(00:00:00) Let me start out with a candid statement to try to tell you how I'd like to approach this problem tonight. I do not claim to be objective. I am highly partisan. I desperately hope that Ronald Reagan is retired from the presidency and next month and I intend to do anything possible to see to it that the only two people who can retire Ronald Reagan Walter Mondale and Geraldine Ferraro or elected next month having said that I want to kick Reagan around tonight, but fairly That is to say I would like to this this issue was so important that I don't want to Simply make it a partisan issue and I hope in the course of my analysis that perhaps you'll get angry, but in addition to your getting angry. I hope also that you'll leave more informed about why you should be angry and how positively in terms of solutions. You should Express that anger and let me begin first by a few introductory Notions about the context of Reagan's attack on feeding the (00:01:17) poor (00:01:18) because it operates within a basic Theory which underlies almost all of the mean social policies of this Administration and the theory goes something like this. In the 1960s above all but also in the 1970s, we spent all of this money on the poor all of this money on the minority's all of this money on women. The result of our being so generous was that we became less efficient and less productive because we were spending money not on being competitive with the Europeans and the Japanese but with a misguided notion of being nice to Americans. (00:02:00) That (00:02:01) therefore when one goes after these social programs, it's not heaven forbid. That one is against the poor but rather that one wants to take the money that has been mistakenly spent on making the poor dependent. Channel it into productive investment. Create the jobs, which will allow the port to feed themselves. That's the thesis and in the course of what I say this evening. I want to among many other things attack that basic notion because it is fundamentally wrong. It is wrong because the United States is the cheapest welfare state in the advanced world. Its premise is we spent all that money. On the poor the fact is we never did. The fact is as a percentage of gross national product. The United States spends less than any other Advanced industrial society including Japan. If being mean to the poor where the secret of productivity we would be the most productive Nation on the face of the Earth no doubt about (00:03:12) it. Secondly, (00:03:15) all of this money was taken in part from the Purim part from the working people in the middle class who had a discriminatory tax law passed against them and given to the rich So that they would invest in plant and jobs there was one small problem. They didn't do it. And I want to suggest to you tonight something very strange alas. It could be that the American people won't understand this until after the election. Until after perhaps they make the terrible mistake of electing Reagan. The fact of the matter is Reagan's economic program has failed. It is an utter and complete failure. All of its predictions failed to materialize. There is a recovery it is a recovery in spite of the Reagan program not because of it. It is a recovery that is shot through with contradictions. That's a recovery that's not going to last. And I hope we can get that message to the American people before election Tuesday in November, but that is the fact and it's in that context of saying we have an utterly failed supply-side politics which took food stamps and Medicaid away from the poor in order to give money to the rich to invest and they did not invest. It's within that framework that I want to look at the problem of hunger and let me do it three different ways number one to talk just a bit about the history of the issue of hunger in recent times number 2 to examine the Reagan social policies particularly in terms of hunger, but taking that as a symbol of his entire social agenda. Number three very briefly because I like to leave at least some time for people to challenge me or to question me some idea of what kind of solutions we should have. To begin with the history and I'll start the history with the Kennedy administration and it starts not with hunger in America, but hunger and Asian hunger and Africa, it starts with something called food for peace. And John Kennedy appointed a South Dakota politician by the name of George McGovern the head food for peace. And the idea of food for peace is very interesting. It's something so typical of all of our food programs foreign and domestic. The idea was we had accumulated an enormous Surplus. Through Federal subsidizing of non production of food by American farmers from the New Deal to the present. We have dealt with the problem of farm income by subsidizing scarcity and raising prices to guarantee farm income. And in that process we accumulated all kinds of food. The impulse behind food for peace was a double impulse. Number one. We simply wanted to get rid of some of what we had accumulated and so often in the United States food programs are not food programs. They are part of agricultural politics agricultural power politics, but number two, even though that's true. It was a program to feed people. Even though the motives were not of the purest the consequences were very good. In 1964 Lyndon Johnson declared an unconditional war on poverty. In my opinion that war was doomed to failure approximately one year later with the escalation of the war in Vietnam. But it did have some very good consequences and one of them was that in the mid and late 60s. First due to some scholarship sponsored by the field Foundation then as a result of a senate committee headed by George McGovern who