Care, but also the costs of that care and the sort of wrenching decisions we have to make. Thats what we are trying to address with. Health maintenance organizations 40 years ago. And i think thats where we have to turn today. Great. Thank you. We have to wrap things up. Unfortunately. The Volker Alliance is a nonpartisan nonprofit founded by the former head of the Federal Reserve board of governors paul volcker and dedicated to advancing his vision of an empowered Public Sector workforce. Sometimes in very nicely with the theme of the day. I want to thank fill up and mr. Is a good friend and that helps for hosting us today at columbia and we have a great set panelists for this third panel we have two people joining us on zoom Neil Ferguson and, jen parker and up here we have paul light to my right, to my left, and then richard roth joining us. So well turn first to neil on zoom. He is the milbank family senior fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University and also a senior faculty fellow of the Belfer Center for science and international affairs, harvard. Hes the author of over 16 books, including most doom the politics catastrophe, and hes a regular columnist with Bloomberg Opinion and an Award Winning historian and economic journalist. So without further ado, let me turn the panel over to neil. Thank you very much, emily. I hope im audible. I can see that im visible. Apologies not having any fancy and apologies also because im going to stretch the meaning social almost to breaking points in. Im about to say. But i hope that it wont seem entirely beside the point. Ten years ago i published a called the great degeneration, the subtitle of which was how institutions decay and economies die. It began life as the the reith lectures the bbc the year before, and it made for arguments. First, the Public Finance was violating Edmund Burkes contract between the generations. Secondly, and here are pompously myself that excessive complex government regulation is in fact the disease of which it purports to be the cure among the most dangerous foes of the rule of law are the authors of very long and convoluted laws. Thirdly, that the rule law had degenerated into the rule lawyers, which is different. And finally, that salvation lay in the associational activity of citizens, for example, that new educational institutions would be the best to disjunct tional schools and universities. So the issues that have already been discussed by the previous panels are ones i have thought about for more than a decade. The theme of what i want to see today is the connect between the work that and yuval and nearly all the other speakers have done on the dysfunction of the Administrative State and the concerns that i and others have about the condition of our Foreign Policy and national security. Thats where i am going to stretch the the meaning of the word social. But lets face it, a society that cant defend itself has no bigger problem than that. The excessive power of Public Sector unions, which is the focus of philips new book, not to mention the power in academic institu as well as in public institu ations of diversity, equity and inclusion officers and the like. That implications in many different domains ranging from economic efficiency. As paul romer already emphasizes as to the health of democracy. Youve alluded. And it also affect our ability to pursue environ mentally optimal policies to speakers in the last panel pointed out. But i really think its most disastrous consequences lie in the realm national security. In my most recent book, doom the politics of catastrophe, a nice, cheerful scottish title for a book, i argued that the relatively poor performance of the United States in response to the covid 19 pandemic was. Not peculiar to the institutions responsible for Public Health, but was symptomatic of a broader malaise. If you think back just a few years to 2018, the us government, a 36 Page National biodefense strategy. It had a dedicated assistant secretary for preparedness of the department of health and human services. They also had a pandemic Preparedness Plan. Congress passed a pandemic all hazards preparedness and advancing innovation act. In june 2019, there was a bipartisan commission, biodefense, and yet all this by the end of last year, the United States. 16th in the world for deaths. Million of population attributed covid, which was not far behind, and the east European Countries that did globally the worst by measures of mortality. The us also fared very badly in comparative prospect to now at the federal state and local level, we imposed a variety of restrictions on social, educational, economic activity, but its become increasingly clear that the costs of of these, for example, to young intellectual development and Mental Health almost certainly exceeded the Public Health benefits. By the way, when Philip Zelikow was, a commission publishes. Report on covid, which could have been but isnt significantly official report, i think that become even more apparent than it was when i wrote doom and i wrote doom in 2020. Well before we had a full sense of what had gone wrong. The key point i want to make today is that the broad deterioration in the us governments ability to respond to natural disasters was which was a core theme of doom, implies that we might perform just as badly in the face of a manmade disaster, like a major war. Im sure that somewhere in the pentagon there are multiple plans for the contingency, a war between the United States and the peoples republic of china. Well, if things turn out to be as ineffective as the pandemic Preparedness Plan produced by dhs