Emulate let me turn now to the updates of recent weeks perhaps the most important change in the labor mood in the United States has been the wave of strikes by public school teachers started in West Virginia but has now spread to Kentucky Oklahoma Arizona Colorado and beyond I want to make sure everyone understands that in some of these cases unions were important in getting these successful strikes going but in other parts the workers did it on their own without unions they have been stunningly successful they have organized brilliantly they have overcome divisions among the teachers those in rural areas versus those in urban those who are registered Democrats and those who are registered Republicans and so on they did this in order to get together to do something fundamental raise their wages and salaries to an acceptable level and get the schools that they've given their lives to the funding necessary to educate this generation of children they've made both those demands central to their struggles as little as a year ago in March 2017 Bernie Sanders and Danny Glover led a March of thousands of people into the south to support an effort to organize the auto workers at the Nissan factory that effort did not succeed the union effort was defeated and here we are literally a year later as the situation has changed dramatically. Unionizing efforts strike efforts efforts to improve not just the wages workers get but the working conditions that allow them to serve the public have been radically improved what a difference a short amount of time can make and no one should miss the changing political and economic winds in our society my next update has to do with a particular company and the lesson it teaches the company's name is Thuram notes t h e r a n o s it was a company that burst on to the public awareness a few years ago because it promised or more exactly the c.e.o. Elizabeth Holmes promised that she and her scientists had developed a new quick and efficient way of doing blood tests on people to discover problems that they had diseases they needed to attend to and so on it would revolutionize the medical industry she said by 2013 Thuram nose was valued at 9 $1000000000.00. Well all of that came crashing down as it was determined that the promises were either in correct uninformed or fraudulent depends a little bit on your point of view investors have lost $900000000.00 that were poured into that company the investors who thought that the hype was correct included the Walton family the owners of Wal-Mart Rupert Murdoch the media mogul Betsy divulges the current secretary of education and others so much for the claim that these super rich people are super smart when it comes to investments in this case not so much Elizabeth Holmes has been found by the Securities and Exchange Commission and others to have behaved inappropriately she is banned from serving as a leader of a company for 10 years she's barred and has to pay a half a $1000000.00 fine but given the size of the company given the wealth of the investors 500000 paid by Elizabeth Holmes is trivial relative to the wealth this. One for her likewise the investments of the Waltons Murdoch and devotes are tiny fractions of their wealth and will mean nothing to them. So where is the risk in this capitalist venture gone bad well as usual the real risk not the one you hear about You'll hear about the risk of investing and not getting your money back the risk of a new scientific breakthrough that turns out not to be what it hopes and claims to be those are the risks you'll hear about but here's the one you won't hear about and it's the biggest risk of all added speak Thuram those add 800 employees that's 800 families the pendent in every way on the income generated in the livelihoods of those 800 people currently the number of employees is 15 that's right out of 80785 have gotten fired if they bought a home and took out a mortgage based on the income they got from that company those are in danger if they move their children to a new community enroll them in a high school that is now a central part of those teenagers lives they'll have to move now because their folks lost the job you know the risk taken by a worker when he or she enrolled in a company is just as powerful if not more so. In their lives as the risk of the entrepreneur and the risk of the investor unless the investor is even more stupid than these folks were they will spread their investments it's known as not putting all your eggs in one basket you put a little of your wealth into this investment a little into that one Precisely so if something goes bad you're not going to be basically affected and that's the case with the Waltons and the Murdock's and the Betsy Deval says as it is with most well advised investors but the worker has no such option the worker depends on his or her income from his or her work and if the capitalist in question Elizabeth Holmes in Serranos is either crooked or incompetent the ones who lose the most who've taken the biggest risk are those workers and yet their risk is disregarded they can't say that their pay should not only be paid for the work they do but also pay for the risk they take no in our strange culture we imagine risk is something only undertaken by those who have money my next update has to do with the. Interesting point made by one of you in communicating to us through our websites as we will as always invite you shortly to do you asked Are we perhaps in another gilded age and so let me explain. And I'm glad to do this what the phrase Gilded Age means it was actually 1st used I believe by the famous American author Mark Twain who wrote a novel called The Gilded Age and this phrase came to describe roughly the period from $1870.00 to World War One roughly half a century during which some of the greatest fortunes of the wealthiest Americans came to be you know names like Carnegie and Rockefeller and so on it was a time of enormous growth in American wealth coupled with unspeakable poverty across America at the same