here in Wild Hall and of course welcome to those of you who are joining us via live stream. This is the final event of the winter semester in our policy talks at Ford School Series and today of course we're featuring United States representative Alyssa Slotkin from Just Up the Road in Michigan's 8th District. My name is Anne Zhilin. I'm an associate professor of Public Policy here at the Ford School and also the director of the University's Librethal Rogal Center for Chinese Studies and this event is co-sponsored by the Librethal Rogal Center as well as the Wiser Diplomacy Center here in the Ford School. A word on our format today. Following representative Slotkin's talk I'll join her in conversation around 6 30 p.m. I'll have a question or two of my own to sort of start the ball rolling and then we'll open up to questions from the audience and questions from those of you on live stream. If you're in the audience please feel free to just raise your hand and if you're coming on live stream please just type your questions into the YouTube chat. Two of our fantastic students Sarah Godic and Dan Russell or Daniel Hayes excuse me are both here and they will be asking the YouTube questions on your behalf. So it's now my pleasure to introduce representative Alyssa Slotkin. Alyssa Slotkin has dedicated her career to national service. After the 9 11 terrorist attacks which took place during her first week of graduate school at Columbia she was recruited by the CIA to become a Middle East analyst serving three tours in Iraq alongside the military. She went on to serve in senior national security roles under both presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama and eventually served as acting assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs at the Pentagon. Since 2018 Slotkin has represented Michigan's eighth district in Congress which stretches from Rochester Hills to our east and the capital of Michigan to our west. It also includes that other university there in East Lansing. She serves on the House Armed Services Committee the House Veterans Affairs Committee and the House Committee on Homeland Security where she is the chair of the subcommittee on intelligence and counterterrorism. In her talk tonight Congresswoman Slotkin will share timely insights into the shifting international security landscape which is fundamentally altering the challenges facing the United States and our allies. With that please join me in welcoming United States Representative Elissa Slotkin. I guess this mic is what I'm using. Hello everybody. Lovely to see you in person. Thank you Professor Lynn for the kind introduction. I'm happy to be here in person. The last time I was here actually was right before COVID I guess in 2019 it was Veterans Day and I remember because we got an unexpected snowstorm and I was a relatively new member of Congress and I had this idea that I would go from all our Veterans Days events and then I would get to the Ford School and I would change into appropriate clothing when I was here and not be wearing my boots and like my whole snowsuit and I showed up on a panel with General Clapper and General Nakasone and all four stars in like my Michigan boots and my like car heart. So it's nice to be in professional gear here in front of the Ford School. So more importantly I'm glad to be here. I know some of you are participating virtually. I know it's a busy time end of semester. You guys are coming up on the end of the year and I just thought it was an important moment to have a conversation particularly with young people about to enter the world of public service or public policy because I really think things are at a major inflection point on those issues and it's a it's a good time to have that conversation. As was mentioned I was I was literally on my second day of grad school when 911 happened and I think I very quickly became part of what's called the 9-11 babies. The generation of young people who from that attack on the United States joined the military, joined the CIA, got involved in public policy, basically were inspired to change their plans and do something different. And indeed it led me to a life of the CIA and at the Pentagon and was just extremely formative to me and I think while that day really birthed the 9-11 generation we are yet to figure out kind of what your name is for this generation of public policy people of people who are doing who want to go into national service. I think we're at such a pivotal moment that you will need a name but I don't know what the name is. Someone should like get that out in a crowd source that but something that captures sort of growing up in the post 9-11 period. The rise of technology as an instrument in foreign affairs and then of course incorporates just the massive impact of globalization most notably and most recently you know things like COVID and a global pandemic. There's something really different about the era that we're going into than the one that I came out of graduate school to. So that in that spirit I thought that I would it would be worthwhile to just go through from my perspective at least how some of those challenges are changing and then at the end I'll make my plug that I always make which is to really seriously consider public service as a career especially for folks who are gone through the training at the Ford school. I think it's one of the most fulfilling things you can do with your time especially now. So you know I think it's fair to say we have several overlapping and central challenges in this new era whatever this new generation is going to be called. That unipolar moment at the end of the Cold War that we entered where we were sort of the winners is decisively over. We now find ourselves with the reemergence of great power competition in which authoritarian near peer adversaries are quite simply looking to reorder the international system and it's important to understand why this is a challenge. I mean I think it's clear that the hallmark of the 20th century was the spread of democracy around the world. That's been our greatest export as the United States. It's made Americans safer and more prosperous and it really is the reason why we call the 20th century the American Century. It expanded our influence abroad. It brought us new allies and new partners and it provided us the opportunity to foster cooperation across the globe that lifted billions out of poverty, ended wars, and improved people's lives particularly after World War II. But we have to face facts that the dynamics have really changed and the landscape is very very different. For a long time we took for granted that democracy was going to continue its march that it was kind of a a trend line that would just keep going and maybe it would spike and and maybe it would plateau but it would just keep going in the same direction and that the rules-based order would just be something that would be self-reinforcing and become the status quo and right now we are seriously seeing those challenged in a major way. Slowly but surely the autocracies are working to chip away at that status quo and instead of being complacent I feel it's very important that the United States help maintain that line. Our principal competitors are Putin's Russia and the Chinese Communist Party. I'm sure that's all very familiar to folks in this audience and we are at obviously a deeply troubling time with Russia's invasion of Ukraine which is an attempt to erase that country from existence. It's given us a really stark reminder that hard power still matters. It's not just soft power and Putin is literally trying to redraw the map after fundamentally altering and in the meantime he's fundamentally altering geopolitics as we know it. To be honest Russia was on its way out as being a peer adversary for us.  Its demographics are trending negatively. They're getting older and they're not replacing with young people. They're besides their seriously sizable nuclear arsenal its military is much weaker than anticipated and we're seeing that in real time in Ukraine. But Putin's actions which I really believe to be a desperate gasp at relevance have made has made Russia a much more immediate threat to international security and it's driven a real sea change in European national security and foreign policy. China meanwhile is a real competitor. Its economy continues to expand. It's emerged as a real incubator for next generation technologies. It continues to invest very heavily in their military and in military technology. These and other facets of China's national power have enabled it to significantly expand its international influence over the past decade. We were talking just before this event or before the I started speaking about just how dramatically you can see things change with China over the last 20 years. And this wouldn't necessarily be a problem but for the Chinese Communist Party intent on molding the international system into one that is more conducive to and accommodating to its authoritarian system of government. It does not always respect individual rights, liberty and equality under law. But here's the thing. We have to recognize that we face significant challenges at home that will impact our role abroad. A signature challenge is posed by our own internal divisions. This may be the greatest threat to our national security. The wellspring of national power is deep in the United States but only so long as all of us remain united around some core basic beliefs and aspirations. And additionally what I want to talk one of the other things I want to talk about today is acknowledging that a democratic decision-making process both on national security issues and on domestic issues is really slow and bureaucratic. We simply don't make quick decisions at the national level. So in a moment in time when technology and globalization has sped up world events to a dizzying pace our ability to react let alone lead is not keeping pace. So we face a range of serious challenges and I'll go through them sort of in kind and then I'm happy to open it up and have a conversation with Professor Lin. So we know you're witnessing and going to school during a major geopolitical event Russia's invasion of Ukraine on February 24th after many months of aggressive posturing after a deliberate strategy by the Biden administration to release declassified information to shame Russia out of an invasion did not work. This escalation what comes after obviously 2014 kind of a longer history of Russia trying to eat away at corners of Ukraine. Putin very clearly thought he could recapture some glory of the Russian Empire the Soviet Union and he thought that he would be able to exact a decisive blow to European and transatlantic unity. He thought he could literally wipe Ukraine off the map and then in the meantime a sort of secondary benefit fracture the EU the European Union and NATO and he was wrong. Russia's actions have led to Europe more unified in opposing Russian aggression than most people can remember. The reinvigoration of NATO which isn't the most dynamic of organizations but has sort of woken up to the fact that this threat on their eastern flank is a real threat. It's driven major European powers to abandon a decades long approach to foreign and national security policy which was kind of holding everything at harm's length and thinking that soft power would be the only thing that mattered and then it's taken previously neutral countries Finland and Sweden as someone who worked to the Pentagon do you know how long we worked on those countries and tried to entice them into coalition with NATO and now are raising their hands and wanting to join. It's really deepened Russia's diplomatic and economic isolation it's driven a bunch of European countries. Do you know how often we begged the Europeans particularly the Germans to