would become a u.s. Senator. We began to discover that the problem of hunger was not simply a problem overseas that it was a problem in America. And we begin to discover that it was not simply the issue of hunger and malnutrition for the living generation. But as the congressman so rightly said we found out that a hungry woman a woman with malnutrition Could do genetic damage to the fetus in her womb. That is to say that there were children who were born already handicapped as a consequence of hunger and malnutrition that there were children who even if they did not have that problem were born and because of the diet they had in their early years did not even have the opportunity to live up to the genetic potential which they had at the time. They were conceived and out of this Research into the existence of hunger and above all into the consequences of hunger for children for babies for fetuses even came a series of programs the most important program was the food stamp program. But even here there is a duality. Let me tell you something that might shock you a little that when the food stamp proposal came out. I was critical of it. I think for a very good reason I will now defend food stamps to the death, but I'll tell you why I was critical of it at the time what the government said is we won't give the poor money to buy food. Because if we give the money to buy food, they might spend it on alcohol. at the races playing the numbers we will give the poor food stamps because we want to be sure that they spend it only on food. And I said at the time the poor are the only people in the United States who are required to be (00:09:23) moral. (00:09:26) Everybody else can spend their money on booze. Men women, whatever horse races it's up to you only the poor were required to spend the food money on food because they weren't given money. They were given stamps and that was also tied into the power of an agricultural Lobby in the United States that wanted to be sure it went only for food to get to get rid of those surpluses. You may remember that not several years ago. The present United States was talking about food stamps and he talked about how outraged a friend of his was one of these marvelous anecdotes. These Reagan anecdotes about somebody is in line with food stamps and they take the change from the food stamps and they buy a bottle of gin. (00:10:07) There's a problem. (00:10:09) The only change you got from Food Stamps as 99 cents. if it's more than 99 Cents you get your change in food stamps because this is the control what the for do with their money and I felt at the time I like to say that I was going I wanted to write the president a letter and asked him where I could get a fifth of gin for 99 cents because I was going to go there and get in line behind the food stamp sheets in any case We went with food stamps. Okay. I was not happy at the time. But what the congressman said is absolutely true. We made enormous strides in eliminating hunger in the United States. There is no doubt about it the foundation that sponsored the original research went back 10 years and later and found out that there had been a qualitative Improvement. In the United States in terms of the problem of hunger, by the way, the amount of money is not great before Reagan started cutting it at the time under the Carter Administration the end of the Carter Administration food stamps cost fourteen point five billion dollars. I'll get to a very important point about that in a moment 14.5 billions lot a lot of money compared to other things at the same time as we moved on food stamps. We put forward a series of programs having to do with nutrition particularly for children. And the two most important were a program which gave Federal subsidies to meals for children in public schools. the feed poor kids because one of the things we had all discovered is poor kids did not eat. Well, I remember when I first I come from a middle class family. I have never been poor in my life. I've been without money, but I've never been poor because I've never been more than one phone call away from a relative with enough money to bail me out. But the first Contact I had with the pores when I was working as a social worker in st. Louis Missouri where I was born and grew up working with white Arkansas sharecropper kids. Who live down by the Mississippi River? This is talking 1948-1949. And I was a social worker for the Board of Education and you would say to these kids. You have a good breakfast this morning. And they all lied. Oh, yes, orange juice bacon eggs sausage. In fact what they quite often had were potatoes. Because one of the things about poverty by the way is it is often the case that poor people are fat. Because they eat very filling and not particularly nutritious foods, which are cheap they eat lots of potatoes. So this idea is simple idea get kids at school where you can be sure they get at least one square meal a day and that program went all the way up in 1984. It's all the way up to five billion dollars. Finally, there was a program the WIC program women infants and children. Which was a food program for mother's nursing their babies. and for infants and these were some of the most important food programs that we had now, let me go from those facts to a generalization that you have to understand something about the American welfare state. Not only is it cheap? But most of the social spending in the United States goes to people who are not poor. (00:13:50) Three-quarters (00:13:52) of the social spending in the United States goes to programs for the Aging. I am not knocking programs for the Aging. If you notice my hair, you might get an idea of why I am not I am 56 years of age. And if you think I am going