hhs in 2018, which disintegrate rated on contact with an actual pandemic. But some have no illusions. The United States government and i mean both the executive and legislative branches is on the march to a showdown with china over taiwan and to the defense, which spokespersons for both branches make increasingly unambiguous commitments. But just consider the following. Just as covid exposed the sclerotic state of american Public Health, so the russian of ukraine has already laid bare comparable deterioration of our once mighty military Industrial Complex. Ill just give you a few brief examples. The quantities of javelins transferred to ukraine through late august 20, 22 represented 70 years of production at the 2022 rates as of january year, 38 high marks. Thats high mobility artillery rocket systems have been sent to ukraine. Each system costs 6. 8 million at the start of last year, Lockheed Martin could produce. 48 of those systems a year. Its got it up to 60 now. So far, 8500 javelins have been sent to ukraine. Thats a third of the us stockpile. The center for strategic and International Studies estimates that if there were a war over taiwan. The us would expend more than thousand long range missiles, three weeks of conflict, 4000 joint air to surface standoff, 450 Long Range Anti surface missiles, 400 harpoons and 400 tomahawk land attack. The Long Range Anti surface missiles would run out within one week and takes roughly two years to produce one of those jet. One of that sorry, one of the jsc arms the joint air surface standoff. By contrast china and this again is a quotation from csi is less constrained as it is investing in munitions and acquiring high end Weapons Systems and equipment 5 to 6 times faster than the United States and quote, i think the military Industrial Complex has succumbed to its own version of institutional degeneration. The Government Accountability office, a report last year amongst the things that pointed out was that the cost of building the new 12 vessel columbia of Nuclear Armed submarines has risen. To 132 billion, and its doubtful that the subs will be available for deployment. In 2031. And that was of 17 programs that they identified delays in last september. Pentagon had to suspend deliveries of marquee f35 jet because a component in the planes engine turned out to contain an alloy made in china. The recent the latest tag for that program, 412 billion. Did i mention that the Interest Payments on the federal debt will overtake defense spending in 2029 . Im nearly done. So let me conclude. About 100 years ago, 123 or thereabouts, the boer exposed profound deficiencies in the British NationalSecurity State and that led to calls for National Efficiency from both sides of the political spectrum. These calls were largely disregarded by royal navy and the army and the results manifested themselves. Disaster boisterously jutland in the somme in 1916. I think the United States urgently needs a version of that National Efficiency debate and it has to produce more tangible results than were produced in britain before 1914. Great or great powers succumb to institutional sclerosis, the sort were discussing today are weakened by plagues, but they are more often broken by wars they lose or even by wars. They manage to win, but only at intolerable cost. In my view, the concerns have been discussing the ones weve heard so far are all and important but really the greatest danger posed by the great degeneration is that its actually setting United States up geopolitical disaster. And thats why when i discussed this conference with philip a few weeks ago here at stanford. I was so keen to participate again for stretching the meaning of the term social. But as i said, it really doesnt get more than military defeat. Thanks very much. Thanks much, neal. Neal thank you so much for kicking this panel off and really calling how critical this discussion for the future of our. Now that you have a good sense of impending doom. Paul light can give you a nice rundown of all the ways that government has failed and led to this sense of doom. So paul, is the nyu wagner is paul latin godard professor, Public Service and before joining nyu was at the brookings institution, where he founded its center for public. Hes the author of 25 books and. His most recent book is the government complex tracking the true size of government. In addition to his academic record, paul light was a longtime adviser to the founder of my organization paul volcker on all things related to Public Service, worked with him on two commissions about Public Service and a paper just recently released, i believe, last week. Right, paul, on what want from government reform. Yeah, i get the title right. So let me hand it over to paul. I mean, i am fundamentally depressed with the meager hopes that i can present you here based on some of the survey work weve been doing. I should say that mr. Volcker was always much taller than i, and i can only reference some of the work he helped sponsor. He was fundamental concerned about public support for government and for the needed improvements that we see talked about today. So ive got a bunch of takeaways here. Weve got a few of them and ill just walk you through them rather and maybe who was whos back there . Whos clicking, hey, so ill just say click right. There. We got it. Oh, its on the podium. There we go. Now im responsible. Very, very. Lets just see if we can do it up where im sorry. You can see it there. Oh, dear god almighty. Thank you so much. I appreciate it. I just have these takeaways here that basically show us where the public is. And i got to tell you. Theres