unentangle their dependency on Russian gas? I mean a long time a long time and it's also revealed in front of the world that the Russian military particularly their army their land forces are not nearly as capable as we thought in basic things like getting food fuel and water to their troops things that we train very new militaries to do. Taken together Russia is likely to emerge much weaker from this conflict exactly the opposite of what Putin intended and to be clear the war is far from over and it is devastating to watch on television on social media the Ukrainians are performing amazingly they are learning to use equipment within two or three days and bringing it to bear to like really score some points against the Russians but I think at the end of the day when we get through this conflict we'll have a dramatic shift in the balance of power in Europe and the thing we're worried about now is what happens when Putin sees again and again that he's not succeeding right when you corner an angry dog do they lay down or do they bite and that's the reason why we've been really judicious about thinking I think on both sides of the aisle right Democrats and Republicans particularly on the armed services committee where I serve which is still a very bipartisan committee we've been very judicious about the approach to Putin because he has a different threshold for using nuclear weapons in the United States for us they're like an existential you know the end of the world kind of stuff I'm a Cold War kid and it was like strategic nukes are for the end of the world when they're destroying us and we're destroying them tactical nukes that could be pulled into Belarus and used you know via telemetry in Ukraine and Europe very different story and I think that's why you see a real carefulness or judiciousness coming out of Washington right now so I think the there is this profound moment in history that we are going through and it's a real test of democratic unity and to be clear we're just in the very early days of those tests often sort of the democratic nations of the world do really well in the first few months of a test and then they sort of peter off right when public opinion gets tired or they move on to something else so I think we have the test is still ongoing it is definitely not over just because we've had a strong robust response to to Russian aggression and look I mean the United States we are a compassionate people if you asked people on January 24th a month before the war are you ready to get engaged and potentially send American men and women to fight in Ukraine the average person would have said no the minute you start showing real life videos of people who are like fighting for their country who are standing up who are organizing you have American sentiment really rally behind them because we're a compassionate people and we empathize with people who are protecting their own country and I think the the best thing I can tell you from a Washington perspective is that in my three plus short years in Congress I have not seen more bipartisanship than on the issue of Russia and Ukraine and that goes for my national security committees but it also goes sort of for rank and file because people I think really understand that it's democracy versus autocracy and there might be some outliers frankly on the left and on the right who are like let's quit this whole thing for very different reasons those people have lost their way I think the majority like the vast majority believe that it is important to send a strong united voice and I think I was in the at the Munich Security Conference in February just two days Zelensky was there just two days before the invasion I went on a what's called the McCain delegation which is the sort of legacy John McCain bipartisan group of senators and congress people go to Munich together and engage as one delegation and it is was amazing how we would like ping-pong back between each other I would start something a Republican senator would come back on the thought we would kept going to and we were engaging foreign leaders with one voice and in my time in Congress I have not seen that and experienced that so I think that's it's been a very important moment in Congress and I think it reminds us and I hope that it reminds the next generation of policymakers that we are not a perfect country but we're sure better than the alternatives and I still believe in a strong robust American leadership in the world not because we get everything right but because the alternatives of a Russian leadership role or a Chinese Communist Party leadership role are not anywhere near as good as we can do so China so beyond the immediate threat that Russia poses to Europe right now the much more significant long-term challenge is China and China is a fundamentally different China a challenge excuse me to be clear the US does not seek conflict with China nor do we seek to contain China right the Cold War kids will remember containment of Russia that is not possible with China because they're purely integrated into every economy that I know in the world right the Chinese people have incredible potential there's literally no limit to what that country can do if allowed to be free and allowed to reach that potential and that's been our approach or that was our approach for many many years since the Nixon first went to China right it's establishing diplomatic relations with the People's Republic of China in order to support China's economic modernization modernization and the US leaders recognize at that time that the power and potential of China and as it took on you know sort of domestic reforms and sought to emerge itself as a responsible stakeholder in the international system that was the play that was the goal this is why for example the United States supported the China's entry into the World Trade Organization and I think that China is one of the major beneficiaries and greatest success stories of a rules-based international order over the last several decades millions of Chinese citizens have been brought out of poverty millions and China has become one of the major manufacturing hubs of the world as we know very well here in Michigan and in a massive market for everything from Hollywood films to the little widgets we make you know in the middle of Central Michigan and we've managed largely our differences in the decades previous to now whether it's Taiwan or economic espionage or theft the mistaken bombing of the Chinese Embassy by us and the EP3 incident theft of intellectual property and research at our institutions we've managed those issues right that's that is something that we've managed to do because we have this idea that if China could liberalize and continue that domestic opening and political and economic reforms then they would be an ever-increasing better partner for the United States but unfortunately we've really reached a different type of decade as China's power has grown the actions of their communist government have demonstrated that they're much more interesting and interested in tightening their grip on power through whatever means possible than on opening and this is a real source of friction between the United States and China our disagreement with the communist party over denial of basic human rights of its citizens like the Uyghurs and their reluctance to do anything about corruption and predatory economic policies theft of intellectual property as I said and then particularly from a military perspective there the communist party's efforts to coerce its neighbors through the use of gray zone tactics and through overt military term intimidation and these are things that undermine a rules-based international order so what can we do about it like how do we think about it how does your generation think about it for the next couple of decades so I said we're not seeking to contain China that'd be nearly impossible just ask the auto industry right just go down the street and ask the auto industry but that does mean that that does not mean that we can't seek to limit our economic exposure to China and that we shouldn't take steps to curb the flow of U.S. capital to programs that might support research and development into weapons that might one day be used against us or that we can't mitigate our own vulnerabilities on supply chains right we learned that one in spades during covid and you know the point comes right back home to michigan this is where national security policy and foreign policy becomes hyper local very important to the average person in a place like michigan last year I was so impacted by covid and our inability to get a 78 cent mask for our nurses who were intubating covid patients that I started looking at our vulnerabilities of supply chains around our military supply chains our pentagon supply chains and I chaired a task force along with Mike Gallagher representative Mike Gallagher of wisconsin a republican that studied the pentagon supply chains and when we picked up the rug and looked what was underneath there were a lot of creepy crawlies under there that were really disconcerting so i'll give you an example we found that while the vast majority of U.S. military equipment is made in the united states and there are actually by american requirements on a lot of our military equipment the component parts the component chemicals a lot of things that go into our military equipment um did indeed get sourced to china so um i don't know if anyone's military or former military but the things that make uh ordinance go boom is propellant right a chemical that makes up a propellant and we learned that about 90 percent of our propellant was being produced in china so we'll do the shell casings we'll do the ammunition the hardware but the actual chemical that makes things go boom and i think it really stopped us in a tracks that if we ever god forbid had to go to war with china um they may have you know a stranglehold on us and our propellant that we may need in said war i don't think anyone thought that that was a good idea and that we should just allow those vulnerabilities to exist at the same time we feel felt very strongly in that task force that our allies and partners were having the same concerns that we were having right whether it was about microchips or rare earth minerals things that we all depend on that all of you have in your phones right now um that we needed to come up with a strategy among allies and partners to at least diversify where we get some of this stuff so that god forbid if you know we weren't at the whim of the chinese communist party if they decided to shut off our supply to some of these things um so this is costly there's no doubt about it there is a reason why we went to china in mass in the 90s in the 2000s but i think what we came away with was there's certain critical items not everything but certain critical items that really we shouldn't allow ourselves to be completely dependent on china on and you know it would help correct what i think many in michigan feel like is that historic mistake of exporting so much of our manufacturing capacity to developing countries and places um that resulted in sort of the hollowing out of our manufacturing sector michigan is the outlier we are one of the few places that still has real manufacturing capacity and it shouldn't be a surprise to anyone that in the height of the covid crisis when things were really going crazy um you know the government came to gm and they came to the auto industry and said help us with ventilators help us produce things it's still important to make things and grow things in the united states um so i think the the um it's helped us renew our focus the last couple of years it helped us renew our focus domestically um and helping to reduce that dependence on china for our collective security um and i think that