Transcript: Mayor de Blasio Participates in Lecture with Former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich at The University of California, Berkeley

May 14, 2015

Professor Robert Reich: Thank you so much, Henry. I want to thank Henry Brady, and the Goldman School, and the staff at the Goldman School for making this possible. I also want to thank Jake Kornbluth and the Economic Inequality Media Project, which Jake and I and some others are involved in because we are trying to get the word out about what's happening in this country economically, what's happening to our democracy.

I also, finally, want to thank the person I'm about to introduce. Henry filled you in on the mayor's background, but on a personal level I am so pleased that he was willing to take some time out and come to talk with us at Berkeley. He is one of my heroes. He has put the issue of inequality not only in the center of the national conversation, but he is daily trying to do something about it – very hard to do something about it – easy to talk about, hard to do something about it. And he's out there rolling up his sleeves and actually working on this issue.

We're going to have a conversation. We're going to talk more in about a half an hour and then open it up to your questions – and I hope you have some. It's my great, great pleasure to introduce to you Mayor Bill de Blasio of New York City.

I think you should stand up. Hold on.

Mayor Bill de Blasio: [Inaudible].

Professor Robert Reich: [Inaudible].

Mayor: I got my victory sign. I like that.

Professor Robert Reich: We embody inequality.

Mayor: Does that make me the one percent?

Professor Robert Reich: I think you're in the top one-tenth of one percent. Mr. Mayor, thank you for joining us. Welcome to Berkeley.

Mayor: Thank you.

Professor Robert Reich: Berkeley, California.

Mayor: Wonderful place to be.

Professor Robert Reich: Berkeley is – New York, it's not exactly New York. Our delicatessens are not quite as good, maybe actually they are. Saul's, you ought to go to Saul's.  We are the sister city on the West Coast.

Mayor: You're supposed to say they make a nice sandwich.

Professor Robert Reich: Tell us about your project. A day and a half ago, you actually launched a project on inequality, a national conversation on inequality. Tell us a little bit about what you're doing.

Mayor: Well, I want to first to offer some quick praise. I want to thank UC-Berkeley. I want to thank the Goldman School, thank the dean for helping to put this together, but especially thank you Bob. I have to say I hope the warm reception I heard for Bob at the beginning is an indication not just how much people have an affection for him, but an understanding of how much his message is having an impact on this country. I assume everyone in this room has seen Inequality for All. Everyone has seen Inequality for All, required viewing, but it is I think one of the clearest, sharpest, evocations of what we're going through and it's one of the clearest calls to arms. Let's thank Bob for making that possible for all of us.

Professor Robert Reich: And Jake Kornbluth.

Mayor: Jake Kornbluth – extra credit to Jake Kornbluth. What we put together into these last weeks we call the Progressive Agenda – very simply, the Progressive Agenda. I urge everyone to go to progressiveagenda.us and look at it, and what you will find is simplicity and clarity, I hope. What's needed in this moment is to organize like-minded people all over the country to man a series of changes in our national policy so we can actually go at the problem of income and inequality head on.

It's amazing when you watch the film to see this is one of the most profound crises this nation has faced and it is going essentially unaddressed. I don't think there's a lot of parallels in our history for something of this magnitude. Finding that there is no coherent federal response, I often parallel the dynamic of the New Deal – the other economic crisis that's comparable. Obviously, the New Deal per-se was a sharper crisis, but the response from our federal government, once the Roosevelt administration took over, borrowing in many cases from policies at the state and local level previously was profound, was deep, was felt by every American – changed the trajectory of our country. We're still feeling it in many good ways to day.

Now, compare it to the beginning of the Great Recession until now – the absence of a coherent federal response, the paralysis in Washington we talk about often. While I think one of the most damning elements of that paralysis is the economic condition of most Americans has worsened and they don't see any meaningful response from those in the best position to do it in Washington.

We created this progressive agenda to say, let's have a short, clear articulation of the things that would make a difference and start organizing around them all over this country because as hard as all of us are working at the local level to address income inequality, we cannot do it effectively without changes in national policy. We need a $15 dollar minimum wage everywhere if we're really going to change this country. We need progressive taxation in the platform. In the platform we say some of the most obvious, some of those items I think should be most universal. The Buffet rule – millionaires and billionaires should not pay a lower percentage of taxes than the secretaries and clerks that work in their offices. Closing the carried interest loophole, hedge fund managers literally should not pay less in taxes than the woman who cleans their summer home or the man who flies their private jet. It's just simple, straightforward ideas and profoundly important ideas where there's not yet the kind of national consensus we need.

What I hoped to do and what I'm finding a really great collegiality on – and Bob, thank you for being one of the people who signed on early on and is helping us to build this movement – is there's a hunger out there for a clear set of ideas that actually change the country and progressives all over the country are gathering to show our combined strength to make a difference. If we do this well enough, if we do this strongly and consistently enough, we actually can change those national policies – and that's my work.

Professor Robert Reich: Mr. Mayor, let me ask you though why should this just be a progressive agenda? Why shouldn't this be an agenda of the entire poor, the working class, the middle class, conservatives, people who call themselves Republicans? They have as much interest in taking back the economy, making the economy working for everybody and not just the few at the top as progressives do, right?

Mayor: There's absolutely a number of areas where I think we can find common ground. I was on Capitol Hill yesterday working on a kindred issue, which is trying to rebuild America's infrastructure is something of great concern in New York City and cities all over the country. Actually, we found some interesting bipartisanship, mayors from around the country working together across the aisle – Republican and Democrat together. We found Republicans in Congress who shared our concern about fixing this country's infrastructure. The fact it's called the Progressive Agenda does not for a moment suggest we don't want a deep consensus to grow around it and we don't want to invite everyone in.

