Joining us is daniel shaw academic and commentator who joins us from new york. Welcome to you both uh William Black. Ill start with you. So you have uh the union and the companies uh remaining far apart in terms of the autoworker strike on key economic issues. The ua president has said um that hes going to stick with that demand for 40 of payes over four Year Contract uh the companies however have offered pay highs of about 20 . Thats the latest we have. Whats your . On it, yeah, the absolute latest is uh, the uaw has gone down to around 36 , um, you know, negotiate, you make smaller moves and take more time, by the way, the actually theres a settlement uh, with the canadian, of auto workers who are also part of the uaw, so the management it is, as you can see quite different in canada. What type of settlement did they reach with canada . So they reached a settlement more in the lines of 25 ish percent to 30 increase. 25 to 30 increase. Okay, uh, thats over the period of several years. Right, right. Um, lets look at um one thing here, daniel shaw that perhaps many dont realize, and this uh, pretty much a flashback, and thats going back to the year 2009. Um, i dont know if you recall. Gm was on the brink of collapse, the ua, the uaw agreed to let the company hire new workers at that time, but at about half the hourly wage that that prevailed, and with um skimpier Retirement Benefits and higher temp workers that even lower rates from what we understand, and outsource more jobs abroad, this is while the american taxpayers forked over 10 billion dollars to save the company, so in a way they sacrifice themselves in order to get the company up and running um um coming out of the uh the sorry state that it was in due to the financial crisis um do you think that the sacrifice that the workers have uh endor that they applied to themselves and then endured all these years is uh being repaid back in a proper way by not getting the pay increase that theyre demanding and thats why theyre still on strike thats why the strike has expanded uh now to 25,000 workers um i think the contradictions are on full display, the ceos of these uh of of the big three Automobile Industry giants, their yearly salaries are between 25 million and uh 50 million, just for these ceos, so the 25,000 auto workers, the uaw union is is is asking, well where is the money, why are you so stingy with us . Weve seen that this has turned into um one of the biggest stories in the country with biden and and trump uh visiting the workers uh this week as we know were gearing up for an Election Year uh uh next year so itll be interesting to see what happens. William black uh or i guess the talked about the ceo pay looking at uh what General Motors ceo is making its 29 million ford ceo 21 million and stalantis coo 25 million so these are uh these are. I mean pretty high salaries, im guessing, especially when you take a look at the profits overall of the uh manufacturers themselves, where were looking at 250 billion dollars, one particular stat, 1. 7 million were made off of each and every one of the workers, why are they holding out so uh much then when it comes to the workers . Oh, because they get their bonus in part by precisely those things that youve just of explained, so uh, it is really important. And very few americans understand that there is this two tier system that the companies insisted on and shamefully the federal government under president s bush and obama uh agreed to of uh paying as you say new workers far less and uh also uh giving them much worse uh pensions so uaws done too clever and appropriate things. One is it said hey we think our increase should be that of the ceos uh after all our workers were responsible for the ceos gains and companies gains and second you need to uh be getting rid of this two tier system uh because it penalizes in particular uh younger workers. All right uh one of the things that uh since were on this topic of ceos um daniel shaw im looking at at just a reaction in terms of strikes overall on the us id like to throw this at you which came from Hospitality Worker thats on strike uh she said uh i think people are all around the country. Here are just getting fed up with the corporations not sharing or including them into the profit or acknowledging our hard work that we put into the company. That seems to be sentiment that is echoed across uh variety of sectors, if not all sectors. Of course, this could be something that could happen all the time, but in this particular uh economic, guess atmosphere in the us, that rings a bell, what are your thoughts on that . Mean, why is it that uh, you know, were looking at the types of. Statements and view points that we uh heard when you had the uh um zikoti park demonstrations that were happening back then uh in terms of uh um you know the 99 versus the 1 because every day the class contradictions are sharper across us society and these workers are class conscious workers they know that uh gm and and ford depend on them in in their labor in their. Back pain and their blood sweat and tears and the sacrifices that they make every day. If we listen to uaw president shaun faine. Yeah, he almost has a