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The Unemployment Rate Today For People With Our-year College Degrees Is 4.1%, Which Is Almost None. That's People Switching Jobs Basically. That Tells You That Education Is The Only Way Up And The Only Way Out. If That Is The Fact, Then We've Got To Get More Of It For More People.

-Thomas Friedman

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The Unemployment Rate Today

Thomas Friedman

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The Unemployment Rate Today For People With Our-year College Degrees Is 4.1%, Which Is Almost None. That's People Switching Jobs Basically. That Tells You That Education Is The Only Way Up And The Only Way Out. If That Is The Fact, Then We've Got To Get More Of It For More People.

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Some Would Ask Which Country Am I From? We Are Supposed To Tell The Truth, [so] We Tell Them India. Some Thought It Was Indiana, Not India! Some Did Not Know Where India Is. I Said It Is The Country Next To Pakistan.

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Watching Both The Health Care And Climate/energy Debates In Congress, It Is Hard Not To Draw The Following Conclusion: There Is Only One Thing Worse Than One-party Autocracy, And That Is One-party Democracy, Which Is What We Have In America Today. One-party Autocracy Certainly Has Its Drawbacks. But When It Is Led By A Reasonably Enlightened Group Of People, As China Is Today, It Can Also Have Great Advantages.

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Service Culture

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No Matter What Your Profession – Doctor, Lawyer, Architect, Accountant – If You Are An American, You Better Be Good At The Touchy-feely Service Stuff, Because Anything That Can Be Digitized Can Be Outsourced To Either The Smartest Or The Cheapest Producer.

What I Want Is Natural Gas To Be A Bridge To A Cleaner Energy Future, Not A Dam Against A Cleaner Energy Future, Not A Dead End. To Get This Right, To Get The Most Out Of It, We Not Only Have To Make Sure We Exploit Natural Gas In A Clean Way - It's A Challenge - But We Also Have To Make Sure That We Are Instilling And Implementing All The Incentives To Win Solar, Nuclear Energy Efficiency That Will Make Them Continually Competitive With Natural Gas In The Future.

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If You Are Self-motivated, Wow, This World Is Tailored For You. The Boundaries Are All Gone. But If You're Not Self-motivated, This World Will Be A Challenge Because The Walls, Ceilings And Floors That Protected People Are Also Disappearing. That Is What I Mean When I Say "it Is A 401(k) World." Government Will Do Less For You. Companies Will Do Less For You. Unions Can Do Less For You. There Will Be Fewer Limits, But Also Fewer Guarantees. Your Specific Contribution Will Define Your Specific Benefits Much More. Just Showing Up Will Not Cut It.

If You Don't Have An Ethic Of Conservation, You Basically Have A License To Drive A Hummer Through The Amazon.

Tap Into People's Dignity And They Will Do Anything For You. Ignore It, And They Won't Lift A Finger.

I Am Always A Little Skeptical On The Water Thing Because I Have Been Hearing That For 30 Years, But One Year It's Going To Be True. With The Rising Populations, Yemen Could Be The First Country In The World, Or Sana'a The First Major City In The World, To Run Out Of Water, That's From Yemeni Hydrological Engineers And The United Nations. Sooner Or Later, All Of These People, From 7 To 9 Billion, All Of Them Want To Live Like America, Will Be Consuming So Much More Water That Some Of The Societies Will Hit A Wall Without More Sustainable Environmental Practices.

I Am Being Very Humble About The Arab Spring. There's Kind Of A Competition Out There, You Might Have Noticed, Of Who Can Be The First To Say The Arab Spring Is Going To Fail. Everyone Says, "i Told You So, I Told You So About The Muslim Brotherhood." I Have No Desire To Tell Anyone Anything. I Don't Know. I'm Just Listening, Watching. It May Turn Out All These People Are Right, They May Be Wrong. They May Be Right This Year And Wrong Next Year, By The Way. I'm Just Trying To Listen Day To Day, Figure It Out.

Do You Know What My Favorite Renewable Fuel Is? An Ecosystem For Innovation.

I'm A Radical Pro-immigration Advocate. I'm Not Saying We Just Look At The Muslim World Or We Just Look At China, We Just Look At India As A Source Of Our Talent. But, One Thing We Know... First Or Second Generation Or New Immigrants Or Children Of Immigrants Have Started About 40% Of The Fortune 500 Companies. For Me It's Always Been A Really Very Important Issue That I Want America To Be Open To The Most Energetic And Talented People From Around The World.

What We Have In The Bush Team Is A Faith-based Administration. It Launched A Faith-based War In Iraq, On The Basis Of Faith-based Intelligence, With A Faith-based Plan For Iraqi Reconstruction, Supported By Faith-based Tax Cuts To Generate Faith-based Revenues.