to attack Social Security, you're crazy. I want my Social Security, but the fact of the matter is 3/4 of federal social spending. Is for people over 65 years of age 85 percent of whom are not poor. Social Security Medicare and a variety of other programs for the Aging if you look at the money we actually spend on the poor. (00:14:38) At the (00:14:38) programs which are means tested not age tested. They are about 10% Of the money we spend on the age tested programs mind you I want both. I'm not saying either are but I just want you to understand that if our welfare state is cheap compared to all other Advanced industrial welfare states. It is particularly cheap with regard to the poor and therefore when one talks about the major programs for the poor you're talking about 84 families with dependent children afdc. You're talking about food stamps and you're talking about Medicaid, but immediately they're even I have to make a qualification forty percent of Medicaid. Goes for aging people who were (00:15:25) dying. (00:15:29) So if you look at the money actually spent on the non aging pour it is Tiny David Stockman in an interview in Fortune. Last December said the poverty programs are Pebbles. Social Security is the boulder. Menteng that Reagan didn't have the guts to go after Social Security. But there's the gimmick Social Security is enormously popular precisely because most of its recipients are middle class. And not only are its recipients middle-class their children who don't want to take care of their parents or middle class. Reagan tried you might remember in 1981. He made one crack at Social Security. Any pulled back when the Republicans in the US Senate all voted against them and said keep your hands off of this. It's too popular. Okay. So where does he go? He goes at the most vulnerable people. He goes among others. Against people who are hungry so secondly, let me now get to what he actually did and he got a problem. Our genial President says all the time now that he has eaten his cake and he still has it. Because he constantly makes the following proposition. I cut all kinds of federal spending and I did more for the poor than anybody has ever done. Now there are two ways that he gets at that Artful little Proposition 1 is he uses dollars not corrected for inflation. So if you look at the money the Reagan Administration is now spending for the poor. It is more than under the Carter Administration. If you neglect the Flack double digit inflation in between If you look at the real buying power of programs for the poor they have been going down for years. In the early 1980s the combined real value of afdc and food stamps was less than the value of afdc alone in 1969. Are we better off the poor are worse off today than they were in 1969 as part of the answer. The rest of the people is not as better off as they might think the second reason why the president can say, well I've done all these things for the poor is the Congress, which was absolutely spineless in 1981. Including many Democrats. I'm afraid to say the Congress finally an 82 got some courage back in 82. We also had an election which improves the composition the House of Representative somewhat and so one of the reasons that the Reagan Administration is spending as much as it is now spending on the pores because the Congress refused to go along with what the president proposed. And when you look at his hunger proposals, it's incredible. You know, what he wanted to do to food stamps. He wanted to reduce food stamps by 51.7% (00:18:37) when the cut the program in half the (00:18:40) Congress only cut it by 13.8% only by 39.8% other words the Congress gave about 1/4 of the cut that Reagan asked for but ironically something comes into play here, you know, therefore who got the cuts who receive the cuts who had the food taken away from them. Not the welfare poor. Americans don't like poor people on welfare are lazy. That's nonsense, but many Americans including many decent Americans believe it. They don't like the welfare poor but Americans like the Working Poor, but the people who got hit by the reduction in food stamps were precisely the Working Poor practically. No welfare family had food stamps taken away from them because it was the people what he did was he cut eligibility at the top And there were some families headed by a working person who were able to get some help from the federal government through food stamps. It's not much but they got some those are the ones he took off. Secondly. He came in and proposed to cut Child Nutrition. by 46% and the Congress acting according to the principles of Solomon decided to cut it in half gave him Twenty Eight percent. Where he really goofed, I mean here is a man going for widows and orphans. So to speak where he really goofed as he then proposed to cut the subsidies for women infants and children. This is nursing mothers and babies. Okay. He wanted to cut that 63.6% That was so outrageous that instead of cutting it the Congress increased it by 9.1% But if you look at what Reagan wanted it was a Savage attack. On people who are hungry and suffering from malnutrition. So one consequence of this was in the last (00:20:46) recession (00:20:47) recession of eighty two three, normally if the normal patterns have prevailed about a million and more than a million Americans would have qualified for food stamps as it was only 300,000 did. (00:21:01) You see this is part of the new problem of poverty in the United States. There are people becoming poor who have never been poor before. There are (00:21:07) working people union members who see their job disappear. Who don't qualify for food stamps because that's been taken away by this this reduction of the of the people who are (00:21:17) eligible who (00:21:19) lose their health care under the contract who can't take their kids to a doctor. Do you know that in the sickly 8283 recession less than half of the people laid off got unemployment. compensation So here you have this attack, but it is part also of an attack not simply on the traditional poor indeed. It attacks the traditional poor less than most of Reagan's programs. It attacks the new poor who are the new poor. Let me just give you a couple examples of what I mean by that category. Number one. There are steel workers and automobile workers and other workers who once made relatively good incomes who have seen the factory simply disappear go out around Pittsburgh and you will see not simply shut down factories. You will see disappeared factories. Well, they've simply taking the factory apart. And sold a mill for scrap. And when I was out there working on my book The New American poverty. I was talking to unemployed steel workers who were telling me that they had lost our Medical Care by the way. The Canadian steelworkers also members the United Steel Workers of America. Working for American companies when they got laid off they had healthcare because Canada has a system of national Healthcare. We are the only Advanced industrial society without a system of Healthcare in the United States. But you have these workers. Who are people who never in the Thousand Years thought they would ever be poor. Who look down on those lazy welfare recipients? And I went to the union hall. And McKeesport and watch those working people in 1982 in the midst of the recession early 83 actually, it was coming through and picking up bags of food to take home to feed their families second group who are among the hungry in the United States undocumented workers. One of the things about poverty there's a whole industry telling us how we're exaggerating the problem of poverty. Very few people are telling us how we understate the problem of poverty. And one of the understatements is all these undocumented workers. Mainly Latinos in the west mainly from the Caribbean in the East and the Midwest. They're not statistics. Some of them are working in sweatshops or they don't get any kind of benefits. many of them take out phony social security cards And are paying into Social Security account that they will never receive a nickel from because they're illegal they're undocumented. And when the administration was testifying on the possible amnesty being of some of the undocumented workers one of the arguments that gave against amnesty was my God. If we amnesty these people if we make them legal, they'll all qualify for food stamps. So all qualify for afdc, we can't do that. What's that mean? We prefer to keep the undocumenteds hungry. We prefer to keep them without income because they are not officially poor in the United States. They are merely undocumented (00:24:35) people (00:24:36) a third group that gets hit by all of this particularly attack on nutrition is children. And one of the frightening things about poverty in the United States is the poverty in recent years has become much more female and much more Young. And it's related. Twenty percent of the children in the United States one out of five of the children between 6 years of age and 16 years of age is poor by the official statistic. 25% of the children under 6 years of age or poor and it's under these circumstances at the president the United States proposed a 46 percent cut in Child Nutrition and a 63.6% cut in the program for women infants and children the homeless. The homeless are the victims of many many patterns. Some of the homeless are deinstitutionalized mental patients. Or let out of Mental Hospitals because we rightly said Mental Hospitals are horrible places. There are warehouses often cruel warehouses. Where people with mental and emotional problems we let them out and we said we're going to bring them back into the community. We forgot to do that. So these are some of the homeless Ed Koch the mayor of New York who was not my hero to put it mildly sad and on this he's right. The island of Manhattan has been turned into a mental ward. The police are being turned into orderlies. These people are hungry lot of them that they have (00:26:14) emotional problems. They don't know they don't know where to get (00:26:16) food. You see them in New York. You see them in other big cities. I don't know exactly what it's like here in the Twin Cities, but you see them rummaging around in garbage cans to try to get food some of these people are people who are homeless because in many of the big cities the United States you get gentrification. You have middle-class people and rich people moving into poor neighborhoods, which are often architecturally Charming in New York city mayor Koch loves it because when you take a single room occupancy hotel, which has been occupied by a bunch of poor people on welfare. And you kick the poor people out on the street and into the subway and so forth and so on and you turn the single room occupancy Hotel into a condominium for the middle class you increase the tax revenues to the city of New York. You also increase the number of people who are living on subways and who are hungry who have no place to live no place to cook and I could go on but the point is that we have now in the United States as a result of the Reagan Administration a much greater problem of hunger and it's a problem which has been exacerbated made worse by the very structure of the new poverty. Finally. What's to do positively I guarantee you I will not give you the answer there is no the answer. I also hope that I will suggest a few ideas about what can be done positively first. in talking about hunger in America