ch the solutions we're already building towards in order to respond to the next recession. So some of the work that's already going on obviously efforts to defend and expand worker rights and power to reign in Wall Street and the power of capital in our economy and our democracy to overhaul the energy infrastructure in order to meet the challenge of climate change to build resilient communities in order to cope with the impacts of climate change to strengthen our social safety net, to reclaim public goods and services, to refocus the Fed on full employment, to repeal the regressive tax restructuring of 2017 and implement more progressive tax structures and so much else. These all can be the foundation for the work that we could push during the next recession, but we need to weaponize these for our recession readiness package. I know it's Bellicose language. I'd argue that what we need is a good economic version of the Patriot Act. This was a ready-to-go package of policies that were pushed through because we were in a moment of crisis and that folks who ordinarily would have stood up against these policies because they're the wrong policies agreed to because they were responding to this moment of fear as Professor Romer pointed out and were feeling the pressure from a broader set of the public than they ordinarily would have in order to act in a way that felt like it was securing us. Well, we have the benefit of the right ideas and could make a ready-to-go package of policies that we know will help restructure our economy in a way that allows everyone to thrive. So a sort of weaponized spark to the recovery that would really help fuel a rapid recovery but would also lay the groundwork for an ambitious and progressive policy infrastructure going forward and build power. And with this kind of long tail, we've seen how the shifts that austerity has made has a long tail. We could also have a long tail and be able to think about what are the policies that give us momentum moving in not just shared prosperity because of those policies but a shift in how we're thinking about policy into the future. But in order to win the next recovery, we have to start now. And so we have to engage a broad set of organizations and leaders in preparation and we'll have more to say on that, I'm sure. And we'll all have more to say because we're trying to stick to a strict five minute, five minute limit on our comments. And then I'll have a few questions but I think this is really an opportunity for all of us to engage the entirety of this morning and think about how we work together in order to win the next recovery. So with that, I will turn it over to me. Great, thanks so much, hi everybody. So I think for folks who focus on state level action and activism, we have two roles as we get ready for the next recession. And the first is to move smart strategic campaigns that really put pressure on our state policy makers and federal policy makers to make sure that the kind of fiscal aid gets to the states that Dr. Romer talked about that can really help ward off the worst effects of a recession. So that's job number one. But I think the second part is that we also have to be very focused on making sure that the state legislatures and the governors make policy choices about the state budgets that are smart and help workers and help move the state economies more quickly into recovery. And as Amy mentioned in her piece before, the important thing to know about state budgets is they're not like the federal budget. The states can't run deficits, they can't print money, they have to stay focused on, at least slightly focused on their bond ratings. And so they have two tools to really address recessions. One is to cut taxes and raise taxes, and the other is to cut spending. And one of the things that we've seen far too often is what happens in states, if there is not a smart political campaign, if we're not organized and pushing forward, they far too frequently will cut spending, which is the absolute worst thing to do in the middle of a recession. And so right now is the time that we as advocates and that state policymakers and governors should really be focusing on how do we get ourselves ready for the recession? How do we set the state up for success? And I think one of the things that's important to know is that, and again, not making any predictions about when the actual recession is gonna happen, but you could imagine what happening before 2022, which means that all of the governors that are in office now and many of the state legislators who are now in office are gonna be those policymakers that are gonna be making the choices that set us up for how we get through a recession and how we come out of the recovery. And so they've got the rare gift of time and they should use it wisely and we should really use that time wisely to get ourselves ready for the recession as well. And so governors should work really closely with state legislators, with members of their congressional delegations, set up interagency task forces right now to start talking about what are the bold, proactive approaches that states should be taking to make sure that they're ready. And I'm gonna go through them in sort of laser-like fashion because I wanna focus more on what I think is a more interesting conversation and that's sort of the political ramifications of not doing that. And so states should be moving right now to shore up their reserves and get their rainy day funds in order. And it's not enough just to build up the rainy day funds. They also have to have the policies in place that allow them to spend those rainy day funds. A lot of states have really convoluted rules about how you can access them or it takes a super majority in the legislature to vote and support how to use those funds. States should shore up their unemployment insurance systems which Amy talked about. I'm not gonna dig into that a lot. But one of the big things I would say is that states should really, right now, and even in the recession, work to raise taxes on corporations and the wealthy. And again, because of the constraints that state budgets, that state policymakers face about how they get their budgets in balance, if they don't raise taxes, the only option they have is to cut spending. And that is just an incredibly terrible thing to do in the middle of a recession. And right now, there are some political opportunities, and I think MJ's gonna talk more about maybe some of the political opportunities around taxes, raising taxes on the wealthy is incredibly politically popular right now. 76% of voters, Democrats, Republicans, and dependents think that the wealthy should be paying more. And so we should be seizing that political moment and using it to raise taxes to help shore up state budgets but also make them more equitable. States should also stop spending like drunken sailors on bad economic development deals that really don't deliver very much for workers and communities and cost states, millions and millions of dollars over time. And so I think one of the key things is that one minute is that we've gotta really be at the top of our game and progressives and folks that care about working people and economic justice have to really seize this opportunity. If we don't, the right wing will. They have a history of using recessions to drive forward their economic agenda and their narrative arc, which is all about going after government, going after the workers who work for government and their unions and cutting taxes and maybe during the Q and A I'll give a couple examples of what that looks like. But I think the bottom line is, Republicans have shown a willingness to use power and wield power in the midst of a recession and coming out of a recession and we better make sure that we're ready to do that too. Thanks and I have to say, having listened to the previous panel on this panel I had hoped it would make me shorten my comment instead there's so much more to say. But as has been alluded to in previous discussions we are facing at least two crises right now. One is a urgent climate crisis and another is a ongoing and destructive economic crisis for working people. And we have to address both, seriously address both of those together if we're going to be successful. Taking action on climate is one of the potentially most promising opportunities for economic growth and economic stimulus. But if our solutions to climate ignore working people and only reinforce the inequality and inequities of our current economy, not only will they not be lastingly effective but there is no way that we can build the kind of momentum and support to see them be successful or see them become reality. By contrast, acting on climate in ways that are centered in the needs and aspirations of working people and their communities have the potential to heal divisions and to build the kind of movement, galvanize a movement that addresses both economic and climate crises. This starts at all levels, whether we're talking state or local or national, with bringing working people whether that's labor, communities, environmentalists, equity and justice groups to the table as a starting point. And it requires a bold, inclusive worker-centered agenda that can not only address our climate and environmental concerns at the scale that both equity and science demand but also address the underlying issues that leave so many Americans today living paycheck to paycheck and bearing the disproportionate costs of economic disruption and technological change. We need to act now and there are also some really great opportunities within this arena to address a recession if and when it comes. And I could, there are many to talk about. I'm gonna jump into just a couple of the kinds of responses that fall into this category. And again, I'd also be happy, you can talk more in the questions. First, we have an incredible opportunity over a pair of America to invest in a new generation of infrastructure that is prioritized to strengthen communities both from a resilience and economic health perspective to rebuild a critical infrastructure that we need for health and safety to rebuild industries so they're suitable for the new economy. And in particular, and this has come up in a number of different arenas, we have an opportunity to target investments at communities who have been undermined by historical, racial inequity, disinvestment and deindustrialization. And finally, I think there's a critical opportunity to ensure that the mechanisms we use ensure that our public dollars actually deliver fully to the public. And I wanna throw out two super quick examples of this. They're the kinds of things that we are already doing and could be rapidly implemented. One came up earlier, which is an investment in thousands of our schools. We have thousands of aging schools and investment that looked at bringing in new technology, getting lead and other toxics out, rebuilding schools with clean, safe and domestically manufactured materials and improving energy efficiency would have effects of not only demands really improving student outcomes, but improving safety and health for students and teachers, but it returns funds to allow for more investment in schooling, but also to taxpayers. Another thing that we are seeing right now is examples of investing in cleaner transit in ways that build on existing by America and Davis-Bacon and similar kinds of programs, but go beyond them to incentivize community and community workforce agreements spur apprenticeship and Priya's apprenticeship. Ah! And any number of other kinds of, and a number of other efforts that actually draw people into long-term careers. I will say two other things super fast then. I would love to talk about the opportunity we have to implement a national strategy to lead in manufacturing the next generation of clean and emerging technology in America and to do that in ways that retain and build jobs. This is a huge opportunity. It's one in which we can actively address not only long-term growth, an issue that came up earlier, drawing investment out of financialization and back into workers and