Failed to see. What its like i got to. Welcome or what you dont want to hog i am i relevant. And i am not a lot like now when magic showing up for work just days after your employer announces big bonuses big pay increases and benefits benefits when it fits to loyal employees like you only to discover a sign taped a locked door is telling you the store you work at is close that well thats what happened to these sams club employees last week and the rochester new york area. Dont worry. Walmart corporation behind sams club quietly announce the closure of at least sixty three sams club Stores Across the u. S. The same day within twenty four hours that theyve 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 in their communities and communicating with them by taping a sign on the door yet those very words contradict walmarts actions and if youre wondering why the way walmart treats us 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 a deadly but what is so unsettling is that despite massive increases in funding they have not raised the working conditions salaries benefits or 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 overhaul to ben as a benefit to bulk up their Real Estate Holdings cut back on expenses and remain competitive can we really be surprised when the Worlds Largest employers have no shame in 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 a naval game today im watching the heart it 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 good thing is that yes of course somebody wants to make money of course the saints are going to happen of course there is only going to be so much but i think its just the way they did and that was unnerving. And the thing about walmart i think that 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. Well there it is you know they needed the department to found this is worldwide we are u. S. Military is a large sum lawyer. Chinas military and then a mcdonalds. And whats really frightening about the list and. Brilliantly pointed out is the. Military u. S. Military number one ok. Veterans and soldiers. Hospitals are. Taking care of the vets when they get back its been a mess and everybody saying that i dont know how china takes care of its soldiers sorry a lot of things i dont know i dont know. But then when you look at like walmart and then the next on the list is mcdonalds i mean 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. 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 Said that they can 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 six. But i think its very funny that its like well redeploy theyre even using military jargon the idea that someone would think that its appropriate and lesser 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 there were what they were going to raise that year and 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 thats. Less than twelve hours later they were like oh yeah and on top of that i. Will but i heard they were they were just doing it like in response to what their competitors did because their competitors like raise wages like you know whatever a little bit before they were fatal they were sold as the 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 going back but having labor versus management. Since one thousand nine hundred exactly well before and there is and the thing about them is that theres this one thing this one area where you really see that how how hard the fight was and of these people really put their lives online i mean we talk about coal workers and saving call not save coal but coal workers back in the in the twenty is such a stage for a lot of labor and a lot of labor issues in this country that was actually organized labor leader from the one nine hundred twenty s. Well into the sixtys john l. Lewis he was the we said quote workers have kept faith in american institutions most of the conflicts which have occurred have been when labors right to live has been challenged and denied and here stone you know thats coming here it is in the twentys and thirtys theyre still fighting that thing of it 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 that were going to were part of this one way or the other 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 much money for the vicious side of capitalism and theres a lot of real debate right now among especially amongst black millennial xin and activists people like that. 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 because they 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 automation worker retraining because the government has failed to do that corporations need to step up and do that and he handles the lifeblood the investment money that 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. Theyre not going to like. You know our parents and our grandparents and our great grandparents did of just fine the thing that we chip stock thats going to want right theyre going to invest in companies that they feel have found that value thats the big question since this letter was released which you know i think the New York Times that are probably you know set fire to corner offices and movement in a mall across the world because i was like whoa this dude say it then im going to have a conscience about it yeah you know and whats going to dictate what about you know whos going to dictate whats good works whats bad works you know theres a lot of questions so i love that anybody that said heres an idea does it bob people write if im killed or people pour 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 they might not invest in companies that they give a bad rap to the 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 so they look at for like who they want to take these super rich monies and people to drill ion them to make the money where do i want to put it theyre now going to have a checklist 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 p. R. If it plays out it will definitely be interesting to see those ideas we go to break our questions dont forget to let us know what you think of the topics covered in facebook and twitter see our full shows at r. T. Dot com coming up sunstone talks of wealth inequality with Donald Jeffries author of the book survival of the rich if. Stay tuned. The two thousand and eight economic crisis turns some countries into pigs these are the countries with weaker economies. Needed austerity policy is if you are in a situation of low bloat 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 wages decline almost a decade how good are the results you saw all of the new york citys will by the people gathered in which the wad of good people with your daughter julie a choice between three hundred billion for blue she still clematis i mean to file a legal. Challenge nothing more than this young girl who is always going to take she found out they are not getting paid why are the same measures still in place who one of the consequences lose to weaken bluebirds food dismantle who will first one this is the truth the consumer is the consequences are actually quite acceptable to the decision makers. Join me every first day on the alex salmond show and ill be speaking to get off of the world of politics sports business im show business ill see that. 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 plentiful thing and i think it will be very quick before people find ways around it because the mistake you made it may be damaging it might cut it back but the idea that you could do anything nearly even this is very unlike. Moses you have when you dont. Seem to. Get a clear. What are the most only ten steps. Left in the he. Said. No terminator that. Alex you speak french. Was. The same yes. Its a new. Song the bill told c. N. N. This close. 