Adam Davidson: What we learned from teetering on the fiscal cliff

37,408 views ・ 2012-12-20

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Translator: Morton Bast Reviewer: Thu-Huong Ha
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So a friend of mine who's a political scientist,
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he told me several months ago
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exactly what this month would be like.
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He said, you know, there's this fiscal cliff coming,
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it's going to come at the beginning of 2013.
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Both parties absolutely need to resolve it,
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but neither party wants to be seen as the first to resolve it.
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Neither party has any incentive to solve it a second before it's due,
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so he said, December, you're just going to see lots of
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angry negotiations, negotiations breaking apart,
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reports of phone calls that aren't going well,
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people saying nothing's happening at all,
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and then sometime around Christmas or New Year's,
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we're going to hear, "Okay, they resolved everything."
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He told me that a few months ago. He said he's 98 percent positive they're going to resolve it,
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and I got an email from him today saying, all right,
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we're basically on track, but now I'm 80 percent positive
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that they're going to resolve it.
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And it made me think. I love studying
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these moments in American history
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when there was this frenzy of partisan anger,
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that the economy was on the verge of total collapse.
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The most famous early battle was Alexander Hamilton
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and Thomas Jefferson over what the dollar would be
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and how it would be backed up, with Alexander Hamilton
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saying, "We need a central bank, the First Bank of the United States,
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or else the dollar will have no value.
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This economy won't work,"
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and Thomas Jefferson saying, "The people won't trust that.
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They just fought off a king. They're not going to accept some central authority."
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This battle defined the first 150 years of the U.S. economy,
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and at every moment, different partisans saying,
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"Oh my God, the economy's about to collapse,"
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and the rest of us just going about, spending our bucks
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on whatever it is we wanted to buy.
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To give you a quick primer on where we are,
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a quick refresher on where we are.
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So the fiscal cliff, I was told
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that that's too partisan a thing to say,
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although I can't remember which party it's supporting or attacking.
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People say we should call it the fiscal slope,
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or we should call it an austerity crisis,
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but then other people say, no, that's even more partisan.
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So I just call it the self-imposed, self-destructive
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arbitrary deadline about resolving an inevitable problem.
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And this is what the inevitable problem looks like.
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So this is a projection of U.S. debt as a percentage
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of our overall economy, of GDP.
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The light blue dotted line represents
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the Congressional Budget Office's best guess
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of what will happen if Congress really doesn't do anything,
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and as you can see, sometime around 2027,
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we reach Greek levels of debt,
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somewhere around 130 percent of GDP,
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which tells you that some time in the next 20 years,
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if Congress does absolutely nothing,
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we're going to hit a moment where the world's investors,
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the world's bond buyers, are going to say,
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"We don't trust America anymore. We're not going to lend them any money,
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except at really high interest rates."
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And at that moment our economy collapses.
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But remember, Greece is there today.
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We're there in 20 years. We have lots and lots of time
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to avoid that crisis,
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and the fiscal cliff was just one more attempt
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at trying to force the two sides to resolve the crisis.
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Here's another way to look at exactly the same problem.
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The dark blue line is how much the government spends.
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The light blue line is how much the government gets in.
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And as you can see, for most of recent history,
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except for a brief period, we have consistently spent
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more than we take in. Thus the national debt.
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But as you can also see, projected going forward,
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the gap widens a bit and raises a bit,
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and this graph is only through 2021.
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It gets really, really ugly out towards 2030.
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And this graph sort of sums up what the problem is.
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The Democrats, they say, well, this isn't a big deal.
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We can just raise taxes a bit and close that gap,
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especially if we raise taxes on the rich.
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The Republicans say, hey, no, no, we've got a better idea.
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Why don't we lower both lines?
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Why don't we lower government spending and lower government taxes,
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and then we'll be on an even more favorable
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long-term deficit trajectory?
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And behind this powerful disagreement between
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how to close that gap,
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there's the worst kind of cynical party politics,
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the worst kind of insider baseball, lobbying, all of that stuff,
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but there's also this powerfully interesting,
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respectful disagreement between
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two fundamentally different economic philosophies.
