Larry Summers in Washington Post

Well, he's a known genius.  So let's see what he has to say:

". . . . When Steve Jobs revolutionized personal computing, he and Apple shareholders did very well, but those shareholders are all over the world, and a much smaller benefit flowed to middle-class American workers, both because production was outsourced and because the production of computers and software was not terribly labor-intensive.

"The market system distributes rewards increasingly inequitably. On one side, the debate is framed in zero-sum terms, and the disappointing lack of income growth for middle-class workers is blamed on the success of the wealthy. Those with this view should consider whether it would be better if the United States had more, or fewer, entrepreneurs like those who founded Apple, Google, Microsoft and Facebook. Each did contribute significantly to rising inequality. It is easy to resent the level and extent of the increase in CEO salaries, but firms that have a single owner, such as private equity firms, pay successful chief executives more than public companies do. And for all their problems, American global companies have done very well compared with those headquartered in more egalitarian societies over the past two decades. Where great fortunes are earned by providing great products or services that benefit large numbers of people, they should not be denigrated."

A bit of fuzzy thinking here, just like Gingrich with his Henry Ford and Bill Gates examples.  THOSE AREN'T THE PEOPLE WE ARE AFTER!  On the other hand, did the capitalist system really have to promise Bill Gates $60 BILLION dollars for him to write some crummy code that turned up on a lot of computers?  And Apple has always been priced too high for what you get.

But I'm getting distracted.  The point is NOT to take money from the hands of real entrepreneurs and investors.  It's to take money from the skimmers -- the people who don't provide jobs, and whose daily work typically does more harm than good to consumers.  I'm not sure, but I think Larry might be one of those.  Any consulting he does for any individual corporation or bank is sure to benefit that bank, almost certainly at the expense of society.  Those are the payments that we want to tax, just like we should have taxed those consulting fees that Gingrich got from Freddie Mac.


Seriously, if he is so smart, why is simplifying so much?  Is it truly beyond his big brain to figure out a system where investment is still encouraged and rewarded, AND skimmers get taxed?

To his credit, he then says "Meanwhile, those who call concerns about rising inequality misplaced or a product of class warfare are even further off base" and makes a few obvious points about income inequality.

And he ends with three suggestions:

"First, government must not facilitate increases in inequality by rewarding the wealthy with special concessions.  Where governments dispose of assets or allocate licenses, preference should be on the use of auctions to which all have access. Where government provides implicit or explicit insurance, premiums should be based on the market rather than in consultation with the affected industry. Government’s general posture should be standing up for capitalism rather than for well-connected capitalists."

The first and last sentences are obvious, but they are old news.  Government, including both Administrations that Larry served in, has always placed well connected capitalists over capitalism.  It shouldn't but it does.  We know the problem Larry, where's the Harvard solution?  The middle two sentences are too specific and vague at the same time.  

On to No. 2:

"Second, there is scope for pro-fairness, pro-growth tax reform. The moment when more great fortunes are being created and the federal deficit is growing is hardly the time for the estate tax to be eviscerated. And there is no reason tax changes in a period of sharply rising inequality should reinforce the trends in pretax incomes produced by the marketplace."

Can't argue with the estate tax point.  And the other point is good too, but I resent his "produced by the marketplace" dig at the end.  Yes, one can say that the skimmers' income is "produced by the marketplace," but only because the marketplace has become corrupt.    

And then No. 3:

"Third, the public sector must ensure greater equity in areas of the most fundamental importance. It will always be the case in a market economy that some will have mansions, art, etc. More troubling is that middle-class students’ ability to attend college has been seriously compromised by increasing tuitions and sharp cutbacks at public universities, and that, over the past generation, a gap has opened between the life expectancy of the affluent and the ordinary."

Ok, states have to keep tuitions low.  Good.  How is that done?  Raise taxes on the skimmers.  And STOP all student loan programs -- as the Economist recently explained, if we lend the kids more money, that translates directly into higher tuitions.  Not a good deal for the kids.

