Benefits when it gets to loyal employees like you only to discover a sign tapes locked doors telling you the store you work at is close that well thats what happened to these sams club employees last week in the rochester new york area. But. Walmart corporation behind sams club quietly announced the closure of at least sixty three sams club Stores Across the u. S. The same day within twenty four hours that they praised the new g. O. P. Tax overhaul which was according to this administration supposed to help corporations afford to create more jobs not as this move by walmart did remove nearly ten thousand jobs in the american marketplace according to a press release from walmart their focus has been on these associates and their communities and communicating with them. Taping a sign on the door here those very words contradict walmarts actions and if youre wondering why the way walmart treats its employees matters its because walmart is one of the handful of private and public organizations that lou kind of literally sets the tone for employers around the world walmart is the Third Largest employer on earth keeping two point one Million People in jobs around the world the only organizations that are bigger are the Peoples Liberation army of china with two point three million employees and the u. S. Department of defense which tops the list with three point two million Workers Worldwide habits guidelines the culture of workplaces comes from the top not just the top of a company but also from the top of an industry i mean why would a business with fifty employees care about making sure theyre building a loyal staff with places like walmart and mcdonalds can pollute lands take advantage of poor workers to bulk up their bottom line and and all do so while profiting from taxpayer funded subsidies but then why would the worlds biggest private employers care when the worlds biggest employer the u. S. Department of state takes such unbelievably bad care of its employees asian orange to iraqi burn pits jobs in the military are deadly but what is so unsettling is that despite massive increases in funding they have not raised the working conditions. Calories benefits our ongoing care of our nations military veterans and Public Servants so while we can be furious at walmart use the much maligned g. O. P. Tax overhauls of ben as a benefit to bulk up their Real Estate Holdings cut back on expenses and remain competitive can we really be surprised the Worlds Largest employers have no shame and using human beings to build wealth while ignoring the humanity of the people who make them rich and powerful and rich powerful and wealthy is kind of the name of the game today and watching the heart really blows my mind i didnt realize that. Ten thousand employees you know youre a big company with you close sixty some stores ten thousand people lose their jobs thats thats a town. Thats multiple in the higher. End of my home to yeah yeah its sort of hard to watch because while the one hand you see a corporation once again which you know thats capitalism not so you know suck it up buttercup thats kind of little bit of a good thing is that yes of course somebody wants to make money of course these things are going to happen of course theres only going to be so much but i think its just the way they did and that was unnerving. And the thing about what i think the people start to stand like were talking about how many i dont think a lot of people know and when you look at the chart of the top four employers in the you know on earth and theres your top four. War. War war. I mean its all there to you know the the department of defense this is worldwide we are u. S. Military the largest employer chinas military and then mcdonalds. And whats really frightening about the list and. Really pointed out is the. Military u. S. Military number one ok we see how they treat veterans and soldiers you know v. A. Hospitals are. Taking care of the vets when they get back its been a mess everybody you know everybody saying that i dont know how china takes care of its soldiers sorry. I dont i dont know. But then when you look at like walmart and then the next on the list is mcdonalds that means three out of the four on that list all have absolutely atrocious history of taking care of their employees like you said where theyre underpaid no retirement nothing like that blows my mind and thats top down like you pointed out man whats a person with fifty point they dont take care theyre not ways better when they know that the big dogs at the top dont care either well theres this idea that i would whether its public or private and i think thats the idea is when you look at those numbers theyre supposed to be job creators that was the whole point was lets give capital to companies so that they can you know share at the heart of the idea but really what theyre just trying to do is as has sort of hedge their bets on a real estate deal actually the sams club c. E. O. John furner said that some laid off workers would be redeployed to nearby locations so to see you know that two of the sixty three locations are said to be repurposed and ecommerce two of the sixty. But i think its very funny that its like well redeploy theyre even used. Military jargon the idea that someone would think that its appropriate in leicester in the military you dont just tape somebody a sign to someones door they show up and say this is what youre doing. And the fact that there were problems from a single wage increases yet so yeah there were what they were going to raise that year one out of one side of them out there saying look were going to raise minimum wages from nine to eleven were going to give people bonuses were going to do this were going to do this. Less than twelve hours later they were like oh yeah and on top of that i scuttlebutt i heard is that they were they were just doing it like in response to what their competitors because their competitors like raise wages like you know whatever a little bit but there was a little they were soldiers of your game anyway at the end of the day sir you know and whats really interesting to have is when we were talking earlier about how this is a long history in the United States. And back in the bag but having labor versus management. Since one thousand nine hundred examples of before and there is and the thing about him is that theres this one this one area where you really see the how how hard the fight was and of these people really put their lives online i mean we talk about coworkers and save and call matter as save coal but coal workers back in the in the twenty is something states for a lot of labor and a lot of labor issues in this country there was actually organized labor leader from