We cannot ignore hunger in the world. Because the hunger in Africa and the Sahel the hunger and Bangladesh. Is not hunger it's not (00:28:03) malnutrition. Its people starving to death. (00:28:08) And I think one of the aims of American policy has to be in the case of starvation emergency aid cooperation with the proposal that's been around for years to creating an international reserve of food. So that nobody should starve to death. I think we should take up the challenge of Robert McNamara who was head of the World Bank the challenge of the report issued by Villi brunt the commission on north south and that the world should adopt the goal that by the year 2000 nobody in the world should starve to death. (00:28:44) Is that too (00:28:45) high a goal for the rest of the 20th century that we put an end? Not the hunger not to maltreat malnutrition that will take a lot more but put an end to starvation. And I think obviously that we should and that I'll get to American Agricultural policy in a minute, but I think that should be one aspect of it secondly. I think that it should be a principal in the United States that every American is guaranteed by the society if necessary a basic and decent diet. Does this mean I won't all kinds of people just free load. Won't this make them dependent aren't the poor just looking for a chance not to work. (00:29:28) No way. (00:29:31) This has happened so many times before but it happened recently. I believe it's Los Angeles then announce that there were 300 new jobs for Longshore people on the docks more than 10,000 people applied. Go to any slum are ghetto in the United States and announce. You've got a hundred jobs. There will be people will stand up in the rain all night long to get a shot at those jobs. But I think by the way as far as I'm concerned somebody's lazy. I don't want him to starve to death. I don't want to be hungry. I mean I leave I'll accept that case but I don't think the problem is really the people will free low, by the way. There's a new book out by a man by the name of Charles Murray, which is very pernicious who argues that the problem of poverty has been made worse by the war on poverty and it's a typical argument is the reason why you got all these lazy poor people. Is the war on poverty made life too easy for them the Great Society who have pampered them too much so they don't work. Any makes much out of the fact that black participation in the labor force in the 1960s became less than white why he said because we pampered the blacks. And there's a very interesting research which shows that black labor force participation began to be much less than whites in the 1950s. The reason was a disability program that allowed people who had severe disabilities. They got help from the society. And the reason why more blacks got disability than more than whites did is because blacks were much more disabled than whites. and the study which established that proved it, by the way, because the group that they analyzed a black disabled people died at a much faster rate than the whites. And when you have a group of people who die from disability, it's not malingering. By the way. This is a program that under Reagan. They took half a million of the disabled and took them off the list. It got so bad that Republican us attorneys were refusing to prosecute cases to take disabled people off the list the Republicans in the Congress the United States finally voted to end the madness this notion that we got a bunch of lazy poor people in all of our programs have to be based on a malthusian idea to make life miserable enough so that people will work. I think is a terrible notion. We should have a basic diet what that diet is is obviously changing. I think we're getting smarter about our eating in the United States. And I think that the poor should have the advantage of our growing knowledge as to what constitutes nutrition everybody thinks that all of those programs in the 1960s failed they didn't but let me tell you about one of them that I think in terms of dealing with the problem of hunger. We should revive was a great program. It was a program a federal program where women who are poor. (00:32:32) We're trained to (00:32:36) be able to help other women who were poor. And to tell them how best to shop. Poor people are not good shoppers. Often grocery stores and supermarkets in poor neighborhoods have defective merchandise priced higher than a middle-class neighborhood and get away with it. And so one of the things that poor people need is some guidance in how to shop and what is a nutritious meal. And doing during the war on poverty some poor women were hired to be Educators about hunger and food and shopping nice terrific idea. So I think that here we have to have a basic commitment to the (00:33:24) food the nutrition of the (00:33:25) poor, but what's this have to do with the farmers? And here and I might step on toes because I'm speaking in a state which has got a former or (00:33:33) two has been concerned about this issue, (00:33:36) but it seems to me that ever since the 1930s the New Deal not Ronald Reagan. (00:33:42) ever since the New Deal (00:33:45) our basic agricultural policy has been to subsidize scarcity in order to raise prices in order to maximize farm income. And that has cost the taxpayers in terms of the subsidy in the consumer who is also a taxpayer in terms of the higher prices. And it has benefited most the biggest forms the corporate forms. There were jokes in the 50s and 60s about people going out and buying land so they could plant nothing on it. And take advantage of these programs. I am convinced that that program those enormous subsidies to the Big Rich farmers in the corporation's allowed them to mechanize and