Bernie Sanders esk uh tone to him when he describes the billionaire class, the elon masks and the bill gates and how these individuals live when the vast majority of us, the workers who keep this country running uh, depend a monthly check to see if we can pay our mortgage. And get enough groceries and settle our uh medical bills, so when sean fein quotes the bible saying that its easier for camel to enter into through the eye of needle than rich person, like these ceos to enter into the kingdom of god, i think that uh rhetoric there, that anticapitalist rhetoric speaks for millions and millions of workers across this country. In terms of wage increases, its its pretty incredible. Well uh William Black when you take a look at the uh difference when it comes to the 1 versus the bottom 90 between 1979 and 2022 what i uh figured here through variety of resources inflation adjusted annual wages of the top 1 rose by 145 and then uh for the bottom uh rose by only 16 why such disparity okay so the disparity is actually massively greater than uh even that number indicates, because it isnt so much the top 1 , its literally the top 1ousth of 1 , there the the gains are in the thousand percent range, however uh the United States and what biden of course is calling biden nomics, turning around insult into a benefit, or as we and economic ranks would call running the economy hot um has actually reversed for a time uh these slightly some of these longterm trends in other words real wages uh despite inflation uh have actually started growing and uh by we the United States had record low unemployment and record low unemployment of minorities uh in particular, and thats why you see biden actually uh meeting, so hes the first president of the United States ever to join a picket line in support uh of a union, and the political dynamics are such that trump therefore state to fake uh one where he pretended to meet with auto workers, unionized auto workers, in fact it was uh a scab plant, working to uh try to break uh the. Strike uh, so there actually have been some meaningful gains and uaw is trying to translate these gains into uh wages that are actually very strongly middleclass uh type wages uh, i can tell you i grew up in dearborna worked for Ford Motor Company, my you know step dad worked Ford Motor Company, my grandfather worked for Ford Motor Company uh and and such um so yes the the bottom 10 uh of the. States still in terrible shape, um, and again this gets political, we took reduced Child Poverty in half, now now first, if youre going to have a policy, why not in Child Poverty, why cut it in half, but hey, uh, the republicans insisted on getting rid of that, and we see in the new numbers that the the Child Poverty rate has gone up very substantially, so this is intensely uh political uh and uh contested and its very unclear which way the elections are going to go in the United States on these issues exactly you talk you touched a number of issues that are really important there uh first of all uh inflation is very important and uh you talked about Child Poverty and i like to uh discuss that a wider scale in terms of poverty in general but daniel show first lets talk about this inflation that the us uh pins the number at around 3 from what i understand um workers pay in 5 , but when you take a look at inflation, i mean youre in new york, daniel shaw, maybe you can tell us, when you take a look at some of the categories, for example, its very shocking uh to hear that in 2022, price of eggs in terms of inflation was uh had increased 19 , oil fats 9 , and then you had things like um in 2022, food at school 305 , and the eggs were 59 , what is the deal there . What are we looking at . Mean, you cant just say inflation three uh, what are they . What did i say theyre saying . Uh, 3 , i believe is what i said, but really its not that, is it . Mean, im sure when you go buy a pack of cigarettes or when you go buy butter or margin, its not just a 3 increase, right . So im trying to, if you see where im going with this, what is the deal there in terms of that versus the wages that average americans are earning . Yeah, uh, based on uh your assessment of. Whats going on here in new york city, one would think that you lived here for the past uh, you know, four, five decades, because you describe all too accurately, uh, we hear all these fancy numbers in in in the mainstream media, but when we go to the grocery store, when we go to the pump, if we take our families out for dinner, we feel that pinch more than ever, and we know that the United States specializes in whats called atrocity propaganda against their political enemies such as um russia or or venezuela or or nicaragua, but i wish that the professor there in the midwest could give tour of what cleveland and detroit and chicago in the midwest uh looks like after decades and decades of social uh abandonment, this was uh the thriving industrial uh sector of our job and i think foreign audience would find it unreal to see the images from gary, indiana or flint michigan and to see. The complete social neglect uh that an entire generation of children or two generations now have suffered from. All right uh