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And I like to think, when I picture how Republicans
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see the economy, what I picture is just some amazingly
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well-engineered machine, some perfect machine.
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Unfortunately, I picture it made in Germany or Japan,
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but this amazing machine that's constantly scouring
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every bit of human endeavor and taking resources,
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money, labor, capital, machinery,
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away from the least productive parts and towards the more productive parts,
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and while this might cause temporary dislocation,
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what it does is it builds up the more productive areas
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and lets the less productive areas fade away and die,
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and as a result the whole system is so much more efficient,
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so much richer for everybody.
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And this view generally believes that there is a role for government,
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a small role, to set the rules so people aren't lying
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and cheating and hurting each other,
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maybe, you know, have a police force and a fire department
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and an army, but to have a very limited reach
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into the mechanisms of this machinery.
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And when I picture how Democrats and Democratic-leaning
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economists picture this economy,
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most Democratic economists are, you know, they're capitalists,
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they believe, yes, that's a good system a lot of the time.
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It's good to let markets move resources to their more productive use.
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But that system has tons of problems.
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Wealth piles up in the wrong places.
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Wealth is ripped away from people who shouldn't be called unproductive.
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That's not going to create an equitable, fair society.
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That machine doesn't care about the environment,
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about racism, about all these issues
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that make this life worse for all of us,
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and so the government does have a role to take resources
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from more productive uses, or from richer sources,
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and give them to other sources.
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And when you think about the economy through these two different lenses,
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you understand why this crisis is so hard to solve,
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because the worse the crisis gets, the higher the stakes are,
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the more each side thinks they know the answer
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and the other side is just going to ruin everything.
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And I can get really despairing. I've spent a lot
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of the last few years really depressed about this,
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until this year, I learned something that
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I felt really excited about. I feel like it's really good news,
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and it's so shocking, I don't like saying it, because I think
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people won't believe me.
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But here's what I learned.
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The American people, taken as a whole,
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when it comes to these issues, to fiscal issues,
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are moderate, pragmatic centrists.
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And I know that's hard to believe, that the American people
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are moderate, pragmatic centrists.
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But let me explain what I'm thinking.
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When you look at how the federal government spends money,
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so this is the battle right here,
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55 percent, more than half, is on Social Security,
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Medicare, Medicaid, a few other health programs,
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20 percent defense, 19 percent discretionary,
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and six percent interest.
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So when we're talking about cutting government spending,
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this is the pie we're talking about,
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and Americans overwhelmingly, and it doesn't matter
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what party they're in, overwhelmingly like
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that big 55 percent chunk.
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They like Social Security. They like Medicare.
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They even like Medicaid, even though that goes to the poor and indigent,
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which you might think would have less support.
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And they do not want it fundamentally touched,
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although the American people are remarkably comfortable,
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and Democrats roughly equal to Republicans,
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with some minor tweaks to make the system more stable.
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Social Security is fairly easy to fix.
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The rumors of its demise are always greatly exaggerated.
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So gradually raise Social Security retirement age,
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maybe only on people not yet born.
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Americans are about 50/50,
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whether they're Democrats or Republicans.
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Reduce Medicare for very wealthy seniors,
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seniors who make a lot of money. Don't even eliminate it. Just reduce it.
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People generally are comfortable with it, Democrats and Republicans.
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Raise medical health care contributions?
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Everyone hates that equally, but Republicans
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and Democrats hate that together.
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And so what this tells me is, when you look at
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the discussion of how to resolve our fiscal problems,
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we are not a nation that's powerfully divided on the major, major issue.
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We're comfortable with it needing some tweaks, but we want to keep it.
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We're not open to a discussion of eliminating it.
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Now there is one issue that is hyper-partisan,
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and where there is one party that is just spend, spend, spend,
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we don't care, spend some more,
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and that of course is Republicans
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when it comes to military defense spending.
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They way outweigh Democrats.
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The vast majority want to protect military defense spending.
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That's 20 percent of the budget,
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and that presents a more difficult issue.
