A Working (Class) Economy with Kathryn Anne Edwards

0:00College football is back. So, Hilton called to me the superstition concierge to make your fan rituals a reality. Need a room to match your lucky number? We got you. Want to make sure our team doesn't wash your lucky jersey? Oho, that smells lucky. Hilton's unmatched hospitality can keep up with any superstition. Even a marching bandwicker call at 555 and 55 seconds. Hit it! When you need a team that will do whatever it takes on game day, it matters where you stay. Hilton, for this day. Visible puts the ultimate wireless hack in the palm of your hand. With unlimited 5G wireless data and hotspot designed to keep you connected, powered by Verizon's 5G network. And no contract holding you back. Plan started $25 a month or get the premium Visible Plus Pro plan and save $10 on your first month when you use promo code HAC. Make the switch at Visible.com. Terms apply, see Visible.com for details. Hey everybody, welcome to the weekly show podcast. My name is John Stewart.

1:12I will be the host of your podcast. It is Tuesday, October 6th. If I seem a little bit rattled today, it is I'm still coming down from a conversation I had on the daily show last night with a gentleman by the name of Jacob Cox and who was a researcher and an open AI and who left me with a very unsettled feeling about what the future might look like if AI doesn't work out well. But I think even more unsettling was the way he was describing the future if AI did work out, which is sort of this weird system, this feudal system where our tech overlords suddenly even though our experience with them has been they are hoarding wealth and power. They will suddenly get to a point where their their companies are so valuable and have created such productivity that they just decide to then share that largest with everybody as to quell them from the disruption of none of us having jobs anymore.

2:16Go check it out because I was a little I'm going to go with rattled. But today's episode is the unrattling. It is the unrattling of all those things is about our economy, how to rebalance it, how to regain the upper hand on our overlords tech and otherwise. So let's just get into it. Ladies and gentlemen, I am delighted. Delighted. You'll hear it in my voice. You'll see it in my facial expressions. Delighted. Welcome our guest today. Catherine Ann Edwards. Economist not just an economist PhD labor economist. Public policy can solve writer in the host of optimist. Economy. Please welcome Catherine Ann Edwards. Catherine. How are you? I'm very well. Thank you for having me.

3:17I'm delighted. Forget about thank you. I'm delighted because I'm a big fan of the way that you explain our economy in an evidence based very clear cut. There's no nonsense. And I so appreciate what you do. Oh my God. John. I'm so touched. Let's Catherine Ann Edwards, right? It is. It is. I'm just really touched. You know, I got a real economist thing going. I want to talk to you today. The reason why I was very much interested in talking to you is. You know, we see all these. The economy is moving towards increased productivity. That's the whole. The buzz word is all about AI and increased productivity. And I am of the mindset that our economy has been out of balance. More so over the last 50 years and moving increasingly.

4:20And your work seems to be bearing out that hypothesis. Would you mind just discussing a little bit just to set the stage at first. What are the ways in which the American economy has become out of balance? I view it sort of through the lens of between labor and capital. The simplest way to understand it is that workers have less power than they used to. Right. And worker power comes from a lot of places for an individual. It's education and experience and skills that you have. Your people skills. Your work ethic. But it also comes from how strong the economy is any time the unemployment rates lower high if there's lots of jobs to get. And then it comes through structural organization of how we privilege one set of people in the economy over another. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. So the past really 50 years have seen just a deemphasizing of the importance of the worker and the lack of protection, lack of power, lack of mobility.

5:25In favor of capital in business and even as early as 45 years ago, we had evidence that this was going to hurt workers. And it just I think over time it's it's hurt more in terms of the number of people that are hurt by it and the way that they're hurt. So if it's just the very bottom of the labor market that's not doing well, it's really easy to write them off. But as we continue down this path of you know business over workers workers having less power eventually that's going to kind of subsume more and more workers who are feeling that and we're at a point now where the majority of Americans feel like they they don't have enough power. They don't have enough money and that is not a oh, but there's nothing we can do. We can't do our hands are tied or hands are not tied at all. We made a lot of choices to get here. We make a lot of choices and we get right back out. This is the importance of of this conversation and it one of the things that the Democrats are talking about a lot is affordability crisis. We have an affordability crisis. I take issue with that phrasing because I don't view it as a crisis.

6:32I view it as the inevitable result of intentional policy choices as you are describing that favor capital over labor and it is a bipartisan project. But this is not a crisis that arose out of nowhere. This is an inevitability. I mean I stress with the kind of affordability crisis that there is no life in America that is affordable at 7.25 an hour and that is the minimum wage. And people put a ton of emphasis on the price side which is important but they're de-emphasizing the wage and income side and that is the problem because you make half a million dollars a year. You don't have an affordability crisis. You're fine. You know you're you can out earn a market failure. But that doesn't fix the market failure. And so you know focusing now on these goods and services that are so important to people's lives things like health things like shelter. You know we can do better on that but we can never have affordable housing in the US that you could have no more than 30% of your income go to rents when when you make less than $10 an hour.

7:41Right. And that salaries are for suckers that you know capital has a lot more advantage. You talked about the idea that we've privileged capital over labor. What are the ways that we have done that? What are the ways that policymakers have made favorites of capital and made labor less enticing? You know mostly it was a lack of leadership and movement as opposed to like you know a bunch of like Mr. Monopoly looking guys in a room in capital hill being like in here is what we'll do it's really just letting the protections we have slide and not keeping up our standards. So you know the minimum wage is probably the obvious and easiest one to understand because it's a dollar amount you get it it's gone up roughly $4 and 50 years. So it's a pretty easy way to say if we cared about people who made money and who were workers we would have a higher minimum wage we don't. It used to be around 15% of the economy made the minimum wage and now it's less than 1%. And so the conclusion is that it doesn't matter as opposed to you know what you're actually saying which is those people don't matter.

8:49And the fact that we have people that make that little money in our economy that doesn't matter to you it matters to me and I think it matters to the labor market in a way that maybe you can't understand which is that you know you are competing in a market with someone who is not only making $7.25 on paper but whose employer isn't paying them the full amount they'll do things like you need to clock out and finish some of the labor market. So you know you're not going to be able to get the money out and finish sweeping or like you quit so I'm not going to send you your last paycheck it is a very like become super commonplace and I know you know nowhere in the United States does the federal government say you have to provide a pay stub try to let that sit in your mind as we passed work requirements on things like Medicaid that you were required to prove that you worked but your employer is not required to prove that they paid you. These are the types of like they're very small things but they add up to a loss of worker power one of the central struggles of this is to get people to understand that other workers being disempowered that does affect you and not all policy that will fix what's going on the economy will flow through you you know I raise the minimum wage I I have a pretty good sense that they mean like 98% of you won't be that affected by it but that doesn't mean that your lot isn't improved just because your wage wasn't like that.

10:02So I think that was the the erosion of labor standards is you know using the minimum wage as opposed to tell it's a pretty easy story to understand and then tell that story three times or four times or other with union practices. Same thing let it slide don't protect workers we don't have unionization really anymore fewer private sector workers organized now than before the national labor relations act was passed so it's as if the law doesn't exist. Right same thing with unemployment benefits you lose your job and you need help can you get it not the way you used to and then there's kind of a whole separate set of policies related to the tax code how how not so so let's tease that well man there's so much here I so much here I'm going to roll back for just a second so I'm just going to start with the minimum wage and then we'll walk through a little bit of the various ways that labor has been disincentivized and that capital has been incentivized so so. You know you say minimum wage is only like one percent of doing that but the truth also is in this country if you make ten dollars an hour that's not enough to live comfortably if you make twelve dollars an hour that's not enough to live comfortably and we subsidize these companies that pay these lower wages so we create more value for them and then have to subsidize with food benefits or health benefits for people that are that are making that so.