Talent vs. Striving III

Back to Hambrick and Meinz, who are really starting to annoy me.  I found the following attributed to Hambrick on a site called psychcentral. “A person with a 150 IQ is in theory much smarter than a person with a 120 IQ, but those additional 30 points produce little measurable benefit when it comes to lifetime success,” Brooks writes in “The Social Animal.”   Hambrick’s response: “David Brooks and Malcolm Gladwell are simply wrong. The evidence is quite clear:  A high level of intellectual ability puts a person at a measurable advantage — and the higher the better.” The problem is that Hambrick is oversimplifying.  Like a true scientist (I suppose), he has "controlled" all the other variables, and yes, ALL other things being equal, the person with 150 IQ -- or better working memory -- will, in the majority of cases, have a "measurable" superiority at some specific task for which working memory is important. But that's not what Brooks and Gladwell are saying.  They are saying that in the overall mix of things, those IQ points do NOT typically result in more success in life.  And although I don't know what statistics they are pointing to, I have little trouble accepting what they say, especially since Hambrick admits that PRACTICE is a much larger contributor to mastery than is "working memory."  If people in the 120 IQ range "practice" more, then Hambrick's critique goes out the window. And just to play it out, let's consider who the 150 IQ crowd is.  As you start going up the IQ scale,   you'll find more introverts, and introversion often puts a cap on just how "successful" a person can be, at least in most business environments.  And you start encountering more and more weirdos.  Admit it, you know it's true.  Sure, some of them go on to start companies like Microsoft and Apple, but some of them move to Montana and mail letter bombs. To say without any proof that the Gladwell/Brooks assertion about "success" is "wrong" shows a serious lack of mental rigor and scientific objectivity. 'Nuff said.

SAT II and Shakespeare (Talent vs. Striving, cont'd).

Oh, speaking of the SAT (in the recent post about striving vs. talent), here’s a sample question from the SAT II – English Literature (available for free on the SAT web site).  I'm using it here to demonstrate that you have to dumb yourself down for reading comprehension on the SAT.  So rather than viewing people who get 800s on the SAT as "profoundly gifted" (per Hambrick and Meinz, the authors of the NYT article) let's just acknowledge that they've learned how to take an SAT test:

Read the following poem carefully before you choose your answers.

Passage

	Against that time (if ever that time come) When I shall see thee frown on my defects, When as thy love hath cast his utmost sum, Called to that audit by advised respects—
	Against that time when thou shalt strangely pass, And scarcely greet me with that sun, thine eye, When love, converted from the thing it was, Shall reasons find of settled gravity— Against that time do I ensconce me here
	Within the knowledge of mine own desert, And this my hand against myself uprear, To guard the lawful reasons on thy part. To leave poor me thou has the strength of laws, Since why to love I can allege no cause. (1609)

If the speaker is implying in line 10 [the bolded line above] that he is not deserving of love, which of the following most strongly supports the implication?

    (A) "defects" (line 2)

    (B) "utmost sum" (line 3)

    (C) "strangely" (line 5)

    (D) "love, converted" (line 7)

    (E) "settled gravity" (line 8)

The practice quiz gives the following hint, which of course you won’t get on the actual test: "Look for the choice that most directly comments upon a perceived shortcoming in the speaker."

 

The obvious answer is “defects.”  A person who acknowledges that he has “defects” might consider himself unworthy of love.  And that's the right answer.  End of issue.  

Lesson:  Don’t overthink it.  If you overthink it, you’ll likely end up going down a rabbithole.  Here's what happens.  You ask yourself:  is "defects" really the "best" answer?  Look at the context from the first two lines:

Against that time (if ever that time come)
When I shall see thee frown on my defects

Here, the speaker (Shakespeare, for the record – Sonnet 49) is noting that the time that his lover (the young man of the sonnets, actually) will “frown on my defects” might never come.  He is acknowledging that he has defects, and he is implying that his lover knows them, and he is even contemplating that s/he might never even frown upon them; in other words, that s/he will know about them and accept them.  Right now he feels loved, and there is no indication in these two lines that he feels that he doesn’t deserve the love.  Of course, the hypothetical tells us to assume that the speaker is “implying . . . that he is not deserving of love.”  But it’s just not clear that the “defects” passage is where the “implication” is.  Let's look elsewhere.

What are the other choices?  Well, b,c, and d clearly make no sense.  Eliminate those. 

But what about “settled gravity”?  

When love, converted from the thing it was,
Shall reasons find of settled gravity—
Against that time do I ensconce me here

Here we’ve got “love” finding “reasons” of “settled gravity”.  This is probably ambiguous, but one way of reading is it that his lover might find good reasons – hitherto unknown to the lover – to stop loving him.  "Gravity" means "weight," and "settled" can certainly mean “agreed upon.”  In other words, reasons that everyone would agree upon – i.e. GOOD reasons.  These are not mere “defects” – which could be something as slight as a physical defect or an annoying habit, but real “reasons,” which could well mean “moral defects”. 

