The ideas expressed in city club forums are those of the speakers and not of the City Club of Cleveland Ideastream Public Media or their sponsors.

Production and distribution of City club forums and ideastream Public media are made possible by PNC and the United Black Fund of Greater Cleveland, Inc.. Good afternoon and welcome to the City Club of Cleveland, where we are devoted to conversation of consequence that help democracy thrive.

Today's Tuesday, June 17th.

My name is Dan Moulthrop and the chief executive here, and I'm pleased to introduce our forum today.

It's the Mandel Endowed Forum on Higher Education.

It's also part of our Authors and Conversation series.

And today, we are featuring Harvard professor Dr. Michael Sandel.

Dr. Sandel teaches political philosophy at the University in Cambridge.

He you might know him because you've seen his class or maybe you took his class.

It's a very it's very popular at Harvard.

And it it fills their largest auditorium, but it's gone far beyond those walls.

15 years ago, it became their first free online class.

Back when we used to refer to those as massive open online class courses or MOOCs, it's been viewed tens of millions of times.

And a lot of his content as well has been turned into material for WGBH in Boston, the BBC, NHK in Japan and Brazil's Globo TV as well.

About 30 years ago, Dr. Sandel wrote a book called Democracy's Discontent.

That book pointed to the shaky underpinnings of our democracy.

Back then, though, that was almost heretical to speak of because we all thought liberal democracies were going to spread everywhere.

It was the end of history.

Nevertheless, Sandel identified the underlying anxieties that have become some of the biggest challenges for democracy today here and abroad.

He's updated that book in a, quote, new edition for Our Perilous Times, which was released in 2022 and is available today.

Thanks to our friends at Max Facts.

The book is essential reading for all those who wonder if our democratic experiment will survive through this century.

Sandel is also the author of a number of other books, including The Tyranny of Merit.

Can we find Common Good?

What Money Can't Buy the Moral Limits of Markets?

Justice.

What's the Right Thing to Do?

The Case Against Perfection.

Ethics in the Age of Genetic Engineering.

The list of titles goes on and on and on.

He has served on the President's Council on Bioethics and is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

He's a graduate of Brandeis, received his doctorate from Oxford.

But what might be the most interesting thing about him he just shared with me moments ago in 1971, when he was the student body president at Palisades High School in Pacific Palisades in the Los Angeles area.

He challenged Governor Reagan to a debate, and the governor said, yes.

I don't have a tape of that to share with you, but perhaps we'll hear a story or two from that moment.

Ladies and gentlemen, members and friends of the City Club of Cleveland, please join me in welcoming to the stage Dr. Michael Sandel.

Enjoy.

Thank you.

Well, thank you, Dan, and thanks to all of you for being here.

What a storied tradition the City Club of Cleveland has of promoting civic discourse.

It matters all the more today because our civic life isn't going very well.

What passes for political discourse consists either of narrow, managerial, technocratic talk, which inspires no one or where passion enters.

We have shouting matches, ideological food fights and the focus of Congress shouting matches in social media and on cable television where people talk past one another without really listening.

We are deeply divided.

And the question I'd like to discuss with you today is how we arrived at this polarized, rancorous moment in American politics.

Paradoxically, the answer, I think, has something to do with a seemingly attractive ideal, the ideal of meritocracy.

Let me try to explain.

In recent decades, the divide between winners and losers has been deepening, poisoning our politics, setting us apart.

This has partly to do with the widening inequalities of income and wealth in recent decades.

But it has also to do with the changing attitudes toward success that have accompanied the widening inequalities.

Those who've landed on top have come to believe that their success is their own doing the measure of their merit, and that they therefore deserve the full bounty that the market bestows upon them, and by implication, to assume that those who struggle, those left behind must deserve their fate, too.

Now, this way of thinking about success arises from a seemingly attractive ideal the principle of meritocracy.

The principle that says insofar as chances are equal, the winners deserve their winnings.

Now we know that in practice, chances are not truly equal.

Children born to low income households tend to stay poor.

When they grow up, we pride ourselves on the American dream of upward mobility.

