A 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 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, ill start with you, so you have uh the union and the companies uh remaining far apart in terms of the autoworkers strike on key economic issues. The ua president has said um that hes going to stick with that demand for 40 , pay hikes 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 of latest is uh the uaw has gone down to around 36 . Um, you know, negotiate, you make uh smaller moves 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 ish percent to 30. Percent 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 that perhaps many dont realize and this uh pretty much a flashback thats going back to the year 209 um i dont know if you recall but gm was on the brink of collapse the ua the uaw ag to let the company hired new workers at that time but at about half the hourly wage that that prevailed. And with um skimpier Retirement Benefits and high temp workers at even lower rates from what we understand and outsource more jobs abroad uh this is while the american tax payers force 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 endure that they applied . 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. Of 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 of were gearing up for an Election Year uh uh next year, so be interesting to see what happens. William black, i 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 dollars, what . Digital 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 but. Precisely those things that youve just explained, so uh, it is really important and very few americans understand that there is this uh twotier system uh that the companies insisted on, and shamefully the federal government uh under uh president s bush and obama, agreed to of paying as you say new workers far less and uh also uh 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, uh, 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. 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 in the us, id like to throw this at you, which came from hospitality worker, thats on strike, uh, 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 sectors, if not all sectors, of course this could be something that could happen all the time, but in this particular uh economic uh, i 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 viewpoints that we uh heard when you had the uh, zakoti park demonstrations that were happening back then uh in terms of uh um you know the 99 is the 1 . Because every day the class contradictions are sharper across us society, and these workers are class conscious workers, they know that gm and and ford depend on them and 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 at. 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 sean fane quotes the bible saying that its easier for camel to enter into through the eye of k than rich person uh like 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, its its pretty incredible, 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 uh figured here through variety. 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 yeah, the disparity is actually massively greater than uh even that number indicates, because it isnt so much the top 1 , is literally the top 1,00th of 1 , there the the gains are are. In the thousand percent range, however, the United States and what biden of course is calling bidonmics, 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 a fake uh one where he pretended to meet with autoworkers, unionized auto workers, in fact it was a scab plan. You now working to uh try to break uh the strike uh 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 i grew up in dearborn a worked for Ford Motor Company my you know as 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 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 end . Child poverty, why cut it in half, but hey, uh, 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 uh, 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, uh, first of all, uh, inflation. Is very important and uh you talked about Child Poverty and id 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, when you take a look at some the categories, for example, its very shocking uh to hear that uh in 2022, price of eggs in terms of the inflation. Was uh had increased uh 19 uh oil fats 9 and then you had uh uh things like um in 2022 uh 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 are they 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 cigarettes or when you go. By butter or marger and 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 or 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 called atrocity propaganda against their political enemies such as um russia, or or venezuela or nicaragua, but i wish that the professor there in the midwest could give tour of what cleveland in detroit, in chicago, in the midwest, 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 or two generations now have suffered from. All right, william black, im going to uh ask you the same question, because i 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 uh, inflation almost certainly is overstated, and thats something that even conservative economists, who and by the way, the politics the United States is that its the democrats who want emphasize inflation isnt that big. Problem and its republicans