Bill Clinton: “First, I do believe in the new economy. I think that technology is rifling through every sector of economic activity, in…”

“First, I do believe in the new economy. I think that technology is rifling through every sector of economic activity, in ways that have given us dramatic increases in productivity and potential for growth without inflation that I think most models have not accurately measured. And I think that, therefore, the most important thing for Government policy is to be fiscally responsible, to create the conditions in which people can prosper, and then to try to do things which will accelerate the trends that are already underway. I think that that's what we're trying to do with Internet II, for example, and what we're trying to do with having heavy investments in biomedical research. Now, why hasn't it trickled down to everybody? I think there are-- I'd like to make three points. First of all, there has been a remarkable amount of trickling down. We have the lowest minority unemployment rate, among African-Americans and Hispanics, recorded in the nearly three decades we've been doing racially separate unemployment statistics. And many cities--Detroit, for example, has an unemployment rate that's roughly half what it was in '93. On the other hand, I think there are two reasons why it hasn't. One is, there are enormous premiums in this new economy for education and skills, so that people who don't have an education are both more likely to remain unemployed and, even more significantly, more likely to remain underemployed or relatively undercompensated, which I think explains the lion's share of why you've had increasing inequality for over 20 years, which began to abate about the last 2 or 3 years. Mr. Dunham. In the last couple of years.”