I think the notion though – and I love the word "progressive" because it harkens back to something that worked powerfully in this nation's history in politics. Progressive movements 100 years ago and before was the gateway to the New Deal – created the thinking of how a government can actually serve people in a meaningful and tangible way. And it also in a way that suggested the kind of reforms that government at that time needed profoundly. I think we need a version of that again today. So why we call it the Progressive Agenda is it harkens back to a consistency in American history about when we got it right. But it's not meant to be anything less than an ecumenical statement of things that people could agree with across the board.

I was on Morning Joe a week or so ago and Joe Scarborough – who is known to remind the viewers of his time as a Republican congressman – he said on the Buffet Rule: “I think something like that is the kind of idea that Americans across the board could agree on.” I think pre-k is another great example. We are blessed in New York City. We've been working very hard the last few years. This is the number one issue I ran on, full day, high quality pre-k for every child in New York City. If you look around the country that idea is gathering strength in lots of places, but if you said, well, tell me where else is doing a great job on pre-k? The first words out of my mouth would be the state of Oklahoma.

It's not a red or blue that we need pre-k for all our kids. It's not red or blue that we should have fair taxation, certainly, not red or blue that we need to raise the minimum wage. In 2014, four states passed minimum wage increases by referenda. They were all red states. Something bigger is going on here that I think indicates people are more and more demanding some solutions. They're demanding it from the grass roots.

We've have talked about the Fight for $15 movement, which is extraordinary. A couple weeks ago, maybe it wasn't on every front page of every newspaper, it didn't lead every TV news broadcast, but in 200 cities around the country simultaneously there were demonstrations for the $15 dollar minimum wage. That's not a minor development. That suggests the grass roots speaking powerfully.

I think it's a moment to achieve some of these changes, and it's certainly a moment where a lot of folks who may not agree on some other social issues, for example, can get together on the economic issues.

Professor Robert Reich: Well, then the political question, we're coming up to an election year next year, the political question is how do we that is the larger – we Democrats, Republicans, progressives and others who want an agenda that is actually for working people and not an economy that's working just for the people at the top. How do we come together when number one, you've got a kind of divide and conquer strategy in the Republican Party? That is – blame the immigrants, blame the poor, blame the African-Americans, blame everybody else. Among Democrats you have got people who are accepting a lot of money from Wall Street and big business. How do you actually break through both? Let's start with money. How do you break through the big money? How do you get big money out of politics?

Mayor: First of all, I think we do need a constitutional amendment to reverse the Citizen's United decision. That's where we have to go fundamentally. I want to say very quickly, this is for those who might say, well, that sounds too idealistic. Look at the polling in the months after the Citizen's United decision. How consistently Democrat, Republican, independent, the American people rejected that decision because they could quickly ascertain that it would lead to even more concentration of power among those who are most wealthy.

I actually think we can build a consensus among the people, not the political insiders and the traditional structures, but among the people that we have to get money out of the political process. I think the time is ripe for that. This is a bit of a window from my point of view into the question of how you change a political context. What troubles me in a lot of our discourse is the notion that the current political dynamics are somehow fixed, somehow handed down to us on stone tablets, which is to me profoundly a-historical. Before 1980, what we are living through today would have been inconceivable. Before 1932, the New Deal would have been inconceivable. The times we live in and how we respond to them are what determine the political trajectory and part of why I think your film is so powerful is it reminds us that these are not fixed dynamics – that we actually are actors in the drama, which I appreciate deeply.

I think a nation where income inequality is at the greatest point it's been since before the Great Depression, and getting worse, and where the middle class is now in a profoundly tenuous situation that is a nation ripe for fundamental political change. We can't be the ones, those of us who want change can't be the ones with blinders on that somehow think the current dynamic is unmovable. It's profoundly movable. I think part of it is to bluntly not allow the mistakes of 2014. I'll speak in this instance from a partisan perspective as a Democrat.

In 2014, I have written about this, many, many Democratic candidates around the country for Senate, Governor, House, ran away from the traditional values of their party. They didn't want to talk about income inequality. They didn't want to talk about poverty. They didn't want to talk about taxing the wealthy. They didn't even want to talk about their own president and his achievement with the Affordable Care Act. Low and behold, a lot of voters around the country looked at that and didn't see anything recognizable in the way of a set of solutions or values.

Professor Robert Reich: Can I stop you just briefly on that point. They didn't want to talk about these things and yet you said and I agree – most Americans care about these things. The four states that actually did raise the minimum wage are red states. They did not send Democrats to Washington. Why is it Democrats are so reluctant to talk in these terms?

Mayor: I think money is part of it.

Professor Robert Reich: You mean the money they're drinking at the same trough as –

Mayor: That's one way of saying it, known for his diplomatic statements. I'm going to go farther than just the narrow construct if you get money from wealthy donors you don't want to offend or propose policies they don't like. That's one piece of the equation. I think the professional political class is another part of the equation because I think what we have developed in this country is a consultant class and an insider class that often is very unimaginative and not necessarily connected to the grass roots.

I think beyond it there's a misunderstanding of how much the jury's already come back. The movie's powerful. Look, one of the things that moved me in the Age and Inequality is the simple notion of asking typical Americans how much is in your bank account. In that movie people said $25 dollars, $50 dollars, $100 dollars. If you ever want to get another way of saying one paycheck away from disaster that's it. In my city, 46 percent of the people are at or near the poverty level. That is based on a statistic from the Bloomberg Administration. It came out first in 2013. It's essentially the same today, 46 percent of people at or near the poverty level, one paycheck away.