the one nine hundred twenty s. Well into the sixtys john l. Lewis he was a he said quote workers have kept faith in american institutions most of the conflicts which have occurred have been when labor is right to live has been challenged and denied and here so now you know thats coming here it is in the twentys and thirtys theyre still fighting that thing of which is that the worker trusts the institution they trust this idea back in the days of carnegie or whoever you know this is a guy with a were going to were part of this one where together and its when the institutions like a walmart say we cant have full im going to not give you full time employment youre just going to show up. And were going to pocket how much money for the side of capitalism and theres a lot of real debate right now especially amongst like millennial as and people like that is do we will cap. Capitalism work in the future you know is this really is the staining idea of how we go about our business because clearly its eating the world alive right now where weve gone too far and thats why as i mentioned at the top of the show this letter from the man running like the Biggest Investment Firm in the world is now saying all right corporate c. E. O. s its time because governments. Are calling on governments in this letter saying look governments have failed to prepare for the future for their people you know retirement infrastructure training people to get ready for automated. Worker retraining because the government has failed to do that corporations need to step up and that he handles the lifeblood the investment money keeps a lot of these major corporations up and one point seven active one point seven trillion active investments is coming you know its incredible to go to work i mean this is one of those things that i feel positive about it because i think the younger generations are you know the generation x. The millennial theyre not going to invest like you know our parents and our grandparents and our great grandparents did just fine the thing that chip stock thats going to. Theyre going to invest in companies that they feel have value thats the big question since this letter was released which i think the New York Times that are probably fired a corner offices and movement in a mall across the world because i was like. Im going to have a conscience about it you know and whats going to dictate what is going to dictate whats good works whats bad work theres a lot of questions so i love that anybody said heres an idea. There i just killed people part probably not going to be on the left whats interesting is his letter could you know be taken as a threat a lot of people are is that they might not invest in companies that they give a bad rap to that and black rock the company is literally doubling down internally on corporate government Corporate Governance increasing the size of the team by a hundred percent who judges Corporate Governance those they look at her like who they want to take the super rich money and people that rely on them to make their money where do i want to put it theyre now going to have a check was saying look if youre not if your company isnt doing enough good public good were not going to give you any money so its going to be interesting to see if this is going to are the plays out it will definitely be interesting to see you know either we go to break Court Watchers dont forget to let us know what you think of the topics weve covered on facebook and twitter. That are two dot com coming up on the phone talking about these qualities with Donald Jeffries author of the book revival of the rich. Stay true to. The two thousand and eight economic crisis turned some countries into paix these are the countries with weaker economies that needed austerity policies if you are in a situational slow gloats even the recession austerity is a very bad idea it doesnt work and it makes millions of people very unhappy those who are unemployed see their which is declined almost a decade how good are the results. When you joined hes welcome by the people gathered in greece to watch it all get people to see what do i do. You know i mean to fight he told. Its just. Why the same Mission Still in place. Is to weaken labor. Well firstly. This is the truth they consider this is the consequences are actually quite acceptable as a decision. Heres what people have been saying about rejected in the sixtys full on. The bill the show i go out of my way to lunch you know what it is that really packs a punch oh yeah it is the john oliver of our three americans doing the same we are apparently better than the blues nothings better than to see people youve never heard of love right back to the next president of the world they go straight because really. Seriously send us an email. To many around the world the United States has historically represented a land of opportunity a country built on the dream that one can start from nothing and with a little hard work become everything but underneath that most American Dream is alive much more sobering economic reality researcher and author of the book survival of the richest Donald Jeffries explores just where the collective wealth of the United States truly lives and recently he sat down with our own sean bell to discuss his latest book. Jeffrey thank you so much for joining us to talk about your book survival of the richest and actually with want to start with this statistic which kind of shocked. Me well i guess its not too shocking but still its a marked fall for United States from may to eighty eight the economist ranked as the best place to be born to today its about sixteenth on the list what are the major differences that allow that kind of fall well i think the disparity of wealth is the major differences we see when the alarming statistic is a lot of long range because if you come out since i wrote the book but i read recently where fifty percent of the people in america now but the bottom half make less than twenty seven thousand dollars a year thats just thats amazing and thats half the country and less than twenty seven thousand you cant live on almost anywhere and began to get an apartment on that kind of salary little and less than that and we already knew that less than the bottom fifty percent is less than one percent of the collective well so i think thats the main reason why this is becoming and not as great a place to live as it was for a long time if i could see can point to things like the inflation when it comes to rents inflation when it comes to Health Care Education you know these type of things you have food but then when it comes to become wage were basically still fighting to try to get ten dollars minimum wage when in fact in