There's A Difference Between Being Able To Make Long Distance Phone Calls Cheaper On The Internet And Walking Around Riyadh With A Pda Where You Can Have All Of Google In Your Pocket. It's A Difference In Degree That's So Enormous It Becomes A Difference In Kind.

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I Think No Country Is Going To Be Immune From The Arab Awakening Because The Arab Awakening Is Driven By Deep Human Longing For Dignity, For Justice And For Freedom. I Think That Applies To Young People In Saudi Arabia As Much As To Young People In Egypt, Tunisia, Or Yemen, Or Libya, Or Syria. If I Were In Saudi Arabia, I Would Be Getting Ahead Of This And Looking For Ways To Appreciate Those Aspirations And Align My Country With Them.

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Iraq May Still Have A Decent Outcome...but Even If It Becomes Switzerland, We Overpaid For It.

Our Bailout Of Detroit Will Be Remembered As The Equivalent Of Pouring Billions Of Taxpayers' Money Into The Mail-order Catalogue Business On The Eve Of The Birth Of Ebay.

When You Study History And Look At Every Civilization That Has Grown Up And Died Off, They All Leave One Remnant: A Major Sports Colosseum At The Heart Of Their Capital. Our Fate Can Be Different; But Only If We Start Doing Things Differently.

My Mom Enlisted In The U.s. Navy In World War Ii, And My Parents Actually Bought Our Home Thanks To The Loan She Got Through The Gi Bill.

I Love America. I Think It's The Best Country In The World. But I Also Think We're Not Tending To Our Sauce.

If We Don't Have A More Serious Energy Policy, The Difference Between A Good Day And Bad Day For America From Here On Will Hinge On How The 86-year-old King Of Saudi Arabia Manages...change.

In The Future, How We Educate Our Children May Prove To Be More Important Than How Much We Educate Them.

What If We're Wrong And There Is No Climate Change? Well, By Doing Everything Possible To Address It, We Will Still Use Less Water, Stimulate New Energy Savings And, In Time, Money-saving Technologies, Enjoy Cleaner Air, And Preserve More Forests And Trees And Animals.

At The End Of The Day, No Amount Of Investing, No Amount Of Clean Electrons, No Amount Of Energy Efficiency Will Save The Natural World If We Are Not Paying Attention To It - If We Are Not Paying Attention To All The Things That Nature Give Us For Free: Clean Air, Clean Water, Breathtaking Vistas, Mountains For Skiing, Rivers For Fishing, Oceans For Sailing, Sunsets For Poets, And Landscapes For Painters. What Good Is It To Have Wind-powered Lights To Brighten The Night If You Can't See Anything Green During The Day? Just Because We Can't Sell Shares In Nature Doesn't Mean It Has No Value.

Most Jobs Are Outsourced To The Past, They Aren't Outsourced To India Or Mexico Or Pakistan Or Anywhere Else.

The Reason That We Are Becoming Less Equal Is Because Of The Greater Requirements, Secure Requirements, For A Good Job. This Goes Back To The '80s Basically, This Started Changing As Globalization And The It Revolution Merged, And Each Started To Drive The Other.

The Dell Theory Of Conflict Prevention Argues That No Two Countries That Are Both Part Of The Same Global Supply Chain Will Ever Fight A War As Long As They Are Each Part Of That Supply Chain.

The Golden Straitjacket Is The Defining Political-economic Garment Of Globalization. [...] The Tighter You Wear It, The More Gold It Produces.

When Widely Followed Public Figures Feel Free To Say Anything, Without Any Fact-checking, It Becomes Impossible For A Democracy To Think Intelligently About Big Issues.

Scientists Tend To Focus On What They Don't Know More Than What They Do Know. And There Are A Lot Of Things We Still Don't Know About The Climate. But We Know The Difference Between Climate Variability And Climate Change, And Right Now The Amount Of Carbon In The Atmosphere Is Well Outside The Variability Pattern - And That's Quite Quantifiable.

Change Your Leaders, Not Your Light Bulbs.

The Historical Debate Is Over. The Answer Is Free-market Capitalism.

The Only Engine Big Enough To Impact Mother Nature Is Father Greed.

C'mon Kids! Wake Up And Smell The Co2! Take Over Your Administration Building, Occupy Your University President's Office, Or Storm In On The Next Meeting Of Your College's Board Of Trustees Until They Agree To Make Your School Carbon Neutral.

Many Of Us Who Grew Up Playing Golf Know That Our Kids Aren't Doing It. A Great Way To Enhance The Game, Make It Cool Again And Bring Back Some Of The Interest Among Younger People Is To Make Golf The Greenest Sport In An Environmental Sense. Every Course's Greenkeeper Should Think Of Himself Or Herself As The Greenkeeper: Responsible For Preserving The Green, Not Just The Greens.

