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tv   Boom Bust  RT  January 2, 2019 3:30am-4:01am EST

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party's m.p. lam byrne who requested the survey told the u.k. guardian that absent major reforms global policy makers are quote risking a new explosion instability corruption and poverty on the other side of the proverbial coin a nov twenty seventh team report from credit suisse found that people on the bottom fifty percent of the income scale on less than one percent of global wealth got that fifty percent of lower income folks on less than one percent o.-m. g. . turning back to the u.s. for more granular view of the problem the pew research center noted late last year that the so-called great recession of two thousand and seven to two thousand and nine further exacerbated inequality by race gender and income as one of most trusted analyst of demographics polling and policy in the united states using figures from the federal reserve they found that among americans poor and middle class the gap between white households wealth and black and hispanic households
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increased in the wake of the great recession and twenty sixteen white households in these brackets had four times the wealth of comparable african-american families and three times the wealth of hispanic households interestingly pew did find that among lower income household white families lost more wealth than their african-american and hispanic peers. reports about the poor are unfortunately not a new thing over the years we've seen a steady flow of papers studies and reports about the growing poverty united states and what seem to many people some obscene numbers separating the rich and the poor the haves and have nots as we say with all of this information and data being delivered revealing the staggering level of poverty in the country we may need help to break it all down and put it into the proper perspective and in that regard we
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are fortunate and honored to have just such a person joining us now is a presser economics of merit to the university of massachusetts and her friends are richard will professor we're very pleased to have you join us again. thank you bob glad to be here so let's start with a benchmark i mean you teach classes and look at these sorts of things all the time as an income inequality always existed in the u.s. the answer simply is yes it has our economic system and there's no nice way to say this our economic system capitalism is at least as efficient in reproducing poverty as it is in reproducing wealth it has tried over and over again to say that it is confronting the problem of poverty but if it's true that it did so it failed to solve the problem because here we are three hundred years into our history and we're still confronted with serious amounts of poverty and serious
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degrees of extreme poverty as the u.n. and others have been documented right up to this moment well there's another report out to professor it may go along with that but i want to get your take on a it's a united way the nonprofit organization they have a project called alice it's that action acronym but it's geared toward trying to quantify and describe the number of u.s. households that are are struggling financially and the result of that work indicates that more than fifty one million homes and there are actual people least one person in these homes cannot afford basic necessities like food housing transportation and we have a total of about three hundred twenty five million people in the state so what do you make of the report and do you think that figure is accurate. there's no question that it's accurate it's been reinforced and validated by other comparable studies what's remarkable about the united way document is that it gets away from formal statistics of the government to really look at what
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a family's situation is it's not just do you have enough food this evening on the table but can you rely on next week and next month when your children go to school knowing that there's food that they'll be heat in the house when they come on to do their homework in other words are the basic qualities of life secure and adequate or not and for them to have discovered with no ax to grind that somewhere between a third and a half of the american people aren't secure in the most basic way is the most profound criticism of our economic system that i could imagine it's really disconcerting and we you know that's why i said there we're asking the question no they're not just homes are real people that live live there and you know bring it to a personal level we often hear about people and politicians tell these stories sometimes
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about how difficult the decisions are between choosing between you only have a certain amount of money in your paycheck between health care and housing or health care and food to eat and you know those are tough choices that all folks that are financially strapped have to make but when we consider the basic necessities like those things i was in food health care etc which of these has become so privily expensive for some that they're just increasingly inaccessible. i think the key culprit among several is housing. the problem with housing is we allow that in this country to be a private profit making enterprise and to put it as simply as i know how the money to be made the profits to be made in building housing is building housing for the one percent the luxury apartments the luxury mansions the luxury condos and all the rest and that's where the money goes meaning that the mass housing for the mass of
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people isn't growing and so what happens is there's a scarcity not in the sense that we couldn't produce the housing but that we don't in a private profit driven economy with the result that the rents are going crazy and we believe in general that a family should never spend more than twenty to thirty percent of its income on housing because if it goes above that it starts eating into the minimal levels of everything else education transportation health care and so on and we have a reality in america that if you look at what's happened to housing particularly rental housing it has driven people into that precarious state that the united way discovered so much is being spent for housing that they literally cannot provide the basics in the case of a third to a half of our households of what's needed in a modern society like ours professor of just got
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a little bit of time but let me ask you do you see any signs of hope for reversing this trend wage and income inequality. well as your report from the london. you know documentary library there shows no the trends we are stuck with now are trends that do not give us hope they are trends in which this is them works to make the rich richer and everybody else a spectator of their wealth and that's why many of us are realizing we really have to change the system if we're going to deal with one of its worst outcomes which is this level of poverty after hundreds of years of seeing that it's a problem that needs to be solved i want to keep an eye on it we appreciate folks like you speaking out will try to do our part here a boom bust professor richard walter resurrected nomics america's university of massachusetts amherst where your debts are currently for your time thank you.
