As opposed to the rosy announcements thats made by the Us Government on things like unemployment and inflation. First let me introduce our guests. Black professor of economics and law at the university of missouri kansas city, joins us from bloomington, minnesota. Also joining us is of danielle academic and commentator who joins us from new york. Welcome to you both, William Black, ill start with you. So you have uh the union and the companies uh. Remaining far apart in terms of the autoworker strike on key economic issues. The ua president has said um that hes going to stick with that demand for 40 pays over fouryear contract uh the companies however have offered pays of about 20 . Thats the latest we have. Whats your impression on it . Yeah the absolute latest is uh the uaw has gone down to around 36 um negotiate you make uh smaller moves uh and and take more time, by the way, the actually theres a settlement uh with the canadian uh auto workers who are also part of the uaw, so the management it is, as you can see quite different in canada. What type of settlement did they reach with canada . So they reached a settlement more in the lines of 25 is percent to 30 increase, 25 to 30 . Increase okay uh thats over the period of several years right right um lets look at um one thing here daniel shot that perhaps many dont realize and this uh pretty much a flashback and thats going back to the year 2009 um i dont know if you recall but gm was on the brink of collapse the ua the uaw agreed to let the company hire new workers at that time but at about half the hourly wage that that prevailed and with um skimpier retirement benefits. Uh and higher temp workers at even lower rates from what we understand and outsource more jobs abroad uh this is while the american tax players forked over 10 billion dollars to save the company uh so in a way they sacrifice themselves in order to get the company up and running um coming out of the uh the sorry state that it was in due to the financial crisis um do you think that the sacrifice that the workers have uh end that they applied to themselves and then endured all these years is uh being repaid back in a proper way by not getting the pay increase that theyre demanding . And thats why theyre still on strike, thats why the strike has expanded uh now to 25,000 workers, um, i think the contradictions are on full display, the ceos of these uh of the big three Automobile Industry giants, their yearly salaries are between 25 million. And uh 50 million just for these ceos, so the 25,000 auto workers, the uaw. Union is is asking, well, where is the money, why are you so stingy with us . Weve seen that this has turned into um, one of the biggest stories in the country with biden and and trump uh visiting the workers uh this week, as we know were gearing up for an Election Year uh uh next year, so itll be interesting to see what happens. William black, are guess the talked about the ceo pay, looking at uh what General Motors ceo is making, its 29 million, ford ceo, 21 million and stalanta ceo 25 million, so these are uh these are, i mean pretty high salaries, im guessing, especially when you take a look at the profits overall of the uh manufacturers themselves where were looking at 250 billion, one particular stat, 1. 7 million were made off of each and every one of the workers, why are they holding out so uh much then when it comes to the workers . Oh, because they get their bonus in part by precisely those things. That youve just explained, so uh, it is really important and very few americans understand that there is this uh two tier system uh that the companies insisted on and shamefully the federal government uh under uh president s bush and obama uh agreed to of uh paying as you say new workers far less and uh also uh giving them much worse uh pensions so uh uaws done two clever and appropriate things, one is it said, hey, we think our increase should be that of the ceos, after all, our workers were responsible for the ceos gains and the companies gains, and second, you need to uh be getting rid of this two tier system, because it penalizes in particular uh younger workers. All right, one of the things that since were on this. Topic of ceos um daniel shaw, im looking at at just a reaction in terms of strikes overall on the us, id like to throw this at you, which came from hospitality worker, thats on strike, she said, i think people all around the country here are just getting fed up with the corporations not sharing or including them into the profit or acknowledging our hard work that we put into the company, that seems to be sentiment that is echoed across uh variety of sector. If not all sectors of course this could be something that could happen all the time, but in this particular uh economic uh, guess atmosphere in the us, that rings a bell, what are your thoughts on that . I mean, why is it that uh, you know, were looking at the types of statements and view points that we heard when you had the uh, zikoti park demonstrations that were happening back then, in terms of uh, you know, the 99 versus the 1 . Because every day the class contradictions are sharper across us society and these workers are class conscious workers, they know that uh gm and and ford depend on them in in their labor and their back pain and their blood sweat and tears and the sacrifices that they make every day. If we listen to uaw president sean fayne yeah he almost has a Bernie Sanders esk uh tone to him. When he describes the billionaire class, the elon musks and the bill gates and how these individuals live when the vast majority of us, the workers who keep this country running uh depend a monthly check to see if we can pay mortgage and get enough groceries and settle our uh medical bills, so when sean fayne quotes the bible saying that its easier for camel to enter into through the eye of needle than rich person uh like the ceo to enter into the kingdom of god, i think that uh, rhetoric there, that anticapitalist rhetoric speaks for millions and millions of workers across this country. In terms of wage increases, its its pretty incredible, William Black, when you take a look at the uh difference when it comes to