drive people off the land. That the black populations of cities like Chicago and New York and st. Louis are often displaced persons who were driven off the land by federal subsidies to Rich agricultural Enterprises. Does this mean that I'm saying that we should not subsidize form income in no way. I want desperately to subsidize the income of family Farmers particularly those family farmers who are being murdered right now by the consequences of the high interest rates of the Reagan Administration and chairman volcker of the FED, but could we not say this terribly radical idea I take from Harry Truman's second Administration. It's called the Brandon plan. Could we not say that farmers in the United States should grow absolutely everything they can grow Drive the prices as far down as they can go let everybody in the United States the third world in the world have the advantage of the cheap prices, but then subsidize the family farmer directly. Guarantee that income. I believe that farmers should have must have an income. Which is on a kind of parody with the rest of the society do we have to do it through scarcity and do we have to do it by channeling most of the subsidies? It's a large rich and corporate Farms. Ultimately. I would like to abolish food stamps. Ultimately, I would like to see an American economy in which everybody got a sufficient income to feed and take care of themselves without the need of any help from the state. ultimately But that's a long way but I think the goal is not to create a dependent population. The goal has to be where there are dependent people through no fault of their own that is to say 99% of the people who need help with regard to food and other things. We helped them but the aim should be to end dependence. And here I'm afraid we get into an area of enormous complexity. I will simply (00:36:36) mention it. We (00:36:38) cannot solve this problem. We cannot solve the problem of racism. We cannot solve the problem of sexism. We cannot protect the environment. We cannot be decent to the third world. If we regard as we do now that we have good terrific times when they're seven point four percent of the American labor force out on the streets when there are 9 million people who can't get work. And that's a low figure because there are many more who don't look for work because they know that they're never going to get it and as long as that prevails that's a cap on how much you can do for the poor. That keeps minorities and women in an inferior position in the occupational structure. I believe that we have to in the United States think somewhat more radically. I've been saying for a long time that the worst thing that could happen in the election of 1984 is if Ronald Reagan is re-elected and the second worst thing would be if Walter Mondale is elected. And then faces an economic crisis and doesn't know what to do with it. I think that the feeding Reagan is the beginning of the job. But that we have to understand that it is not simply the poor but the entire American economy the entire American society and social structure, which is in deep trouble and let me end on this point. Let me address a particular to the students in this audience. Do not think that I am tonight talking about them. Them poor people black people Hispanics people in slums. I'm also talking about you because the macroeconomic forces the technological Revolution the shift in the international division of labor the multi nationalization of corporate Capital these huge massive forces, which are striking at the poor. First of all and most vicious lie, they're striking at you two, if you're a student I suspect you don't have the foggiest notion. Typically if you're a liberal arts student of what to do. When you get your degree. And you right now are thinking of some way of adapting to an insane labor market. You are not thinking about how to do something which will enrich you and the society. You're thinking how can I make out in this crazy labor market, how can I get an edge? And what I am saying is if we deal with these problems of employment that we deal with these problems of poverty. If we deal with these problems of hunger, we are not just helping them. (00:39:24) We are (00:39:24) dealing with problems that affect everybody in American society. We (00:39:28) are helping you (00:39:31) and you should be for the abolition of hunger out of decency and compassion and justice, but you should also be for the abolition of hunger because of society like ours which allows it to continue (00:39:45) his not going to treat your life very well either. Thank you very much. (00:40:07) Okay, so I think you raised a very important question. I answer all of my answers tonight will be oversimplifications because there's a pressure of time but let me try to get to it. What I am saying is I would like to see this Society (00:40:20) provide (00:40:21) work for all of those capable of working. Okay, and it is my very strong. Not simply moral sense, but my analytic conviction that if work were available people will take it that most people who are able to work one to work that what keeps people from working is not their laziness or not. The fact that being pampered by the federal government and it's a joke, but they're not halfway decent jobs around so I would like to have all of those people and you have to remember that an enormous number of the poor are in families of the Working Poor that secondly for example the afdc mothers Only about 20% of afdc mothers are on afdc for eight years or more more than half of afdc mothers receive afdc for less than two years. They desperately want to work what we need. There is we need things like childcare. I think we need to look at the whole question in this