A Working (Class) Economy with Kathryn Anne Edwards

(upbeat music) - Hey everybody, welcome to the weekly show podcast. My name is John Stewart. I 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 throppec and 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, 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 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. Go check it out, 'cause I was a little, I'm gonna 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 to welcome our guest today, Catherine Ann Edwards, economist, not just an economist, PhD labor economist, public policy consultant, writer and the host of Optimist Economy. Please welcome Catherine Ann Edwards. Catherine, how are you? - I'm very well, thank you for having me. - I'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, thank you. - Let's Catherine Ann Edwards, right? - It is, it is, I'm just really touched. - You know, I got a real economist thing going. Catherine, I wanna 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. And 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. - 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 anytime, the unemployment rate's 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. - 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 in favor of capital and 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 hurt more in terms of the number of people that are hurt by it and the way that they're hurt. 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 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 don't have enough power, they don't have enough money. And that is not a, oh, but there's nothing we can do where 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 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, I 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 725 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 can out-earn a market failure, but that doesn't fix the market failure. And so, focusing now on these goods and services, they're so important to people's lives, things like health, things like shelter. 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 you make less than $10 an hour. - Right. 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 favourites 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 Capitol Hill being like, and here's 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 and 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. And 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 sweeping or like you quit so I'm not going to send you your last paycheck. I mean, it's a very like become super commonplace and I, 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've 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. And so that 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 in the economy will flow through you. You know, I raise the minimum wage. I have a pretty good sense of it. I 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 legally raised. Those are, I think those, the erosion of labor standards is, you know, using the minimum wage as a poster child. 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 organize now than before the National Labor Relations Act was passed. So it's as if the law doesn't exist. The 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 not, so let's tease that. Well, man, there's so much here. - There's 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 you say minimum wage, there's only one percent of doing that. But the truth also is in this country, if you make $10 an hour, that's not enough to live comfortably. If you make $12 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 making that. So these companies are not just held to that standard. We actually subsidize them for not reaching that standard for workers. There's about 9 million full-time workers who are on Medicaid or food stamps. 9 million full-time. A part time there'd be more. I mean, that's still just one part of it because you are working at such a low wage that you are eligible for food stamps and Medicaid. You are probably getting something like the Earn Income Tax Credit. So 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 and the tax system to basically keep you happy and not put any of that burden on the employer. I mean, 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 this earlier. There'll be no fire on this program. I mean, something like the overtime credit or the tip credit, where he makes his 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. Well, don't make it time-and-a-half. Make it time in three quarters. Make it twice. They could have said the tipped minimum wage is no longer $2 an hour and let's get rid of the tipped minimum wage. They could have given every single worker a raise and made the employer whose labor 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 you say to somebody, we're not going to tax your tips anymore. How are we subsidizing that? It's basically a coupon. 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 out through the tax code where I'm going to lower your tax bill through these coupons and it's a way it's like a complex bonus system that our tax system has turned into. That means that people who don't get the coupon, they have to, they're the ones paying taxes. But you and I make the exact same amount of money, but 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. Yo, 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. Ground 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. You may not realize this. 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, 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, hmm, hmm, subscribe for 40% off unlimited access by scanning the QR code on screen or go to ground dot news slash JS, make sure you use our links so they know we sent you again, that's ground dot news slash JS. Why is it 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. No, it absolutely does. Yeah, 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 I think most members of Congress are relatively terrified of the prospect of losing jobs or employers. So it's, it's kind of a hostage in negotiation. You know, I'll, you'll lose jobs. I'll have to cut jobs. If you make me pay this, if you make me do this, you know, I won't employ as many people and so you'll, you'll lose jobs. That is 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 the most profitable years for corporate earnings in history. These last five and 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. So is it based on the fact that this is a hostage in 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 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. Well, so I, 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, or we don't have a raised minimum wage, but then we'll have things like a tipped credit will 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 loophole. 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%. And 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. So you can do it. You can do 50% travel there and then 50% like, hey, let's go to Bermuda. Let's just go do whatever we want. All right. Yep. Like, those are the coupons you can get. 