11:25These companies are not just held to that standard we actually subsidize them for not reaching that standard for workers is about nine million full time workers who are on Medicaid or food stamps nine million full time a part time there'd be more I mean that's that's still just one part of it because you are working at such a low. Such a low wage that you are eligible for food stamps and Medicaid you are probably getting something like the earned income tax credit so it's it's the positionality of the government to say that you are going to be in a very low wage job and we will use the benefit system in the tax system to basically keep you happy and not put any of that burden on the employer I mean the another example of this one that just makes me set my hair on fire if I think about it don't set it Catherine we talked about it. What about this earlier there'll be no fire on this program. I mean something like the overtime credit or the tips the tip credit where you know he makes this campaign promise we're not going to have taxes on tips and so then some workers in some household situations in which they are eligible can get a credit for part of their tips meaning that you taxpayer are helping subsidize the labor of somebody else they could have amended the fair labor standards act to raise overtime.

12:49Make it time and a half make it time in three quarters make it make it twice they could have said the tips minimum wages no longer two dollars an hour and let's you know let's get rid of the tips minimum wage they could have given every single worker a raise and made the employer who's labor profit who profits from their labor pay for it instead you taxpayer are subsidizing it explain the subsidy part explain how we're subsidizing that so if if you say to somebody we're not going to tax your tips anymore. How are we subsidizing that are we is our money going to the employer now because they get a tax credit how does that work so it reduces the tax bill of people who qualify. Okay it's basically a coupon so you're a tipped worker and you file your taxes you get a little coupon for your tips and you don't owe as much in taxes that's called tax expenditure it's spending that goes up through the tax code where I lower your tax bill through these coupons and it's a way it's like a complex bonus system that our tax system is turned into that. Means that people who don't get the coupon they have to they're the ones paying taxes but like you and I make the exact same amount of money okay you got you got a little bit more in tips and I don't have tips I pay more in taxes than you so I'm now subsidizing you and your employer because you're better off via the fact that I pay the full tax load and your employer doesn't pay you as much.

14:09Yo round a motherfucking news. Round news. It's a website and it's an app that helps you make sense of the just sewage flow into the river that is our media ecosystem. Round news it helps you make sense of what your algorithm is flooding towards you it compares coverage on stories across news outlets compares them across international coverage it you may not realize this America we're not getting the information that the world is necessarily getting so it helps you differentiate how the world is seeing the events in this country how we are seeing it how we're seeing the events in the world it's not going to be a big deal.

15:09It's it's remarkable it compares how each outlet frames the same story you can even see news sources factuality rating you can see who's funding them what what transparency oh the crown prince of who that's who paid for. Hmm subscribe for 40% off unlimited access by scanning the QR code on screen or go to ground dot news slash J S make sure you use our links so they know we sent you again that's ground dot news slash J S. And I think that capital and corporations are given all these subsidies and all these benefits because that does shift the burden doesn't it to the rest of us.

16:09Yeah, what is so successful about this this narrative I mean I think they they hold a lot of power and they say if you make us do anything you'll lose jobs. And then you know, I think that's the most common argument you hear that the it's the livelihood of workers that it's we're better off subsidizing them than losing them all together because we're putting too much of a burden on companies which this would be a great time for me to say have had the five highest year of corporate profit in US history the most previous five let's let's stop for a second let's just let me hit the rewind button so these have been a lot of things that I think that's the most important thing is that we're going to have to do is to get a little bit more money and then we're going to have to do that. So let's let's do that. The most previous five let's let's stop for a second. Let's just let me hit the rewind button so these have been the most profitable years for corporate earnings in history these last five.

17:11And yet there is very clearly a crisis among the people work now again that has got to be based on intentional policies that have been created. Is it based on the fact that this is a hostage negotiation so the policies have to be always tilted in the favor of corporate profit and corporate earnings. Yeah, I mean, there's a kind version of this story like a gracious version where you say, okay, tax policy is very complicated. It's very hard to get right and you know, Congress is just you know, they're trying to they're trying to use tax policy to create good economic policy and they're just missing. And it's not like a nefarious, you know, it's not that they got together and like let's figure out how to make workers and all of our voters worse off and companies better like they are just truly bad at their job. I think there's room for that. That's the gracious, that's the gracious version of this. They suck at what they do.

18:12Well, so I mean, there's so much policy we are missing in the US that has shown up in the tax code. I mean, we don't have paid family leave. We don't have universal child care. We don't have paid sick days for workers, but then we'll and we don't have a raised minimum wage, but then we'll have things like a tipped credit. We'll have, you know, a child care and dependent care tax credit, a flexible savings account where like tax policy has been the most active policy in Congress over the past 25 years. I mean, they are constantly messing with the tax code. So if you want something done and you want to help people, you just shove it in the tax code. That's actually pretty hard to do. Well, and you end up with a lot of loopholes. So I think the same thing with the corporate income tax. I mean, they wanted to cut the corporate income tax rates. They did a they just did a very bad job at it. I mean, the US corporate tax rate has always been statutory one level and then effective much lower because of all of the tax coupons, the corporations get roll, roll, roll back, roll back. I don't statutory one. What hold on. So so I would say the corporate income tax rate is 35%.

19:15And then by the way, corporations here are all the coupons you can claim for bonuses for research and development. You know, you can I think you can claim corporate jet as a write off if it's used for corporate travel 50% of the time or more. That's all you got to hit. That's all you got to hit. So you can do you can do 50% travel there and then 50% like, Hey, let's go to Bermuda. Let's just go do whatever we want. Yep. Like those are the coupons you can get. So if Congress says the tax code is the tax rates 35% in actuality, they'll play they'll pay closer to 20 on average. When they lowered the corporate tax rate, I thought they lowered it to 20. Oh, they did. And then the and then the actual rate paid fell closer to 10. So they even lowered it further. So when we talk about the using the tax code as I guess a surrogate for policy courage or legislative function, which I guess we don't really have.

20:16The one thing maybe that we also have to remember in this equation is one side of that equation has access to our lawmakers. And one side of the equation doesn't. Yeah, I think I think you can argue that. I mean, you can zoom out and go back to we've been talking about this 50 year time period. So you know, zoom out zoom out, zoom out starting in the 80s. The Reagan era, the Reagan era, you're starting to see real problems with wages where people are we're you've got a terrible recession. It takes a long time for people to recover. You see real wage declines for huge parts of the wage distribution. Right. And the first kind of narrative that comes up is well, the economy is evolving. People, you know, they just need to go to college. They don't have the right skills. And you know, this narrative takes over that it's it's almost like workers fault for not having the right training. And so there's no like compelling evidence to be like, well, we don't need to raise them.

