You may know it as capitalism, or the Industrial Revolution. Most economists call it modern economic growth. Deirdre McCloskey calls it the great enrichment. Whatever you call it, it transformed our standard of living from something like $3 a day to $120, or maybe $300 a day. How it happened is the most important question in economics, and of course many economists and other academics have tried to answer it. McCloskey's answer, which she will be talking about today, has been a development for her entire career. As an economist, McCloskey is classically trained. BA and PhD from Harvard, tenured as a professor of economics at the University of Chicago. McCloskey's scholarship was initially focused on the economic history of Great Britain before the great enrichment. Such topics as industrial productivity, international trade in the gold standard, poor laws, and the enclosure of open fields in England. As an economic historian who was on the vanguard of using data and quantitative techniques to answer historical questions, McCloskey has always been interested in not just what questions we ask, but how we answer them. Increasingly, McCloskey's focus turned to the profession of economics himself. I'll skip one there. And the writing of economics, the rhetoric of economics, the teaching of economics, and where the field of economics was using its way, especially the exclusive use of mathematical optimization models, what McCloskey calls the max view economics, and the misuse of statistical significance as a substitute for real economic analysis. On that note, just last spring, the American Statistical Association issued a statement that affirmed and brought urgency to what McCloskey and co-author Steve Zeliak have been arguing emphatically for over 20 years. The essay statement reads in part, a p-value or statistical significance does not measure the size of an effect or the importance of a result. So statistical significance is not equivalent to scientific, human, or economic significance. In 1994, I started graduate school at the University of Iowa, intending to specialize in economic history and study under Donald McCloskey. I ended up switching my specialty to sports economics, which was a big change. But it was certainly not the biggest change that happened at that time. I kept dear to McCloskey as my dissertation advisor because I so valued her insight on how to think about economics, regardless of topic, and especially her ability to write about it. Since her transition, Deirdre has continued to grow as a scholar in both depth and scope, which brings us to her most recently completed project, a three-volume epic to explain the great enrichment and redeem the values of the bourgeoisie. She argues that all of the classical virtues, courage, justice, temperance, and courage, and the Christian virtues, faith, hope, and love, are essential to the bourgeois commercial society, not just prudence alone. She then shows that the great enrichment was not caused by greed or exploitation of natural resources or other peoples, or technology, or even trade and specialization. Instead, the great enrichment was born and persisted because liberty and dignity have extended to a larger and larger share of the population, allowing more people to, as she says, have a go. It takes a special writing skill to sum up Deirdre McCloskey in a few words, so let's have her do it. I'm a literary, quantitative, postmodern, free market, progressive, Episcopalian, Midwestern woman for Boston who was once a man. Not conservative, I'm a Christian libertarian, and I just learned yesterday that I should change libertarian to liberal. And it is my great honor to introduce my advisor and mentor, Deirdre McCloskey. Thank you, Deirdre. That was lovely. That was good. Well, thank you very much. I'm honored to be here, of course. I've actually taught in Sweden a lot, but only in English, so I can't say anything in Swedish except, hey, hey. So I apologize for my idiocy. I'm going to speak today about a project which you see the outcome of here in three books, which I've been obsessed with for 20 years. I call it the bourgeois era. And I'm using the word bourgeois to mean simply middle class, but it also has an intent of making people stop saying bad things about the bourgeoisie, about the middle class.  I want to get away from that. And in particular, I want to get away from the assumption that what we normally call capitalism is corrupting. I take an ethical view. I'm an amateur, very amateur, theologian. I take an ethical view of life, and not that I'm ethical. I'm afraid. I try, but I don't succeed too well. But I try.  If you want one word, inovism, that society, I think, is capable of being ethical. And indeed, largely already is ethical. It's not an ethical disaster to buy low and sell high. It's not an ethical disaster, as Paul said, to show up for work as a school teacher for pay. It's not an ethical disaster to be motivated by money, as John was saying. So I have three volumes that are available on Amazon.com. Cheap, cheap. I'm hoping for a, I've argued with my editors now to try to get a boxed set. How cool is that? Like Harry Potter? Makes a beautiful gift for your mother. She'll be delighted to receive 1,700 pages in defense of a market society, which is what it is. The first volume, which was published in 2006, was called, now here are the whole title, the bourgeois virtues. When I first proposed to speak on this at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, the secretary laughed and said, isn't that a contradiction in terms, the bourgeois virtues? And it was my initial purpose in these volumes to contradict her, to show that they're not, to contradict her claim that it's a contradiction. The bourgeois virtues, ethics for an age of commerce. Volume two is the most economic. That first volume is philosophical, theological, sociological. I always use a lot of examples from Shakespeare and Jane Austen and so forth. And I do that through all the books. But the second one's the most economic. And I go through the explanations of how we got so rich and show that the standard explanations, some of which you've heard in this conference, are at best partial and often quite wrong. And then the third volume, which is the largest, the first two are 500 pages each. That's bad enough. But the last one is 700 pages. Because I was going to do at 1.4 volumes, then I decided, though a trilogy on this matter might be considered somewhat self-indulgent, a tetralogy is an abomination. So three volumes is all you get. And the third volume asks how what I think caused the great enrichment, as Jeff mentioned, how it came to be originally confined to Northwestern Europe. But now you see it in Botswana. You see it in Hong Kong. You see it in India and China most spectacularly. So here's a brief. I'm an economic historian by scientific trade. I also do some other things. But economic history, as Jeff said, is my core field. So I'm going to give you a brief economic history of the world. And in a way, it's the most important thing I'm going to say this afternoon. So if there's one takeaway, it's this. My finger has a remarkable feature.  My finger can do scientific diagrams there. It's in the finger. So here we are back at, say, the beginning of Homo Homsapiens. The Adam and Eve, so to speak, in Africa. Everyone here is an African, by the way. Let's get that clear. Mine, according to a cheek swab I did about 10 years ago, not too informative. It said, your people came out of Africa about 30,000 years ago and turned left. Well, I'm Norwegian and Irish and English, so that's not too surprising. But anyway, let's start back in 200,000 BCE and represent what a hunter-gatherer society got along on per person per day. And it's about $3. Now, tried to live in St. Paul or St. Peter or all the other saints in this state on $3 a day, and you're going to find it tough, particularly in the winter. So there you are, $3 a day. And it goes along like this. See the trembling in my fingers, the ups and downs. $3 a day, $3 a day, $3 a day. That's 200,000 BCE. We'll make this little cross here, the present. And now we're at about 8,000 BCE. And in nine different parts of the world, completely independently, the domestication of plants and animals takes place. The so-called agricultural revolution. You'd think, well, boy, that's going to change things. We'll get from $3 to, I don't know, $20. No. What happens is it goes up, but then the population increases. Women are more fertile when they're well-fed. More children survive. Childhoods, so population, booms. And we get civilization in the literal Latin sense of the word. We get town life. We get towns. And then people learn to read and so forth. So it goes back to three, on Malthusian grounds, on grounds of diminishing returns to land, essentially. So then it goes along at 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3. Now we're in 1800. Now it's very important that you see this and hear it. Then it goes in countries like the United States or France or then ultimately South Korea and other places. It goes like this. The sound effects are quite important. Now how much is there? Well, as you can see from Orly's data across country, it increases by a factor of 10 at least. And in countries that have taken full advantage of the great enrichment, the innovations, and so on of the 19th century and the 20th and the 21st, it goes up by a factor of 30 conservatively measured. Sweden, for example, mentioned one of my favorite countries. Sweden in 1800 has been called the impoverished sophisticate because though most people in Sweden could read both men and women because they had to read the Bible, nonetheless, Sweden was the second poorest country in Europe. The only poorer country was Russia. So you can see that it was pretty bad. And then Sweden grew when it adopted liberal policies in the middle of the 19th century. Faster than any grew in per capita income, real per capita income from this $3. It grew faster than any country in the world except Japan in this matter. And so now Swedish national income per head per day now. So you have a scale is $110 a day. So it went from $3 a day in modern terms. Modern, we're correcting for inflation. It went to $110. In the United States, it's about $130 a day per person. In Norway, which is where my people come from, because of the oil this irritates the Swedes very much, it's $145 a day. And the Swedes have been accustomed for centuries to thinking of the Norwegians as their poor country cousins. And it really sticks in their craw that the Norwegians are better off. My grandfather grew up in a Norwegian-speaking community in Illinois. Used to say, 10,000 Swedes went through the weeds one day at Copenhagen. 