Player FM - Internet Radio Done Right
367 subscribers
Checked 1+ y ago
Vor elf Jahren hinzugefügt
Το περιεχόμενο παρέχεται από το PBS NewsHour. Όλο το περιεχόμενο podcast, συμπεριλαμβανομένων των επεισοδίων, των γραφικών και των περιγραφών podcast, μεταφορτώνεται και παρέχεται απευθείας από τον PBS NewsHour ή τον συνεργάτη της πλατφόρμας podcast. Εάν πιστεύετε ότι κάποιος χρησιμοποιεί το έργο σας που προστατεύεται από πνευματικά δικαιώματα χωρίς την άδειά σας, μπορείτε να ακολουθήσετε τη διαδικασία που περιγράφεται εδώ https://el.player.fm/legal.
Player FM - Εφαρμογή podcast
Πηγαίνετε εκτός σύνδεσης με την εφαρμογή Player FM !
Πηγαίνετε εκτός σύνδεσης με την εφαρμογή Player FM !
Podcasts που αξίζει να ακούσετε
ΕΠΙΧΟΡΗΓΟΎΜΕΝΟ
W
We Have The Receipts
![We Have The Receipts podcast artwork](https://cdn.player.fm/images/37350108/series/3hptiqPGSZRELxyS/32.jpg 32w, https://cdn.player.fm/images/37350108/series/3hptiqPGSZRELxyS/64.jpg 64w, https://cdn.player.fm/images/37350108/series/3hptiqPGSZRELxyS/128.jpg 128w, https://cdn.player.fm/images/37350108/series/3hptiqPGSZRELxyS/256.jpg 256w, https://cdn.player.fm/images/37350108/series/3hptiqPGSZRELxyS/512.jpg 512w)
![We Have The Receipts podcast artwork](/static/images/64pixel.png)
1 Love Is Blind S8: Pods & Sober High Thoughts with Courtney Revolution & Meg 1:06:00
1:06:00
Αναπαραγωγή αργότερα
Αναπαραγωγή αργότερα
Λίστες
Like
Liked1:06:00![icon](https://imagehost.player.fm/icons/general/red-pin.svg)
Happy Valentine’s Day! You know what that means: We have a brand new season of Love Is Blind to devour. Courtney Revolution (The Circle) joins host Chris Burns to delight in all of the pod romances and love triangles. Plus, Meg joins the podcast to debrief the Madison-Mason-Meg love triangle. Leave us a voice message at www.speakpipe.com/WeHaveTheReceipts Text us at (929) 487-3621 DM Chris @FatCarrieBradshaw on Instagram Follow We Have The Receipts wherever you listen, so you never miss an episode. Listen to more from Netflix Podcasts.…
Economy – PBS NewsHour
Σήμανση όλων ότι έχουν ή δεν έχουν αναπαραχθεί ...
Manage series 30016
Το περιεχόμενο παρέχεται από το PBS NewsHour. Όλο το περιεχόμενο podcast, συμπεριλαμβανομένων των επεισοδίων, των γραφικών και των περιγραφών podcast, μεταφορτώνεται και παρέχεται απευθείας από τον PBS NewsHour ή τον συνεργάτη της πλατφόρμας podcast. Εάν πιστεύετε ότι κάποιος χρησιμοποιεί το έργο σας που προστατεύεται από πνευματικά δικαιώματα χωρίς την άδειά σας, μπορείτε να ακολουθήσετε τη διαδικασία που περιγράφεται εδώ https://el.player.fm/legal.
Analysis, background reports and updates from the PBS NewsHour putting today's news in context.
…
continue reading
74 επεισόδια
Σήμανση όλων ότι έχουν ή δεν έχουν αναπαραχθεί ...
Manage series 30016
Το περιεχόμενο παρέχεται από το PBS NewsHour. Όλο το περιεχόμενο podcast, συμπεριλαμβανομένων των επεισοδίων, των γραφικών και των περιγραφών podcast, μεταφορτώνεται και παρέχεται απευθείας από τον PBS NewsHour ή τον συνεργάτη της πλατφόρμας podcast. Εάν πιστεύετε ότι κάποιος χρησιμοποιεί το έργο σας που προστατεύεται από πνευματικά δικαιώματα χωρίς την άδειά σας, μπορείτε να ακολουθήσετε τη διαδικασία που περιγράφεται εδώ https://el.player.fm/legal.
Analysis, background reports and updates from the PBS NewsHour putting today's news in context.
…
continue reading
74 επεισόδια
כל הפרקים
×This is part of an ongoing series of reports called ‘Chasing the Dream,’ which reports on poverty and opportunity in America. By Megan Thompson and Mori Rothman MEGAN THOMPSON: Nancy Kukay works at a community college in Maryland, coordinating technical education programs. She’s worked in education most of her career and loves her job. But at 65-years-old, she had imagined retiring by now. NANCY KUKAY: I can’t afford to retire. I could never make the payments. MEGAN THOMPSON: Payments for student loans she took out for her son Andrew about a decade ago. She pays around $500 a month on the nearly $75,000 she owes on loans she took out, and others she co-signed with her son. By her math, she’ll probably be paying on her loans alone for another 11 years. NANCY KUKAY: Even if I started drawing on my retirement and Social Security together, I still wouldn’t have enough monthly to make those payments. It’s certainly not where I hoped to be at this stage in life. MEGAN THOMPSON: The number of Americans age 60 and older with student loan debt quadrupled between 2005 and 2015 to nearly 3 million. And the average amount they owe has nearly doubled from 12-thousand dollars to almost 24-thousand. PERSIS YU: There’s a number of factors that contribute to why the number of older borrowers is increasing. MEGAN THOMPSON: Attorney Persis Yu directs the Student Loan Borrower Assistance Project at the National Consumer Law Center in Boston. PERSIS YU: Student loans are structured to be paid over a very long period of time. They have no statute of limitations, which means that they follow you. They can follow you till you die, literally. And so there are a lot of borrowers who are out there who still have their own student loan debts from the ’70s, from the ’80s. ANNETTE PELAEZ: I think originally it was, like, 27,000 dollars… MEGAN THOMPSON: 64-year-old Annette Pelaez of Boston is still paying about 300 dollars a month for the loan she took out 20 years ago to pursue graduate degrees in American Studies, a loan she expects to be paying for another 10 years. She worked for nonprofits serving children and the elderly, but her income never reached the level she had hoped. ANNETTE PELAEZ: I’m making now what I made in the ’80s. I’m making about $42,000 a year. MEGAN THOMPSON: So when you went back to grad school, you assumed you’d be making a lot more money than that? ANNETTE PELAEZ: Oh, yes. Absolutely. I mean if I was making that money with a bachelor’s degree in the ’80s, I assumed that, you know, with a Master’s I’d do a little bit better. PERSIS YU: Folks with student loan debt typically save less than folks without student loan debt. And then, once they’re in retirement, if they are repaying loans, certainly that is a liability that they wouldn’t otherwise have to pay for when they’re on a fixed and limited income. MEGAN THOMPSON: Because of her debt and the high cost of living in Boston, Pelaez says, she has little retirement savings. She recently retired but can’t afford to keep living in Boston – so she moved New Mexico, where it’s cheaper to live. But even still, her expected 1,000 dollar a month social security check won’t cover her expenses. ANNETTE PELAEZ: Rent will be $620 plus utilities, and then there is the school loan, and there goes the $1,000. So I will be doing some part-time work. MEGAN THOMPSON: How do you feel about that? I mean, is this what you pictured retirement being? ANNETTE PELAEZ: Well, you know, at this point, I’m not so terribly concerned, because I’m still young enough to do so. What concerns me is that when I’m in my 70s or 80s, hopefully, if I get there, I may not be able to do that. MEGAN THOMPSON: Like Pelaez, 27 percent of older Americans with student loans borrowed for their own education. But most, more than 70 percent, borrowed for their children’s or grandchildren’s education. People like Nancy Kukay. Kukay, who’s divorced, took out about $46,000 in her name and co-signed for around $34,000 more with her son Andrew, who graduated from the University of South Carolina in 2008. NANCY KUKAY: I entered into that, now as I, in hindsight, without nearly enough information. And didn’t know what I didn’t know about– financial aid. It’s vastly different from when I went to school. I didn’t have to borrow to go to school. MEGAN THOMPSON: Kukay obtained about half of the 46-thousand dollars she borrowed for her son’s education through a federal loan program called “Parent Plus.” The number of Parent Plus borrowers has grown by 60 percent since 2005 to three-and-half million Americans. The National Consumer Law Center says some families can borrow more than they can afford under parent plus because the program lets them borrow as much as a college says they need without verifying their income. PERSIS YU: At no point is the school or the federal government seeing if the family can afford to repay this loan. MEGAN THOMPSON: Is anyone along the way saying, ‘Hey, if you take out this amount of money, this is what it’s gonna mean for you.’ Is anybody kind of giving a warning to families? PERSIS YU: So, you know, there is some very minimal counseling that is required– when folks take out federal loans. The other component is a lot of these families don’t have a lot of other options. Because education is expensive. So a lot of families feel trapped, and they feel like they have to take out this, because they want to provide for their kids. And they want their kids to have a better future. MEGAN THOMPSON: And that’s exactly what Nancy Kukay wanted for her son. Kukay says she wasn’t too worried about his ability to pay off his loans once he graduated. NANCY KUKAY: I kept telling him, and I thought this would be true, is, “This degree will give you a career that you can pay that off. Turns out not to be the case. He graduated in 2008 in the depths of the Great Recession. And jobs were hard to come by. MEGAN THOMPSON: After graduating with a degree in sports management, Andrew has worked steadily — even taking on second jobs at night and on the weekends. But his earnings haven’t been enough to keep up with the 4-and 5 hundred dollar payments on the roughly 45-thousand dollars he took out, so Nancy’s been paying the loans she co-signed. I spoke to Andrew over Google Hangout. ANDREW KUKAY: I did not think that you would be this hard to pay student loans. I definitely went in to school thinking I’ll get a decent paying job. MEGAN THOMPSON: Andrew recently landed a higher-paying job and wants to help pay the loans his mom co-signed. ANDREW KUKAY: I don’t want her to be suffering for any longer than she has to just for doing the nice thing and cosigning on a loan. Would I do it all over again? No. I would not do it again. I would stick around and stay home for a couple of years. And go to a community college. Near my house. MEGAN THOMPSON: In the meantime, Nancy says, the loan payments are weighing her down. NANCY KUKAY: It governs everything I do, every decision I make. It all revolves around making sure that I have that money to make that payment every single month. MEGAN THOMPSON: Nancy has consolidated, and has gotten slightly lower interest rates, on some of the loans. But she expects she’ll need to work part-time after she retires. And she’s also considering moving to Montana, where the cost of living is cheaper. NANCY KUKAY: My life isn’t going to be the way that I’d hoped that it would be. It just simply isn’t going to be. MEGAN THOMPSON: There’s also this catch with federal loans, and older borrowers who can’t pay them off. The U.S. treasury can garnish their Social Security benefits. In fact, between 2002 and 2015, the number of Americans having social security disability and retirements garnished because of unpaid loans increased almost 500 percent to 173-thousand. MANUEL ROBERTS: Who do I go and get this money back from? MEGAN THOMPSON: It happened to 55-year-old Manuel Roberts of Brooklyn, New York. He paid off most all of the 13,000 dollars he borrowed to attend the University of Southern California in the 1980’s. But after losing a job, he defaulted on the last three thousand dollars and then sustained a severe head injury in 2002. MANUEL ROBERTS: Then I was injured- street violence. I was a victim of a violent crime. I was in a coma for two weeks or so. MEGAN THOMPSON: Roberts received Social Security disability checks for 1,300 dollars every month. But the government began deducting 200 dollars from every check for the defaulted loan. MANUEL ROBERTS: I was already in a bad situation. It’s plain to see they just made it worse. MEGAN THOMPSON: The Social Security deductions pushed Roberts to the verge of the federal poverty line. It turns out, there’s a program for people disabled like Roberts to get their loans eliminated. But many people don’t know about it. MEGAN THOMPSON: So no one ever said, ‘Hey, we notice you’re getting disability income. You might be also eligible for a disability discharge. This could stop.’ MANUEL ROBERTS: No, that never- that was never brought to me by anybody. MEGAN THOMPSON: Roberts’ attorney helped him get the disability discharge…and is also helping him and six people with similar stories sue the heads of the federal Department of Education, Treasury, and the Social Security Administration- alleging that they don’t do enough to let people know about the Disability Discharge program. The federal Department of Education declined an on-camera interview with PBS NewsHour Weekend and did not respond to written questions. The Social Security administration and Treasury Department also did not comment. MEGAN THOMPSON: US senators Ron Wyden of Oregon and Sherrod Brown of Ohio are sponsoring legislation to eliminate the practice of garnishing social security benefits for unpaid loans… but the bill’s gone nowhere so far. Nancy Kukay’s Social Security checks are not at risk, because she keeps kept up with her monthly student loan payments. For other parents trying to figure out how to pay for college now, she has this advice. NANCY KUKAY: I would strongly encourage them to become educated in the– in every aspect of financial aid. Talk to the college financial aid people. I didn’t do that. That’s a huge mistake. I made assumptions that turned out not to be true. And mine is a cautionary tale. Chasing the Dream: Poverty and Opportunity in America is a multi-platform public media initiative that provides a deeper understanding of the impact of poverty on American society. Major funding for this initiative is provided by The JPB Foundation. Additional funding is provided by Ford Foundation. The post More older Americans than ever are struggling with student debt appeared first on PBS NewsHour .…