21:17No, which that would hurt jobs. We don't need to make everyone have a sick day. That would hurt jobs. And this kind of crashes into the 21st century where we start to pile things into the tax code. And it becomes more and more evidence that people are hurting. Right. We have persistent levels of poverty. We've got, you know, housing costs are taking off. And we have a foreclosure crisis. And there's this just, you know, put a tax credit on it. Kind of becomes the de facto policy that it's almost as like the problem is the same problem. Workers don't have enough power and they're not earning a much they they need more help from their governments. And the government is basically like, well, hear me out. Maybe instead of this, we're just going to have a tax credit for your corporation for this. So we're going to do this. And so there's almost like a recognition of the problem without saying out loud the cause of it. Like I think Congress's actions would show trying to help the middle class trying to help the working class trying to put things out there. They're just extremely bad at it because they, you know, the problem is workers don't have enough power.

22:21And being able to say that out loud changes how you respond to it. If the problem is like, well, they need some credits to get a new job or like, well, like housing got expensive after the financial. We'll retrain them. We'll do like we'll do this. Like there's a real, you know, there's some value to saying this is the problem because the solutions we've had for 50 years. I wouldn't say are some like really like sure there's bad people in Congress. But I think a lot of them are trying hard, but they're just they're not succeeding. And the policies that they've pursued are not succeeding. And so something that I try to always emphasize is we're not out of options. We have a lot we can do. And that's to move forward, we just we have to actually name the problem in an attack it head on. And Catherine, that's that's where we get to is. So my thought is, why can't we effectively rebalance this isn't one of those the way it's the way we practice capitalism versus we must get rid of this entire system.

23:23We've allowed so that time from Reagan is also when the time when globalization took shape and offshoring took shape. And we allowed all these corporate entities to find the low watermark as far as what they could pay workers. What worker protections would be laid out there and if and you could send those jobs overseas because capital can travel but labor can't. And so we've allowed these corporate entities in search of growth to find all these low watermarks to pop up their earnings and so that all that matters is stock price and equities and growth. Why can't we rebalance that equation why can't we ask anything of these entities we don't and eat by the way let's say this and it's not even about finding the low watermark in other countries like worker. In Vietnam, Texas will do that to New York will have to we'll find the low watermark in this country.

24:27So you do know I'm in Houston right now right is that why you said Texas in New York did I say Houston I didn't mean Texas what I meant was South Carolina. Son of a bitch. Thank you. But is is that is that right 100% yes no it's it's I mean even conservative think tanks like the Mercatus Center will tell localities do not try to lower companies here because it's a race to the bottom and you give them a corporate tax break you give them a property tax break you give them an unemployment insurance tax break and they're there for a year they take it all and they leave. So I think there's two things one I mean you've been in media a long time my I'm kind of new to this space coming from the economics world but I I get the distinct impression that economics is a very effective straw man. That you want to talk about workers like workers don't make enough money and someone will talk back at you you'll cause inflation and they don't say yes they don't say the problem that you are naming is not happening they don't say that's the problem that you are trying to solve can be solved another way they just look at your solution and say well that's that makes economy bad so we can't do it well we see that threat even now when they say if you know okay we're going to try and do a P.A.

25:42We're going to get a tear tax in New York City on second homes that are above a certain value and they're all like great everybody who's rich is going to leave your city and you're going to end up with a shit hole. Like it is it is an explicit threat that is laid out. Yeah like every like every action is the nuclear option I I am yes I think that that's one part of what has been so difficult is getting past the the just boogie man of economy bad that is held up. For any progressive policy you know I worked of my first job out of college was at the economic policy institute super lefty wait that was your first job out of college. What whatever happened to like bar and bad part of town how did you you must have been that's a pretty good job. Yeah I don't know how I got it I do your smart as shit. They hired me over the phone I was on the I was in a like a closet in the office I had on campus at UT Austin where I worked as a clerk and I was in the closet on the phone and I had like a four hour phone interview with them and they offered me the job side unseen in the first time I met them was when I showed up on my first day of work.

26:51Which was in September of 2008 right so it was Labor Day to September 2008 I started the next day. Oh my god that was my first month on the job I didn't know anything about the economy and like the the and that was when the crash. It's every it's a. I. G. it's Lehman brothers oh my god John McCain and a Barack Obama suspend their campaign like bush mix a national address and like everybody around me knows what's going on and I'm just like very like. Serpentishly googling like do banks fail question. Was there ever any instinct for you to just crawl back into the closet. I did not deal with it I saw I had no idea what was happening and I didn't understand what was going on but I was surrounded by people who were with every breath they had fighting for workers. I didn't know if I was ever going to figure out what was going on in the economy but I knew that I was right I was near the right people because they were saying that this you know I remember a specific quote was my first days of work that the crisis is happening in the stock market but the fallout will be in the labor market yes.

28:03And I you know I wanted to be there I wanted to be in that chair watching all of you know trying to understand from their perspective from the workers perspective of what policies are chosen I mean that's a perfect example that recession was so mishandled yes we we gave workers the raw deal possible we bailed about we bailed out all these you know toxic assets and we made them whole and people lost their houses and nobody helped them nobody helps them I mean it was. And really you know workers and unemployment they were used as leverage to get tax policy out you know because the bush tax cuts were going to expire in the middle of all of this and all these unemployed workers became leverage and tax debates I mean it's it's it was a really it was a really ugly time so it was a very formative experience and I it. It it absolutely affects how I see the world like I want to go to PhD I did everything we're supposed to do I learned everything neoliberal and theoretical and pure markets and all of that but in the back my mind I was like.

29:03But if shit hits the fan i'm fighting for workers I don't care what you say. And and by the way and they need people like you doing that and so you know you talk about you learned neoliberal so on the democratic side there's sort of this idea of the neoliberal policies which is. You know capital travels and you have to let a travel and we have to open up the whole world and we can't put protections on anything we can't because that's. You know we'll slow growth to the point I don't really know you know what their theory was and on the right those policies took the form of that sort of trickle down theory which is i'm telling you if you just let rich people rich. At some point you know they're going to have to come to you and get their boat repainted so. You know you have those two competing things but you don't have anybody. Trying to say why can't we demand something it was like when they bailed out those companies there were no. caveats within those bailouts that said well give you this money but you have to make.

30:05These adjustments or you have to give small businesses. 25% of that money that's coming through will set up 0% interest. But you don't have any responsibility they they're financial regulation was passed in separate legislation. Dodd Frank but the in the in the bailout money was that was paid back. But they didn't put any strings on it really when it went out the door you know i bring all this up in this time period in my first job because. You know even at 21 or 22 at at the economic policy institute you learn pretty quickly that if you're for progressive economics you don't know what you're talking about. Like your stupid and you don't know what you're talking about like it is that is the defect a response of like well if you want to do things like protect workers like you don't really understand the economy and even. The PhDs i worked next to is a very dismissive of you know there is this. Like almost like myth that to understand the economy is to not care about workers or to not want active labor market policy and I remember my old boss telling me like well we just we're probably just 20 years ahead of them.

31:14You know that the things that we want when we say it's bad but someone else will adopt it and then it will become normal like like the the. Like productivity the way that productivity separated from wages i mean you pay i published that in 1994 you know and here we are 32 years later and it's now become a mainstream chart i mean Larry told me the guy the economist who made it he's he said like that will be on my tombstone. That that chart of productivity going up in wages staying flat but that chart is is everything i mean if you look what she's describing and i hate that this is not a visual medium so that we can't really show it but. What it shows is. The percentage of the economy that goes to labor was at like 52% in the 1970s and then we instituted all these neoliberal or trickle down policies and you watch it's like this crazy slide that you almost imagine all work it's like all workers having to get kicked out of the plane and get on that slide and it just you watch their share of the economy plummet.