William Black im going to uh ask you the same question because really curious as to whats going on when it comes to inflation versus pay, what is it like there um in Bloomington Minnesota where youre at, what does it look like . Does it look like to you that is that its around the 5 mark . Yeah i dont think youre going to like my answer um actually uh inflation almost certainly is overstated uh and thats something that even conservative economists uh who and by the way the politics in the United States is that its the democrats who want emphasize inflation isnt that big a problem and its republicans who want emphasize uh that its a you know the biggest problem uh ever and economists of course are overwhelmingly in the conservative uh camp um but uh i can go through. The technical reason is probably boring uh, even conservative economists think that inflation is overstated by about one and a half to 2 , and the us has the lowest inflation rate of any major industrialized nation with a you know sort of capitalistish type economy, so the pressure in the United States politically is emphasize inflation and say therefore. Shouldnt have social programs for the poor, so i im off pushing in the opposite direction of where you you may think im uh coming from and uh saying no, we need to be. Emphasizing poverty, and you know my counterpart is absolutely right, i was born in detroit, um, and ive taught for years in missouri, and uh, st. Louis, and detroit are two of the the huge cities that, but used to be among the five, lart depending on the time period, among the five largest cities in the United States, or the sixth largest cities in the United States. And now they are catastrophically in terrible uh condition. For example, the uaw at peak had about 1. 5 million members, it now has 400,000 active members, but is responsible still for negotiating on behalf of retirees whose benefits the uaw still you know uh pushes for. Number about 600,0, but you can see that decline from roughly 1. 5 million to roughly 400,000, and thats actually a uaw number, so that actually includes employment in canada, which is quite substantial in the Auto Industry uh, and puerto rico, which is kind the United States, its a little technical, and uh, in mexico. All right, well im glad you mention uh the points that you made about inflation. Because were just trying to figure it out really, mean daniel shaw uh our guest there says that its not as bad as as it uh thats as bad as some may make it, but uh so what what about the workers that are striking, mean its not just the auto workers, im looking down a list of uh some the industries and some of the companies, mean you had the screen waters which appears that they reached some kind of agreement, you had starbucks employees, amazon workers, you have frontline workers, whether its nurses, hotel staff and pilots, you have the ups. Which they reach an agreement if they hadnt, that would have been the biggest strike in us history, or should i say the largest strike in us history, so and and the news um reads that uh, you know, its strike season, that the us a strikes have made a comeback, i mean, so why are they out, a striking, is it not because of inflation obviously, but because of their pay, thats usually what its all about, so how do you explain that . Yeah, tomorrow will be the first day of strike tober, it seems. October is gearing up to be a month of uh strikes, i think uh professor blacks macroeconomic analysis is um informed at the same time if we take a step back in terms of unemployment, you know, the New York Times will report this, the presidency will report that in the department of labor, but when we go into our communities, the reality is even harsher on the ground, because how many workers, how many families have actually given up, theyre no longer counted um in the actual statistics, so unemployment is often so much higher when you go through oppress communities, the black community, often those numbers are um under reported, in terms of um the the strikes, i think so many workers are again uh waking up to reality of what these mass uh the automobile starbucks, we saw the the vast uh strike campaigns and in the fight for 15 over the course of the past uh uh decade or or so and and workers are demanding more because the economic reality is biting and they cant survive on what we survived on uh decades past sure well i have to squeeze in uh this question because uh if i dont uh then my producer is going to get really mad at me and its about the its about the Government Shutdown um were trying to figure out whats going on there and the last that we heard is that well, what is the last you heard, William Black . Im sure you can give us better idea. I mean, are we looking at uh mccarthy doing his job or is he going to be out of a job if that thing with ukraine doesnt go through . Well, hes going to be out of a job, but in a broader sense hes been out of the job. In other words, hes never had the powers of a true speaker. Uh, the speaker of the house is the answer to uh, a trick question in the United States, uh, whats the most powerful, second most powerful elected official in america . Its not the vice