    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: WILLIAM J. CLINTON (2000, Book I)]
    [April 5, 2000]
    [Pages 634-637]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Remarks at the Third Session of the White House Conference on the New
    Economy
    April 5, 2000

        The President.  All right. Please be seated, everyone; let's go. The
    final panel today is one of particular importance, to me at least, and
    that is, how can the new economy's tools

    [[Page 635]]

    empower civil society and government? And I'm going to call on Esther
    Dyson first, the founder and chairman of
    EDventure Holdings, because she has to catch a plane.
        Ms. Dyson. I can stay.
        The President.  But you can go first, anyway--so there. [Laughter]

    [Ms. Dyson made brief remarks.]

        The President.  Thank you. I think it would be good now--I'll just
    go over to Kaleil Tuzman, the cofounder and
    CEO of govWorks.com, to talk. The floor is yours.

    [Mr. Tuzman made brief remarks.]

        The President.  Thank you. I'd like to now call on William Julius
    Wilson, who is now a professor of social
    policy at Harvard, the JFK School. He's been very generous with his time
    to me and to this administration over the last 7 years, and who I think,
    better than anyone else I know, chronicled the disappearance of work for
    minority males in inner cities as the economy changed and as jobs moved
    to the suburbs, and the implications that had for economic and social
    dislocation and racial tensions in our country.
        So I would--I think the title of his last book was ``When Work
    Disappears.''

    [Professor Wilson made brief remarks.]

        The President.  Let me say, as you know, we're trying to get another
    substantial increase in the earned-income tax credit, including one that
    would help working families with more than two children. The last time
    we--we nearly doubled the earned-income tax credit in '93, and it took--
    that helped us to move over 2 million people out of poverty.
        Most of the people in poverty today, by American definitions, are
    working people, which would surprise a lot of Americans. It wouldn't
    surprise anybody from any developing country, where all the people in
    poverty are working people unless they're disabled. But it's also true
    in America, and I think it's very important.
        And clearly, we ought to raise the minimum wage again. It still
    hasn't recovered its former levels. And indeed, all we will do if we
    raise it to my proposal is to basically recover where it was about 20
    years ago in real dollar-purchasing-power terms. I hope we can do that.
        I'd like to call on Professor Robert Putnam now, who is also at Harvard, and who gave us the
    concept of social capital, defined as ``rules, networks, and trust,''
    and has really, I think, broadened the understanding that we have of
    civil society and its role in how our economy works and how we all live
    together. And I also have the galley copy of your latest book, so you
    can hawk it, too, if you like. [Laughter] I think you should. ``Bowling
    Alone,'' it's called; worth it for the title alone. [Laughter] Go ahead.

    [Professor Putnam made brief remarks.]

        The President.  Well, first of all, I thank you all, and I want to
    give you a chance to comment on what each other said. But let me just
    observe, every time I hear Bob Putnam speak, I
    think that Washington, DC, needs more social capital. And I'm not
    kidding. And I think, also, that there is a deep yearning for this sort
    of thing among young people.
        We have a big increase in enrollment in the Peace Corps. We have a
    huge increase in AmeriCorps. We've had more people in AmeriCorps in 5
    years than the Peace Corps had in 20 years. That shows you there's
    something to what you're saying, and I think it's very real.
        And I saw it in very stark ways. I'm thinking of this because we're
    coming up on the fifth anniversary of the Oklahoma City tragedy, where
    person after person down there told me they sort of uncritically bought
    into the antigovernment rhetoric, and all of a sudden, there were these
    people, and their children were in school with their children, and on
    and on and on, all the obvious things. But there was this instantaneous
    sense of cohesion. It had nothing to do with Government or the fact that
    they were Government employees.
        And I do--the whole question of whether the Internet will be an
    atomizing or a unifying, cohesive force in our society is, I think, an
    open question.
        Esther, do you want to talk about it?
    Bill?

    [The discussion continued.]

        The President.  Anybody out here want to say anything, ask any
    questions?

    [At this point, the question-and-answer portion of the session began.]