JUDY WOODRUFF: Now a look at the winner of this year’s Nobel Prize in economics, announced today. Richard Thaler is a professor at the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business. The award acknowledged his groundbreaking work in establishing the field of behavioral economics, which blends psychology with economics to better understand human decision-making. We start with a little bit of background from our economics correspondent, Paul Solman. It’s part of his weekly series Making Sense. PAUL SOLMAN, Economics Correspondent: In Chicago’s Millennium Park two-and-a-half years ago, Richard Thaler, the academic revolutionary who won this year’s Nobel Prize for insisting, for decades now, that his field, economics, is wedded to distorted view of human behavior. Economics teaches that we’re all rational maximizers, mathematical machines, who use our big, brainy heads to carefully calculate every decision as we strive to reach concrete objectives, creating. But look, Thaler explained: RICHARD THALER, 2017 Nobel Laureate in Economics: After the ’87 crash, when the market fell 20 percent in a day, and the Internet bubble, when the Nasdaq went from 5000 to 1400, and then the real estate bubble, which led to a financial crisis from which we’re still trying to extricate ourselves, the idea that markets work perfectly is no longer tenable. PAUL SOLMAN: Thaler has been running his revolution from inside the belly of the beast, the University of Chicago, which boasts 28 other Nobel laureates practiced in traditional economics. Collectively, they have created what’s known as the Chicago School, predicated on the perfect efficiency of markets, in which prices rationally reflect all available information. But Thaler started noticing market irrationality early in his career as an economist. WATCH: How economists think differently from other humans RICHARD THALER: The market would be up in January. It would go up on Fridays, down on Mondays. It would go up on the day before holidays. None of this made any sense. PAUL SOLMAN: But it was only when Thaler began doing experiments and publishing them that doctrinaire economists, whom he calls e-cons, began to admit some of the error of their ways. Take the concept of sunk costs, time and money already spent. An e-con assumes everyone knows when to quit, cut their losses, move on. This group of Cameroonian students at first seemed to just as economics would predict. RICHARD THALER: Let’s suppose you bought tickets to go to a concert over here at this fancy bandshell 40 bucks each. And the group is OK, but then it starts to rain. How long do you think you’re going to stick around this concert? MAN: Not much. PAUL SOLMAN: Not much? RICHARD THALER: Not much. PAUL SOLMAN: But what if the sunk costs had been much higher? How many of you would have a different decision about staying or leave leaving, if it was $500, as opposed to $40? Every single one of you. MAN: I have to make my money worth it. PAUL SOLMAN: You have to make your money worth it. MAN: Yes. PAUL SOLMAN: And your point here? RICHARD THALER: Well, economists would say how much you paid for the ticket, tough luck, if it’s $40 or $500. PAUL SOLMAN: Doesn’t matter. RICHARD THALER: You should just decide whether the music is worth the annoyance of the rain. PAUL SOLMAN: In the past few years, Thaler’s behavioral economic insights have been applied by governments around the world, including ours. And how did he feel about being called the inventor of behavioral economics? RICHARD THALER: One guy can’t create a field, but you can get people thinking. PAUL SOLMAN: And so he has. This is economics correspondent Paul Solman. JUDY WOODRUFF: For more, we turn to Richard Thaler himself. He got the call that he won the Nobel at 4:00 a.m. I spoke to him just a short time ago and began by noting, as we just heard, that he has been honored for recognizing that people don’t always act rationally when making economic decisions, and asking if that is the way he sees his contribution. RICHARD THALER: Well, yes, although pointing that out is kind of obvious to everybody, except economists. (LAUGHTER) RICHARD THALER: So, in some ways, it’s pointing out the obvious. But I think the contribution that I have made, and the young economists following in my footsteps have made, is saying, OK, what follows from there? How should we do things differently if people aren’t perfect? And there’s a lot of things we can do better. JUDY WOODRUFF: What do you think the main consequence of your research has had on economics and on policy? RICHARD THALER: Well, on economics, I think it’s made especially young economists more open to thinking outside the box. I coined the phrase supposedly irrelevant factors for the kinds of things that economists are sure don’t matter, like the way a letter is worded or what the default option is. And these kinds of things are supposedly irrelevant because they’re actually really important. So I think, on the professional side, that’s the most important thing. On the policy side, the work I did with Cass Sunstein, my former colleague, now Harvard law professor, in our book “Nudge” really shows how you can help people if you grant that they’re not saving enough for retirement or they’re overweight or they’d like to do more to save the environment, but aren’t sure how to do it. What are the steps you can take to help people make better decisions? JUDY WOODRUFF: Was your finding or set of findings as much a psychological-sociological observation as it was an economic one? RICHARD THALER: Well, I was borrowing findings from psychology and trying to incorporate them into economics. So, economic models are pretty sterile, and there are these agents that really could be robots that calculate at lightning speed and aren’t absent-minded and never eat too much or drink too much, kind of just like you and me. But by fleshing out the way real people behave and our weaknesses, as well as strengths, people are nicer than economists give us credit for. We’re more likely to contribute to charity. Or look at all the volunteers in these are hurricanes and other natural disasters. Economists have no explanation for why people would work for days trying to clear away rubble in an earthquake. So, that’s the nature of humans. I guess we call it human nature. And incorporating human nature into economics is what I have been trying to do for 40 years. JUDY WOODRUFF: Someone said to me that part of what you have done is take the fringes of economics and make it respectable, bring it into the mainstream. RICHARD THALER: Yes, a lot of team have thought of me as a fringe player. (LAUGHTER) RICHARD THALER: But, yes, I think — I often say I work in the gap between economics and psychology. Psychologists know a lot, but most of them aren’t very interested in public policy problems, and certainly wouldn’t have a clue what to say about Federal Reserve policy or taxes or any of the other bread-and-butter issues that economists think about. And most economists don’t have any interest in psychology. So, there was a lot of ripe fruit for the plucking. JUDY WOODRUFF: So, I’m going to take advantage of having you here. Everybody’s watching the stock market shoot up over the last several months. If you could spend a few minutes with every family in this country right now trying to make tough decisions about spending and saving and investment, what would you say to them about the market and about the economy in general? RICHARD THALER: Well, look, I think that the economy is strong. We have been on a nice ride since the depths of the great recession. As far as the stock market goes, personally, I’m a little worried about it. There’s no real explanation for why it keeps going up, other than interest rates are low and people aren’t sure where to put their money. So, if I were giving advice to people, it would be to say not to spend the 10 percent or 15 percent you have made most recently in the stock market, and maybe even take a little of that money off the table, if you’re likely to need it any time soon. JUDY WOODRUFF: Some advice from the latest Nobel Prize winner in economics. Professor Richard Thaler, congratulations again. Thank you very much. RICHARD THALER: Thank you, Judy. The post Economics Nobel winner Thaler shed light on how real people behave appeared first on PBS NewsHour .…
