in which they operate today our clients who are your company's owners are asking you to demonstrate the leadership and clarity that will drive not only their own investment returns but also the prosperity and security of their fellow citizens. i'm sorry but i i believe i believe i just i just read a modern titan of corporate capitalism i think may have just blanked. demanding benefits for everyone not just shareholders demanding diversity and better retirement for workers serving a social purpose not just the presidential one could could this really believe the awakening of a new hash table wolk wall street. let's find out if we start watching the hawks. you're the already. at the bank like a real bitch it would be glad to get back to. what

it's like i got it. because we. can't. predict our. welcome or what you don't want to hog relevant. and i am not allowed it's now one magic showing up for work just days after your employer announces big bonuses big pay increases and benefits benefits when it gets to loyal employees like you only to discover a sign taped the locked door is telling you the store you work at is close that well that's what happened to these sam's club employees last week and the rochester new york area. don't like.

wal-mart's corporation behind sam's club quietly announced the closure of at least sixty three sam's club stores across the u.s. the same day within twenty four hours that they praised the new g.o.p. tax overhaul which was according to this administration supposed to help corporations afford to create more jobs not as this move by wal-mart did remove nearly ten thousand jobs in the american marketplace according to a press release from wal-mart their focus has been on these associates and their communities and communicating with them. taping a sign on the door get those very words contradict wal-mart's actions and if you're wondering why the way wal-mart treats its employees matters is because wal-mart is one of the handful of private and public organizations that lou kind of literally sets the tone for employers around the world wal-mart 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 people's 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 they're building a loyal staff with places like wal-mart and mcdonald's 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 world's biggest private employers care when the world's biggest employer the u.s. department of state takes such unbelievably bad care of its employees asian orange to iraqi burn pits jobs in the military are deadly but what is so unsettling is

that despite massive increases in funding they have not raised the working conditions some. calories benefit our ongoing care of our nation's military veterans and public servants so while we can be furious at wal-mart using the much maligned g.o.p. tax overhauls of ben as a benefit to bulk up their real estate holdings cut back on expenses and remain competitive can we really be surprised when the world's largest employers have no shame and using human beings to build wealth while ignoring the humanity of the people who make them rich and powerful and rich powerful and wealthy is kind of a navy game today and watching the heart really blows my mind i didn't realize the. ten thousand employees you know you're a big company with you close sixty some stores ten thousand people lose their jobs that's that's a town. that's multiple in the higher town kind of my hometown yeah yeah it's sort

of hard to watch because while the one hand you see a corporation once again which you know that's capitalism not so suck it up buttercup that's cover them good thing is that yeah of course somebody wants to make money of course these things are going to happen of course there's only going to be so much but i think it's just the way they did and that was nervous. and the thing about wal-mart i think that people start talking about how many i don't 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 their top four. or. more. is all there it is you know the department of defense is worldwide we are u.s. military is the largest employer. china military and then a mcdonald's you know that and what's really frightening about that list and as you

brilliantly pointed out is the. military u.s. military number one ok we see how they treat veterans and soldiers. v.a. hospitals are. taking care of the vets when they get back it's been a mess everybody you know everybody saying that i don't know how china takes care of its soldiers i'm sorry a lot of i don't know i don't know. but then when you look at like wal-mart and then the next on the list is mcdonald's that means three out of the four on that list all have absolutely atrocious history of taking care of their employees like you said where they're underpaid no retirement nothing like that that blows my mind. and that's top down what you pointed out meant once a person is. going to go take care of that way better when they know that the big dogs at the top don't care either well there's this idea whether it's public or

private and i think that's the idea is when you look at those numbers they're supposed to be job creators that was the whole point was let's give capital to companies so that they can you know share at the sort of the idea but really what they're just trying to do is as has sort of hedge their bets on a real estate deal actually the sense of 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 e-commerce two of the sixty. but i think it's very funny that it's like well redeploy they're even using military jargon the idea that someone would think that it's appropriate in leicester in the military you don't just tape somebody a sign to someone's door they show up and say this is what you're doing and. the fact that there were problems from a single. yes so yeah there were what they were going to raise that year one out of one side of them out there saying look we're going to raise minimum wages from nine

