I'm Janet Gornick, Professor of Political Science

and Sociology here at The CUNY Graduate Center

and I'm also director of The Stone Center

on socioeconomic inequality,

one of the hosts for this evening's event,

and it's my pleasure to welcome you this evening.

Welcome to those of you in the Elebash Recital Hall

and welcome to our viewers joining via live stream.

Let me just say a few words about

the City University of New York and The Graduate Center

for those of you who might not be familiar with CUNY

or The Graduate Center.

CUNY, which of course serves the city of New York

is the country's largest urban public university

and the third largest university system

in the United States.

We have 25 campuses, about 275000 matriculated students

and nearly 7000 professors.

Among the overarching themes

to be raised this evening is inequality,

and in my view, there's no more appropriate setting

in which to discuss inequality than here at CUNY.

CUNY itself is a massive project aimed

at reducing socioeconomic inequality

and enabling intergenerational mobility.

When our first college, The City College of New York,

was founded in 1847, it was described as an experiment

whose purpose was to educate

the children of the whole people.

And over 170 years later, our mission is intact.

CUNY, with a design unique in the United States,

has dedicated one of its campuses to graduate study

and that's The Graduate Center where we are this evening,

The Graduate Center, a small school embedded

in this large system enrolls nearly 5000 graduate students

across an array of disciplines.

The Graduate Center is strongly committed

to CUNY's historic mission, we provide access

to doctoral education for diverse groups

of talented students including those

who have been underrepresented in higher education.

In the last decade, the graduate center has set,

among its highest priorities, expanding our capacity

in research and teaching in the field

of socioeconomic inequality

with an emphasis on empirical work,

high quality data and quantitative methods.

One of our primary goals is to contribute to

and to deepen the complicated national

and international conversation about economic inequality

that has received so much attention in recent years.

This evening's event will address several of the economic,

political and institutional challenges that many of us here

at The Graduate Center and throughout CUNY

have grappled with in recent years.

The Graduate Center is now home

to more than 30 research centers

and institutes including our own,

The Stone Center on Socioeconomic Inequality.

The center's mission is to build and disseminate knowledge

related to the causes, nature and consequences

of multiple forms of socioeconomic inequality.

The Stone Center has six core faculty members,

myself, Leslie McCall who's on stage,

Miles Corak, Paul Krugman,

Salvatore Morelli and Branko Milanovic.

Tonight, The Graduate Center and The Stone Center

are delighted to be partnering with The Guardian

whose new series, 'Broken Capitalism',

addresses the question of why discontent with capitalism

is rising and asks if it can be repaired.

Richard Reeves, from whom you'll hear in just a moment,

is the guest editor for this Guardian series.

Richard is bringing together an extraordinary group

of scholars, politicians, writers and activists

to reflect on this critical topic.

I encourage you to follow this series

which will run throughout the summer

and we're extremely pleased tonight

to offer this companion live event

which will examine the topic of democracy and capitalism

asking the fundamental and rather ambitious question,

can they co-exist?

Tonight's event is also part of The Graduate Center's

two year initiative of scholarship and public programs

called the Promise and Perils of Democracy

which is supported in part by a grant

from the Carnegie Corporation New York.

And now without further ado,

I'd like to introduce our moderator

for tonight, Richard Reeves.

Richard is a senior fellow in economic studies

at the Brookings Institution where he's also co-director

of the Center on Children and Families.

He's author of the highly praised book,

'Dream Hoarders: How the American Upper Middle Class

'Is Leaving Everyone in the Dust,

'Why That's a Problem, and What to Do About It.

'Richard will introduce our distinguished panel.'

Richard, I turn the evening over to you.

- Thank you Janet for that great introduction.

(audience applauding)

It's my great pleasure to be moderating this panel today

and to be guest editing The Guardian series.

It's a deliberately provocative title of course,

the idea that capitalism and democracy can't coexist

is a provocative one.

It's one we wouldn't have even asked ourselves

not so very long ago and probably the thinking behind

the title of this evening's event but also this series

is to think about the connections between

our political system, our forms of governance and democracy

and our economic system.

So it goes, it wasn't that long ago

when we wouldn't even ask,

not only not asking a question whether they can coexist

but also they seem like natural bedfellows.

Those long enough memories,

we remember the end of history being declared,

the end of the Cold War and there's just this sense

that broadly market based economies

would come together, converge together

with broadly representative political systems.