HARI SREENIVASAN, PBS NEWSHOUR WEEKEND ANCHOR: Hurricane Maria destroyed Puerto Rico’s power grid, but it turns out Puerto Rico’s power company was in deep trouble before the storm struck two weeks ago. “Reuters” reporter Jessica Resnick-Ault has reported on that side of the story. She joins me now from Metairie, Louisiana, where she is already deployed to cover Hurricane Nate. So, here we are this far out after the storm, and according to the status that the governor’s office in Puerto Rico is saying, 11.7 percent of the power is back? JESSICA RESNICK- AULT, REPORTER, REUTERS: At this point, you know, you would expect really to be returning close to full power, but you have to assume that in this case, it’s just the low-hanging fruit that’s been brought back online. So this was the 11 percent that was easy to get to, and now, they’re going to have to run power lines across mountains. There are really serious hurdles to getting the rest of the island back into service. SREENIVASAN: One of the things that’s your report points out is they had kind of a staffing migration of people that’s left the power company. The people who are going to be able to put the grid back together found better jobs on the mainland because of the way the economy is going. RESNICK-AULT: Puerto Rico has had an incredible emigration out of the island to the mainland, and the power company is no exception to the rule. They’ve lost thousands of employees over the past five years. Some people estimate as many as 4,000 or more employees have left the company. SREENIVASAN: One of the things that was startling from the report is there is really not a steady stream of revenue. Not everybody pays their power bills. RESNICK-AULT: Right. Even the government has not paid its own power bills. There are up to $700 million in uncollected bills from government agencies. SREENIVASAN: I’ve heard that some of the tech companies are trying to start helping. I mean, we saw kind of a Twitter conversation roll out between Elon Musk and the governor yesterday, saying perhaps solar and batteries can be part of your solution, if you’re rethinking this thing from scratch. RESNICK-AULT: But even before the storm, there had been discussions about solar and renewables. They even made it to the Department of Energy level with Puerto Rican officials meting with the DOE. But those conversations have never materialized in real change in Puerto Rico’s grid because PREPA and its board have such control over the island’s electricity grilled and have been resistant to change that would bring in new utilities. SREENIVASAN: So, where do you start building and where do you start fixing the infrastructure? I mean, what do the Army Corps of Engineers and what do other forces do? Do you start with, say, the key places, like the hospitals and kind of crucial infrastructure, the power and water? RESNICK-AULT: So, they have a list of priorities and they’ll start with critical infrastructure, like hospitals, police stations, and go from there. They’re very focused on making sure that any infrastructure that has to do with fuel is restored. So as long as people are relying upon diesel generators, they need to make sure that stations that provide diesel are functioning and accessible. SREENIVASAN: All right. This is going to be a long, long recovery. Jessica Resnick-Ault of “Reuters”, thanks so much for joining us. RESNICK-AULT: Thank you so much for your time. The post Puerto Rico’s power struggles predate Hurricane Maria appeared first on PBS NewsHour .…
JUDY WOODRUFF: And in a piece of related news, the White House wouldn’t confirm or deny that President Trump will decertify the Iran nuclear deal before the October 15 deadline. It is being widely reported that he will take that step, and leave it to Congress to consider to reimpose sanctions. White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders says Mr. Trump is evaluating what she calls all the bad behavior of Iran. SARAH SANDERS, White House Press Secretary: Not just the nuclear deal as bad behavior, but the ballistic missile testing, destabilizing of the region, number one state sponsor of terrorism, cyber-attacks, illicit nuclear program. He wants to look for a broad strategy that addresses all of those problems, not just one-offing those. JUDY WOODRUFF: The president says that Tehran has violated the spirit of the agreement, if not the actual provisions. Hurricanes Harvey and Irma have dealt a temporary blow to the U.S. job market. The storms shuttered thousands of businesses and forced evacuations in Texas and Florida last month. As a result, the Labor Department reports that the economy shed 33,000 jobs in September. Even so, the unemployment rate improved. It fell to 4.2 percent, its lowest level since 2001. A new storm warning is up for Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama, ahead of Tropical Storm Nate. It is on track to brush past Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula tonight, and then strike the U.S. late Saturday, as a hurricane. People along the Louisiana shoreline are already stockpiling supplies and trying to protect power lines. Officials are hoping that the storm will pass quickly, limiting its total rainfall. Vice President Mike Pence got his first up-close look at the hurricane damage in Puerto Rico today, and vowed that more help is on the way. He first toured the destruction in the U.S. Virgin Islands, and then went on to San Juan. He told a church congregation that the federal government is in it for the long haul. VICE PRESIDENT MIKE PENCE: When one part of America cries out for help, we come together. And I believe in my heart that, when the history of this time and this crisis is recorded in Puerto Rico, this will be a chapter when Americans stood by Americans and delivered on that promise. (APPLAUSE) JUDY WOODRUFF: President Trump visited Puerto Rico earlier in the week, amid criticism that the federal response had been too slow. Another U.S. commando has been found dead in the African nation of Niger. The Pentagon says he was killed Wednesday, along with three other special operations troops, in an ambush by Islamist extremists. The Americans were patrolling with soldiers from Niger. Army Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl is expected to plead guilty to desertion for leaving his post in Afghanistan in 2009. The Associated Press reports that he will also admit to a charge of misbehavior before the enemy. Taliban militants held Bergdahl hostage for five years, before he was freed in a prisoner swap. He is 31 years old now. He could face life in a military prison. Las Vegas police say they still don’t know the motive behind Sunday night’s mass shooting that left 58 dead. Today, the county undersheriff, Kevin McMahill, said