Intertitle: Which over­looked issue should the next President prioritize?

Douglas Rushkoff: There’s a gen­er­al belief amongst the polit­i­cal class that a grow­ing econ­o­my is good for every­body, because as cor­po­ra­tions grow the mon­ey will trick­le down, and every­one will be wealthy. And what they need to under­stand is that the way cor­po­ra­tions grow is by extract­ing val­ue from peo­ple and places and stor­ing it up in share price. So, even if the Dow is going up, espe­cial­ly if the Dow is going up, it may just mean that peo­ple’s actu­al wealth is going down. So they need to real­ly chal­lenge that under­ly­ing assump­tion, and then start to recon­fig­ure pol­i­cy and tax law around that.

Intertitle: What job should the next President do for a day to under­stand the coun­try better?

Rushkoff: I think it would be inter­est­ing if the President had to be a min­is­ter for a day and actu­al­ly engaged with peo­ple’s spir­i­tu­al bank­rupt­cy, and think about, ​“Do I want to solve this by lying to them with anoth­er myth, or do I want to help them con­front the truth?”