that this issue like supply chains were not a sexy issue a few years ago no one was talking about supply chains a few years ago they were a very niche thing for like low justitions to talk about um but i really think that our supply chains i mean if i i in in my district they're in and around my district there's two auto plants that have largely been dormant for the better part of a year because they can't get a 14 cent microchip um and uh like i said i do not care if they make like rubik's cubes and ladies razors in china because no one's life depends on those no one's economic security depends on those but there's a bunch of key items that we should care about as a way to mitigating risk um i will have to say that china has embarked for the past two to three decades on a real military modernization plan um to provide it with capabilities to give them more parity with the united states they've invested billions particularly in military tech right i think there was a an understanding that we they weren't going to maybe be able to go toe to toe with the us conventional military um but they've been investing in sophisticated weaponry advanced naval vessels aircraft intelligence system and technology that purposely undercuts our advantages should we ever god forbid go to war very smart at the same period of time the united states has been fighting wars in afghanistan and iraq and investing in much more traditional hardware and making hardware more resilient so that our american men and women weren't at greater risk as as greater risk in those war zones so now washington is much more focused on the military side of the problem with china we've been slow to wake up to it but the combination of their investments plus the tyranny of geography just being so far away um you see the logistics problems that the russians are having right on their borders the idea of conducting a war basically half a world away do not underestimate the difficulty of that even for american logisticians so we need to do a couple of things to maintain our deterrence with china and if necessary respond to aggression it means we need to catch up on our tech investments period we need to think rethink how we acquire new technology into the u.s. military we are very slow we take a long time we are very methodical we have a very long process for how you acquire new technology into the pentagon into the the military um and it just does not compete with the timeline that the chinese are on um and um frankly our systems have become cumbersome and risk averse right and trying something new means risking that that system fails so why not just stick with the old stuff the old contractors the old guys who know how to do everything like you know methodically instead of trying that new thing out of silicon valley that could really make a big difference there's a real culture problem at the pentagon on that um and then secondly we need to diversify our footprint in asia we're never going to have nato in asia right that's a big game changer in a place like europe we're never going to have a treaty alliance with asian nations that have the chinese communist government breathing down their back um breathing down their necks like right next door while we're so far away but we do need to diversify who we spend time with where we have locations where we engage with folks where we have training um and make it harder for china to ever envision knocking us out with one punch right because you don't they don't want to go up against a con and have a complicated war we don't want a complicated war so they're they're looking to see if they could take us out with one punch um i i will just say um finally that the thing you know i've been focusing on the military things that we need to do but the truth is if we get to a military conflict with china we failed um that that's disastrous for us for them for the whole world it's failed much more important is to actually do something that the u.s government has a hard time doing which is having a whole of government strategy that's really leading with our economic policy with our cultural policy with our uh engagement abroad with our diplomacy and then thinking about military only as a last resort and the u.s government tends to have silos we call them silos of excellence right everyone does their own thing we don't have an integrated plan and the truth is our economic policy with china is going to be much more important than our military policy i hope um uh lastly um as i mentioned the internal divisions in the united states deeply worry me as a citizen as a representative and as a national security person from my former life right um we have this incredibly complex world and we have decisions to make um but we cannot get at those pressing fundamental issues if we just don't have a unity of of decision in our country and you know if you think about our leverage abroad after world war two where we literally remade europe with the the marshal plan and you think about how consistent our foreign policy was since world war two democrat republican and then you look at how the pendulum has swung in the last 20 years if you're a nation abroad bush to obama to trump to biden that's like a nauseating amount of swing right that's a lot of change we get into deals we get out of deals we send force abroad we pull force back it's very it's like whiplash for our partners who were used to national security being very staid and very consistent for many years um and we have to decide what we want our role to be in this next century and if we don't agree at home we cannot be that strong leadership role abroad if that's what we want so your generation of leaders are going to have to help us plot our way through that um and part of that is making sure our like our structures can keep up with the pace like i said right now at the pentagon if you take a new idea and you want to see that actually fielded in the pentagon and used three years minimum from idea to actually a pilot program three years in china one year um if we want to move ourselves into the next generation of policy making we're going to need help from you from you all on how we can sort of get a hold of our national decision making process and get through some of those wickets in our bureaucratic systems a lot of those wickets were put up for very good reasons like human rights and making sure there's no um corruption and all those good things but what it ends up doing is it slows us down compared to an autocratic government that can just make decisions and then you're going to have to figure out what role we want in the world i'm biased i'm a cold war kid i believe that an american um leadership role is pivotal not perfect but important but i understand and hear from lots of students about um how you grew up in the post-911 generation and you saw us involved in messy complicated wars in in iraq and afghanistan and so your sense of what we can do um is totally different than someone who grew up the way i did um so we're going to need to have that conversation but we better have it we better have it because not making a decision is also a decision um lastly i will just say um uh or i will just plea that um as you go off into a world as people who have studied public policy i'm begging you to be the person in the arena and not the person in the stands like get in on the action don't just comment don't just write a piece don't just like get in it if you don't like the way our government is being run get in and do something about it if you think we can do better please consider public service because it is a democracy it is our government it is only as good as the people who go in and work it um the your service your country is the greatest love letter you can send because it's your sweat and your time um and there is nothing more meaningful and if you're in public policy if you're at the ford school already you've already made the decision that your driving factor is not making cajillions of dollars right you've already made the decision that mission is important to you so i urge you to take that initiative and put it into work for your country because we need you more than ever and i'll stop there so representative slot in thank you so much for that speech i think it was really interesting really thought provoking in a bunch of different ways and it's really inspired me i was going to ask you some really policy wonkish types of questions um but it actually inspired me to start with something more existential um you know when we had the racial justice protests um in the summer of 2020 um when we had the january 6th insurrection um i think other countries and in particular china and russia looked at that and said look this is horrible you know you look at look at what democracy is producing that's not getting people to work together that's not moving ahead that's not even sort of coming to a unified sense of what the national interest is and i think chinese and russians you know people who are not committed necessarily to the to the particular authoritarian ruler that they have still look at that and say that's not the kind of country we want to have we want to have a unity of purpose we want to be able to move forward into our place in the world um democracy is really problematic and i'm wondering what you would say to them and what you say to us yeah well look no one is proud of what happened on january 6 i was in the capital um and i never thought that i'd use you know training from iraq inside the u.s capital i i think um look i i don't think there's any way around it we are just in what i think is probably a decades long period of instability like if you can't keep up with events if you if things are flying at you and you can't even like on a daily basis keep up with all the crazy things that are going on in the world that's not a that's not just you that is the world right now and i i can tell you it i don't know it's the crazy alchemy of globalization and social media and just the period that we're in in the world coming out of a pandemic and so i understand the criticism we deserve criticism but we also deserve criticism for other things in our history and we came through it if you were in russia and especially if you were prone to to wanting to highlight the the problems in the united states and you looked at michigan in 1967 during the riots um you said you see why would i ever want that we have had terrible moments in our history we're going through a very difficult moment but that doesn't mean that there are um that there is sort of people who are just naturally going to be better off because they're in an autocratic system we're messy democracies are messy that's the whole kind of concept and you know i happen to be in taiwan over Thanksgiving speaking with the president of taiwan who's amazing an inspiring woman and it took me going to another country and hearing her talk about like look obviously we speak chinese we watch their media and i'm telling you people want to be free it may take them a long time to talk about that openly but don't mistake them kind of keeping quiet for agreeing to live under that system they want more and i just reject the idea that legitimate criticism of the united states means that democracy isn't a system that works thank you so i will jump then to a pretty wonkish question which is if you i mean one of the things that really i think made our relationship with china work is that it wasn't a washington-beijing relationship that over the last decades you know it's developed into a relationship where at the state level there's a lot of interaction the state provincial level there's a lot of interaction at the manufacturing level it's not government led it's industry led right and a lot of that's dropped out because of the pandemic so how do we get it back especially