says it's made significant progress in the investigation but no homicide charges have been filed. see the u.k. politicians or criticize london pleas for breaking up a vigil for a woman whose murder has some chalk waves across the u.k. there were scuffles at the event center of rock which police are trying to cancel because of lock down rules. bolivia's for president jennie and there's says it's an outrage that she's being accused of staging a coup and there's has been charged with terrorism sedition and conspiracy she took over as interim leader when evo morales was forced to step down in 2009 t. v it is an irregular detention because i was never summoned in addition to all that you know that as a former president i have a very particular situation but even with the abuse and the outrage and. police in russia have broken up a conference of municipal deputies in moscow arresting about $200.00 people including several well known opposition figures the raiders see that as the kremlin's latest effort to stifle dissent organizers say the government is trying to intimidate opposition politicians ahead of september's parliamentary elections 7 patients being treated for corona virus have died at a hospital in jordan after their oxygen supply ran out the prime minister says the health minister has been fired at the national medical emergency has been declared medical researchers say these sorts of goodies last break may have been a person infected during the last break that ended in 2060 if confirmed that means the person carried the virus for more than 5 years before spreading it the world health organization says more studies of the did but data rules out animals as a source of the outbreak they have been at least 18 cases of a bolo conservative getting this year those are the headlines and back with more news in half an hour that stars are the bottom line. teaching you out just the way english screaming on the channel. last thousands of other programs award winning documentary. did these reforms. subscribe to you she would slash al-jazeera english. hi i'm steve clemons and i have a question who benefits and who loses if the minimum wage goes up across united states let's get to the bottom line. advocates for raising the minimum wage in america came this close to achieving victory last week in congress president joe biden wrapped it into his multi-trillion dollar economic stimulus plan but it was knocked out at the last minute for years pro worker activists in america have been wanting to raise the bar from $7.25 an hour to $15.00 an hour as the bare minimum compensation an employer should offer his or her employees they argue that the current minimum wage which comes out to about a $1000.00 a month for full time work leaves millions of americans living in poverty opponents argue that doubling the salary of entry level jobs would force many businesses to shut down or fire folks or at least think twice before hiring more workers so who's wrong and who's right which plan would lift millions out of the american poverty trap and which plan to give small business owners a fighting chance fortunately we're joined by folks who have all the answers david serota is the editor at large at jacob in magazine and former speechwriter for bernie sanders presidential campaign last year and economist rachel grasmere worked for years of the joint economic committee of the united states senate and she's currently a senior policy analyst at the heritage foundation where she studies the economy and federal budget thank you to you both for joining us today let me start out with you rachel you $7.25 an hour i mean just hearing that and knowing you know i've been working on economic issues for a very long time and when you look at workers stagnation you look at wage stagnation i mean the 7 dollars 25 dollar line seems almost embarrassing who would be opposed to raising that what what is the case against raising the minimum wage. well the some $25.00 an hour that's not a living wage and i think we all acknowledge that but look at it it's a stepping stone it's the bottom rungs on the ladder so that people who are just entering the labor market the 26000000 americans who don't have a high school degree somebody with a disability or criminal record it's that starting point for them to be able to gain the education and experience so that they can climb further up the ladder and so obviously the people who are hurt by a minimum wage that excludes them from that is the very people who need those education opportunities in order to get their foot in the door i guess my question is why not make a step on the lower end of that level why be satisfied with that notion oh that's the ladder in why can't the ladder be in $15.00 an hour well there are certain people then when they 1st start out are not capable of producing the equivalent of $15.00 per hour that cost an employer $36000.00 per year i know that when i 1st start started my job at pizza hut washing dishes or when i was waiting tables at the sub minimum wage i wasn't producing that much in value but nevertheless that was a great opportunity for me to be able to gain that work experience and that education and so we've actually seen a decrease the number of people who are earning the 725 an hour or less even is that wages remain the same because when you have a strong economy and a tight labor market which is what we had from 2016 to $21000.00 leading up to the code in $1000.00 pandemic we actually saw the wages of the lowest 10 percent of workers rise the most they experienced 15 percent wage growth and that's more than the middle and that was more than the top 10 percent of workers and so when employers have to compete to get the workers that they need and when they have lower taxes and lower regulations and they can invest more in those workers and provide them