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in the us the idol worker strike has expanded for the first time ever to the detroit thrate, the union and the automakers remain far apart on key economic issues like pay, but the strikes are not limited to just our workers, which the combined number workers on strike has hit a record. in this edition of the spotlight we will look at why workers are unhappy in the us with their pay and how a looming government shut down a partial or full one, maybe a window into a bigger economic problem in the us, which points to a dire situation as opposed to the rosy announcements that's made by the us government on things like unemployment and inflation. first let me introduce our guests. of i am black of economics and law at the university of missouri kansas city. joins us

from bloomington minnesota. also joining us is daniel shaw academic and commentator who joins us from new york. welcome to you both uh william black. i'll start with you. so you of have uh the union and the companies uh remaining far apart in terms of the autoworker strike on key economic issues. the president has said um that he's going to stick with that demand for 40% pays over four-year contract uh the companies however have offered pays of about 20%. that's the latest. have what's your impression on? yeah, the absolute latest is uh the w has gone down to around 36% negotiate, you make smaller moves and take more time. by the way, the actually there's a settlement uh with the canadian uh auto workers who are also part of the uaw, so the management it is as you can see quite different uh in canada. what type of? settlement did they reach with canada? so

they reached a settlement more in the lines of a 25 ish percent to to 30% increase. 25 to 30% increase. okay, that's over the period of several years. right, right. um, let's look at one thing here, daniel shaw that perhaps many don't realize, and this uh pretty much a flashback, and that's going back to the year 2009. um, i don't know if you recall, but gm was on the brink of collapse. "the ua, the uaw to let the company hire new workers at that time, but at about half the hourly way that prevailed, and with um skimpire retirement benefits and higher temp workers at even lower rates from what we understand, and outsource more jobs a broad, this is while the american taxpayers forked over $10 billion dollars to save the company, so in a way they sacrifice themselves in order to get the company up and running, um, coming out of the uh, the sorry state that." due to the

financial crisis, um, do you think that the sacrifice that the workers have uh end that they applied to themselves and then endured all these years is uh being repaid back and proper way by not getting the pay increase that they're demanding and that's why they're still on strike, that's why the strike has expanded uh now to 25,000 workers, um, i think the contradictions around the ceos of these uh of the big three automobile industry giants, their yearly salaries are between 25 million and uh 50 million just for these ceos, so the... auto workers, the uaw. union is is asking, well where is the money, why are you so stingy with us? we've seen that this has turned into um one of the biggest stories in the country with biden and and trump uh visiting the workers uh this week,

as we know we're gearing up for an election year uh next year, so it'll be interesting to see what happens. william black - guess talked about the cp, looking at uh what? promoters ceo is making its 29 million, ford ceo 21 million and slanta ceo 25 million, so these are uh these are, i mean pretty high salaries, i'm guessing, especially when you take a look at the profits overall of the uh manufactures themselves, where we're looking at $250 million dollars, one particular that $1.7 million dollars were made off of each and every one of the workers, why are they holding out so uh much then when it comes to the workers? oh, because they get their bonus in part by precisely those things that you've just explained, so uh, it is really important, and very few americans understand that there is this uh two tier system that the companies insisted on and shamefully the federal government, under presidents bush and

obama uh agree to of paying as you say, new workers far less and uh also uh giving them... much worse uh pensions, so uaw's done two clever and appropriate things, one is it said, hey, we think our increase should be that of the ceos, after all, our workers were responsible for the ceo's gains and the company's gains, second, you need to be getting rid of this two tier system, because it penalizes in particular younger workers. all right, one of the things, since we're on this topic of... ceos um danielle shaw i'm looking at at just a reaction in terms of strikes overall on the us, i'd like to throw this at you which came from hospitality worker that's on strike uh she said uh, i think people all around the country here are just getting fed up with the corporations not

sharing or including them into the profit or acknowledging our hard work that we put into the company, that seems to be sentiment that is echoed across uh variety of sectors, not all sectors of course this could be something that could happen all the time, but in this particular uh economic uh, guess atmosphere in the us, that rings a bell, what are your thoughts on that? i mean, why is it that uh you, we're looking at uh the types of statements and view points that we uh heard when you had the uh zokoti demonstrations that were happening back then uh in terms of uh you know the 99% versus the 1%, because every day the class current addictions are sharper across us society and these workers are class conscious workers, they know that uh gm and and ford depend on them and in their labor and their back pain and their blood sweat and tears and the sacrifices that they make every day. if we listen to uaw

president sean fein, yeah he almost has a bernie sanders esk uh tone to him when he describes the billionaire class, elon musks and the bill gates and how these individuals live when the vast majority of us, the workers who keep this country running uh depend a monthly check to see if we can pay our mortgage and get enough groceries and settle our uh medical bill, so when sean fayne quotes the bible saying that it's easier for camel to enter into through the eye of neil than rich person uh like these ceos to enter into the kingdom of god, i think that. that uh rhetoric there, that anti capitalist rhetoric speaks for millions and millions of workers across this country. in terms of wage increases uh it's it's pretty incredible uh william black when you take a look at the uh difference when it comes to the 1% versus the bottom 90% between 1979 and