that now that we're in the period where things look so fraught and so difficult well we i think we used to call that track two conversations i don't know if it's it's as formal as track two but i think the more of that the better the more that we have human beings talking to human beings separate from the politics of the news the better and i think if there's like i said it's not the military policy that's going to keep us out of war it's economic policy it's people the people relationships and diplomacy so whatever we can do at whatever level whether it's a professional association or just conversations about investment that is a good thing that will help mitigate against increasing risk that washington you know kind of beats its chest about china and i think that you know i super interesting what's going on right now i mean it was before covid like they're building like 20 art museums you know like this is this is people on the move and um hollywood now right think about the market that for hollywood i think there are lots of ways to communicate about what our culture is here over there besides the spokesperson at the pentagon um let me turn to people in the room now and also people on youtube feel free to send your questions over on youtube on chat and sarah and daniel will um flag them for us but maybe we'll start with you thank you for being here sir one one question that i have for you um given your previous experience working at the ian in particular with the reprobial in regards to the ukraine war as well that currently iran is funneling weapons into ukraine through weapons funneling with the popular mobilization forces thank you um and it and they've used other means to for example recruit mercenaries from syria in order to achieve their war aims in the conflict based on your experience in the iran portfolio and in the intelligence community how can we essentially prevent that from happening um and in a more broader sense for strategy within the region how do we get iraqi democracy to be less influenced by proxies um iraqi proxies iranian proxies in the region thank you and just to just to correct the question um i think you said iran is smuggling weapons into ukraine but i you met iraq in the beginning of your question i said i haven't heard that one yet breaking news um the um so um when i worked on iraq for eight years um including uh three tours over there um i am a specialist in militias and terrorist groups particularly shia militias so i led a research team that did some of the original analysis that linked the weapons those militias were using to iran right um and um there's no doubt about it iran has been fueling um and supporting terrorism in iraq but other places in the middle east for a long time yemen gaza strip um they have a robust program of exporting their weapons um and um to me this is about making sure that we deal not just ron has a nuclear program they have a ballistic missile program and they have a terrorism program those are the three arms of their overt capabilities and um i believe it's important to look at all three of them not just the nuclear file and you know for a long time we've talked about mitigating their potential of turning nuclear material in a nuclear weapon super important right nuclear weapon is devastating if they got their hands on one but so is their ballistic missile program and their terrorism program so um sanctioning them engaging with them on um their terrorist program i think is particularly important and it's one of the reasons why there's real questions about what's going to happen with the potential um reentry into the iran deal um that obama signed and that trump pulled us out of that's a real hot topic right now because a lot of us believe that any deal should be um more robust than just their nuclear issue and that sanctions and going after them on their terrorism and ballistic missile programs is also very important um in terms of iraq i mean look you take a strong man like saddam hussein and you pull him and his family out and what's left is still forming 20 years later or whatever 18 years later it's still forming and because no one party has like dominance of force you get a mushiness to iraqi politics and um uh i that is there we we learned that you cannot just impose a healthy democracy on another country no matter how much you will it no matter how much you want it to be for the people there they have to you can only give them a few kind of suggestions and then they have to take it for themselves and i think the system is getting better it's getting left less corrupt but it'll take a very long time for it to form into what you and i think of as a healthy democracy um let's take a question from youtube thank you so much for being here greatly appreciate it uh so i have kind of a culmination of questions from the audience uh from youtube as well as some pre-submitted questions so what do you see as the potential end state in the ukraine russian conflict presuming putin does not use tactical or strategic nuclear weapons and to ensure a peaceful outcome should we consider an off ramp for putin and what do you see as our diplomatic and deescalatory long-term goals so um uh let's put aside the devastating change and impact that any use of a nuclear weapon or mass use of chemical or biological weapons would have on that conflict just like americans are empathetic when they watch what's going on now if we had a massive you know if we had a nuclear strike or a chemical massive chemical weapons attack i think the american consciousness consciousness would uh be deeply impacted by that so let's let's hope that cooler heads prevail and putin does not do that um and we're not in that position um i think the the easiest answer to your question is it's not going to be up to us the united states to decide what that off ramp is every war in history either ends by one side clearly winning militarily or by a negotiated off ramp right and it just is enough that both sides get it get enough victory out of it that they in their exhaustion say okay like uncle um i i so i i doesn't matter what i think the off ramp is going to be um president solinsky who i think has really risen to the moment of this war is going to ultimately be the one at the negotiating table with the russians making a a deal with them um a diplomatic deal to get out of this conflict um and um you know i i don't know what that will be because imagine any president of the united states like will you just give us florida like let's just you know we're in war can we just have florida like who can give up you know even if you're you're like florida come sometimes causes me problems like what president what president can give up a part of their country that's a very difficult thing so um i've heard like lots of speculation from american um you know uh policymakers about eastern ukraine and you know russian administration of certain parts of eastern ukraine the bottom lines is we're not at that table and uh when we're not at the table you know we we used to have a phrase of the pentagon you don't talk about them without them right you just the negotiation is those two parties um and uh they will have to decide what they're willing to do all right um lucas i was wondering what role you see thanks also for coming what role you see for the german marshal fund and NGOs like that um encounter acting the pendulum swinging that you talked about foreign policy especially as it pertains to our allies yeah so the german marshal fund actually is a perfect example of what professor lin was talking about this sort of like below the government level conversations and the fact that the german marshal fund has been around since world war two and has continued to send generations of young professionals between you know the in the transatlantic relationship to meet each other it's it is um it is part of the reason why we have just continued very strong bonds with europe and actually i don't know what the what the um relevant organization with china is or with asia there probably is one and i just don't know it but we want to elevate that organization whatever it is or few organizations the the german marshal fund um has has educated generations of americans about the problem sets that the europeans are facing and given us a front row seat to understanding those issues and vice versa um and um those organizations like i hope they're getting stronger i'm sure they are because this whole crisis with putin has reinvigorated the transatlantic relationship i have good friends who ran the german marshal fund and who are now in the biden administration um and there's nothing more important than having those conversations before you need them right i always tell my staff like you never want to have your introductory call be with someone who you really need to do something like hi i'm elissa and i really need you to help me like so so bad right now bad way to introduce yourself go have coffee beforehand because you never know when you're going to need those relationships and the german marshal fund is like 50 years of coffees like that sarah do you want to give us a question from online yeah absolutely thank you again so much for taking the time to be here with us today this is a combination of pre-submitted questions so folks are asking how can we ensure that rising tensions in u.s china relations do not negatively affect asian americans today and in addressing this can you also comment on the now defunct china initiative and the continued investigation spiraling out from it does the china investigation mean the co related to covet or i'm not i'm guess i'm not sure what the china investigation is uh initially from the china initiative um china initiative sorry not investigation yeah i'm just not sure what that is some of the continuing investigations into academics in the united states i see i'm sorry um so um again the professor and i were speaking about this beforehand because it would be um a deeply deeply terrible thing if conversations about rising tensions with the chinese communist government um ended up increasing anti-asian hate in the united states and the it's totally different conversation and that's why i try to talk about the chinese communist party and the chinese government not china or chinese people right because i i um have no beef with the chinese people i have issues with the chinese communist party and their policies um and just like you know think about during um uh you know being an american citizen you have lots of people from abroad who don't like our president but you don't want them to say all americans are horrible human beings right and so it's the same thing just in reverse and i think we just have to be vigilant about what we're talking about and be very very clear and then have a very hard line of deterring anyone who actually uses violence or incites violence and that's across the board for any whether it's violence against people of color asian americans lgbtq i mean we have to be very very clear you have freedom of speech in this country and it ends the moment you threaten or use violence um so um i think that's an important way to make a distinction i'm not totally up to date on the china initiative um and um but i do represent michigan state and we're here at a university um and look i think it's like a really challenging part of this new dynamic where we have more competition with with china when we were in competition with the soviet union we did not have huge numbers of russian students in our universities right um in fact they were some of them were trying to desperately come out in defects so that they could be students but there wasn't like an exchange program um and we have a very different approach with china because we don't want to be adversaries um and i think that openness is good but illegal