If that is the reality in our country, it would be illogical not to address it. What I find interesting is that so many people in the insider political world have decided it is a greater danger to offend the wealthy or the donors than to say the things that would actually move the people and the voters. What happened in 2014? Many, many voters who would have been moved by a vision of progressive economic change simply stayed home. Many of them were Democrats because they did not hear a believable vision.

Part of what I hope our discussion will do and certainly our progressive agenda will do is remind candidates and leaders in office right now if you want people to feel something, give them a vision that's sharp and clear and yes, has an element of risk to it. There's no question.

Professor Robert Reich: Let's hypothesize for a second. You are a candidate for president in 2016.

Mayor: No, I'm not.

Professor Robert Reich: No, you're not. I'm using a hypothetical.

Mayor: No.

Professor Robert Reich: Let's say I'm a candidate.

Mayor: You're a president.

Professor Robert Reich: This is a hypothetical.

Mayor: You heard it here. We have news made already.

Professor Robert Reich: No, I want to use this as a hypothetical. Here is the question I have for you. You are advising me or let's say Hillary Clinton is sitting here. What specifically – to say yes you have to have the vision that's going to move people. You've got to talk about inequality. But specifically, what do you want that candidate to say in order to move people, something that the political consultants are not –

Mayor: Again, I'll hype for a moment progressiveagenda.us – 13 point agenda. No point is more than a sentence long or two sentences long. It's very compressed and clear. For example, if you want to move people in this country, you have to speak to wage and benefit levels. No one should ever mistake the fact that we're talking about $15 dollar minimum wage and saying that that's where we want people to end. We're saying that should be a baseline. We should have no one in this country paid less than that if we expect them to make ends meet.

One, a candidate who wants to move the people has to say, I want to make sure everyone starts at that level and I'm going to do something about it. They have to say, I'm going to address some of the core benefit issues, paid sick leave, paid family leave are two of the things that actually bring economic stability to working families and there's plenty of precedent for the value they bring in both the private sector in this country and across nations in other parts of the world, which think those policies are normal. I think if you can present a tangible, clear picture of the way we're going to change people's lives – let me tell you about pre-k. Pre-k is so fascinating because parents get instantly that you're now saying. We're going to help your child change fundamentally their economic trajectory, not just their educational trajectory, their economic trajectory because we get them into full day, high-quality pre-k. It will change their entire futures. It's the time that you can have a transcendent impact on their economic and educational future. By the way, for those parents to pay for the same opportunity – working parents who need a good place for their child – in New York City that would be $10,000 or more. It's not just we're setting up the future for that child. We're taking an immediate economic burden off that family.

I think people do want to hear, they know the game has been rigged. They want to hear that something's going to start to rewrite the rules, so when you say, we're going to implement that Buffet Rule. We're going to close the carried interest loophole. You start to change the dynamics in favor of the people again. Those things to me would be a catalytic in terms of public interest and involvement.

Professor Robert Reich: Yeah, well, powerful policies and the policies that you're talking about are powerful specific policies and also Jake Kornbluth and I, and MoveOn have been working on something very, very similar, a series of videos, ten videos about ten ideas, many of them overlapping with what you're talking about. There is a way of educating the public about this, but let me ask you a more difficult question I think.

Democrats have a tendency to believe that all you do is go out in front of the American people and you provide them lists of policies and if they're powerful enough lists of policies, the public will be rational enough to say, "Yes, I want that." But Republicans, I don't want to make this a partisan forum, but I have noticed over the past 40 years that Republicans tend to not go out there in the public with a lot of policies. They go out with moral principles. They talk morality. What is the morality that we or you or I or Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders or anybody else as a progressive? What's the moral set of principles that's going to actually move people?

Mayor: We need to reward work not wealth. What's happening and you're sitting in the presence of the experts. I'll say it in my own simple short formulation as a society, as a nation, as a government, we reward wealth more and more every day, which is just concentrating wealth into fewer and fewer hands. It's not just smart, clever people in the financial industry. It's a set of government policies that continually allow them to concentrate the wealth.

Meanwhile back at the ranch, we do not reward work. How can people work one job, two jobs, three jobs and not still be able to make ends meet and have the $25 dollars in the bank account? Well because government policy hasn't set the right minimum wage. Government policy hasn't provided paid sick leave and paid family leave. Government policy doesn't make things like pre-k and after school available to children for free. These are noble things, fixable things. The moral standard is, and I think it's a profoundly and classically American value, a country formed on hard work, a country of immigrants, a country of strivers.

The American dream actually happened in many ways. I don't want to provide a gauzy, romantic view of perfection, but the core notion that generations were actually able to uplift themselves and their children could do better than them and it was based on hard work and work actually was rewarded that's true. Your film, your research, your book show it. If we say, you know what? We are the party of work. We're a party that believes in work and we're going to do a series of things to reward work and we're not a party that accepts inequality. Inequality is an un-American value.

If you had to make it plain and narrow and we're not in a partisan setting, but if one party wants to represent growing inequality and the other party wants to represent a return to equality, which is an American ideal, I think that's plenty of the groundwork you discuss. But I don't want to underestimate the value of specific ideas.