president. Its the speaker of the house, unless youre mccarty, in which case youre about the 20th most powerful uh person uh on your very best day and he doesnt have many good days, so this is very bad for the uh economy potentially, but worse its very bad for precisely the folks that we have both been emphasizing, the folks who are you know not uh succeeding in america uh who are in very bad condition, the government say. Net is absolutely essential, and again to get politics are important, the Republican Party actively wants to increase unemployment and poverty. Of infants and youth, its just staggering. Yeah, well, lets end it on this food assistance, im going to give you a minute there, daniel shaw, i have two pieces of stat to throw at you, one is the snap program where uh, i was shocked to to read that its 41. 2 million people, 12 and a half the total total us population, i think thats skewed on the high uh side, but even if you go and lets say put it at 35 million, thats lot of people that need assistance for food, and the other stat i want to throw you is how much the us actually generates in terms of revenue, which is around 6. 3 trillion, but it is said that almost half of that goes on whats called entitlement programs. Now theres something really wrong if you have to spend that much on entitlement programs, not that im saying thats a bad thing for the ones that are getting it, and you have that many people who need food assistance. Whats wrong with this picture . And thats why so many people are asking, every year we hear these rumors about Government Shutdowns and it uh freaks us all out, but you never hear about their military aid to zelensky in kiev, that that money is never questioned, they just approved 21 billion dollars in additional funds for this proxy war in ukraine against russia and russias geopolitical interests, which means that the total amount spended now is is foreign excess of 200 billion dollars and thats the argument that were making that that 200 billion dollars needs to be invested snap, different nutritional programs as well as uh education and other infrastructure programs in our communities. All right, were going to end, thank you so much, daniel shaw academic and commentator from new york, William Black, thank you for your contribution, professor of economics and law university, kansas city, loomingto, minnesota, thank you, with that we come to an end for this edition of the spotlight we cover way in the goodbye. My name is Muhammad Iqbal chaudhari, i was born in karachi, i was raised in a family of five children, so i started my education at the age of about four, three and a half, my mother was deeply religious, she used to explain that in the holy book, there are so many verses of universe and creation of humanity and creation of universe. 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Institution, i completed my phd and then the opportunity of my post talk in Cornel University and i work in frontiers of science and technology, so i was working on the structural chemistry, using all the modern tools of organic chemistry such as animal spectroscopy, xray defraction, mas spectrometry. Project is all about using natures diversity and natures diversity, there are lots of chemical diversity. So everything natural you pick and you would identify lots of fascinating molecules, these molecules are capable of locking disease mechanism, and what we have done in last three decades is to actually use profound knowledge of chemistry and biological sciences to identify molecules which are present nature as drug like molecules, some them were active as antibacterial, some of them are active. As antiviral, some of them are active against the epilepsy, some of them are active against cancer, and project has been extremely success successful because since last three decades, we have been looking into various kinds of chemicals from different sources, from marine organisms, from medicinal plants, from fungi and bacteria, and isolated this fascinating array of complex structure. I used to read lot, i used to read about medievals, muslim scientists who laid the foundation of modern science as it is today, and i used to read about albaruni, al kharazmi, than other from seventh century to 12th century, muslim world led the entire humanity in terms of science and technology, there were many scientists from west asia who contributed in the development of science and technology, time for us to go back, understand the fundamentals of what is required to be done, and this is the reason why initiatives such as mustapha science and Technology Prize has a pivatal role in encouraging people to move, go back to the science and technology and start contributing towards the betterment of humanity by innovation and by by research. Another footage has been released showing a us military convoy apparently transporting looted syrian oil to iraq. Israelies once again taked to the streets in their thousands to protest his judicial overhaul plan by the cabinet of Prime MinisterBenjamin Netanyahu and us house of representatives and the senate have passed a stop gap measure to avert a Government Shutdown just hours before funding expires