with education and training that's when you see more opportunities for people and when they don't even earn the minimum wage anymore. david you and i have been corresponding for decades i think about our subject around growing inequality about the erosion of the american middle class and about the poverty economy in america why is the minimum wage debate such an important one to you well look i mean the minimum wage directly affects millions of workers it is the floor of wages in america obviously the minimum the raising the minimum wage would boost the wages of roughly at least 10000000 workers according to the congressional budget office so it is the it is the entry point it is true to the entry point to the economy and your your question at the beginning of this is right why can't the entry point be something better something that's more equitable especially at a time of rising economic inequality and i would i would answer your question one other way which is to say that this should be the minimum that is done to start restructuring the economy that if you're going to start to actually address not just getting people through this pandemic which is hugely important to help get people through a difficult time and the economic crisis but if you're going to start restructuring the economy as a whole to make sure that it starts producing and more and sharing more wealth with people at the bottom and to lessen that gap the minimum wage is the 1st place to start one of the other findings david and this is that if if they were to impose a $15.00 minimum wage around the country they talk about the job losses that would be created is that a concern to you do you do you buy that line or do you think that that those findings are off somehow. well i think that we have a lot of data from the last many years where states and cities have raised their minimum wage above the federal minimum wage and there has not been requisite mass job losses i mean there has been some job loss at the margins but overall study after study after study shows that there is not some huge giant effect in terms of depressing the labor market when it comes to raising the minimum wage that that part of what's offset about it is that when you pay workers more money they can pump more money into state and local economies in terms of spending so i believe that the economic data over years and years and years is is very clear on this that while you can argue there may be some job losses on the on the very very margins that overall in the macro economy it is not a huge effect at all and there's a much bigger effect in terms of the anti-poverty component in terms of giving workers at the lowest rung of the economic ladder giving them the resources they need to survive and rachel alexandra ocasio cortez has been out tweeting about this subject and there was a lot of frustration about the parliamentarian's decision not to let this go through a budget reconciliation process and having the $15.00 minimum wage part of that massive 1.9 trillion coburn relief bill be taken out as an item but she writes an op will put on the screen and says override the parliamentarian and raise the wage mcdonald's workers in denmark are paid $22.00 an hour 6 weeks paid vacation $15.00 an hour is a deep compromise a big one considering the face and i guess my question to you know a lot about not only the u.s. economy but other economies so let me just ask you if it can work in denmark why can't it work in the united states. one denmark at $22.00 per hour is not actually the result of a government mandated minimum wage and i think that this drug is to big differences that exist across countries but also across the united states i mean we have a very diverse place and when we talk about $15.00 per hour in d.c. when they've already implemented that that's very different than $15.00 per hour and diver of illnesses said across the state of mississippi even wages $15.00 per hour so if we talk about the federal mandate raising it to $15.00 per hour that's half of the population that you are mandating and wage increase for those employers that's very different that's equivalent to mandating $36.00 per hour in d.c. and i don't think anybody would say that that's a good idea and so this highlights the fact that if there are to be minimum wages they need to be tailored to each state any looks locality so that they're not disproportionately driving out job opportunities we have seen economic everton's in the preponderance of it says that there are negative employment effects but we've only seen those localized studies we have never seen a study that looks at more than doubling the minimum wage on a nationwide scale yes seattle has done it other places how but seattle did it and what happened employers tellabs the more experienced workers and those with less experience who were just trying to get a job had to go outside the city limits to make up for their lost work and there were negative employment impacts but what works for a high cost city does not work for rural alabama. david you have written a lot about this you've got a great headline out if i may as it's called raise the minimum wage stop the joe mansion presidency is very provocative and is a right word sitting in joe mansions office i would sort of take this is more compliment than critique in a way because you compliment him for deploying power his political power right now in a way that other advocates for workers in a 15 dollar minimum wage have not had the guts to do yet i mean it's a real slam against some progressives in the senate i'd love to get your snap shot in my one of my getting that right but you know i think in this when you look at it you're basically arguing that this is an end of the world issue that they have to act with greater backbone and severity which meant vote against the