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, the using the tax code as I guess a surrogate for policy courage or legislative function, which I guess we don't really have. The 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, 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, and people are really hurting. And the first kind of narrative that comes up is, you know, I'm going to say, I'm not going is well, the economy is evolving. People, they just need to go to college. They don't have the right skills. And this narrative takes over that it's almost like workers fault for not having the right training. And so there's no compelling evidence to be like, well, we don't need to raise them in wage. That would hurt jobs. We don't need to make everyone have a sick day. 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 housing costs are taking off. And we have a foreclosure crisis. And there's this just 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 need more help from their governments. And the government is basically like, well, hear me out. Maybe instead of this, we're just gonna have a tax credit for your corporation for this. So we're gonna 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 are just extremely bad at it because the problem is workers don't have enough power. And 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, how is it got expensive after the financial crisis? - We'll retrain them. - We'll retrain, 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 and attack it head on. - And Katherine, 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 we, it's the way we practice capitalism versus we must get rid of this entire system. We'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 workers in Vietnam. Texas will do that to New York. We'll have to, we'll find the low watermark in this country. Like, so 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? A hundred percent. Yes, no, it's, it's, I mean, even conservative think tanks like the Mercatus Center will tell localities do not try to lure 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. I mean, 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 tell back at you, you'll cause inflation. And they don't say, they don't say the problem that you are naming is not happening. They don't say that 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, we see that thread even now when they say, if, you know, okay, we're going to try and do a Pied of Territax 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 shithole. Like, it is, it is an explicit threat that is laid out. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like every, like every reaction is the nuclear option. I, I, yes, I think that that's one part of what has been so difficult is getting passed 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. - Mm-hmm. - 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, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, 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. And the first time I met them was when I showed up on my first day of work, which was in September of 2008, right? So it was Labor Day to September 2008. I started the next day that, 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 AIG, it's Lehman Brothers. - Oh my God. - It's John McCain and a Barack Obama suspend their campaign, like Bush makes a national address. And like everybody around me knows what's going on. And I'm just like very, like, serotonously googling, like, do banks fail question mark? - Was there ever any instinct for you to just crawl back into the closet at that point and 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. And 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 in my first days of work that the crisis is happening in the stock market, but the fallout will be in the labor market. - Yes. - And, 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. - And we gave workers the rawest deal possible. - We bailed them out. We bailed out all these, you know, toxic assets. - Yeah. - And we made them whole and people lost their houses and nobody helped them. - Nobody helped 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 was a really, it was a really ugly time. So it was a very formative experience. And I, it absolutely affects how I see the world. Like, I went and got a PhD. I did everything I was supposed to do. I learned everything, neo-liberal and theoretical and pure markets and all of that. But in the back of my mind, I was like, but if shit hits the fan, I'm fighting for workers. I don't care what you're saying. - And by the way, and they need people like you doing that. And so, you know, you talk about you learned neo-liberal. So on the democratic side, there's sort of this idea of the neo-liberal policies, which is, you know, capital travels and you have to let it 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, will 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 gonna 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 these adjustments or you have to give small businesses 25% of that money that's coming through. We'll set up 0% interest, but you don't have any responsibility. - They, their financial regulation was passed in separate legislation, Dodd-Frank, but the, in the bailout money 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 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 you're stupid and you don't know what you're talking about. Like that is, that is the de facto response of like, well, if you wanna do things like protect workers, like you don't really understand the economy. And even the PhDs I worked next to, it was a very dismissive of, you know, there is this. It's 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're probably just 20 years ahead of them. You know, that the things that we want, when we say it, it's bad, but someone else will adopt it and then it'll become normal like the productivity, the way that productivity separated from wages. I mean, EPI 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's said, like that will be on my tombstone, that that chart of productivity going up and wages staying flat. But that chart is, is everything. I mean, if you look at 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 in real time through today. Yep. And then, and if you were to look at the productivity, which productivity is take the U.S. economy, big ol' pie, and divide it 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. Really just that there's so much evidence around the idea that workers have lost power. This has resulted in lower wages that corporations have gained power. They've used this to concentrate amongst each other to have 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. I'm like, I mean, I get it. What is the idea that true, like that the economy has to be all ceiling, no floor, is that the rebalancing is somehow anathema to supply and demand because it's all made up to some extent. I think that the intellectual push around deregulation, around lower taxation, around fewer regulations in the labor markets, fewer rules for companies was really built on this idea that government gets in the way of growth. And that government policy gets in the way of growth and we need to untether businesses and have people move more and work, like this was all about growth. We're going to have growth and government gets in the way of that. 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, Katherine. Wait, did you write that down? I'm writing that down. It didn't get in the way of growth, it got in the way of greed. Bars. But this is why you can't say, you know, the neoliberal kind of talking point from that would say, well, listen, you deregulated, you had fewer rules and 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 doesn't follow. Oh, today's ad, today's ad is bull and branch. 