Bill Clinton: “Well, actually, what we talked about here on that point was what the Europeans could do to create jobs when they have…”

“Well, actually, what we talked about here on that point was what the Europeans could do to create jobs when they have economic growth. The frustrating thing for a lot of the Europeans is not only that they've had slow growth but that even when they've had growth, they haven't necessarily been able to create jobs. And Prime Minister Major discussed that in some length, because Great Britain has of late had some pretty good success in bringing their unemployment rate down. And the highest job growth countries in the G-7 are the United States and Canada, so we talked a lot about what we thought the relationship of low interest rates and no barriers to small business formation and expansion and affirmative help for small business could have. Because it's very interesting, even in all the European countries, most of their jobs are being created by small and medium- sized businesses, the same as in America. But there isn't the same almost obsession that exists in our country both to clear out barriers to small business formation and expansion and to take affirmative steps to accelerate it. So we talked a lot about that from their point of view. From our point of view, we talked a lot about how we could reduce the inequality and the wage stagnation that affects some of the people in the bottom half of the wage earners. And we talked about whether--the extent to which we could integrate into our systems some of the things that work in Europe and still keep our ability to create jobs. And that's what we're trying to do, for example, with the apprenticeship programs, the school-to-work programs, giving everybody access to 2 more years of schooling after high school, and trying to accelerate the rate at which we retrain the existing work force, and also trying to provide some more security in terms of access to movable retirement and health care benefits. What we're both trying to do, if you will, is to create dynamic economies in which we can generate jobs that are good jobs, but also give people who are working hard the necessary conditions and tools they need to build a stable life and a stable family life. So in that sense, the Europeans like a lot of the security that a lot of their working people have, but they want to be able to create more jobs. We like the fact that we create a lot of jobs, but we want our people to be able to live with all the upheavals of the modern economy. So we basically decided we needed to try to find how we could learn from one another. Russian General Aleksandr Lebed”