10,000 Swedes went through the weeds all chased by one Norvegan. I don't know really the historical origin of that, though I'm a historian. So this great enrichment, and I think it's fair to call it a great enrichment, because you'll notice in my diagram it never happened before. So the question really of the first book is to establish that it's possible to be ethical deeply so. It's possible, for example, to be a Christian as I am. Well, that doesn't mean you're deeply ethical, I'm afraid. But anyway, let me say it, to be an Episcopalian and yet still be an actor in the economy. That's the first book. And the second and third book are concerned with then this material consequence of the bourgeois virtues, as I call them, this amazing. Now, this question that I ask, those other people that have spoken here, they're talking about minor issues. I'm talking about the most important issue in economics. Actually, we all are. All of us are. We're talking about the nature and causes of the wealth of nations. And I think most of the explanations are wrong. And I'd like to, but answering that scientific question is very important. It's like discovering the periodic table of the elements, if you can figure it out. It's that important. Because maybe, and here I would want to disagree with my new friend, John List, maybe you'll want to know why it happened two centuries ago to help you understand why it might continue to happen, as I think it will. So we've got a factor of 10 at the minimum, factor of 30, kind of at the average, not the average of the rich countries, a factor of 10,000, factor of 10,000. No, no, not a factor of 10,000. A factor of 100, a percentage increase 10,000, if you include improvements in the quality of goods and services. Medicine, for example, up until the 1920s, as Louis Thomas, a great doctor, pointed out, it was really a bad idea to go to a doctor, unless you had a broken arm or something that was very simple to fix. So there's been an improvement in quality, even the quality of economic analysis since 1800. So OK, there's this enormous increase. That's what we're trying to explain. Now here's how it's been conventionally explained. On the left, let's talk about politics here. On the left, Bernie Sanders says, it's caused by exploitation. Marx, when I was an undergraduate at Harvard College, Bernie was an undergraduate at the University of Chicago. And at that point, we both had the same politics. I was a Marxist, he was a Marxist. The difference is that since then, Bernie hasn't changed his opinion or his facts. But OK, he says and Marxists and people on the left say that, for example, Europe is rich because of imperialism. Europe is rich because it's exploiting what we once called the Third World. Or we're rich because the working class in the early 19th century was terribly exploited. And that allowed capitalists to accumulate. And that made us rich, surprisingly, also the working class, or else slavery made America rich. This is embodied in the wonderful poetry of Abraham Lincoln's second inaugural address. All of those are wrong. All of those are mistaken on grounds that I could go into. Let's take imperialism as a simple example. Yes, King Leopold II of Belgium was an appalling tyrant in the Congo. He wanted rubber at the end of the 19th century for the new applications, for gaskets in steam engines and other things, gaskets, rubber gaskets. He wanted them for tires, for bicycles, and so forth. So he took this place that he owned personally, Congo, and he sent his soldiers in. And they forced people to go into the jungle to tap rubber trees at the same time this was happening in Amazonia. But then you'd say, aha, Belgium was made rich by exploitation of Africa. But the trouble is that all the money from this profitable trade went to the king himself. It didn't go not a dime. Essentially, not a dime went to ordinary Belgians in the late 19th century, late 1800s. All the money went to buy castles for King Leopold in the south of France and that sort of thing. So the ordinary Belgian was made no better off by this terrible, terrible exploitation. And I don't make any bones about it. This was among the worst instances of European imperialism. So far as the much more extensive British empire was concerned, it's been shown over and over again that in economic terms, it didn't matter much. Maybe or maybe not South Asia as the jewel in the crown of the British empire was damaged by imperialism. I happen to think that by now they've probably gotten over this effect, but let's not get into that. I'm asking what caused the quck in Britain? And you can see again by the example of Sweden. I'll give a lot of Swedish examples. You can see by the example of Sweden that it can't be the possession of empire that makes a place rich. Because people got bananas or curry for their breakfast or for their dinner in Sweden just as well as they got it in Britain. If you look closely at the accounting, it turns out that the British empire was paid by ordinary taxpayers in Britain. It was supported by ordinary taxpayers in Britain. Half of the expenses of the Royal Navy went to protect the sea routes to India. Culling stations in the days in which warships ran on coal were scattered all across the world in order that the British Navy could wander around and stop anyone from cutting Britain off from India. But it's not as if India was some cow. Let's go to Wisconsin analogies. It was not as if it was some cow that was being milked all this time. That's not true. There was essentially free trade between Britain and India. So there was not masses amounts being taken from India. Indeed, if you think of the business plan of seizing a poor country like India for the benefit of a rich country like the United Kingdom, it's kind of crazy. Would you do well by robbing from the homeless people in your neighborhood? No, I don't think so. If Britain was going to steal from someone, it should have stolen from France or Germany, not from India. But half of the Navy was on this assignment. And the Navy was paid for by the great British public. It was paid by taxes on beer, for example, beer that was drunk mainly by poor people. And then the poor people would serve in the Imperial armies to fight on the Northwest Frontier in South Asia or to fight the Africans armed with spears or then in the First World War and the Second. So ordinary people in Britain got nothing from the empire, but the pleasure of seeing a quarter of the world's map painted red if you include Canada and Australia. So the left story, that exploitation is the key to what they call capitalism, is mistaken. And I'll be glad to argue with someone who thinks not argue, I'll be glad to convert. Anyone who has the other view, if you think that bargaining strength is what determines wages, speak to Orly Ashenfeller and he'll tell you it's not. He'll tell you, as we know since the 1930s, a great book by Hicks, The Theory of Wages, wages are determined by supply and demand, essentially. Unions, I belong to the faculty union at the University of Illinois at Chicago. When I was a kid, I belonged to the National Maritime Union. I'm in favor of unions. My whole family, I'm fond of saying, I'm the only person here, and even in a large audience like this, I'll bet you, I'm the only person here who could become an apprentice electrician in the state of Michigan. I don't intend to, I must say, but I could, because my grandfather, Fritz, my uncle Joe, and my cousin Phil, were all electricians and members of the union in a closed shop state. So I could do it, you all, sorry, you can't. But I'm not against unions. I just don't think that they cause enrichment. So it's not the struggle on the picket line a couple of years ago. I was on a picket line. I sang the old labor songs, which, by the way, I challenge anyone here to know more left-wing songs than I do. When I was a kid, when I was in college, I was a Joan Baez Marxist. I, Joe Hill, I dreamt I saw Joe Hill last night alive as you and me, and Joseph Hillstrom from Sweden again. So it's not bargaining that got us the 40-hour week. It's not the government policies that the left wants that made us rich. They may help a little bit, but they're not. The bulk is caused by increasing marginal products, as we say in economics, increasing real wages, such as Orly was talking about. OK, so that's on the left. Oh yeah, that's the left from your point of view. Now over on the right from your point of view, the argument's also mistaken. On the right, the argument is basically, and it shares some features with the left, is that it's investment that made the modern world. Now I would challenge Paul Collier in this point, although I think in the end, I think we actually agree on this, that investment by itself without innovation, without what I call trade-tested betterment, without electric lights or microphones that don't work a third of the time, or wood cheaply, not cheap, but inexpensive wood, such as these things here. The amazing projections we have here. Look, God, look at my hair. I've got to fix my hair. This is terrible. Oh well, this is it. This is what you get. You can't do any better. Any investment by itself doesn't accomplish anything. The classic case is Ghana, which received per capita a lot of foreign aid, 50s, 60s, 70s, and so forth. And Ghana started out after independence one of the richest countries in sub-Saharan Africa. And it rather quickly became one of the poorest. The foreign aid didn't do anything. The pouring of the making of artificial lakes to refine bauxite into aluminum, or the various plans they have, didn't work. Because there was no real innovation behind it. There was no novelty. There was no really clever idea. Uber, which has been mentioned, is a very clever idea. And it's an idea all by itself. Once you've realized that you can do reputational tests on both sides of an exchange with the web and iPhones, then you have essentially the whole business plan of Uber. So investment, John Maynard Keynes, the hero of my youth after I'd started to study economics and had stopped being a bone bone by his Marxist, John Maynard Keynes said this in his great book of 1936. He said that within a generation, the return on capital could be brought down to zero if, and this is what he was implicitly assuming, there was no innovation going on. If, look, we have this nice fieldhouse here, hockey stadium, or whatever you call it. Let's see. This is a success. Let's build another one next door. And of course, the other one next door is not going to be as valuable as this one. Well, OK, let's do a third one. Well, down goes the return. Probably by the fourth one, if not fourth, a identical building like this with no innovation, no change, no new use, the investment is going to be less than zero in return. So that basic idea, which is very fundamental to economics of diminishing returns, applies very strongly to investment by itself. Therefore, all the talk since Adam Smith, who was the first to make this kind of argument in a serious way or Marx, I guess I should give him a other side because the main application was in Russia, and Keynes, and then Walt Whitman Rostow, acquaintance of mine. The idea that simply accumulating capital is what capitalism is all about is a mistake. In fact, that's one of the reasons that's the main reason. I don't like the word capitalism. Not because it was coined by the enemies of trade-tested betterment or innovism, but because it suggests very strongly to practically everyone, the people on the left, the people on the right, the people in the middle, that capitalism is all about capital accumulation. How do I know the very word capitalism says it? I mean, what more evidence do you need? Well, it's wrong. Humans have always accumulated capital. You go back to the Ausulian handaxe of our forebearers, very much our forebearers, used for 1.3 million years among the genus Homo. And you find in archaeological sites masses of these so-called handaxes. They weren't actually axes. They were used for other things. So we've been accumulating stuff forever. So that's one of the reasons why accumulation of capital can't be it. Over here, the exploitation can't be it because, look, we've always exploited each other, especially since the invention of agriculture. In hunter-gatherer communities, you can't exploit very much because the exploity can be knocked off very easily, can be killed if he starts misbehaving. Whereas the Lord and the lady, the Lord on his horse with a sword, he can dominate an agricultural community. The economist Mansur Olson called these people stationary bandits. That is, the ruling class, the priests and the lords who collected the surplus from agriculture, they had this power through violence. And it's always been true. Now it's the government that's the stationary bandit. Sometimes, as Paul would argue, for good. Sometimes, as I would argue, for bad. But anyway, they're the ones who collect the surplus. So it's always happened. There's been exploitation of the surplus, agricultural surplus by these people over here, the exploitation people. And there's always been capital accumulation over here. Those are the historical reasons why the usual explanations don't work. Why the can't be caused by foreign trade leading to accumulation or the profits of the slave trade to go to the left again that caused the increase in capital. No, capital accumulation doesn't do it. And in the middle of this political spectrum I have here, you might talk about institutions, the orthodoxy in the World Bank these days. Once, when I was a development economist, a transport economist, when early in my career, once the World Bank orthodoxy was add capital and stir. Add capital and stir, pour investment into some country and stir it around, and then you'll get economic growth. Now the orthodoxy, coming from my old friend Douglas North, is add institutions and stir. And I think neither of these makes a lot of sense, because as Paul points out, the institutions need ethical support or they don't work. You can add all the good laws you want to Chicago 100 years ago when every policeman, every judge was for sale, and you could add laws and have good institutions and it just wouldn't work. It wouldn't change anything until there was, as there has been slowly in