time it was called the gilded age to suggest as Mark Twain did that yes at the top what we nowadays might call the one percent it was glitz it was money it was wealth but right below it was a man as of thieving immigrants living in really broken down ghettos in our major cities it was time of some of the bloodiest strikes and labor disputes the Pullman strike many of the others it was a time of abject poverty corrupt political machines and so the question of who wrote to me said could we be in another moment that deserves the phrase the gilded age very good question and my answer is yes exactly just only this thought we need another great novelist another person like Mark Twain to come up with the right phrase that captures the growing gap between the one percent and the rest of us it's very necessary. Let me interrupt for a moment by reminding you that we maintain 2 websites that I urge you to make use of we fill them with materials for you they're available 24 hours a day 7 days a week there is absolutely no charge for using them one of them is r d Wolf with 2 f. Dot com and the other one is democracy at work all one word democracy at work dot info i n f all through these websites you can communicate to us what you like and don't about this program what you'd like to see us cover through those websites you can follow us on Facebook Twitter Instagram and Youtube which we urge you to do as a way of partnering with everything that this program seeks to achieve the websites are also ways for you to see the range of work we do to get more information than what we can do to follow us on the variety of services we now provide We have a store with interesting products that may be of interest to you we have a blog you can follow we have ways for you to sponsor us please make an effort to take a look at our websites and make use of them that's why we maintain them literally every day. Recently in a report from c.n.n. It was indicated that banks and non-banks who are becoming more important in the mortgage business are lending less and less to wealthy and middle income Americans and more and more to those at the Ritz. End of the spectrum I want to mention this only to drive home the point that the so-called recovery since the crash of 2008 has been very very unequal and unfair something which the American people clearly seem to understand and just another piece of the evidence this shifting of money for homes going to where the wealth is and leaving the communities of the poor and the communities of the middle the folks who suffered most in the crash of 2008 are now being discriminated against because it's not as profitable to lend to them as to others that's not a recovery folks that's a deterioration of the situation of most Americans continuing from their disproportionate suffering during the crash of 2008 I want to turn in the time that remains to me to 2 major events of the last week one of them was the announcement by President Trump of what he is proposing to do to deal with the awful high prices of drugs and medicines here in the United States the bottom line is after his speech was over the prices of the stocks that are of companies that make drugs and medicines zoomed up. Clearly the companies and the investors in them understood what I'm about to tell you that Mr Trump's proposals will do next to nothing to control and limit the prices of drugs and medicines we all depend on and why not well everybody who follows this knows that there are 2 big ways that many people have advocated to lower drug prices the 1st is allowing Medicare and Medicaid to negotiate with the drug companies to buy medicines in huge bulk and thereby get them at a lower price let me remind you that we Americans pay more for medicines than nearly everyone else in the world and that leads me to this 2nd way we can lower prices namely by allowing Americans easily to buy medicines from abroad many Americans already do that in both Canada and Mexico if you live near those borders you know what I'm talking about but Mr Trump's speech did neither of those not a word about buying drugs in bulk to lower the price and not a word about allowing Americans to buy what are often the exact same drug made by the exact same company from another country at a much lower price these $2.00 steps would of course drive down the price of drugs in the United States so they look more like the drug prices in other countries. Instead of doing any of those things like Would he really make a difference what Mr Trump did was he yell at countries for example the European countries with the following bizarre argument drug prices are too low Well he said in those countries things should be higher and here was his argument. Those countries drive a good bargain with the medical and drug companies those countries do to get those low prices and what that makes those companies do is jack up the prices in the United States to make the big profits that they are blocked from making in other countries let me translate that bizarre argument Mr Trump is saying that foreigners are better deal makers were drug companies than Americans have did she that's an insult to Americans isn't it and it's a real slap on the back to the sharp dealmakers everywhere else in the world if you doubt that we need to this is a way to get out of the blame by finding a foreigner to blame it's right up there with blaming immigrants for the problem of American workers blaming foreigners is just what Mr Trump's make America great again amounts to and always has and by the way don't be surprised Mr Trump's failed effort to rein in drug prices follows the equally failed efforts of Mr Obama to get that job done what followed the equally failed efforts of Mrs Clinton during the reign of Bill Clinton to get that job done somehow our leading politicians run for office promising to do something about the bad drug prices and then somewhere along the way the lobbyist for those companies bring it all to nothing no wonder the prices of the stocks why not they knew what was