productive capacity in the US and do that in ways that don't just build jobs because I think we actually have a lot of jobs at the moment. What we don't have is jobs that are good jobs and are getting better as opposed to poorer jobs that are getting worse. We have an opportunity to not only build 21st century technology in America, but to do it not with 19th century working conditions which too much of it is happening today, but with a build a whole new generation of jobs. And finally, I just wanna say super fast two things. We also have an opportunity to reinvest in workers and we need a, and maybe there are others who will talk about this, we need a globally competitive social safety net that helps ensure that we can talk about the examples, but that we position workers and communities to cope so that they do not bear the bulk of the impacts of technological disruption, economic change. These are natural things that happen in the economy and there are many ways that we can think about piloting now, but also in a recession responses that do a much better job of preparing workers for change, delivering ongoing work-based training and helping secure communities when economies change. So I, that was really short. Is it on? Oh, it is, wow. I can't see any of you. Whoever was on the panel before that was like the lights are in my eyes, that is in a real way the lights are in my eyes. Thanks for having me, Margarita George, healthcare for America now. So I just wanna talk a little bit, sort of big picture about this question of what we can do to be ready for the next recession. And I wanna thank the panel before me because almost all the answers were there. And so all I have to do is summarize some of what the colleagues on the earlier panel said and just add a couple of twists. So there's obviously a very robust conversation happening about healthcare right now. Healthcare was the hottest issue of the last election. It's gonna be the hottest issue of the next election. Anybody not working on healthcare if you wanna get on the action with the hottest issue now is the time. And that's actually very good for us, right? It's really good for progressives because the underlying thematics of the conversation about healthcare really are about all the big picture issues that we need to resolve if we're gonna advance a progressive agenda. And by that I would just mention a couple of the big ones that is the role of government, the ever contested role of government. Taxes and revenue on healthcare. A lot of people actually don't know that I work on healthcare, they think I work on taxes. And that's because almost every sentence that I say about healthcare will eventually lead us back to taxes. So I think the question about taxes and coming out of the closet, because we should, because we're the progressive, so we actually believe in progressive taxation. We believe in middle class folks paying more taxes and the rich incorporations paying their taxes so that we can have investment and make choices that really do reflect our values. And then we have to deal with a huge issue across all sectors, and it doesn't matter if you're working on climate issues or health issues or workplace issues. And that is the huge question of corporate influence that has captured democracy. Somebody said it earlier, the young lady that got up and made the comment at the end, this issue of what is our story? One reason why in healthcare, we spend a lot of time contextualizing issues like prescription drug costs or the Affordable Care Act or Medicaid expansion or Medicare for All, it doesn't matter pick. We contextualize that in a much larger story about how the economy works. That is also a story about how democracy works because we should not take for granted that folks know, right, regular people, I'm not an economist. I think that makes me good at my job because as it turns out, most other folks in America also are not economists. Therefore, there is never a time in the many years that I knocked on doors, there was never a time that I knocked on somebody's door and they asked me about fiscal stimulus. Like ever, there was like never, not even one time. But, right, your mom, I need her address, yeah. I want to do it at least once. But I think that the other thing that sometimes we take for granted here in the Beltway is that regular people understand that for instance, tax breaks for the rich in corporations cost money, right? Like that, I couldn't believe it when I first came to DC and I was working with my colleagues Americans for Tax Fairness and they were just, you know, we were just like plugging along, thinking everybody understood that tax breaks for rich people mean that it's like less Medicaid and education for us. It's actually not true and that brings me to what I sort of perceive as the paramount thing that we could do to really be ready for whatever the next calamity or opportunity is gonna be and that's organizing beyond the Beltway, right? When we went, years ago, when we were thinking about passing at healthcare reform, the Affordable Care Act and we brought together HCAN's coalition, we didn't spend a whole bunch of time thinking about the policy because other folks had thought about the policy. We thought about two things that were tied to power analysis. One is that whatever the solution is to the healthcare crisis and lots of people have lots of opinions, the key feature of it is a much larger role for government and what does that mean in a country where we really have a record low confidence in government right now and where actually folks think that the government is something other than themselves and so we have some real challenges with agency when folks don't even recognize that they have the power to influence what the government does. And then secondly, we have lots of confidence that when we elect people, the right people from the right party, they're gonna go up to the hill and do all the things that we want them to do. I don't know where that comes from cause it's crazy town, right? Like that is just not true. In order to advance the policy that we want, we have to be organizing 24 seven and really build an independent constituency for power in states and we know on every single issue and healthcare is no different, it might be the best example that in order to stop President Trump from taking away people's healthcare or in order to advance a large reform where we expand healthcare for 25 million people, it requires real organizing out in districts. That is the way to influence lawmakers regardless of which political party they're from. So if we wanna be ready for whatever the next big thing is, then we've gotta do the relatively unsexy work of organizing 24 seven in the states. So I'm gonna pick up on that last point and especially when it comes to thinking about the problem at the state level. While the stimulus packages Christina mentioned in its early form was heavily favored to getting money to state and local governments, it was far from sufficient because we know for this downturn, we suffered the biggest loss in public employment in the history of the United States and we have not recovered. We have not recovered from that. So what has to happen is we have to get state and local governments out of the fear of making public investment. We need an insurance for state and local government. Now when we did the great recession, we kind of ignored the elements from the Great Depression that gave us some lessons in part because we didn't have to invent them. We had social security, which addressed many of the economic risks that people face, but there's an economic risk which we now know people face that we had not envisioned. When you wake up in the morning, you think there's gonna be a teacher in the school, you think there's gonna be a cop on the corner, you think there's gonna be somebody to fix the stoplight. This downturn, we found that that's not true and I need that same insurance that social security gives me over my personal life. We have to think about our corporate life and so we need an automatic stabilizer that assures that we still get the same public investment even in a downturn because even if the economy fails, kids still need to be taught, fires need to be put out, lights need to be changed, potholes need to be fixed. This is nothing to do with anything other than just the necessity of life, we need those things to be insured. Who should pay for this? If we have a downturn, we know who will have caused it, we have to have a financial transactions tax because they create the mess, they get all the upside, now we've passed a tax cut that gives them even more of the upside and then we have to pay for the downside. So they need to pay to ensure that our public sector is still there for us in the next downturn. Why is this key? Because in the next downturn, it's not likely to be like the Great Recession where we lose millions of jobs and everyone is gonna be galvanized. It's far more likely to be like the 2001 downturn which was very shallow in terms of job loss but everyone needs to remember, it took us a long time to recover even the shallow loss of jobs from 2001. We've forgotten that because then we got whacked in 2008 and it was like, oh, 2001 wasn't so bad but we shouldn't forget how long it took. George W. Bush did not go into his second election with the same number of people employed as when he took office. It took that long in order for us to recover from that downturn and we didn't get the jobs and we call it a peak in 2007, 2008 but we didn't really even get back to 2000. So the next downturn is not likely to be as deep. It will be more shallow and therefore the focus and the ability to generate this recovery is gonna be more difficult. We have to fix our unemployment insurance system. It is not a state-based function. This is a federal function because economic downturns are a national phenomenon and just as we have to ensure the public sector, we cannot have a state-based unemployment insurance system. It does not make sense. It does not make sense because this next downturn is gonna highlight the nine states that have already cut the maximum duration of unemployment below 26 weeks and many of us who fight for extended unemployment benefits assume that states are getting there, they're not. The replacement rate for workers who lose a job should not be dependent upon the state on which they live. I have always said, if you are poor, you are not an American.  And so we have to ensure that Americans are Americans all the time. There should only be one state and if you're poor, you should be a poor American. So unemployment insurance is one of those key issues and we must make sure we don't lose jobs. The number one thing isn't a jobs program. Afterwards, that's when it's a disaster. Ensuring the public sector means we won't lose public sector workers. Had we not lost public sector workers, there would be hundreds of thousands of jobs which we would not have had to worry about. And the unemployment insurance system, had we been able to bargain for shorter work hours and used unemployment to fill in the gap, we wouldn't have had the overreaction of manufacturing and it looked like, oh, wonderful recovery because they overreacted in manufacturing and then we were able to get them to respond and start hiring back. The key was don't let them lose the job in the first place. So that's what we need to fix first. Those two elements and then we need to fix in our mind. We need to fix in our mind exactly what was raised before. Tax cuts for the wealthy cost us because they cost us these opportunities. Telling Wall Street they can't be taxed on their financial transactions that ruin our economy, that can't be because that cost us the opportunity of having a truly flexible economy that can serve us.  