Chicago, a change in ethics, change in the conversation that Paul was talking about, the conversation of the society, the attitude towards the corruption. Towards, towards, towards. It's not so much bourgeois virtue that I think is the cause of the modern world, but a change in attitudes towards the bourgeoisie. So if these, and then there are economic grounds, as I've described to you, on the left it doesn't work. On the right, the diminishing marginal returns to capital you can easily show can't possibly let capital, even human capital, human capital. Education doesn't do it by itself. You can educate millions and millions of people if you don't give them the freedom of enterprise that they need. You'll just get more and more educated, unemployed people. That's what you'll get. So neither of these works, and the one in the middle, the institutions, what's wrong with that historically. Doug North, this man who died about a year ago, marvelous guy, he said that there was a big change in the quality of institutions in Britain or England to be specific for the date in 1688. In the glorious revolution, which was the end of the 80-year struggle between the Crown and the Parliament and Parliament won. And Doug says that meant that now property rights were secure in Britain. And that's to use a technical term in economics. That's baloney. Property rights had always been secure in England, except during episodes such as the Law of the Roses. But back to the time of Edward I, common law was in full bloom in England in property and contracts and anything you want to name. And indeed, the law only changed after, well after, the beginning of the Great Enrichment starts around the middle of the 18th century in England. The institution started changing in the 1820s and especially the 1830s and 40s. So the institutions changed after the economy started changing. So things that come after can't be the cause of things that come before. That's among the numerous problems with this new institutionalist story of modern economic growth. So dear, OK, dear, stop dumping on my colleagues and stop complaining about economic arguments that I think are wrong. What's my explanation? Well, my explanation is technology. I think Jeff misspoke when he said I was against technology as a cause. No, no. I'd join with my friend Joel Mokir, a great economic historian and Jack Goldstone and a bunch of other people in saying that technology is it. It's not exploitation. It's not investment. I don't think it's changes in institutions because they don't change. And institutions anyway are often conservative. It's technology. Both mechanical technology, electrical technology, look at this marvelous cheap, I mean, handsome carpet here, which would be impossible in the 18th century. Look at the steel on your chairs, impossible before the middle of the 19th century. Look at this. Oh, my hair again. God damn. Look at this amazing technology. Those are the technologies, but they're also institutional improvements, institutional improvements such as what we're in right now, the modern college, the modern college that combines research and teaching. That was invented in 2010 by a man named Van Humboldt at the University of Berlin. Or take McDonald's once again. Let's talk about McDonald's. Ray Kroc invented the idea of the hamburger chain. Actually, the first idea of this was called Howard Johnson. You've never heard of Howard Johnson's, most of you. But back when I was a kid, that was the chain. But it was an institutional innovation that McDonald made, that Kroc made. By the way, his widow has given the money to NPR, which I think is great. So the institutional change, the investment, is necessary. You've got to embody this, what would you call it, this movie system we have back here, in actual stuff that you have to invest in. But it was the ideas for it. The idea in Ray Kroc's mind, the idea of a research university, those came first. The idea of a new spinning machine, the idea of a steam engine, the idea of electricity, the transistor, et cetera, et cetera. Now, in a way, this is a completely obvious point. Once you've gotten over thinking that it's either exploitation or investment or institutional change and can look at what it actually was in the 18th, 19th, and 20th century, it's pretty obvious, as Paul Romer, a student of mine at the University of Chicago, has said, it's pretty obvious that ideas for technological improvement or institutional improvement come from people's brains. I mean, where else are they going to come from? Outer space? They come from people's brains. So that's the first point completely obvious in my explanation. But the big question is why all of a sudden, in the after 1800 especially, in many countries and in an increasing number of countries, people, as Jeff mentioned, have a go? Why did so many people start thinking of innovations? An example that I have in mind, I've had in mind for decades, is an exhibition at the Wisconsin Historical Society about 40 years ago, maybe even longer, about 40, of cherry piters. These, Wisconsin was not a dairy economy in the 19th century mainly. It was a fruit growing economy. There were a lot of fruit orchards, and people grew cherries. Then they had the long Wisconsin winter to think of ways of getting the pit out of the cherry. And in this exhibition, I'm not making this up. Hear this. In this exhibition, there were 200 cherry piters of various designs. 200. Now this is loco. This is potso. This is insane. Heck, as we say in Dutch. Meshugana. Come on. 200 cherry piters. But that's ordinary people having a go. So the key is that a mass of people feel entitled, feel empowered to open a hairdressing salon, or start a computer business in their garage, or invent the Chicago Board of Trade. Ordinary people.  That had happened before. Innovation has been something homo sapiens have been doing forever. But nothing like the volume that they did after 1800. OK. Why the change? Why rather suddenly after 1800, starting in Northwestern Europe and spreading to the world, did we get this crazy outburst of invention? My friend Matt Ridley, an English science journalist, calls it ideas having sex. So I know it's kind of vulgar, but I can't help it. Neither can he. You invent, rather obviously, to get coal out of horizontal mines in northeastern England.  And then you invent the high pressure steam engine. The atmospheric engine won't do it. It has to be high pressure. And then you put the two together. They have sex, and you get the railway. And then there are little baby ideas of the railway.  And everyone, the grand baby ideas and the great grand, and you get this enormous explosion. Because ordinary people are having a go. As Walt Whitman said, I contain multitudes. I contain multitudes. And he did. He and Americans. Now, why did that happen? It happened because of what is properly called liberalism. Not the way it's used in the United States and in Britain, especially in the United States, to mean slow socialism. I was once a socialist, so I sympathize with this error. But it's an error nonetheless. Liberalism is what Adam Smith called the liberal plan, now hear this, of equality, liberty, and justice. Equality before the law. And in, let me see, let's get this right. Equality of social standing. Liberty to open a business. Look what happened in China after 1978, when the Communist Party started allowing people to own business. And justice. That is equal justice before the law, the motto on our Supreme Court. So that's it. It's a species of equality. I call it Scottish equality, to contrast it with Rousseau's French equality, which is equality of outcome. I've written a long review of Thomas Piketty's big book on capital in the 21st century, in which I treat the book with respect. It's a serious book. But I conclude after 50 pages that it's wrong, and that equality is not our problem. Our problem is raising up the poor. The problem is poverty, not equality of outcome. The problem is the failure of the public schools that John was speaking of to give everyone a proper start in life. So liberalism is what made us rich. It's also what made us free, more or less, by definition. This is an 18th century idea. The clericy, as I call them, the intellectuals and the artists, the theologians and the novelists since the 18th century have had three ideas, three ideas about society. One was this liberalism. So Voltaire and Ben Franklin, Mary Wollstonecraft, Tom Paine, that's liberalism. The other two ideas were just terrible. Socialism and nationalism. Nationalism came first than socialism. And if you like nationalism or socialism, maybe you'll like national socialism. That is fascism. You know, you need to consider whether that's the kind of world you want. And the liberal idea turned out to be correct.  Now why was that? Why did it happen in Northwest Europe? Is this more Eurocentric pride? Pride, the chief sin against the Holy Spirit? No, it's not. It's very, it was a close thing. Could easily have gone the other way. In 1500, if anyone could have conceived a factor of 10 or 30 or 100 increase in real income per head for ordinary people, they would have bet on China. Because China made most of the world's inventions. We once used to think that the blast furnace was a Swedish invention and know it wasn't, it was Chinese. We tend to think of the printing press as a German invention, know it wasn't, it was Chinese, et cetera. China had an enormous free trade area, low taxation. It had a comparatively educated population, at least by comparison with Europe at the time. And it had, what else, it had most of the world's a panoply. Most things were invented in China and you would have thought it's going to go on, China's going to be the place. But no, it was this crummy little corner of the Eurasian landmass called Northwestern Europe. And emphasize that it wasn't in Italy, where on internal European grounds you would have supposed that economic development would start taking place. Now it was around the North Sea, Holland to begin with, the Dutch, then England when it got a Dutch king, then Scotland when it escaped from strict Calvinism, the English American colonies, North American colonies, then Belgium, Northern France, et cetera, et cetera. It gets, it spreads. But it's Northwestern Europe, in fact, accepting Holland, and there's some, actually some involvement of Sweden in this, but not much, accepting Holland, it's the Anglo sphere, it's the English speaking world. Now why there? Well, it's not because of some ancient English or European superiority. It's not science, for example. And Joe McCarr argues it's the scientific revolution. I don't think so. I think now the scientific, high science, is terribly, terribly important for economic growth, for further economic growth. But in the 18th and 19th century, indeed in most parts of the economy, well into the 20th century, it's technologists, tinkers, skilled machinists, people who are not doing thermodynamics or something. It's not high science, it's low technology that made the modern world. And certainly the institutional developments have very little to do with high science. So it's not science, it's not English common law as some of my colleagues think. Asimoglu and so on, they think it's that. No, no, because it didn't happen in Britain, now properly called Britain with the act of union until the 18th century. So what was it?  The Reformation, not the way Max Weber claimed it as a change in the doctrine of salvation, but because of a change in radical Protestantism, not the kind I espouse or the Lutherans or the Catholics, and certainly not the Catholics espouse, not a hierarchical church but a democratic church. Congregationalists, extreme example in the 17th century are Quakers who have no minister at all.  Reading, not a German invention, but the printing press was crucial to the success of the Reformation. Martin Luther's address to the nobles of the German nation is highly radical pamphlet against the Pope. In its first week, 4,000 copies. In its second week, another 4,000 copies. Within two weeks, 8,000 copies of this revolutionary pamphlet on the order of the communist manifesto was circulating in Germany, in German. Revolt, the successful Dutch revolt against Spain. Which was the northern low countries, what we could conventionally call Holland, against the largest and best army in Europe, name of the Spanish army. And in an 80 years war, it actually didn't really last that long, but it's called the 80 years revolt, they finally won. That made people bold. The English Revolution, you can call it, the English Civil War of the 1640s, made people bold. The English Revolution, the glorious revolution, 1688, I've mentioned, made people bold. The American Revolution, you know about that. The French Revolution, 1789. All these could have gone the other way. Without Martin Luther, without, well, maybe even without Gutenberg, but certainly without Oliver Cromwell, without King William of William and Mary, without George Washington, who finally learned how to fight, without the French Navy intervening at the right points, without, without, without. It could easily have gone the other way, that's why I call it an accident. So by an accident of history, Northwestern Europe became somewhat liberal. Now understand, the United States was a slave society well into this, this event. So I'm not saying that these were perfectly liberal societies, but they were more liberal than the alternatives. There were societies in which ordinary people could have a go and wanted to have a go. So I'm going to make a bold claim, and then I'm going to sit down. I think I've solved the central question in economics. And if you don't believe me, buy the books and read them. Anyway, buy them. It is that ideas, as I say in the subtitle of the third volume, ideas, not capital or institutions, enrich the world. And if I had had my wits about me, I would have sold more copies. I've sold a fair number already. I'm glad to hear it. I'll be glad to hear it. This last volume came out last spring, this spring. If I'd had my wits about me, I would have said, I would have added one more word. I would have said, how liberal ideas, not capital or institutions, enriched the world. Thank you very much. Come on up. I think you know the drill. Our panel will join us. We'll hook up and we'll have our conversation here in a few moments. Thank you.


