shareholders employees customers and the communities 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 blinked demanding benefits for everyone not just shareholders demanding diversity and better retirement for workers serving a social purpose not just the fundamental one could could this really be the awakening of a new hash tag woke wall street. let's find out as we start watching the hawks. if you. were already. at the bank

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

wal-mart corporation behind sam's club quietly announce the closure of at least sixty three sam's club stores across the u.s. the same day within twenty four hours that they've 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 in their communities and communicating with them by taping a sign on the door yet those very words contradict wal-mart's actions and if you're wondering why the way wal-mart treats us employees matters it's 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

a deadly but what is so unsettling is that despite massive increases in funding they have not raised the working conditions salaries benefits or ongoing care of our nation's military veterans and public servants so while we can be furious at walmart use the much maligned g.o.p. tax overhaul to ben as a benefit to bulk up their real estate holdings cut back on expenses and remain competitive can we really be surprised when the world's largest employers have no shame in using human beings to build wealth while ignoring the humanity of the people who make them rich and powerful and rich powerful and wealthy is kind of a naval game today i'm watching the heart it really blows my mind i didn't realize that. 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. end of my home to 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 you know suck it up buttercup that's kind of little bit of good thing is that yes of course somebody wants to make money of course the saints are going to happen of course there is only going to be so much but i think it's just the way they did and that was unnerving. and the thing about wal-mart i think that people start to stand like we're 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 there's your top four. war. war war. well there it is you know they needed the department to found this is worldwide we are u.s. military is a large sum lawyer. china's military and then a mcdonald's. and what's really frightening about the list and. brilliantly

pointed out is the. military u.s. military number one ok. veterans and soldiers. hospitals are. taking care of the vets when they get back it's been a mess and everybody saying that i don't know how china takes care of its soldiers sorry a lot of things 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 i mean three out of the four on that list all have absolutely atrocious history of taking care of their employees like you said where they're underpaid no retirement nothing like that blows my mind and that's top down. like you pointed out man. they don't take care they're not ways better when they know that the big dogs at the top don't care either well

there's this idea that i would 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 said that they can share at the heart 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 sam's club c.e.o. john furner said that some laid off workers would be redeployed to nearby locations so to see you know that two of the sixty three locations are said to be repurposed and e-commerce two of the six. 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 and lesser 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 wage increases yet so there were what they were going to raise that year

and one out of one side of them out there saying look 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 that's. less than twelve hours later they were like oh yeah and on top of that i. will but i heard they were they were just doing it like in response to what their competitors did because their competitors like raise wages like you know whatever a little bit before they were fatal they were sold as the your game anyway at the end of the day sir you know and what's really interesting to have is when we were talking earlier about how this is a long history in the united states going back but having labor versus management. since one thousand nine hundred exactly well before and there is and the thing about them is that there's this one thing this one area where you really see that how how hard the fight was and of these people really put their lives online i mean we talk about coal workers and saving call not save coal but coal workers back in

the in the twenty is such a stage for a lot of labor and a lot of labor issues in this country that was actually organized labor leader from the one nine hundred twenty s. well into the sixty's john l. lewis he was the we said quote workers have kept faith in american institutions most of the conflicts which have occurred have been when labor's right to live has been challenged and denied and here stone you know that's coming here it is in the twenty's and thirty's they're still fighting that thing of it is that the worker trusts the institution they trust this idea back in the days of carnegie or whoever you know this is a guy that 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 vicious side of capitalism and there's a lot of real debate right now among especially amongst black millennial xin and

activists people like that. will cap. capitalism work in the future you know is this really is the staining idea of how we go about our business because clearly 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 people you know retirement infrastructure training people to get ready for automation worker retraining because the government has failed to do that corporations need to step up and do that and he handles the lifeblood the investment money that keeps a lot of these major corporations up and one point seven active one point seven

trillion active investments is coming you know it's incredible to go to work i mean this is one of those things that i feel positive about it because i think the younger generations are you know the generation. 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 dude say it then i'm going to have a conscience about it yeah you know and what's going to dictate what about you know who's going to dictate what's good works what's bad works you know there's a lot of questions so i love that anybody that said here's an idea does it bob people write if i'm killed or people pour probably not going to be on the left what's interesting is his letter could you know be taken as a threat

a lot of people are they might not invest in companies that they give a bad rap to the black rock the company is literally doubling down internally on corporate government corporate governance increasing the size of the team by a hundred percent who judges corporate governance so they look at for like who they want to take these super rich monies and people to drill ion them to make the money where do i want to put it 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 those ideas we 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 full shows at r.t. dot com coming up sunstone talks of wealth inequality with donald jeffries author of the book survival of the rich if. stay tuned.