What we're gonna get is more polarization. And so without an adequate safety net to take care of the length of time is gonna take the recover from the next downturn. We're gonna have a lot of people suffer unnecessarily. Thank you all. I wanna start our sort of conversation part thinking about how we should think about states and federal. We sort of started at the state and got more and more to the federal. So I would love for you guys to reflect on how we should be thinking about and strategizing around what states need to do, what the federal government needs to do and how we prepare both our members, where we have members and our governments to do the right thing in a recession or a downturn. I'll keep going, I apologize. But one of the key things that occurred during this downturn that states did to rein in expenditures was to make a massive cut in higher education. That is what we have not recovered from. And change without us having an election changed the way we view higher education. Higher education is now something pursued by individuals and the individual's benefit and therefore the individual should pay for it. And that is the model we now accept. And we accept this as another commodity that's in the private good and therefore something that is not a public good and therefore something that we, all of us don't have a collective interest in. The result is the obvious. You now have universities running businesses because you told them they have to get the revenue. Now, anybody who's confused about this, just look at all these parents who paid money to get their kids into school. You said this is what you wanted. You want business. You don't see this as a public good. So this is just one of those ways in which the downturn has taken our eye off the ball of a bigger picture of us, the need for thinking about what are public goods versus private goods. And we need the language to reassert what are public goods. Sure, I'll go. I totally agree. And I also think, I mean, one thing we've seen in terms of the interplay between the state and the federal is in terms of setting up the terms of the debate for a future recession, terms of the debate which would allow us to make a credible case for large investment because we've connected the dots on tax breaks for the rich in corporations, investments that people want and values. Oftentimes what we see is a lot of opportunity for learning from the states. We certainly see that on healthcare. Almost everything that rises to the top at the national level on healthcare started from the states, including, for instance, examples of how we get through partisan gridlock. We just had three states, three conservative states that expanded Medicaid. Three Republican states that expanded Medicaid. We know Medicaid is increasingly important to Republicans. They recognize it as a political advantage or a political liability, depending on which Republican you're talking about. So I think in terms of the state, federal, connect, it is true, I don't know how to solve this problem, but it is actually true that we don't have a coherent story about the economy. The other side has trickled down and it's a simple way for them to explain the economy and it actually sort of makes sense to people though they're not buying it anymore partially thanks to this tax law that didn't work out so well for them. But what we don't have is an alternative on our side that connects the dots simply and helps people understand how the economy works. It lays out a rationale for then us coming along and saying we actually, as one of the previous panelists said, we can't afford it, right? That is fundamental to raising people's expectations which is then fundamental to building the political demands and the political power to pass policy. I think a great place to sort of pioneer those models is in states. We've seen a lot of successful measures on health care and other issues. The Florida rights restoration measure, right? If folks are following that debate, 1.4 million returning citizens, former felons got voting rights back in a measure in Florida that got a million more votes than any candidate or any other measure on the ballot. Totally bipartisan in a state where things could have really gone south, right? Given how racialized the issue could have become. I think we should be looking to states and using the states as a laboratory, frankly, to figure out how we have some of these bigger debates and how we're able to advance policy even in circumstances where it seems like the political lineup is not with us. Yeah, and I would just say, too, I wanted to piggyback on one of the points that Bill made. It's not just higher education that didn't bounce back and public employment didn't bounce back after the election. Also K through 12 education spending didn't bounce back. And so as late as 2016, there were still 25 states who hadn't returned to pre-recession levels of spending. And so you look at that at a time when school populations, school enrollment, what's the word? School enrollment is increasing, but spending is flat or decreasing and it has real impacts long-term. And I think examples like that speak to the desperate need for state policymakers and federal policymakers to work together on solutions and to really think very carefully before cuts are made because it takes so long to rebound and get back to the place that we can really support folks in their communities. I might just quickly add on that to say it's not only state and local policymakers who need to start now, but we have in either the climate or infrastructure or whatever space, we have urgent issues at a state level and it takes more than saying, hey, we wanna solve our economic and climate problems together. We actually have to do the hard work of getting all the stakeholders to the table and having the hard discussions to figure out how you do that and meet people's needs. And that's a process that does take some time, but is actually proving to be extremely effective to solving hard problems, problems that were previously divisive and separated constituencies at state level and crafting solutions which are very applicable at a larger economic or energy or climate space. So just would urge people starting those discussions at a ground level now. That's great, thank you. So I wanna get to this question about the story that we're gonna tell and how we make sure that the right actors and policies are blamed in the public eye coming out of sort of a, or going into a financial downturn. So I'm gonna pause it something and then ask a question. So the right wing ideologies of austerity, of trickle down economics and of sort of a radical individualism sort of won the day in the last recession and partly it's because they seem like common sense by now. Even thinking about the federal government is like a family and if you were experiencing a financial problem you would cut back and so the federal government should cut back obviously, right? And so it really builds on sort of both this kind of like common sense that has been built over time and on this fundamental distrust of government of sort of that idea that government effectively provides public goods and services and of public sector workers. And I wanna pull in a thread from the race class narrative work that Demos and Anachankar Osario and Ian Haney Lopez have done where they've shown how this ideological commitment to the idea of government overreach has been really enmeshed with economic anxiety and racial fears, right? And so when you trigger one you trigger many if you think back to sort of the famous quote from Lee Atwater what he says is he's sort of introducing what Ian Haney Lopez has identified as dog whistle politics is he says you start with the N word and then you can't say it anymore. And so then you start talking about busing and whatever and public programs that are identified with black and brown folks. And even though you're not saying black and brown folks people are understanding that's who you're talking about. And then you can get even more abstract and talk about taxes and so forth and people still understand that racial element. So it seems to me that the common sensing of, I just made a verb, of sort of like a deep trust in government and that government is us. This understanding that it is ours and not some third party really demands that we also be thinking about, right, cross racial solidarity and shared prosperity which is part of the teaching that the race class narrative puts forward. Like that seems to me as crucial to the solution but getting there is my question. So how do we identify the right villains and how do we communicate about that in the sort of lead up to and in the face of the next recession? I'll go first since I went last again. My analogy to folks is if you have a rose you don't order it from the top because if you ward it from the top the leaves will get wet and you get what's called rot.   You grow a rose by watering it from the bottom. And so I'd like to call what we're experiencing now mildew and leaf rot. And we know it goes to the top of the plant. And it kills the plant because you kill the leaves at the top instead of watering at the bottom where you grow the roots and the foundation. We have to get people at the state and local level the reason why people accept and can act more bipartisan is because we all think we're gonna have schools and roads and firefighters and people who patch the road. We all believe that that's the space in which we feel comfortable and understanding how the government operates. Our challenge is at this level of inequality the other things that government used to do which was to fix inequality which was to address the people who were being priced out of a market driven system were few in number. But because of inequality we've priced the middle income out of housing. We've priced the middle income out of childcare. We've priced the middle income out of college. The very fundamental things that they see as the investments in their life shelter and their children. And so we have to get people thinking that government can address that too. And so that the government doesn't just have to address inequality at the very bottom but the government can address inequality further up the income screen. And that that's good when the government does that because that's watering the roots. I would also say I mean just as an example of how the other side used narrative so effectively in the last recession is if you think back to 2011 so states were still really coming out of the recession even though the official recession had ended and states experienced budget deficits usually for a couple of years after the official recession ends. And so Wisconsin governor Scott Walker was able to prey on those economic insecurities of folks and talk about the budget crisis to really drive through this horrible Act 10 which that was the name of the law when it was enacted what the bill was called was the emergency budget repair bill. And it was all based on like be framed it up so that it looked like it was gonna be the fix to all the woes of the state budget and that if only we could cut back on those greedy public employees benefits and make them pay more for their own and wipe out collective bargaining for public employees everything would be okay. And all of those words are also the dog whistle that Connie is talking about because it's like who even in liberal Hollywood sort of portrays public workers as the sassy black gal at the DMV or anything else and it's like sort of what is in folks minds and it's this sort of racial anxiety and economic anxiety created a situation where somebody like a Scott Walker can get elected and then drive through these really horrible things. Same thing happened in Michigan with Governor Snyder got elected and drove through the emergency financial manager bill which if y'all will remember it gutted collective bargaining and also just took over in local communities completely gutted democracy and said like yeah so you elected a mayor doesn't matter the state should take that under control and also racialized overtones of which cities got taken over. You know who were the constituents in those places that suffered under emergency financial manager and so I think our challenge is really like multiple levels is we have to do an extraordinary amount of organizing in communities to help people understand who the real villain is. It's not public sector workers. It's not black folks. It is the folks that are destroying the economy making you lose your jobs, gutting our schools, all of that.  