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Point is this, upgrade your sleep with bull and branch, get 20% off your first order plus free shipping at boldandbranch.com/tws with code TWS, that's bull and branch, B-O-L-L and branch.com/tws, code TWS, to unlock 20% off exclusion supply. So 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 at a certain level and that level and there's not a lot of flexibility within that. 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? Why 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 them or do you? I want them to get paid the way that executives get paid. Why aren't they considered shareholders? If 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? No, there's no good reason. You can pay workers a lot. You could give them good retirement accounts. The way that people normally add that type of compensation is that you set up a retirement account for them and you contribute to it and you use short of profit sharing. You make active investments in your worker's retirement and you don't necessarily have it be. 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 teat 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, I'm of the mind that it's, it's like a whack-a-mole, is that the game I'm thinking of? I don't, I don't know which game you're thinking of Katherine. 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. Like 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 firms. Well, they're already good at not paying taxes. Yes. 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. We have retirement accounts. 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 the rearranging the compensation structure would probably be easier for them to game. Let me ask you, okay, this is a great, so let's game out this problem. Okay. So let's say they do, I don't know, bonus is at the end of the year. And you say, all right, if you're going to bonus here, guys, in that bonus pool, 25% 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 B, you're introducing the government as a middleman. 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. 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. I think that's, that's it. I mean, like they get, like, pay someone a wage that's $7.25. 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 of 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 stock option to their workers? And there are, there are rules here left over from Enron about that's never a good sentence, by the way. We've got a rule left over from Enron. But Enron, when it collapsed, all of their retirement accounts were invested in Enron stock. And so they're, we had to, there were some rule changes related to how you compensate, like via retirement accounts and company stock. Because, you know, when Enron, there's a Houston thing. I mean, when Enron and with us, 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 worthwhile, it would be for workers pension plans, not for the people that created the 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 worker's power really comes from their mobility. But 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 tends to turn down. But with concentration amongst employers, that turns out too. So I was looking this up just before we started. There used to be the big eight accounting firms. Right now, there's the big four. So that's four fewer employers that you can go to. Well, that'll never happen in entertainment. I'll tell you that, Catherine. We will 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. A million. And now I think it's like you say, it's four. Well, it used to be even, you know, there was all these cable stations, but now they've, they've bondled 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 like these two guys. That's right. Just these two guys. But Catherine, let's what we're trying to okay, but hold on, work on here. Yeah, go ahead. Okay. So so in one's plight is one's opportunity. Yes, we are 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 worker's, you know, contribution, you'll have fewer workers. It is very little evidence that that happens. I 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 what you are suggesting here? Young lady. Yes, my name is Catherine and I improve this message. Well, technically, I'm in my studio. So I keep forgetting. I've just seen 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 $7 an hour. And yet, for the, you know, blossoming of states and local minimum wage laws over the past 20 years as the federal government has gone dormant in labor law, there are every time they raise the minimum wage, someone looks to see if there was job loss. And it's not significant. The reason why there's not is because of employer power and concentration. That the starting points in order for the minimum wage to cause job loss, you have to be in a competitive labor market. Because the assumption is that people are being paid what they do. But if you're not in the 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, depowered, 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. She's getting ready to lay down some mother fucking labor laws that are going to help rebalance this economy. Catherine 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 or you get demoted in the shift road. We're 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 will 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 did shit? Like, if you work until 10 p.m. to like, can't have them come back until 10 a.m. the next like that happens in our industry. Because you're unionized. So that's right. So 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 childcare 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. This would retain people in the labor market and keep them earning money as opposed to shoving people out when they have anything like 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. - 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 that 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 underprotective 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? - It's a floor. - It's a floor of this. - It's saying that this is like pay to play. You wanna run a business in the United States in 2026 but you can only pay $5 an hour to children. Sorry, you lose. You don't get to play. We're better than that. This is saying this is the minimum to play here. You have to meet these standards for workers because we're not a developing economy in 1950. We're a modern economy. We've got modern expenses like you need to do better and you need to lift up the floor. And you're gaining the benefits of our productivity. - Yes. - Yep. So a new floor. - Now, all right, so what else? How about this one? What about 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 and four Americans that suffers from it. I don't think health insurance should come from your employer at all. We gotta just cut that cord. It shouldn't come from employers at all. You know, it's horrible for the labor market. 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 have to pay more for health insurance that'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 we like to think in the US that we have private health insurance, but if the tax bonus turned off, those companies would collapse. 