the two thousand and eight economic crisis turns some countries into pigs these are the countries with weaker economies. needed austerity policy is if you are in a situation of low bloat even the recession austerity is a very bad idea it doesn't work and it makes millions of people very unhappy those who are unemployed see their wages decline almost a decade how good are the results you saw all of the new york city's will by the people gathered in which the wad of good people with your daughter julie a choice between three hundred billion for blue she still clematis i mean to file a legal. challenge nothing more than this young girl who is always going to take she found out they are not getting paid why are the same measures still in place who one of the consequences lose to weaken bluebirds food dismantle who will

first one this is the truth the consumer is the consequences are actually quite acceptable to the decision makers. join me every first day on the alex salmond show and i'll be speaking to get off of the world of politics sports business i'm show business i'll see that. i don't think that any country can push a button and get rid of trade this is far too important to be farmers to political backlash money is a very plentiful thing and i think it will be very quick before people find ways around it because the mistake you made it may be damaging it might cut it back but the idea that you could do anything nearly even this is very unlike.

moses you have when you don't. seem to. get a clear. what are the most only ten steps. left in the he. said. no terminator that. alex you speak french. was. the same yes. it's a new. song the bill told c.n.n. this close.

to many around the world the united states has historically represented a land of opportunity a country built on the dream that one can start from nothing and with a little hard work become everything but underneath that most american dream is live a much more sobering economic reality researcher and author of the book survival of the richest donald jeffries explores just where the collective wealth of the united states truly lives and recently he sat down with our own sean bell to discuss his latest book. jeffrey thank you so much for joining me want to talk about your book . survival of the richest and actually i want to start with this statistic which kind of shocks me well i guess it's not too shocking but still it's a marked fall for united states from may to eight the economist ranked as the best place to be born to today it's about sixteenth on the list what are the major differences that allow that kind of fall well i think the disparity in wealth is

the major differences we see when alarming statistics a lot of alarming statistics come out since i wrote the book but i read recently where fifty percent of the people in america now to the bottom half make less than twenty seven thousand dollars a year that's just that's amazing that's half the country. less than twenty seven thousand you can't live on almost anywhere and to get it get an apartment on that kind of salary little unless the match and we already knew that less than the bottom fifty percent is less than one percent of the collective well so i think that's the main reason why this is becoming and not as great a place to live as it was for a long time is the effect i mean obviously you can point to things like the inflation when it comes to rents inflation when it comes to health care education you know these type of things you have food but then when it comes to become wage we're basically still fighting to try to get ten dollars minimum wage when you factor in a way to probably closer to i would say twenty five to thirty dollars to actually reflect what it used to be in the 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 the the vast majority of workers are not being paid enough to meet the cost of living and as you mentioned the cost of everything go up and even in something 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 even that happens mostly carrying on down the line with the fallout from this tax plan but people you already have one hundred closed one hundred million americans of adult age are unemployed which somehow adds up to four percent unemployment under either. what kind of common core math that is but it does not up in my book and then you have the people that are working half of them are making twenty seven thousand less so it's a great disparity between people who are top that are doing very well incredibly well and continue to do well and the people who really probably eighty percent of the public 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 yeah it's really described 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 in the millions of dollars on the on the enable basis what is it you know what is it that keeps them in that class well i think one of the things that donald trump said that resonated with people was talking about it was a rigged game and he had no you know he was born to a multimillionaire so it became much easier to become a billionaire when you start out life as a multimillionaire the system is rigged for that point and survival the richest everything is in favor of the rich from things like the rich pay less for car insurance for instance because they don't fact they factor in certain things that favor them and certain things and don't favor border on the drivers. and get rich

get so many freebies and things like that and this is them is backwards and yet as you mention that we have this mythical welfare queen type mentality that comes from the days of reagan who talked about the welfare queen and i think there's they've never been able to find these people i don't think anybody is people are certainly milking the welfare 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. it's is folding like a pack of cards and you know their ratings are down their business is doing terrible right. you know recently basically threaten the n.f.l. said raise my salary and give me some you know whatever it is how many millions for a life and give me my family and i completely free health care and i believe they caved in and that makes no sense in a free marketplace because by any measure he's done a horrible job he's running what i could you know a golden egg into the ground and we see this post or equate with so many c.e.o.'s

