuse but theyre different. Its nice to remove artificial ingredients. Kind never had to. We choose real ingredients like almonds, peanuts and a drizzle of dark chocolate. Find your favorite and give kind® a try. This is moving day with the best inhome wifi experience and millions of wifi hotspots to help you stay connected. And this is moving day with Reliable Service appointments in a twohour window so youre up and running in no time. Show me decorating shows. This is staying connected with xfinity to make moving. Simple. Easy. Awesome. Stay connected while you move with the best wifi experience and twohour appointment windows. Click, call or vi