Society. Of our crazy perception that a woman who takes care of her own children at home is not working. Whereas a woman who takes care of somebody else's children in somebody else's house is and we might consider if we could not regard both as types of work valuable to the society. We have to redefine work among many other things. I just I will throw out an idea or two. I think we have to go to the 32 our week as fast as we could possibly can so I think that so but I think that if we do these things we will discover that the American Workforce has much larger than we think and my example of this is there are all kinds of people who in 1938-39 were declared to be permanently unemployable. And Along Came World War II and we drafted 15 million people mainly men into uniform and we discover that all kinds of unemployable people were perfectly capable of becoming welders in defense plants. Okay, but I absolutely agree with you. There are people who for a variety of reasons severe disability physical emotional mental what have you can't for them? I don't want welfare. I think that this Society should say that everyone in this Society is guaranteed annual income. And organized the society so that guarantee for most people is achieved through work. But for those who cannot work, it's not welfare. It's not it is simply that everybody in this Society is guaranteed a minimum. By the way one last thought here. Dr. Martin Luther King at the time. He was murdered. Was campaigning for something which he called an economic and social Bill of Rights. And his argument was that the constitution the United States guarantees us political rights, which are precious. But that it is now time to declare that it is not simply the basic right of the citizen to be able to speak to assemble to organize to be free from unlawful search and seizure and so forth and so on it is also a basic and fundamental right of the citizen to have work or income and I think we should move to that. So I think you raised a very important but the whole idea of means-tested welfare. I wish we could get rid of it. In the meantime. I'm going to fight like the Dickens to improve it. (00:43:40) Sure, (00:43:42) but let me let me tell you something. Honestly me say two things. Number one. I have honestly not thought through my attitude. You know, I don't like the Lottery's I don't like the off-track betting in New York whether I'm against it. I have to honestly say I haven't thought through it but what its effects are I do know there is a very interesting analysis of the famous statement by Karl Marx that religion is the Opium of the people. Most people do not realize that statement is always quoted out of context that it comes at the end of one of the most beautiful tributes to religion that's ever been given and Karl Marx was profoundly respectful of the contributions of religion. And he says leading up to that. He says religion is the sigh of the oppressed the heart of the heartless world the encyclopedic that the popular encyclopedia and he goes on and on and his conception of religion was that religion had been the greatest liberating Force for Humanity. He now believed that his movement would take up all that have been really good in religion. And then he says religion is the Opium of the people. There are some Scholars who believe that he took that concept from a novel by Balzac Or actually a short story by balls are in which Balzac had argued that the lottery they've had a lot of rien France since the beginning of creation that the lottery is one of the ways that the rich keep the poor content. And that Marx was in talking about religion was analogizing it to a lottery and I see that so much in New York where I live that you can always believe in its on television. I'm a millionaire. And there was a what which was the one where there was 26 million by Illinois 26 million something like that everybody and I think that is something that you know, you have this hope which is not going to work out for most people and most people are going to be net losers. So as to its function its pernicious as to whether I'm for immediately abolishing hitter against the proposal to put it in. I just have to honestly say I haven't thought it through enough. Ian two ways one is what I said to to not to subsidize non-production, but to say that there is a basic income. (00:46:03) Which (00:46:03) Farmers receive? But obviously I would also want to leave in the fact that a farmer could improve on that basic income by exerting more effort. But what I'm saying is to have a concept of parity of the relationship between Farm family income and the income of other social groups in the society not mediated through this kind of controlled induced scarcity. But mediated by direct payments to make up the difference between a parody income and the actual income achieved by farmers were using all of their land but as I say, I would want to leave in there because I very strongly believe that the best Society in the world should be inefficient Society particularly. If you let me Define efficiency as I want to I would leave in their incentives economic incentives, but you could you could better that income by being more productive. Number one, I believe that there are lots of hungry people who can use the food. That's why I'd like to see it produced. The problem is they can't afford it. I would like to see full production to drive prices down. Number two. I think what farmers in the United States are suffering desperately from now is the fact that Ronald Reagan and the Federal Reserve Bank used High interest rates to bring down inflation. And that's what is causing a greater number of foreclosures and more misery among family Farmers than anybody has seen since