of in the us the idol workers strike has expanded for the first time ever to detroit three, the union and the automakers remain far apart on key economic issues like pay, but the strikes are not limited to just auto workers, which the combined number of 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 may be a window into a much 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 unemployments and inflation. first let me introduce our guests: black, professor of economics and law at the university of missouri kansas city, joins us from blumington minnesota. also joining us is of daniel shaw academic and commentator who joins us from new york. welcome to you both black, i'll start with. so you have the union and the companies uh remaining far apart in terms of the autoworker strike on key economic issues. the ua 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 we have. what's your of impression on it? yeah the absolute latest is uh the uaw 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 auto workers who are also part of the uaw, so the management it is, as you can see quite different in canada. what type of settlement did they reach with canada? so they reached a settlement more in the lines of 25. is percent to to 30% increase. 25 to 30% increase. okay, uh, that's over the period of several years. right, right. um, let's look at one thing here, daniel, 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 agreed to let the company hired new workers at that time. but at about half the hourly wage that

that prevailed and with um skimpier retirement benefits and higher temp workers at even lower rates from what we understand and outsource more jobs abroad uh this is while the american tax payers for over 10 billion dollars to save the company uh so in a way they sacrifice themselves in order to get the company up and running um coming out of the uh the sorry state that it was in due to the financial crisis um do you think that the sak advice that the workers have uh end that they applied to themselves and then endured all these years is uh being repaid back in a 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 are on full display, the ceos of these uh of the big three automobile industry giants, their

yearly salaries of between 25 million and uh 50 million, just for these ceos, so the 25,000 auto workers, the uaw. union is 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 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 uh or i guess there talked about the ceo pay looking at uh what general motor ceo is making it's 29 million ford ceo 21 million and salancio 25 million so these are uh these are i mean pretty high salaries guessing especially when you take a look at the profits overall the uh manufacturers. get their bonus in part by

precisely those things that you've just explained, so it is really important and very few americans understand that there is this uh two tier system uh that the companies insisted on and shamefully federal government uh under uh presidents bush and obama uh agreed to of paying as you say new workers far less and uh also 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 workers were responsible for the ceo's gains and the companies gains, and

second, you need to uh begin rid of this two tier system uh, because it penalizes in particular younger workers. all right, one of the things that since we're on this topic of ceos um daniel shaw, i'm looking at at just a reaction in terms of strikes overall in 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, if not all sectors of course this could be something that could happen all the time, but this particular uh economic uh, i guess atmosphere in the us, that rings a bell, what are your thoughts on that? i mean, why is it that uh, you know, we're looking at uh the types of statements and view points that we uh heard when you had

the uh zikoti park demonstrations that were happening back then uh in terms of uh um you know the 99% versus the 1% because every day the... class contradictions are sharper across us society and these workers are class conscious workers, they know that uh gm and and ford depend on them and labor and their back pain and their blood sweat and tears and sacrifices that they make every day. if we listen to uaw president sean fein, he almost has a bernie sanders esk tone to him when he describes the billionaire class, the elon. and the bill gates and how these individuals live when the vast majority of us, the workers who keep this country running uh depend a monthly check to see if we can pay our mortgage and get enough groceries and settle our uh medical bills, so when sean fein quotes the bible saying that it's easier

for camel to enter into through the eye of needle than rich person uh like these ceos to enter into the kingdom of god, think that uh rhetoric there, that anti-capitalist rhetoric speaks for millions and millions of workers across this country. in terms of wage increases, um, 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 figured here through variety of resources, inflation adjusted annual wages of the top one percent rose by 145%. and then uh for the bottom uh rose by 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 one thousandth of

1%. uh, there the the gains are are in the thousand percent range, however, the united states and what biden of course is calling biden nomics uh turning around insult into a benefit um or as we as economic ranks would call running the economy hot um has actually reversed for a time uh these slightly some of these long-term trends in other words uh real wages uh despite inflation uh have have actually started growing and uh by we the united states had record low unemployment and record low unemployment of minorities uh in particular, and that's why you see biden actually 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 uh 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 uh type wages uh i can tell you i grew up in deerborn worked for ford motor company my stepdad worked for uh ford motor company my grandfather worked for ford motor company. company uh and such um so yes the the bottom

10% of the united states still in terrible shape um and again this gets political we took reduce child poverty in half now first if you're going to have a policy not in child poverty why cut it in half but hey uh the republicans insisted on getting rid of that uh and 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 clear which way the elections are going to go in the united states on these issues exactly, you talk you touch a number of issues that are really important there uh first of all uh inflation is very important and uh you talk 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 us pins the number at around 3% from what i understand um workers pay uh to have increased 5% but when you take

a look at inflation i mean you're in new york daniel shaw maybe you can tell us uh when you take a look at some of the categories for example it's very shocking uh to hear that uh in 2022 price of eggs in terms of inflation was uh had increased 19% uh oil flats 9% and then you had uh things like um in 20 22 uh food at school 305%, 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 b is what i said, but really it's not that is it, mean i'm sure when you go buy a cigarettes or when you go buy butter or marger, it's not just a 3% increase right? so i'm trying, if you see why with this, what is the deal there in terms of that versus the wages that average americans are earning? yeah, uh, based on uh, your assessment of what's going on 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's called atrocity propaganda. against their political enemies such as um russia or or venezuela or nicaragua, but i wish that the professor there in the midwest could give tour of what cleveland and detroit and chicago in the midwest looks like, after decades and decades of social uh abandonment, this was the thriving industrial sector of our job, and i think foreign audience would find it unreal to see the images from gary indiana. or flint michigan and to see the complete social neglect uh that an entire