Yes, The World Is Now Flat For Publishing As Well.

There Is Definitely Global Warming, And Man Is Definitely Contributing To It. Go Out To, Say, Montana And Talk To Some Pretty Conservative People, Hunters And Fishermen. They Know That In The Trout Stream They Fished When They Were Growing Up, The Trout Are Stressed Because The Water Temperature Is Going Up. They Know The Hunting Season Has Been Delayed Because The Snows Are Coming Later, And Therefore The Elk Aren't Coming Down From The Mountains.

The Financial Crisis Just Made The Hole Deeper, Which Is Why Our Stimulus Needs To Be Both Big And Smart, Both Financially And Educationally Stimulating. It Needs To Be Able To Produce Not Only More Shovel-ready Jobs And Shovel-ready Workers, But More Google-ready Jobs And Windows-ready And Knowledge-ready Workers.

I'm A Capitalist. I Believe In Capitalism. But Capitalism Only Works If You Have Safety Nets To Deal With People Who Are Naturally Left Behind And Brutalized By It.

When I Was Growing Up, My Parents Told Me, 'finish Your Dinner. People In China And India Are Starving.' I Tell My Daughters, 'finish Your Homework. People In India And China Are Starving For Your Job.'

You Win The Presidency By Connecting With The American People's Gut Insecurities And Aspirations. You Win With A Concept.

America Is Interested In Change And Reform In The Middle East But In A Stable Way.

Optimists Are Usually Wrong. But All The Great Change In History, Positive Change, Was Done By Optimists.

Positive Change

It Is Hard To Partner With Someone When You Become So Radioactive No One Wants To Stand Next To You.

There Are Elites That Are Real Leaders And Role Models. There Are Elites That Are Really Selfish And Want To Pull Up The Ladder Once They've Reached The Roof.

When You Lose Your Job, The Unemployment Rate Isn't Four Percent, It's 100 Percent.

Capitalism Makes People Unequally Rich. Communism Makes People Equally Poor.

Hope And Optimism Aren't Just Attitudes, They Are Life Strategies.

The Middle East Would Always Be An Important Trading Partner In Just A Market Sense, Like America Is A Big Market For Us, Asia Is A Big Market, Europe Is A Big Market. You Are Going To Have Hundreds Of Millions Of Consumers There, From Just A Standard Market Point Of View, From A Very Narrow American Point Of View.

Desktop Freelancers And Innovative Startups All Over The World

You'll Know The Green Revolution Has Been Won When The Word 'green' Disappears.

Our President's Latest Energy Initiative Was To Go To Saudi Arabia And Beg King Abdullah To Give Us A Little Relief On Gasoline Prices. I Guess There Was Some Justice In That. When You, The President, After 9/11, Tell The Country To Go Shopping Instead Of Buckling Down To Break Our Addiction To Oil, It Ends With You, The President, Shopping The World For Discount Gasoline.

Gasoline Prices

Benjamin Netanyahu, Understands That The Standing Ovation He Got In Congress This Year Was Not For His Politics. That Ovation Was Bought And Paid For By The Israel Lobby.

I Have A Daughter Who Is A Sophomore In College And Another Who Is In The 11th Grade Of High School.

All One Needs To Do Is Just To Go To Any Hospital In America And See The Number Of Pakistani Or Indian Or Lebanese, Or Syrian, Or Egyptian Doctors, Who Are Either First Generation Or Themselves Immigrants, To Know, And I'm A Big Believer - Brains Are Distributed Evenly Around The World. What Aren't Distributed Evenly Are Opportunities, Stable Government, Educational Institutions, Etc.

Your Boss Doesn't Care What You Know, Because The Google Machine Knows Everything. Your Boss Cares About What You Can Do With What You Know. That's The Only Thing Your Boss Will Pay For.

The Arab World Had A Big Problem Of Frankly Venal Elites. That Is Why These Revolutions Happen, Because People Didn't Think The Opportunities Were Being Shared Fairly.

Mcdonald's Cannot Flourish Without Mcdonnell Douglas, The Builder Of The F-15.

The First Rule Of Holes Is When You're In One, Stop Digging. When You're In Three, Bring A Lot Of Shovels.

The Unemployment Rate Today For People With Our-year College Degrees Is 4.1%, Which Is Almost None. That's People Switching Jobs Basically. That Tells You That Education Is The Only Way Up And The Only Way Out. If That Is The Fact, Then We've Got To Get More Of It For More People.

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Henri Frederic Amiel

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