going on. The other big event this last week also of course from Mr Trump was the decision by Mr Trump and his advisors to break the treaty with Iran or to be more careful to break a treaty signed not only by the United States and Iran but by 5 other countries Britain France Germany Russia and China so all those countries signed a treaty and last week the American government broke the treaty now they couldn't be honest and say broke because that doesn't sound good does it so they say Mr Trump said we are withdrawing I suppose that was designed to fool somebody breaking the treaty is a remarkable thing to do keep it in mind the next time you hear about other countries breaking treaties and let's remember the reasons given by Mr Trump where that we didn't get enough out of this namely the Iranian commitment to stop developing their nuclear program for your information if it hasn't been made clear to you every one of the other 5 countries that signed on to this treaty Germany France Britain China and Russia have declared that in their judgment Iran has observed its side of the bargain the United States is claim to the contrary they reject every single one of them. So the lives these decision to withdraw is what it's probably got very little to do with anything about the Iranians not performing their side of the bargain since everybody else thinks they have and there's international inspection all the time to verify Well what else could be the reason then the answer is it makes Mr Trump look like oh tough guy somebody protecting America and whacking the evil doers over there in another Muslim country but I'm an economist so I'm interested in the economic affects of what Mr Trump has done to build up his domesticity reputation with his political base and I'm just going to give you of few if we go one hour in the world are you going to strike a deal with the North Koreans when you meet with them in a month a deal in which we promise them to give them economic assistance if they diminish their military nuclear program they've just observed us break that deal for our own reasons why would they make such a deal why are you doing this and especially Now let me give you another example of an economic effect. Just a few weeks ago the Boeing Aircraft Company signed a deal to sell $20000000000.00 worth of super airliners to Iran that's a lot of work for thousands of employees of the Boeing Aircraft Company kiss that goodbye because the Iranians are not going to be able to buy those things in fact that trumpet ministration has already said it's canceling the alliances who's going to be hurt by this the Europeans have invested heavily in Iran so have American companies all of those investments are threatened by all of this indeed the United States is threatening to punish companies in Europe that do business in Iran as part of reimposing the sanctions now that the United States has withdrawn let me ask you dear listener How would you feel as an American if some foreign dispute say between India and China or between I don't know it doesn't really matter and in the dispute between those 2 countries they decided to punish by fining or otherwise hurting American companies that did business with the other side you would feel outraged wouldn't you well how do you think companies around the world feel and if indeed this continues all we are doing is making the Iranian oil that one of the greatest producers of oil and gas in the world go elsewhere in the world work out their payments with the Chinese who are already their biggest customer get further distance from us may indeed renew their nuclear program who knows. This is an enormous political and economic disaster undertaken to boost the political fortunes of a minority president who is desperate to have more support and we ought to wonder about a society that permits such a thing. We've come to the end of the 1st half of the economic update I want to thank you for being with us please stay with us after a short break we will be here with a 2nd here. In Welcome back friends to the 2nd half of economic update it is my pleasure in this 2nd half to introduce to you Professor Miguel roadless Durand. He's a personal friend he's also a colleague at The New School University where I also teach at the New School University he is the associate professor of urban ism and a member of the Parsons School of Design graduate urban Council in New York he has a long list of activities dealing with problems of cities problems of the ecology of cities around the world and one of the reasons I invited him was to tap into his knowledge is experience to give us some understanding of what's going on in the cities around the world and particularly in the United States. He has also been involved in a program called cohabitation strategies it's an international nonprofit cooperative that studies both in Rotterdam and New York City where it's based on the conditions of urban decline inequality and segregation within contemporary cities he works with David Harvey at the Graduate School of the city of New York and is really an expert in the kinds of issues around the urban crisis that many of you have asked us to bring on to this program so it is with great pleasure that I introduce Professor Miguel rube less to Ron thank you very much Frank thank you for having me here thank you for coming all right one of the terms everybody throws around is gentrification by which I think is generally meant the notion that middle and poor middle income and poor people are being forced out of a neighborhood or a whole city or a region because wealthy people want space there for their homes their businesses and so on and literally out bid those who with middle and lower incomes raising the prices of apartments and houses beyond what others can pay. Tell us a little bit is this going on around the world what does it look like and what's the relationship between gentrification on the one hand and the growing gap between rich and poor that is documented all over the world you know