Major sponsors for Ableton on Air include Green Mountain Support Services, empowering people with disabilities to live home in the community, Washington County Mental Health, where hope and support come together. Media sponsors for Ableton on Air include Park Chester Times, Muslim Community Report, WWW, this is the Bronx.info, Associated Press Media Editors, New York Power Online Newspaper, U.S. Press Corps Domestic and International, Anchor FM and Spotify. Partners for Ableton on Air include the HOD of New York and New England, where everyone belongs, the Orthodox Union, the Division for the Blind and Visually Impaired of Vermont, the Vermont Association for the Blind and Visually Impaired, Center Vermont Habitat for Humanity, and Montpelier Sustainable Coalition, Montefiore Medical Center of the Bronx, Roosevelt Kennedy Center of Bronx, New York, Albert Einstein College of Medicine of the Bronx. Ableton on Air has been seen in the following publications, Park Chester Times, WWW, this is the Bronx.com, New York Power Online Newspaper, Muslim Community Report, WWW.H.com, and the Montpelier Bridge. Ableton on Air is part of the following organizations, the National Academy of Television, Arts and Sciences, Boston, New England Chapter, and the Society of Professional Journalists. Hello and welcome to this edition of Ableton on Air, the one and only program that focuses on the needs, concerns, and achievements of the differently abled. I've always been your host, Lauren Seiler. I'm Lauren Seiler. And on this particular program, we will talk about higher education and people with special needs. But before that, we would like to say special thanks to Washington County Mental Health, Green Mountain Support Services, and many others for sponsoring and partnering with us on this program. And one of our partners on this program today is Community College of Vermont, which we will be speaking about higher education and people with special needs. And with that, we would like to welcome Kelly Young, the ADA, America's Disabilities Act coordinator and coordinator for special needs services at Community College of Vermont. Welcome, Kelly. Wonderful. Thank you. Thank you, Lauren, and Arlene, for having me. Did I say it right, ADA coordinator? Sure. So the little bit of new terminology, our roles have shifted a bit. I am now a dedicated student advisor. I work with students in our TRIO program, which is students who are first generation from limited income means and or have a documented disability. I'm also an accessibility services coordinator. So yes, I work with students who have documented disabilities to access their education at CCB. Okay. So what are the missions and goals of Community College of Vermont and working with students with disabilities? Why is it so important for students with disabilities or special needs to go to college or pursue higher education? Yeah, great. Thank you for that question. So the college's mission for all of Vermont is to support students in accessing higher education, affording higher education, and being successful in meeting their goals. And that's for all Vermonters. And, you know, we certainly recognize that some Vermonters have different abilities and may have barriers to accessing their education created by a disability that we can and we can mitigate those barriers. And we want to mitigate barriers for all Vermonters. And so for Vermonters with special needs, we have specific ways of doing that at CCB. Yep. Okay. So explain some of the ways that you help students with special needs access those services and, you know, why are, and then the second part to this is why are students with special needs sometimes afraid to go to college? Yeah. Okay. Great. So I think, I think Vermonters, all different kinds of Vermonters can be afraid to go to college for various reasons.  I don't know how to fit it in, or I'm not sure I can be successful, right? And so there's lots of reasons that students, including students with special needs, might be afraid to go to college. And I think, I think there's a culture shift happening right now in this country and in this state around seeing people with special needs as college students, just like anybody else might be a college student, right? That that might be a shift that's happening. And it's a, it's one that CCD values and would like to contribute to. So the ways, did I answer that part of your question? Okay, great. Okay. And then how we help students access the services. So right from the point of the application, we do ask students if they have a documented disability. And if they answer yes to that question, we send them out information about how to access and how to get started with accessing our services. There's a self disclosure form they can fill out. There's a list of who the accessibility coordinators are like me across the state and how to reach them to set up an appointment and to start the process of setting up accommodations. Again, to mitigate any barriers created by a disability. So if students don't say yes to that question, they might not realize they have a documented disability or they might not think it's important at the time they apply. If they, if they bring that up with a faculty member or a staff member or an advisor, then we also help them start that process of getting accommodation set up. So at any point that they disclose having a documented disability, then we kind of take it from there and get them the information and services they need. Okay. Arlene, did you start one of the ask questions? Go ahead. Yeah. Take your time. I'm trying to say, okay. I know a person needs to have challenges. Does that affect them from going to college? Sorry, Arlene. I didn't hear that question very well. I'll repeat it. Sometimes when a person has a disability, does it affect them sometimes going to college? Is it more difficult for them? Is it more difficult for students with disabilities to go to college or has CCB made it easier? Let's put it that way. Yeah. No, I think there can be some real, there can be some real barriers created by a disability, depending on what it is, right? So if somebody has visual impairment or is blind, right? Then we need to be providing accessible ways for them to access the courses and content. And we do that through, you know, the latest and greatest in online technologies for accessibility, as well as in-person. We hire interpreters for folks who have a hearing impairment or are deaf. We also, you know, students might have a mental health disability or a learning disability or, you know, another physical disability that has other needs associated with it. And so we meet with students regularly to discuss what their, you know, what their documentation says, what they know about their disability, what kinds of accommodations might mitigate those barriers so that they have equal access to learning. And then put those accommodations in place. And those can look like all different kinds of things, depending on what the disability issue is and how it's impacting the student in the learning environment. Okay, Arlene, go ahead with some other courses. Take your time, take your time. I know certain, why are, why are especially people afraid to go to college? Why are they afraid? Go ahead, Kelly. Yeah, I mean, I think what I, what I've heard from students is some of the things I mentioned before, which I think is some of the messages that, that folks with special needs might get growing up. Other, other Vermonters might get as well, you know, things like, I don't know if I can do it. I've never been told I'm college material. I don't know if I'm smart enough. I've been told I'm not smart. You know, those kinds of messages, nobody in my family's ever been to college and those kinds of messages are not unique to people with special needs, but I think they're common, unfortunately, for people with special needs. Okay, so let's, let's go through some of the new things. Your website is wonderful. Oh, good. It's a lot of websites. I mean, they're supposed to be, especially with a lot of colleges now going online, which is a little strange for people. If people are used to in person, now everything has been switched online. So two part question, how has your website changed? Personally, I think it's better for people with visual impairment because you can like zoom it in everything. But then how has CCV made the switch or how hard, if at all, how hard has it been during COVID? You know, because COVID, a lot of things were closed. People were afraid to go into buildings. So how has CCV kind of take that leap? Yes. So if taking that leap, if I'm saying it right, taking that leap and making it so much easier, because I know, I notice now CCV has a whole bunch of grants for students who want to pursue college and you don't have been afraid to, or they can't afford it, such and such. So go ahead. Yeah. I'm sorry for the big question. Well, it did all kind of come at once at CCV, right? So changes, there were planned changes to our website and our portal to, and honestly with our online canvas sites, to those were already planned to make the user experience easier for all everybody, including people with special needs. So that was already underway and then the pandemic hit. Fortunately, CCV has a long, long experience with teaching and learning online. We've been helping learners do that for, I don't know, 25 years or something a long time, right? And we were the first ones to head in that direction in Vermont and maybe the first, they don't know. And so, so there was a lot of experience already with teaching and learning online. The challenge was that a whole bunch of faculty and students, two years ago, had to mid-semester, What do you mean by mid? What do you mean by mid-semester? I'm sorry. Well, right. I think it was around this time, two years ago, that we learned about the pandemic really hitting hard in Vermont. And we had to tell everybody, hey, a week from today, there will be no more in-person classes and everybody's going to go online.  