activity is illegal and if someone's conducting illegal activity they should be held accountable and that's if you're an american or a foreigner um and i just think we have to be very clear about that um and um that's a struggle to figure out when you're in the gray zone of research and and sort of new things that are coming out of our universities and i don't um i don't envy our university administration trying to figure that out but if you're stealing no so it's a very simple policy but representative slacking you're going to have to give me five minutes later to talk to you about the china initiative but please go ahead hi representative slacking thank you so much for being here to talk to us i'm olivia i'm a sophomore double majoring in political science and history uh here at the university and um you talked uh about all the different um problems that we're going to be facing and that we are facing right now and in the future and particularly with china i'm just curious like what your opinion is on diplomacy and the role that that plays and um if you have an opinion on how diplomacy could positively or negatively affect a relationship with china i i think it's only positive right this is what i was saying in my talk is like i focus on the military because i have a national security background and that's the committees that i'm on but if we're fighting a war with china our diplomacy has failed our economic policy has failed our development policy has failed so those should really be our front foot with china and i think what ends up happening is our government doesn't like to use economic policy as a tool we are we believe in open markets and free competition and so we don't like when we we use it right and i think that in this case that's a mistake that we need to have a policy that protects our economic security but diplomacy like i just come from the school like we went through an entire cold war where we were constantly talking to the soviets we were adversaries we didn't get along we had a lot of deep concerns about our security that came from them and there wasn't a year that went by that we didn't speak to them so this idea that it's like it's my way or the highway and we're just not going to talk not only is it um and i think a bad approach it just is not effective um so i'm into results and that means sometimes you talk with people you really don't like i had to negotiate the flight safety arrangements with the russians above syria they came into syria we saw them coming into syria first out of area conflict that they got in since afghanistan in 1979 and we had american pilots flying 3000 feet from russian pilots now dangerous that is to have nuclear powered countries nuclear nuclear powers in that close proximity you get mistakes you get accidents you get cycles of escalation that suddenly you're you can't control so we had flight safety arrangements and i had to negotiate with these russian generals by secure vtc and then we met a few times to negotiate it it was not fun i didn't have fun they didn't have fun right they were insulted just by being having to negotiate with a younger woman from the pentagon and like took that as a slight just by walking at me walking in the door it was not fun but you know what you have to think about the safety of the pilots that's what mattered and we got it done so talking is always better than not talking even when you don't like the leaders of the country um can we have another question from online absolutely absolutely so another question that came in here uh was looking at cyber threats so we currently deal with myriad cyber threats from adversaries including china russia around and others should we consider working with international partners and rivals to create standards of engagement for cyber warfare or do we believe that this might actually limit our ability to operate from a position of strength um we 100% need a doctrine on cyber warfare we have a doctrine on every other type of more conventional warfare we do not have it on cyber we don't know the rules of engagement so i'll give you a perfect example of just how different this is first of all raise your hand if you you or anyone you know has ever had your identity taken data taken gotten some alert from somewhere that you met like every single one of us i'm guessing right yeah every single one of us okay there is no other type of warfare where civilians are on the front lines like this it's not uniform military that are on the front lines it's you all getting your data stolen getting your data ransomed like you're and and i don't think there's an american around today who feels like i'm well defended against cyber threats by my government right we have some work to do there across multiple administrations the other one the other the other case where we just we have the demonstrates we have zero doctrine okay so it gets cold in michigan in the winter and if anyone's if you have we have lots of michiganders in the room a couple years ago now we had a fire at one of our gas facilities and the governor asked us all to turn our heat down in the middle of winter down to like 65 or below right because we were worried about heat across the the state so if we were the victim of a cyber attack that dismantled or disrupted our gas infrastructure in the state and everybody suddenly had freezing cold homes um and 28 elderly people died and froze to death in their homes what is the appropriate proportional response the united states believes in proportionate response right we don't nuke a country if they kill a few of our civilians um we have a doctrine of proportional response if they kill 25 28 elderly people what do we do back do we do a cyber attack of our own and shut off their heat in russia do we kill their civilians in their homes that doesn't sound like us right so what is the appropriate response we don't have that set up right now and if we don't know and our adversaries don't know we don't got it down and that's not to say we don't have amazing tools right i don't want to leave but they're all classified i can't talk to you about any of them and i'm constantly saying to our leaders in the cyber realm i'm like do you know it feels like people feel like they're not defended right people are worried about their child's data online when i had all the superintendents from my district come to washington to engage us i said raise your hand if you if your k through 12 school has had a ransomware attack and every single one raised their hands so we do not have doctrine i feel that strongly and we're going to need your generation to help us think through that doctrine because you're digital natives um and um this is going to be the battlefield of of like the next decade two decades three decades we are at 703 i see and we were planning to stop around seven but there are so many questions in the room that i feel like maybe with just one more so a question in the room um let me take person in back thank you no just yes you thank you i am uh thank you for coming tanner vinn ross cool business across the street uh my question is based around you said that you believe that the best thing is to have like humans interacting with humans in in that sense isn't some of our sanctions against russia kind of counterproductive particularly pulling all of our businesses and internet sites out of the country particularly when putin stated that one of his biggest threats his regime is western influences and we've kind of taking those away from the russian people for him i'd like to hear your thoughts on that sure so uh what's important about your question is the temporal nature of it you want those human to human connections as strong as possible before you need them and before conflict but when a country goes into their net their sovereign neighbor and invades now we're in punishment time i'm sorry now now you've made a decision we tried to tell you to stop we threatened they put aside money knowing we'd sanction them but they can't go unanswered in economic sanctions you either respond militarily or you respond economically and we responded but the other interesting thing about what you said and actually hugely new hugely new in the history of warfare is yes of course we had a certain suite of sanctions we've appropriated in congress a lot of money for weapons for the ukrainians humanitarian assistance etc but what is really bothering the russians is private companies making independent decisions without direction from the white house to shut down their operations we had the head of mcdonald's into one of my bipartisan groups no one told mcdonald's to stop working in russia no one told american express no one told paypal that was not ordered we don't have that kind of system in the united states where we order our private companies to do things they just felt frankly that they'd come under so much scrutiny if they didn't shut down that it was worth it to their brand to shut down radical that's not that's that's not normal and it's having pain it's creating financial pain for the russians that they are feeling right and i don't like punishing people that's why we've gone after a lot of oligarchs a lot of very rich people who are right around putin and they sanctioned me and other people right back right i got sanctioned last week but um so i can't travel to russia or deal with any russian financial institution so i will survive that one the um the but the truth is um we're in this new era where the private sector and non-governmental organizations have real sway in national security crises in a way that i is totally different um and um i want to and look think about the number of times like biden or zealinsky or other nato leaders have spoken directly to the russian public right zealinsky did an amazing press conference that was addressing russian mothers of conscripts that man knows what he's doing right because he's not speaking to putin he's saying i'm gonna go right into your vulnerability um and i hope that the russian people particularly those under 45 are still getting access to real news real information it's like if i tried to cut off you guys from world news i couldn't do it if i tried you'd find another way and my hope is that the russian people i know a large percentage of them do not agree with what their government is doing um and that they're i hope that they're still getting access to real information but the role of the private sector has been totally groundbreaking in this conflict um representative slaken i can't tell you how grateful we are and also what an interesting dynamic you know our this has been so thank you very much for coming today thanks


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I'm Martin Dippie and I'm all the way from Dunedin, proud owner of this shiny Porsche behind us. Enjoying my Targas, this is my 11th Targa. We like to go fast and we can't break the law during the years. So when we come to Targa, are we going to break the law or what we want? Going good. Cars going well. A little faster than the last one, which is proven to be a lot of fun. We're getting the hang of it. The first couple of stages, just a little bit hairy. The rear wheel steering was a little unstable, but once we got the hang of that, we're actually starting to pick up a bit of speed actually. Going good. Participation and the morning teas, lunches and afternoon teas. That's important to us from South Island. Why do I find that hard to believe? I'm not sure. OK, so the plan for the rest of the afternoon then is to go even faster than you were this morning? Yes we are.  Which is most unfortunate. Well the Germans wouldn't like that. I'll be getting a text message from our friends in Germany surely. So we're definitely going to try and pick up speed this afternoon. Do you think that might cost you the spa drive next year? Probably.