I think it's very important to start with. The issue that gentrification is normally talked to a something very natural right. You hear all over the place is unstoppable is something that you know like it just has to happen there's a way the market works etc and there's nothing you can do about it because you know cities need to improve and there are many people that are in project if occasion I mean actually not only the business people but there are many cities that I would say 1020 years ago were putting in their general plan to gentrify and mostly European cities but what's very important to understand is that for those of us that study this thing for us is a very clear issue that gentrification is something that is the signed it's not something that just magically happens right and and it's very difficult to communicate this and to transmit this somewhat I mean when it's the sign is if you look at the way that cities were growing before Margaret Thatcher and sort of talking about the end of the seventy's beginning of the eighty's in England. Cities had certain control by the very government that was the terminating you know through planning strategies through a lot of other norms and regulations where how was the city going to be growing you had how seem agency you had all kinds of agencies that somehow work with an idea of wealth or structure now gentrification was happening then I mean with the house money in Paris in 1000 century you can see it etc But the dramatic shift is when the rules and regulations started to move into the private life in the position where part of the new liberals the schema you know begin in the eighty's and the ninety's and then what we've seen recently is that everything needs to be for profit you know the cd from that point on begins to be looked at as a commodity for absolute can. It is so cities no longer for people to live in right but cities flu seen as something you can extract as much wealth as possible so the type of gentrification we see today is very different from the previous For instance vacation it is not about like you moving in you're a rich person you're moving in that part it's more about how can you kick out people so you can make more money and you don't necessarily need to leave him there right so most of the times actually the people that kick out other people don't leave in those places you just want to extract as much from profit from that part and then yes it has happened globally the reason that I mention Margaret Thatcher is because with Marta touch and Ronald Reagan they started this international campaign global campaign you know of putting these same economic principles in a liberal principles around the world and we've been seeing this happening not only in the seed in your cd but you can go too much every cd perhaps people young not yet right that it will happen at some point so am I right to understand you that somehow before Margaret Thatcher there was still a significant part of the development of the city that was decided by the city authorities that wasn't least in some way democratic I put that in quotation marks because it was supposed to gather what the community as a whole wanted and planned the cities growth to meet those goals this gets dropped and we have the market in other words let the prices go and if the rich want to live there and they get bid up the prize the poor have to leave and all of that is called gentrification with the positive notion that this is good that the city should develop along the lines of market making money making instead of what was done before is that yes I mean one could argue that that still gentrification I mean the issue that again you put certain money over the power that occasion a neighborhood and you. You draw out everything that existed before in order to make things from you has been going on for some time I mean we also have to be careful not to remind the size to much what happened before Margaret Thatcher the state had absolute monopoly and it also had its entities to mean we must remember the state is part of the capitalist center price and it was before it was after but the conditions completely changed when you basically create a campaign where you say the state you're not a good manager you're not a good you know you don't you cannot make money lead just business people deal with everything and as we've learned over the last 40 years of your liberalism Yes they do know how to extract from everywhere right and so what we're talking about in current terms gentrification is just like exponential like form off the more exactly exactly him form or representation of that and we must be aware also that the consequences are incredibly dramatic as we are moving on into the 21st century which are unseen actually an unseen unheard off their level of bacon sees that exist in cities the housing prices that exist in cities the infrastructural sort of like complete management is absolutely privatized the services like water you know who sing the crisis and so forth all of that falls into that rubric of one need only really simply to C.D.'s which is basically change that she from before you had a government you know and now you all think about governance which is basically a public private type of thing where obviously the reason for that we see so the private can extract more wealth out of everything I tell us something about the effects so if if we have this shift to letting the market decide letting the private sector somehow manage what are the consequences and I guess it's another way of saying. Is it right to talk about cities changing because of this or is it right to talk about cities declining in some sense how do you navigate these loaded words yeah it's a very interesting question I would argue that neither one or the other. The way we tend to see or at least the way that I tend to see the cities are the absolute most perfect mature representation of capitalism there is capitalism specialized right and so therefore the way that you would read