Now, what we did with most of those classes was provide a synchronous learning opportunity. Okay, define synchronous. Yeah. Yeah. So most classes up until that time were what we call asynchronous. So there were assignments and discussion forums and deadlines throughout the week, but you could post to those anytime up until the deadline. So you might have a discussion taking place all week, but you had to post your first post by the end of Wednesday and you had to post responses to five classmates by the end of Friday. And you had to read the rest of it and make one more post on Sunday or something like that. So people were posting at all different times, but they were reading and responding to each other, but all in a different days and times with a synchronous option. That means there are online components that are like that, but there's also a live class through zoom once a week. So most of those. Yeah. So most of those classes that had to go from in person to online, kept the same day and time of the meeting. They just moved it to zoom. So a lot of students and faculty had to get, well, a lot of faculty had to get zoom accounts. A lot of students and faculty needed equipment for zoom to work. And they didn't have computers. A lot of students taking in-person classes have computers and some don't. A lot of them have good internet access at home and some don't. Many don't, didn't at the time have computers with cameras. Right. So, so there was a lot, it was a huge learning curve, a lot of flexibility for faculty and students during that time and a lot of resources. How do we get computers, you know, cameras, et cetera, how do we get these resources into students' hands so that, and faculty hands, so they can be successful in this rest of this semester and provide flexibility through the end of the semester. So if somebody, you know, could only participate through audio phone on the zoom meeting. Well, that's how it had to be, right? So, so there was a big pivot during that time. And then classes stayed online. I think one of the big, I'm sorry, the big misconception about like online learning, you know, is there any misconceptions with that and students with disabilities? Like not being able, not being able to. Yeah, you know, it's interesting. I don't know how many students with disabilities were taking classes online before the pandemic. I don't know that. That's a really great question. I'm guessing, I mean, I think what happened for a lot of people who thought they needed to take classes in person once they moved online, because they had to, you know, we, we, first of all, we really supported faculty in making sure their online classes were really clear that, that they provided regular access to students who might have questions and, you know, that those, those experiences could be successful for all kinds of learners. And so there was a big push on the faculty side as well as, you know, supportive resources. So now all students, regardless of where, how they're taking classes, synchronous, asynchronous in person, whatever, they all get automatically registered their first semester at CCB, not only for an orientation, but for an orientation to how the online course experience works. And they all have an opportunity to meet with an advisor to talk about, you know, what their comfort level is with those things, but to check into their course sites before the semester starts to make sure they understand how to navigate them and use them. And then of course there are, there are advisors like, like me who are now dedicated to working with students with special needs who are using, we're accessing services, accessibility services. Because example, we're talking about internet. If you're, there's a lot of people that we've spoken to that are like up in rural Vermont and don't even have access to a computer or they might be low income or not realize, okay, I can get a computer from the school or get, or what they call lending library, you know. How do they get computers if they can afford it? Exactly. Yeah. So that's a great question. That first semester, we were sending out maps of hotspots in Vermont. So people could get their laptops and sit in the, you know, parking lot of the local store or library to be able to access internet. It was, you know, I'm sorry, people in Cabot for example, when you're like way up, you don't have access. So yeah, those students were driving down to the Marshfield store and using that stores internet to be able to access their classes. Right. Like that's what was going on. But then soon there, we did, we did have some resources just port right away. Again, making sure students had some ways to access computing resources. And then since then there've been more for, for anybody to be able to access what are called cares grants. And this is available, pandemic relief funding available for all students to request funds. And many students have used those funds for computing resources, whether it's internet in upgraded internet access, you know, any internet access at all or computing resources. They need those sorts of things. And then, and then also some students who have special needs joined the trio program. And that's a program. What is that? What is the tree? Yeah. That's another federally funded program. And it is primarily for first generation. People were the first in their families to pursue college. Their parents, people who raised them didn't, didn't earn bachelor's degrees at least. And they are also either low income or they have a documented disability or both.  We can only serve a couple of hundred. And so our 225, something like that. And so we, we really look for students who want to take advantage of a more dedicated advising relationship, a more engaged advising relationship through the college. And so we, we really look for students who want to take advantage of a more dedicated advising relationship, a more engaged advising relationship through the college. Because there are dedicated advisors like me as well as trio coaches. We make success plans with those students and follow them through. We make sure they're doing all right all the time in their classes and see, you know, how they can leverage, partnering with their advisor and coach and resources of the college to be successful. So some students with special needs join that program. And there are a couple of other programs as well for students with special learning needs. Do you have a mentoring program through CCB part of the trio? Or is the two different? Do you mean the learning center mentoring? No. College compass mentoring. College. Yeah. College. I'm sorry. Go ahead. Yeah. I'll talk. There's a, there's a few mentoring kinds of programs for actually that I can think of. So one is trio. So if you're a trio student and you are struggling with the content of a class, right? To understand the content of a class, you can get academic mentoring through trio. There's also academic mentoring through our learning centers. There are three learning centers in person. And some of us, some of those learning centers. That's Montpelier. That's Montpelier. When you ski and Rutland. Okay. And I believe at least in Montpelier, we are starting to also have students access those, those mentoring opportunities through zoom. So I've got a new court student who's going to, you know, log into the learning center later today through zoom in Montpelier. So that's starting to expand the reach of those. And that those, those are for all students, the learning centers are for all students. And we also have a 24 seven. Tutor.com program for all students. There are a couple of programs in addition to trio. There are a couple of programs specific to students with special needs. And these are partnerships with voc rehab. And in some cases, another partner you said before we began the show, you said voc rehab change names. Yeah. And I've been, I've been out on vacation for a week and a half. And I think I've missed some, some things, but my understanding is voc rehab is now called higher ability. Yeah. Yeah. And so I don't know much about that change. I'm sorry about that. But in any case, we've had for a number of years, we've had a program called linking learning to careers. I think it's a grant that's wrapping up. So we're just coming to completion of that. But that, that program provided some dedicated mentoring and additional funding for students who were just coming out of high school to begin college, to try out college. And in some cases, you know, I have a student who has been going full time and is going to graduate this semester with a degree and transfer on to another college to get a bachelor's. Wait a second. There are stories that I've seen on the news where students who were in high school and then they graduate with both their high school diploma and college degree. Is that what you're talking about? That's called early college. So there's a number of things. So students, all high school students in Vermont have access to two free classes through the dual enrollment program. In addition, students who are at career and technical education centers can get additional credits through what's, you know, through some other college credits. And then through linking learning to careers, students also had access to two additional vouchers for free classes. And some of those students then went on to enroll as a after high school in a degree program to complete. Now the early college program is doing your entire senior year at CCB or another college. And so you graduate and if you took some dual enrollment classes, you know, you might graduate your high school with 36 college credits, not a full degree, but pretty, you know, pretty well in your way. And many of those students stay. And some of those students are using accessibility services, right? But it's not dedicated for those, those students. The programs we have really dedicated for students with special needs is again that linking learning to careers, which is wrapping up, I believe, and also a program, a newer program called college compass. That is a partnership between CCB and higher ability formerly voc rehab and college steps. Now college steps provides real wrap around supports and services on residential campuses. So this was a new program to work with CCB. And I believe others in the Vermont state college system on a paired back, just the academic mentoring component because we're not a residential college. We're a commuter college, right? People either just zoom in or log into their online class or they show up once a week for a class on campus, right? Or a couple of days a week for a couple of different classes or classes in person or typically only one day a week. So this is a program that really just zeroes in on that, that mentoring piece, which might be academic support. It might be support with social communication and might be support with understanding and following what's, what's in that canvas site online in that class. But that's, you know, it's a four to 10 hours a week of support depending on, depending on what the student needs and how they class. Yeah. Okay. So, so let's talk about, but before we get to more questions, Arlene, did you want to ask anymore? Yes. Take your time. Take your time. Take your time. They have trouble accessing the text, but how do they do that? Yeah. How does, when, when working with students with disabilities, does CCB make it easier to, to get things from the bookstore? How does that work with students in online learning? Yeah. Yeah. Sure. And so there's a number of things that are available to all students and then something specific for students with special needs. So textbooks come in all different formats. Many faculty are using what's called open education resources, which are videos, articles, websites, et cetera, that they're posting to their canvas site and they're using closed captioning and they're using, you know, those sort of accessibility tools built in as they go. And so students don't have to purchase a textbook. They may or may not, depending on, on their experience, but students with special needs might need support with downloading a screen reader program. There are free ones available online or they can go to the technology tryout center through the state of Vermont and Waterbury and borrow a, you know, a natural reader souped up version of natural reader to, to have that kind of text to voice option. And so some students might need support with accessing those kinds of resources so that they can hear those, those online resources or otherwise access them. And then some, some books have an ebook option. And very often there's an audio option built into those. Yeah. And, and then, and then some are just, there's only a hard copy available. And sometimes students want to have a hard copy, but they also want the audio at the same time. And so when there's no ebook option or audio option regularly available or students want the hard copy plus the audio, then CCV can, can, can offer an alternative option to students. So we can sort of translate those. We either have relationships with a publisher where we can get an audio file or we can get a PDF to send to the student that run through a screen reader. Or we've got a program up in Winooski. We kind of have to get the textbook in advance and send it up to Winooski so they can run it through this program to create that audio file. But there are those options for students as well. No. Kelly, before we explain. You ever have a blind student? Yes. Yep. Yes. How does, so how does CCV help students with visual impairment? You know, more so. Yeah, you know, it's interesting. I have, I have had very little experience in this area. Um, because we just haven't had very many students who had some deaf students in that player, but while I've been here, there have not been students with visual impairment, very many visual impairments. Um, and so, but my understanding is for students with significant visual impairments. Um, and or who are blind that they're, you know, that part of our services are, uh, translating materials into Braille into an accessible format for people with visual disabilities. Many people with visual disabilities. Um, the online format works great because as you noted, um, Lawrence, you can really zoom in. You can zoom in.  