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and we mention the united nations report with the professor the report looks at poverty in the united states are to correspond on your heart bill looks not only at the report but at some of the reactions surrounding its recent release. for fifteen days in december two thousand and seventeen professor philip alston the un special rapporteur to or on extreme poverty and human rights traveled to the united states in order to quote evaluate and report to the human rights council on the extent to which the government's policies and programs aimed at addressing extreme poverty are consistent with its human rights obligations his findings paint a dire picture of life in the us the report states that a staggering forty million americans live in poverty eighteen point five million in extreme poverty and a whopping five point three million americans toil under third world conditions characterized as absolute poverty of the thirty five member states in the
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organization for economic cooperation and development the report finds the united states has the highest youth unemployment rate and highest infant mortality rate among comparable countries the us also has one of the lowest voter registration levels in the o.e.c.d. the report reads quote its citizens live shorter and sicker lives compared to those living in all other ridged democracies are radical tropical diseases are increasingly prevalent and it has the world's highest incarceration rate and the highest obesity levels in the developed world professor alston's conclusions have drawn a harsh response from members of the trumpet ministration us ambassador to the un nikki haley wrote in a letter to senator bernie sanders of vermont quote it is patently ridiculous for the united nations to examine poverty in america the special repertoire wasted the un's time and resources deflecting attention from the world's worst human rights abusers and who can sing instead on the wealthiest and freest come. tree in the
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world and haley may have a point about the united states being one of the wealthiest countries in the world it just so happens that the vast majority of the nation's wealth is hoarded by an ever shrinking elite in march of this year for example amazon c.e.o. jeff bezos amassed an estimated net worth of one hundred twenty seven billion dollars and that amount is equal to the combined wealth of the two point three million poorest americans and november two thousand and seventeen a report by the institute for policy studies found the three richest americans bezos bill gates and warren buffett were worth two hundred forty eight billion dollars combined that number is equal to the wealth of one hundred sixty million americans who make up the bottom half of the country's population when measured in dollars following the reports released senator sanders and nineteen other members of congress sent a letter to the trumpet ministration urging it to address the growing poverty rates the letter says trump's one point five billion dollars in tax cuts signed into law
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last year quote overwhelmingly benefited the wealthy and worsened inequality and while many headlines concerning the report emphasized the trump administration's role in exacerbating poverty professor alston makes this important note successive administrations including the current one have determinately rejected the idea that economic and social rights are full fledged human rights meaning if you're poor in the united states your government has never seen you as a priority in washington on your part hill party. time not for a super fast break but stay cause because when we get back the c.e.o. of strong marker from your report which tells us about the wealthiest nations not including the u.s. and the poorest nations around the globe plus are to corresponding trinity trados go to the picture i would for
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a very special report. on the wealthiest zip code and on the other end of the spectrum archie correspondent dan cohen looks at the war on fortunate and analyzes poverty united states notably even here in the gilded capital that is playing right here will be back in a play. span different fantastic ball. drill down into twenty nineteen predictions. will be celebrating ten years of the kaiser report. hello my name's peter and i've been living in bushnell for about seven years and this is a film about just some of the crazy things i've got. time. let
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me go this is fun there's. the pilot's. license is not because. i was. i. was depressed because. the. country has gone into a nihilistic theme. and get out the traveling across america to find what makes america the charlotte is the genius of this place especially american hero this is it we've come to a point around which hollywood has gotten so weak. always are on the margins
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something. called gun culture is moving forty. odd. we're starting last with is going to headed east into the swamp we're going into the belly of the beast i think i want to leave now governor any more gonzo left it may be completely different but the end of mr. small seemed wrong. but old old just don't call. me old yet to say proud disdain comes to agitate and in games from an equals betrayal. when so many find themselves worlds apart we choose to look for common ground.