On the on the thought that no one is consigned to the fate of his or her birth.

But it isn't so easy to rise in this country.

A study was done of intergenerational mobility rates in the advanced economies of the world and it asks the following question Given existing rates of intergenerational mobility, how many generations would it take for someone born poor, bottom 10% to rise not to the top, but to the median income?

Now, there are some countries that do pretty well by this measure.

In Denmark, for example, it takes two generations.

How many generations does it take in the United States?

Would you guess?

Just call out a hundred?

No, it's not that.

Four, seven, five.

It takes five generations.

So you might conclude from this that the American dream is alive and well and living in Copenhagen.

Here's another indicator.

At Ivy League universities, like the place where I teach.

They have generous financial aid policies at Harvard and Stanford, for example.

If your family makes less than $200,000 a year now and you get in, it's tuition free.

If your family makes less than $100,000 a year, it's not only tuition free, but all of your room and board and books and expenses are provided for.

And yet, despite these generous financial aid policies, there are more students in these places from families in the top 1% than there are students from families in the entire bottom half of the country combined.

So we don't fully live up to the meritocratic principles we proclaim.

And you might think, Well, that's the problem.

And therefore there's a straightforward solution.

Perfect meritocracy makes sure that everyone truly begins the race at the same starting point to bring about bring about a fuller, fairer equality of opportunity.

Well, what would that mean exactly?

It would mean more than just bringing up everybody to the same starting line before beginning the race.

It would mean making sure that everyone had good running shoes and access to the best coaches and nutrition and training facilities and to do this writ large across the society.

Well, suppose we could.

Suppose we really could create a perfect, fair meritocracy where everyone came to the starting line with the same the same background advantages and preparation.

Then would you say and here's the question I want to put to the group then would you say that the winners deserved their winnings?

No.

Well, let's let's take a survey and then we will have a discussion.

How many would say, if we really bring about fair equality of opportunity, then the winners deserve their winnings.

Raise your hand if you think so.

And raise your hand if you don't think so.

We have a division of opinion in the room, which means we should have a discussion.

Think it through together.

So let's begin with someone who doesn't think that even bringing everyone up to the same starting point would enable us to say that the winners deserve their winnings.

Why not?

We will begin our discussion and say, why not the back at the back of the room?

And if you could tell us your name, we'll get you a microphone.

If you could tell us your name, please.

Thank you.

My name is.

My name is Merle Johnson.

And even if you start, everybody at the same point doesn't mean they're going to be have the same resources along the way.

So that's why I say that, you know, all different people could have an impact on them.

They could do all kinds of great things along the way.

So you can start at the same point, but you may have different resources along the way.

Okay.

And and, Marilyn, if we gave everyone the same educational resources growing up, everyone could go to a good public school.

Let's say.

And if everyone had good childhood nutrition growing up and a roof over their head and decent health care, what about that?

Well, I taught school for 40 years.

And one thing that's really important in a child's life is mentors, right?

Someone who's going to have an influence with them along the way.

So you can have all of that wonderful stuff.

But if if you're stressing about something, if you are concerned, you don't have someone to reach out to.

You don't have someone to listen to your issues.

It's just there's so much that has an impact on your ability to be successful.

Right.

So you saw firsthand with the kids you taught the differences in resources that they brought to the classroom.

Yeah.

Yes.

Yes.

Thank you.

Yes.

Hey, let's wait till we get to the microphone.

Bethany, Pew College, Class of 98.

Sort of similar to what you're saying, but in terms of just we're all born with certain qualities.

Some of us have, you know, stronger mental capacity.

Some of us have greater emotional intelligence versus sort of traditional intellect.

And those play a part in sort of how successful we are can be, even if we start at the same place.

So I think the distinction I would make is between earning and deserving.

Huh.

And well, you know, sorry, people are murmuring approval, but.

But you better tell us what is the distinction between earning and deserving.

So it's is the playing field is equal, but the outcomes are different.

That could be because people have earned the whatever the results are.

Right?

If that's financial success, relational success, because they put in the quote unquote work, but they still had intrinsic abilities that others didn't.

So deserving means.