So the choices are:  “defects” – which might just be physical defects or annoying habits that the lover overlooks initially but which after a while start to grate on the lover and turn love to disdain.  If that “definition” of defects is open, then answer (a) is suboptimal, since that kind of “defect” would not imply that the speaker is unworthy of love.

Reasons of “settled gravity” – we can’t tell exactly what this means, and maybe the speaker is being sarcastic, but it seems likely that this refers to real, good reasons for not loving the speaker.  If that’s what it means, then it means that the speaker has reason to know that he is not actually worthy of love.  That seems to match the question better.  Yes, the word “reasons” is not in the quote.  But “settled gravity” is the modifier that makes the reasons what they are – and creates the implication of a true moral defect, and unworthiness of love.

But the makers of the test were apparently unaware of this potential for confusion, and they even list this as an “easy” question.

For the record, I’ve looked at four books of the Sonnets (the Bush/Harbage Pelican version, the Duncan-Jones Arden version, the Cross/Brooke Yale version), and the Wright/Lamarr Folger version), and none of them provide a clear answer to the question.  Wright and Lamarr give“for staid decorum” for “of settled gravity,” which seems like a bit of a stretch.  This would have to be the “sarcastic” interpretation suggested above.  In their “translation” of the entire sonnet, they seem to equate “reasons of settled gravity” with “prudence.”  I’m not saying this interpretation is wrong, it’s just far from clear.  They don't explain why they reject the plain language interpretation of "settled gravity."

Cross and Brooke simply give "for a grave demeanor" with no further explanation.  So they read the line as "Shall reasons find for a grave demeanor," even though the line says absolutely nothing about demeanor or looks.

Bush and Harbage are more straightforward in acknowledging the ambiguity of the line:  for “of settled gravity” they write:  “for continued coldness (?) “of sufficient weight(?).  I have no idea where they get “coldness" from (or "continued," for that matter).  I still think "agreed upon" is better than "sufficient" for "settled" but I won't quibble -- their “reasons of sufficient weight” option is similar to my reading as suggesting true defects, for which there is good reason not to love the person.

Duncan Jones gives “gravity” as “the mature judgment associated with age” and cites 2H4 (Henry IV Pt. 2) line 1.2.60 (where the Chief Justice says: "There is not a white hair on your face but should have his effect of gravity" and Falstaff responds "His effect of gravy, gravy, gravy." She thinks the sonnet parallels Henry V’s rejection of Falstaff (a different, much later, passage of the same play), and she says:  “Since neither his own love nor that of the young man can be justified, the future cessation of the youth’s affection needs no justification either.” It’s not clear where in the text she is getting the "no justification for cessation" idea from. But it seems inconsistent with the premise of the SAT II question, which is that the speaker is not worthy of love, and that the cessation of love CAN be justified in some way.  It also seems inconsistent with what she just said about "mature judgment." Seriously, it’s hard to tell what she’s saying or where she’s getting it.

So by now you've spent fifteen minutes thinking about it and are no closer to the right answer than you were when you first looked at the problem.  No matter how you look at it, there are problems with BOTH answers.  In your mind you're trying to figure out which one is less wrong, which might well lead you to check "settled gravity," which at least has a chance of being right (and it is consistent with one of the suggestions from Cross and Brooke).  But remember -- if you have to think about it this long, it's because you're thinking of something the question writer didn't think of.   Just check "defects" and move on!

Talent vs. Striving in NYT

In an article titled "Sorry Strivers, Talent Matters," David Hambrick and Elizabeth Meinz, Associate Professors of Psychology, take issue with the notion (proposed by K. Anders Ericsson and spread by Malcolm Gladwell in "Outliers," David Brooks in "The Social Animal", and Geoff Colvin in "Talent is Overrated") that if you're above a certain intelligence level (120 IQ), talent does not matter so much -- you can achieve mastery by putting in 10,000 hours of practice (which seems to be the requirement for mastery in most fields).