the 1 versus the bottom 90 , between 1979 and 2022, what i figured here through variety of resources, adjusted anyway. The top 1 rose by 145 , and then uh for the bottom uh rose by only 16 . Why such disparity . Okay, so the disparity is actually massive later than uh even that number indicates, because it isnt so much the top 1 , its literally the top one thousandth of 1 . There the the gains are in the thousand percent range, however, the United States and what biden of course is calling biden nomics, turning around and insult into a benefit, or as we as economic ranks would call running the economy hot um has actually reversed for a time uh these slightly some of these longterm trends, in other words, real wages uh, despite inflation, have actually started growing and uh by we the United States had record low unemployment and record low unemployment of minorities uh in particular, and thats why you see biden actually uh meeting, so hes the first president of the United States ever to join a picket line in support uh of a union, and the political dynamics are such that trump therefore state defate. Uh one where he pretended to meet with auto workers, unionized auto workers, in fact it was a scab plant, working to uh try to break the strike. So there actually have been some meaningful gains and uaw is trying to translate uh these gains into uh wages that are actually very strongly middle class uh type wages uh i can tell you i i grew up in dearborn a worked for Ford Motor Company my you know stepdad worked for uh Ford Motor Company my grandfather worked for. Ford company uh and and such um so yes the the bottom 10 uh of the United States still in terrible shape um and again this gets political we took reduced Child Poverty in half now first if youre going to have a policy why not in Child Poverty why cut it in half but hey the republicans insisted on getting rid of that uh and we see in the new numbers that the the Child Poverty rate has gone up very substantially, so this is intensely uh political and uh contested and its very unclear which way the elections are going to go in the United States on these issues, exactly, you talk, you touched a number of issues that are really important there, first of all uh inflation is very important, and you talked about Child Poverty and i like to uh discussed a wider scale in terms of poverty in general, but daniel shaw, first lets talk about this inflation that the u. S. Uh pins the number at around 3 from what i understand, um workers pay uh to have increased 5 , but when you take a look at inflation, mean youre in new york daniel shaw, maybe you can tell us uh when you take a look at some of the categories, for example its very shocking uh to here that uh in 2022 price of eggs in terms of the inflation was uh had increased 19 uh oil fights 9 and then you had uh uh things like um uh in 2022 uh food at school 305 and the egg were 59 . Mean what is the deal there . What are we looking at . Mean you cant just say inflation three uh what are the what did i say theyre saying uh 3 i believe is what i said but really its not that is it . Mean im sure when you go buy a pack of cigares or when you go buy but or margin its not just a 3 increase right . So im trying to if you see where im going with this what is the deal there in terms of that versus the wages that average americans are earning . Yeah, uh, based on uh, your assessment of whats going on here in new york city, one would think that you lived here for the past uh, you know, four, five decades, because you describe all too accurately, uh, we hear all these fancy numbers in in in the mainstream media, but when we go to the grocery store, when we go to the pump, if we take our families out for dinner, we feel that pinch more than ever, and we know that the United States specializes in whats called atrocity. Propaganda against their political enemies such as um russia or or venezuela or or nicaragua, but i wish that the professor there in the midwest could give tour of what cleveland and detroit and chicago in the midwest uh looks like after decades and decades of social uh abandonment, this was uh the thriving industrial uh sector of our job and i think a foreign audience would find it unreal to see the images gary. Indiana or flint michigan and to see the complete social neglect uh than an entire generation of children or two generations now have suffered from. All right uh William Black im going to uh ask you the same question because uh really curious as to whats going on when it comes to inflation versus pay what is it like there um in Bloomington Minnesota where youre at what does it look like does it look like to you that is that its around the 5 mark yeah i dont think youre going to like my answer um actually. Inflation uh almost certainly is overstated uh and thats something that even conservative economists who and by the way the politics of the United States is that its the democrats who want emphasize inflation isnt that big a problem and its republicans to want emphasize uh that its the biggest problem ever and economis of course are overwhelmingly in the conservative camp um but through the technical reason is probably boring uh, even conservative economists think that inflation is overstated by about 1 2 to 2 , and us has the lowest inflation rate of any major industrialized nation with you, sort of capitalistish type economy, so the pressure in the United States politically is emphasize inflation and say therefore we shouldnt have. Programs for the poor, so im often pushing in the opposite direction of where you you, you may think im coming from, and saying, no, we need to be emphasizing poverty. And uh, you know, my counterpart is absolutely right, i was born in detroit, um, and uh, ive taught for years in missouri, and uh, st. Louis uh, and detroit are two of the the huge cities that, but used to be among the five, lar, depending on the time period, among the five largest cities in the United States, or the sixth largest cities in the United States, and now. They are catastrophically in terrible uh condition, for example, the uaw at peak had about 1. 