2022 what i uh figure here through variety of resources inflation adjusted annual wages of the top 1% rose by 145% and then uh the bottom uh rose only 16%. why such disparity? okay, so the disparity is actually massively greater than uh even that number. indicates because it isn't so much the top 1%, it's literally the top 1ousth of 1%. there the the gains are in the thousand percent range. however, the united states and what biden of course is calling biden nomics, turning around insult into a benefit, or as we as in economic ranks would call running the economy. um has actually reversed for a time

uh these slightly the some of these long-term trends in other words real wages despite inflation uh have actually started growing and by we the united states had record low unemployment and record low unemployment of minorities in particular and that's why you see biden actually the uh meeting, so he's the first president of the united states ever to join a picket line in support uh of a union, and the political dynamics are such that trump therefore state to fake uh one where he pretended to meet with auto workers, unionized auto workers, in fact it was a scab plant, working to uh try to break uh the strike uh so there actually have been some... meaningful gains and uaw is trying to translate uh these gains into uh wages that

are actually very strongly middle-class type wages uh i can tell you i i grew up in dearborna worked for ford motor company my you know step dad worked for uh ford motor company grandfather worked for ford motor company uh and and such um so. yes, the the bottom 10% uh of the united states still in terrible shape, um, and again this gets political, we took reduced child poverty in half, now now first, if you're going to have a policy, why not in child poverty, why cut it in half, but hey, uh, the republicans insisted on getting rid of that, uh, and we see in the new numbers that the the... poverty rate has gone up very substantially, so this is intensely uh political uh and uh

contested and it's very unclear which way the elections are going to go in the united states on these issues exactly, you talk, you touched a number of issues that are really important there, uh, first of all uh inflation is very important, and uh you talked about child poverty, and i like to uh discuss that a wider scale in terms of poverty in general, but daniel shaw, first let's talk about this inflation that the u.s. uh pins the number at around 3% from what i understand um workers pay increased 5%, but we need to take a look at inflation, mean you're in new york, daniel shaw, maybe you can tell us uh when you take a look at some the categories, for example it's very shocking uh to hear that uh in 2022 price of eggs in terms of the inflation was uh had increased 19% uh oil flats 9% and then you had uh things like um in 2020 22 uh food at school 305% and the eggs were 59%. mean what

is the deal there? what are we looking at? mean you can't just say inflation three uh what are they what did i say they're saying uh 3% i believe is what i said but really it's not that is it? mean i'm sure when you go pack of cigarettes or when you go buy butter or margin it's not just a 3% increase right? so i'm trying to if you see where i'm going with this what is the deal there in terms of that versus the wage that average americans are earning? yeah, uh, based on uh, your assessment of what's going on here in new york city, one would think that you lived here for the past uh, you know, four, five decades, because you describe all too accurately, uh, we hear all these fancy numbers in in in the mainstream media, but when we go to the grocery store, when we go to the pump, if we take our families out for dinner, we feel that pinch more than ever, and we know that the united states specializes in what called the trost'. city propaganda against their political enemies such as um russia or or venezuela or or

nicaragua, but i wish that the professor there in the midwest could give tour of what cleveland and detroit and chicago in the midwest uh looks like after decades and decades of social uh abandonment, this was uh the thriving industrial sector of our job, and i think foreign audience would find it unreal to see the image. from gary, indiana or flint, michigan and to see the complete social neglect, than an entire generation of children or two generations now have suffered from, william black, uh ask you the same question because really curious as to what's going on when it comes to inflation versus pay, what is it like there um in bloomington, minnesota where you're at, what does it look like, does it look like to you that is that it's around the 5% mark? yeah, i don't think you're going to like my answer, um, actually uh, inflation almost certainly is overstated,

and that's something that even conserve economists uh who and by the way, the politics in the united states is that it's the democrats who want emphasize inflation isn't that big a problem and it's the republicans who want to emphasize uh that it's a you know the biggest problem ever and economists of course are overwhelmingly in the conservative camp um but i can go through the reason but it's probably boring um even conservative economists think that inflation is overstated by about one and a half to 2% and the us has the lowest inflation rate of any major industrialized nation with a you know sort of capitalistish type economy, so the pressure in the united states, politically is to emphasize inflation and say therefore we shouldn't have social programs for the poor, so i i'm often pushing in the

opposite direction of where you you may think i'm coming from, and saying no, we need to be emphasizing poverty, and uh, you know, my counterpart is absolutely right, i was born in detroit, um, and i've taught for years in missouri, and st. louis, and detroit are two the the huge cities that, but used to be among the five, depending on the time period, among the five largest cities in the united states, the six. largest cities in the united states, and now they are catastrophically in terrible uh condition. for example, the uaw at peak at about 1.5 million members, it now has 400,000 active members, but is