32:20In real time through today yep and then if you were to look at the productivity which productivity is take the us economy. All big ol pie and divided up by every hour of work from all workers that's productivity per hour okay and if you look at productivity per hour and wages per hour they split up. It's like two two lines diverge in a Reagan wood and productivity keeps going up it's like three x right yeah like it's like 90 oh yeah it's really just that there's there's so. Much evidence around the idea that workers have lost power this has resulted lower wages that corporations have gained power they've used this to concentrate amongst each other to have you know fewer and fewer employers if they become massive merged companies and that this results in lower pay for workers the data is all there. But even if you point that out there's always this condescension of like but we can't do progressive policies because you don't understand the economy and i'm like i i mean i get it. But what is the idea is the idea that true like that the economy has to be all ceiling no floor is is that that the rebalancing is somehow anathema to supply and demand because it's all made up to some extent i think that the.

33:40Okay okay i think that i'm not about to get kicked out of class i think that the the like intellectual push around deregulation around lower taxation around you know fewer regulations in the labor markets you know fewer rules for companies was really built on this idea that government gets in the way of growth. Okay and that government policy gets in the way of growth and we need to untether businesses and you know have people move more and work like this was all about growth we're going to have growth in government gets in the way of that. You we put that on a timer for 50 years and what we have learned is that government didn't really get in the way of growth it got in the way of greed. And it was pretty effective at getting bars Catherine. Wait did you write that down i'm writing that down didn't get in the way of growth it got in the way of greed bars.

34:42But this is why i mean you can't you can't say you know the the neoliberal kind of talking point from that would say well listen you know you deregulated you had fewer rules and you know workers just didn't have the right skills and they needed to go to college but people like the economy shifting to a service. Economy as opposed to production economy where we don't make stuff we sell stuff that won't explain the wealth accumulation of the top point 1%. You know you can't say it's because there are people in Ohio like 5% more people in Ohio need to go to college than used to and that's why we have trillionaires like that that doesn't follow. Oh today's ad today's ad is bowl and branch you know i remember when they first got together like Dow and Jones when bowl is doing fine and branch you know both listen they both were doing the best they could.

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37:08So we've always gone by the paradigm that it's growth is exponential for these companies they get to do it and they have a variety of ways in which they cut up that growth pie. Whether it's stock buybacks or whether it's vested interests and all that but workers. Their ability to tap into that stream right is always wages and wages are for suckers because wages you don't have that flexibility of carried interest or any of those things like your tax that a certain level and that level and you don't there's not a lot of flexibility within that and like you say they try and correct it a little bit with tax code but that's not sufficient. So is there a possibility that so if you don't want to untether growth and regulation if you want to let them is there a way then to rebalance this by getting workers whose productivity is leading to these exponential gains to tap into that stream of income and revenue beyond wages.

38:18Why can't workers tap why is it that companies are allowed to post these incredible earnings but the people who provide the labor that creates those earnings don't tap into that large s. So do you mean do you want workers to get like stock options like is it you want that or do you I want them to get paid the way that executives get paid. Yeah why aren't they considered shareholders everything is about we have to grow exponentially and we have to merge because we have to service our shareholders why is labor left out of that equation. That was a heavy sigh, Catherine. I think so I mean there's some like there's some conservative answers I could give you on in terms of like what is the proper savings rate for people of certain incomes. Now there's no good reason you can pay workers a lot you could give them good retirement accounts. I mean the way that people normally you know add. You know that type of compensation is that you set up a retirement account for them and you contribute to it and you use you know short of profit sharing you make active investments in your workers retirement and you don't necessarily have it be.

39:30So because but they get bonus wildly like at the end of the year they go through and a share of those profits are given or they like there's all kinds of ways that they suckle from the teet of their earnings profits but they don't let that they don't let workers into that room. And by the way if the company fails we all bail them out through tax money like growth and profits are always privatized but losses and other shit is always socialized. Yes I would say the like short of rearranging compensation within a company I think just tax of more like I like I. I'm of the mind that it's like a whack a mole is that the game I'm thinking of don't I don't know which game you're thinking of Catherine like you like if you told companies hey when you make a profit and you make above this you need to pay a certain percent to your workers they will figure out a way to not pay it.

40:30Like they they avoiding paying workers is an art form simple kind of like how wealthy people are incredibly good at not paying taxes and they will they will hire I mean there are firms out there family firm well they're already good at not paying taxes. Yes there are so I so my I think it's easier to tax them than it is to kind of like get under the hood and how they and how they do business and tell them how to pay people. Like I'm the simplest rules are the easiest ones to follow you put into law that we have minimum standards like every worker in the US gets paid sick days every worker in the US gets paid vacation you know we have a retirement accounts we you know we we can do all of this and then just take more profit on the back end. That is simpler than trying to rearrange their compensation structure because that's the rearranging the compensation structure would probably be easier for them to game. Let me ask you okay that this is a this is a great so let's game out this problem okay so let's say they do I don't know bonuses at the end of the year and you say all right if you're going to bonus your guys in that bonus pool.

41:3925% of it has to be distributed to labor not just to the boardroom they could maybe game that or what I'm saying is every way that you see that they use to pay themselves. They have to use a percentage of that to also go to the workers here's why I worry about just taxing them a they've already figured out how to game that system and be you're introducing the government as a middle man you're saying all right well we'll tax you and then the government and there's no guarantee that the government will use that money to improve their lives in the first place. I feel like if we can if we can get workers in on that gravy train if we can figure that out we create new streams that raise the floors. Yeah yeah yeah it's so come on Catherine come with me come with me on this journey. I'd have to know more about corporate pay structures that I do to feel confident that they wouldn't get around it.

42:42I think that's that's it I mean like they think it like pay someone a wage that's 725 they will figure out a way around it and so I'm trying to like. I'm just trying to I don't know enough about corporate pay structures like where the money really comes in like if you give someone a stock an unrealized stock option you know how do you do they give the unrealized option to their workers and there are there are rules here. Left over from and Ron about. That's never a good sentence by the way we've got a rule left over from and Ron but but and Ron when it collapsed all of their retirement accounts were invested in and Ron stock and so they're they we had to there were some rule changes related to how you compensate like via retirement accounts and company stock because you know when and Ron does a Houston thing I mean when and one and one with bus they took down all those people's retirement they didn't just lose their job they lost a lot of their savings but I would say we could bet like if there were ever bailouts that were worth while it would be for workers pension plans not for the people that created.

43:45The problem I feel like government can provide back stops and solutions because let's let's go the other way we're talking about why don't they pay them more so why don't they pay them more. They don't have enough competition amongst workers going to other jobs and they have market power to pay less than what people deserve yeah it all comes down to a worker's ability to say either ask for more to bargain or to leave and go somewhere else I mean a workers powers really comes from their mobility that I can get another job if I want one that I can demand more that I could get an outside offer and that that. In a bad economy that that tends to turn down but with concentration amongst employers that turns out to so I was looking this up just before we started there was a there used to be the big eight accounting firms right now there's the big four that's four fewer employers that you can go to well that'll never happen in entertainment I'll tell you that Catherine we remain a competitive business with no mergers and acquisitions I was going to ask you how many studios were around when you started oh my god.