covert relief bill unless it has a $15.00 minimum wage built into it so kotel me what your thinking is in this to go to such brinksmanship regarding this particular issue. well to be clear i'm not arguing that progressive democrats should take down the covert relief bill i mean i worked in the house for 5 years and what i was arguing and what i am still arguing is that the progressive democrats in the house and by the way in the senate need to actually make crystal clear demands and then stick by them procedurally to make sure that the final package which has to pass and which is a must pass bill which will pass that the final package has some form of minimum wage increase in it joe manchin has made clear or i should actually say he's made clear he has implied that he would vote down a bill that includes things that he does not want you know that is the insinuation that is the implication that is what people assume and so what ends up happening in these legislative debates is that the legislative conversation revolves around how to appease him how to make him happy one of the things he said was that he may not support a $15.00 minimum wage but he would at least support at least an 11 dollar minimum wage chained to a consumer price index essentially rate of inflation the democrats have all said that they're most of them have said that they're for a $15.00 minimum wage so the question is well how do we go from the democrats saying that they want $15.00 joe manchin saying he take at least $11.00 and the final covert relief bill having 0 dollars of minimum wage increase in it and i think part of the issue is is that the other that the progressives in the senate that the house progressive says they have not said that we are not going to accept and we are not going to vote for a final code that bill covert relief bill unless it includes some form of minimum wage increase in it in other words that they have not been willing to behave the way joe manchin has behaved now the reason they haven't is because there's good stuff very good things in the covert relief bill that progressive support but the bottom line is if you're not willing to make demands and say that you have specific . things that you want in a bill and that you will withhold your votes for those things until those things are added to the bill then you should not expect to have them added into the legislation rachel from an economic perspective if there were to be a deal and joe manchin won the day on and you know $11.00 compromise or someone in there what would be the economic ripple effects from your perspective from that. well $11.00 per hour would be less harmful than $15.00 per hour you see fewer jobs lost you see fewer price price increases that are impacting families and workers but the reality is it shouldn't just be what works for joe manchin and for west virginia residents it should be what works for everybody across the 50 us states and so i think that what the procreate compromise would be is to tie whatever the federal minimum is set out to the locality based adjustment the federal government already does this with their own general schedule the scale and so they allow for differences in the cost of living across the united states you know what's going to happen here is a lot of unintended consequences especially in lower cost areas i was looking just at the child care sector in essence a relatively low wage sector $15.00 per hour there would mean a 21 percent increase in prices 43 percent increase in mississippi so we're talking about thousands of dollars more per year for a lower income and middle class working families and that prices them out of being able to afford other things and it makes the situation completely different in terms of whether they are even able to work to get much david how do you see locality based adjustments and i should also say just in response to rachel you know you know recently talked to the head of the farm workers union of america when you look at at particularly women in the workforce and the double date hit they've taken both in terms of being laid off in this time but also if they do have jobs of the of children at home the costs of of care on a lot of fronts and you know it's a very bleak picture for a lot of americans out there and i want to make sure that as we talk about this we're remembering how bleak the circumstances are for working americans who are doing everything right but still have the cards stacked up against them but david does rachel have a point about locality adjustments. well my point on the minimum wage is that we have to decide what the minimum is that that that's the 1st decision in the united states is what is the minimum acceptable and this is really a moral question what is the minimum acceptable pay per hour that we believe that people deserve when they work you can make arguments some workers are more valuable some workers are are are more productive this that and the other thing but the point is that we have to actually take a moral make a moral decision about what is the minimum that somebody who is working for an hour deserves to be paid for that hour that is a decision we have to make it is a national decision and i also think the 2nd point is is that we can look at the minimum wage in a in a snapshot situation where we say you know if right now we raise the minimum wage to $15.00 and it should be said that this is all phased in so let's be very clear about this we're not talking about taking the minimum wage to $15.00 you know tomorrow it's phased in but the point is that if you take a short term isolated view and say what would happen if we raise people's wages to to $15.00 people who don't make $15.00 what would happen to the economy in the into short term versus what would happen in the long term and the long term is an important point