some good news in here that americans so dispirited that theyd really like us to do something. Thats a good sign that when you say, you know, to what extent do americans believe that the federal government needs very major reform and then you put it with, you know, whether we can actually accomplish something weve weve got a strong base of citizens who are saying get done. They want it done. Notion that theres all this public resist stance to fixing government. And i see that in some polling. And i see that in some commentary thats just not true americans are wanting us to do something radical to make government work. Now who that might be im not paul volcker would take it on perhaps Ronald Reagan tried to take it on jimmy carter went at it hammer and tong. Its a hard to do when we sit here and we talk how difficult things are and how government continues to fail here and fail there. And ive got a new indicator a later in this talk, i wont go into much detail on it, but were tracking governance breakdowns very level, highly events where the federal government just didnt do its job and those numbers continue to rise and we havent had a good forceful discussion about how to fix government or whether even want to go down that route. We have wonderful people today talking about alternatives to the traditional state thats driving forward. We have in the first chart here just federal government performance ratings. And we see that the number of americans who give the federal fair poor ratings is pretty darn high. We a second slide here. Weve got the federal performance ratings. I dont know how to do click through here while im clicking through there. At any rate, im going to run through here to slide, which is demand for major government reform. Americans are really quite convinced. Keep go on. One more. Have you figured it out, my dear it was there we have a demand government reform that has been going up ever so slightly but its around for a good long time. To what extent do americans believe that the federal government needs very major reform . There are effects and these findings. We run the based on income education, on Party Identification passed vote, so forth and so on are fairly steady marks. And what you would expect to see in a our response to the biden presidency that would be driven by red voters as opposed the democratic blue. So lets move on to the next one here, a what i want to get you to is show you right here on this chart are support for major reform. This is a four way division respondents where were saying, okay who believes that the government needs very major reform. Pair that with support for bigger or Smaller Government. We see these four archetypes perhaps we can use that term here and say, well, youve got people who are very much interested in expansion. A bigger government, not too much reform, and were going to see in just a second how that out the expanders want of what government does and not particularly disturbed at particular point when we asked them. Well how good a job is government doing. Just give us more is some times the take away to the bottom left are the dismantlement weve seen them in political settings for some of course been around a while basically saying government needs major reform and that major reform is going to be towards a Smaller Government and we can figure out whos who are the standard bearers for this. Joe biden on the expanders, donald trump on the dismantlement. You see a little bit of jimmy, a little bit, the rebuild ers and so forth and so on. The two major anchors in what public what the public wants, not what we think best, but what the public says is best. When you pair these questions up and you hope youre hitting it and doing a good job explaining as we move forward, we see movement here. Lets take a look at the next just show you what we have so we did this survey back in 1997. Weve run it at several points in time. And what can see here is that a strong amount of public support away from expanding. You see back at the early bottom bar chart here, you know, americans were ready to grow what we now at the top of the chart, baby blue at the top of the chart, see declining interest in a bigger government and we see concerns about it. Now lets go to the next so i can show you this. This is one heck of a bar chart chart if i can use for you. Ive circled the key findings here down near the bottom and the green are the expanders. And you can just see where its headed that. Fewer and fewer americans respond. So now services are saying bring on bring us more. That is in decline and at the same time those circles that ive drawn for you are a much larger number of americans are saying we want it fixed. These are folks who are saying less is better and better performance is better. The dismay handlers right now occupy position, which could harnessed generate the kind of push that many of you are talking about. Theres no constituency for yet. Theres no candidate for yet. Its not donald trump, im guessing, because theres a large number of people in, these red bars, who are going to say, no, we do not trust him. And i would argue to you that over the next few, perhaps were going get some debate over how use this kind of analysis to structure reforms that could actually pull americans a more useful conversation about government and delivering on the promises we make, i think im getting the sign that thats the time right . So let me move on and up to you now to clarify. I think actually were going to turn back to zoom to jen parker and well turn to you, richard, if thats all right. We got thank you so much for you are so welcome. Youre welcome