Or politicians who don't say anything, right? So just one basic thing I want to mention is it's very easy for the opposition to monopolize the conversation about government and taxes given that our side doesn't talk about it, right? I mean we don't ever talk about it and like you know here's the thing I just know from being an organizer for a lot of years as it turns out when you have nothing to say and your opposition has a lot to say people tend to believe your opposition. It's you know they're pretty persuasive compared to like silence so anyway just like a basic thing and I have to say you know on healthcare we saw this a lot, right? We passed the Affordable Care Act, Democratic members of Congress because remember we didn't have to move any Republicans we just had to get Democrats to act like Democrats. Democrats passed this law, they got smacked around during 2009 during the Tea Party you know during the Tea Party stuff and they all got scared and never said the word healthcare again. You know fast forward and it's I mean frankly it's shocking to be working in a moment where like Democrats are discovering that Medicaid is popular and that people care about pre-existing conditions, right? That was true back then too. The polling on Medicaid is not different today than it was 10 years ago. Medicaid has always been very, very, very popular but we still couldn't get Democrats to really say much and that really allows the opposition to monopolize that conversation. So I think at minimum on our side if we're gonna have some narrative change or you know we have to get elites to actually say things like we're for raising taxes on the rich corporations and a lot of middle class people and we think government plays an essential role in many of the best legacies, some of the not best but also many of the best legacies that we have in public health for instance are about the role of government and stepping up in that way. The other thing that I would say about this question of narrative is I think the attributing blame to villains and helping people understand who in fact is to blame for the state of the economy is critically important but the other thing is we have to have something different to say about heroes because the hero of the democracy story in this country is always a politician and that's just the wrong hero. The hero of the democracy story has to be the voter. It can't be Barack Obama or Joe Blow that we're gonna elect to Congress and so we're not gonna get to a more vibrant sense of democracy and I think the big lesson on this and Naomi could talk about this a lot is just look at the success we've had with ballot measures in states. When we need to do something hard we take it to a ballot measure because we can actually depend on voters more than we can many politicians. So I think that's another really important piece of telling a coherent story that is about how the economy and democracy works and how all people brown, black, white people can come together and really create something that reflects their shared values and interests but time should have taught us by now we don't get there by obscuring the facts and we don't get it by not talking about race and not talking about gender. So I think the stuff coming out of the Peoria Project and the research coming out of Demos is really exciting because it really validates what I think a lot of organizers have known which is a direct authentic conversation that actually names like real things. People are very receptive to that and that is the best way to advance a better story. I just want to follow up real quickly on a couple things that folks have said. First, I think the premise of this panel in a way was how to prepare for recession. I think one of the key political issues we have today is that in some sense many working people feel like they've been in a recession for several decades and some communities have been in depression for several decades and we have to have any no matter whether it's climate change or any other initiative infrastructure you name it, if our solutions don't speak to that in a way that's practical we will be divided but if we can do that it's powerfully uniting and to follow up on the ballot initiative I think people when they can see what the practical outcome would be people are prepared to do unusual things like raise taxes and there's we shouldn't be shy to think that this is just something about changing the narrative around the public sector. I think we along with trickle down and anti-regulatory push and an idea of kind of an inevitable economic disruption we've accepted that jobs, technology will change and jobs will be lost. We won't be able to, the workers don't have the training as came up very vividly earlier. These things are absolutely not inevitable and we can take direct action to prevent and retard layoffs to get ahead of transitions if we start soon enough so that in fact we have the incentives that drive companies and these can be enacted at a state or a federal level that drive companies to reinvest in workers rather than just take the profits out of the company that we incentivize reinvestment in plants in communities. I can think of, I was listening to the folks from Ohio I can think some vivid examples of this right now in Ohio where communities are coming together to say no we need to come up with a variety of policies that re-incentivize investment back in this plant or conversely discourage actively disinvestment. And so there are things that can be done that bring together people in Ohio right now across the political spectrum. Strange bed follows from labor, environmental business, you name it. So I just throw that out there as we shouldn't leave what we can do in the private sector behind as well because it is shaped fundamentally by policy. So your turn. So I'm gonna ask folks to keep your comments or questions to a couple or three minutes but I would love to hear from the audience we've had such great contributions from this panel from the first panel and also obviously from Professor Romer and would love to hear any questions or comments. Hi, my name is Ariane Higovesh from the Institute for Women's Policy Research and we're doing a lot of work on automation and the future of work and women. I was very happy to hear both Bill and Zoe allude to technology and technical change. I have a very specific question on hours of work. The new deal brought the 40 hour week, right? Every other big industrial wave brought reductions and working hours. In the US apart from work sharing that has never been such a big deal and work sharing is helpful but it's almost like something you ramp up during the recession and then it goes. So can we do something with reduced having a shorter working week not just more overtime pay, getting paid vacation, something that we can start to push now and will it help or can we just give up on that? Well at many states are pushing very hard on paid family leave and that's been successful because people understand the need for it and as Zoe was just mentioning, right? We have allowed ourselves to be bullied into the view that robots will eat our jobs and therefore we don't deserve to get paid. This is a language of rent seeking and those who are pushing it are rent seekers. So the people who pushed that view are the Ubers of the world who do arbitrage on labor regulations. They're just rent seekers, they're vampires. So we must push back against that. We must push heavily for the right of workers to organize so that when productivity, the implication of robots is higher productivity. This is why they say there would be fewer workers. That means the ones who are left are more productive, therefore should be getting paid more money. This is never in their equation because they're rent seekers. So they don't view it as oh I'm gonna increase your productivity and therefore increase your wage. I'm gonna increase your productivity and therefore I get more profits, I will do more stock buybacks and therefore I will get paid more money. So what we have to do is short circuit that so that we don't allow this inside dealing that these corporate executives are able to do to inflate their pay through that behavior and not be intimidated by technological progress, but instead harness the profits from technological progress to do exactly what you said. Why don't Americans get two months off? When everybody looks at our health disparities and we talk about how much we spend and we look at these other things, it always astounds me that no one says yeah, but you know in France, even though they smoke and eat butter, they live longer than we do and nobody says yeah, what about those two months off? It's always astounding that no one says the what to me is the obvious. They don't work themselves to death. Is that a miracle? I mean it's almost common sense that if you get two months off a year that's paid and you take it seriously and if you retire at a younger age that actually you might live longer. Is that not common sense? I super quick follow up. I agree with everything. I wanna tell one tiny story. I do a lot of my work in the automotive sector which is the most robotics intensive in the world. And we have very good examples of the impacts on robots and quality of work. And there are in the auto sector factories where working side by side with a robot means the company is expanding, it's hiring more workers and robots. People are well paid, they have workers' rights, they have full benefits. And there are places in America where people are literally being killed by robots on the job and they barely make more than a minimum wage. And the difference between those two factories is not the robots. It's whether or not they have a union or are in a state that is heavily unionized, whether the state enforces OSHA and health and safety laws. And it's not about technology. It's about the rights of workers and the policies that states put in place. Everyone, Kate Gallagher-Robbins, Center for American Progress. Thanks for such a great conversation. A question I had, one of the outcomes of the Great Recession was a real demonization of people with disabilities and an effort to cut particularly federal disability programs. So, but we haven't really talked much about that today and I'm wondering if you guys could talk a little bit about sort of the role policy-wise and in the movement and organizing that people with disabilities have played and will play and maybe how we think about that in the context of the next recession. I would say on healthcare, people with disabilities, especially in the last couple of years in the fight back on the ACA have been critical messengers, maybe the most powerful messengers around the issues of Medicaid, pre-existing conditions, expansion of coverage. And the polling that had just recently been done really shows them to be very powerful spokespeople. So, I think they're gonna continue to be, especially as we're fighting through this state-level slog on work requirements in Medicaid, they are gonna continue to be an incredibly powerful constituency. One other thing that I would say is there seems to be much more understanding in the public that people with disabilities are a very widespread community and it's not just people that have been officially designated by SSDI or whatever as people with disabilities, but that in fact there are many different kinds of disabilities and we're even seeing a lot of organizing among children with autism as part of the people with disabilities community. So, I think there just seems to be a lot more knowledge of people with disabilities and they seem to be much more visible as spokespeople. That's all to the good because they have incredible credibility around the healthcare issues and they're able to speak from a position of really moral authority, right? Like a civil rights battle for people with disabilities that are increasingly being marginalized