I ran for mayor, and some of you may know the recent history. I spent most of my time running for mayor in fourth or fifth place, and I would not recommend that to most people. But we did have a clear understanding of the fact that if you stand for something, and people can recognize it, and see it, and touch and feel it, it makes an impact. First thing, number one plank unquestionably was I called for a tax on those who make $500,000 or more so that we could have full day pre-k for every child in the city. That communicates some very simple things in very few words. Those who had done well, nothing against them. We commend them for their success, but we want to create more success stories, so we're going to ask those who have done well to do a little more for the good of all and for them, too. They're part of our society. It's for the good of all.

That made a lot of sense to typical New Yorkers. The value of pre-k made a lot of sense for families thinking about their own children or their nieces, nephews, grandchildren. They thought about, wow, that's something that would change our lives. It communicated that we weren't going to allow continued deepening inequality.

I think you need, yes, you need the moral grounding. You need the thematic grounding if you will, but you also need to attach it to a series of policies that suggest you're for real. When I said I mentioned risk earlier, risk is not a bad thing. Actually, proponents of the pure theory of capitalism will be the first to agree with me. Things are achieved through risk, ergo [inaudible] for office should show some risk in what they do. They should be willing to take on powerful interests in the name of the people. They should be willing to risk donations.

I tell a story. It is 100 percent true. I gave a speech October 4, 2012, where I introduced my pre-k plan. I did it before a business audience. When I said let's tax those who make $500,000 or more so we can have pre-k, that was not the moment I got a standing ovation. I just want you to know. What did happen is the next day individuals from my finance committee called and resigned, and I was not surprised and we had in fact said, let's be honest, we give this speech. We will lose a certain amount of financial support. These are not ill-liberal people. These were some people who believed in a lot of the other things I stood for, but they personally do not think it was fair to ask that they be taxed more and they resigned. That is part of what you have to do if you're actually going to change something. You can't change something and make everybody happy.

Professor Robert Reich: Let's talk about change and let's talk about not only campaigning, which we've done up until now, but actually governing. You ran on a tale of two cities. You put inequality in New York City right there in front of everybody. You pissed off people on your finance committee who left. Franklin D. Roosevelt, I remember – I don't remember directly, but I remember. I'm starting to feel like I remember.

Mayor: You called him Frank, didn't you?

Professor Robert Reich: In 1936, Frank, my good – my dear friend said, they hate me these business leaders, and I welcome their hatred. Then you've got to govern. Then you've actually got to take the reins. Well, how is it different? What have you discovered about governing with regard to a platform to overcome inequality? What have been the most challenging aspects of doing that?

Mayor: I think I would say two answers. On the first, what have I discovered versus the most challenging? What I have discovered is that we underestimate the tools of government. I am a progressive. I'm inspired by nothing more than the New Deal and by my predecessor, Fiorello LaGuardia, who was the great example of the New Deal at the local level. I think we're still understanding what government can do for people and I think that is particularly true because from 1980 to present, there's been such a clear consistent movement to try and undermine people's faith in government and what it can do that even for those of us who know the history and know the facts sometimes the vision has become less clear.

What I have found is that a strong, aggressive approach can move mountains. We said so we did not get tax for pre-k because it had to be approved in our state capital in Albany. A lot of powerful individuals and interests there didn't want to see it happen. They blocked it, but we had created such momentum around the idea that the leaders in Albany felt they had to produce an alternative, so we got the full funding for our pre-K plan from the state budget. The reason I say that is well, when we got that funding it was April 1 of 2014, opening day of school was September 4 of 2014. We had five months to create a full day pre-K plan for 53,000 kids. There had been only 20,000 a year previously, so our delta was 33,000 more kids had to be accommodated. We did not have the space. We didn't have the teachers, but we had a powerful government that was resolute and devoted to it and we pulled it off. On opening day there were 53,000 seats.

I think part one, I have learned what can be done and that does not reference the naysayers were actually wrong and you cannot be lost in the naysayers, but what's the challenge? I mentioned our state government. I think it is that for localities what's upstream is the challenge. It's not what your constituents need. That's self-evident or what some of the great examples of effective policies are. That's clear, too, because cities all over the country are sharing good ideas and tools all the time so we actually say, hey, we've got the tools. We know what the people need. We're ready to go. A lot of what we need has to be approved in a state capital or even at the federal level.

Transportation issues, as I said yesterday outside the capital with a cross section of mayors around the country, Democrat and Republican -- all of us can't move our people around sufficiently. All of us see our roads and bridges falling apart -- and bridges is a particularly sensitive matter, because one of the people there was the mayor of Minneapolis, who talked about being at the site of the bridge in 2007 that fell down -- the interstate bridge across the Mississippi River that literally fell down in 2007 because the federal government had not invested in maintaining it.

So, I think the challenge for local leaders, and particularly for progressive local leaders, is -- above us are still realities where policies are stuck, and there's not movement, and there's not a necessary willingness to support the local level. That, you know, does not take all the options away. And what it calls upon all of us to do is two things: one -- innovate and create with the tools we have and two -- change the paradigm. As I said, the notion we're going to accept existing politics is absolutely illogical -- it’s absolutely illogical. Why would we accept a political context that isn't serving our people? How do you change a political context? Change people's minds.

In the movie, there's a beautiful segment with some of the workers you went to address. I'm trying to remember the company -- Calpon, I think it was.

Professor Robert Reich: Calpon.

Mayor: And you meet with one family in particular -- obviously, that is somewhat dubious of your worldview -- and in the course of the movie, they start moving. The more you present the truth to people and the more you engage people at the grassroots, the more they will move because their economic reality will dictate it. Then, the other step is to convince them that there are leaders and ideas that will constitute change, and to relentlessly turn them out to vote, energize them, mobilize them. This is how social changes happened. One beautiful part of the movie -- I'm going to keep plugging you here, Bob. I'm sorry. I loved it.