capitalism would be for me very similar the way that every city is now it's always in motion so I didn't always see movement it's full of contradictions right there some things that happened here some things that happened there when we talk about cities in the 21st century you cannot only think about cities like New York just New York have to talk about a regional global you know aspects of between chains chaser production commodities exchange and so forth and so it's difficult to position of whether they're changing of course they're changing or whether the climbing I would say it's yes they're actually change of their declining both in and not right I mean you see let's say that I'm going to talk about the city of New York you see many parts of the cd like bettering I could have better public parks we have at least some in some regions right but then we have completely the relict you know areas that are being right now just complete the mall and or be bulldozed and so you could see that that type of uneven development you know with my friend David Hardaker was an even geographical development it's always there right it's always present now the effects I think the most clear effect that any member of your audience could see that basically 2 it's in the housing structure in the housing I mean I think there's no single American of this point that cannot agree that we have a housing crisis and we've been having a housing crisis for some time and then the other one is the commercial space crisis right so these are 2 very clear you know aspects. What is this housing crisis that you see as an. Outcome of what's been going on well it has to do what I said at the beginning that the issue is that if you begin to see or to put all the regulations and norms some policies to favor those that want to invest and extract you know capital from real state what you will get is a market that is absolutely crazy to speculate right that is absolute speculation now there are a few people as we know you know perhaps 10 percent of New York City can afford these things or in the general aspect of United States just the one percent right that can afford to do those traits and it's fantastic for them right but for the other members of the pollution speculation is actually horrific so you would find people let's say in San Fransisco they used to pay $800.00 to rent a month right and then suddenly within 4 or 5 years that apart same apartments is Course $56000.00 a month and and this is basically the type of effect in which we have 2 things to happen one people either move out of the city which we begin to see we have begun to see already for many years or you can stay homeless I mean you basically become homeless or you go to your father or your mother and you believe in their hearts houses and this is I think what we talk about the crisis and I haven't even mentioned the financial part of it which is another incredible sort of a development that is ongoing as we speak is this because of the housing is it also the case of the housing being built is increasingly the housing for those who have a lot of money because there's no profit or relatively little profit in building houses for middle income and lower income people I mean there seems to be some evidence that mortgages are going in that direction and so on so is there a housing crisis in the sense of a fundamental disconnect between what people need in the way of housing and what they can afford Well it's mostly what the failures of whatever we call them. Markets have more capitalism but there are the failures of capitalism to provide you know what we need that's basically this is so it's very good at providing what the bankers and the speculators need but it has certainly not done at all well in providing what the rest of us need and so they need bases in a system that is focused on the profit extraction would be let's create a housing which we can speculate easier on and history the housing which we can extract more profit from now that's not to say that you cannot extract some little profit or even some profits out of making middle class and affordable housing obviously you can perhaps not in the city but in general you can. You have these sort of things where the regulations have also shifted to subsidize the reach to continue doing this type of thing so 1st of all you took at look at fiscal incentives you have programs that give the reach tax free benefits for 30 years if they develop 10 percent of whatever affordable housing they want to build now we have been there all citizens united I mean really some kind of the affordable housing but just to give you an example a recent building in San Francisco had I think 96 apartments had something like 7000 applications one here in New York City with 36 apartments have 9000 applications you leave it all to chance and to lotteries this supply basically and I don't want to get into supply in the midst of all we can absolutely can that what capitalism is interested in producing certainly not that so it seems as if the people it's not society is not the wellbeing of everyone it's interesting just where how if you make luxury dwelling you can totally change it much it's year among your luxury friends living in Dubai living in Russia living in France for a living wherever they need to be you know on one side it's etc It's very easy to trade these luxury commodities of these moment now but making housing that actually responds to the needs of. People were you treated as a used value right this is very important like I didn't need a house because I want to live in it I use it right and I want to die in it right for the speculators it's not it's like how fast can you flip it and so it's completely unbalanced you know those that are supplying the housing are interested in that side not in part yeah struck 2 because in American history it's crystal clear that when you created the f.h.a. And all of the other institutions it was in the middle of a depression it was a way to get housing for people as a means