and we've seen that, you know, I don't know if folks are working on the public charge. I mean, we've really seen it like across the organizations that we work with and touching a number of different issues. So, in a lot of ways, they're very intersectional spokespeople that I think can be leveraged on a lot of these, on this bigger story, a lot of these issues. It's one of the reasons we have to fix the unemployment insurance system. We need to make the benefit from unemployment comparable to the benefit you would get if you got a disability check. And that's an easy fix and there's no reason why my unemployment check shouldn't actually be based on what would I get under social security for disability. Because we know there's a cyclical component to people applying for disability and that's the reason why they thought it was a target because they were trying to view those workers as shirkers and it was a broad sweep and it just adds another group that they get to demonize and they no longer use dog whistles. They just demonize us. So, I think that's one key component but it's also I think for those of us who are progressive and need for caution on thinking through ideas about job guarantees because there are many people that you have to think about how do we support you properly when you may not be able to do 40 hours. There'll be accommodations that are necessary to let you be a protective worker. There are a lot of things that have to be addressed and I'm not the one who's in favor of because somebody has a serious muscle or skeletal issue to say work is better than killing them. So, I think we have to keep that in our forefront and we have to fight back, have to fight back against this notion that someone with disabilities is a shirk or they're not a shirk. One thing that I would add is I think that in preparation for the next recession that actually we need to be talking across communities that are organizing around particular kinds of investments and we need to be thinking together about how we build in again that foundation into the recovery and the rapid response that helps us continue a longer trajectory of policy change and structural change. And so really thinking about how are we engaging organizations of people with disabilities in conversations about things like infrastructure and other kinds of interventions that we could imagine to be immediate interventions and again why I think today is really exciting because I think that we need the sort of policy smarts, the economic smarts and the organizing smarts in order to be able to do that. There was somebody over here and then we'll come to the front. Hi, my name is Juliette. I'm from Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. I'm French and I do agree we eat a lot of butter and I'm healthy I think. But I wanted to get back to the changing the narrative and how to shape a different story and I wanted to hear your opinion on how much this right wing neoliberal narrative is embedded in economic departments and universities and schools in general in the media and how we hear it every day from like five years old to all throughout your life. And so I wanted to hear what do you think we should be doing about this? Why is that way? Well, I am not an economist but I've heard things about economic departments that are not all good. So, but no, I can't really answer that question but to further my economist friends who can. I mean, I will say I think part of the decline in people's understanding about the economy can also be traced to the decline in unions and unions used to have education departments that could help explain to large numbers of workers how the economy worked, who was getting screwed and why and that with the attacks on unions as union resources have dried up, that public education function has also dried up and so I think it demands us to think about what are other ways? One, we should make sure that more workers can organize and rebuild our unions and we should also be thinking about are there other organizing opportunities, other organizations that can really embed and a narrative almost feels like too slick of a way but it really is education about how things work in their organizing. So, I think it gets to the lack of diversity in the profession. This is the least diverse of any of the social sciences. The mode, the most often occurring number for the number of black faculty at an American university in economics is zero. The mode for never having had one is the peak. Most departments have never had a black economist and women are finally having the space, a moment to raise their voices within the profession to talk about the lack of diversity when it comes to gender. So, part of this is this is a very white male dominated view of the world and it is a profession that is prone to be sycophants and that's because the media wants to hear what the media calls economic news is Wall Street. The media business page, compared to the sports page, on the sports page, right, if your team is doing poorly then they'll turn on them. They'll say the Washington football team sucks and nobody thinks anything of it. The business page, oh Wall Street is so smart, they're so wonderful, yeah, yeah, yeah. There's a cheerleading page. It stinks, it's not journalism. And the economists who get quoted there are part of the cheerleading squad. So this is a sickness and our journalists are treating policies that are logical progressions. If you look at America from 1946 to 1980 there's a logical progression of movement. They treat people on that spectrum as socialists and they use this term, right? It's like we did Medicare and Medicaid because of course the elderly are being priced out of healthcare, shouldn't we have healthcare for the elderly? And what are you gonna do about children?  I mean, this doesn't make sense. Isn't the logical progression you did for the elderly and the poor, everybody? Isn't that the logical progression? Isn't that where the country was going?  You want the marginal tax rates of Ronald Reagan's presidency?  And the press feeds into this. They treat Congress people who suggest those marginal tax rates as if they're the Bolshevik storming the barricades. So we have to do something about the way that the press has fed into this business narrative in spades and have what they call business pages that aren't business pages that aren't critical of what's going on. So can I just pick up one thing and then you can go to me? Okay, so I love the kind of comparison between the sports pages and the business pages partly because I am not a sports fan, but I know that sports fans can cite statistics. You don't have to be an expert. You don't have to be certified in order to feel like you can educate yourself about your team, about the field, about where people are in relation to it, right? There are experts and that's important. And I mean one of the things that I think is such a service of the ERM network is that the way that they work with power building organizations in their communities in order to equip folks to be able to speak about what they experience in the economy in such a way that they can be heard by people who are used to hearing economists speak about it. But mostly people think only economists can speak about the economy because it's super specialized. We all live in the economy. And so finding opportunities to have more of that education feels to me like super important. And just a plug, like I actually think that getting ready for the next recession and really leveraging the ongoing organizing that's happening already in order to get ready for the next recession is one way in to help equip people to participate in the conversations about the economy. Naomi, you were gonna say? That's exactly right. The ERM groups, the policy groups in the States, think tanks like Economic Policy Institute are also a key for helping to educate a broader swath of people. Yeah, I was just gonna say real quickly. I think the more that we're able to drill down to what is the real problem and how do we solve it, the better. I know there's been a variety of polling that ask people, so how do you think is the economy?  And they're reflecting what they read in the business page, which is reflecting the stock market. But when you ask the same people, like how's your situation? Totally different story. And the more that we can separate between kind of the economy that's in the business page and what's actually happening in factories and people's jobs, what are the things you need to do to fix that? And we may find that there are actually things that we can do once you break through that. And I think we're seeing some, I think people, this trajectory, since the time you talked about, we've sort of come to the end of all the things that we, all the dismantling of our government, of siphoning, you know, of increasing inequality. And people are suddenly at a place where they're not getting more slack. Where they already tried, you know, mortgaging their houses, that didn't work so well. And people are really saying, so what do we do? And I think this is a real opportunity to jump into that breach with practical solutions that change some of the things that need to be changed back. It's a great place for us to end. What do we do? Great opportunity for us to jump into the breach, let's do it, let's, well, win the next recovery. How about? Thank you all. Hi, so I'm, this is gonna be very quick. So I didn't even want them to get up. Only bit of logistics. We're gonna be hosting essays from many of the panelists and many outside authors on our website over the next couple of weeks reacting to this event. So please keep checking in if any about this interested you. And with that, I just wanna say how about a round of applause for this panel, the panel before and Kristi Romer. Thank you so much for coming.


Finally, what's up money gigs Mr. V here. Welcome to another video guys. So in this video, we are going to talk about ticket symbol KULR cooler technology. So this is a company that we've covered here on the channel. As a matter of fact, I think I've done about three to four videos on this particular company and I told you guys how this company has huge growth potential and their product and what they're working on and the partnerships that they've formed really positioned this company to do some big things. So I want us to talk a little bit about it again today because there's been some major news, which I think you guys are going to find interesting. But before we get started guys, if you're new to the channel, we talk about how to earn money, how to save money, how to invest and build wealth. So if that's something that interests you, go ahead and hit that subscribe button and your notification bell so you don't miss out on new content. KULR technology is a company that builds what I call next generation carbon fiber material specifically around the EV space. So they service the EV industry and the material that they develop, manufacture and license is used around lithium battery to protect and keep them cool in hot weather or keep them warm in very cool weather. So you will see their technology also being used in electronics to keep things really cool or even in data centers. So it's a very, very specific niche company and you've seen their products was used in Nassar as they had one of their missions to mass. So it's the rover as you can see even in the video moving there, the battery that's powering that is actually protected by the technology from KULR technology. So that's why I'm really bullish on this. And again guys, if you haven't watched any of the videos that I go in depth on this company, I'll definitely try to hook them up here so you can definitely go check them, watch all those other videos. To this video, again, my focus is gonna be on some major news.  So let's turn our attention to these news. Remember when I did the video, I told you guys that you cannot buy KULR technology on Weibo or Robinhood or all these smaller brokers. You have to buy them on let's say Vanguard or TD Ameritrade because the stock was OTC and that means over the counter. So they were not listed on let's say the New York Stock Exchange. But now they have finally met the requirements that is giving them that promotion from their over the counter exchanges to the NYSE in New York. So this is great news. This is like having an upgrade.  