You know, there's something that's all about your merit.

It's all about what you put into.

I did it.

It's my doing.

Exactly.

But you're we're all born with, like, certain qualities that aren't distributed equally.

Okay.

So I think.

Well, that's a powerful point.

So to give it make it concrete.

Yes.

You want me to do that?

No, I will.

Okay.

Okay.

If I've got you right, you'll tell me if I've got got it right.

But to to use that metaphor of the race, take an actual race.

Let's say I'm.

I'm going to have a foot race with Hussein Bolt.

You know, the gold medal winner in the sprint.

Now, let's say that I'm given all the resources that I've got the best running shoes.

I had a wonderful coach, good nutrition, and so did he.

Mm hmm.

And so we're both at the starting line, and I can predict pretty easily who's going to win.

So because he's a more gifted runner than I am.

So, you know, I have it right that you're saying that even if we brought everyone up and had fair quality of opportunity, some people flourish or succeed, win a race or make more money in virtue of natural talent and gifts, in this case, athletic talent.

Correct?

Yeah.

Okay.

Thank you for that.

Well, thanks to Marilyn, Bethany, for getting us going.

And now I want to hear from someone who took the opposite view.

And I want to continue with the concrete illustration, but I want to change it now, not to winning a foot race, but to being financially successful, making a lot of money.

And whether that's a matter of deserving this or not.

So let's take.

Well, think of someone who makes a lot of money.

I want to get back to this question of talents and gifts.

So let's stay with an athlete for the moment.

Let's take LeBron who makes it.

You've forgiven him for leaving.

I can see that.

So what does he make in a year?

Counting everything.

About 120 million, I think.

When last.

Yeah.

So now here's a thought experiment.

Think of your best, most inspiring teacher in high school.

You can probably remember their name.

I bet you can.

I can remember the name of my Miss O'Brien.

She.

She taught European history.

She was very tough, very demanding.

But I learned a tremendous amount from her anyhow.

You.

You probably can think of your teacher now.

How much did your best high school teacher make about?

Roughly speaking, Darden speaks from experience and says 40,000, right?

Yes, something like that.

No, not as much as LeBron.

That Now how many think that LeBron deserves to make 3000 times more to use it and figure 3000 times more than your best teacher.

Let's take a vote on that one.

How many say, yes, he does.

This is a room friendly to teachers.

I can see that.

How many say no?

All right, let's take another one beyond.

Beyond athletics.

Someone who makes even more than LeBron Taylor Swift.

What if we did that vote?

He deserves everything there then is his Swifty.

All right.

How many?

I don't know what multiple she makes of of what Miss O'Brien made.

Not him my favorite teacher.

Most inspiring teacher.

But how many think that Taylor Swift deserves to make 6000 times more than your best teacher?

How many think so?

All right.

Well, there are a few.

There are a few who vote yes.

So let's hear from let's hear from one of you who who will give us your reason.

Go ahead.

Did you volunteer?

Sure.

Okay.

And then there's also someone in front.

The two of you can both.

Yeah.

I'm Jasmine.

Block's in.

And the reason why I say yes is based on productivity.

I would love for teachers to get paid more.

But then how would I be able to afford to give my child that education?

You know, for parents who have to send their children to public schools right.

It's probably because they can't afford a private school and they might want their child to have a private school education.

Yeah, but they can't afford that.

And those teachers at private schools get paid way better than the teachers at public schools.

Okay, maybe not always.

Sorry.

Yeah.

So sorry.

Please educate me.

That's all right.

But still, I think you guys get my point on that.

Okay.

So to me, it's about productivity, a supply and demand kind of situation where supply and demand for What are you willing to pay for?

Okay.

In my opinion, and there's a lot of people willing to spend their hard earned money to see LeBron James or Taylor Swift, who, you know, if they're willing to pay for it and and they're willing to take their money, then let them have it.

Let them have it.

And then, Jasmine, would you say, and they deserve it.

They've earned that money because they work hard for it.

It's not like LeBron does not work hard.

It's not like Taylor Swift does not work hard.

Is a lot.

He plays a lot.

Yeah, they do more outside of just that.