because it starts to factor in that there is more money in the hands of workers who then spend it in their local economies in other words that if you yes there's a there's a point you can say well you know from today tomorrow if you raise the minimum wage from from x. to y. there's an economic effect but there's also a longer term effect because you're putting more money into the hands of thousands if not millions of workers to then spend in that economy which creates all sorts of other positive effects for the businesses that we're talking about so why do you also have out on the other side here in the c.b.i. has you're putting more money into the hands of some workers and you're taking money out of the hands of other workers and other smaller businesses that are unable to adjust as well as larger businesses are and so the reality here that we have to recognize. ises policymakers cannot create new income they can only redistribute income if you want to achieve true lasting income gains then workers need to have additional education so they can become more productive paired with technology that makes them more productive things like apprenticeship programs that could be expanded are more opportunities to independent work for other low income workers is the solution is not redistributing income. but i would i would argue 11 quick point on this we don't necessarily have a problem in the united states where business profits business revenues and business margins are a problem we have a problem where we have seen for years and years and years of business profits corporate profits skyrocket and workers are not getting a share of those revenues and profits that they have not they're not getting the same share that they were getting 10203040 years ago so this is so so even if we talk only about redistribution and not revenue growth we have a fundamental problem where workers are not getting the share of the total poverty that they used to be getting in an economy that in many macroeconomic ways was working better 10203040 years ago well why don't you tell us why you have to go ahead rachel please and i think there's a misperception about the minimum wage and that you can just mandate and it's all the large companies that it's going to fact when the reality is is the smaller businesses that tend to employ more the wage workers and these are the businesses that we've been hearing about that simple right who served president biden and her restaurant she's taken out a home equity line of credit to help her workers because she wants to keep their paychecks coming and yet she said this will decimate my restaurant it will cut me out of business we have to recognize that this was a disproportionately impact smaller business owners their average income is $69000.00 a year if not billions of dollars in corporate profits the money simply isn't there for the smaller businesses and there are the moms that will be driven out well i think rachel you're. point guess is something that i've been concerned about which is. just think hypothetically for a moment david you probably get angry hear this but what if you did accept the joe manchin line that 11 dollars gets that worker who's working full time above poverty and index it above that level that he could argue well that's a moral argument but my concern after looking at this is that workers have not had portable pension benefits have not had portable health care have not had portable you know benefits across a lot of you know the workers' spectrum in the particularly in the decades that i've been paying attention to this and talk to david when in the 1990 s. you seen everything else be flexible and nimble in an economy except workers who were sort of captured and so i'm just wondering if it doesn't make much more sense it some level to address what rachel said is a start i mean she doesn't agree with me on the minimum wage but start with a minimum wage then bring in education create a reverse match and pension benefits begin looking at that broader arena of inequality that's built up for decades so david tell me where i'm wrong with that. well i agree partially with it in the sense that yes i mean in the united states we need to guarantee health care to all americans we need to do a better job of guaranteeing adequate retirement for all americans other industrialized countries do these basic things which gives workers a lot more flexibility in their own right in the labor market and which can alleviate many of the things that we're talking about i don't think it negates the the know the need for a minimum wage and a much higher minimum wage but i would agree i would certainly agree that that exacerbating all of this arguably at the foundation of much of this is you talk about health care i mean beach and job lock and people dealing with you know all the economic issues that they face i mean the fact that we don't guarantee health care to all americans a good quality health care that is a huge piece of the puzzle and what the puzzle that we're talking about is how do people survive in the economy and to bring it back to the covert relief bill steve one of the things that i'm most concerned about in the covert relief bill is is that there's great stuff to float people through this horrible economic moment unemployment benefits and the like but it doesn't really in any serious structural way address the health care sit situation it doesn't have a public insurance option as sure as sure as heck doesn't have medicare for all or a guaranteed health care benefit in there you know what it does have it has tens of billions of dollars to hand over to private insurance companies to try to get people onto these ac exchanges which we know are defined by higher out of pocket costs and $1.00 in 6 roughly one in 6 claims are denied now is that better than nothing for