a way should probably be closer to i would say twenty five to thirty dollars to actually reflect what it used to be in the seventys time period for example right i think thats thats the main problem is that politicians are ignoring is that i think the main issue in america is the the vast majority of workers are not being paid enough to meet the cost of living and as you mentioned the cost of everything go up and even in Something LikeSocial Security they dont factor in the cost of food and housing when they get their very small yearly raises and who knows whats going to happen so security now down the line with the fallout from this tax plan but people you already have one hundred closed one hundred million americans of adult age are unemployed which somehow adds up to four percent unemployment under i dont know what kind of common core math that is but it doesnt add up in my book and then you have the people that are. Working half of them are making twenty seven thousand less so its a great disparity between people who top that are doing very well incredibly well and continue to do well and the people who really probably eighty percent of the public its working is just struggling living i think seventy some percent of the people that are living paycheck to paycheck and you just you can i dont think that adds up to a first World Economy and certainly doesnt have to what it was fifty years ago or yeah its really described thats more of a description of a third World Economy than first world but you know i mean the question people would have is those who say for example well we have people on the dole and theyre just lazy and they dont say to pull themselves together and work hard i mean what is it that the rich are doing to allow themselves to continue to see you know huge amounts of profit lets say for example or you know paychecks of the millions of dollars on the on the enable basis what is it you know what is it that keeps them in that class well i think one of the things that donald trump said that resonated with people was talking about it was a rigged game and he had no you know he was born to a multimillionaire so it became much easier to become a billionaire when you start out life as a multimillionaire the system is rigged for that point and survival the richest everything is in favor of the rich from things like the rich pay less for Car Insurance for instance because they dont fact they factor in certain things that favor them and certain things that dont favor border on the drivers. And get rich get so many freebies and things like that and this is them is backwards and yet as you mentioned that we have this mythical welfare queen type mentality that comes from the days of reagan who talked about the welfare queen and i think theres theyve never been able to find these people i dont think anybody is people are certainly milking the welfare system i imagine but theyre not getting very much out of it if they are you know gaming the system theyre not becoming millionaires whereas we have so many people c. E. O. s getting these huge goldman bro isnt the reason the n. F. L. We saw the n. F. L. Is is folding like a pack of cards and you know their ratings are down their business is doing terrible Roger Goodell recently basically threaten the n. F. L. Said raise my souring and get. You know whatever it is how many millions for a life and give me my family and i completely Free Health Care and i believe they caved in to him and that makes no sense in a free marketplace because by any measure hes done a horrible job hes running with. You know a golden egg into the ground and we see this story clee with so many c. E. O. s who sat with Carly Fiorina you know ran h. P. Packard into the ground was given a forty Million Dollars goldman relative go and then tell qualified to run for president so i think thats thats the system we have is that the very wealthy are the most compiled in and yet the poor are the ones that have this reputation of their lazy and they want handouts and so forth but the rich actually get the big hand outs whatever handouts happens at the bottom are very small and just enough to live on precisely i mean. You know weve seen for example situations like walmart employees who basically are making minimum wage and sub that and then theyre basically having to get food stamps to be able to. You know have to have a you know have food because they basically cover trying to cover their rent and their basic cost of living and there was a time when we had labor unions in this country and it was like as though the capitalist class really went after the idea of labor unions as though it was too many freebies you know to pay too much for labor were paying too much on health care and other you know pensions and things like that. Is that i mean is that really one of the major reasons that we dont have that we have seen this kind of disparity this country is because weve seen the collapse of the labor unions i think thats one reason thats why i believe it really began with reagan in the air Traffic Controllers and going to see stood up to them under a great deal of americans were short sighted because i mean i never belonged to a labor union but i knew people who didnt back then the presence of labor unions raised everyone salaries because of competition if i give you a perfect example that people that work in Grocery Stores i know someone that was a cashier at safeway back in the early eightys and was making sense. Thirty five thousand dollars a year which is a really good salary back in that same job today probably pays eight dollars an hour or so same company same because what happened the union they had a strong union back then and again the presence of the union i dont know if all the Grocery Stores unionized but the ones that werent in they realized this is the going rate and thats why you have everything from immigration visa workers and so forth all this has an impact because once the wages get lowered for some people if they will work for that kind of wage then it becomes the standard and you have to accept it or not and it just i dont see how americans dont realize that you know the living talk about living wage is cliched but you you have to be paid enough i think Bernie Sanders said no one should work full time and you know be in poverty but we have that situation now half the country is making twenty seven thousand dollars or less thats an awful lot of people that are you know theyre not living in the kind of middle class life a little on the first world tech the life and what well see then from trumps tax plan i mean what does that mean as opposed he basically is taking a lot of the but you know Tax Deduction this far as the corporations are