generation of children or two generations now have suffered from. all right uh william black i'm going to uh ask you the same question because uh 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 inflate. almost certainly is overstated, and that's something that even conservative economists, and by the way, politics of the united states is that it's the democrats who want emphasize inflation isn't that big problem and it's republicans who want emphasize uh that it's the biggest problem ever, and economists of course are overwhelmingly in the conservative camp, but i i can go through the technical reason because probably boring, conservative economis 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 capitalistica 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'm often pushing in the opposite direction of where you you may think i'm coming from uh and saying no we need to be emphasizing poverty and 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, lart depending on the time

period, among the five largest cities in the united states or the sixth largest cities in the united states and now they are catastrophically in terrible uh condition. for example, the uaw at peak had about 1.5 million members, it now has 400,000 active members, but is responsible still for negotiating on behalf of retirees whose benefits the uaw still you know pushes for. "ho number about 600,00, but you can see that decline from roughly 1.5 million to roughly 400,000 and that's actually a uaw number, so that actually includes employment in canada, which is quite substantial in the auto industry, uh, and puerto rico, which is kind the united states, it's a little technical, and uh, in mexico. all right, well uh, i'm

glad you mention uh, the points that you made about inflation because we're just trying to figure it out really, mean daniel shaw uh our guest there says that it's not as bad as as it uh that that's as bad as some may make it, but uh so what what about the workers that are striking, mean it's not just the auto workers, i'm looking down a list of uh some the industies and some of the companies, mean you had the screen riders which appears that they reached some kind of agreement, you had starbucks employees, amazon workers, you have frontline workers uh but there's nurses, hotel staff and pilots, you have the ups which... they reach an agreement if they hadn't that would have been the biggest strike in us history or should i say the largest strike in us history so and and the news um reads that uh you know it's strike season that the us strikes have made made a comeback mean so why are they out a 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 be a month of uh strikes, i think uh professor black's macro economic analysis is um informative at the same time if we take a step back in terms of unemployment, you know, the new york times will report this, the presidency will report that in the department of labor, but when we go into our communities, the reality is even harsher on the ground, because how many workers, how many families have actually given up, they're no longer counted, um in the actual statistics, so unemployment is often so much higher when you go through oppress communities, the black community that often those numbers are um under reported, in terms of um the the strikes, i think so many workers are again uh waking up to the reality of what these mass uh the automobile

starbucks we saw the vast uh strike campaigns and in the fight for $15 over the course of the past uh uh decade or or so and and workers are demanding more because the economic reality is and they can't survive on what we survived 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 government shutdown um we're trying to figure out what's going on there um 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 an 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 of a 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 of 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 mccarty, 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 uh succeeding in america uh who are in 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 just 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 41.2 million people, 12 and a half percent of 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 stet 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 in titlement programs. now there's something really wrong if you have to spend that much entitlement programs, not that i'm saying that's a bad thing with 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 some 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 to prove $21 uh billion dollars in additional funds for this proxy war in ukraine against russia and russia's geopolitical interests, which means that the total amount spended now is is foreign. of $200 billion dollars and that's the argument that we making that that $200 billion needs to be invested in snap 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 missouri, kansas city, bloomington, minnesota. thank you, with that we come to an end for this edition of the spotlight from the team, it's goodbye.

از پنج سال پیش تا حالا بسیار بد شده تقریباً زیر صفره خب فشارهایی که از خارج هست و اقتصاد ایران تحت فشاره و نمی ذارن راحت معامله بکنن ایران یک گوهر تو این دنیا از نظریت ایران کشور امنیه سیفه در منطقه ما متأسفانه امروز امنیت حرف اول رو می زنم ما هدف اصلیم همه مردم دنیا آزادانه بدون سلطه اونها زندگی. hossain

and ibrahim are standing on the ruins of the house overlooking the school in the northern gaza strip town of bait hanon. the israelisound. them up and killed 16 of them where they stood, mostly children and wounded more than 55 others. the children were playing in the street, some were playing on the swings. we were surprised by the explosion, but when we turned round we saw the children had become shreds of flesh laying in the street, some were injured and some others were dead. my uncle shaban, jamal and muhammad were among those who died. every child of palestine now carries with them memories of explosions, of screams of horror by the inhumane, unconchionable actions of

israel.

mazandaron is one of the most beautiful provinces in iran and an ideal option for mountaineers. the symphony of colors is at play. i dare say this is one of the most amazing views of mount damovent i have ever

seen. the track was rocky and steep and it was getting dark a rapid pace. each moment of this track is imbued with wonderful scenes. first of the headlines: iran's foreign ministry says tehran is opposed to any geopolitical change in the caucasus region, but welcomes the expansion of transit routes. anti-war activist rally in new york city to protest to protest arm supplies by the us and its allies to ukraine, blaming the conflict

in such moves. and thousands of catalans march in barcelona chanting anti-goverment slogans as they mark the sixth anniversary of the region's failed independence referendum.