But if I if you let me.

Can I ask you a follow up question?

Yes.

If I practice basketball longer and harder than LeBron, but could barely make a free throw, I would I because I work even harder, deserve to make more than LeBron.

I think that there's a difference between being lazy and unproductive.

You may not be lazy, but you're unproductive as right as a basketball player.

And I don't know that I want to see you play basketball, but I would love to do it right.

Yeah.

So sorry.

I don't know that I spend my money to come see you.

You wouldn't.

Yeah, you're just.

You're just being honest.

Just being honest.

Okay.

Do you teach any day?

Okay.

Enjoying this?

For sure.

Okay, fair enough.

Absolutely.

Thank you.

Thank you for that.

You remember the the slogans we heard going back from the eighties and nineties up to the early 2000.

If you want to compete and win in the global economy, go to college.

What you earn will depend on what you learn.

You can make it if you try.

I call this the rhetoric of rising in the face of widening inequalities of income and wealth, but the rhetoric of rising offered was individual upward mobility through higher education that was offered as the solution.

There was a problem with this advice.

It contained an implicit insult that these political parties didn't appreciate.

It contained an implicit insult that these parties missed.

And the insult was this If you're struggling in the new economy and you didn't get a degree, your failure is your fault.

We told you so.

The problem is not with the economic policies we put in place that led to the outsourced jobs and the hollowed out industrial communities and to the wage stagnation for the average worker in real terms for five decades.

No, it wasn't our policy.

It said you didn't improve yourself as we told you to.

So it's no wonder that people without four year degrees felt aggrieved.

Those of us who spend our days in the company of the credentialed can easily forget a simple fact Most of our fellow citizens do not have a four year college degree.

Do you have any idea how many?

How many do have a four year degree from any place?

Yeah, it's about it's about 34%, 34, 35%.

So more than 60% of our fellow citizens don't.

Which means it's folly to create an economy that sets is a necessary condition.

Undignified work in a decent life, a four year degree that most people don't have.

Not only that, even a not not only that higher education is not the engine of upward mobility.

We often assume it to be a team of economists, led by my colleague Raj Chetty did a study of 1800 colleges and universities in the United States, some selective, others not selective, some private and public.

And they asked the following question What percentage of students in American colleges and universities arrived poor?

Bottom 20%, and would rise to affluence Top 20% in some years after college?

What percentage would you guess?

Just call out a number 4515.

That's 13 2%.

Now, this isn't because attending a good college or university doesn't help you do well in the job market.

It's a measure of the fact that so few students in these in in colleges and universities, four year degree programs come from low income backgrounds in the first place.

So way of thinking about it is this higher education is like an elevator in a building that most people enter on the top floor.

That's why it's only 2% who come poor rise to affluence.

So so what should we do if something like this diagnosis is what's created the the rancor and the polarization in the sense of grievance, What should what should we do?

Well, a couple of things.

First, I think we need to change the terms of public discourse, focus less on the rhetoric of rising, focus less on arming young people for a meritocratic tournament so that the better to scramble up the ladder of success, even as the rungs on the ladder grow further and further apart and focus more on the dignity of work, focus more on making life better for those who may lack a diploma, but who nonetheless make important contributions to the economy and to the common good through the work they do and the families they raise and the community and the communities they serve, we should renew the dignity of work and put it at the center of our political debate.

Now, different political parties, people of different persuasions, will have different ideas about what that means, about how to interpret the dignity of work and how to promote it.

But that should be the question.

And the debate should proceed on the understanding that work is not only about making a living, it's also about contributing to the common good and winning recognition, winning and social esteem and respect for doing so.

The dignity of work is about more than increasing the incomes of those who struggle.

Important, though, that is, it's about according to dignity and respect to everyone who contributes to the economy in the common good.

A political hero of mine was on to this in 1968 when he was seeking the Democratic Party nomination.

Robert F Kennedy.

He was onto this.

He put it this way fellowship, community and patriotism.

These are central values do not come just from buying and consuming goods.

Together.

They come instead from dignified employment at decent pay.

The kind of employment that enables us to say, I helped to build this country.