No computer is 100%. No, no computer program, computers crash like people sometimes, but you know, so nothing is 100%. And what I like about CCBs, um, everything is like huge. You can zoom in, you can zoom out.  If you have to look at a video. So, yes, exactly. So I have had some students with actually pretty significant visual impairments, but they can, they can still access. They can zoom things enough to be able to access what's there. We've had to have some conversations that sometimes faculty have classes set up in ways that, you know, they might be technically accessible, but they're not the facto actually accessible. So sometimes there needs to be a conversation about how a class is working with that student. But most of the time things are working pretty well for for students with visual impairments. I just haven't, I haven't actually worked with translating materials to Braille, but I do know that service is available. Okay, now here's, here's something interesting. Since CCV has changed a lot with websites and things, what is, for those that don't know, what, and I hope this question is not far-fetched, but what is a flex class? Because I've heard about that. And, you know, a lot of colleges are eight weeks, 10 weeks, CCVs is 15 weeks, but what, what is a flex class? Great, great. I'm going to just start with an overview of all our options. Right. So there's the 15 week class that might be face-to-face in person. It might be hybrid, which is partly in person, partly online. It might be fully online asynchronous. Right. Everybody's logged in at different days and times, or it might be fully online that in addition has a synchronous live Zoom meeting once a week. Right. On top of that, there are classes that might be accelerated. So they might be seven weeks for the first half or seven weeks for the second half. Those are called accelerated online classes. And then, and then there's the flex format. So the flex format class takes place over the whole semester, but students can sign up for it up until I think, I don't know, week seven, week five, week seven or something as long as there's still room. So they're entering it all at different times. And they have the whole semester to complete that course, but they're doing it at their own pace. So I have a student right now who hasn't even logged into their flex class because they have three weeks off from work. And they're planning on doing that flex class during those three weeks. Right. And then there are other students who, there's 15 modules in that class. So they're just doing one a week. You know, but there's no discussions with other students or typically there's very little discussion with other students because people are all over the map in terms of when they're accessing it and when they're completing modules. So it's much more like an independent study with faculty engagement and support, but without sort of that other class. Like an independent study degree or, or. It's like an independent study or, or study at your own pace. Right. And talking about flex class, what is, and I was researching it because, you know, I liked finding digital badges or digital, certificate, digital badge. What the heck is that? Yeah.  So a digital badge is a credential. So there's sort of outside organizations that say, okay, this set of content is something that, that we can badge. We can sort of say this adds up to X, Y, or Z skill. Right. And so if you take a workshop, there's a, there's a series of three workshops. I'm not going to get them right, but personal, personal professional effectiveness, critical and creative thinking and maybe effective workplace communication. There's a couple of three, maybe three one credit flex classes. And if you complete all three, you get a digital badge and 21st century learning because the skills demonstrated in 21st century learning, you know, things like collaborative learning and communication, leadership, working with all kinds of people, diversity, you know, a series of skills that add up to 21st century learning skills. And so if you complete all three of those, those one credit workshops, you get that digital badge. There's others like, I think it's internet marketing or something like that that has its own badge attached to it. And so some of these, there are some sort of micro credentials, right? It's not a full certificate. It's not a degree, but maybe it's a series of, you know, nine to 12 credits that have badges associated with them. So you can get sort of a micro credential that says, hey, I've earned these three digital badges with this title on it. And now I'm going to work towards that certificate next or now next I'm going to work towards that degree. So it's a way for students to build skills and micro credentials on their way to a larger credential or just, they want to stop there with that piece. And, you know, a digital badge is something you can post to a LinkedIn site. It's something you can link on to an online resume. It's something that demonstrates to employers and others. Hey, I have this skill set, right? And it's separate. It's sort of industry credentials rather than an academic. I mean, it's both, right? Because you've got through an academic institution. So you got some, you got some college credits for that. It also says, hey, here's this set of industry recognized skills that this person has as a result. Okay. Is there anything that we didn't, we have a couple of minutes left. Is there anything we didn't add that is important? Yeah, you know, I think the only thing else I would mention is that, you know, over the past couple of years, the other big shift at CCB has been in how we have dedicated our roles. And so you guys know my role used to include advising all kinds of students and working with faculty and setting up the curriculum and doing a little of everything. And now my role is really focused. So there are people who are just advised. And within that pool, there are people like me who are really dedicated to working with students with special needs and students in the trio program. Right. And so, and we've also gotten all gotten trained in a coaching model. And so we're really able to partner with all students. And in my case, students with special needs to think about how do I best prepare myself for this semester? What are the steps I need to take to make sure that on day one, I've got my textbooks. I know how to log in. I've got, I understand how my courses work. I understand what the resources are at CCB. And I know how to get help if I need it. Also, okay, I'm somebody who's always procrastinated. How do I get better at managing my time to make sure I meet those deadlines? Or geez, I'm, I'm balancing school and work and parenting or and lots of appointments. You know, how do I manage all that? Or gosh, I'm taking classes online. I sort of feel really distant from everybody. How do I bridge that gap? You know, so, so advisors are able to partner with students to meet their goals and to overcome all kinds of barriers, right? That might get in the way for them. Some of which might be related to special needs and some of which might be related to something else. So I think that's an additional first from the student side and additional piece. That's really great. And then on the, on the curriculum side, there's lots of great stuff happening. We've got a lot of two plus two arrangements where we have a, an agreement with another college like UVM or what technical college or any of, you know, lots of different colleges, especially. At one point in terms of your role, weren't you doing things with Johnson College? Did that change? Yeah, yeah. So that's, that's now all at, at Northern Vermont University, right? So I'm no longer directly advised those students.  And that translates all 60 credits towards a bachelor's degree in Y over at that college, right? So those kinds of transfer pathways, transfer agreements. And we also have canvas sites for every degree program and certificate program. So if you are in a healthcare related certificate or degree, or you just want to be in that canvas site and you're a non-degree student, but you're interested in healthcare, you can enroll in this canvas site and there's all kinds of webinars going on, faculty sharing their experience, or somebody talking about, you know, pathways at the hospital, coming to talk about the ways that they support their employees in going to college and earning credentials and pathways to nursing or things like that. So all kinds of stuff gets posted there, as well as how do I complete my degree? How do I transfer on to other schools? All it gets packaged into a canvas site for students. And there's also all kinds of online ways for students to interact with each other outside of classes now as well. Our student advisory and leadership council is putting on social groups and common interest groups. There's a coding corner for students who are all interested in coding, you know. So there's a lot of great stuff happening at CCB right now. Okay. So we would like to thank you for joining us on this edition of Ableton. Arlene, did you want to ask any more questions before we end? I can't think of one. Okay. So we would like to thank Kelly young and the community college of Vermont for joining us on this edition of Ableton on there. What is your role again? You are Kelly is the ADA coordinator and Trio. Yep. Trio and accessibility coordinator student advising is my title. Trio ADA coordinator and student advisor at the community college of Vermont. We would like to thank her for joining us on this edition of Ableton on there. And we would also like to add and thank our sponsors Washington County Mental Health Green Mountain support services and many others also including the division for the blind of Vermont, the association for the blind of Vermont and many, many other supporters and sponsors for Ableton on there. Thank you again Kelly for joining us on this edition of Ableton on there. I am Lauren Seiler. I'm Arlene Seiler. See you next time. Major sponsors for Ableton on there include Green Mountain support services, empowering people with disabilities to live home in the community. Washington County Mental Health where hope and support comes together. Media sponsors for Ableton on there include Park Chester Times, Muslim Community Report, WWW. This is the Bronx.info, Associated Press media editors, New York Power Online Newspaper, U.S. Press Corps, Domestic and International, Anchor FM and Spotify. Partners for Ableton on there include Yachad of New York and New England where everyone belongs, the Orthodox Union, the division for the blind and visually impaired of Vermont, the Vermont Association for the Blind and Visually Impaired, Central Vermont Habitat for Humanity and Montpelier Sustainable Coalition, Montefiore Medical Center of the Bronx, Rose of Kennedy Center of Bronx, New York, Albert Einstein College of Medicine of the Bronx. Ableton on there has been seen in the following publications, Park Chester Times, WWW. This is the Bronx.com, New York Power Online Newspaper, Muslim Community Report, WWW. H.com and the Montpelier Bridge. Ableton on there is part of the following organizations, the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, Boston, New England chapter and the Society of Professional Journalists.