        The President.  Well, when you talked about that--I want to give you
    an example. When you talked about all these organizations that

    [[Page 636]]

    were created in the aftermath of the industrial revolution in America,
    arguably, they were filling need for social capital, for networks that
    didn't exist when people worked in smaller work units and had more kind
    of comprehensive relationships with a smaller number of people.
        When you did your book and you talked
    about Italy, for example, and how northern Italy had massive amounts of
    social capital, partly around the economic units that were patterned on
    the medieval guilds, I got to thinking about this. I'll just give you an
    example of something that's going on in the Internet economy.
        You know, eBay, the website where you can buy or sell on eBay and
    you can trade, they keep up with their customer base. I just was out
    there last weekend, and I always ask, every time I see somebody that has
    anything to do with them--they're now up to approximately 30,000 people
    who are making a living on eBay. That's what they do for a living. They
    buy and sell, swap and trade on eBay. And they know that a significant
    percentage of these people who are now making a living were actually
    very poor, were actually moved from being on public assistance, on
    welfare, to making a living on eBay. So they have, in effect, recreated
    a small village.
        On the other hand, they're working alone on a computer at home. Does
    this phenomena add to or subtract from the stock of our social capital?
        Professor Robert Putnam.  Yes. [Laughter]
        The President.  You ought to run for
    office if that's your answer.

    [The question-and-answer session continued.]

        The President.  Let me just give you one other example. I've seen
    this in several contexts in all of the controversies in which I've been
    involved here over the last 7 years. You can create a virtual national
    movement over the Internet in 48 hours.
        Professor Putnam.  Yes.
        The President.  Somebody supports my position on the assault weapons
    ban; somebody opposes my position to close the gun show loophole--I can
    give you 30 examples of this. And all of a sudden, you will have 200,000
    people that are in touch with each other all for the same thing. And I
    think in a lot of ways that's empowering and a very, very good thing.
    And a lot--but the thing that bothers me about it is, even though it has
    infinite possibilities and it's really reinforcing, in some sense you
    want communities to be places where people of different views have to
    meet and mediate those views----
        Professor Putnam.  Yes. Exactly.
        The President.  ----where you have to confront not only those that
    agree with you and you want to swell your numbers so you will have a
    defined political impact, but you have to sit down at the table with
    people who totally disagree with you and try to figure out what in the
    Sam Hill you're going to do to live together and work together and move
    forward. That concerns me as well, because it's like the specialty
    magazines or the 69 channels on your cable or other stuff. I think all
    this, on balance, is a big plus. It's more fun for me. I like it, you
    know, and everybody else does.
        But the question is, where do we find the commons? And how can we
    use the technology to find the commons and to honestly discuss in a
    respectful way with people with whom you disagree those matters that
    have to be dealt with? Because no matter what our opinion is, you know,
    our action or inaction will define who we are as a people.
        You know, for example, I think about a developing country that--what
    I hope from what Ms. Chatterjee was saying is that, in the beginning of
    her opening remarks, is that somehow technology can be used to bring
    decisionmakers face to face with the poor, en masse, and force them to
    interact with them in a way that in effect creates a community that
    wouldn't be there, because we all know in every society the people who
    are really poor and downtrodden tend to be invisible to people until
    they're intruded upon.
        I don't have an answer to this. I just know it's a serious problem.
    It's a problem--you know, when I leave the White--I don't have an
    option, as President, not to deal with people who disagree with me. And
    I think it's a good thing, because I'm constantly having to reexamine my
    opinions on the issues or wondering whether on the edges I might have
    been wrong or whether we can do better, you know?
        But when I leave here, you know, I can do just fine and be happy and
    sassy going through the rest of my life just being around people that
    agree with me all the time. And I don't know that that's the best thing
    for a community. There needs to be a common space where we come together
    across the lines that divide us.

    [[Page 637]]

    [The question-and-answer session concluded.]

        The President. I agree with that. Let me say to all of you, one of
    the things in our budget this year, in addition to our efforts to
    connect all the schools and libraries, is funds to set up 1,000
    community centers in poor rural communities, Native American
    reservations, and relatively isolated urban neighborhoods, so that it
    will, by definition, build social capital if you have community centers
    where people can come and access the net, with people there who are
    trained to help people use it who otherwise would never use it. I think
    it can make a big difference.
        Well, we stayed an hour late, but it was certainly interesting. I
    think you did a great job, and I thank you all for your patience.
        Thank you for being here today. It was great.

     Note:  The President spoke at 4:30 p.m. in the East Room at the White
    House. In his remarks, he referred to Robert Putnam, Stanfield Professor
    of International Peace in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Harvard
    University. The transcript released by the Office of the Press Secretary
    also included the remarks of the participants.