It seemed to be the way the world was converging

but now we're seeing the rise of illiberal democracies,

the rise of state forms of capitalism.

And a real question being asked now

which is how do the traditional ways

in which market based economies operate,

really interact with political systems

and particularly with democratic systems.

And Janet has already set up very well

by talking about the rise in inequality,

sluggish income growth especially in the middle

and the bottom and growing fears about climate crisis.

The promise of capitalism is one that is being questioned

as, I would say, as never before

but certainly more strongly questioned

than in recent history.

In some polling you'll now see

significant numbers of Americans especially millennials

and those who support a democrat party

saying that they actually kind of veer more

towards socialism than capitalism.

On closer investigation of course,

what they really mean is more social democracy,

something more like a welfare state

and so being clear in our definitions is important too.

And so what I'm gonna do is introduce our three speakers

who are gonna speak to this kind of question

and what does it mean to be a citizen

in both a political democracy and a participant

in a capitalist economy, what does that mean now?

Where are the pressure points?

Why are we having this conversation at all?

They'll each give some brief comments,

I'll then moderate the discussion between the panelists

and then we'll throw it open to the floor for Q&A.

I'm gonna offer brief introductions

because obviously you can look online

to see more about our distinguished panel.

And I'm going to introduce in the order

in which they're going to speak.

So first we're gonna hear from Andrew Yang.

Andrew Yang is a tech entrepreneur, he's a philanthropist,

he founded 'Venture for America'

and he's author of most recent book of

'The War on Normal People:

'The Truth About America's Disappearing Jobs

'and Why Universal Basic Income Is Our Future.'

I apologize in advance to the other panelists.

I don't have their book in my hand.

That's because they didn't just give it to me

whereas Andrew cleverly gave me the book,

literally as I'm walking on the stage

so that's excellent marketing.

And Mr. Yang is of course

well known for other activities.

He's enjoying a particularly high public profile right now.

Many people are supporting him

and are interested in his policies.

That of course he is here today as a thought leader.

And then we're gonna hear from Leslie

who's one your far right.

Leslie McCall, Janet's already mentioned.

She's presidential professor of sociology here at CUNY

and she's the executive director

of The Stone Center that Janet runs.

She is the author of 'The Undeserving Rich: American Beliefs

'about Inequality, Opportunity, and Redistribution.'

And then you'll hear last from Vanessa Williamson

who's on your left.

Vanessa is a senior fellow at the best think tank

in the world, the Brookings Institution.

It's just, there are surveys of these things apparently,

and she is author of 'Read My Lips: Why Americans

'Are Proud to Pay Taxes.'

And so between the panelists we have really rich experience

of both business but also academia and political science.

And so I'll stop talking and hand over

to Andrew to kick us off.

Welcome.

- Thank you Richard and thank you

for the generous introduction.

It's true, I do carry copies of my book around

just wherever I go.

So I was fascinated by the question

and scaffolding for this conversation as well

because I grew up thinking that capitalism and democracy

were natural bedfellows.

And that the problem right now is that we're dealing

with this distorted version of each and so now it seems like

neither is functioning very well, which is accurate.

And one of the quotes I like to share

is from a friend of mine, Eric Weinstein,

who said that we never knew that capitalism

was gonna get eaten by its son, technology

which is unfortunately the era we're entering

where we're entering this win or take all economy

that is breaking down many of the capitalist relationships

we take for granted.

So for example, in the 1970s,

if I started a successful company,

you could make a number of assumptions.

I would have to hire lots of people to feel my growth,

I would need to treat them moderately well

maybe so they could buy my offering like Henry Ford

and buy my car and I would need to care

about what happens in my backyard

because my workers live there, I live there et cetera.

Today none of that is true.

I can start a successful company that does not need

to hire lots of people or if I do hire people,

they have a very specialized skill set.

If I hire lots of people, let's call them Uber drivers,

I do not need to treat them very well,

I do not need to give them benefits

and I don't have to care about my own backyard

because I don't sell in any one place, I sell everywhere.

And so there are all of these underpinnings

of what you thought the economic benefits would be

to growth that are not translating to the broader population

and then you have a democracy that's being held captive

in many ways by the same moneyed interests,

and that's why young people today are coming of age

where they think capitalism hasn't served

their interests very well and they're correct,

so you can't fault them.

And so if I had grown up during this era,

I too would be very dubious given