on everyone. Sam here with late in sports cards. I've been one box of a 23 at Padini Chronicles UFC hobby for Lynn M. It's good luck here. Lynn, let's do it. Come on, we'll see something big. Again, thank you all for hanging out this late at night, man. I appreciate that. It's always nice when everybody's here. Come on, we'll see something big now. My first time ripping UFC Chronicles this year, so I'm pretty amped, dude. Yeah, Washington's jerseys overall are pretty clean to me, I would say. All right, so that's a filler on the back. Famos, Algermain Sterling. Nice, 249. Purple, Algermain Sterling. Nice one there, Lynn. Got a Matt Sarah, Dan Hooker, upside down Spivak, and John Bones-Jones on the certified. Olavera, Salikov, Tito Ortiz. That is a Patrick Sabatini rookie. Got Drew Dober, Sergei Pavlovich to 199 on the Spectra, Canaro, and a Chris Barnett rookie. Levy, Dan Hooker, Vincent Luck. Jeff Neal to 99. Nice one there on the Chronicles blue base. Darren Elkins, another Drew Dober, not numbered. Robbie Lawler, nice one there on the XR. And then Terence McKinney, 19 of 49 on the Purple. There you go, Lynn, congrats buddy. Pac Trace, Caitlyn Semanera to 199. Semanera, St. Pierre, nice, they're in tail. It's gonna be your auto on the Revolution, not revolution, obsidian lightning strike auto. Let me grab, I gotta grab another case, or another pack of thin sleeves, one sec. Sorry, Lynn. These are ready here. I'll leave these for Lances too, so nice one there. Darren Till, lightning strike auto. Nice, Israel Adesanya, and a Raphael Ossenshaw. I agree on that JT, they look really good this year, man. Blanchfield, Chamayev, Bonacol, Bonacol again. Purple is Kopramanov, 249. Sadyukov Karamanov, Karamanov. That is a Carla Asparza and Tatiana Suarez as well. Last pack for you here, good luck, Lynn. Come on, baby. Trotsky, Drew Dober to 199. Drew Dober. Asparza, oh, nice, Cosmatchyamev. Wow, nice one there, Chamayev on the auto, Cosmatchyamev. Grats on that one there, Lynn. Solid. Very solid, the Phoenix auto, take that. Zangwili, and a Jack Short to 199 on the red. Great last pack there. That'll do it for your break there. Lynn, thanks again for the support, buddy. We'll get them right out to you, my friend.


What's up everybody, JC of the jazzy's case breaks.com Just sold out 2020 panini prison draft picks football as a four-box copy break random college football teams number 18 Now if you can see number 19's already in the store, we just refreshed it So number 19's in the store and again 23 total spots everybody gets three random teams from the list below Remember no veteran base car ship. So from Alabama all the way down to Wyoming So let's roll the dice and we got a tuna four six times Good luck. Triple up your names from Eric down to Eric last bomb over at one two three four five and six Six times mark Down to mark six times down the teams one two three four five and six Marilyn combo an Oregon states Here you go So I'm gonna leave this like this Let me share this with you guys So you guys can get a shareable link We just randomize the customer names and the pack numbers and then whatever you match up with is what pack number you get And then we rip it open So it's pretty much like a random pack break. It's pretty much the same list So there's that guys you guys can look at that and I'm gonna show you guys quickly how it came out boom boom boom All they done at Oregon State Yeah, most of the time you are guaranteed to hit. I think the hit packs mean. Yeah, you are guaranteed to hit All right, so Allen. It's it's just like a mixer or Tyler We just have random cards that varies from $15 to $500 whatever the description says So it could be any product. It's just more on the value. So I have no idea It's not always a specific product. It's from all types of products All right, Alan, you got the Michigan Wolverines, Alabama, Crimson Tide, Boston College Eagles Andy combo team plus Cincinnati, Texas A&M Bill you got Oklahoma State, Tennessee, Temple, Florida, Auburn one combo team Chad, you got Boise State, Baylor one combo team Derek You got Penn State, Clemson and one combo team Eric Yeah, definitely. Yeah, yeah Eric, you got my Ducks, Utah State, LSU, Kentucky, Mizzou one combo team. So there you go. Good luck, Jens You got Texas producer accused Joey you have Georgia, Minnesota Arizona State, Washington State, TCU Notre Dame Chris, Virginia, Florida State, Vanderbilt combo Mark Livingston you have a combo team plus Ohio and Stanford Mark Matheson you have a handful of teams. I don't know if I can show them all in the same photo. Yeah, I can Yes, from Wake Forest Combo, you got Ole Miss in there, Nebraska, USC, Iowa, Utah, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Cal, UCLA, Texas Tech, Oregon State and a handful of combo teams Mark N, you have Wisconsin, SMU and one combo team and Matthew as you have Ohio State, Wyoming, Miami So there you go. So I'll give you guys time If you guys want to make trades by the minute or so, if not, we will start the break Derek's saying I'll offer Clemson and Penn State for Alabama Lewis gets a spot straight up in the basketball mixer and gets the New York Jets. Nice. Good luck, man So basketball makes us now down to five left Celebs packs at 13 and NT football is now down at five Five, ten, nine You will be stripped of the Black Panther All right, Derek, sorry about that man. Close the trade window, man. So again guys refer to the break schedule or suggested breaks for today NT is starting to move five left straight up in the picker team ten left in the 14 team random number block and nine left in the 14 high-end random number block and just remember guys the mixer is starting to get close. We have five left straight up and Celebs packs are 13 left So you guys have all access to this Google Doc that you guys can view I'm updating it as Spots are coming in so I'm kind of updating them. So again, just keep track. It'll tell you what we need to do But if we're gonna want to do an NT today guys, we're gonna need a little help We're gonna need customers to grab spots in the round of number blocks for sure And then of course the five teams that are remaining. All right three Opportunities are three different stacks here for all the one two We're gonna go with the first stack on the left three four the middle five six the right side one two three four five six These two will be for numbers 19 and 20 which 19 is already on the website We can always run the olden of those back as well to 199 and with a nice little Joe Burrell coming up and it's at a 299 little wave LSU Eric with that one and we got a Scotty Phillips these out of 25 variations really really nice All miss with that one. All miss is mark with that one Juju Smith Schuster to 299 JK Dobbins, we got James Robinson It looks like for Illinois State Which is mark and with the combo team Josh Allen who a nice CD lines coming up 110 out of 149 for Oklahoma Mark with that one and Tristan Jackson to 30 for Syracuse Syracuse that is gents Herbert little snakeskin FAU Devon Singletary Bill with that one pink me and Joanne Johnson Oregon that one got a little Jaylen Hertz.  I hadn't seen one just yet Zach Moss And out of 175 Justin Herbert 43 out of 125 Oregon going to Eric. There you go. He has a long autograph like Marietta All right, next one Shawn, what is that? What are you talking about? I mean, you were like looking up a couple of collects like cards you have in your collection Very Sanders to 199 very net worth and Patrick Taylor Jr. to 149 Memphis Mark to a toggle low That's one. Oh Wow, really Sean. So you so you come from a family of collecting to Sean. That's awesome Wish my parents would have collected. I think they were I mean they cared about sports though Key Sean Vaughan, I love my mom does now older. She loves to like bet on games Kendrick Rogers is 75 Texas A&M Marlon Mack the 299 Patrick Queen AJ Dylan There you go LSU Go to August Mark Andrews to 49 Got Jake from 299 Georgia Joey with that one and Eno Benjamin to 199 for Arizona States Another one there for you Joey Jordan Love Jacob Eason. Oh nice. Awesome Sean. So is that your dad then? Is that Tommy? They just buy yesterday. I thought it was just you maybe just like using a middle name or something I don't know that's awesome though If you did it if that is one of your relatives or family members I hit on some nice ish and a Joe Burrell silver There you go. Oh nice. Well, it's kind of ironic. Does he like the Chargers too? I think he either got the Raiders or he bought the Raiders 73 out of 75 and I hit on some nice Josh Jacobs. So I Don't know that was kind of funny or not. He's a Raiders fan. Great Justin Jefferson. That's a nice one as well. All right, next one. Oh He's a ceilest fan. Oh Well, maybe you just saw the valley in the Raiders. I remember correctly. I thought he did. I thought he got the Raiders I know he got the Raiders and something though. I Don't remember what it was, but I know he got something with the Raiders Let's see now. I'm curious. Oh, you know what? He didn't buy the Raiders It's that he got the Raiders and they are right. I write a right mixer. That's what it was My bad. All right, we got Daniel Jones to 49 AJ Dylan Yeah, I don't remember exactly what it was. I thought it wasn't Josh Jacobs and I was remember I think in the video too, I was talking about it. I was like, yeah, it's kind of