Professor Robert Reich: Everybody's seen it. You don't need to plug it.

Mayor: Okay, well, for the audience at home. But one thing I found powerful is that reminder towards the end that history favors social change movements. We've seen it happen again and again and again. And I think we have to have the courage of our convictions to say, okay, if we're not getting some of these changes, why -- why do we not have more progressive taxation? Or, why don't we have a $15 dollar minimum wage? Because we haven't talked to enough Americans yet. We haven't reached enough of our fellow citizens and convinced them and mobilized them -- because if we do that enough, then I don't care how strong the Tea Party is.

Professor Robert Reich: Well, let me -- I -- I want to get to your questions in just a minute. I want to ask you a little bit of a devil's advocate question here on this particular point. Because there is a divide and conquer strategy, whether it's explicit or implicit among those who want the status quo. You divide the middle class from the poor. You divide the whites from blacks. You divide union members from non-union members. You divide the rural people from the urban people. You divide the poor cities from the rich cities and you convince each of them that the other is their real problem. How do you -- as a leader, trying to bring people together -- actually show that the other guys are not their problem?

Mayor: I’ve believed for a long time that the missing link is economics. I think a lot of progressives down through history have seen this clearly -- that it's easy to be divided by nationality or race or region. A lot of history shows how simply people fall into those patterns.

But economics unites people, and today that is profoundly true in America. Maybe if you had a wonderfully strong, stable middle-class and then a painful underclass, and those two were fully separated ideas, maybe you could say, well, can that be bridged? But [inaudible] -- fortunately, as your and many other people’s research has shown, what you have is an extremely tenuous middle-class, where more and more people understand the condition of those who are even in worse shape than them. And I think that is a different America.

I think the Great Recession changed our lives and our politics, and our political class and our political discourse have not caught up with the reality. I think we went through a lot of the same trajectory as happened in 1929 and the early 30s, but it has not been recognized yet. Because you can't have a nation that, for a half-century, had an assumption about a strong and vibrant middle class and the assumption evaporated, which it did, and then not have the politics have fundamentally become unmoored and changed. I think it's up to us to actualize the results of that change.

And I’m -- I'm not happy about it. No one should be happy that so many hard-working people that once thought they have security -- had security -- now know they don't. No one should be happy about all the people who were promised pensions, only to see the pensions literally disappear. But we have to be honest about the fact that that’s made -- created a greater commonality of experience. And therein is the possibility of a governing majority on a host of issues like minimum wage and benefits and progressive taxation.

One other vignette -- I live this in a different way. You know, I'm obviously from one of the most diverse places on the earth. And when I ran, you know, I happened to be a white guy.

I was running against a variety of different candidates of different backgrounds. And I can't tell you how many rooms I sat in where people said to me, well, there happened to be an African-American candidate, so you're not going to win any African-American votes. There happens to be a woman candidate, so you won't win the women's vote. There happens to be a gay candidate. You won't win the gay vote. And it almost was an extraordinary minimization of the human experience and the human mind and soul, because, in fact, what I found from my constituents -- all 8.5 million hyper-opinionated constituents I had, is --

[Laughter]

Professor Robert Reich: Now, you must be mayor of New York. Is that right?

[Laughter]

Mayor: Yeah, that's -- that’s right.

But they are watching. They are thinking. They are looking. They don't check some kind of box and say, oh, I'm going to think from this demographic perspective only. They're thinking as humans beings. They're thinking as family members. They're actors in the drama, and -- we had a primary, a Democratic primary and I ended up doing better than those other candidates in terms of the women's vote, the black vote, the gay vote, because people voted their economic interests. And I think we have to recognize that we've unfortunately been sold a bill of goods in terms of political analysis. In the end, what is more profoundly important than your economic circumstance? And if more and more and all of us are in this together, and more and more of us have a shared economic reality and experience, that should be the moment for a new politics. I actually think it is.

Professor Robert Reich: Mr. Mayor -- Bill, if I may –

Mayor: Please.

Professor Robert Reich: One last question -- a more personal question. Now, I want to know what got you into this business.

[Laughter]

A lot of people are very cynical about politics.

Mayor: Don't call it a business to begin with. That's a cynical formulation.

[Laughter]

Professor Robert Reich: Non-business. My wife went to high school with you.

Mayor: Yes.

Professor Robert Reich: And she remembers you very fondly.

Mayor: She’s wonderful.

Professor Robert Reich: And I said to her this morning -- I said, what do you remember about – about Bill?” And she said, well, he was a lovely, lovely man. I suppose he still is. And he was very tall.

[Laughter]

I said, do you remember his political activism? She -- and she said, well -- and she was -- she strained a little bit. I mean, maybe you were politically active.

Mayor: Sure.

Professor Robert Reich: What got you into politics? What gave you your fervor, and what made you particularly concerned about widening inequality?

Mayor: I think it's the life my family and I live, like so many others. You know, it's seeing adversity in different forms -- the stories of the Great Depression, first of all, because my parents both had me a little later in life than usual. They were both 44 when I was born. They were absolute classic children of the Depression. And it was -- I think one thing we can say about children of the Depression, they're an extraordinarily brave generation, but they also never lost that imprint. So I cannot tell you how many family meals included the discussion of how they lost the family business -- you know, the bread lines, everything -- and then the heroic actions of people like Roosevelt and LaGuardia that changed things. I think that's one part of it.