investigators are having trouble getting a fix on Stephen Paddock. KEVIN MCMAHILL, Undersheriff, Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department: In the past, terror attacks or mass murder incidents, motive was made very clear, very clear in most of those cases, by a note that was left. By a social media post. By a telephone call that was made. By investigators mining computer data. Today, in our investigation, we don’t have any of that uncovered. I wish we did. JUDY WOODRUFF: Paddock killed himself as police closed in on his location. Australia today ended a three-month amnesty for turning in illegal firearms. The government says the public turned in 51,000 weapons to be destroyed, and Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull says that the country’s gun laws have prevented mass killings. Australia enacted strict curbs after a gunman killed 35 people in Tasmania back in 1996. U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions today ordered federal government agencies to put new emphasis on religious freedom, even if it means overriding civil rights protections. Those could include same-sex marriage, transsexual rights and equal opportunity provisions for women and others. Civil liberties groups responded right away, charging that the new rule could lead to discrimination. Wall Street was little changed today. The Dow Jones industrial average lost one point to close at 22773. The Nasdaq rose four points, and the S&P 500 slipped two. The post News Wrap: Hurricanes deal temporary blow to U.S. job market appeared first on PBS NewsHour .…
MICHAEL OATES, Welder: I would wake up in the morning and take four pills and snort two. That’s just to get out of bed. PAUL SOLMAN, Economics Correspondent: Michael Oates, a lifelong welder, is recovering from a 10-year opioid addiction which began when he took Vicodin for pain while working at a steel mill. Did you lose the job? MICHAEL OATES: Actually, my job went to China. And that was my excuse to do even more pills. PAUL SOLMAN: Have you worked since? MICHAEL OATES: I have had four or five different jobs since then. PAUL SOLMAN: And what happened to those jobs? MICHAEL OATES: I lost them all due to being addicted to opiates. They would random drug-test me, and I would be like, well, see you later. I would walk out. I even got caught one time with synthetic urine in my underwear, because I got pretty slick at using that, you know? PAUL SOLMAN: Do you stash it in your underpants? MICHAEL OATES: I would stash it in my underwear, and I would go in, and it’s synthetic urine. It’s got everything in it that you need to make them think it’s your urine. PAUL SOLMAN: Out of work for three years now, Oates is just one example of how the opioid crisis has decimated the American work force. Business owner Clyde McClellan has seen plenty of other examples. CLYDE MCCLELLAN, Owner, American Mug and Stein Co.: We have people that come in on a regular basis looking for employment that are obviously under the influence when they come in. PAUL SOLMAN: Really? You can tell? CLYDE MCCLELLAN: Oh, yes. They look like they’re the walking dead. I say, we’re going to send you for a drug test, and what is the drug test going to show us? Most of the time, if it’s pot or booze or anything like that, they tell me. If it’s something other than that, they don’t come back. PAUL SOLMAN: McClellan owns American Mug and Stein in East Liverpool, Ohio, once known as the pottery capital of the world with dozens of firms. Foreign competition has since wiped out all but two of them. McClellan owes his survival to his top customer, Starbucks. You would think would-be workers in town might be flocking here. But they’re flocking to drug dealers instead. CLYDE MCCLELLAN: One day, I was looking out of my office in 2015, and there was two policemen standing in my driveway with rifles. And I went out. I knew one of them. And I said, what’s going on? He said, well, we’re raiding this house that’s next to your building, and — for heroin distribution. PAUL SOLMAN: And these indelible photos of a couple overdosed in their car with their son in the backseat were snapped just three blocks from here. You don’t need experience to get a job at American Mug and Stein, but you do need to be clean. Half of applicants are not. CLYDE MCCLELLAN: I have been an employer in this area since 1983. Drugs were not at the forefront when you were talking to somebody about possible employment. Now the first thing we think of is, are they on drugs? How do we find out? What kind of references? PAUL SOLMAN: Somebody came in here looking for a job with a reference from one of your other employees? CLYDE MCCLELLAN: He was using this person as a reference. And when we asked the employee, he said, he’s a dope head. He steals money. He has stolen money from me. Obviously, we didn’t bring him in. PAUL SOLMAN: Donna Dibo has been there. A full-time waitress, she was prescribed opioids after a car accident. In time, scoring heroin became her main line of work. DONNA DIBO, Former Waitress: It is like a job itself, actually. It is. PAUL SOLMAN: Just trying to find that day’s drugs? DONNA DIBO: Yes. And then, once that day is over, your mind’s already going 1,000 times a minute, thinking, what am I going to do for the next day? PAUL SOLMAN: How long have you been out of the work force? DONNA DIBO: I have been out of work for about seven years. PAUL SOLMAN: The prime skill she honed? Shoplifting. DONNA DIBO: I would go into all the stores. My trunk and my backseat would be full with everything. Sears, I’m no longer allowed on their property. I stole so much from them, I probably own their store. PAUL SOLMAN: And then there was her daughter’s new cell phone. DONNA DIBO: We had some people over, and, all of a sudden, it just came up missing. I made it look like it came up missing. I am the one, actually, in fact, that did it. PAUL SOLMAN: You stole it from your daughter and sold it? DONNA DIBO: Absolutely. PAUL SOLMAN: Scott Schwind was a well-paid machinist when his addiction took charge. SCOTT SCHWIND, Machinist: I was just working to supply myself. I would have people come to my work, deliver stuff to me at work. PAUL SOLMAN: At the machinist shop? SCOTT SCHWIND: Yes. I was on third shift, so they would come at night and bring me stuff. But that’s how I messed the job up, is, I wouldn’t show up, or I was doing shady stuff, like having people come there. I would be in the bathroom for half-an-hour. So, I lost that job. And then I have had other jobs, but I have never been able to keep a job for long because of the addiction. PAUL SOLMAN: So, how long have you been out of work now? SCOTT SCHWIND: Since 2011. PAUL SOLMAN: Schwind, Oates and Dibo are now sober and enrolled at Flying High, a nonprofit program in Youngstown, Ohio, to get those out of the work force back in. It teaches hard skills, like welding and machining. An urban garden is for soft skills, showing up on time, teamwork. Jeff Magada says job training is critical to places like Youngstown, its population down more than 60 percent since its steel furnaces last ran full blast. JEFFREY MAGADA, Executive Director, Flying High: You don’t have a lot of industry coming here because they know there’s not a lot of skilled workers here, and then