Welcome to the FeeCast, your weekly dose of economic thinking from your friends at the Foundation for Economic Education. My name is Richard Lawrence, and I'm here today with our beautiful panel, Anna Jane Perrell, Dan Sanchez, Mary Ann March, and returning special guest, T.K. Coleman. Welcome. Hello. Thank you. You look radiant as ever, Richard. Well, thank you, Anna Jane. It takes a lot of work, but, you know, we end up here every week, and do we do what we can, you know? So we're going to be talking about teachers today. We're going to be talking about those important people, I think, who have made differences in many people's lives, including, I can at least speak for my own, my life. I had a great teacher, I had many great teachers, one of whom was my fifth-grade teacher, Mrs. Conley, who in fact I just reconnected with on Facebook, and she went through a couple of my photos and started commenting and saying, you know, how great it was to see me. So I'm like a like frenzy to hear your attention.  So it kind of revived those photos, as Facebook tends to do. Did she friend you, or did you friend her? I friended her. Oh, wow. So you were out there looking for her? I was. For many, many years, many years. Her name is Betty Conley, and again, my fifth-grade teacher. She taught me all sorts of things. In fact, she even gave me the chance to teach a computer club and a class to teachers and to students after school. The student becomes the teacher. Indeed. That was one of those times in our collective history where computers were fairly new to the classroom, and so it was important for the, you know, ten-year-old to be able to teach the teachers how that would all work. But today we're going to be talking about something that I think we might be able to add some economic and ethical context to. And that is a new series of stories that came out last week from Time Magazine and made a pretty big splash, actually. TK, you actually brought this to our attention. Teaching in America was the title of the series that Time Magazine had. Yeah. So it was a post by Katie Riley, and the headline says, I work three jobs and donate blood plasma to pay the bills. This is what it's like to be a teacher in America. And it's chock-full of really interesting and provocative quotes, but there was a cover series that they ran and promoted on Twitter, and that's the part that really caught my attention. Lots of celebrities were sharing it. And there were three covers with teachers on them and quotes on the cover, and I want to read those three for people to have some context. The first one says, my child and I share a bed in a small apartment. I spend $1,000 on supplies, and I've been laid off three times due to budget cuts. I am a teacher in America. Cover two, I have a master's degree, 16 years of experience, work two extra jobs, and donate blood plasma to pay the bills. I am a teacher in America. The third, I have 20 years of experience, but I can't afford to fix my car, see a doctor for headaches, or save for my child's future. I'm a teacher in America. And the post is pretty clear that teachers are people to actually give you another quote from Hope Brown of Kentucky. I love teaching, but we are not paid for the work that we do. And this is a common way that many teachers feel about themselves and that many people feel about public school teachers and kind of wanted to bring this to the table for discussion. Absolutely, I think, a really common narrative that teachers are some of our most underpaid. I mean, we perceive them as the most underpaid people, yeah, I mean, workers out there. Yeah, well, it was just a couple of months ago that we all saw in the news the strikes that were happening in Oklahoma. That's right. And a couple other states as well, and they were striking because, again, they believe that they are underpaid. Yeah. And one thing that came up during the, when there was that wave of strikes and protests is that there's a lot of misinformation about that propagated by the media. So we have an article on feed.org called how media outlets misinform the public about teacher pay and some of the things that they don't factor in, they don't adjust for the cost of living of the different states. Right, so between New York City and somewhere in Kentucky, there might be a very big, there is a very big difference in the cost of living. Exactly. And in particular, Oklahoma was in the headlines and the cost of living is quite low in Oklahoma. You were going to say something? Yeah, I did pull some numbers. So this year, the Oklahoma starting salary for a teacher with a bachelor's degree in zero years of experience is $36,600.  So about $12,000 underneath the average for starting out teachers. But I was a little surprised. I thought, given all of the news and the strikes, I was expecting a much lower wage. When I was working full-time in retail, I think I was earning roughly $25,000 a year. And so I was surprised that it was as high as $36,000 to be honest. One line that we have in the article I mentioned is adjusted for costs of living, the average annualized immediate compensation of Oklahoma teachers in 2016 to 2017 was about $102,943 or roughly twice what CNN had said a teacher with a doctorate degree in 30 years experience will never make in most districts. Because it's extremely affordable to live where the, I guess, salaries are being pulled. Another thing is that they often don't include benefits. That's exactly right. Which you've got retirement, yeah, you've got crazy retirement benefits. You've got, yeah. Well, and it's interesting too because, again, I feel like this time magazine piece actually sort of compresses the data in a way that isn't all that useful for us. So they tell us that there are 3.2 million K through 12 full-time teachers in the country. All right. That's a number, a big number. But then average nationwide salary, 3.2 million full-time K through 12. About half New York City. Yeah. I know that much. Average nationwide salary, which is, I think, a bit interesting to unpack, is $59,000. And like you said, that doesn't include the pension benefits, it doesn't include other sorts of benefits, it doesn't include the fact that they take a summer off. It's another big thing. Yeah. One line that we have is that an average of 37 percent more hours are worked by private industry employers per year than teachers. Right. Right. So we're throwing out a lot of numbers. And I think that none of us here would begrudge teachers or anybody, for that matter, for trying to get their money, trying to get increases in salary. So I think that's totally understandable. We all want to feel like we're being compensated and compensated fairly for the work that we're doing. But how is the big question? Because do you do it through coercion or do you do it through market negotiation? And you could argue that, especially public school teachers, that they're not asking customers or even private employers to just pay more. They're not asking. They're demanding that taxpayer money be forcibly transferred to them. Well, in the sentiment that you're saying there, Marianne, is echoed in the article. Hope Brown from Kentucky, who you mentioned, TK, says in the piece, I do want to be paid what I'm worth. Yeah. I was going to say. That it's a very understandable thing to say, well, we all should value education a lot. We should be paying these people tons. But what you're kind of saying, Dan, is that you have to think about how we end up accounting for that value. Is it going to be kind of like governmental coercion or choice? Right. And then you might wonder, OK, in a market, in an actual market for their labor, would they actually be paid higher? Because if they are offering a lot of value. But a big part of value is not just the good that humanity as a whole gets from this, but the availability of it. I mean, it just goes back to the alleged diamond water paradox that Adam Smith raised, and then this notion that, OK, well, why should diamonds be worth more than a bottle of water when a bottle of water is what we need to live in the same way as education? It's like everyone needs education to become a good person. But again, there's a lot of water and there's not very many diamonds. And it's all about like, so you have to consider the supply. And there are a lot of people who are able and willing to offer teaching services a lot fewer than are able to offer doctor services, which is often the example that people bring up. Whether they do it well is another question entirely. And that goes into all sorts of rules surrounding tenure and teachers unions for employment and termination. All that would go into whether you actually have good service delivery by these teachers. But you said something a moment ago, Dan, that I do want to delve into. And it kind of leads into the next topic that we want to discuss here. And Hope Brown, again, the teacher who is mainly profiled in this piece in Time Magazine, says that if budget cuts continue, so we'll just pause and have that integrate into our consciousness for a second. If budget cuts continue, teaching will cease to be a viable career for educated, engaged, ambitious people. And I think that's an interesting statement because I believe truly when someone is called to educate that they feel that it is not just a job. It's a calling, right? I mean, they feel in many ways that this is something they can do to add value and inspire children from a very early age. It's a valuable thing. But I feel like the direction of this piece, especially with the emphasis on budget cuts continuing, is that there's been something happening in the state funding. You were saying it might be compulsory and we can discuss that as well. There's something happening that is, you know, decreasing the amount of resources available for this profession that is necessary. Question is whether we actually need the state to be involved in it. So budget cuts continue. Is that something that it looks like there's actual, is it happening in education? Well, so in some of the research I did, I found that adjusted for inflation teachers across the US have seen an average decrease of $27 from 1996 to 2017. So I think there is an argument to be made by them that their wages aren't keeping up with inflation. The thing that I wonder and about the diamond water paradox that you brought up is if we're hearing a lot about teacher shortages, shouldn't that scarcity make their wages go up? Yeah. Yeah, but by how much? I mean, there might be, you know, a drought, but it doesn't mean that every bottle of water is going to be worth a diamond. I kind of want to talk about it. So can you read