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's, yeah, I'm with you on that one. 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 paid family leave, universal childcare, universal after school, universal summer programming. Let's make a big investment in 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. When 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, we'll lose female workers. Not 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 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 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 delink benefits from your employer, health insurance, but everybody needs to have a retirement account. And I would think employers would welcome at least that part of it, that they would, you know, 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? Well, you know, 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'll cause job loss. And I think now all I hear back is, well, that would be expensive. The federal government doesn't have the money. All right, because right now the Republicans, they used to be, remember when they used to say to the Democrats, you're 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, 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 childcare, 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 childcare system working for your constituents? Yeah, they will not pick up the phone. No one will go on record and say, childcare is really easy to get. Talk about that though, the, the way that we organize our system is indefensible. Tell me what you, what you mean by that. You couldn't, okay, yes, childcare is one of them. You're not going to find an elected official in this country who will go on record and say, childcare 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 childcare. It's, why don't we have paid family leave? Totally indefensible. The idea that there are people dying, people sick, that there are newborns 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 in someone's family, you're forcing someone out of the labor market. That's a horrible policy. The kind of like, oh, but it's expensive for me is, 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 childcare. You're just, you just don't want it. Or elder care or any of those. Or elder, yeah. So the, no, I mean, it's, how about the way we treat unemployed people? I mean, this would be for me like the system that is probably the 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 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 can find, you're basically burning down that human capital. I, I've managed 30 people. I, 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 at McDonald's and all that skill and all that experience, we've burned it to the ground. And all that investment that we've made in those workers through their education and training in skills, and 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. It 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 with it myself 'cause I'm like, oh, your girl can raise taxes. - Right. - Yeah. - Right. - I've got no problem raising taxes. (laughs) (upbeat music) - You know, when you're a comic work in the road, the cats were the perfect, you know, 'cause cats, man, you leave for like a week. 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 Smalls. Smalls, cat food, I'm telling you, man, if my cats had ever gotten ahold of Smalls, or if they had known there was another cat like across the hall getting Smalls, they'd have left me toots sweet. They would have been out of there. I was, you know, fading 'em like fast food. Smalls, man, fresh cat food. Preservative for you, 100% human grade ingredients. You find in your fridge. Back then, I wasn't eating human grade ingredients. Let alone my cats. And by the way, like, not hard to get the deliberate right to your door. 88% of cat parents. And you know, if you know people that have cats, can't get 88% of 'em to grin anything. 88% of 'em say, after feeding Smalls, notice the cat has better digestion. Software and shinier and has more energy to play. Spooked by commitment, try Smalls risk-free. They'll refund it if your cat won't eat their food. Stop serving your little carnivore, bowl of processed shortcuts. For a limited time because you are a weekly show listener. Get 60% of your first order play. free shipping and free treats for life when you head to smalls.com/TWS. One last time that 60% off your first order, plus free shipping and free treats for life when you head to smalls.com/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 relies 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 everybody'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. I mean, it's a different world. I mean, the position matters. 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 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 some real economic shocks like the oil shock. And there was a lot that also went into that. Yes. 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 of rebelling against the past. And their recent past was was government they didn't like and 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. I'll take that. But I think now 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. But at some point, we want to change direction. We didn't have that in 1980. I think we have that on our side now. And we just have to capitalize on this moment to be like, all right, we're big for government. We're here. Let's do it. Well, I think 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 that's got Jacob Cox and who's sort of worked at anthropic and open AI and has been blowing 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. Oh, we 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 a base level of income for bargaining. There's those people and 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 it's, 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 disrupted 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 and 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 quicker and people didn't lose their houses. Do you want to know 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 Keynesian level is like such a more effective policy. So I I mean come on. Social security is bailing out. 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't have social security. When in fact, like social security is reflecting that workers have had a raw deal for 50 years and it can get through small problems. But something like how big of a hit, the great recession, you know, gave to social security's 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. And 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, and I say this with love, horrible choices. Like they're so stressed. They're so scared. They've got bills that are coming in right away. Terrifying. Terrifying. So you need to just give them a check. Like here's four weeks. We'll float you, figure it out. And 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. The middle kind, it's a smaller share, but it's people who like they'll get a job with their resume. It just takes them a while. And then the third kind is very long. And it's a small, small share of people, but their resume will never get them a job again. Right. And they have to do something different. So they get a job quick. They get a job on their 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 any news program, there's always a