workers who can also pass a drug screen. PAUL SOLMAN: That’s a problem for Michael Sherwin’s company. MICHAEL SHERWIN, CEO, Columbiana Boiler Co.: We have had positions open for a year-and-a-half to two years. PAUL SOLMAN: Sherwin’s Columbiana Boiler Company has lots of demand for galvanized containers, but figures it’s foregone some $200,000 in business because he can’t find skilled, drug-free welders. MICHAEL SHERWIN: We probably lose 20 to 25 percent. PAUL SOLMAN: Because they can’t pass a drug test? MICHAEL SHERWIN: Mm-hmm. PAUL SOLMAN : Flying High places ex-addicts in shops like this and pays their salary for six months. But the threat of relapse is always there. That’s why Scott Schwind is taking it slow. SCOTT SCHWIND: I just want to get a foundation of being sober and dealing with things before I jump into a job and all that stress, and you know what I mean, having a bunch of money in my pocket, to where I’m not tempted to do something that I’m going to regret, because, like, the drugs out there today will kill you. PAUL SOLMAN: Why would you be tempted if you had money in your pocket? SCOTT SCHWIND: You forget how to deal with problems. It was a coping mechanism. Something went wrong, and you’re like, I’m just going to get high, and then you don’t have to worry about it. I had a house, I had a car, I had all my stuff taken care of. I was a good father, you know what I mean? And everything’s gone. And it takes a lot of work to get back to where you were. So, it’s easy to just throw your hands up and be like, you know what? Screw it. PAUL SOLMAN: So, you could imagine having money in your pocket and going back to drugs? DONNA DIBO: Absolutely. Absolutely. It takes two seconds for us to get a thought in our head, and we act on it. PAUL SOLMAN: So, technical instructors like Ivan Lipscomb wear two hats. IVAN LIPSCOMB, Flying High Instructor: Not only are we welding instructors, but we’re life coaches also. So we can try to talk to them about that also, maybe throw in a little joking in there every once in awhile just to keep their spirits up. PAUL SOLMAN: Magada says those who complete this program pose much less risk than those who don’t. JEFFREY MAGADA: We’re not just going to let them go. We’re going to monitor them over the next six months, while they have money in their pocket, and be working with them on those life skills. PAUL SOLMAN: Life skills absent in those whom opioids have overtaken, says Michael Sherwin. MICHAEL SHERWIN: Ten years ago, the drug screen wouldn’t have been an issue. PAUL SOLMAN: At all? MICHAEL SHERWIN: No. PAUL SOLMAN: And now you’re losing 25 percent of… MICHAEL SHERWIN: Of eligible candidates to it. So, for us, it’s a big deal. PAUL SOLMAN: A big deal for the broader economy as well, says Princeton economist Alan Krueger. He’s found a direct link between opioid use and out-of-the-work-force Americans. ALAN KRUEGER, Princeton University: For both prime-age men and prime-age women, the increase in prescriptions over the last 15 years can account for perhaps 20 percent of the drop in labor force participation that we have seen. PAUL SOLMAN: The rate has been falling for years, as the population ages, says Krueger. But opioids are increasingly the story, as the participation rate has hit historic lows. ALAN KRUEGER: We have had a change in medical practices, which has caused the medical profession to prescribe 3.5 times more opioid medication today than was the case 15 years ago. I think that’s made it harder for some people to keep their jobs and has led them to leave the labor force. PAUL SOLMAN: Clyde McClellan has seen it happening in East Liverpool. CLYDE MCCLELLAN: When you drive around town, you see too many young and middle-aged people just out during the middle of the day, when, normally, they’d be at work. If they’re out on the streets, many times, they’re not looking for work. They’re just out there looking for their next fix. PAUL SOLMAN: Donna Dibo is on the lookout no longer. Instead, she’s reinventing herself as a welder, Scott Schwind updating his machining skills. Michael Oates hopes to get back to work welding, and to rebuild the links shattered by his addiction. MICHAEL OATES: It tore my family completely apart. It was stronger than eating. It was stronger than paying bills. It was stronger than going to my kids’ football games. I went from spoiling my kids to barely doing anything for my kids. PAUL SOLMAN: Will they talk to you? MICHAEL OATES: My youngest doesn’t talk to me. And that breaks my heart. And my youngest son, he barely ever talks to me. They went without a lot of things over my selfishness, over me wanting to be high every day and not wanting to be sick. PAUL SOLMAN: And they’re still resentful? MICHAEL OATES: And they’re still resentful, yes. If it takes me the rest of my life, I will make amends. PAUL SOLMAN: Here’s hoping he can return to his family, and to the work force. For the PBS NewsHour, this is economics correspondent Paul Solman, reporting from Northeastern Ohio. The post How the opioid crisis decimated the American workforce appeared first on PBS NewsHour .…
E
Economy – PBS NewsHour
![Economy – PBS NewsHour podcast artwork](https://cdn.player.fm/images/13861/series/RfhExg3Myci0lkbA/32.jpg 32w, https://cdn.player.fm/images/13861/series/RfhExg3Myci0lkbA/64.jpg 64w, https://cdn.player.fm/images/13861/series/RfhExg3Myci0lkbA/128.jpg 128w, https://cdn.player.fm/images/13861/series/RfhExg3Myci0lkbA/256.jpg 256w, https://cdn.player.fm/images/13861/series/RfhExg3Myci0lkbA/512.jpg 512w)
![Economy – PBS NewsHour podcast artwork](/static/images/64pixel.png)
JUDY WOODRUFF: And let’s turn to a different conversation on questions of sexism, in tech, finance and Silicon Valley. Ellen Pao became a kind of cause celebre in 2012 after she filed a gender discrimination lawsuit against her employer, the powerful venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins. Pao had been a junior partner and claimed that her bosses didn’t promote her because of her gender and retaliated against her for complaining. She asked for $16 million in damages in a trial, but lost. And her personal reputation was damaged along the way. Still, her case served as a wakeup call. She has a new book about it and the aftermath titled “Reset.” Our economics correspondent, Paul Solman, sat down with Ellen Pao, part of his weekly series, Making Sense. PAUL SOLMAN: Ellen Pao, welcome. ELLEN PAO, Author, “Reset”: My Fight for Inclusion and Lasting Change”: Thank you for having me. PAUL SOLMAN: From your biography, you do not seem like the person who would sue Kleiner Perkins or, for that matter, pretty much anyone. ELLEN PAO: It’s not my nature. I think the lawsuit was part of a mission to call attention to this problem. So, I had tried so many other ways beforehand. I’m not doing that much press. I’m an introvert. It’s hard for me. But it’s like kind of now it’s going to go on air and all these people, calling attention, seeing me on the street and recognizing me. PAUL SOLMAN: You don’t want that. ELLEN PAO: I don’t want that. It’s not my personality, and it makes me uncomfortable. But this is a culture that has pervasive problems. And seeing the extent of it, we need to do a whole reset. PAUL SOLMAN: Reset is the title of Pao’s book. And with its