I think it was the times I grew up in, too. I grew up in the 60s and into the 70s, and I saw social change all around me and people dealing with incredibly challenging, painful issues. My oldest brother was draft age at a time in Vietnam, where -- where it had become a national consensus that we were in a war that was painfully wrong and yet, young men were being sent to die. You know, you live enough of those experiences, it's impossible, from my point of view, not to want to address them.

So, and I also -- on a very human level, my own father went through tragedy, and having served in World War II in a -- in a heroic manner -- decorated -- came back very painfully wounded, lost half his leg on Okinawa. And, unfortunately, for that and other reasons became an alcoholic, so I watched his life decline before our eyes. My parents were divorced. And I think -- I -- I'm not trying to be maudlin here. It's just a combination of things that wake you up. And I -- I know from the movie you had a similar painful experience with someone you lost in your life that woke you up in a different way.

I think -- I think in the end it is a call to arms when you see how much unfairness there is and how much can be different. And once I started, I found it energizing to be in the fray. There's a great Teddy Roosevelt quote about "those in the fray who are willing to risk victory or defeat." I think that's, to me, an inspiring notion -- that there's something to be done and it's worth the risk. On a lighter note, I'll conclude with this.

On a lighter note -- I’ll conclude with this. On a lighter [inaudible] your wife, doesn't remember that I was very actively involved in student government and people thought I was going to be involved in long-term. I was one of those kind of geeky, student government guys.

Professor Robert Reich: She -- she did remember that. She just didn't think it was very important.

[Laughter]

Mayor: Well, she's right. She’s right. But here's how it wraps around. I was -- I was also very deeply moved by my Italian culture, because during high school I went to my grandfather's hometown in Italy and I came back and basically couldn't stop talking about my Italian culture. It was to the point that people gave me a nickname. So they combined the fact that I seemed like someone who was going to be involved in politics with the fact that I obsessively talked about my Italian heritage and they literally -- my nickname around school was Senator Provolone.

[Laughter]

Professor Robert Reich: Okay, Senator Provolone. Now, your questions to Senator Provolone –

[Applause]

Okay, shall we -- why don't we start on this side? Can we just --

Question: Hi, Mr. Mayor. So, I think any discussion --

Professor Robert Reich: Can you introduce yourself, please?

Question: Hi -- yeah. I'm Albert Lynn. I'm a public policy student. I think that any discussion of inequality has to start with housing stability, and in the Bay Area here, we're in a major, major crisis. And we also have a political system here with kind of entrenched -- entrenched interest groups in a political structure that make a lot of debates or proposals kind of dead on arrival. And as a mayor of a big city that's undergoing a lot of the same issues, if you were advising Mayor Lee, Mayor Lecardo, Mayor Shaft, what proposals would you have and how would you suggest kind of building that coalition to bridge all these divided interest groups?

Mayor: Well, I wouldn't presume to advise my colleague mayors. They -- I know them -- two of them very well and the third I look forward to knowing. But they each understand their circumstances. [Inaudible] advise the people and those actively involved on the issue, which is to demand a different reality in the process of development, which is what we are now doing. I -- in my campaign I said, look, we're grappling with an inequality crisis that certainly plays out in housing. We're also grappling with a gentrification dynamic over now several decades that literally went unaddressed by public policy.

One of the solutions from my point of view was a different kind of development. We had to create a massive amount of affordable housing. We couldn't put our head in the sand, in my point of view, and do nothing -- because if you did nothing, the market forces were simply going to continue to march forward and you'd have ever more gentrification, and you'd end up potentially with a European type model of everyone who was working class or poor pushed to the periphery. If you actually wanted an economically integrated city -- and that for New York is part of our lifeblood, that combination of people -- you needed to build, but with different set of rules. So we said very clearly, we were going to build, but we were going to drive a very different kind of bargain with the development community -- a very hard bargain.

And what we found instantly upon taking office --  we moved the goalposts. We announced we were going to move the goalposts, and we moved them. And we said, if you want to develop, it's going to cost you in this sense. We're going to need to see a lot of affordable housing as a part of every development -- every development.

If the government had a role in permitting the development or a rezoning, anything like that, it was going to come with an obligation for a very substantial amount of affordable housing. And once that paradigm is set, the development community has a pretty stark choice -- either follow it, or they're not in a position to develop. I think that's what the people should demand.

[Applause]

Professor Robert Reich: Let's have a question over here. Could you introduce yourself please?

Question: My name is Pinky Kushner and I'm from San Francisco. And I actually had the same topic, which is housing, and -- but I'll approach it from a different way. In San Francisco, it's a big city with a lot of different departments, and those departments seem to have a life of their own. They set their own policies. They are the knowledgeable ones. It's very hard to contradict them.

And I'll give you an example of what -- how I would like to contradict them. Affordable housing in San Francisco is set according to the number of units. So if the developer wants to build ten units, they have to build one affordable housing unit. And, of course, then the developer builds 6,000 to 10,000 square foot units and sells them to people who can afford six bathrooms and 10,000 square feet. And Mayor Lee has tried, but I think has been very unsuccessful in promoting what I think would be more equitable, which would be based on, for instance, square footage. How do you plan to control your very large and very important Department of Planning and Building?

Mayor: Well, we -- it's the beauty of our administration is we based everything on the platform from the campaign. On the campaign I said we're going to create 200,000 units of affordable housing between -- it's 80,000 new units, 120,000 preserved, meaning currently affordable units that we subsidize or find other tools to keep affordable for the long term. And the message to all of the entities of our city government, our planning department, our housing department, etcetera was: this is a goal, has to be achieved over ten years, the most ambitious affordable housing program of any city in the country, historically.