little ticker at the bottom and there's always a little thing in the back. And it's always about the Dow or the NASDAQ or the S&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? I don't know. I don't know. I mean, for one [BLANK_AUDIO] 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 um but I I think I know if you I think people see it I don't know maybe maybe on to maybe I'm too optimistic I would say that I'm a very cynical optimist and in some ways I'm optimistic I mean I'm almost optimistic at a spite at some point like we 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 it you should watch me play putt putt it's ridiculous like I'm so competitive I'm so spiteful and so I will believe in a better country just to damn you 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 there's this 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 GDP 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 am 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 boogie man to say well if I help you we might have a worse economy no we have a better economy when people are helped that is everything we have a better economy these are not entitlements they are investments this is not charity that's right they are when you do that you are investing 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 childcare child child it's 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 it's not cheap to pay for childcare for every American but if you had childcare 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 essentially 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 like to turn on my like heartless economist sarcastic voice and be like listen I also hate children I hate their mothers but I hate kids and I don't want to invest in them any more than you want to invest in them those not knows little devil's they're they're we need to their their vectors of disease but I've got to give them daycare 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 gonna lie right but 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 gonna 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 don't tell 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 that's 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 right the economy works for us and not the other way around flip it flip it right now and send it out over the airwaves Catherine and Edwards economist writer and host of the optimistic 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 percent they have continued to treat humans like shit and you think you think 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 going to 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 never give up well 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 a quince quince has cashmere sweaters fall wardrobe pants t's active wear high quality stuff well yeah 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 paying 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/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 dot com slash t-w-s 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 gonna 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 and 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 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 and 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 tech CEOs hoard to their wealth but no no they'll tell you they're gonna all your $5,000 check is in the mail but meanwhile we're just gonna keep hoarding all of your resources 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 she 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 yes 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 accounts, and it is like a football game where I'm like, Oh, shit. Oh, great pass. Interception. Britney, what are the, what are the people want to, what do they, what do they want? What do they want? What do you want this fall morning? John, if the Democrats win the house and the Senate, what? Fingers crossed, should they try to impeach Trump or would that be a strategic mistake since he won't be convicted? What, what is any of that? 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 going to drain us, wall it off so it doesn't infect the rest of the economy and spend a total government effort at 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 going to 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, what confidence do any of us have that you're going to be able to untangle Eric and Don's drone company? Truly. Yes. I do want them to be a little scared though. That's it. It's like, I get what? 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 Donnie it, which pod hole 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. Side hobby. What else they want to know? John, can you name the current White House press secretary? Is it Fox news? 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 begun, there's been a real dearth of information. And you know, the transparency that she provided, I thought, and it's, you feel it. It's a loss for the American, for the American people. I think she just joined Fox News that she not. She sure did. I was just about to say that. Yeah. She had enough time with her family. 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 only one. They left the house and then my wife was looking at me, like, what are you going to do now? Yeah, that'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? 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 going to be controversial. I don't think we should have nighttime at all. I am not down with it's scarier. There's all kinds of shadows. It's when you never know when you're going to 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 a vitamin water worried that I'm going to get pounced by four little chubby trash bandits. That happens. 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. I want to go off the three in the morning. And not have to worry about not being able to find my ball. By the way, I've never golfed in your life. 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 again. It's, it's kind of the same shit over and over again. And 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, it's, 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 you bring it up. I think at a lot of golf courses, there are like people in carts who drive up. Yeah, they do. Yeah. The bar cart. The bar cart. They just, they just, I was just imagining like you're playing golf. It's, it's so little of a sport that somebody could just drive 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 of alcohol do not apply on the seas. Lawless. 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 Shepard Instagram Thuds TikTok Blue Sky. We are with the podcast. And you can like, subscribe and comment on our YouTube channel. The weekly show is John Stewart, which I do. I'm a gold star commenter on those. I always write in, I go like, what a great conversation. That John Stewart is so handsome. Well, no, even I can't pull that off, unfortunately. Thank you guys very much. As always, producer Brittany Mimetic, producer Julian Spear, video editor and engineer Rob Vitolo, audio editor and engineer Nicole Boyce, associate producer Rebecca Rodenberg and our executive producers, Chris McShane, Katie Gray, have a great couple of weeks, and we will see you back on October 21st. We'll buy. The Weekly Show with John Stewart is a Comedy Central podcast is produced by Paramount Audio and Busboy Productions.