I am a participant in its great public ventures.

This civic sentiment, this way of thinking about work is largely missing from our public life today.

It's we too easily slip into the assumption that the money people make is the measure of their contribution to the common good.

But a moment's reflection suggests that this can't be right.

The labor market, its verdict is not the true measure of the value of someone's contribution, because if it were, we would have to conclude that Taylor Swift or LeBron or a hedge fund manager really does deserve to make 5000 times more than.

O'BRIEN And what that suggests is that we've made a mistake to outsource our moral judgment about value, about the value of the contribution people make to markets, rather than what we need to do is to reclaim that those judgments about value for us as Democratic citizens to debate.

Here's one example of a time when we did also in 1968, Martin Luther King Jr.

Shortly before he was assassinated, made a trip to Memphis and he spoke to a group of striking sanitation workers.

And what he told them was this.

He said the person who picks up our garbage is in the final, as significant as the position, because if he doesn't do his job well, disease will be rampant.

All labor has dignity.

That was Martin Luther King.

He was on to this.

So the dignity of work and that includes the way we fund education.

A study was done, including higher education of how much the federal government spends helping young people go to colleges and universities, something this is some years ago, about 164 billion.

And how much spent on supporting vocational and technical training.

And it's about 1.1 billion 164 to 1.1.

This reflects the kind of credentials, prejudice that leads a great many working people to feel looked down upon and disrespected.

We need to do something else, and that is to notice one of the most corrosive effects of the inequality of recent decades, which is that those who are affluent and those of modest means increasingly live separate lives.

We send our children to different schools.

We live and work and shop and play in different places.

This isn't good for democracy.

What democracy requires is not perfect equality, but it does require a broad equality of condition, by which I mean a way of life in which people from different backgrounds, different class backgrounds, different ethnic religious backgrounds encounter one another in the ordinary course of their lives, in public places and common spaces that bring us together, whether sports stadia or public libraries or the municipal swimming pool, public health facilities, public transportation.

Because encountering one another from different backgrounds in everyday life, this is what teaches us how to negotiate and, to abide our differences.

And this is how we come to care for the common good.

So rebuilding class, mixing institutions, that's another important part of any agenda to address the polarization that we face and also the, well, the rancor of our public life.

No, there's one other thing beyond turning our attention to the dignity of work and beyond rebuilding class, mixing institutions, and that it really is more, I suppose you could say, a moral and spiritual turning, a moral and spiritual turning, rethinking the meaning of our own success, the meritocratic conviction that people deserve whatever riches the market bestows on their talents, makes, makes community, makes solidarity an almost impossible project.

Because why do the successful owe anything to the less advantaged members of society?

The answer to this question depends on recognizing that for all our striving for all our effort and hard work, we are not self-made and self-sufficient finding ourselves in a society that prizes our talents.

That's our good fortune, not our due.

Recalling the role of luck in life being alive to our indebtedness, this can prompt a certain humility, the humility that teaches there but true, the accident of birth or the grace of God, or the accident of faith, mystery of fate.

Go.

Why?

That could be me.

Such humility is the beginning of the way back from the harsh ethic of success that drives us apart.

Perhaps it can point us beyond the tyranny of merit toward a less polarized, less rancorous, more generous public life.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Good.

Thank you so much.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you so much.

So we're about to begin the audience Q&A, where you get to ask the professor questions instead of the other way around, as we've been doing for our livestream audience, I'm Dan Walter, the chief executive here.

And as you know, we're joined by Harvard professor and political philosopher Michael Sandel.

If you would like to text a question, you can text it to 3305415794.

And our colleagues will help work it into the program.

We have our first question, please.

Thank you.

Yes, my name is Peggy.

I think one aspect that you're overlooking is the inequality at work.

And I'll give you a couple of examples, such as The Waltons of Wal-Mart before Obamacare, 90% of their employees were on Medicaid, so they dumped the cost of health care on to us middle class.

You got Robert Murray, the the coal billionaire who raped all the land and then claimed bankruptcy, dumped those pensions on the middle class and dumped the cleaning up of the of the forests and the land on us and LTV steel here.