to eleven we're going to give people bonuses we're going to do this we're going to do this. less than twelve hours later they were like oh yeah and on top of that i scuttlebutt i heard they were they were just doing it like in response to what their competitors because they're competitors like raise wages like you know whatever a little bit but there was a deal they were told in the yard game anyway at the end of the day sir you know and what's really interesting to have is when we were talking earlier about how this is a long history in the united states goes back but having labor versus management. since one thousand nine hundred exactly well before and there is and the thing about him is that there's this one this one area where you really see how hard the fight was at these people really put their lives online i mean we talk about coworkers and save and call not as save coal but coal workers back in the in the twenty is sought the stage for a lot of labor and

a lot of labor issues in this country there was actually organized labor leader from the one nine hundred twenty s. well into the sixty's john l. lewis he was a reason quote workers have kept faith in american institutions most of the conflicts which have occurred have been when labor's right to live has been challenged and denied and here so you know that's coming here it is in the twenty's and thirty's they're still fighting that thing of which is that the worker trusts the institution they trust this idea back in the days of carnegie or whoever you know this is a guy that we're going to we're part of this one way or the other and it's when the institutions like a wal-mart say we can't have full i'm going to not give you full time employment you're just going to show up. and we're going to much money for the side of capitalism and there's a lot of real debate right now among especially amongst like millennial xin and activists people like that is do we cap. capitalism work in the future you know is

this really a sustaining idea of how we go about our business because clearly it's eating the world alive right now where we've gone too far and that's 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 it's time because governments because they are calling on governments in this letter saying look governments have failed to prepare for the future for their for their people you know and that's 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 that 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 i think it's incredible to go to

work i mean this is one of the things that i feel positive about it because i think the younger generation the generation x. the millennial they're 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 that's going to want right they're going to invest in companies that they feel have found that value that's 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 is to say it isn't going to have a conscience about it yeah you know and what's going to dictate what is you know who's going to dictate what's good works what's bad works there's a lot of questions so i love that even if not bad here's an idea does it bob people right up until the people pour probably not going to be on the left what's interesting is his letter could. 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 her like who they want to take these super rich moneys and people that do rely on them to make the money where do i want to put it they're now going to have a checklist saying look if you're not if your company isn't doing enough good public good we're not going to give you any money so it's going to be interesting to see if this is p.r. if it plays out it will definitely be interesting to see how yes i does go to break our questions don't forget to let us know what you think of the topics covered in facebook and twitter see our poll shows at our two dot com coming up one stone talks about the new quality with donald jeffries author of the book survival of the richest stay tuned.

i don't think that any country can push a button and get rid of trade this is far too important to be for. i wish to political backlash money is a very plentiful thing and i think it will be very quick before people find ways around it because they say it may be damaging it might cut it back but the idea that you could do anything nearly to the south is very unlikely. is iran must going to fit into steve jobs is by coming up with innovative products you know the electronic gadgets market is a little bit different in the car business because the car business is you know you kind of bound by the highway system and you're bound by the whole infrastructure that is the automotive industry and the lobbying of the automotive industry so it's a bit difficult to be disruptive in that industry in

a way he's going to open up his charging stations with one nine hundred fifty style burger and shake joints with servers on roller skates ok that's that's an idea that might take off that might be a new like starbucks like third place that people go to to have an experience that might work. closer to you know when you don't see. the teachers what did the court to do. what did you not through only ten space. left alone. said. samantha climbed into no terminated especially that. alex you speak french. most of you have passed close while the timing of the events send them to continue to post sunday's busy times that come to

this close. to many around the world the united states as the stork lee 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 of dreams lies a much more sobering economic reality researcher and author of the book survival of the richest donald jeffries explores just where the collective wealth in the united states truly lives and recently he sat down with our own sean bell to discuss his latest book and jeffrey thank you so much for joining us 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 it's not too shocking but still it's