the Great Depression. It's not as bad as the Great Depression. They're not as many failures or anything like it but it's absolutely outrageous. What is happening? What I'm saying is I that problem you deal with by let me go into it for a minute. We have an institution in the United States called the Federal Reserve Bank. It is the second most powerful Economic Policy institution the United States the most powerful Economic Policy institutions called the presidency. Next comes the Federal Reserve. It is run by a person who is elected by nobody. Who was appointed not by President Reagan, but by President Carter with the consent of the Senate we have an Institute Institution called the Federal Reserve board, which is totally run by bankers and their friends. What if I propose that we would have a Federal Reserve board totally composed of trade unionists feminists blacks Hispanics liberals and socialists. Everybody. Say my God that's biased but in fact, we have a Federal Reserve which is controlled totally by bankers and their intellectual friends and agents and thats not biased that's objectivity. So what I'm saying is I think that the immediate crisis has more to do with the Fed Van then it has to even with the what I was criticizing. I think the basic goal should be Farm output subsidized family farm income. Directly not through scarcity in high prices because I think the benefits from that are very great. Yes, number one. I'm now about to to take what was it? It was once said that Patriot patriotism is the Refuge of Scoundrels or the last Refuge of Scoundrels the proposition all other things being equal. Is the last Refuge of intellectual Scoundrels, but I'm going to go there for a minute all other things being equal. If you have a 40 hour week and a 32-hour week. All other things being equal you would require 20% more workers to produce the same output at a 32-hour week than at a 40 hour week because you have reduced the hours per worker by 1/5 all other things being equal to get the same production. You'd have to increase the number of workers by 1/5. Now. The problem is right now above all other things are not equal because we have a technological Revolution. In which with this incredible increase in technology, General Motors is now planning to layoff in the near future by next three or four years a hundred thousand workers. 40,000 by attrition about 60,000 by robots and automation. So that's one of the reasons why I'm for 32 hours a week if that happens on the basis of a 40 hour week. There is absolutely no hope whatsoever in I think getting anything like full employment. But I think if we I will get it in a second to something that goes beyond the 32-hour week. If we go to the 32 our week, even though all of the things are not being equal it will create some employment. The United Automobile workers until the crisis hit the automobile industry had a policy of going for the four-day week through collective bargaining by in every negotiation for about two or three negotiations the UAW increase the number of holidays. Remembers the UAW for example before the big crisis hit members the UAW all got to take their birthday off. As a holiday as a paid holiday with your birthday, then came the crisis this terrible recession and the UAW had to give up that a lot of other things but what I'm saying is that basic idea I think is a Sound Idea. Secondly. Can you do it like that in no way because if you went from today 40 Hour Week tomorrow by law 32-hour week that all other things being equal increases the cost of Labor by 20% It would wreck the American economy. I'm absolutely convinced though it so you can't do it overnight and you can't even necessarily do it primarily through wages. But I think one of the ways and here I'm following brilliant socialists the Nobel Laureate by the name of Vasily leontyev. One of the things that we might consider would be in part you reduce the hours and you increase the wage you have more Leisure, but in part you make up for the 20% of time reduction by federal transfer (00:52:15) payments. (00:52:17) By tax policy there are other ways to increase income then simply by the size of the check. You can increase the size of the check by reducing the size of the taxes pay for example this ties into something that I which I wish Walter Mondale would talk a little more about we talked about us tax program. I think his tax program is so much better than Reagan's I don't want to really criticize it but the fact of the matter is the rich in the United States get much much more welfare than the poor. And if we took the rich off of welfare. That would allow one to include to decrease the taxes of working people in the middle class. And I think it would open up the road to a 32-hour Week. Final Point. I've bus for been arguing for the 32-hour weakland sort of technical terms within a framework of it is a instrumentality to achieve full employment than a time of technical technological Revolution, but I really have a much broader concept of the 32 our week. I believe in the United States that we should now begin to reconsider the nature of the working life. (00:53:20) Not just the working (00:53:21) week. That I think given this technological Revolution if we can get Democratic control of it. There is a possibility for a vast increase in leisure in the United States. I as a college professor two years ago got a sabbatical. That is to say I got half pay for a year and I didn't have to work. It was terrific. I could have gotten full pay for half a year without working. That's terrific to why just for college professors. Why not the notion of a sabbatical for for working people? They might be able to profit from having a year a half a year off to think long thoughts.