But, it comes with this core assumption and we laid it out a year ago. It's publicly available. Here's how we're going to do the units. Here's the income mix we must achieve, including for the lowest income New Yorkers being a substantial part of that mix. And, it's not negotiable that we have to reach that goal. And therefore, in every development we're trying to maximize the number of units that are affordable.

We used to have a formulation in New York City that "80-20" where the standard was 20 percent affordable units, period. We have developments now where we're turning that into 25 percent, 30 percent, in many cases we're getting even to 50 percent and that depends obviously on all the dynamics and the financing and the specifics, but it is about changing the rules of engagement. By the way, I will let developers, and this is controversial, some people love it, some people hate it. I’ll let them build higher. I'll let them build denser, but I'm going to determine very clearly a lot of affordable housing in the mix in the same building.

And what's interesting is I found this out -- so I'm from the neighborhood of Parks Slope in Brooklyn. It's a wonderful community, but a community where I found a contradiction. I was the City Council member and I had to have this very honest conversation with my constituents. A lot of people truly believe, I'm sure like many in this audience, they really believe in an economically diverse city. They really honestly wanted New York to maintain that mix of people. But I said, "We can't do that without heightened density. At this point in our history, there's very little land left. We have to do that, and it will make life around here somewhat more congested. It will be maybe less appealing than the small town feel that people love, but let's be honest. It is a choice. I choose integration. I choose economic diversity any day.

And once you make that decision, you have a lot of bargaining power with the development community, because they either get to build the thing that is to them very powerful and profitable, but only if it give the public back the public share. If they're not willing to give the public back their share, we literally walk away from the table. I’ve had this conversation with developers. They say, I'm not going to give you that amount of affordable housing. I say, great, we'll find someone else that wants to develop the site. That's a pretty powerful message.

[Applause]

Professor Robert Reich: But, as I understand, what you're saying, you are doing a calculation. Certain sites are going to be much more valuable to developers than others and you're saying the more valuable the site, the more leverage you have in terms of demanding affordable housing and they're still going to walk away with money, but you're going to demand a little bit more from them.

But let me ask you, some people say one of the keys to affordable housing is an excellent system of public transportation. Because if you've got a system of public transportation that goes into the suburbs or into other boroughs as in the case of New York, you can get people to the jobs, fast. And if it's really well done, if it's really well-financed, then the affordable housing can occur and can be out there. Do you think about public transportation and affordable housing in the same way?

Mayor: Yes, yes but I think the difference is that mass transit, we all know, comes with tremendous cost challenges that can't be borne sufficiently by cities as cities are organized today. You can -- I just came from Washington as I said and I partnered with the mayor of Oklahoma City, who is a Republican, who is very pro-mass transit, who passed a tax-referendum so that they could build a streetcar system in Oklahoma City. Now again, I want to emphasize the words Oklahoma City.

[Laughter]

People voted for taxes on themselves so they could have mass transit. That's what a city can do in many cases.

But the real development of a mass transit system that would work in many, many growing urban areas in this country that are more and more our economic core, requires a federal government role, as it does every in the world. Which is why we're fighting for a transportation bill, a multiyear well-funded transportation bill, so we can actually have mass transit, roads, bridges, highways in this country that are up to date with the size of our cities and our economy. That I believe also is a winning hand. I really do. I believe this is an area where there's a transcendent desire on the part of people at the grass-roots and the business community to actually improve our infrastructure because we are falling behind so much of the rest of the world.

So yes, I think affordable housing and mass transit go together. I think the difference is in so many cities, there is that leverage. When it comes to housing there's a leverage with the development community that is profound. We hold all the tools. We have the zoning power and the other powers to create affordable housing on a mass scale. With transportation, we don't get to do that the same way unless we have a federal role or an additional revenue stream.

Professor Robert Reich: Over here, please introduce yourself.

Question: Hi, I'm Brianna Mullen. I'm an undergraduate history student. And my question is the historical reality is that progressivism and New Deal did leave out a lot of Americans into economic opportunity. This is why the 40s and 50s was still plagued by a lot of urban poverty that was both assisted by federal and local policy. What does this progressive agenda that you've created do to integrate and include that yes, economic opportunity is available to all, but realizes the economic history that has left out a lot of people in the progressive agenda, which is, has been historically white, middle-class Americans?

Mayor: Well, I would differ with the question on one level. There's no question that we have had structural racism in our country and that we have had a country in which many people were left poor and without opportunity. That is absolutely true. But I would differ by saying I think the sum total of the New Deal, and the prosperity it helped to usher in did reach an extraordinary number of people in a consistent manner. Not everyone and not enough and it didn't overcome some of the reality of racism. But I would say in the scope of human history, it's one of the most successful outcomes we’ve seen.

I think today, and this is why I talked about the tale of two cities to begin with, today we have to be even clearer and blunter and more forceful to overcome inequality, including across all communities. So, from my point of view, this is where the rule of education is a huge x-factor. Pre-k For All effort in New York City obviously reaches because our public schools are overwhelmingly not just children of color. Many, many children who are immigrant, many, many children who are low income, that's an equalizing effect that's profoundly important. All the things we do around education, all the things we're doing around affordable housing, obviously, overwhelmingly are going to help working people and in many cases, low income people.

The focus on an actual strong minimum wage and strong benefits, transcendent for folks who have been left out economically. And one more piece, trying to use the tools of government to maximize economic opportunity. All that government spending, we're trying to find ways to maximize how much of it gives an open door economically to people who have been left out previously in a very targeted way.