a marked fall for united states from may to eighty eight the economist ranked as the best place to be born to today it's about sixteen 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 the alarming statistic a lot of alarming statistics here come out since i wrote the book but i read recently where fifty percent of the people in america now but the bottom half make less than twenty seven thousand dollars a year that's just that's amazing that's half the country. less than twenty seven thousand you can't live on almost anywhere and began to get an apartment on that kind of salary little on less than that so and we already knew that less than the bottom fifty percent is less than one percent of the collective well so i think that's the main reason why this is becoming not as great a place to live as it was for a long time is the effect to me to 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 we're basically still fighting to try to get ten dollars minimum wage when you factor in a way should probably be closer to say twenty five to thirty dollars tax. you're flecked what used to be in the seventy's time period for example right and i think that's that's the main problem is that politicians are ignoring is that i think the main issue in america is that the the vast majority of workers are not being paid enough to meet the cost of living and as you mention the cost of everything go up and even in something like social security they don't factor in the cost of food and housing when they get their very small yearly raises and who knows what's even to happen with the security now down the line with the fallout from this tax plan but people you already have one hundred close two hundred million americans of adult age are unemployed which somehow adds up to four percent unemployment under i don't know 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 or less so it's

a great disparity between the people who top that are doing very well incredibly well and continue to do well and the people who really probably eighty percent of the public it's 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 don't think that adds up to a first world economy and certainly doesn't add up to what it was fifty years ago or yes or they describe that's 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 they're just lazy and they don't say it's 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 let's say for example or you know paychecks of the millions of dollars on the on the enable basis what is it you know what is it that keeps them in that class well i think one of the things that donald trump said that resonated with people was talking about it was a rigged game and he had no you know he was born to a multimillionaire so it became much easier to become a billionaire when you start out life as

a multimillionaire the system is rigged for that point and survival the richest everything is in favor of the rich from things like the rich pay less for car insurance for instance because they don't fact they factor in certain things that favor them a certain thing. and don't say a reporter on the drivers. and get rich kids so many freebies and things like that and this is the most backwards and yet if 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 there's they've never been able to find these people i don't think anybody people are certainly milking the wealth service system i imagine but they're not getting very much out of it if they are you know gaming the system they're 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. is is folding like a pack of cards and you know their ratings are down their business is doing terrible roger goodell recently basically threaten the n.f.l. said raise my souring and give me you know whatever it is how many millions for a life and give me my family and i completely free health care and i believe they

caved in to him and that makes no sense in a free marketplace because by any measure he's done a horrible job he's running with what i could you know a golden egg into the ground and we see this story clee with so many c.e.o.'s just not with carly fiorina who you know ran h.p. . packard into the ground was given a forty million dollars goldman relative go and then sell qualified to run for president so i think that's that's the system we have is that the very wealthy are the most compiled in and yet the poor are the ones that have this reputation and they're lazy and they want handouts and so forth but the rich actually get the big ten whatever handouts happens at the bottom are very small and just enough to live on precisely i mean. you know we've seen for example situations like wal-mart employees who basically are making minimum wage and sub that and then they're basically having to get food stamps to be able to. you know have to have a you know have food because they basically cover trying to cover their rent and

their basic cost of living and there was a time when we had labor unions in this country and it was as though the capitalist class really went after the idea of labor unions as though it was too many freebies you know two for pay. so much for labor we're paying too much on the health care and other you know pensions and things like that. is that i mean i really one of the major reasons that we don't have that we have seen this kind of disparity this country is because we've seen the collapse of the labor union i think that's one reason that's why is i mean i believe it really began with reagan in the air traffic controllers and going to see stood up to them under a great deal of americans were short sighted because i mean i never belonged to a labor union but i knew people who didn't back then the presence of labor unions raised everyone salaries because the competition for i give you a perfect example that people that work in grocery stores i know someone that was a cashier at safeway back in the early eighty's and was making thirty five thousand dollars a year which is a really good salary back in that same job today probably pays eight dollars an

hour or so same company same job because what happened the union they had a strong union back then and again the presence of the unions and i don't know if all the grocery stores unionized but the ones that weren't in they realized this is the going rate and that's 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 don't see how americans don't realize that you know the living talk about living wage is clichéd 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 that's an awful lot of people that are you know they're not living any kind of middle class life a little on the first world type the life and what we'll see then from trump's tax plan i mean what does that mean as opposed he basically is taking

