Partial or full one may be a window into a much bigger economic problem in the us, which points to a dire situation as opposed to the rosy announcements thats made by the Us Government on things like unemployment and inflation. First let me introduce our guests. Ian black, professor of economics and law at the university of missouri, kansas city, joins us from bloomington, minnesota. Also joining us is daniel shaw, academic and commentator who joins us from new york, welcome to you both uh 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 pay hikes of about 20 . Thats the latest we have, whats your impression on it . Yeah, the uh absolute latest is uh the ua. W has gone down to around 36 negotiate, you make smaller moves, and take more time, by the way, the actually theres a settlement uh with the Canadian Auto workers who are of 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 of 25 to 30 increase okay uh thats over the period of several years right right um lets look at um one thing here daniel shaw 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 hired new workers at that time, but at about half the hourly wage that that prevailed, and with skimpire retirement benefits, and higher temp workers at even lower rates from what we understand, and outsource more jobs abroad, this is while the american taxpayers forked over 10 billion dollars to save the company, 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 endure 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 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 is asking, well where is the money, why are you so stingy with us . Weve seen that this is 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 our guests 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 profit. Overall of the uh manufactures themselves where were looking at 250 billion. One particular stat, 1. 7 Million Dollars 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 giving them much worse uh pensions, so 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 uh, because it penalizes in particular uh younger workers. All right, one of the things that uh, 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, uh, she said uh, i think people are 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 sectors, 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 . Mean, why is it that you know were looking at uh the types of statements and viewpoints that we uh heard when you had the park demonstrations that were happening back then uh in terms of uh um 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 our mortgage and get enough groceries and settle our uh medical bills, so when shawn faine quotes the bible saying that its easier for camel to enter into through the eye of needle than rich person uh like these ceos 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 um, its its pretty incredible uh William Black when you take a look at the uh difference when it comes to the 1 versus the body. 90 between 1979 and 2022, what i uh figured here through variety of resources, inflation adjusted annual wages of 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 massively greater than uh even that number indicates, because it isnt so much. The top 1 is literally the top 1 th00th of 1 uh there the the gains are in the thousand percent range. However, the United States and what biden of course is called bidennomics, turning around insult into a benefit, or as we is in 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 uh 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 middleclass uh type wages uh, i can tell you, i grew up in deerborn, worked for Ford Motor Company, my you know stepdad worked for uh Ford Motor Company, my grandfather worked for Ford Motor Company uh and and such, um, so yes, the the bottom 10 of the United States still in terrible shape, um, and again, gets political, we took reduced Child Poverty in half, now now first, if youre going to have a policy, why not in Child Poverty, why cut it in half, but hey, uh, the republicans insisted on getting rid of that, 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 contested, and its very unclear which way the elections are going to go. In the United States on these issues, exactly, you you touched a number of issues that are really important there, uh, first of all, uh, inflation is very important, and uh, you talked about Child Poverty, and i like to uh discuss that a wider scale in terms of poverty in general, but daniel shaw, first lets talk about this inflation that the us uh pins the number at around 3 , from what i understand, um, workers pay, to have increased 5 , but when you take a look at inflation, i 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 hear that uh in 2022, price of eggs in terms of inflation was uh had increased 19 , oil flats 9 , and then you had uh uh things like um in 2022, food at school 305 and the eggs were 59 , mean what is the deal there, what are we looking at . Mean, you cant just say inflation three uh what . What are they, what did i say theyre saying . Uh, 3 , i believe is what i said, but really its not that, is it . I mean, im sure when you go buy a pack of cigarettes or when you go buy butter 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 days. 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 from gary indiana or flint michigan and to see the complete social neglect uh than an entire generation of children on generations now have suffered from. All right, William Black, im going to uh ask you the same question, because 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 is around the 5 mark . Yeah, i dont think youre going to like my answer, um, actually, inflation almost certainly is overstated, and thats something that even conservative economists uh, and by the way, the politics in the United States is that its the democrats who want to emphasize inflation isnt that big a problem, and its republicans who want emphasize uh that its a you know the biggest problem ever, and economis of course are overwhelmingly in the conservative camp, but i i can go through the technical reason, but probably boring, even conservative economists think that inflation is overstated by about one and a half to 2 , and the us has the lowest inflation rate of any major industrialized nation with a you know sort of capitalistikish type economy, so the pressure in the United States, politically is emphasize inflation and say therefore we shouldnt have social programs for the poor, so im im often pushing in the opposite direction of where you you you may think im coming from, and uh saying, no, we need to be emphasizing poverty, and uh, you know, my counterpart is absolutely right, i was born in detroit, and ive taught for years in missouri, and st. Louis, and detroit are two the the huge cities that, but used to be among the five large, 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 catast. 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 600,000, 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 of the United States, its a little technical and uh in mexico. All right, well uh, im glad you mention uh the points that you made about inflation because were just trying to figure it out really, i mean di uh our guest there says that its not as bad as as it uh that thats as bad as some may make it, but uh, so what, what about the workers that are striking, i mean its not just the auto workers, im looking down a list of uh, some the industies and some of the companies, i mean, you had the screen riders, 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 have been the. The biggest 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 uh strikes have made a comeback mean so why are they out a 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 uh 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, they no longer counted um in the actual statistics, so unemployment is often so much higher when you go through a press 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 vast uh 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 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 the 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 mccarthy, in which case youre about the 20th most powerful uh person uh on your very best day and 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 you know not succeeding in america, who are in very bad condition, the government safety net is absolutely essential, and uh, again to get politics are important, the Republican Party actively wants to increase unemployment. And poverty of infants and youth, its just staggering, yeah, well, lets end it on this food assistance, 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 i was shocked to to read that its 41. 2 million people, 12 and a half percent of the total total us population, i think thats skewed on the high 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 stet 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 . Picture and thats why so many people are asking uh 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 zelensky 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 the argument that were making that that 200 billion dollars needs to be invested in snap in a different nutritional programs as well as uh education and other infrastructure programs in our communities. All right were going to end it 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 loumington minnesota thank you. With that we come to an end for this edition the spotlight from we cover tway and the team, its goodbye. Asia 335, the nays are 91. To shut the government down would be disastrous for the american people, our military and our economy, shutting down our entire government over obscure policy decisions. Gentleman from new york is recognized for one minute, պայմանագրի համար, մենք սկզբից էլ ասում էինք, որ որեւից բանակցությունը հայաստանի հանրապետության եւ որեւէ ղեկավար, որեւէ պատճառ չունի, մենք ունենք, մեկ հստակ ճանապարհ, դա հանրաին, i think so. Aleppo, a city raised to the ground, destructed by war. But beyond the rubble and a half destroyed house, life still continues, with all of its beauty, zest and hope. The headlines this hour, an explosion and ensuing gunfire hit the turkish capital ancora, close to parliament. Authorities say the incident was a terrorist attack. Evans president. Highlights the importance of muslim unity as he addresses International Islamic unity conference in tehran. And the pro russia party which seeks the end military aid to ukraine wins general elections in nato Member States slovakia