Here is the first of their two reasons for saying so (their second is their own work, which is obviously the reason they are writing this in the first place):

"Exhibit A is a landmark study of intellectually precocious youths directed by the Vanderbilt University researchers David Lubinski and Camilla Benbow. They and their colleagues tracked the educational and occupational accomplishments of more than 2,000 people who as part of a youth talent search scored in the top 1 percent on the SAT by the age of 13. (Scores on the SAT correlate so highly with I.Q. that the psychologist Howard Gardner described it as a “thinly disguised” intelligence test.) The remarkable finding of their study is that, compared with the participants who were “only” in the 99.1 percentile for intellectual ability at age 12, those who were in the 99.9 percentile — the profoundly gifted — were between three and five times more likely to go on to earn a doctorate, secure a patent, publish an article in a scientific journal or publish a literary work. A high level of intellectual ability gives you an enormous real-world advantage."

I'm happy to report that the Ericcsson/Gladwell point remains fully intact, and if anything, this result supports the "pro-striver" side of the debate.  

Let's take this paragraph apart piece by piece.  "(Scores on the SAT correlate so highly with I.Q. that the psychologist Howard Gardner described it as a “thinly disguised” intelligence test.)"  Very clever, they are using a quote from multiple-intelligences guru Howard Gardner (who presumably would be in the pro-striver crowd) against the pro-striver position.  And I will even admit that it's probably true, there is a correlation.  But let's see what they do next:

"The remarkable finding of their study is that, compared with the participants who were “only” in the 99.1 percentile for intellectual ability at age 12, those who were in the 99.9 percentile — the profoundly gifted — were between three and five times more likely to go on to earn a doctorate, secure a patent, publish an article in a scientific journal or publish a literary work. A high level of intellectual ability gives you an enormous real-world advantage."

Labeling the SAT-score 99.9 percentile as "profoundly gifted" should qualify as scientific malpractice.  If you've taken the SAT, you know five things:

1.  You can improve your score by studying (striving)

2.  There are no advanced concepts -- no calculus, no trigonometry.   You just need to be a bit clever in applying some very basic math, none of which is beyond the grasp of a 120 IQ twelve year old.

3.  If you're in the 95th percentile or above, the questions were almost certainly written by someone dumber than you.  On reading comprehension, you need to be thinking about what that person would see as the "right" answer, as opposed to what a more nuanced analysis might yield (see next post).

4.  If you don't know all of the SAT words that are in the study guides, you are at risk of losing some points on the vocabulary.

5.  A large number of the SAT words in the study guides are simply not encountered by normal twelve-year-olds or even high schoolers.  The most efficient way of learning them is to simply focus on them and learn them.

I would be willing to admit that any kid who scores 99.9% on the SAT WITHOUT preparing for it probably is "profoundly gifted."  But also probably very lucky (see no. 3 above).  There is no suggestion that the kids in the cited study didn't study, and it's almost certain that many of them did, especially the ones in the 99.9 percentile.

So this study has taken two highly artificial groups and compared them -- the 12-year-old kids who scored in the 99.1 percentile (for 12-year-olds) vs. those who scored in the 99.9 percentile.  What can we say about 12-year-olds who scored 99.9 vs. those who scored 99.1?  Clearly, they did something to remove the possibility of losing points -- they probably made absolutely certain that they knew all the vocabulary backwards and forwards, had practiced the math stuff enough to ensure they had time to go back and make sure they didn't make any careless errors, and they also dumbed down their thinking on reading comprehension enough to be sure they got all those questions right, too.   All that means is that they were a lot more anal than the people who scored in the 99.1 percentile.  It does not mean they were more intelligent.

But then what is the "proof" that these "profoundly gifted" people were more intelligent after all?

They "were between three and five times more likely to go on to earn a doctorate, secure a patent, publish an article in a scientific journal or publish a literary work." In other words, they were more anal than the mere 99.1'ers. With the exception of getting a  patent (which can take very little effort, but often reflects a desire to get rich), all of these activities require some dedication.  It's exactly what you would expect from people who at age 12 were sitting inside compulsively memorizing SAT words, in order to prove how "smart" they were to some grown-ups who had selected them for a "smartness" study.   And perhaps even more importantly, none of those activities translates very well to real-world success.  We all know Ph.Ds who are idiots, and we know that they must have written scientific articles to become Ph.Ds (and note that the Hambrick/Meinz study itself presumably qualifies as such an article).  And don't get me started on patentees and authors.

In order to somehow prove that "talent" matters as much as they say it does, they'd have to come up with a much better way of measuring "talent" than SAT scores and doctorates, patents, scientific articles, and literary works. 