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and now we take a more global view about inequality from a national perspective to help us along we are joined by the c.e.o. of dr mark our friend hilary ward which it's good of you to be with us thank you so much tell me tell or about what are the wealthiest nations and sort of the poorest nations and let's just take g.d.p. by g.d.p. right a great to be about thank you so the wealthiest nations are outside of the u.s. that is china germany japan and closely followed by the u.k. the poorest nation actually probably not many of our viewers have maybe even heard all about tuvalu which used to be former ellis island in the polynesian islands but the poorest nations are actually a lot of the former communist countries and sub-saharan africa and then good and
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then in the middle east the big bright star of course is saudi arabia ok and. if you look at growth rates in the different regions you know a sure. how are they looking from the growth rates going forward yes on some of the hot spots coming up actually there are some of the emerging nations and they're just growth rates so one of the most outstanding growth rates that continues that has outpaced all nations actually is australia and that's really due to their brilliant immigration policies to get into australia i mean you have to have a certain network you have to come with certain skills they have not been stupid about that and most importantly they had a mining boom where they were mining coal and i and all that they were shipping to all the factories in the nation so that's a great growth rate some of the emerging nations where there's a men's growth you've got the some of the. in the pacific basically all the countries right and you have argentina you have indonesia india india is projected to have a seven percent growth rate seven point nine next year rule. yes and then actually you know they overtook china by just like two percentage or two points that don't
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sort of percentage exactly yes they did yes and it is in india and that's a lot of that and everybody of course in the u.k. we think well it's because they can speak english but they've actually been a pretty have a lot of those outsourcing call centers but a lot of global business they've always had a very global outlook on the fiscal stimulus has been as a also very smart but also as you jim o'neill the former chairman of morgan stanley in two thousand and one he used to call them the bric nations and that was brazil russia india china and sub-saharan africa i think over the emerging nations in sub-saharan africa is somewhat to look because of course there's a great percentage opportunity for growth and a lot of the the real commodities which are more in demand now it's very interesting we did some the other day on australia which hasn't been in recession you know twenty five years or so but beyond that any developed nation so our history really went out and even the netherlands crazy crazy us i guess is pretty difficult to predict what's going on given the current circumstance. but you know
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what sort of trends do you see there in or does it leave it were you know i think of trade was on healthy but i think there's going to be an even ing out i think the one thing that's concerning globally in terms of inequality is the tremendous gap actually in skills skilled labor the good news is inequality actually is the lowest it's been since one thousand nine hundred one it pete forty four percent of the world was below the abject positive positive level in eighty one do you know it's less than ten percent today so that's actually good news in terms of inequality but the inequality is with in nations there's this technology gap between skilled labor and unskilled labor and that actually accounts for a lot of the nationalistic vote of populist vote like bricks in the u.k. populism both here in the u.s. do to try to trump and that's what's accounted for inequality inside of nations is actually more concerning than global inequality which to me has to. before we go the you know when you're when your don't have
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a good economy it leads to all sorts of ill including terrorism on rust and everything yes if you look around the world hillary what are the real slow g.d.p. countries that we you know heaven forbid predict any problems in those countries and what are the ones that sort of stick out to you well i mean obviously i mean we had a disaster in syria and that's been a lot of course because of the drought i'm so i think you could actually global warming trends have affected some of that and it's really obviously in the middle east where you have colliding factors i think robust employment begets robust economies and therefore of course robust stability instability if you think about many years ago in the sixty's those instability in northern ireland why the economy was disastrous now the northern irish economy is strong and that keeps stability so i would think anywhere where there is abject poverty and that will be places in the middle east so you have strong mark to work for which thank you for coming in your leader malcolm but absolutely any time.
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one might ask where is the definitively wealthiest place in the united states well archie correspondent treaty charges looked and went there for the special report beverly hills nine zero two zero one zero used to be america's most recognizable zip code but that's all changing now america's richest code is based on an island word so exclusive you need an invitation to get there in a recent analysis of iris data bloomberg found the wealthiest of codes in america and the number one spot may shock you. it's called fisher island zip code three three one zero nine once privately owned by william vanderbilt the second the island is located just off the coast of miami and is now a haven for the world's richest only accessible by boat or helicopter the two hundred sixteen acre manmade island has a mix of condos and private homes not to mention
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a vast array of amenities you come to fish island and you literally can stay here for three months without having to leave the island so we have about eight hundred manatees from the arenas to seven restaurants to eighteen tennis courts four different surfaces on tennis courts a great golf club we have an amazing. as you have seen and the beautiful beach club environment so we have private beaches we have a private school so this is an ideal environment for families who want to come here who want to raise their children there are about five hundred residents ranging from royalty to professional athletes to business executives and while only about twenty percent of them reside on the island full time. if the island's exclusivities that attracts people from all over the world we have about thirty seven different nationalities and fishes. we have about fifty percent u.s.
