This is naturally the most important thing, the dark traces left by the era of totalitarianism in the human mind, where is - are difficult to do away with. And this is a very demanding job.
I knew that Vaclav Havel didn't want to look into people's eyes, because he said that, when he was being interrogated during the communist period and had been taken to jail, that, if you look directly into somebody's eyes, they can persuade you. And so you can see that so clearly in this interview, where he's looking down.And I kept saying to him as we kept coming - came over here: " You have to look up."And I clearly had no influence on him.
Vaclav Havel was the most amazing man in terms of being the combination of somebody with massive moral authority, great courage for having espoused the concepts of democracy, freedom throughout a very difficult communist period, a very modest man, and somebody with a fabulous sense of humor and the idea of being able to see the absurd in situations.
The system was afraid of Vaclav Havel. And so they either harassed him for put him in jail.
I think that, from Vaclav Havel own experience, he knew if we all paid attention to what was going on, the chances were that even the most horrible dictators wouldn't execute people.
Of course, man is also a weak creature with many bad qualities. And it depends on which of his qualities will in a certain social situation and in a certain climate prevail, which qualities will awaken. The totalitarian system was masterful in how it managed to mobilize all the bad qualities.
I have no doubt about it. I think this is a part of the nature of man, a desire for freedom, for dignified life.
That's one of the surprises in the research, that's it's not young people who are smitten with their phones. It's their parents who are not paying attention to them.
Our phones do play to our natural nervousness about being vulnerable to each other, but that doesn't mean that we can't we can't pull ourselves together, and say - we need to talk to each because it's in conversation, the most human and humanizing thing that we do, that empathy is born, that intimacy is born, that relationship is born.
In the study, 89 percent of Americans said that they interrupted their last social encounter by looking at a phone. And 82 percent of them said that it deteriorated the conversation.
If you're using technology in a way that opens out conversation in your family, with your friends, with people you care about, I'm for that. But if you're using technology to silence the conversations with the people around you, then you have to create sacred spaces in your home, the kitchen, the dining room, the car.
Create sacred spaces in the workplace as well. Classrooms, five years ago, professors would say, I don't want be a nanny to my students. They can do whatever they want. Now professors are saying, put away that laptop, because studies show that it not only takes away the attention of the person who's on the laptop from the class, but everyone around them. There's like a circle around that person that's distracted and not paying attention.
Young people realize that something is amiss. There's a generation that fell in love with their phones, and it's very hard for them to see that there's a problem. But young people are desperate for the attention of their parents, who are really not paying attention to them.
More than half the U.S. population and more than half of the voters in this election were women. Among them, 42 percent voted for Donald Trump, 54 percent went for Hillary Clinton, essentially the reverse of how men voted.
Viewing that complex relationship one-sidedly from the aspect of manufacturing and the impact of Chinese imports on the United States makes sense from the point of view of the Rust Belt of the United States. It may even make sense as a political strategy for a candidate running for office.
Income tax in particular in the United States is concentrated on the top half of the income distribution, and very heavily skewed towards the top 10 or even top 1 percent.
They have two aspects. One is that they're unpredictable, and that often rich and more affluent households are slow to spend the funds. The other thing about tax cuts is that they're redistributive. So they tend, naturally, to benefit those who pay tax.
There's no doubt that [tax cuts] act as a stimulus. How could they not, in a sense? You're giving cash back to households.
Almost all of us have wondered at one point or another about the taxes we pay: Where does the money go?
What we do have is a gigantic matching tax-cutting program as a way of stimulating the economy.
There are still very few companies run by women these days. And, clearly, there are many reasons for that, including what many see as the role of both unconscious bias and outright sexism.
You have to be careful, because, in the [Donald] Trump stimulus package, there were two elements. One is the infrastructure investment program, which at this moment doesn't have the financing spelled out in any effective form.
We're obviously in speculation territory here, because we don't know what the Trump administration is going to do.
I see a bit of a contradiction between the fight against the Islamic State and the desire to remove the Assad regime. And even if you work with Russia, I'm just not sold that working with Russia is an effective way to hasten the end of the Assad regime or to enact any type of punitive measures.
If you stimulate the economy by means of a tax cut, the people that you tend to be benefiting are the better off.