to bring a broken capitalism out of the Depression and you get the feeling that once you've brought capitalism out of the Depression it brings on itself then you don't want with anymore you want to let the market the profit system work until again even this is them crashes or the mass of people whose needs for housing are not being met simply won't tolerate it anymore or we moving in the feeling it's hard to say look I wish I could say yes I wish were the virtue of some kind of compliment realization of people in the streets because they can afford housing but we must understand that the Konami conditions of 50 years ago we still had somehow moving out of these gold standard system right I mean we didn't have what is finance capital in the it's evolution as we have it today and certainly not globalization as we have it today and so the conditions right now is that the majority of the owners of the new dwellings around every city in America let's put this way are not local people that are you know hedge funds their insurance companies or they're just simply wealthy individuals the want to you know afford somewhere else so as long as you have these group of people buying and selling between each other you know Paul does not collapse right I mean like you can continue speculating. This property as much as you want somehow like the u.s. Prints as much dollars as they need you know on that level of things like you know we grow some trees now I wish I could say and sometimes I think that of course we cannot withstand so much oppression I'd like the people just getting into a situation which is impossible you know they over the last year for example in the United States top top 24 C.D.'s that had the highest rising rents were small or middle sized series below 500000 people interpret population about 10 years before we're talking here in New York City yes Chick chick hour to a certain extent or some Francisco but these very same dynamic is now entering very heart you know in cities like Boise Idaho or something like that right so it's and that's the level of investment that is happening right now you have Goldman Sachs with new instruments on how to get even young people John people to invest in real estate by giving them shares of a gentrification project but gentrification of the 21st century but it does let me ask you a question if you travel around the United States I'm thinking of Pittsburgh I'm thinking even of Detroit you see a vast wasteland of 50 years of deterioration but in the middle typically in the downtown center of the city in the middle are a burst of hotels luxury condominiums restaurant a kind of a tiny chorus of which the local media hype as if it's the rebuilding and rebirth but it's actually just tiny Is that what you're talking about the the hedge funds that are making investments so that the people who are making business can have a nice hotel in a nice restaurant for the 3 days they're in the town and so forth and so yes I mean this is I think a very beautiful way of seeing exactly what we all talk about it is the destruction of wealth right this can be compared. B.o.c. In the city right that these were not taught see that right but they well disparities are so clear there and one thing we have to understand Rick is that there's never been more money in the world in the east now right the u.s. Has never been in numbers in the numbers the World Bank likes to use and so on it's never been more wealthy I mean actually these countries absolute reach I was reading some statistics from reporters there recently and you know everything's used to be on employment is perfect and so on right and so 3 percent to 4 percent have to be crazy numbers right I mean but so we continuously being told are told by the media like yes I mean cities are regenerating like Detroit or you know all this like the new reemergence of whatever and we'll be going to we're going to do fine but the reality is that yes the one percent are doing fantastic they have their hotels they have their really nice restaurants there have a nice shops you know and everything just functions well I always tell my students Ok let's one exercises go out here in your city and walk to 5th Avenue and tell me how many of the places you see you can actually either buy something or go there and eat right and of course almost nothing right I mean this is the shops are $500.00 shoes or I don't know $50.00 you know dinner plates or whatever right so that's the title disparity that I'm that I'm inducing And yes if he continues like that there is a trend towards Korean islands I mean and we've been seeing that more and more right even willingly creating islands similar to what we see in South America in certain cities in Asia in which you have you know Gates you know across were this is where the rich live right and then you have the rest the population that services that right that's was my next question. Sometimes I have the thought and I'd like your reaction that the United States used to look at other parts of the world particularly poorer parts of Asia Africa Latin Americans on and see just what you said a vast mass of desperately poor people not just in the rural areas but in the favelas and the poor areas around cities and then in the middle gated armed with with guards the place where the rich live and play and work and you have this. Frightening dichotomy between the one and the other is the United States now basically joining that pattern having given up on the various middle class it once promised the people. That have been obsolete I think is going on for some time and you know one of the things that space also the us or cities also do to us is that the mask very well all the inequalities you know of that are going on at the time to give an example like you go to Dubai and you see these are great buildings and which I don't think they're great by the way but most people do and you don't see the labor that built them right so the seed is very good at hiding all these processes now when we have a