The authors go on to tout their own results as reinforcing the SAT "findings":

"In our own recent research, we have discovered that “working memory capacity,” a core component of intellectual ability, predicts success in a wide variety of complex activities. In one study, we assessed the practice habits of pianists and then gauged their working memory capacity, which is measured by having a person try to remember information (like a list of random digits) while performing another task. We then had the pianists sight read pieces of music without preparation.

"Not surprisingly, there was a strong positive correlation between practice habits and sight-reading performance. In fact, the total amount of practice the pianists had accumulated in their piano careers accounted for nearly half of the performance differences across participants. But working memory capacity made a statistically significant contribution as well (about 7 percent, a medium-size effect). In other words, if you took two pianists with the same amount of practice, but different levels of working memory capacity, it’s likely that the one higher in working memory capacity would have performed considerably better on the sight-reading task."

Where to begin with this?  Again, it overwhelmingly proves Ericsson's point about striving -- by far the largest contribution to a pianist's ability to sight-read (nearly half) is practice.  The factor that they have identified -- working memory -- gives only a 7% contribution.  It's hard to tell what this means in this context.  The authors just say it means that for two pianists who have practiced the same amount, it's "likely that the one higher in working memory capacity would have performed considerably better on the sight-reading task." 

In their recent article on this subject in the Oct. 2011 "Current Directions in Psychological Science," they explain that the data comes from a study that they did in 2010, and produce a chart with sight-reading on the y-axis and working memory on the x-axis that shows that (1) for pianists who haven't practiced all that much, better working memory means better sight-reading (as represented by a blue line that slopes upward from y =3 to y = 4), and for pianists who have practiced a lot better working memory also means better sight-reading (as represented by a red line that slopes upward from y = 5.5 to y = 6.5).

Of course, their point is that everything else being equal, working memory makes a difference for sight-reading.  That's fine, and hardly surprising -- you can readily imagine why this correlation is so.  If working memory is hard-wired (and I have no reason to believe it isn't), then working memory (which is the ability to have a lot going on in your head at the same time) is obviously going to help you sight-read music, everything else being equal.  But I have no idea how important this small, incremental ability in "sight-reading" is in the total mix of qualities that makes for a great pianists.  And the authors don't come close to telling us.

As an example, it's pretty obvious that a chess player with a better memory for opening sequences will be better than one who, everything else being equal, does not have as good a memory.  And perhaps that's why Grandmaster Sergio Mariotti -- who supposedly had a photographic memory -- got to be a grandmaster.  But he never was able to distinguish himself particularly among grandmasters. 

In the end, their data support rather than refute what the pro-strivers have been telling us:  The pianists with poor working memory who have practiced a lot score 5.5 on sight reading, while the people with excellent working memory who have practiced only a little score only 4.0.  That sounds like a pretty good argument for practice and striving to me!

And beyond that, we're only talking about a 7% contribution.  As above, the best the authors can say is that it is "likely that the one higher in working memory capacity would have performed considerably better on the sight-reading task."  That means that at least in some cases, all other things being equal, pianists with worse working memory managed to do better at sight reading than those with better working memory.  For those pianists, talent did not matter one bit.


To their credit, the authors hedge a bit here and there, e.g. "None of this is to deny the power of practice. Nor is it to say that it’s impossible for a person with an average I.Q. to, say, earn a Ph.D. in physics."  But then they go on to say: "It’s just unlikely, relatively speaking. Sometimes the story that science tells us isn’t the story we want to hear."

I haven't heard anything from "science" that I don't want to hear.  The results of the research they've provided us do nothing to diminish the value of practice; they only confirm it.

n.b., by coincidence, I had earlier today listened to Jane McGonigal's TED Talk on the value of videogaming.  She cites the Ericcson study (via Gladwell) for the point that because video-gamers have put in 10,000 hours of gaming by the time they finish high school, they must have gotten very good at SOMETHING.  We just need to figure out what that something is!  (And to her credit, McGonigal suggests four somethings: (1) urgent optimism - the desire to act immediately, combined with reasonable hope of success; (2) weaving tight social fabrics -- takes trust and builds bonds to play games with people; (3) blissful productivity -- gamers know they are happier working hard than just hanging out; (4) epic meaning -- gamers want to be attached to world-changing activities.).   