44:54A million and now I think it's like you say it's for well it used to be even you know there was all these cable stations but now they've they've they bond old and you know the mergers and acquisitions and ultimately I think and it's maybe a few months off we'll just all work for the same guy yeah just the what it's like these two guys that's right just these two guys but Catherine let's what we're trying to okay but hold on here yeah go ahead okay so so in one's polite is one's opportunity yes we're at a moment of intense employer concentration right we most people are in some kind of industry that has gone through you know a crazy round of mergers and acquisitions there are many fewer companies they're now large employers that are concentrated the less competitive the labor market the easier it is for employers to absorb labor law and regulation so the classic example is does the minimum wage cause job loss it should I could put it on a graph for you right now it 100% should if you raise a floor above a workers you know contribution you'll have fewer workers it is very little evidence that that happens

46:01I mean even on the margin it's not clear that the minimum wage would cause any significant type of job loss or even a change to labor demand so how is it that the econ rules say the minimum wage should lead to job loss but in real life we just don't see it Catherine are you suggesting here on this program that some of the theories that work out in the economist classroom and in their think tanks in the real world failed to materialize exactly as they are proposed is that when you are suggesting here young lady yes my name is Catherine and I improve this message out of my studio well technically I'm in my studio so I keep forgetting I've just in my house here but that so then how do we begin the process right call their bluff yes call their bluff all right talk to me so they were saying if you raise the minimum wage it's going to cause job loss and we're going to have job loss if we paid workers more than seven dollars an hour and yet for the you know blossoming of state and local minimum wage laws over the past 20 years as the federal government has gone dormant in labor law there every time they raise the number wage someone looks to see if there was job loss and it's not significant the reason why there's not it is because of employer power and concentration that the starting points in order for the

47:26minimum wage to cause caused job loss you have to be in a competitive labor market because the assumption is that people are being paid what they're do but if you're not in a competitive labor market and you're being paid less than what you are do when you raise the minimum wage they can absorb it because it just comes out of the profit that they were able to to gain from not paying you what you were doing the first place so I look at five years of record corporate profits and I look at you know almost every industry becoming more and more concentrated in the hands of a few employers and I see like this is the best time to pass labor regulations because this is when they will cause the least amount of harm to business because they have the most power I mean if we were in a perfectly competitive labor market a labor law could actually upset the Apple card a little bit but we're not in that market we're in a very worker D powered corporate powered market this is when we should be passing these laws so what are some of the labor laws that we could pass that would help rebalance this okay hold on let me just warm up because I've got a lot I got a lot okay so the ladies and gentlemen for those you can't see she's literally cracking her shoulders and I think around I think c4 c5 c6 they all popped they just get ready to lay down some mother fucking labor laws yeah

48:37going to help rebalance this economy Catherine and Edwards the floor is yours okay so what we're going to do is eradicate the low wage labor market these these jobs that pay nothing with awful schedules with no power where you call in sick you lose your job you have to find another one you get demoted in the shift road or just that's going away everybody has a decent job it's not that hard so you pass a new fair labor standards act to require sick days and vacation days for every worker to say you can't fire someone for calling in sick you raise the minimum wage and you pass two types of scheduling laws the first type of scheduling law says that schedules have to be predictable that you need to know when you'll work at least two weeks in advance you have to know your shift because people have lives and they have children and they have things that they have to coordinate around that and if you cancel a shift you have to get paid for it and if you don't have a minimum amount of time between a shift you have to get over time for the second one this is called clopening where you close and then open you don't actually have eight hours room to sleep in between by the way you get that if you're literally on a film like did you

49:44did shit like if you work until 10 p.m. they're like can't have them come back until 10 a.m. the next like that happens in our industry because you're unionized that's right so that's right so the the second one I think most Americans I feel like there's a kind of all that's gravy the second one is that we need to allow workers in salary positions to request the right to go part time and work from home. So you work in an office you work five days a week you need to be able to request to work part time or from home for a period of time. The US does not have a high quality part time labor market why why is that what is what is the theory behind that is that in terms of like child care or elder care is it is it addressing those issues yeah and also I mean basically life happens to people and they can't show up to work five days a week for 45 hours and they lose their job and it's harder for them to get back into the labor market it's really predictable things like they have a kid their parent gets sick their partner gets sick they move they get divorced and they they can do their job a little bit but their life gets in the way and they need a period of time to go part time and then come back.

50:53This would retain people in the labor market and keep them earning money as opposed to shoving people out when they have anything like a part of their life happen. Like if your kid gets sick and they've got to have lots of doctors appointments and surgeries do you need to lose your job right no but they're not going to give it to you so let me ask you something that's okay go ahead. Oh no what I'm saying what it sounds like we're saying is we're having the federal government as a stand in for unions because the onus is always on workers to organize themselves and then drive through in this and what we're saying is that puts too much of an onus on workers. The government has to step in and have workers best interests in a way that they don't have it right now they have to have their backs in a way that they don't have it right now that they have been. They have been overly solicitous to corporate interest and they have been under protective of workers and relying on workers and then they've made it much harder for workers to organize so government has to step in and represent those interests is that the theory of this.

51:59It's a floor it's a floor of it's saying that like if this is like this is like pay to play you want to run a business in the United States in 2026 but you can only pay five dollars an hour to children sorry you lose you don't get to play we're better than that this is this is saying this is the minimum to play here you have to meet these standards for workers because we're not. You know we're not a developing economy in 1950 right modern economy we've got modern expenses like you need to do better and you need to lift up the floor and you're and you're gaining the benefits of our productivity. Yes yep so new floor now all right so what else what how about this one what about you you should never lose your medical insurance if you change a job give workers more mobility by not having them tied into jobs that are shitty for them just because they know they'll lose their insurance if they leave. It's called job lock about one in four Americans suffers from it I don't think health insurance should come from your employer at all we got to just cut that court it shouldn't come from employers at all. You know it's it's it's horrible for the labor market it it suppresses wage growth it keeps people locked in their jobs it gives employers an incredible amount of bargaining power and not just your employer but your ability to move to a smaller employer where insurance is more expensive and then you don't you have to pay more for health insurance.

53:16That's probably worse yes it's bad for small employers to have to pay for health insurance and compete with large employers who can offer better benefits employment and health needs to be just completely divorced. We spend I would say two thirds of federal spending on Medicaid goes into the tax preference for health insurance so there we like to think in the US that we have private health insurance but if the tax doll if the tax bonus turned off those companies would collapse they there's no private market for health insurance. There is private delivery of health insurance via your employer heavily subsidized by the tax system get rid of it so that that's yeah I'm with you on that one. No the second kind of big policy for me is adding family benefits just making it easier to be a parent in a worker at the same time so this would be. This would be paid family leave universal childcare universal after school universal summer programming let's make a big investment communities and teen mental health let's give kids a safe place to go and then in the meantime we get to recoup immediate benefits by parents working longer. Parents working more during the day during the summer I mean we have such predictable and costly drops in labor force participation when you have a young kid and when you it's summertime will lose female workers.

54:26Not because they don't want to work but because they don't have a safe place to put their kid. And women didn't want to work that would be one thing and they should you know do what they want to do but if you want to work but you can't you're making the economy smaller by shoving them out of the labor market that's an own goal like we can do better than that. So invest in invest in the floor of the labor market invest in basic family policies to help to know that people are people when they work. And then I think yeah we just need to de link benefits from your employer health insurance but everybody needs to have a retirement account and they I would think employers. Would would welcome at least that part of it that they would you know you would you would be able to remove that but why is it as an economist. When you suggest these types of progressive fixes why do they tell you that those are untenable. Um well you know that the reason has changed over time it's funny I think you know 10 years ago I would have heard back. You know that'll hurt jobs that that'll cause job loss.