They paid the guy who closed everything down millions of dollars.

He got put on many boards and our people lost their pensions.

I mean, I think that is a huge part of the anger that's out there.

Don't you think so?

I do.

In fact, I agree with everything you've just said, except that I overlooked inequality, because in a way, this what I've tried to offer precisely an interpretation of how the rampant inequality of income and wealth of the past five decades has been so deeply corrosive of social life, of civil society, both from the standpoint of distributive justice, unfairness and from the standpoint of community.

It's deeply corrosive of community, of any sense that we are all in this together.

So while we need to rebuild community, we can only do it if we address inequality.

And that's that's a project that's a challenge that's right at the heart of our current our current political challenge.

Thank you for that.

Yes.

So my question is, is it possible to create a social system structure that actually values the common good, which is essentially, to me, sort of intrinsically valuing humanity when we have an economic system, capitalism, which has no intrinsic value to man or of man?

Well, it's it's a far reaching question.

It's a radical question in the best sense.

It's a it's a philosophical question about whether capitalism is compatible with human dignity and with democracy.

And the the impetus behind the question, I think, is very well taken, because it's not obvious that the answer is yes, as we often assume and reflectively, if by capitalism.

I think the answer to that question depends on what we mean by capitalism.

If we mean a capitalism defined by the market faith, the market fundamentalist faith that has been so influential for the past five decades, then I think the answer is no, it's not compatible.

That kind of market faith is not compatible with either respect for human dignity or with democracy, because The market faith assumes that markets and market mechanisms are the primary instruments for defining and achieving the public good.

And it's that assumption that has become deeply embedded in our public life, and that's led us astray.

It's led us to not only the economic inequalities, but also to the inequalities of respect and social esteem that have fueled the anger against the existing system and that have produced a toxic politics.

So then if that's the case, if that's what's happened, then we need to ask, well, is there a version of capitalism that can organize the production of goods and services efficiently without these damaging effects?

I once heard Quigley, University of New Mexico, Class of 80.

I wrote a newspaper column about your work in 2012, and there was a really intriguing example you gave on the subject of pricing.

You said that you don't see a lot of litter in the Grand Canyon, even though it would be in the financial interest of a hedge fund manager not to pack to the trash out, but to pay the fine.

And you said it's social pressure.

It's it's cultural norms that prevent people from behaving that way in public and in that particular public space.

And it struck me that that was kind of an intriguing suggestion of a solution to what you've been talking about today.

But I don't know how we organize a society in such a manner that succeeds in preventing trash in the Grand Canyon.

Right.

Well, thank you, first of all, for remembering that editorial and for writing it or book review these years ago.

If I could just build on that example that you remember from my book, What Money Can't Buy About Litter in the Grand Canyon.

And thank you for remembering it.

The question I put was, I suppose, as is the case, there's a law against littering in the Grand Canyon, but a wealthy hiker has a bunch of beer cans to dispose of, tosses them in the Grand Canyon, but says I will pay to hire someone to go clean it up.

And suppose he does pay and they do get cleaned up.

Would we say that wealthy hiker, he's cleared his slate, He's done nothing wrong.

Or would we say still there's a kind of moral taint to that kind behavior, that wanton disregard for the Grand Canyon, even if he cleaned it up.

And that may seem like a quaint, implausible example, but think about carbon offsets that companies and institutions use.

They say we will go carbon neutral by 2030.

Carbon neutral?

What does it mean to go carbon neutral?

Either we that company, let's say, will reduce our emissions to zero or or through through remediation, through scrubbers, through new technologies and so on change, behavior, reducing consumption and so on.

Or carbon neutrality could be achieved partly by reducing the company's own emissions or the countries because countries negotiate climate change targets in a similar way.

And the United States has insisted on being able to fulfill its obligations under global climate agreements, either by reducing our own emissions or by paying other countries to reduce theirs.

That's the kind of offset.

So what would you say of a country or a company that said we achieve carbon neutrality not just by energy efficiency and sacrifice, but by paying to reduce carbon?