a lot of the the you know tax deduction this far as the corporations are concerned with the intention of great britain on economics or trying to bring corporate tax money start corporate dollars back into the united states trying to repatriate that money. but then you also he's i think trying to sickly get a little girl into. 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 eight i see sort of a token tip of the cap to the to the regular common man and most of it is going to the corporations i think that's probably had i think i think it's a trickle down type of black tax plan where we see the most obvious benefits coming the corporate tax rate being slashed dramatically from i think thirty thirty six to twenty one percent or something that's permanent to have the individual class tax cuts i believe only fall twenty twenty five no it's going to happen after that and of course the top tax rate is cut from thirty nine point six to thirty seven

percent the last minute during a compromise the other tax rate i'm not sure i don't know how my tax rates and i'll have to see when we do our taxes but they're changing the standard exemptions they're limiting lots of deductions what they're doing to real estate is awful they're going to cripple an already struggling market with the changes they're making there they're limiting deductions like for student loans and you know there are so many bets the biggest debt we have in this country on the average student loan is thirty two thousand dollars you're not going to be able to write that off anymore and deductions for alimony are going to be eliminated a moving expenses and i'm not sure all the business expenses but if they translate into realtors and other type of sales people it's going to crush show 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 we specially ironic but i think we'll have to see what follows from that but just judging by the people who are cheering it. i think it's very reaganite like what he did in one thousand nine hundred six which was

a disastrous force and i don't 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 a bill that point you could write off credit card and it auto wound. personal loans things and in fact i mean any impact on the people needed those type of loans which are dinner at the bottom so that seems to be what happens all the time is that the greater benefit happens to those in the top and they just assumes that some magical way these things will trickle down and i don't see much an occasion that they never trickle down to. buying things online has become the norm for many who want to avoid cravats people paper dollars and do it all from the comfort of their living room but in the event that you don't have a living room ever gone can help you with that to see wisconsin based model international started selling compact houses on amazon last fall and since then and are now offers homes from tiny log cabins to shipping containers reworked into

luxury as little living dulness files from a number of different companies but it's 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 just died over four hundred forty seven different home designs countless out options of each for customers a set of course prices are slightly different from nineteen away when you could buy an eight room bungalow for one hundred thousand dollars not including the cost of land and now you can get it and hundreds thirteen square foot cabin will set you back about four thousand dollars these days but. it's a private space ship. there's little houses are a lair is the charm. just like our style and that is our stroker to predict every one was world we're about told me i love that stuff so i tell you all i love you i

am tired of it for a while watching those talks have a great day and night at the foot. young children who worked in bolivia for generations almost three quarters of a million doing so today. this culture led to the development of bolivia's new liberal and highly controversial children's code in two thousand and fourteen which gave children as young as ten the right to work under certain circumstances much as anything this. is all news. eat but without the end of. the six

years. but there are hundreds of thousands of children in bolivia operation completely outside the mold. mining work is strictly forbidden by the children but it's never enforced and that means the school boy minus he continues risking their lives for the money they need to survive. hey everybody i'm stephen both task hollywood guy you know suspect every proud

american first of all i'm just george washington and r.v. i'm going to say this is my buddy max famous financial guru well he's a little bit different i'm honest. though no one knows up with all the drama happening in our country and i'm hitting the road to have some fun meet everyday americans. and hopefully start to bridge the gap this is the great american people which. are the mainstream media intentionally gaslighting the public against president donald trump three first appears to be equally true trump does with style gas like the media what kind of body politic is this creating as the us become a collection of hysterical drama queens.

president trump says it's very possible the north korean crisis can't be resolved peacefully despite the two koreas agreeing to compete under one flag at the winter olympics. the u.n. agency for palestinian refugees slams america's decision to cut the organizations funding corning get the worst crisis in its history. that there are russian agents in the spirit parlance right now. lies and lies and lies are being told throughout europe and we hear the same story over and over again talk about russia dominates in the european parliament's with members clashing over alleged threats and fake news.