claim of gender discrimination in Silicon Valley, it’s become part of an increasingly polarized debate. Just in the last few months, charges of sexual discrimination and harassment have brought down the CEOs of Uber and the online lending startup Social Finance, spurring a backlash. A front-page article in this Sunday’s New York Times featured Silicon Valley men alleging discrimination. Pao is a Princeton grad with degrees from Harvard Law and Harvard Business School, jobs in Silicon Valley since 1998, including a stint at venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins that triggered the gender bias lawsuit. What was the percentage of women in venture capital when you were there? ELLEN PAO: I believe it was about 6 percent. PAUL SOLMAN: And what is it now? ELLEN PAO: I think it’s gone down. I think it’s gone down to maybe 5 percent. And less than 1 percent are black or Latinx. PAUL SOLMAN: Do you think that you were sort of suppressing feelings you were having at the time, or the sense that you were getting that there was systemic discrimination against you as a woman, perhaps you as a minority ELLEN PAO: There are a lot of — like 1,000 cuts in little small things that would make it very hard for a woman to be successful. So, women were asked to take notes at meetings, and men were not. Women were asked to baby-sit. Women were asked to do some of the menial tasks of organizing events and planning conferences that the men were not. So, when it came time to invest, which was the work that you would get recognized and promoted for… PAUL SOLMAN: And compensated for. ELLEN PAO: … and compensated for, it was much harder for a woman to be taken seriously and was harder to get investments through and was harder to be successful. And it was also possible for men to take away investments that women were working on if they looked good, and to dump investments that weren’t doing so well on the women when they didn’t want to work on them anymore. PAUL SOLMAN: Now, this sounded strikingly familiar. Listen to Maureen Sherry describing Wall Street gender bias when she was a trader. MAUREEN SHERRY, Former Managing Director, Bear Stearns: Accounts not being given equitably, that is really one way, or an account being taken away when you felt it wasn’t something that you deserved. PAUL SOLMAN: And the atmosphere wasn’t exactly congenial for a woman. MAUREEN SHERRY: When I had come back from my maternity leave, I was still nursing and kept a breast pump under my desk. One trader would notice, and he would start making a mooing sound, and sometimes other herd members would join in. PAUL SOLMAN: Actually mooing? MAUREEN SHERRY: Yes, mooing. PAUL SOLMAN: Her problem, Pao claims, is that the young men went West. ELLEN PAO: That boy culture came in around 2008, when people stopped going to Wall Street and the people who wanted to make big money fast wanted to be the next Mark Zuckerberg. And they all came out to Silicon Valley instead. PAUL SOLMAN: So you are at Kleiner Perkins. You are making a lot of money there, right? ELLEN PAO: Yes, more than I could spend. PAUL SOLMAN: So, what is happening there that is upsetting you? ELLEN PAO: I was getting blocked. I wasn’t being invited to meetings. One of the women at the firm also actually mapped out investments for the women and investments for the men, and showed that the women’s investments were doing significantly better. We have more experience. We have more education on average. And we’re not getting promoted. And, as a group, most of the men got promoted. PAUL SOLMAN: And you weren’t getting promoted because? ELLEN PAO: Because we were women. And there was some kind of belief that the men were better, despite all the results and the record. SALLIE KRAWCHECK, CEO and Co-Founder, Ellevest: There is actually research that shows that women are better investors, that they are more risk-aware. PAUL SOLMAN: But despite that, says former banker Sallie Krawcheck, who now runs a mutual fund invests in female-focused firms, men are better self-promoters. SALLIE KRAWCHECK: If it were just about intelligence or effort, we would have much more diverse teams. My experience has been that the gentlemen are more likely to come and ask for the promotion, and that the women are less likely to do so. ELLEN PAO: They were more assertive, and they did things exactly the right way, while we were, you know, too aggressive or not aggressive enough, to loud or too quiet or we were too competitive, we weren’t team players. And, you know, this was an endless slew of impossible things to fulfill. PAUL SOLMAN: When you confronted that reality, did you think, I am in the wrong place, this is the wrong world for me? ELLEN PAO: I actually tried to quit in 2007. I said, this culture is not — you know, it’s not my culture. And they told me they wanted to change their culture, that the things that I was bringing up were things that they didn’t want to be. It wasn’t until I really saw, like, I cannot succeed, or any other women in the firm, that was really the catalyst for me litigating. PAUL SOLMAN: So, you felt it was your duty to sue? ELLEN PAO: Yes, I would say that. I felt, if I didn’t do it, then who would do it? So, I sued for sexual discrimination and retaliation. PAUL SOLMAN: So what happened? ELLEN PAO: Oh, you’re going to take me to the dark days. They hired a crisis communications firm that launched a campaign around, you know, that I was a poor performer, that my case had no merit. PAUL SOLMAN: That you don’t get along well with other people. ELLEN PAO: Right. PAUL SOLMAN: And the verdict? ELLEN PAO: I lost on both counts. PAUL SOLMAN: Why? ELLEN PAO: I think people weren’t ready to believe that tech was this really biased and unfair culture. PAUL SOLMAN: Or that Pao, who had turned down a million-dollar settlement offer, had been unfairly treated. Taking the role of devil’s advocate, I asked if she could have played along, and, if so, how. Would you have become more of a sports buff? It sounds ridiculous, and yet… ELLEN PAO: Yes, but those were the things that I would have had to do. It was to become one of the guys. PAUL SOLMAN: Yes, but if — I’m thinking of myself now as one of these guys, OK? ELLEN PAO: Yes. PAUL SOLMAN: Much younger, sort of not reflective, making a lot of money. And if you are there, and are you not playing along, you are making me a little uncomfortable, maybe. ELLEN PAO: Well, I think if playing along means participating in sexist and racist jokes, that expectation has to change. It can’t be on the women to — or, you know, the people of color or the older people to try to make everything better. And I think, now that, you know, this year, with all these people coming out, and with the press and the public being so much more receptive to their stories and being able to take them at face value, instead of going through the same process I went through, where, oh, you are not a perfect victim, oh, you are kind of crazy, oh, you are a fraud, oh, you shouldn’t have done this, oh, why did you do that, like, all of that has kind of dissipated, as people see, wow, this is a huge problem. PAUL SOLMAN: Ellen Pao, thank you very much. ELLEN PAO: Thank you for having me. The post How Ellen Pao realized women ‘cannot succeed’ in Silicon Valley frat boy culture appeared first on PBS NewsHour .…