Professor Robert Reich: Talk about people who are being left out. Mr. Mayor, how do you create a criminal justice system that responds to the structural inequalities and the racial inequalities and responds in such a way that is not going to exacerbate those inequalities?

Mayor: Look, I think we have a beginning New York City I'm very proud of and I have been working on this with Commissioner Bratton now for the last 16 months. First, you know, one thing Commissioner Bratton talked about the other day a "Peace dividend." This is a powerful phrase. A lot of people in this room will recognize the phrase "Peace dividend."

Professor Robert Reich: We never got it.

Mayor: We never got it.

Professor Robert Reich: From the Vietnam War, we never got the "Peace dividend."

Mayor: But it’s -- correct, the peace dividend of that time, less spending on military and more on the needs of this country. But, Commissioner Bratton's version of peace dividend, he's talking about lately is that there's been about a million fewer contacts between police and community members in this last year than compared to just several years ago. The stop and frisk policy of the previous administration which was fundamentally broken. In 2011, 700,000 New Yorkers were stopped and frisked. The overwhelming majority had done nothing wrong and had -- there was no police outcome. We used to arrest a lot of young people, particularly of color for low level marijuana possession. We ended that policy. And a host of other things have happened that actually reducing the contact between police and community in a very productive way.

We also looked at the incarceration side of the equation. And mass incarceration is a profound problem in this country that needs to be reversed intensely and quickly.

[Applause]

Let alone, let alone creating an actual, honest path back for people coming back from incarceration. As they call them in our city of brotherly love, our neighbor in Philadelphia they call them returning citizens, not formerly incarcerated, which is a powerful message.

[Applause]

So, I think the notion of reducing prison population, jail population, at the outset. What we're doing right now at Rikers Island in New York City, we are finding that 40 percent of the people in Rikers have a mental health challenge. My wife, Chirlane McCray, is leading a charge for a brand new set of policies in the city government that will address mental health at the front end of the challenge, which will then allow us to divert a lot of people away from the incarceration system to begin with. A lot, a lot of people end up in the Rikers Island because they can't make a small amount of bail or because they didn't answer a summons. Those are solvable problems. We have summons reform, bail reform.

Our goal is to greatly reduce the population in our jails in the next few years. These are doable things. And so I think, I think that the criminal justice reform deeply needed -- it is to me clear you can achieve a lot of reform in the short term. That's going to change the economic trajectory for a lot of people who have been economically marginalized if they never come in contact with incarceration to begin with.

Professor Robert Reich: Time for one more, one more question. I wish we had time for more than one more question, but the mayor has already stretched to the limit your agenda and your schedule. Somebody over here, who has not had the chance … Can we get a microphone over here, oh, down here.

Mayor: It's like here comes the microphone.

Professor Robert Reich: Boy that was the fastest run of a microphone. That was an Olympic microphone run, yes.

[Applause]

Question: So my name is Steve Silverstein. I'm a member of the board of advisors of the Goldman School. There was a story over the weekend in the New York Times on the nail salon workers, which I think many people read that's in your city. The problem is probably partially due to the fact that these are workers who cannot vote and in fact, they fear deportation from this country. So these are kind of loopholes in the system where you have workers who are disenfranchised.

The other thing that is not really mentioned is the, in that in the industry is a tipped industry that is where the workers get tips. And part of the reason that the employers don't pay them is because there's a loophole in the law where tipped workers don't really have to be paid. I know that Cuomo in New York tried to do a little bit about this, but there seems to be a little bit of reluctance to get rid of that policy where for certain professions, usually women-dominated professions, the employers really don't have to pay them at all. What do you think about that?

Mayor: Right, well I think you -- and thank you, you've educated me on this as have others. I think we have to end the practice of discriminating against those who receive tips and I think it's part and parcel of trying to lift up people economically. Let's create a minimum wage structure for all that actually provides a decent wage. That $15 dollar minimum wage should be across the board, including for those who previously were treated as tipped workers. If their tips help elevate their economic circumstances further, God bless. That's part one.

I think on the point you raised also about the reality of what happens with immigrant workers in this country. I don't think I need to say to anyone here, we need comprehensive immigration reform, but beyond that we have an opportunity here and now to change the immigration debate. And I think cities in a particularly powerful position to do this. I met with Mayor Lee earlier today and what cities are poised to do is the second the President's executive action on immigration is reaffirmed in the court system, San Francisco, New York and cities all around the country are going to go right out to communities and start to give people the opportunity. I think it's up to 5 million people in this country will benefit from the executive action and can get their status updated and improved through the process. And it's up to cities to actually implement it and reach people.

We're also doing a lot at the local level and a lot of other cities are, too, where we're not participating in the deportation process. For so many people who committed very, very minor offenses, we're just not going to aid and abet them being deported. We're providing legal support for families that are about to be torn apart by deportation. And one thing I'm very proud of in New York City, today we have a new municipal identification program, which has revolutionized the reality for a lot of struggling folks who happen to be undocumented. In the eyes of New York City, they are our fellow New Yorkers period. They deserve an identification that can give them access to all that society has to offer.

[Applause]

Professor Robert Reich: Mayor Bill de Blasio, you have been very generous with your time and we are very appreciative of your time. We're also appreciate, and I can certainly speak for myself and I think most people in this room, for the leadership you're providing on this issue of inequality. Keep it up and use your voice as you have. Use your stature, thank you.

[Laughter]

Mayor: Well done, thank you sir.

[Applause]