Half a world away, buying well, paying for the preservation of trees in the Amazon that might otherwise have been cut down and carbon absorbing.

It's like the hiker in the Grand Canyon.

And the question that I pose is, is that kind of carbon neutrality?

Is that fine or is it a kind of cheating?

Maybe we could take a vote on that, too.

How many think it's the kind of cheating that should be increased and how many don't?

How many think it's okay?

It's a way more efficiently.

All right.

So here, too, there's a there's a difference of view, but if it's a kind of cheating and some people here think it is, it must have to do with considerations that go beyond the result, the amount of carbon that have also to do with norms and attitudes toward nature.

Should we regard the climate crisis in a purely technocratic or utilitarian way, or also as a prompt to reconsider the way we live in relation to the natural world and to reconsider our tendency to regard nature as a dumping ground for our excess?

And that gets back to the question of norms and attitudes.

In general, my way of thinking about how we should deal with the challenges of justice and democracy and the common good we face is that we need to pay attention not only to the utilitarian consequences or the level of GDP, not only the metrics captured by numbers, but also by the attitudes and norms that we cultivate by adopting this or that way of dealing with the problem of climate change or of inequality.

And I think this is why we I think we arrived at our current moment, partly because of economic inequality, but not only that, also because of the way we have rationalized and justified the widening inequalities through this credential list hubris, these attitudes.

And I think I think we need to address both both institutions and attitudes and norms.

If we really are to renew the democratic project.

And we are.

All right.

I'll try to be very quick.

I just want to hone in on this idea that I just want to hone in on this idea that the common good seems to be a Trump to meritocracy.

It seems to me that in society we have an intuition that there are certain inhalable forms of justice that do not trump the common good.

Like, I don't think most of us in here would agree on a 100% tax rate, for example.

So I'm curious if you could just say more and why you think it seems to trump justice or distributive justice in this case?

I wouldn't say that the common good outweighs or defeats justice.

I would say that we can't figure out what it means to live in a just society or to seek justice without asking about the common good, about what the common good consists in.

Because what, after all, is a just system of rewards, which is really where we begin in our discussion here today.

Who deserves what and why?

That's a question of justice.

But there may be people who satisfy consumer demand of a kind that's base that's unworthy.

Suppose someone catered very effectively to the consumer demand for casino gambling or for for drugs to take a more extreme example for illicit drugs.

They they might earn the rewards associated with building a great casino empire.

But does that really advance the common good?

And if it doesn't, if we think that that's an unworthy mode of life, if too much of our attention and energy is preoccupied, let's say with casino gambling, then we might say because that is at odds with the common good.

Doesn't that lead us to question where whether a just society should reward it quite so handsomely?

So the general point is this and thank you for the question, because it brings us back to a broader theme that's right at the center of the contemporary challenge facing democracy is how can we organize the economy?

This also goes back to the question about capitalism.

Can we organize the economy in a way that achieves greater justice than an economy that's shot through with rampant inequalities and the indignities we attach to those inequalities and if so, if we if we need to seek a more just economy and a more just society, can we really do that without reflecting as fellow citizens about the common good?

It's not easy because reflecting together about the common good requires a morally more robust kind of public discourse than the kind to which we've become accustomed.

And that's what we need.

That's my main argument, and one of my best arguments for it is look how robust a moral argument we've had just today in this room.

I think there's a great hunger for a public life of larger meaning and purpose that addresses more directly with big questions that people care about, including questions of justice of the common good and what we owe one another as fellow citizens.

Thank you all.

Thank you.

Day and future.

Thank you.

That is what I'm talking about.

Awesome.

Michael Sandel, thank you so much.

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Squared STEM High School.

It's up up next at the City club.

Tomorrow, we welcome Ken Martin, chair of the Democratic National Committee, and he will be in conversation with newly elected Ohio Democratic Party chair Kathleen Clyde.

And then on Friday, June 20th, we have Attorney General Dave Yost, who that presentation will be moderated by Ideastream editor Mike McIntyre.

That brings us to the end of our forum today for information on those forums and everything else coming up.

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Our forum is adjourned.

Have a great day.

Thanks.

All.

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