that quote that you read again? If budget cuts continue, teaching will cease to be a viable career for educated, engaged, ambitious people. Go back to the value, the one where she mentions her own. She says, I do want to be paid what I'm worth. OK, so yeah, being worth, I think that TK has made some interesting points in the past about personal value versus what you're giving. You know what I mean? Like your salary defining or not defining the value you add. So I don't know if you have any insights into kind of what teachers, the value they bring and measuring that. Yeah. You know, I think part of what makes this discussion so complicated is we have all sorts of conceptual categories that get conflated. So like being underpaid, that's a pretty loaded concept. And we have to kind of unpack that. I mean, what does it mean to be underpaid? There is a sense in which we can say teachers are underpaid, just like everyone here, we probably are underpaid in some sense. And in that sense, it would say, are you making enough money to be able to live comfortably or be able to provide for your needs within reason, right, assuming that you're not just aiming for luxury goods all the time and not having to sell your blood plasma. Yeah. Yeah. And from the descriptions that I'm reading here, it seems like many of them are underpaid in terms of what they need to be able to take care of their children and so forth. So there's no debate about that. But there's another aspect of this question. And that is, are you unjustly underpaid, right? Because it's possible that there may not be enough resources to compensate me for my work. And if that's the case, I'm underpaid. But am I underpaid because someone owes me more than what they're giving me? That's a different thing. So that leads us into the next distinction that Anna was getting at, which is between what I call ontological worth or maybe philosophical or spiritual worth, worth that has to do with what something is with its beingness versus economic worth, which has everything to do with how much another person is willing to pay you for the services you provide. Now, ontologically speaking, I think I'm worth a whole lot, right? And I don't know if I can be paid enough to account for that because I'm priceless. So human being is priceless. Ontologically speaking, I think music is perhaps more valuable than diamonds, right? Ontologically speaking, I think water is more important than diamonds. Diamonds are dispensable to me. Waters are necessary for human life. But that's different when I'm trying to get another human being to give me their money.  Well, now I have to think about the value of what I'm doing, not just in terms of how much I think the world needs it, but how much of a priority it is to this person who has the money that I want. And unfortunately, the way we think about paying educators is negatively influenced by education itself because we don't really teach people about value creation. We don't teach them what money is. We don't teach them what markets work. And so when people graduate school, there's this kind of vague sense that they ought to receive a salary because of what they think they're worth, because of what their degree is, and they don't really have a concept of the relationship between how much my problems matter to you. What value you're adding and how many resources are out there to give me for the value I'm at. I think the value for value point that you're making really helps to kind of set aside another distinction that people make. They say, well, isn't it ridiculous that basketball players make like celebrity basketball players make so much more than teachers? When again, what the basketball player is offering is just such a frippery, whereas what teachers are offering are so essential. But again, when you remember that it's value for value, you have to think about how many people, how many individuals are being provided with value.  And so he's being compensated accordingly as opposed to like, OK, maybe it is a lot of value that teachers are providing, but only to like 30 people, human beings at a time. But I think the argument is or I think that people perceive it. People that really I mean, do advocate for this and it is important is they're saying that people, everyone, education affects everyone because when you educate the future generation, you improve society. Right. LeBron James isn't improving society by ducking the basketball. Right. So we really should pay. We should all be paying more for that good. But so is food and so is babysitting. You know, all these things are like really essential in the aggregate and in the abstract. But it doesn't mean that every single food provider needs to be paid like a doctor or a basketball player. You know, what's also interesting about this is I think, Dan, you're keen on sort of looking at the alternatives to this public schooling side of thing. And I think it's also interesting and I don't believe it's captured in that time magazine piece, the alternatives that people have to public schooling today and typically what alternatives can do to the price of something, right? So if you have a substitute good, say, for example, homeschool co-op or YouTube video series or Udemy or Khan Academy or whatever. Typically what would happen is that those would come onto the market and you know, we all like things done cheaper, faster, better, right? So that would then depress the price of the competing thing. And in our case of public schooling, we're then probably talking about salaries of teachers at schools. But it's a bit different because it's compulsory and done through taxpayer dollars for the most part. That's right. Well, you could look at, oh, sorry. No, good. Oh, I was going to say, you could look at it kind of like, I mean, it's a public education. You can, in theory, look at it like a subsidy. We are subsidizing education. What does that do to the price of a teacher's salary? To the price of a teacher? What does it do if you think about how a subsidy affects prices? I don't know if you want to elaborate on that. Well, I was just going to comment to the idea about like online education. So if you have like the star basketball player equivalent of a teacher who is providing millions of people with educational lessons, then you would expect that person to be paid like a rock star. Sure. And so it doesn't necessarily mean that like education is valued less than than leisure. So this might actually be a case for more free market. Based education. So the thing about the basketball player versus the teacher comparison is that it really helps us see the difference between stated and revealed preference. Right. Because if you take a survey and you ask most people, what's more important? LeBron James dunking a basketball or a teacher instructing little children on how to do math, everyone's going to give the right answer because we've been through school and we know a test when we see it. We know how to give the right answer on a test. But then when you look at what we actually do, when scarcity and sacrifice is involved, when we have to decide at the individual level how we're going to spend our own time and money, we choose watching LeBron James over the teacher doing what the teacher does. And so we can get angry at that all we want. We can we can get really upset, but only by trying to understand that can we actually do something about the problem. The reality of the situation is that in spite of the small number of people who say this is what everyone ought to do with their money, the majority of people are telling you right now by what they do, what they would prefer to do with their money. And that's pay to watch NBA players, pay to watch baseball players. And so you can't have a debate about how we're going to pay these teachers without understanding the people that have the resources with which to pay them and what they value. Yeah. And watching the behavior like you're saying is what you mean by revealed preferences, not just surveying, not just asking, but actually seeing what people choose to do with their money or their time or their energy, whatever. So I do want to go back to a little bit of what we were talking about at the top, which was these cases, these very interesting and in many cases, sad stories of people who are forced to sell blood plasma or work a third or fourth job. That brings up the question outside of, I think, a little bit of what we've been discussing about how the market determines prices and how subsidies can affect prices. To what degree do some of these people have the responsibility to look at their own situation and say, well, maybe teaching for all of its nobility, for all of its value that it brings to them individually and to the people who they teach, how much is teaching maybe not the right job for them and how much should they actually take on themselves for the situation that they find themselves? Yes. So, you know, that's a really interesting question for me because I work with a lot of people that are college opt-outs. You know, I have an apprenticeship program that helps people launch their careers without a traditional credential. And when people choose to take that path, whether it's through practice or through coding boot camps or places like the Lambda School, they tend to get a drill. They tend to get drill by adults who whip out income statistics and say, well, I know that you want to start your own business. I know you want to go to a trade school and all of that. But people who get bachelor's degrees on average tend to make this much more over the course of a lifetime, and that ought to be something you consider. And my rebuttal to that has always been fair enough. It's always good to let people know the income implications of their educational choices. But can we do that to more than just college opt-outs? I think we all have a responsibility to challenge one another, to think critically about our educational choices. And what we know about those choices ahead of time. And unlike any other discipline, education is the one subject that we're always having this conversation about. Notice that we don't sit around and have debates about our plumbers making enough.  We always come back to the teachers because this is one field that has a reputation for not paying well enough. And so I think we do need to challenge people that want to go into education not to feel guilty about any of this stuff, but to think deeply about do you feel called to do it in the same way that if someone says, I want to be an actor, great, I support your dream. But do understand this is very different from going into accounting. You're going to have to face some financial realities that will be tough.  