funny like Raiders, but I guess it doesn't really matter them. He's a ceilest fan, but I guess you can hate the Raiders too a little bit All right, so that um Omar Bayless, I forget is Arkansas State, I believe Next one Michael Thomas. I don't know how rare they are, but I assume they're just as like normal Prism silvers that you can find Obviously, I think these are gonna die down just a little bit once NFL prisms come out, but I'm assuming the silver sell pretty well Mitchell Wilcox. I was always curious to see what like a Like a Joe Burrow silver sells for because I feel like it should sell pretty well I still haven't gotten to like looking it up. I think I'm gonna do it right now after Ooh, look at that Terry Bradshaw Louisiana Tech and look at that speaking of Joe Burrow Got like another wave 34 to 299 Very very nice and Steven Montez For Colorado at 149. Oh, do you really to Herbert's 31 bucks? Yeah, Herbert. I guess not as I'm not on the resale value level of a Joe Burrow, which I should be buying them now But uh, I assume his silvers are not that bad Silver sold for 72 dollars. It says At least for Joe Burrow, dude 72 bucks Okay, it's not too bad. I guess right you sold to to a base. Oh, but that's based alright to a silver 25 third But you saw two of them for 26 gotcha Yeah, I feel like a lot of people just want the autographs right now 299 Eastern Illinois and Here's Herbert. I think I'm gonna start buying up Herbert then Joe Reed, that's a Virginia Miko Harman And we got Antoine Gendry Goldie or gold 25 cold met No, today. All right, next one. Yeah, I really think this quarterback class is pretty deep and I don't I don't I can see that like I was you know I was that watch was atomic Shea and those other guys and think even The guys from NFL Dan Jeremiah like he thinks that there can be five five quarterbacks Trapped in the first round. I know it's oh man. What am I doing? Oh well I know it's crazy to say that but really think about it You got to think at least the first they're gonna go which would be Burrell to and maybe Herbert Jordan Love may jump over Herbert It just depends on the system and who wants to get them But you got to think those four quarterbacks at least right and then someone that may be looking for a quarterback in the second round May jump up and try to get like a Jacob Easton or maybe Jalen Hertz and give him a shot, you know So, yeah, I mean this draft is so hot. Yeah, the reason I was gonna blow away And it's true. It's gonna be nuts Think I'm gonna start buying up her for now. I mean I'm more of a fan of him, but I Mean hey if I could make money and be a fan great Jalen Hertz I mean the wider seer class is just ridiculous I Mean, I really want to be like in the top. I want to get the top three top four Darren's and Evans for Appalachian State But it's gonna be so hard for the Eagles to to get a top three receiver in the draft because they'll all be gone by 21, but I Mean who's to say they don't trade up or potentially get someone in the early second round You know like a like a KJ handler or something like that, you know Who I think is a stud and there's a lot of other studs that are gonna fall into the second third fourth round that are gonna be really really good to Ralph Stewart To Michigan State So come Barclay man a lot of burrows in this break Just no autograph just yet. So come Barclay and Joe Burrow little orange Troy Brown to 149 Colorado Mark Matheson with that one probably But I actually think our day whites that has a good upside I don't think his value ever be good in the NFL when it comes to trading cards, but I Think he'll be fine Kishon Vaughan Salvin Amit Washington now we got Baker Mayfield We got CJ Henderson and out of 25 Brandon, Iowa Arizona State, which is Joey and there you go guys. That was the break All the autographs more significant cars nice Joe Burrow a lot of different color Joe Burrows in this break as you can see Jefferson Burrow silver. I'll see you killed it definitely in this break Got a Herbert in there. I know the Joe Burrow Lots of Joe Burrows, but just no autographs of him. Not bad though And then of course a bunch of numbered cards silvers That also be top loaded Appreciate it guys Jaspie's case breaks calm number 19s in the store


The Tefl Budget Planner, How Much Money Do I Need To Teach English Abroad? How Much Money Do I Need?  Estimating Your Total Expenses The Tefl Budget Planner is a tool to estimate your total costs to become Tefl Certified and then begin working as a teacher. It's spread out over three months as that's a conservative plan to complete your one month in class Tefl course, interview and secure a position, begin teaching and final get your first paycheck at the end of your initial month. As most all schools pay at the end of the month, we're assuming, conservatively again, that it's at the end of the third month when you will start to receive income. Some may receive a partial paycheck in the second month, but that depends on the actual start date and the policy of your new employer. So to be safe, let's assume you'll need to support yourself from your savings for approximately three months from arriving to your Tefl course to finally getting paid. Expenses for accommodation, transportation, and food are based on real costs, but it's important to note that these will obviously vary from county to county. Your food costs, for example, will be considerably different if you do Teflin Thailand as opposed to studying in France. If you're not familiar with the local food, it may be best to choose a middle road approach .not too spart in a lifestyle and not too luxurious. You can, of course, adjust any of these cost inputs based upon your personal preferences and budget considerations. A three month plan. Month one is the core expenses to become Tefl certified over four weeks. It includes course tuition, internet, and incidental costs as well as food and accommodation. Add your own roast to include additional expenditures like entertainment and travel to complete your budget planner. In month two, you'll be interviewing after graduation. Accommodation costs will probably increase as you need to get around town, and up country, to see schools and institutions. Your Tefl tuition fee is listed as paid as that cost was covered in the first month. In month three, you'll be working, earning money, but you won't get paid until the end of this month.  Included in this month is the cost of securing new accommodation as you may wish to move closer to your new school. This is, of course, an optional expense. Long term room rentals are typically one month's rent plus two months deposit. Again check the local practice to know how much to input here. These costs are figured in. We've also returned to you one month's deposit at the end of month two for the service apartment near your Tefl training center you stayed in months one and two. Your Tefl budget planner spreadsheet. Have a look at the Tefl budget planner spreadsheet here. You can see the total expenses for each month separately as well as a running cumulative total for the months combined. Finally, in month three, we've added all the costs for all three months together to give you a good idea of the total investment you'll need to make to become professionally certified and began a teaching career. Just add airfare. There's just one more major cost to add, your airfare. We haven't included that as people are coming to a Tefl training center from all other the world. And also as airfares obviously can vary widely. Add your airfare costs to the expenses you've already itemized on the planner and you'll have a pretty good idea of the total investment you'll need to make to become a professional teacher. As we're Bangkok based, the Tefl budget planner we did had Thailand in focus. We estimated approximately $4,500 dollars in savings were need in that country to pay for your Tefl certified and the support yourself until your first teaching paycheck came at the end of month three. One would just add airfare to that total to get a total investment, that's what you're doing here, investing in your future, figure. How to get started Step one is to download the Tefl budget planner below. Each month is on a separate tab. Most of the expenses are already inputted. If you have a particular need that's not on the spreadsheet simply add rows as needed above the month's total row to include that cost.  You can also do scenario analysis where you change your assumptions on particular expenses. Food is a good example. You can see how that can affect your total bill if you eat more local. Another consideration in your Tefl course investment. For many teaching positions, completing your 120 hour Tefl certification will increase your monthly salary by $100 to $50 in many cases. That's at least $1,200 over the course of a year, essentially repaying your Tefl tuition just from the extra salary. Early in year two that's all profit. Your Tefl certification will ensure you'll know what to do in the classroom. The market too will also recognize your qualification and reward you as a professional teacher. And it's a qualification that's good for life. Are you ready to teach abroad? Speak with an ITTT advisor today to put together your personal plan for teaching English abroad. Send us an email or call us toll free at 1-800-490-0531 to speak with an ITTT advisor today.