you start with carly fiorina you know ran h.p. . packard in the ground was given a forty million dollars goldman relative go on and then sell qualified to run for president so i think that's that's the system we have is at the very wealthy are the most entitle them and yet the poor are the ones that have this reputation of they're lazy and they want handouts and so forth but the rich actually get the big handouts whatever handouts happens at the bottom are very small and just enough to live on precisely i mean. you know 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 but you know have food because they basically cover trying to cover their rent and their basic costs of living and there was a time when we had labor unions in this country and it was like as though the capitalist class really went after the idea of labor unions as though it was too many freebies you know chipper pay too much for labor we're paying too much on the

health care and other you know pensions and things like that. is that i mean is that really one of the major reasons that we don't have that we have seen this kind of disparity this country is because we've seen the collapse of the labor unions i think that's one reason definitely is i mean i believe it really began with reagan in the air traffic controllers and going to see stood up to them a great great deal of americans were shortsighted because i mean i never belonged to a labor union but i knew people who did and back then the presence of labor unions raised everyone's salaries because the competition for i give you a perfect example that people that work in grocery stores i know someone that was very. cashier at safeway back in the early eighty's and was making thirty five thousand dollars a year which is a really good salary back to that same job today probably pays eight dollars an hour or so same company same job because what happened the union they had a strong union back then and then again the presence of the unions and i 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 a 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 of life and what we see then from trump's tax plan i mean what is supposed he basically is taking a lot of the the tax deduction this far as the corporations are concerned with the intention of creating they're going to put it on economics right trying to bring corporate tax money start corporate dollars back into the united states trying to repatriate that money but then you also he's i think try to sickly give

a little boon to the middle class and lower class by saying well everyone who ever will get a break for the next basically seven ten years. do you see this as something that can be productive for the economy or is it really just playing a sort of a token tip of the cap to the to the regular common man and most of it is going to corporations i think is probably had i think i think it's a trickle down type of black tax plan where we see the most obvious benefits come in the corporate tax rate things was dramatically from i think thirty thirty six to twenty one percent or something that's permanent to the individual class of. tax cuts i believe only fall twenty twenty five no it's going to happen after that and of course the top tax rate was cut from thirty nine point six to thirty seven percent the last minute during a compromise the other tax rate i'm not sure i don't know how my tax rate is going to 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's so many that's that's the biggest debt we have in this country and the average student loan is thirty two thousand dollars you're not going to be able to write that off any more and the deductions for alimony are going to be eliminated i'm 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 crash so that kind of industry because people depend on writing all their expenses off to be able to make a living so and for trump into real estate magnate you do that as we've specially ironic but i think we'll have to see what the 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 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 up so that what you could write off credit card debt auto one's personal loans things like that and then who had that

impact and then impacted the people who needed those type of loans which are here at the bottom and so that's what seems like to be what happens all the time is that the the greater benefit happens to those the top and they just assumes that some magical way these things will trickle down and i don't i haven't seen much indication that they've ever trickle down. buying things online has become the norm for many want to avoid crowded people dollars and do it all in the comfort of their living room but in the event that you don't have a living room eliz on can help you with that too he was not the base model international started selling cars. impact houses on amazon last fall and since then and as of now offers homes from tiny log cabins to shipping containers reworked intellectually as little living doll in the silos for a number of different companies but 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 does died over four hundred forty seven different home designs how it was of options of each for customers they said of course home prices are slightly different from nineteen away when you could buy an eight room bungalow for under its thousand dollars not including the cost of land. and now you can get and under thirteen square but cabin will set you back about four thousand dollars these days but it's prime that's pretty typical of somebody there's little houses are. just like our show and that is our stroke because the perfect crew member we want to move the world we are about to all be a lovely stuff so i tell you all i love you i robot are. watching those talks have a great day and i never put it.

all to see we have a great team but we need to strengthen before the free world cold and you're better than a legend to keep it so it's at the back. in one thousand nine hundred two that must qualify for the european championships at the very last moment no one believed in us but we won and i'm hoping to bring some of that winning spirit to the r.c.t. . recently i've had a lot of practice so i can guarantee you that peter schmeichel will be on the best fall since my last will come from that story as well as three. thousand the joke was on the russian. nice try i. know the left left left more or less ok stop that's really good. the new global economic war is unfolding in the realm of education the right to

education is being supplanted by the right to access education alone higher education is becoming just another product that can be bought and sold but it's not just about education anymore it's also about running a business where you could you know most of the regime could these songs. i want is the place of students in this business model. for. an extremely more education of the new global economic war. i. i.

i. so he demands that the united states end its support for syrian kurds amid a spat between the two countries over washington the train border force. hundreds of prison guards at a large french prison that. strike over unsafe working conditions. and a new leak from the hacking group. raises concerns over cases in the rio olympics of two thousand and sixteen.