Your tiny house, you can do stuff but there's not enough room for a lot of people. Some people don't even know that that tiny house exists. But this massive house is sitting on top of a hill. Everybody sees it. So when you host a party, a lot of people show up. I know the analogy might not be the best but here's where I'm going with this. The fact that this stock was being traded in OTC market most people didn't actually have the opportunity to buy it because if you didn't have Vanguard or TD Ameritrade and stuff like that you wouldn't be able to buy it. So if you have Webull, Robinhood then now you have the possibility to buy it. So you're going to see more and more investors are going to start looking after this stock and I'm pretty sure even Wall Street itself is that they're going to start keeping their eye on this and so you're going to see the price of this thing spike. Is it just going to spike immediately after this listing? We're going to see a little spike there and then we're going to pull back. But then people are going to start looking at the fundamentals of the company and you see why I have been so bullish on this company from day one. So again, guys, cooler technology is finally making it to the big leagues. Cooler technology is going to be listed on the New York Stock Exchange, American Exchange here on June 7th. As soon as trading opens on June 7th, you can definitely buy cooler technology. The ticket symbol states the same KULR. The only difference is that now that the exchange where they trade has changed, which is awesome. And again, the date here is June 7th. So don't miss that date. This is excellent news, guys. I'm so happy again. This is like some information from the CEO. Me personally, as an investor in the company, I'm super excited because you're going to see a lot of investors are going to come and people are going to start doing research. Even people, because when I did this video or the video here on the channel, when I tell people that it's over the counter, a lot of people are reluctant. They don't want to go opening up another account to try to buy one or two stocks. So they just ignore it. But now you have the possibility to get your hand on cooler technology. As a matter of fact, this stock has the potential to grow five or 10X in the next one or two years, in my opinion. So that's how I value this company. As we get more and more comfortable with electric vehicles and autonomous vehicles, again, lithium battery is key in those vehicles. So you're going to see cooler technology come in space and really position themselves as a leader in that material management. In this case, they're building that carbon fiber material as a matter of fact, they develop it, they manufacture it and they have license to even give it to other people to use it, which to me, I think is excellent. So this is great news, guys. So if you don't already have cooler technology, consider this one. It could, you can consider it from two perspectives. One from a swing trade perspective that you can buy it and ride the wave because of the momentum coming off of this uplift to the New York Stock Exchange. Or you can look at it from the perspective of a long-term investor because the technology is still up and coming. Companies that are leveraging the technology are still, some of them, especially the electric vehicles, are still in the early stages. So it will be a good opportunity for you to get in early. So you know how to buy it. Like I always say, buy the dips. You don't want to just jump in and buy it when it's high and then when you pull back, you're in the red, you start to DM me and ask questions. So always try to buy the dip. Again, average your weight into a stack. If you have $1,000 to put into a stack, stay out with $200, buy and see which way the market is going and add more. If it's going down, you add more as you go down. Maybe an increment of $100 or $200, depending on your comfort, not just take $1,000 and just buy at the high of the stack and then when you pull back, you start to complain. Again, guys, just look here. They are an electric transportation, energy storage, battery safety, 5G infrastructure, cloud computing, aerospace and defense. All these different sectors that I just mentioned there, those are the sectors that are going to lead the future. And if they are part of that, then to me that's why I see that the future is bright. So now let's take a look at the stock here. So this is where the stock is going to be trading as of when news came out. So not making a ton of move. Remember, when we started talking about this stock, it was really, really cheap. So it actually went, let's go switch to six months here. You see, it went to a high of about $293 there back in February 16th. That was pretty nice. I said, look at that. Look at that move that I squeezed right there. From $160, because I think when we talked about this stock, it was all right. Yeah, around $125 or so. And got into the stock and squeezed to the high of 293. And then pullback, I mean, like with the pullback that we've seen in the market, especially in the tech space and specifically there's a smaller cap stocks. We saw that pullback. So the thing pulled back to about $2.  Now it's sitting on that 250 something. So again, my anticipation here, or what I'm looking here for price target is $4. So I'm looking for a $4 price target if you want to string trade this one. But again, if you're long-term, they don't need a price target because you're going to hold this thing for the long haul. I mean, it can go to 10, 15, 20, 30 bucks, which is going to be awesome for some of us that are early investors in the company. And again, I mean early investors. I didn't invest when it was under a dollar. Invested about a dollar, 25 or 30 somewhere around it. And I've been adding more too. And each time I do a video here, I tell you guys that this stock is one to buy. So again, my price target here, it would be $4 if you're string trading this one. And then for long-term guys, you don't need a price target. It's pretty straightforward. So again, I'm super excited about this. This is good news. Cooler technology has made it to the big leagues. Tells me that a lot of people are going to start talking about it. A lot of people are going to get exposure. They're going to have more investors come in. And when the more people come into a stock, they're going to increase liquidity. And what that does is the price of the stock is going to go up. It's going to push the stock price or because more people are looking to get in. That's what you see again with some of the stocks there. This is not the exact same situation, but stocks that would do like a split or do like a four for one split because they're trying to reduce price and bring people in. But in this case, they're moving from a really small exchange to a bigger exchange that has more investors. So people will start reading about this stock and then they can easily buy it. Because with a smaller exchange, most people don't feel comfortable going and creating accounts to buy in those small exchange. So this is great news, guys. Again, I'm super excited. This is, as a matter of fact, I'm going to be looking at this one early morning to get some shares off of this one again. Even just for day trading, I'm going to treat the momentum. You know me, I take advantage either if it's day trading or if it's spring trading or if it's long term, I take advantage in every situation that comes my way. So let me know in the comment section what you guys think about this. Do you currently own cooler technology or do you even know about this stock? Again, guys, if you have any questions about this, don't hesitate to drop them in the comment section. If you're new to the channel, we talk about how to earn money, how to save money, how to invest and build wealth. So if there's something that interests you, go ahead and hit that subscribe button and your notification bell so you don't miss out on new content. Also, guys, if you're looking to get together with investing, we will have the promotion where if you sign up and deposit $100, you get some free stocks, links in the description below. And as always, guys, do your due diligence.


Hi, everyone. I'm Joseph Poon. I'm here to talk about plasma, and this is going to be sort of an overview for about the first 10 minutes. So if you've already seen the other presentation, a little bit of this might be a review. So the second half is going to be sort of exploring the narratives around, you know, data availability and the data availability problem. Vitalik has been talking about this data availability problem for the past several years, and it's very critical when it comes to Ethereum-based layer scalability such as sharding. And today I'm going to be talking about the implications of data availability when it comes to building transactions when we're talking about plasma in particular. So plasma is a project that right now is being architected and after that will be written and it's co-authored by me and Vitalik. And hopefully, you know, a lot of people in the Ethereum community can contribute because I think this can be, you know, this can be a lot of fun. So plasma at its core is about building a blockchain on top of a blockchain. So you write the smart contract inside Ethereum and you initialize it by basically taking a library and modifying it to whatever particular use you need. So for example, you can build, you know, some social network, some decentralized exchange, or even some private blockchain. I think the private blockchain example is pretty interesting because you can build a private system with your own rules, with your own participants, with whatever terms you want, but also enforceable on the public network. That's pretty effective because right now a lot of private blockchain systems are role-playing, right? A lot of the systems they're building today can be modified by the operators of these systems. If it's these five people, then you're sort of like, well, all my money is sort of at the whim of these five people. If you bond your activity in a private chain to a public network that allows everybody in the world to sort of say, okay, this allows the Ethereum network to sort of be this base layer for all of these private chains interacting in the future. And that could be an interesting aspect to develop on. And the way this works is that in the smart contract, you make it so that the consensus rules are defined inside Ethereum itself where you upload the smart contract and it's enforceable via fraud proofs. And each individual plasma chain has its own consensus mechanisms defined inside the smart contract and it could be written in solidity or in the future more likely viper. And the goal is to build decentralized applications at scale where you can create billions of transactions per second is sort of the goal given certain security constraints. The presumption is that you're not really trusting them.  So it's very, very small measured in hundreds of bytes, which can encompass perhaps gigabytes of data. This is not proof of existence. Proof of existence is another form of like role playing that people use when it comes to building blockchains inside blockchains. This is actually enforceable. The notion is if you create an invalid block, if a block is invalid, it can be penalized and rolled back. And what this allows you to do is allows you to create a lot of transactions inside a system. This is of course assuming data availability and data availability is an interesting problem that we'll get into in greater detail later. And essentially this is an example if someone submits an incorrect transaction, an incorrect block rather.  And it's actually very similar to the previous presentation about Trubit, where you have Merkleized Enforcement and Merkleized Attestation. And by having Merkleized Attestation, you can represent information in a very, very compact way.  