55:30And I think now all I hear back is well that would be expensive. The federal government has a lot of money. All right because right now the republicans it used to be remember when they used to say to the democrats your tax and spend Well the republicans have a new theory tax cut and spend. So it's I mean they're they're functioning at deficits unseen in the world because they do these giant tax cuts but they still spend on all there's no change. The it's a very effective policy for killing social policy is to to bankrupt our government to the degree that people will think like well we really want child care but we can't. I see it again I'm an optimistic person I was like oh you think we can't afford it and that's why you don't want it. That's so easy because the the way that we have organized so much of our economy is indefensible. Like you call every member of congress right now and tell them is the child care system working for your constituents. You know they will not pick up the phone no one will go on record and say child care is really easy to get talk talk about that though the way that we organize our system is indefensible tell me what you what you mean by that.

56:39You couldn't okay yes child care is one of them you're not going to find an elected official in this country who will go on record and say child care is affordable for my constituents. They'll say women ought to be at home. How do we not have a better system that's okay yeah yeah that's it's not like the fact that we don't have child care. It's why don't we have paid family leave totally indefensible the idea that there are people dying people sick that there are new born and we don't think that a family member should be next to them is completely indefensible and it's indefensible on a human level and it's also indefensible on an economic level. When you don't have something like paid family leave every time there's a major illness and someone's family you're forcing someone out of the labor market as a horrible policy. The the kind of like oh but it's expensive for me is like I'm like oh yeah your money concerns speak volumes because you know you can't be against paid family leave like you know you can't be against child care you're just you just don't want it or elder care or any of those or elder yeah yeah so the no I mean it's how about the way we treat unemployed people.

57:42I mean this would be for me like the the system that is probably them so at the heart of what people are afraid of with artificial intelligence. That they will lose their job but of course that fear is compounded if you don't have a decent system for helping people I mean once you lose your job in the US you are lazy and don't want to work. That's it it is just unemployed people are not like us they don't work as hard they you know I kept my job they didn't keep theirs there's there's a there's a judgment that comes down to unemployed people that has resulted in almost no support for unemployed people in the United States. That is indefensible from an economic perspective you you know you think of some business in your neighborhood that is closed just keep it in your mind's eye there was a building there used to be a shop there used to be a restaurant and it closed. You know when that's when that when that shop closes a four lease sign goes up and they look for another tenant it's not as if they burn the building to the ground. But when you talk about workers losing their job and you say something really snide that politicians do like you should just take the first job you could find you're basically burning down that human capital.

58:50I've managed 30 people I've worked at this place for 15 years I've got these skills but apparently as soon as I lose my job I need to go sweep the floor McDonald's and all that skill and all that experience we burned it to the ground. And all that investment that we've made in those workers through their education and training and skills in time on the job it's all gone. Because they lost their job and now they need to be punished for it that is terrible economic policy results in a smaller economy it's indefensible. So now when we bring these investments up all you hear is it's the price tag that's the problem and I kind of have to chuckle to myself because I'm like oh your girl can raise taxes. Right. Yeah. Right. I got no problem raising taxes. You know when you're a comic work in the road cats were the perfect you know because cats man you leave for like a week. They don't even they don't even miss you. You leave them a little something to bowl but we know better now and no one knows better than small.

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1:00:56Get 60% of your first order plus free shipping and free treats for life when you head to smalls.com. Slash TWS one last time that 60% of your first order plus free shipping and free treats for life when you head to smalls.com slash TWS. Are you concerned that AI supercharges these inequities that exist between labor and capital because we're already seeing what is the government bending over backwards to do capitalize these data center 50 trillion industry you know so much of our economy right now in terms of GDP growth and any of those things. Relise on the bet that we're making that AI is the future it's talk about consolidation it's these seven companies are going to decide.

1:02:01Everybody's future and all the little issues that are bubbling up or workers will they not be exacerbated by the rush to AI. If we make the same mistake we made in the 80s which we will. I don't know I don't know the I mean it's a different world I mean the position matters in the in the early 1980s we had been through a four decade expansion of the federal government through the new deal through the great society you you had heavy regulation of every industry with the government's hands all over everything and then you had a series of deeply deeply unpopular presidents. And then and then some real economic shocks like the oil shock and there was a lot that also went into that. Yes and and so having like people don't just react in a bubble they react you know in the context that they're in I think the reaction was against what had come before you always are some ways rebellion against the past and they their recent past was was government they didn't like in too much of it always expanding and they were tired of it and so this you know someone says like actually less government will be awesome they're like oh yeah.

1:03:11I'll take that but I think now that that that's exposed as that's not going to work. No you go out and say don't worry these corporations will take care of you as long as they're growing and then people are going to be like no they won't. No they won't right you know what I posted a video about I posted a video about tax policy and someone said on the comments oh yeah trickle down right and someone posted underneath it only works if you squeeze real hard. And it had like a thousand likes we forgot we forgot to squeeze we just got it's not going to keep squeezing but I took that as like this is this is incredible because now I post some random video and the comments I mean okay yeah there's bias of like the people who follow me agree with what I'm saying but I don't think that in 1980 you had people say trickle down as a lie to a large degree you didn't have people who had been at companies that had worse health benefits every year you didn't have people who couldn't afford housing because of the way the market structure who had maybe been foreclosed on I mean we've had so much experience that we carry through each neoliberal conservative crisis to the next that at some point we want to change direction we didn't have that in that.

1:04:241980 I think we have that on our side now and we just have to capitalize on this moment to be like all right for big for government we're here let's do it well I think and in many ways people see that corporate power is kind of a fourth branch of government and only government has the power to be an effective counterweight to whatever that exploitation may be and I find it so interesting now with AI and we had a guy on the the Daily Show last night this guy Jacob Cox and his sort of worked at anthropic and open AI and has been blown in the whistle on kind of how dangerous he thinks it might be but even he buys into this idea that oh well you know AI is dangerous and you can have these things but if we put enough guardrails on it we'll get to an age of abundance where there won't be jobs productivity will go through the roof and the robots in the AI will make all these industries so and jobs will obviously be diminished but we'll have universal high income and you won't have to and I just keep thinking to myself like who the fuck do they think they're kidding that this industry of people who are hoarding wealth at a level we have never seen it before if we just let them cook they'll get to a point where they control everything and then they'll start handing it all off to people.

1:05:50We have 50 years of experience of corporate largest right does not come down to us yeah at all yeah I should I should say there is like a very reasonable UBI camp universal basic income that's different they come from the left they want to disrupt power yes they like there's a very there's a very like and it's descended from MLK and the freedom budget of like this is this is a liberal policy because it disrupts the power in the labor market to give people base level of income for bargaining there's those people. They are very different from yes don't worry your corporate overlords will give you all enough money that like everybody will be fine I think there's like legitimate power questions we should get at and there are other things and I think there are policies that can help with that like wage insurance I think is you know you talked earlier about you lose your job and then you have to go to a lower wage job and all that that to me is a good use of wage insurance where you don't make people make a step down if their industry gets just right.