concerned with the intention of Great Britain on economics or trying to bring Corporate Tax money start corporate dollars back into the United States trying to repatriate that money but then you also hes i think try to sickly give a little boon to the middle class and lower class by saying well everyone who ever will get a break for the next basically seven ten years. Do you see this as something that can be productive for the economy or is it really just playing a sort of a token tip of the cap to the to the regular common man and most of it is going to the corporations i think thats probably had i think i think its a trickle down type of like tax plan where we see the most obvious benefits coming the Corporate Tax rate being slashed dramatically from i think thirty thirty six to twenty one percent or something thats permanent to have the individual class tax cut certainly not only for twenty twenty five knows its going to happen after that and of course the time. Tax rate is cut from thirty nine point six to thirty seven percent the last minute during a compromise the other tax rate im not sure i dont know how my tax rate is going to ill have to see when we do our taxes but theyre changing the standard exemptions theyre limiting lots of deductions what theyre doing to real estate is awful theyre going to cripple an already struggling market with the changes theyre making there theyre limiting deductions like for Student Loans and you know theres so many thats thats the biggest debt we have in this country and the average student to thirty two thousand dollars youre not going to be able to write that off anymore and. Deductions for alimony are going to be eliminated a moving expenses and im not sure all the business expenses but if they translate into realtors and other type of sales people its going to crash so that kind of industry because people depend on writing all their expenses off to be able to make a living so and for trump is a real estate magnate you do that is you specially ironic but i think well have to see what the follows from that but just judging by the people who are cheering it. I think its very reaganite like what he did in one thousand nine hundred six which was disastrous force and i dont think we realized how important that was as you know at that time he eliminated or they limited all the deductions that had for Consumer Credit and so thats what you could write off Credit Card Debt auto loans personal loans things like that and then who had that impact and then impacted the people who needed those type of loans which are dinner at the bottom and so thats that seems would be what happens all the time is that the greater benefit happens to those the top and they just assumes that some magical way these things will trickle down and i dont i havent seen much indication that theyve ever trickle down. Buying things online has become the norm for many who want to avoid crowded people dollars and do it all from the comfort of their living room but in the event that you dont have a living ram amazon can help you with that too he was confident based Model International started selling compact houses on amazon last all and then sent em up now offers hope. It was from tiny log cabins to shipping containers reworked intellectually is little living doll misfiled from a number of Different Companies but its not new in fact this way nineteen zero eight one hundred forty this sears and roebuck catalog sold over ninety thousand home kits begin small in the United States over the years sears anonymous architects does died over four hundred forty seven different home designs countless of options of each for customers they said of course home prices are slightly different from nineteen away when you could buy an eight room bungalow for one hundred thousand dollars not including the cost of land. And now you can get and under thirteen square foot cabin will set you back about four thousand dollars these days but its a crime thats step. Theres little houses are. Just like are thrown out of doors are open for to target everyone to move the world we are about to all be a lovely stuff so i tell you all i love you i am a robot. And if you are watching the talks of a great writer but for. The new Global Economic war is unfolding in the realm of education the right to education is being supplanted by the right to access education alone Higher Education is becoming just another product that can be bought and sold so this not just about education anymore its also about running a business where you could also. Look at this also. They could limit. What is the place of students in this Business Model before college i was born now and im extremely bored Higher Education the new Global Economic war. I dont think that any country can push a button and get rid of trade this is far too important to be farmers to political backlash money is a very fine people think and i think it will be very quick before people find ways around it because as i say in that it may be damaging it might cut it back but the idea that you could do anything nearly the same in the south its very unlikely. Prescribe medication is widespread on the us market and a frequent cause of death at that point in my life. I just felt like everything was ashes my family was literally coming unglued i had actually planned. To commit suicide watch all who has made antidepressants so commonly used we were doing what the doctors told us to do we were being responsible and what the real side effects. Was was chemically altered what i did was done on a cocktail of legal drugs. Just because somethings legal doesnt mean its safe. Young children have worked in bolivia for generations almost three quarters of a million are doing so today. This culture led to the development of bolivias new liberal and highly controversial childrens code in two thousand and fourteen which gave children as young as ten the right to work under certain circumstances what is and isnt as. Is only. Eat well with us in the end all. The things years. But there are hundreds of thousands of children in bolivia operating completely outside the local. Mining work is strictly forbidden by the children but its never of course and that means the schoolboy minus continue risking their lives for the money they need to survive on. Was was i. Was i. Was was. The headlines on International Washington truck song claims it was setting up a kurdish led Border Security force and syria off to turkey reacted furiously to the initial announcement quickly shifting its military equipment straight to the border. President costs doubt on any toltz with north korea but working just as direct negotiations between the two koreas resulted in a breakthrough decision to