And then in that moment, that individual, the individuals that created that block get penalized and that allows some measure of honesty when it comes to propagation. But the core notion of plasma is not around the notion of Merkleization of Information. The core notion is about exiting in the event of data unavailability. Data unavailability is an interesting problem because you can't prove when someone is withholding data. It's sort of like, if Alice and Bob says, oh, I gave the data to Bob and Bob says, no, Alice didn't give it to me, who do you know is right? You really can't be on having this trusted third party and in Ethereum, we try to reduce that as much as possible. And what you can do in Plasma, this core of Plasma's construction, is this allows you to exit in the event blocks are withheld, so Plasma blocks in this case. So it's saying that if you, if let's say block number four is committed, so this 100 plus bytes is committed onto Ethereum and it's like, wait, I don't have this data, I can't prove this as false, I can't prove this invalid. So then what you do is you then submit it and then when you, when you, not submit it, you exit and basically you exit from that chain because you're like, well, someone's not giving me the data, there could be bad data in there, there could be bad state transitions. It's sort of like, if a party starts sucking, you just leave. You don't try to make, you know, like, it's like a party's a disaster, you're just like, well, you can try to make it better, but you could just leave and join another party and it's much more fun that way for everybody. And the fun part is when you do blockchains and blockchains, you could do blockchains and blockchains and blockchains and blockchains, and that gives you even greater scalability where you could do like potentially billions at this point, representing a single use case, for example, you know, like fun posting in some live chat, you could, you could do that and like, you know, build a system where you could, you know, make that enforceable in some way. And that gives you a great deal of computational scaling.  This also lets you do computation using MapReduce, so you go like, okay, map, and you so map out all the blockchains and blockchains, they do computation across many, many different blockchains, and you reduce the results back down, it's sort of like returning variables. So you just have one way of splitting up the work and one way of returning the work, and that's sort of how you reach incredible computational scale. So the design goals is, you know, one blockchain can encompass, you know, all worldwide computation, maybe not all is in everything, but all is in, like, you know, there's no necessary constraints given, given the security properties of the system. And the goal is to do trust minimization where you're not trusting the people operating these plasma chains because you can ultimately go to Ethereum and enforce invalid state transitions. And the goal is to payment and ledger scalability.  And I believe that, you know, this is very much in the near future, you know, measured in, you know, you know, very short time frames, not like 10 years plus, but closer to like low digits amount of years. But, you know, transaction data is, I think, can give you an example of the problems that we're dealing with. This may be a little bit, you know, more architecture.   Not really. You can't attest to this payment if the block is being withheld. Remember, like that block number four I was going over earlier? If that happens, then if, you know, there's, you make a payment, you don't really know if that payment is in there, and like, you don't know if the correct amount is in there, you don't know if the current state is correct, it's just being withheld from you. And you can't even prove that it's invalid. It's sort of like, all you can do is just say, well, maybe my payment is in there, maybe it isn't in there, or maybe it's wrong. And if it is in there, and you try to withdraw an old state, then you get penalized. If you try to withdraw and it isn't in there, well, that makes no sense, that won't work. And if it's incorrect, well, you have a big problem, right? And normally, when an incorrect state is attested to, you just exit. But in this case, you may not have enough information to exit. So that's sort of a problem that needs to be addressed within the context of data availability. And, you know, you're not sure if that, those funds are even, are spent even further, right? Someone, maybe that transaction went in to this plasma block, and maybe later it gets withheld because it gets spent, a separate transaction spends it. So that could be a big problem. And this problem also exists when you put funds into a plasma block as well. So how do you address this? You address this by creating this two phase commit process. This is a very different, different way to do it. This is not a hard necessity for a lot of problems. But if you want 100% certainty, this is sort of how you would do it in the event of data withholding. We don't have this problem on the Ethereum base chain, right? On Ethereum, all you do is use broadcast of transaction. It gets confirmed, you're done. The reason it's not a problem in Ethereum is because it has presumptions of everybody having the data available. Ethereum works by, I receive blocks. I don't trust anyone else, right? Anyone else on this network. And when I receive it, I compute it, I validate it, and I just make sure that it's true according to the consensus rules on my computer. And what happens is I can process the current state, but you could also do a full replay of the entire blockchain history in order to have 100% assurance. That's not necessary, but you're capable of doing that because you have the data available. In this case, when you split up into all these different plasma blocks that are only committing very small pieces of data onto the Ethereum main chain, what happens is, is that in this plasma block, there could be information you don't know about. And when someone's withholding, you could exit.  So in this case, what you do is you create and broadcast the transaction, much like you do normally. And in this case, the plasma block gets signed by a validator, so it gets included into a plasma block. And then step three is where it gets weird. Alice commits that she saw her transaction get submitted to a block and she can give that to Bob or she can submit it onto the plasma chain so that there's like a second record. So it's sort of like, I submit a transaction and I submit another transaction saying I saw the first one. And then at that point, when Bob sees that second step, whether it be directly from Alice or from the plasma chain, Bob now has assurance that the money is his. Why do we do this? Right? Alice needs to be sure that the transaction has occurred and she's able to reference it. Remember that Merkelized proof stuff? So Alice now is able to reference that that transaction existed and now Alice is able to be assured of it and now she's willing to test that, okay, this money is no longer mine. And this is sort of the one weird trick to make this all work. And as Bob, you're only willing to accept the funds when you receive that second step because at that point, Alice cannot claim the funds according to the consensus rules written in, you know, solidity or a viper on the base chain, on Ethereum, basically. It says, okay, once the second signature happens, Alice no longer has any claim to the funds. And essentially we're dealing with three parties here. Alice, Bob, and the plasma chain itself. So let's go over these four steps. There's Alice, there's Bob, this is the chain and that's sort of the state, so that's the third thing I was talking about. Alice has one ETH. The plasma chain is there and then Ethereum on the base layer which periodically gets commitments and exits and deposits. So Alice signs a payment. So this is like very similar to how Ethereum works. You just send a payment into the plasma chain. Ultimately, a plasma chain creates a block and then it sends a commitment onto Ethereum and it says, hey, I made a block. Here's a couple hundred bytes. Alice and Bob then get the data of that plasma block and it says, okay, I see this block is legit, okay, there is a payment going on. Alice and Bob both see that there has been a payment from Alice to Bob. Notice on the top right, it shows Alice or Bob because either Alice or Bob can claim this according to the chain itself. Step three, this gets a little bit tricky but it'll make sense. So Alice then submits a commitment signed by herself that she has seen that previous transaction and essentially she's able to prove it because she sort of can see the data there and sees the Merkleized commitments. So she's like, okay, cool. This money is no longer mine. She passes it off into the plasma chain and Bob and now from her perspective it's not her money anymore. If she tries to claim it that's bad news for her because she's not able to do that or gets penalized. For Bob, it's sort of like, well, okay, if he hasn't received it yet, oh, there's a slide skipped. Oh well, anyway. So for Bob, he, let's say Bob hasn't seen it yet. That should be a dash. Then Bob doesn't yet know whether it's Alice's or Bob's. From his perspective it should be Alice's and for the chain it sees it as Bob's because you know it received that transaction and confirmed. In this case now that should be a dash line to Bob, not dash, a solid line to Bob so we're correct here now. Bob now sees the funds as his because he has that commitment and the original transaction. So Alice now has no claim and in the top right you now see Bob has the one ETH. So creating this two-phase construction allows Bob to know that Alice no longer has any claim to the funds and Alice has assurance that she does not, she will have the funds available if the block is withheld at any point in time. So as an example, let's say Alice tries to maliciously withdraw the funds. If Alice tries to withdraw the funds during step three, what happens is that when it's not fully committed to Bob yet, she submits a transaction onto the Ethereum main chain, the Ethereum root chain, you know basically what we call Ethereum today and let's say the holding period is 14 days before she can correctly withdraw and she has to put up a bond. Assume that Bob believes that the money is his because he has the information available to prove that Alice has committed to the fact that she saw her original transaction. Then what Bob can do is take that proof that says Alice says hey I saw this transaction hit the block, here's a proof that this transaction hit the block and here's a commitment that I have submitted this transaction. Bob should say okay that money is mine now but if Alice tries to take that money, Bob can submit to Ethereum that says okay Alice tried to submit this, Bob sees it on the blockchain and he says okay Alice screwed up or is trying to take my money, here's a proof because Alice gave it to me and I saw it on the chain and now what happens is Bob is even happier because she takes her bond and it's his money back. So this type of construction by constructing a two-phase commit process, you're basically making attestation on information availability and this is going to be I believe be an emerging theme when you're dealing with states where not everybody in the world has information, right? We're not dealing with global state anymore, how do we deal with this, right? In channels the way we deal with it is we can only move forward if both parties have it available but you know we're dealing with perhaps thousands of parties, billions of parties maybe eventually and you know different people have different sets of data so you know the goal is to be able to make it so that you can have attestation correctly and to scale and you know perhaps you know the blockchain can be the ultimate arbiter in this case Ethereum can basically be the Supreme Court of computation across the world. Thank you.