Elizabeth Warren for President (in 2016)

She's the only candidate on any horizon who comes close to embodying what I'm saying here, and (not coincidentally) the only one I can imagine going along with my cottage-cheese requirement.  She recognizes that nobody gets rich by themselves, and she might actually be able to whip up some support for enforcing the social contract I've been talking about.  Here's a link to a Nov. 18 NYT profile.

She'll become a Senator in 2012, and will probably not be as careful with her votes as Senator Obama was.  But that's fine, that's WHY we'll vote for her in 2016.

You can just tell that she's not interested in the money or the perks.  I'd love to see what happens when some lobbyist offers her tickets to a hockey game.

TED Talks

A handy spreadsheet with available TED talk downloads is here.  Many good talks on many subjects by a variety of speakers, all free to download under a Creative Commons license.

Hypocrisy Gingrich-Style

I actually like to hear Newt Gingrich speak.  He is very articulate, and sometimes what he says makes sense.  (Of course, sometimes it doesn't -- see post on OWS).  But the idea that he could make $1.6 to $1.8 million in "consulting fees" for trying to help Freddie Mac bolster its image with Republicans is sickening on many levels. 

It's the worst kind of influence peddling -- he went against his supposed principles for the sake of money.  So although it's sickening, it's also very sweet to see it come home to roost.  When Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae were deemed to have been a big part of the meltdown problem, Gingrich immediately remembered how much he didn't like them (and could only remember getting about $300K from Freddie Mac).  Now that this has been disclosed, he's trying to tell us that he was merely giving Freddie Mac history lessons.  Bye Newt, and good riddance.

But Gingrich is far from unique.  I just read somewhere that either one hundred or two hundred K Street lobbyists are former Capitol Hill staffers.  And it's a rare lobbyist that will refuse a client or a position based on principles.  So how does one find a truly principled (current or former) politician or staffer?  Is there some kind of a test we can give them?


The answer is probably not.  The system simply has to be changed so that it's simply not worth it for people to become lobbyists -- either because the politicians can't be influenced, or because there isn't enough money to be made. 

Which brings me back to my point from previous posts.  Here, we've got a perfect example of someone in the 1% who is making money in a way that does more harm than good to society.  Gingrich is not a job creator.  Clearly, it was in Freddie Mac's interest to pay Gingrich those fees -- they wouldn't have done so if it wasn't.  So the "free market" is not the answer here.  Why can't we just impose a gigantic tax on income from this kind of work?

Just to bring it home, take a look at Jack Abramoff, who made $20 million a year buying politicians and their staffers.  He feels bad about it now, and he explained the system to the rest of us on Sixty Minutes a couple of weeks ago.

Here are some of the highlights of the Sixty Minutes appearance:

Abramoff: When we would become friendly with an office and they were important to us, and the chief of staff was a competent person, I would say or my staff would say to him or her at some point, "You know, when you're done working on the Hill, we'd very much like you to consider coming to work for us." Now the moment I said that to them or any of our staff said that to 'em, that was it. We owned them. And what does that mean? Every request from our office, every request of our clients, everything that we want, they're gonna do. And not only that, they're gonna think of things we can't think of to do.

Abramoff: At the end of the day most of the people that I encountered who worked on Capitol Hill wanted to come work on K Street, wanted to be lobbyists.

Stahl: You're telling me this, the genius of figuring out you could own the office by offering a job to the chief of staff, say. I'm having two reactions. One is brilliant. And the other is I'm sick to my stomach.

Abramoff: Right. Evil. Yeah. Terrible.

Stahl: 'Cause it's hurting our country.

Abramoff: Shameful. Absolutely. It's the worst thing that could happen. All parts of the system.

Stahl: I'm mad at you.

Abramoff: I was mad at me-- 

Stahl: Was buying favors from lawmakers easy? 

Abramoff: I think people are under the impression that the corruption only involves somebody handing over a check and getting a favor. And that's not the case. The corruption, the bribery, call it, because ultimately that's what it is. That's what the whole system is. 

Stahl: The whole system's bribery? 

Abramoff: In my view. I'm talking about giving a gift to somebody who makes a decision on behalf of the public. At the end of the day, that's really what bribery is. But it is done everyday and it is still being done. The truth is there were very few members who I could even name or could think of who didn't at some level participate in that.

Abramoff: If you make the choice to serve the public, public service, then serve the public, not yourself. When you're done, go home. Washington's a dangerous place. Don't hang around.