1:06:50They are not just the people that are affected by globalization or by people chasing the lowest corporations chasing the lowest water. We learn that in the pandemic the the difference between the government response to the 2008 financial crisis in the pandemic was stark in the pandemic rather than bailing out at the corporate level they just said oh what if we just made it so that people could still eat and live in their houses and you saw the bounce back in the economy was so much a quick quicker and people didn't lose their houses do you want to a devastating fact about that please the great recession took eight years off the life of the social security trust fund and the covid pandemic didn't take one. That's fucking crazy isn't it the 2008 where they bailed it out at the corporate level even though they got that paid back in the government took eight years out of it but she doesn't that just prove that to stimulate the economy at that canzine level is like. Such a more effective policy so I mean come on security is my own now social security is my Roman empire and I think one of the reasons why i'm so just fascinated by it is that it is a mirror back at our labor market of how we are performing and you know you you hear this narrative of like oh there's too many old people they live too long we can have social security when in fact like social security is reflecting that workers have had a raw deal for fifty.

1:08:19So you know it can get through small problems but something like how big of a hit the great recession. You know gave to social security bottom line is really like this is the story it needs workers and it needs those workers to be making good money and if you hurt workers it hurts social security and I this like longevity people live longer and there's old people now like that that to me is like a very convenient like you are missing the broader picture which is that social security is a labor market program. The great recession was devastating to social security bottom line because of how long job loss went on how how many people left the labor market for good because they never found a job. We can do we can do better than that i've advocated for a long term unemployment program that's you know basically like when you lose your job you just give people a little bit of money for a little bit of time because once people lose their job they make it is with love horrible choices like they're so stressed they're so scared they've got bills that are coming right. Terrifying terrifying so you need to just give them a check like here's four weeks will float you figure it out don't make it adversarial no just make it just literally walk off the street go get an unemployment benefit don't lose your life over how scary this is right there's basically three types of unemployment the vast majority is really short like you lose your job you find another one really quickly.

1:09:39The middle kind it's a smaller share but it's people who like they'll get a job with their resume it just takes a while. And then the third kind is very long and it's a small small share of people but there resume will never get them a job again and they have to do something different so they get a job quick they get a job on the resume or they they something has to change. So i think we should have an unemployment system that looks exactly like that. Catherine is some of this based on the idea of what we believe are the markers for our healthy economy because if you tune into. You know any news program there's always a little ticker at the bottom of there's always a little thing and it's always about the down or the nasdaq or the s and p 500 as though that is somehow. Those are the markers for a healthy economy and you could be forgiven for assuming just like if you went to the hospital and they checked your blood pressure and your pulse that that is oh those are the two things that symbolize health but shouldn't we have in that corner. Workers share of productivity shouldn't we have other markers that are much truer indicators of what a real healthy economy would look like so that people become educated to look for those changes.

1:10:55I don't know i don't know i mean for one thing the the reason why those markers are up is also there's a frequency bias I mean they change all the time unemployment rate we get an update once a month you know poverty will get an update. Maybe once a quarter but really just once a year and so it's like this permanent fixture to have them up there I think that they just it's news right and the stock market prices are always new because they they change. You know in every moment but I I think. I know if you I think people see it I don't know maybe maybe on to maybe on to optimistic I would say that i'm a very cynical optimist in some ways i'm optimistic. I mean i'm almost optimistic at a spite at some point. Like we call my podcast is called optimistic economy we say all the time like we're not nice but I mean to me optimism is not giving a free pass to our awful members of congress that they can stop trying. Because when I stop believing change can happen they are no longer held accountable for what I'd like to see because I've made peace with how awful the world is and so I'm like oh I can be optimistic out of spite for so long I am a Texan do you know how stubborn I can be you should watch me play put put it's ridiculous like I'm.

1:12:06So competitive I'm so spiteful and so I will believe in a better country just to damn like 100% do that you know I think about this with with how people are reacting so i'm sure you've heard that there's this big like vibe session of like the new the economic news is good but people feel bad about the economy and there's the struggle to explain it I don't really think there's a struggle to explain anything it's it's that even if you were to put the unemployment rate up on a ticker or you were to put GD. P up on a ticker people's lives have not improved and they can gauge their own lives right better than any national economic indicator can. And so the you know bringing more attention to indicators outside of the stock market is one thing but what we really need to do is pay attention to people when they say I'm hurting and you are not helping and that that comes down to better leadership and that comes down to different priorities and it comes down to no longer holding the economy up as a bogeyman to say well if I help you we might have a worst economy no we have a better economy when people are helped that is everything we have a better account these are not entitlements they are investments this is not charity that's right they are when you do that you are

1:13:21investing in the best thing we have in this country which is human capital yes and these are not entitlements by poor people right exactly no so you talk about child care child is a price tag it can be expensive it's probably still I don't know a fifth of the cost of the one big beautiful bill act but I mean it's not cheap to pay for child care for every American but if you had child care you could expect anywhere between you know one to four million more people working every year that the size of our economy is predicted by the number of people working in it so same thing with paid family leave the same thing with the right to work part time or or schedules that are predictable this isn't charity when you make the labor market more fair and when you make the labor market work for workers they can work more and they can earn more and that makes the economy bigger I I I like to turn on my like heartless economists sarcastic voice and be like listen I also hate children I hate their mothers but I hate kids and I don't want to invested them any more than you want to invest in them those not knows little devil's they're they're we need to their vectors of disease but I've got to give them

1:14:29daycare if I'm going to get there if I'm going to get more hours of work out of their mom which is good for the economy and so I can I can like code switch and turn on this like this is beautiful evil economist of like well I also hate children I'm not going to lie right I don't want to make people's lives easier but I do need them to stay at the factory till seven so we're going to have to do that I need some more worker bots yeah so I I frame things like my economic arguments I mean I'm also a human I mean I'm telling anybody but in addition to that don't yeah but I frame the economic arguments as you know they've the the conservative neoliberal agenda for so long has been we own growth they don't own growth they don't own growth they don't grow the economy faster because they treat people like shit that's not a better way to grow yes one way to grow that hurts we own growth growth is on us when you have labor force participation that is growth and that growth can come from treating people like human beings and treating the economy works for us and not the other way around

1:15:32flip it flip it right now and send it out over the airwaves Catherine and Edwards economist writer and host of Optimus economy I so appreciate your your your thoughts on this your spirit your content all those different things I'm so happy and if there's anything that I take away from this is remain optimistic purely out of spite 100% they have continued to treat humans like shit and you think you you think you can break us motherfucker you cannot John hold in your mind your least favorite Republican in Congress I'm doing it right now yeah I'm gonna wait he's in a wheelchair giving me a peace sign all right imagine how even happier he would look if he was like hey good news everyone John Stewart doesn't think the balance of power will ever change in the US and workers favor and so he's gonna give up on caring he'd be even happier he'd be even happier so everybody listening holding your mind's eye someone that you don't want to make happy with your defeat and tell them you will

1:16:35never give up we're never give up thank you Churchill hold on a white knuckle Catherine really appreciate it thank you so much for your time and hope to talk to you again soon yeah thanks for having me hello that's the it's time for your favorite thing which is advertisements that's a new jingle that I'm working on find your next fall favorites of quince quince has cashmere sweaters fall wardrobe pants teas active wear high quality stuff well you they've got home bedding kitchen essentials furniture why are you shopping anywhere and by the way for those you know me I like the stuff that I get to be the product of labor that has been exploited but quince doesn't roll that way they're all into ethical factories I'm doing the quotes there they cut out the middleman you're