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 live a 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 me want to talk about your book. Survival of the richest and actually i want to start with this statistic which kind of shocks me well i guess its not too shocking but still its a marked fall for United States from may to 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 in wealth is the major differences we see when alarming statistics a lot of alarming statistics come out since i wrote the book but i read recently where fifty percent of the people in america now to the bottom half make less than twenty seven thousand dollars a year thats just thats amazing thats half the country. Less than twenty seven thousand you cant live on almost anywhere and to get it get an apartment on that kind of salary little unless the match 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 is the effect i mean obviously you 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 you factor in a way to probably 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 and 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 even that happens mostly carrying on 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 either. What kind of common core math that is but it does not 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 are 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 add up 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 its a 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 in 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 and 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 mention 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 bros and recently n. F. L. We saw the n. F. L. Its is folding like a pack of cards and you know their ratings are down their business is doing terrible right. You know recently basically threaten the n. F. L. Said raise my salary and give me some 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 and that makes no sense in a free marketplace because by any measure hes done a horrible job hes running what i could you know a golden egg into the ground and we see this post or equate with so many c. E. O. s you start with Carly Fiorina you know ran h. P. Packard in the ground was given a forty Million Dollars goldman relative go on and then sell qualified to run for president so i think thats thats the system we have is at the very wealthy are the most entitle them and yet the poor are the ones that have this reputation of theyre lazy and they want handouts and so forth but the rich actually get the big handouts 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 but you know have food because they basically cover trying to cover their rent and their basic costs 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 chipper pay too much for labor were paying too much on the 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 definitely is i mean i believe it really began with reagan in the air Traffic Controllers and going to see stood up to them a great great deal of americans were shortsighted because i mean i never belonged to a labor union but i knew people who did and back then the presence of labor unions raised everyones salaries because the competition for i give you a perfect example that people that work in Grocery Stores i know someone that was very. Cashier at safeway back in the early eightys and was making thirty five thousand dollars a year which is a really good salary back to that same job today probably pays eight dollars an hour or so same company same job because what happened the union they had a strong union back then and then again the presence of the unions and 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 to 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 a 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 any kind of middle class life a little on the first world type of life and what we see then from trumps tax plan i mean what is supposed he basically is taking a lot of the the Tax Deduction this far as the corporations are concerned with the intention of creating theyre going to put it on economics right 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 corporations i think is probably had i think i think its a trickle down type of black tax plan where we see the most obvious benefits come in the Corporate Tax rate things was dramatically from i think thirty thirty six to twenty one percent or something thats permanent to the individual class of. Tax cuts i believe only fall twenty twenty five no its going to happen after that and of course the top tax rate was 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 loan is thirty two thousand dollars youre not going to be able to write that off any more and the deductions for alimony are going to be eliminated im 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 into real estate magnate you do that as weve 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 up so that what you could write off Credit Card Debt auto ones personal loans things like that and then who had that impact and then impacted the people who needed those type of loans which are here at the bottom and so thats what seems like to be what happens all the time is that the 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 want to avoid crowded people dollars and do it all in the comfort of their living room but in the event that you dont have a living room eliz on can help you with that too he was not the base Model International started selling cars. Impact houses on amazon last fall and since then and as of now offers homes from tiny log cabins to shipping containers reworked intellectually as little living doll in the silos for 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 big and small in the United States over the years sears anonymous architects does died over four hundred forty seven different home designs how it was 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 under its thousand dollars not including the cost of land. And now you can get and under thirteen square but cabin will set you back about four thousand dollars these days but its prime thats pretty typical of somebody theres little houses are. Just like our show and that is our stroke because the perfect crew member we want to move the world we are about to all be a lovely stuff so i tell you all i love you i robot are. Watching those talks have a great day and i never put it. All to see we have a great team but we need to strengthen before the free world cold and youre better than a legend to keep it so its at the back. In one thousand nine hundred two that must qualify for the european championships at the very last moment no one believed in us but we won and im hoping to bring some of that winning spirit to the r. C. T. Recently ive had a lot of practice so i can guarantee you that Peter Schmeichel will be on the best fall since my last will come from that story as well as three. Thousand the joke was on the russian. Nice try i. Know the left left left more or less ok stop thats really good. 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 but its not just about education anymore its also about running a business where you could you know most of the regime could these songs. I want is the place of students in this business model. For. An extremely more education of the new Global Economic war. I. I. I. So he demands that the United States end its support for syrian kurds amid a spat between the two countries over washington the train border force. Hundreds of Prison Guards at a large french prison that. Strike over unsafe working conditions. And a new leak from the hacking group. Raises concerns over cases in the rio olympics of two thousand and sixteen