You know, and I think we need to do that to people that want to go into education more. That will be good for education and good for them individually. Absolutely. Yeah, I went, I moved from accounting over to the nonprofit sector here at the foundation. And it is it is a choice that I had to think up for a very long time about. And it is a reality of a choice that you make. And I remember being grilled by my father being, I mean, all my friends. And it is a decision you have to make and talking about talking about how an experience or a profession can give you value aside from what the salary looks like. Yeah. I think another important distinction that has to be made is that education and schooling are not the same thing. Good point. Yeah. Because people and that's why when you say that you're against public funding of education, that then people think that, oh, well, then you're against education. But often you can question whether what what some of what's happening in schools is even a service to begin with, or is it a disservice, especially that a lot of people, young people are traumatized by their school experience and and and actually have the love for learning crushed by their school experience. So so you can't assume that what they are providing is of that value to begin with. Yeah, it's almost as if we assume that simply because these people are in teaching professions and they are called educators that they must be providing something valuable as a service, right? That they must be delivering a curriculum or a course or information valuably, right? But the problem is just given the incentives and the structures that we've built up around public schooling that we pay bad teachers the same amount that we pay good teachers. And there's no real differentiation in sort of the pay scale because the unions have gotten so deeply embedded in how to negotiate these things. And so that's another dimension to all of this, that, you know, we need to discuss when it comes to the value that we're actually getting from a fifty nine thousand dollar average nationwide salary for K to 12 people. Yeah. So I did find something out kind of interesting to put this in somewhat of an international context. And actually I want to question question you all to guess how the United States ranks against other countries as far as teacher pay goes. And he guesses like on average, like who are we in the bottom? Are we in the middle? Are we in the top? What do you think? Top quartile is top twenty five percent. Yeah, I'll lean on the word quartile as well. Top quartile. I'll go with that one. That sounds sufficiently intelligent. I'm going to say the middle middle. Yeah, I'll say bottom just because I'm going to say it. I was surprised to find out that elementary school teachers in the United States are in the top five in the world. Top five percent. Top, not percent, just the top. So the top five countries for teacher pay for elementary school teachers is number one Luxembourg, Switzerland, Korea, Germany, and then the United States. And then for high school, it's I'm excuse me, that was high school and we're still in the top five for elementary school as well. Yeah, I wonder if those numbers of pay the best in relation to Yeah, we can complain all day that teachers in America aren't getting paid adequately, but we're above Austria, we're above Canada, Ireland, Japan, Portugal. We do really well and think about how that contradicts this whole when as budget cuts continue conversation. So you've got that on one hand and on the other hand, you've got the notion that we're underperforming in those international stats. Every time we talk about teacher pay, we talk about the fact that the United States is lagging and falling further behind internationally. All right, I have a request.  I might change the direction of the conversation. So I just wanted to take a quick case study. I mean, so in Atlanta, we have this amazing school called the Ron Clark Academy, and I find it really fascinating because it has a lot of these ideas play out. It's a nonprofit, but it's completely privately funded by donors. But it was founded by Ron Clark, who this is where, to me, innovation is so key. So if you are called to educate and you really care about how students learn, Ron Clark created his own curriculum.  And so he, you know, he's had such a supportive donor base that has created the school that now is, I mean, so many has received so many awards is so recognized as this incredibly different than public education, but is totally free for its students. So it is for essentially it's for students who they apply and they get in. It's kind of like a private school, but it's completely free for the students. And I just think that that is all of these things that we really care about, which is innovation. So you create a better curriculum. How can we really educate students and they? How can we make them incredible students? And then it's also got, you know, if you really do, it's market support of this idea, which I think is also really cool. So Ron Clark actually, you know, saw a problem. He didn't choose to be engaged in the political side of trying to solve it, which is a whole big mess and takes a long time. And we all have competing interests. He ended up doing this, which is amazing. So TK, you were going to say something else here that hopefully will bring us home and end the whole podcast today. Yeah. So I want to talk for a minute about how we can encourage teachers to be more wealthy, how we can show them how to be more wealthy, because I'm not one of those people who believes that people should just be happy with whatever they make.  Wealth is bad. I believe it's a good thing. And if you want more of it than what you have, we ought to support that quest, right? And so I don't want to send out a signal and I don't think we are, but I want to make this explicit that we're not saying to teachers, hey, we're in the top five.  No, let's let's figure out how to maximize your income potential. And here's one thing I want to point out. I think to make a complaint about being underpaid is to make a complaint about who is actually doing the paying. Right. So let's say I think I deserve one million dollars to appear on the feedcast. Wink, wink, right? And I'm not making that. And I say, well, I'm not getting paid enough to make appearances on the feedcast. Well, I'm not just making a complaint about the amount I make. I'm making a complaint about the specific organization that asked me to be on here. And so if I'm not receiving value from the system or the entity that's paying me, then that means I can negotiate with that entity. I can argue with them or I can opt out and try to figure out a way to get more value from another entity. And so we focused most of our conversation around the value that teachers to teachers create. But I also think there's room to talk about the the people for whom we create that value and how willing they are to compensate us. So let's say I sing and I want to get paid to sing. And I sing for one person and they say, OK, that's a decent song. I'll pay you a dollar to sing to me every day. Well, I'm going to feel like an underpaid musician and I can argue with that person and get angry at them. But what if I can find someone that says, well, I value you're singing a little more than that person and I'll pay you $10 to sing me a song every day. Well, now I'm moving in a positive direction. How does this relate to education? I think it's a total myth that the world values education more than it values basketball or other things, because the world shows us over and over again that they are willing to pay top dollar for education when we educate them about things they care about and when we don't force them to pay the teacher, right? So an example of this would be you take Tony Robbins seminars. I don't care if you like Tony Robbins or not. Doesn't matter to me at all. But I know that people pay thousands of dollars to go listen to Tony Robbins for just a weekend, even though they know they're going to go home and their life isn't going to be changed anyway, because he's educating them about things they care about. So I think what there's room to do is to educate educators about how to be more entrepreneurial and what they do and how to not depend on a system that clearly doesn't value them enough. Because when you say I'm underpaid, you're not talking about me. You're not talking about anyone at this table. You're talking about a very specific system that has a very specific way of procuring resources and a very specific way of paying you. And if that system doesn't respect you or value you like you want to be valued, why not entertain the idea of opting out of that system and going to deliver your goods to people that actually respect what you know? I'll put... And with that, I think we might have to offer a dollar for you to sing us a song. I'll wait for ten dollars. Well, thank you, everybody. Thank you, TK. Thank you, Mary Ann, Dan and AJ. And we'll see you next week on The FeeCast.


In 2014 on RetroJunk, a strange new video was added to the Brandy and Mr. Whisters page by an anonymous user, called hijacking, 2006, that included footage of an episode of Brandy and Mr. Whisters getting hijacked. There were tons of claims that this hijacking was real, because most of them saw this hijacking on TV. There were other claims saying it was fake. Due to the mixed claims, it turned into an argument real quick. Eventually, the video was deleted. It was then re-uploaded by another user on YouTube nine years later, reviving the mystery and the recognition. The video starts off with an episode of said series. Everything is normal up until the five-second mark. It cuts to black with the audio staying for three seconds. At the 11-second mark, a low-quality image of what looks like a Mickey or Donald mask with inverted colors in an ominously dark room appears, accompanied with ominous ambience. After a few seconds, we hear an ominous Mickey impression saying, Then it asks, Then, a blood-curdling scream plays. It abruptly stops, and then cuts back to the episode. The hijacker of this incident was never identified, and nobody else knows how this incident occurred, but the most popular theory is that it was hijacked. Real answers might potentially never be found, as Disney Channel denies the existence of such hijacking. It was revealed that Disney Channel wants everyone to forget it even happened at all, so the denial of it was part of a plan to erase the hijacking from everyone's memories. That plan actually worked.