1:17:36paying for high quality not brand markup these guys are the good guys you should buy from them download the quince app for app exclusive offers or go to quince.com slash TWS get free shipping on your order and 365 day returns now available in Canada and the UK too that's q-u-i-n-c-e.com slash TWS fire you like that one that young lady when she started cooking yeah because you could tell like she wasn't quite sure when we first started like who is this guy what is he now and then finally she was just like let me tell these motherfuckers what's what remaining optimistic out of spite it's so good how beautiful is that putting it on a poster yeah sue it for the haters I love the idea that she is just like let me tell you something they think they can keep us down no I'm gonna I'm

1:18:39gonna keep my head above water and keep hoping for a better future just because I know how much it fucking annoys them just to damn you spectacular smart hopeful yeah yeah every time she's talking I was like yes yes well that when she said that and I wrote it down about growth in greed yeah and I'm looking forward to all the economists who listen to that and go fuck her she doesn't know what she's talking about and he doesn't know what he's talking about and and we're the only economists that matter like it's just so crazy too because you know the greatest period of American prosperity is when worker protections were the greatest and when workers had the largest share of that pie and yet they'll tell you that and when growth and productivity are more coupled and when wages and productivity are more coupled yeah and they decoupled it and acted like this rush to inequality is how it's all actually supposed to work yeah and they'll say you know we can't afford it and it's gonna cause inflation meanwhile their pay goes up 400% and worker pay can't go up a nickel but yes we're poor

1:19:45and it is and it is so much about like the places where economy is withered where it's whether it's rust belt or certain where where poverty is intractable um bringing prosperity to them would be the greatest thing that could ever happen in the economy raising the ceiling for tech titans is not what makes the economy better it's helping the areas that have withered and withered because of intentional policy yeah because people spend money when they make it and the textos hold to their wealth but no no they'll tell you they're gonna go all your $5,000 check is in the mail but meanwhile we're just gonna keep hoarding all of your resources and all and by the way and only if you give us control of everything it's actually it's a bribe it's not yeah well I thought you was fantastic I really I hope to get a chance to to have her and talk again that was I'm fired up now yeah I know my blood is boiling you kept getting closer to the camera I know you like it when you're like

1:20:48yes yeah certainly in an environment yeah it is it's so funny because it's not obviously a visual medium sometimes it is but there are certain things that you would say that I was just like what like touchdown but I really sometimes and I get in these conversations with the encounters and it is like a football game where I'm like oh shit that's all great pass interception uh Brittany what are the what are the people want uh what do they what do they want what do they want what do you want this fall morning uh john if the democrats win the house and the senate what figures crossed should they try to impeach Trump or would that be a strategic mistake since he won't be convicted what is any of that he we've already shown there's no accountability when they're what I want to see is a full government effort on rebalancing this economy and this is about triage and the corruption of that family fucking let them drain us like they think they're gonna drain us wall it off so it doesn't infect the rest of the economy and spend a total government effort

1:21:54at rebalancing labor versus capital with real ideas about like the ones that Catherine was saying that's where all their efforts should be I don't want to see a fucking five act performative play of house hearings I just don't want to see it I don't want to see everybody having the opportunity to pantomime accountability because you know they're actually not going to bring it you want to do some investigations to some shit that's great but on the triage list of what's wrong in this country it is I'm sorry sir you're gonna have to stay in the waiting room because this guy just got shot and it sounds to me like you just have a sore throat like do the shit that actually is killing people right now that's all too much was that too no no I think just the right level like we've been in those hearings if you couldn't bring accountability to January 6th in two years

1:22:57what confidence do any of us have that you're gonna be able to untangle arrogant don's drone company truly yes I do want them to be a little scared though that's it it's like I scared what are they scared of there is not a person of that power and privilege that can't figure out how to run out the clock on a two-year investigation so accomplish mom donny it which pothole you need filled fucking fill it govern you want to do some things that are ancillary a little side project you want to do the investigations as a hobby knock yourself out fix shit perhaps we also finally release the Epstein files release the fire site hobby what else they want to know um john can you name the current White House press secretary is it Fox News did they I don't you know I actually don't think they've replaced Caroline love it they have it right which is a shame I mean since she's

1:24:03begun there's been a real dearth of information and you know the transparency that she provided I thought and it's it's you feel it it's a loss for the American for the American people I think she just joined Fox News did she not she sure did I was just about to say that yeah she had enough time with her family and it was like a cool month yeah no listen I've been there that month is you might be the only person that left to spend time with your family and I actually did it for like eight years and that's finally the only one they left the house and then my wife was looking at me like what are you gonna do now yeah it's a good that's a good question American maybe I should go back once a week yeah all right fair enough what else what else what else uh john what are your thoughts on making daylight savings time per minute Trump said that it would make golfers happy let me tell you something this is gonna be controversial I don't think we should have night time at all uh John I am not down with it's scarier there's all kinds of shadows it's when you never

1:25:10know when you're gonna come across a raccoon that doesn't happen during the day I don't I don't come home from work with a pizza box and invite him in water worried that I'm gonna get pounced by four little chubby trash bandits but that happens and no I think if Donald Trump was a real man he would outlaw night he would he wouldn't be pittling around the edges of this shit that would be masculine of him twice the golf hey golf at night we're off the band-aid I want to golf at three in the morning and not after worry about not being able to find my ball by the way I've never golfed in your life now uh when I was I went once with a friend and I did like a hole yeah and then I was like okay I think I can go now not for me and you were right yeah have you done it yes and it's so boring I can't stress enough how boring golf against it's it's kind of the same shit over and over again

1:26:13and what they tell me is what what gets you about it is like you can never be good at it consistently and I'm like that it's like saying like have you ever been frustrated well what's the code it's like it's like golfing is a good way to ruin a lovely walk or something yeah yeah that's cute a good walk ruin but I have friends who swear love it I mean the drinking and the golf carts are fun especially when put together I think that I think they have actually it's funny to bring it up I think at a lot of golf courses there are like people in carts who drive up yeah they do the bar cart the bar cart they just they just I was just imagining like you're playing golf it's so little of a sport that somebody could just try it up and be like hey man hey man want to get high also the only place that you can drink and drive oh the carts now are there designated cart drivers like maybe if you're golfing no everybody's just fucked up it's like boats apparently the rules

1:27:13of alcohol yes do not apply on the seas like nobody gives a shit and just drive around fantastic now no we're off next week and then we're back on the 21st but Brittany how do they how do they keep in touch with us with their golf questions twitter we are weekly shapod instagram threads tiktok blue sky we are with the podcast and you can like subscribe and comment on our youtube channel the weekly show with john steward which I do I'm a gold star commenter on those I always write in ego like what a great conversation that john steward is so handsome that's well no even I can't pull that off unfortunately uh thank you guys very much as always producer Brittany medvik produce july and spare video editor and engineer rob the tollo audio editor and engineer and Nicole boy associate producer Rebecca rodenberg and our executive producers christmas shame katee gray uh have a great couple of weeks and we will see you back on October 21st well bye

1:28:15the weekly show with john steward is a comedy central podcast is produced by paramount audio bus boy productions brosso's cleanup nicely at sweet green maple glazed roasted and edges perfectly caramelized sweet greens fall harvest is back on the menu and the season's most overlooked little green vegetable to be devoured you know what to do order on the sweet green app this week it pays extra to be a my lows rewards member through october 14 members get ten dollars my low as money when you spend two hundred dollars or more on an eligible purchase during my lows money days also using your my lows rewards credit card even better that's an additional twenty dollars my lows money use it to save on your next lows haul exclusions restrictions and more terms apply cloes dot com slash my lows money days for detail my lows money expires

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