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twenty five. thousand america we have a lot of russian. of course so it's true that you can truly call home and it has pretty much all the ingredients that. reflect that if you want whose income bracket the average income for fisher island members was a whopping two want to half a million dollars in two thousand and fifteen that's one million dollars more than the second place bought held by zip code nine four zero two seven in silicon valley meanwhile new york represents a quarter of the top one percent of households nationwide and california accounts for eighty five percent of the riches that codes in the west but while neighborhoods in the new york tri state area and california make up the majority of the top riches of codes in america the favorable tax structures in florida and in wyoming are drawing the wealthy to according to the report since two thousand and ten the average income in most wilson road wyoming has increased more than seventy
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five percent making it the fourteenth which is the code in the country and then of course the south is home to the richest code in all of america fisher island now in order to live on the shore island you do have to pay a membership fee of a quarter million dollars and not including the annual fee that comes after that but you don't have to be a millionaire to enjoy this luxurious place they do have a hotel on the property and they welcome everyone from around the world reporting from the shore island trinity each other. while wealth inequality may be seen by some as a regional thing it's actually a nationwide issue even in some places you may not expect our to correspondent dan cohen gives us a closer look at wealth inequality in the district of columbia. the united states has long portrayed itself as a land of opportunity and upward mobility for all peoples but with scenes of
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homelessness and despair like this popping up all over the country it's an increasingly difficult claim to make income inequality in the united states is at its highest since one thousand nine hundred twenty eight just before the great depression the top one percent now owns a staggering forty percent of the country's wealth the poorest sip codes in the united states are in rural areas of pennsylvania oregon ohio and arizona they all have an average income under fifteen thousand dollars per year while income inequality is visible across the united states its most extreme in the nation's capital washington d.c. the median annual income of black residents of the district is thirty seven thousand eight hundred ninety one dollars just thirty percent of the median white income at one hundred twenty seven thousand three hundred sixty nine dollars in the streets of the district it's obvious that there are huge amounts of wealth just
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across the anacostia river in the southeastern part of the district the disparity is glaring and twenty fifteen mayor muriel bals are unveiled her plan to address income inequality and poverty with her pathway to the middle class program community activist skyla pondexter more lives in public housing in ward eight the poorest in the district she says bowzer is program has been a fig leaf for giveaways to private developers and corporations i believe that this income gap. this all that way out she's doing it back just phasing us out i believe she thinks happy to have been just get rid of all the income tax and think about all of this and get the most of us back to the law going to japan south of the state or have innocently gentrification has devastated d.c.'s african-american population in one. seventy one african-americans accounted for seventy one percent of washington's population struggling to cope with increasing
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costs of living and lack of employment opportunities twenty sixteen the percentage of african-americans in the district fell below fifty percent but moore says local investment can benefit the community if you give people the resources and help them wrap around then we can really start to close this gap and that wipes out we all need to bring in people who get money we can be to people get money you've got to bring in a trader joe's going out with expensive housing and corporate chains like starbucks under construction and mayor bows are likely to win reelection later this year the same policies that led to such inequality are likely to persist reporting for boom bust dan cohen r t. that's it for this time we appreciate you joining us on what's an incredibly
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important issue catch boom bust on direct t.v. channel three twenty one dish network channel two eighty or streaming twenty four seven on pluto t.v. the t.v. channel one thirty two or of always check us out at you tube dot com pleasure boom bust r.t. later. after the war. was still active. in the nineteen seventies crittle had as the chair of its board a man convicted of mass murder and slavery and ash was a german company developed. a drug that was promoted as completely safe even during pregnancy. it turned out to have terrible side of the. what has happened to my baby is anything. you know she said she's just got choked up minutes of it
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a mind victims i have to this day received no compensation they never apologized for the suffering that not only want the money i want the revenge. but whole existence to do something to. put themselves on the line to get accepted or rejected. so when you want to be president and she. wanted. to go right to be close it's like that before three in the morning can't be good. i'm interested always in the water using the. best soup. nobody could see coming that false confessions would be that prevalent in the spot the wish to fall for humans look at any interrogation out there what you'll see is
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threat promise threat promise threat why a lie a lie the process of the turkish was designed to put people in just that frame of mind make the most comfortable make them want to get out and don't take no for an answer don't accept their denials she said if i would. send a statement that i would be home by that time the next day there's a culture on accountability and police officers know that they can engage in misconduct that has nothing to do with all the crime. not. up. to me. gave it to you can't you you'll be going to school.
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because of the few. stories. in the russian. baby boy. in freezing temperatures. in the next few weeks he's will have a decision. if the deal. way . tens of thousands of indian women take. to support gender equality after of course to face centuries old.

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