who want emphasize uh that its a you know the biggest problem uh ever and economists of course are overwhelmingly in the conservative uh camp um but i i can go through the technical reason but probably boring uh even conservative economists think the inflation is overstated by about one and a half to two percent and the u. S. Has the lowest inflation rate of any major industrialized nation with a sort of capitalistish 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 i im often pushing in the opposite direction of where you you may think im coming from, and saying no, we need to be emphasizing poverty, and uh, my counterpart is absolutely right, i was born in detroit, um, and ive taught for years in missouri, and st. Louis, and detroit, are two. The huge cities that but used to be among the five lart 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, 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 of the United States, its a little technical, and uh, in mexico. All right, well im glad you mention the points that you made about inflation because were trying to figure it out really, i mean daniel shaw, our guest there says that its not as bad as as it, 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 workers, im looking down a list of uh, some of the industies and some of the companies. I mean you had the screen waters which appeared they reached uh some kind of agreement, you had starbucks employees, amazon workers, you have frontline workers, um, whether its nurses, hotel staff and pilots, you have the ups, which they reached an agreement, if they hadnt, that would have been 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 strikes have made made a comeback, i mean so why are they out uh 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, theyre 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, 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 in in the fight for 15 over the course of the past 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, 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 mccarthy 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, 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 uh who are in uh 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 uh 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 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 what 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 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 zelenski. In kiev uh, that that money is never questioned, they just approved 21 uh 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 and in 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, bloomington, minnesota, thank you, with that we come to an end for this edition of the spotlight from the team, its goodbye. 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. صحبت کردن در مورد آقای پروفسر عبدالهد یک کار افتخارآمیزیست بسیار پیگیر بود در دوره دانشجویی فوق العاده باهوشن و ایده های بسیار خوبی دارن اگر چیزی رو نمی دونه میگه سریح که نمی دونم خیلی سریح میگه نمی دونم باید یاد بگیرن تا زمانی که موضوعی را به نتیجه نرسن رها نمی کنن ما اینجا چیزی به نام نشد. نیست این فعلا اینجا هیچ کاربردی نداره قدرت اعتماد به نفس بالا دارن و معتقدن که باید در کشورشون و برای کشورشون کار بکنن. من از دوران دانشجویی که دانشجوی دوره دکترای بودم توی رشته مهندسی الکترونیک، گرایشان الکترونیک، مژغول شدم به صورت جدی وارد حوزه پزشکی بشمن و هم در حوزه بایولوژی سلولی، هم در حوزه پاتولوژی. و هم در حوزه کلاً کنسر. خب این ارتباطات گسترده با مراکز پزشکی درنیتز دکترا باعث شد که یه دید خیلی خوبی پیدا کردم به حوزه پزشکی و با توجه به بک گراندی که از حوزه الکتونیک و نالوتکنولوژی داشتم بفهمیم که چه اتفاقاتی در حوزه بایولوژی سرطان که قابل ترجمه به الکترونیک باشه داره میفته. صاحب تئوری بسیار معتبری هستند. این تئوری اولین بار در دنیا مطرح شده. داده های اون در مجلات نیچر چاپ شده استاد شدنم آزمایشگاه دار شدنم باعث شد که هم ارتباطاتم با حوزه پزشکی خیلی قوی تر شد هم اینکه از طرفی خودش باعث شد که من بتونم تحقیقاتی که مدنظرم دارم و سؤالاتی که تو ذهن دارم و ایده هایی که دارم فکر می کنم به نتیجه برسه که بتونه بیشتر به زندگی مردم کمک بکنه و کمتر بکنه بالاخره درد و آرامی که در اثر بیماری سرطان چه از نظر مالی چه از نظر روحی روانی برای جامعه هست رو بتونم توش خدمت گزار باشم مهمترین سرطانیم که این توش خیلی مرزها و مارجین های آلوده درد سررس میشه سرطان سینه هست که متأسفانه بسیار فراگیر داره میشه و من خودم به یقین رسیدم که وقتی یک خانوم توی خانواده همچین سرطانی میشه واقعاً شیرازی خانواده از هم میباشه ایدهی که تو ذهن من بود راجع به ساختی دستگاه تشخیصی که بتونه ریل تایم مارجین های آلوده رو مورد شناسایی قرار بده رو من شروع کردم ۴ ساله که تقریباً میشه گفت تمام وقت تو این حوزه از وقتی که رو تئوریش کار می کردیم بعد که رو ساخت قطعه و دیوایسش کار کردیم بعد که بردیم تو حوزه تست هایی سلولی حوزه تست های حیوانی حوزه تست های انسانی تقریباً میشه گفتیم باهاش زندگی می کنیم. وقتی اینقدر قدرت شناخت من با یک دستگاه کوچیک الکترو سرژری در اتاق عمل داشته باشم قطعاً به بیمارم کمک بسیار بیشتری می کنم. Level one, youre watching basketball here from, im your host, your headlines for this hour, iran once again warns that any geopolitical change in the caucases will destabilize the region and escalate the crisis. The European Union promises to increase military support for ukraine despite russias warnings against western armed supply to kiev. And the democratic peoples. Republic of korea caused the un Nuclear Watch dog washingtons paid trumpeter for joining a us the Pressure Campaign against peonyang