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I should also note that the [discretionary] spending,
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which is about 19 percent of the budget,
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that is Democratic and Republican issues,
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so you do have welfare, food stamps, other programs
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that tend to be popular among Democrats,
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but you also have the farm bill and all sorts of Department of Interior
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inducements for oil drilling and other things,
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which tend to be popular among Republicans.
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Now when it comes to taxes, there is more disagreement.
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That's a more partisan area.
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You have Democrats overwhelmingly supportive
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of raising the income tax on people who make 250,000 dollars a year,
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Republicans sort of against it, although if you break it out by income,
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Republicans who make less than 75,000 dollars a year like this idea.
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So basically Republicans who make more than 250,000 dollars a year don't want to be taxed.
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Raising taxes on investment income, you also see
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about two thirds of Democrats but only one third of Republicans
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are comfortable with that idea.
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This brings up a really important point, which is that
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we tend in this country to talk about Democrats
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and Republicans and think there's this little group
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over there called independents that's, what, two percent?
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If you add Democrats, you add Republicans,
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you've got the American people.
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But that is not the case at all.
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And it has not been the case for most of modern American history.
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Roughly a third of Americans say that they are Democrats.
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Around a quarter say that they are Republicans.
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A tiny little sliver call themselves libertarians, or socialists,
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or some other small third party,
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and the largest block, 40 percent, say they're independents.
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So most Americans are not partisan,
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and most of the people in the independent camp
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fall somewhere in between, so even though we have
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tremendous overlap between the views on these fiscal issues
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of Democrats and Republicans,
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we have even more overlap when you add in the independents.
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Now we get to fight about all sorts of other issues.
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We get to hate each other on gun control
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and abortion and the environment,
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but on these fiscal issues, these important fiscal issues,
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we just are not anywhere nearly as divided as people say.
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And in fact, there's this other group of people
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who are not as divided as people might think,
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and that group is economists.
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I talk to a lot of economists, and back in the '70s
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and '80s it was ugly being an economist.
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You were in what they called the saltwater camp,
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meaning Harvard, Princeton, MIT, Stanford, Berkeley,
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or you were in the freshwater camp, University of Chicago,
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University of Rochester.
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You were a free market capitalist economist
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or you were a Keynesian liberal economist,
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and these people didn't go to each other's weddings,
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they snubbed each other at conferences.
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It's still ugly to this day, but in my experience,
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it is really, really hard to find an economist under 40
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who still has that kind of way of seeing the world.
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The vast majority of economists -- it is so uncool
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to call yourself an ideologue of either camp.
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The phrase that you want, if you're a graduate student
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or a postdoc or you're a professor,
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a 38-year-old economics professor, is, "I'm an empiricist.
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I go by the data."
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And the data is very clear.
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None of these major theories have been completely successful.
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The 20th century, the last hundred years,
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is riddled with disastrous examples
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of times that one school or the other tried to explain
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the past or predict the future
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and just did an awful, awful job,
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so the economics profession has acquired some degree of modesty.
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They still are an awfully arrogant group of people, I will assure you,
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but they're now arrogant about their impartiality,
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and they, too, see a tremendous range of potential outcomes.
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And this nonpartisanship is something that exists,
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that has existed in secret
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in America for years and years and years.
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I've spent a lot of the fall talking to the three major
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organizations that survey American political attitudes:
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Pew Research,
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the University of Chicago's National Opinion Research Center,
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and the most important but the least known
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is the American National Election Studies group
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that is the world's longest, most respected poll of political attitudes.
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They've been doing it since 1948,
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and what they show consistently throughout
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is that it's almost impossible to find Americans
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who are consistent ideologically,
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who consistently support, "No we mustn't tax,
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and we must limit the size of government,"
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or, "No, we must encourage government to play a larger role
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in redistribution and correcting the ills of capitalism."
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Those groups are very, very small.
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The vast majority of people, they pick and choose,
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they see compromise and they change over time
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when they hear a better argument or a worse argument.
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And that part of it has not changed.
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What has changed is how people respond to vague questions.
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If you ask people vague questions, like,
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"Do you think there should be more government or less government?"
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"Do you think government should" — especially if you use loaded language --
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"Do you think the government should provide handouts?"