point of view that it's not so global that scene or daily lives we hardly think about other cities I would argue that the United States always had its counter side with Mexico and with what the Milan we saw Joe graphically speaking the u.s. Has been able to be so reach because it has all the wealth from other places and those in the other places that you're talking about you see these disparities right now it has gotten really bad at it in the last 2030 years or it has not been interested so the u.s. Has not been interested anymore in creating this facade right that you know we're like you come to us everything looks fine you know like perfect M.O.'s a kid I was coming to us and say wow this is like 1st world whatever that means no but yes there's been a growing this interest and my take is the only reason this happens because this c.d.s. Especially the infrastructure let's talk about subway systems roads right and the highways etc sewage systems waterways etc The majority of those are not so profitable they're not spaces to make profit from I mean in capital in 3 my . Works with would say that infrastructure is a place with just that producing that creating. And at some point the cd the govern federal government the state government was taking care of but all of these resources have shifted into those things that are actually profitable right so they look a Republican exactly right I mean we have a we have been going on going cries in New York City about the metro system the m.t.a. Multiple It's not sort of the subway system. Yes I mean people are you have seen you in the news like these things has to be profitable it's like no there's no way that you can make that type of infrastructure profitable it's incredibly expensive and so but the law or the governance logically knowledge or logic of government says that all the we need to bring a manager so we can make it profitable it is very difficult if there is no subsidy right and so all of these projects get abandoned so one hand you see that and then the other and yes the absolute concentration of wealth in certain centers and then the lappie dated aspects of you know people living in trailers or people living in the streets and that's yeah that's a pattern and that will continue to exacerbate even more as we speak live with because one thing that worries me a lot is the coming 1020 years with all these issue of automation on the loss of labor jobs and so forth the consequences in cities are going to be absolutely dramatic right and and that it's difficult to predict what's going to be the situation we might have beautiful cities like the one here in nor back right in this in and. But most of it would be empty right there's just not going to be labor so we have all these issues that are servants and think it's a prison we are always looking into but certainly what you're talking about these levels of inequality are completely represented in the in the landscape generalizing of the United States so it's not the exception of the more oh no no not by any means a last thing that if we run out of time you study urban ecology So let me ask you. Given what's been happening to cities particularly in the States but generally what is the impact on the ecological crisis that we know we face of the way cities and developing Yeah that's very sick that's a hard question to answer let me 1st say that my interest in urban ecology I see a call a g. As a dynamic a quality. See that like the cattle talent the you know from the marshes perspective I would see as a as a way around this and every single aspect of the world from an ecology is not the environment as all so I always look at the way in which extraction of natural resources right affects and I say sure if in cities and so yet we have very strong examples of what Nestle is doing to be telling friends you know the famous water via television or any audience member would recognize that they sell it in a lot of shops there the little town is run out of water because Nestle is extracting all of that right is drying out same one that just got to controvert 200000 and over this all gallons of water in Flint right as we're speaking right now the same one the same company has been having the contract in near Toronto to extract from their aquifers etc and so you have of course they're a consequence of natural resource extraction which does produce you know like dramatic consequences on these but on the other hand we see cd's react to the environmental issues with more capital investment right which is I think really contradictory in New York City or in San Francisco or in Chicago or you don't have all these phenomena of a green cities right and then the way you saw green cities is like well you create more leed platinum or titanium uranium certified buildings right and that is like all I'm super environmental and I always ask my friends like what do you know which is the most environmentally friendly building in New York City and was like you know when they start to guess what is a Bank of America tower right and tell me if that is sustainable. Right and so these are the things that we have failed to see again because C.D.'s are so good at hiding these processes if you put solar panels they tell you Ok that you're going to go you know everything so that there's a student that has been using a term that she names green terrific ation and this is basically where we can go into later we've run out of time Miguel thank you very very much thank you very much and thank you all for joining us on the economic update but let me remind you take what you learn on this program take what we present share it with the people you know and work with and live with it's a way of partnering with us and extending our reach I want to thank you for doing that much as I enjoy thanking Truthout dot org that remarkable independent source of moves and analysis Truthout dot org. So thanks again and I look forward to speaking with you again next week. Thank you. 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