And a stand up comic to boot!
He opened with:
“Clearly the economy has worn me down. I used to be 6’2”
“Politics comes from the Greek work ‘poly’, meaning many. And ‘tics’. Small blood sucking insects.”
“The fiscal cliff is all micro tactics. It’s a game – a game with a high stakes – but a game. The real issue looming out there is on the demand side; there is not enough aggregate demand to buy what we can make with full employment.”
“80% of U.S. workers are hourly workers. If you are a male hourly worker, you are paid less today than in 1980. Wages have not beat inflation over 30 years. But the economy is twice as large. Consumers are 70% of our economic activity, and until 2008, the U.S. consumer kept on buying. How could this be? There were three coping mechanisms to stagnant wages, and none of them are sustainable sources of growth:
1) Women entered the paid work force
2) Average work hours per week grew to surpass even Japan
3) We took trillions of dollars from our homes with mortgage debt”
“Not every country can be a net exporter.”
“I have two new hips. They are beautiful. I wish I could show you. I had to ask the doctor where my hips came from. It’s like a part of my personal identity. I wondered if I met domestic content requirements. The hips were fabricated in Germany. Germany has the best precision manufacturing in the world. They have high wages. Their education system is world class and has high minimum competence in technical education. The top 1% have 11% of the wealth, not 24%. And they have strong unions. But my hips were designed in France. I have French designer hips.”
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