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Or, "Do you think the government should redistribute?"
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Then you can see radical partisan change.
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But when you get specific, when you actually ask
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about the actual taxing and spending issues under consideration,
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people are remarkably centrist,
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they're remarkably open to compromise.
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So what we have, then, when you think about the fiscal cliff,
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don't think of it as the American people fundamentally
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can't stand each other on these issues
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and that we must be ripped apart
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into two separate warring nations.
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Think of it as a tiny, tiny number of ancient economists
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15:51
and misrepresentative ideologues have captured the process.
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And they've captured the process through familiar ways,
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15:57
through a primary system which encourages
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that small group of people's voices,
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16:03
because that small group of people,
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16:05
the people who answer all yeses or all noes
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on those ideological questions,
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they might be small but every one of them has a blog,
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every one of them has been on Fox or MSNBC in the last week.
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Every one of them becomes a louder and louder voice,
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16:20
but they don't represent us.
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They don't represent what our views are.
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16:25
And that gets me back to the dollar,
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16:27
and it gets me back to reminding myself that
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we know this experience.
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16:32
We know what it's like
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to have these people on TV, in Congress,
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yelling about how the end of the world is coming
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16:42
if we don't adopt their view completely,
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16:45
because it's happened about the dollar
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16:47
ever since there's been a dollar.
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16:49
We had the battle between Jefferson and Hamilton.
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In 1913, we had this ugly battle over the Federal Reserve,
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16:57
when it was created, with vicious, angry arguments
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17:01
over how it would be constituted,
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17:03
and a general agreement that the way it was constituted
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was the worst possible compromise,
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17:08
a compromise guaranteed to destroy this valuable thing,
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17:11
this dollar, but then everyone agreeing, okay,
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17:14
so long as we're on the gold standard, it should be okay.
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17:16
The Fed can't mess it up so badly.
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17:18
But then we got off the gold standard for individuals
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17:22
during the Depression and we got off the gold standard
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17:25
as a source of international currency coordination
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17:29
during Richard Nixon's presidency.
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17:31
Each of those times, we were on the verge of complete collapse.
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17:35
And nothing happened at all.
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17:37
Throughout it all, the dollar has been
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17:39
one of the most long-standing,
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17:41
stable, reasonable currencies,
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17:44
and we all use it every single day,
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17:46
no matter what the people screaming about tell us,
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17:49
no matter how scared we're supposed to be.
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17:52
And this long-term fiscal picture that we're in right now,
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17:56
I think what is most maddening about it is,
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18:00
if Congress were simply able
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18:04
to show not that they agree with each other,
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18:06
not that they're able to come up with the best possible compromise,
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18:09
but that they are able to just begin the process
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18:12
towards compromise, we all instantly are better off.
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18:17
The fear is that the world is watching.
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18:21
The fear is that the longer we delay any solution,
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18:24
the more the world will look to the U.S.
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18:26
not as the bedrock of stability in the global economy,
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18:30
but as a place that can't resolve its own fights,
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18:33
and the longer we put that off, the more we make the world nervous,
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18:37
the higher interest rates are going to be,
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18:39
the quicker we're going to have to face a day
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18:42
of horrible calamity.
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18:44
And so just the act of compromise itself,
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18:47
and sustained, real compromise,
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18:49
would give us even more time,
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18:51
would allow both sides even longer to spread out the pain
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18:54
and reach even more compromise down the road.
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18:57
So I'm in the media. I feel like my job to make this happen
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19:00
is to help foster the things that seem to lead to compromise,
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19:04
to not talk about this in those vague and scary terms
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19:08
that do polarize us,
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19:10
but to just talk about it like what it is,
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19:12
not an existential crisis,
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19:14
not some battle between two fundamentally different religious views,
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19:19
but a math problem, a really solvable math problem,
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19:22
one where we're not all going to get what we want
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19:24
and one where, you know, there's going to be a little pain to spread around.
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19:28
But the more we address it as a practical concern,
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19:31
the sooner we can resolve it,
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19:33
and the more time we have to resolve it, paradoxically.
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19:36
Thank you. (Applause)
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