5 million members, it now has 400,000 active members, but is responsible still for negotiating on behalf of retirees whose benefits the uaw still you know uh pushes for, number about 6000, but you can see that decline from roughly 1. 5 million to roughly 400,000, and thats actually a uaw number, so that actually includes employment in canada, which is quite substantial in the auto industry, uh, and puerto rico, which is kind the United States, its a little technical, and uh, in mexico. All right, well, im glad you mention uh, the points that you made about inflation, because were just trying to figure it out really. I mean daniel shaw our guest says that its not as bad as as it uh thats as bad as some may make it, but uh so what what about the workers that are striking . I mean, its not just a auto worker, im looking down a list of uh some of the industries and some of the companies, i mean you had the screen waters which appears that they reached some kind of agreement, you had starbucks employees, amazon workers, you have frontline workers, whether its nurses, hotel staff and pilots, you had the ups, which they reach an agreement if they hadnt that would be. Strike in us history or should i say the largest strike in us history so and and the news um reads that uh you know its strike season that the us a strikes have made a comeback mean so why are they out striking is it not because of inflation obviously but because of their pay thats usually what its all about so how do you explain that yeah tomorrow will be the uh first day of strike october it seems october is gearing up to be a month of uh strikes i think. Professor blacks macroeconomic analysis is um informative at the same time if we take a step back in terms of unemployment. You know, the New York Times will report this, the presidency will report that in the department of labor, but when we go into our communities, the reality is even harsher on the ground, because how many workers, how many families have actually given up, theyre no longer counted um in the actual statistics, so unemployment. Is often so much higher when you go through a pressed communities, the black community that often those numbers are um under reported uh in terms of um the the strikes i think so many workers are again uh waking up to the reality of what these mass uh the automobile starbucks we saw the vast strike. Campaigns and in the fight for 15 over the course of the past uh uh decade or or so and and workers are demanding more because the economic reality is biting and they cant survive on what we survived on uh the decades past sure well i have to squeeze in uh this question because uh if i dont uh then my producer is going to get really mad at me and its about the its about the Government Shutdown um were trying to figure out whats going on there and the last that we heard is uh that well what is last you heard William Black, im sure you can give us better idea, i mean are we looking at uh mckarthy doing his job or is he going to be out of a job if that thing with ukraine doesnt go through, well hes going to be out of a job, but in a broader sense hes been out of the job, in other words, hes never had the powers of a true speaker, uh, the speaker of the house is the answer to uh, a trick question in the United States, uh, whats the most powerful, second most powerful elected official in america, its not the Vice President , its the. Speaker of the house, unless youre mccarty, in which case youre about the 20th most powerful uh person on your very best day, he doesnt have many good days, so this is very bad for the uh economy potentially, but worse its very bad for precisely the folks that we have both been emphasizing, the folks who are not succeeding in america, who are in very bad condition, the government safety net is absolutely. And again to get politics are important, the Republican Party actively wants to increase unemployment and and youth, its just staggering. Yeah, well, lets end it on this food assistance, and im going to give you a minute there, daniel shaw, i have two pieces of stat to throw at you, one is the snap program where uh, i was shocked to to read that its a 41. 2 million people, 12 and a half percent of the to total us population, i think thats skewed on the high uh side, but even if you go and lets say put it at 35 million, thats still a lot of people that need assistance for food, and the other stat i want to throw you is how much the us actually generates in terms of revenue, which is around 6. 3 trillion, but it is said that almost half of that goes on whats called entitlement programs. Now theres something really wrong if you have to spend that much on entitlement programs, not that im saying thats a bad thing for the ones that are getting it, and you have that many people who need food assistance, whats wrong with this picture . And thats why so many people are asking every year. We hear these rumors about Government Shutdowns and it uh freaks us all out, but you never hear about their military aid to zelenski in kiev, that that money is never questioned, they just approved 21 billion dollars in additional funds for this proxy war in ukraine against russia and russias geopolitical interests, which means that the total amount spended now is is foreign excess of 200 billion dollars and thats that were making that that 200 billion dollars needs to be invested in snap in different nutritional programs as well as uh education and other infrastructure programs in our communities. All right, were going to end there. Thank you so much, daniel shaw academic and commentator from new york, William Black, thank you for your contribution, professor of economics and law, university of missory, kansas city, wington minnesota, thank you, with that we come to an end for this edition of the spotlight from way in the team, its goodbye. Another footage has been released showing a us military convoy apparently transporting stolen syrian oil to iraq. Us house of representatives passes a stop gap measure to avert a Government Shutdown just hours before funding expires. And the Chinese ForeignMinistry Says that the United States is a true empire. Of lies after the Us State Department accuses beijing of manipulating the global media