people sure is that a way to continue fortifying a health care system that creates so much pain suffering an economic hardship yes and until we address that health care structure we've got a serious problem that you alluded to rachel me just tease out this point that david is making that in those a ploy employers that are employing people at $7.25 an hour. those employers if they're if they're single head of household or you know not single had a household they're getting the earned income tax credit hopefully if they're applying for their hopefully on the obamacare exchanges but there are other subsidies that these companies are getting to have that $7.25 an hour employee which you know to me doesn't make economic sense and as david said they're getting much less value for the dollar that is being put into those health care exchanges then those of us that are in other health programs and so how do you from an economist perspective square that is that a healthy part of having a low wage employee at that at that low level of minimum wage what do you think the better way to target individuals especially somebody who's supporting a safe play to let them have the income and the health care and the comprehensive things that they need to support that family is through those things like the earned income tax credit or through the health care subsidies because the reality is those are things that a 16 year old working at mcdonald's doesn't need but you want them to be more targeted toward those individuals a problem though that has actually been experienced in places like california is when you have these rising wages going towards $15.00 per hour you see that some of these lower income families are losing the subsidies that they need one family day out of $4.00 really is losing $2200.00 per month in child care subsidies the incentive for employers to reduce workers' hours below $30.00 both 30 a week so they can save thousands dollars in the employer mandate from obamacare you know this is a comprehensive policy and it ends up having a lot of unintended consequences for the very people the lower income the working families that we all agree we want to help have rising incomes hey david as we talk about gloom and doom in the u.s. economy what to do about it i understand you have a new netflix hollywood production called don't look up tell us about it. sure it's a movie that is spearheaded by the one and only great director adam mckay what i can tell you is it's sensually about a story of a world in which an asteroid is headed towards earth and nobody seems to care nobody seems to want to do anything about it kind of metaphorical for our current world on a lot of these issues do you see the minimum wage debate as an end of the world to me. i don't think it's like an asteroid headed towards earth certainly it's an important debate but i do think the you know what the movie is sort of spotlighting is in some cases our hostility to what's happening in our world the hostility to basic facts the hostility to science still a t. towards you know towards the the basic reality that we live in and i think that i think that's been a major theme of the last few years and hopefully the movie kind of brings the subtext and makes it the full text for people to to think about the kind of information system that we're living in economists rachel gress lawyer and author david serota thanks so much for sharing your thoughts with us today thank you to both yeah so what's the bottom line in the 1980 s. the poor were told that wealth will trickle down to them just be patient and quiet so here we are 40 years later wondering where is that trickle the rich are much richer and everyone below is struggling more and more the american social contract is broken and it's pretty obvious that unfettered markets leave a lot of people behind but there's a collapse of empathy across society today america's winner takes all reality means a few win and a lot lose and it's no wonder that america's political culture is so toxic these days i'm not sure that the fight over the minimum wage bill will fully address the broader issue of systemic inequality in divisions in america but it's an important 1st start and that's the bottom line. frank assessments the world is on the brink of a catastrophic failure is that a fair assessment you catastrophic. to twice as valuable back saying informed opinions should we be buying bit coy ultimately it will be sovereigns and governments who are buying this that is the direction this is all headed in-depth analysis of the day's global headlines inside story. these things are sick and it's time for a different approach one that is going to challenge the way you think and asking the questions now is the new host of the next season of the show that's got no space for sale but only targeted let's leave simplicity to the headlines join me as i take on the liars dismantle the misconceptions and debate the contradictions. are marc lamont hill and it's time to get out from right here on al-jazeera. i want to have is on china working in asia and africa there'd be days where i'd be choosing editing my own stories in a refugee camp that know it's interesting and right now we're confronting some of the greatest challenges that humanity has ever faced and i really believe that the only way we can do that is with compassion and generosity and come from miles because of the only way we can try to solve any of these problems is together that's why it is there are so important we make those connections. about the justice for bruna tarver the testers of the u.s. although the blank would killed by police a year ago. would watch an officer amongst one headquarters here are also coming up police and heavily criticized for arresting people think tribute to a woman who was abducted at. the spot turn over with safety.