because of technological improvements that

enable it; some is because of policy choices.

Unbalanced globalization is good for the working class,

but it comes with really big downsides and

we need to do a better job of dealing with those downsides.

It's really important to understand that

you know, our globalization problem isn't because

other countries are unfair to us. So if your goal is

to make other countries more fair to us, that's

going to do very little to solve the problem.

The bulk of what we need to do manage globalization

better isn't in the international arena at all.

It's in our domestic policies, and what we do to

help educate and train our workers to succeed,

what we do to help our workers be more mobile

from place to place in the economy, and to let

our businesses have the infrastructure to take

advantage of those global opportunities.

Most important is what we can do to equip people

to succeed in a world with globalization, a world

with artificial intelligence, changing technology.

If you look just at training right now we

spend 0.2% of GDP in the United

States on training (labor-market programs). That's the lowest of any of

the advanced economies in the oecd. So I think

that's something that we actually just need to

invest more in. Now we also need to be smart about

those investments. Training programs have a mixed record.

Mixed means that

some have been bad, some of have been good, and we need

to understand better what makes them

good. Community colleges is one where the

evidence is overwhelmingly strong for it.

That's something where we've made very little

federal investment in the past.

A lot of it depends on the person's age. If the person is

30, 35 -- there is training that can help. But you

know, a lot of what we can do is invest also in

their children, and their jobs, and their economic

future. And there is a huge amount we can do.

By the time you're 55 or 60, we need to have

a more honest conversation and say, you know what,

if you used to have a job making $70,000, and the best

you can do now is $40,000, we're not gonna spend

$15,000 training you and get nothing out of

it. We'll just give you $15,000 in cash. You'll

get it every year for the next couple of years.

And it's sometimes called wage insurance and

that eases some of the transition helps keep

people in the workforce.

The unemployment rate being below four percent

shows that we're in a great place in the

business cycle. We have really strong demand.

The fact, though, that 12 percent of men between the

age of 25 and 54 aren't working and aren't trying

to find a job -- that's a really big problem.

That's a problem that has been decades in the making.

It wasn't caused by the recession, although it was

exacerbated by the recession, and it's not a

problem that we could solve with monetary or

fiscal policy. It's something we need to make

bigger economic changes

to deal with. So I would increase demand for

those workers by, for example, investing in

infrastructure. I would make it easier to find a

job by doing things like reforming the

unemployment insurance program to make it much

more of a job placement or even apprenticeship

program, that puts people into jobs. And

education and training -- it's not gonna work for

everyone, but it's gonna help for a lot.

I think those are three steps that we could take.

When it comes to women, all those steps would help

but it would also be very helpful if the

United States moved more in line with the rest of the world

in terms of subsidies for child care, paid leave,

more flexible workplaces, to enable more women, especially, to work.

I think the United States is

really good at flexibility in labor markets. We're

really bad at security in labor markets. And the

places that have been most successful, like the

Nordic countries, have combined the two of

those. If people had more security they would

feel free to take a little bit more of a risk --

they'd be a little bit less worried about the

downside of globalization

And we could make our labor markets function better.

I tend to be a little bit "small-c" conservative

that if they're making too big a change, it makes

me nervous. Universal basic income would require

nearly doubling income taxes in this country.

I think it's based on the premise that there

won't be jobs for people. I think our premise

should be that there will be jobs for people.

The one big idea that I do have some sympathy for, and

it might be worth thinking more about, would

be a larger-scale system of wage subsidies that

if you don't make

as much at your job, the government would pay [you].

Extra would show up in your paycheck and it would

both reward work and encourage it.

There's a whole group of people who think that

something really different is happening and that

we're in some brand new space of innovation -- there will

be robots that come and take everyone's jobs.

I just don't see that in history, as new

technologies come they destroy jobs and they

create jobs, and I don't see that in the data

because, in fact, productivity growth is lower now

than it used to be. Which is to say there are

fewer machines taking humans' jobs rather than

more. So I don't think we're in some brand new era of

change but what I do think we are in an era of

change, just like we were in 10 years ago, just like

we were in 20 years ago, just like we were in 30 years ago.

And 10, 20, and 30 years ago, I don't think we

did everything we could to handle that change

as well as possible.