>> Well you know in economic theory there is a name
for the policies that Europe is following, England too,
namely imposing austerity in the middle of a recession.
It's called the Herbert Hoover Principle.
That's exactly what led to the world depression.
It was reinstated again in 1936 under the advice of--
under business pressure, and led to another recession.
One well known economist observed
that European leaders might perhaps be charged
with violating an ethical and, in fact, a legal principle,
namely experimentation with human beings
that cannot be taken without their consent, okay.
This is an experiment to see if the kind of policies
which have always been a disaster in the past,
and which are likely to be a disaster for good reasons again,
whether these policies, which have humans
as their experimental subject,
whether they should be permitted.
Well, that's up to people who don't believe
in the Marshall doctrine to respond to.
As far as education is concerned,
I don't really feel qualified to talk about the situation here.
You obviously know much more about it than I do.
In the United States it's quite interesting,
as I think I may have mentioned in that letter
of support that you brought up.
About, I guess about a year ago, by accident,
I happened to be giving some talks in Mexico
at the National University and I went straight from there
to California to the Bay Area for more talks.
These are kind of, you know they're not the exact opposites
in terms of the economy.
California should be the richest place in the world.
Mexico is not the poorest country in the world,
but it's a pretty poor country.
The National University
in Mexico has a couple hundred thousand students,
quite a high level, good facilities.
You know, engaged students and the salaries, of course,
are much lower than the United States but
it functions quite well.
It's free.
Ten years ago there was an attempt by the government
to raise tuition slightly.
There was a student strike, the national students' strike,
and the government backed down.
It's still free.
Okay, that's one of the poorer countries in the world.
You go to California, one of the richest places in the world.
It had the greatest public education system in the world.
It was excellent, you know.
It's being systematically destroyed.
This has been going on since the 1970s, very systematically,
deliberately, for reasons that, in fact, have been articulated.
It has nothing to do with economic necessity.
These two comparisons should suffice to show that,
and there are many others like them.
So it's not an economic necessity, but other reasons,
reasons having to do with the vicious cycle that I described,
and it's having its effects.
Next year for the first year, the public universities,
like the great universities, Berkley, UCLA and so on,
they're getting more of their income
from tuition than from the state.
And in fact, that's true of most of the state college--
the state universities in the country,
Massachusetts too, where I am. Well,
these are deliberate policy choices designed--
they are designed essentially
to privatise the major universities.
So very likely the stars in the system like Berkley and UCLA
and maybe San Diego, they'll probably be privatised.
They're almost like Ivy League universities today; huge tuition
and big endowments and so on.
So, they'll probably be privatised and the rest
of the system will just shrink.
And it was a very good system and of course,
that has dire effects for the future economy,
but again that's an externality insofar
as market systems apply, they do to an extent
and you don't consider that, short-term gain is what matters.
So that's happening all over the country
and the same is happening with the public schools.
So there's major pressure, which Obama is contributing to as well,
to privatise the public school system,
what are called charter schools, which is still paid
for by the public, but they're
out of the public education system.
There's plenty of studies of them.
They do roughly as well
as comparable public schools even though they have many
advantages, like they don't have
to run the special education programmes,
they don't have unionised teachers and so on,
but no special performance gains.
And that's a way of undermining public education,
which has a kind of a deep purpose behind it.
It's very much like the effort to destroyed social security.
There's a major effort that's been going on for years to try
to destroy the social security system.
It's claimed-- you open the newspaper.
Say you read the New York Times,
the editorials will tell you we've got this huge deficit
problem and so we have to deal with entitlements,
social security, Medicare and Medicaid
and not waste our energy on other things.
Social security contributes zero to the deficit, zero.
It comes out of payroll taxes, okay.
It's got-- first of all--
and furthermore it's pretty well funded for decades in advance
and a little tinkering would fund it forever,
but that's got to be killed.
Medicare and Medicaid, it's true, but the reason
for that is something that they won't mention.
It's because of the privatised healthcare system,
which is extremely inefficient.
Now the US spends about twice as much per capita
as every other comparable country on healthcare
and the outcomes are among the poorest.
And if you look at the privatised,
unregulated healthcare system you can see why,
but you're not allowed to touch the financial institutions,
the insurance companies and so on, so that's kind
of like off the agenda.
If the United States had a healthcare system comparable
to other industrial countries,
not only would there not be a deficit,
there'd actually be a surplus.
About half the deficit in addition
to that is the military spending, but those things are,
you know, off the agenda.
You have to go after social security.
Why social security? It's extremely efficient.
I mean, administrative costs are practically zero, but,
it has a couple of deficiencies.
It's no use whatsoever to privileged people.
[Laughter] So you get it--
you know some billionaire gets another small amount of money,
it doesn't make any difference; you can't even notice it.
But its a sustenance for most of the population,
especially those who've been wiped
out by the fiscal catastrophe.
It doesn't pay that much, but it pays enough to get you by.
Beyond that it has an ideological problem,
which is never discussed, but I think is quite crucial.
It has to do with that message from Kamal Abbas to the workers
of Wisconsin that I mentioned.
Social security is based on the principle of solidarity.
You're supposed to care if the disabled widow
across town has enough food to eat and that has to be driven
out of people's heads.
You're supposed to be concerned just about yourself.
Same defect in the public education system.
Like, I don't have kids in school anymore so,
if I follow the rules I'm not supposed to care if the public--
I don't want to pay taxes for public education.
But, if you're infected by this disease of solidarity you care
if a kid across the street can go to school.
Now, that's got to be driven out of people's heads,
and that's the same reason for the attack on unions.
So, you get these massive attacks
and I think that's what's happening
to the public education system.
You know better than I would that that applies here but,
I wouldn't be surprised.
[ Silence ]