responsible still for negotiating on behalf of retires whose benefits the uaw still, uh pushes for number about 6000, but you can see that decline from roughly 1.5 million to roughly $4000, and that's actually uaw so that actually includes employment in canada, which is quite substantial in the auto industry uh, and puerto rico, which is kind the united states, it's a little technical, and uh, in mexico. all right, well - i'm glad you mention uh the points that you made about inflation because... we're just trying to figure it out really, i mean daniel shaw uh, our guest there says that it's not as bad as as it uh, that's as bad as some may make it, but uh, so what about the workers that are striking, it's not just the auto workers, looking down a list of uh uh some of the industies and some of the companies, i mean you had the screen waters which are people they reached some agreement, you have starbucks employees, amazon workers, you have

frontline workers, whether it's nurses, hotel staff and pilots, you had the ups, which they reach an agreement if they hadn't would have been. the biggest strike in us history or should i say the largest strike in us history so and and the news um reads that uh you know it's strike season that the us strikes have made made a comeback so why are the out uh striking is it not because of inflation obviously but because of their pay that's usually what it's all about so how do you explain that? yeah tomorrow will be the uh first day of strike october it seems october is gearing up to the month of uh strikes i think uh professor blacks macroeconomic analysis is um informative, at the same time if we take step back in terms of unemployment, you know, the new york times will report this, the presidency will report that in the department of labor, but when we go into our communities, the reality is even harsher on the ground, because how many workers, how many families have actually given up, they no longer counted um in the

actual statistics, so unemployment is often so much higher. when you go through a press communities, the black community that often those numbers are um under reported uh in terms of um the the strikes i think so many workers are again uh waking up to the reality of what these mass uh the automobile starbucks we saw vast uh strike campaigns and in the fight $5 over the course of the past uh decade or or so and and workers are demanding more because the economic reality is biting and they can't survive on what we surve. on uh the decades past sure well i have to squeeze in uh this question because uh if i don't uh then my producer is going to get really mad at me and it's about the it's

about the government shutdown um we're trying to figure out what's going on there and the last that we heard is uh that well what is the last you heard william black i'm sure you can give us better idea i mean are we looking at uh mckarthy doing his job or is he going to be out of a job if that thing with ukraine doesn't go through well he's going to be out the job but in a broader sense he's been out of. the job, in other words, he's never had the powers of a true speaker, uh, the speaker the house is the answer to uh, a trick question in the united states, uh, what's the most powerful, second most powerful elected official in america? it's not the vice president, it's the speaker of the house, unless you're mccarthy, in which case you're about the 20th most powerful uh person uh on your very best day and he doesn't have many good days, so this is very bad for the uh economy potentially, but worse, it's very bad for precisely the folks that we have both been emphasizing, the folks who are you know not succeeding in america uh who are in a

very bad condition, the government safety net is absolutely essential, and uh, again to get politics is important, the republican party actively wants to increase unemployment and poverty of infants. and youth, it's staggering. yeah, well, let's end it on this food assistance, and i'm going to give you a minute there, daniel shaw. i have two pieces of stat to throw at you, one is the snap program where uh, i was shocked to to read that it's 41. million people, 12 and a half% the total total us population. i think that's skewed on the high uh side, but even if you go and let's say put it at 35 million, that's still a lot of people that need assistance for food, and the other step. i want to throw you is how much the us actually generates in terms of revenue, which is around 6.3 trillion, but it is said that almost half of that goes on what's called entitlement

programs. now there's something really wrong if you have to spend that much on entitlement programs, not that i'm saying that's a bad thing for the ones that are getting it, and you have that many people who need food assistance. what's wrong with this picture? and that's why so many people are asking, every year we hear these rumors about... government shutdowns and it uh freaks us all out, but you never hear about their military aid to zelensky in kiev, that that money is never questioned, they just approved 21 billion dollars in additional funds for this proxy war in ukraine against russia and russia's geopolitical interests, which means that the total amount spend now is is foreign excess of $200 billion dollars and that's the argument that we're making. that that $200 billion dollars needs to be invested in snap in different nutritional programs as well as uh education and other infrastructure programs in our communities. all right, we're

going to end it there. thank you so much, daniel shaw, academic and commentator from new york, william black, thank you for your contribution, professor of economics and law, university of missory, kansas city, blumington minnesota, thank you, with that we come to an end for this edition, the spotlight fromway in the team, it's goodbye.

israeli forces have killed a young palestinian man and injured another in their new attack in the occupied. west bank, the two were identified as members of the hamas movement, following that palestinian media reported confrontations between israely troops and protestors in the west bank city, notably in tualcare. china has islam the u.s. as a true empire of lies following the state departmental report that accuses beijing of information manipulation. the chinese foreign ministry says the agencies of the us state department that produced a report for the

source of false information.