Mr. President, this is Mrs. Rowling. Mr. Rowling, how's it going there? Well, I'm very excited to be here. Now don't go like it, don't go like it. Okay, all right. Well, Mr. President, how are you? Well, good to see you again. Good to see you again. Yes. It's going to be a regular visit now. I'm sorry we didn't make it last year, but everybody went to Hawaii. Thank you. Well, now we've got all the people over here because that pressure just passed, we want to come in. Coach, we'll put these right over here. Okay.  Oh, no, I think you should. You should be in there too. Yes. We're very much a team, so be careful. All right. We brought you a little reading material.  Oh, I have some. I don't know. I don't know. Go ahead, please. All right. All right. All right. All right. Well, that's about it. All right. And a busy day here. Maybe you should act like that. All right. Yeah. See you in the back of the car. All right. What's up, Mr. President? What's up, Mr. President? What's up, Mr. President? Well. And Los Angeles went crazy for the Lakers, so you'll come back to the Lakers. I know. I have to watch a little bit. No. Not the last four or five minutes, six or seven. I mean, I was thinking of Lakers. Well, I would like to present you with, I know you wear this tonight, the band, you know, it's a night shirt. This was autographed by the Lakers, the first team in 20 years. We'll go back to back. When you're on the ranch. Thank you very much. It goes over the 85 T-shirt. Because we know that your administration is going to go back to back with Mr. Bush, too. So we went back to back titles. I don't think I should do this. I probably should not show this cover. But this is a book about last year's team and it definitely will put you to sleep. Well, I can talk to you. It's about making history, which is something you've done in the past eight years. Yes. This would be a time to look at my athletic days. I played some high school basketball. I was a swimmer. I was a swimmer. Well, that was the year of Indiana. Oh, the basketball. Southern Illinois, someone had lapped over. Football ended and basketball started and I went out to look at the floor. The guys that were out there on the floor and I took one look at what they were doing. Not me. All the southern kids. All the guys that played high school schedules of 40 games and no football. Well, we have a few seven years with a couple things. This is a Nancy Reagan key ring. Oh, thank you for that. And I know you've got somebody at home. And in here is a glass jar of the seal on it and filled with jelly beans. Oh, he loves his sweets too. Oh, and my little James will look at this also. Thank you so much. This is just a pleasure. Hey, that's great. Congratulations. Thank you. I look forward to working with Nancy in our anti-drive work. We really do a lot of that. We brought her a few things. We brought our video, we made a rap song about just saying no to drugs. The big production with Magic Johnson and cream and everything. It really went over very well. You know, a lot of the kids in Englewood have watched it and it's made a profound impact. We took 8,000 schools in California all for free, so we're committed to a drug-free America too. I know that was on your calendar this morning, right? Sure.  Thank you. Thank you so much. It's a pleasure. Have a good day. Thank you. Okay. We'll see you next year. All right. Anyone ever done it three times in a row? Our motto is not repeat. It's called three-peat. Three-peat. That's for me. It's a new word. You might be there to watch. Yes. All right. Have a good day. Have a good day. This is my water cat. Hello there. Mr. President. Yes. Very pleased to meet you. Pleased to meet you. Thank you, sir. I think we ought to get the ladies in the middle or something. All right. And have a family photo. Have you ever done this, Mr. President?  Well, I certainly have. It's been quite a real pleasure to work for you. These seven and a half years. You've made our family proud to be Americans, Mr. President, and we thank you for that. Well, bless you. I appreciate that. Listen, I have just a few souvenirs here. Oh, wow. Go away. And there's quite an arm over there. You've got a key ring. Thank you. Thank you, sir. And you share the glasses. Thank you, sir. We will. And then this is just a little something that's been around that we thought you might like to have. Well, thank you very much. I'll be around until the end of the summer, so I will be at the convention and my husband will be on Saturday. So we're going to be separate for a few weeks. Well, don't make it too long. No, I'm sure it will be a certain amount. Thank you, sir. Well, listen. It's our pleasure. Well, good to see you. Thank you, sir. Thank you for taking the time. Well, please do. We'll see you later. Bye. Bye. To college, Theresa Anderson. Well, hello there. Robert Dola. Hi, how are you? Pleasure to meet you, sir. Amy Fight. Hello. Hi. See you. David Poe. Hi, nice to meet you. How are you? Shelly Taylor. How are you? Mr. Rothcraft is the director of the program. Well, hi. How are you? Well, I think we have a photo picture here. The other side of the president there. Three on one side and three on the other. How does life leave the Elms upon the chance? Hot. Hot and dry. Well, yes, I'm going the other way, too. Yes, definitely. There. One thing I never, well, I haven't forgotten anything about Eureka, but one thing I always remembered in the spring was that there would pretty soon, from the surrounding neighborhood and all there would be is that beautiful fragrance of lilacs. I don't believe it's still there.  It was marvelous. Beautiful. Well, where about are you all from? I'm from Mount Vernon, Missouri. It's between Springfield and Southview. Bellevue, Kentucky. It's near Cincinnati. It's reaching out there. I'm from Illinois. I met him. I'm from McLeod, Oklahoma. And I'm from Williamsville, a small town by Springfield, Illinois. Well, by a gully. Don't recall that we reached out that far. Well, I think you've helped the college reach out quite a bit, Mr. President. Well, pleased to find you. This year, the semifinalists for the competition, we had 87 on campus. And they came from, I believe it was 17 different states. And I think this is what's most interesting. In addition to the scholarship winners for this coming year, almost a third of all those who were on campus are going to be at Rowling and Draco College. So we're really putting together a core of future leaders out there. Well, I have to tell you, if I had to do over again, I'd go right back there to the same place. Now that I've been on the board of the Regents of the Giant University of California when I was governor and things like that. No, I would not choose one of those assembly line diplomas. Well, I think that's just wonderful. You'll find a sticks with you for a long time. We hope so. It's a good place. Are you all still there? Are you singers? He will be soft most of all. He will be soft most of all. He will be soft most of all. He will be soft most of all. He will be soft most of all. He will be soft most of all. He will be soft most of all. I've worried a little. I haven't heard from President Hearn for a long time. Well, make sure that it's true. My last letter to him, I've worried that maybe I turned off. He'd written me about some funds for a kind of a museum. Oh, yes. Maybe he misunderstood my answer. I thought that duty, I know he had always lived in genteel poverty there. I thought I ought to clear the decks and tell him that if the money could be used for better, for other things in Eureka to help out. Well, I don't think that's a problem. He doesn't know. He's just busy. I never reported your letter to the faculty. You know, and it was very clearly stated that, you know, this was not, this was a very positive step. Eureka was not at all offended by that. Okay, but I'll make sure you get a letter. I think you'll probably get a six or seven letter. I'm saving up things that I think would fit in the museum. Whatever it is. Well, incidentally, you should have some souvenirs of your visit here. These are all key rings with the presidential seal on them. One day you'll be having a need for keys. Thank you very much. We also, and we are embarrassed, we haven't, but then we've suggested that we probably should not bring him into this visit. We would like to ensure that you've got that. Should we just send it to the White House? Is that the correct? They all have their Eureka t-shirts, and we want to make sure that all seven of us are here today. I remember our wardrobe used to be just a sweatshirt and worn as a t-shirt. You wear a letter in it. I was with your letter sweater over it. And Washington dishes in the girls' dormitory. And there's wood. We always dined in the dining room. And one day, Lydia Wambler suggested that she thought it would be nice since we dined in there with the girls that we would wear neckties. And she just specified neckties. We met a great change of wardrobe for us if we obeyed what she really meant. So I talked to the other fellas.  Our bare necks. And I guess she figured that she was defeated, so we went away with it. All right. I didn't live in the light of wish all night. I am. It's beautiful. It's very nice. It renovated last night. Beautiful structure. I'm washing dishes in the commons. It's close. Well, I've used that experience of where I wash dishes to lots of times and talk to people and so forth on campuses. And I've told them that one of the better words my way through college, one of the better jobs I've ever had was washing dishes in the girls' dormitory. I'm not going to be reading into it what they will. It's good to see you. Thank you. Well, we thank you not only for what you give to the college, but for being a great president for the entire community. And I think the whole Greek community is so proud of you. That's true. Thank you. And they better not go back there. That's fine. I'm not sure. I'm relatively new. I'm the freshman of the group. I've only been there a few months. And I'm really amazed that even 40-year-old people seem to have known you in college. Which I... I know it's easy, right? Come on. Mr. President, how are you? President, this is Christopher Bray. Hello there. Very nice to meet you. Laura Bray. Is that Bray? Hello. Sally Townsley. Hello there. Joe Townsley. Hello. Nice to see you. Jim Townsley. Hello there. Michelle Townsley. Mr. President, good to see you again. Good to see you. This lady over here. And you were not too far from there. Remember when you were up in Clyde, New York? Kate's going over. We figured that one of the sweetest things you can give any actor is the Oscar. So this is thanks to Eastern Airlines. We rushed it down from New York City and Kate Masters. But we felt you deserved this all on your own. And we wanted to give it to you and perhaps to the National Multiple Sclerosis Foundation. Thank you for helping us. Well, I never got an Oscar. I finally did get one. I could eat it. We're with the kids, so they don't act up. I asked them if they were going to behave in here. I told them I wasn't going to. Well, we thank you from the bottom of our hearts for helping all people with multiple sclerosis. Well, listen, I am the society. I know the work that they're all doing. And I think it's wonderful. And particularly with regard to the work which is being done toward finding cure and developing that kind. And I'm very proud to have the mother of the year and the father of the year here. And I know that you do more and just accept that honor. I know that you are very active and you do a lot of counseling with children other than your own. And I know that you are very much with the Cub Scouts in your area among other things. Well, I'm just proud that you're all here. I'm going to be happier to see there's quite a group over there. We're going to do a little bit of a group. Thank you, gentlemen. Thank you. Now we're going to switch families. It's very unusual over here. I was a reserve officer calling to active duty. But I was a reserve officer in the horse cavalry in a moment. Okay. He's been up to once in hours. He didn't call. He was a gentleman. Just a minute. I need to have to get my lunch.