JUDY WOODRUFF: The president launched a major campaign today to pass big tax cuts, and perhaps the most sweeping overhaul of the tax code in more than three decades. Many key details are not yet decided. Whether he can succeed is very much an open question. But the president and congressional leaders said today they have ambitious plans, which include cutting the corporate tax rate to 20 percent, reducing the number of individual tax brackets to just three, with rates — tax rates of 12 percent, 25 percent and 35 percent, and doubling the standard deduction for individuals and families. President Trump told supporters in Indianapolis the tax code is a relic that must be simpler. PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Americans waste so much money, billions and billions of dollars, and many hours each year to comply with our ridiculously complex tax code. More than 90 percent of Americans use assistance to prepare their taxes. Under our framework, the vast majority of families will be able to file their taxes on a single sheet of paper. JUDY WOODRUFF: For more on what we know and what we don’t know about the Republicans’ tax proposal, we turn to Greg Ip, who writes on economic and financial matters for The Wall Street Journal. Greg, welcome back to the program. So, what is the core idea here? What are the president and Republicans trying to do? GREG IP, The Wall Street Journal: There are two core ideas in this proposal. The first one is lower corporate taxes, so that American businesses will have a higher incentive to invest. That raises economic growth and wages for everybody. And it makes the United States a more competitive place to locate head offices and businesses. Right now, the U.S. has the highest corporate tax rate in the developed world. After this reform, it would have one of the lowest. The second big piece is something that Donald Trump has been very emphatic about from the campaign trail and now. That is a big middle-class tax cut. JUDY WOODRUFF: So then who are the winners and the losers, based on the information they have provided so far? GREG IP: Well, right now, first of all, they haven’t put out a fully, you know, detailed document, so it’s impossible to say for sure. But we know that, right now, the business side is very much a winner. They see the corporate rate drop from 35 percent to 20 percent. They get to like write off the cost of all their new equipment right away, instead of taking several years to do it. We move to a so-called territorial system, which means that instead of taxing them on their profits no matter where they earn it, we only tax them on their American profits. On the individual side, it’s a little harder to tell. There are some things that clearly are good for the middle class. For example, some of the tax rates are lowered. Instead of seven brackets, we have three. The standard deduction is doubled. On the other hand, there’s a few things that are negative in there. For example, some itemized reductions are reduced or eliminated altogether, for example, for state and local taxes. And, finally, even though the president is framing this as a middle-class tax cut, there are provisions which clearly benefit the wealthiest the most, repeal of the estate tax and repeal of the Alternative Minimum Tax. JUDY WOODRUFF: So, I’m reading the cost of doing all this in the trillion — a few trillion dollars. How do they make up for that, or are they even going to try? GREG IP: So, one of the drawbacks in today’s proposal is there aren’t enough details to fully know how much it will cost. But some good estimates suggest that, over 10 years, it will be more than $2 trillion of additional borrowing. Now, we have already heard Republicans in Congress and the president basically say they’re willing to borrow a lot of money to finance this tax cut, somewhat ironic, considering they spent eight years bashing Barack Obama and Democrats for the big rise in debts that they presided over. Now, there is a budget resolution in the works which will limit the debt impact to $1.5 trillion over 10 years. That still leaves a lot more so-called revenue raisers that they need to find. JUDY WOODRUFF: And just in a few seconds, political prospects better than for health care reform, which has been a problem for them? GREG IP: It’s still tough. They will still have the same tensions within the Republican Caucus, for example, blue state Republicans who don’t like taxes being raised on their taxpayers, deficit hawks who don’t like the fact that this might add to the deficit. But there are some positives. First of all, because they are essentially paying for it by borrowing from future taxpayers, you’re giving away to people, instead of taking away, as you were with health care. And perhaps most important, Trump was only peripherally involved and interested in health care. He was always leaving the details to Congress. Here, you have seen a unified effort and the president thus far fully engaged. JUDY WOODRUFF: Greg Ip of The Wall Street Journal, it’s only beginning. GREG IP: It sure is. JUDY WOODRUFF: Thank you. GREG IP: Watch this space. The post Who wins and loses in the GOP’s proposed tax overhaul appeared first on PBS NewsHour .…
JUDY WOODRUFF: This hurricane season has seen one devastating storm after another. Harvey, Irma and now Maria have left communities in ruin in their wake and put a spotlight on the problems plaguing the U.S.’ National Flood Insurance Program. That’s the subject Paul Solman tackles on our weekly economics series, Making Sense. LENI SHUCHTER, Pequannock, New Jersey Homeowner: And, in 1984, that’s the roof we were taken off of. PAUL SOLMAN: You went up onto this roof? LENI SHUCHTER: Yes. PAUL SOLMAN: Leni Shuchter lives in Pequannock, New Jersey, a little too close to the Pompton river, a tributary of the Passaic. LENI SHUCHTER: We had — it was a 24-foot boat pulled up alongside the roof. PAUL SOLMAN: And how long were you up there? LENI SHUCHTER: About four hours. PAUL SOLMAN: The spring storms of 1984 were a once-in-a-century event, which is why Shuchter had no flood insurance. LENI SHUCHTER: It wasn’t classified a flood zone in 1972, when I bought the house. PAUL SOLMAN: So then, after ’84, did you then get flood insurance? LENI SHUCHTER: Yes. We had to, because what we were eligible for is a loan that was put out by the Small Business Administration, and part of that was you had to have flood insurance. PAUL SOLMAN: As it turned out, the so-called 100-year floods moved up their schedule. LENI SHUCHTER: We have had five occurrences since 1999. PAUL SOLMAN: Five? LENI SHUCHTER: Five. Four of them were I guess what they would call, 25-year floods. You know, they’re the ones that just went in our basement. PAUL SOLMAN: So, that’s four 25-year floods in… LENI SHUCHTER: Well, from ’99 to ’11, so in 12 years. PAUL SOLMAN: And three 100-year floods in 27 years. LENI SHUCHTER: Correct. PAUL SOLMAN: She now had flood insurance and has received more than 110,000 federal dollars over the years, most recently $72,000 in 2011, after Hurricane Irene. So how high did the water get here in the house? LENI SHUCHTER: It came within an inch of the waterlilies. PAUL SOLMAN: Too bad you didn’t have the bridge. LENI SHUCHTER: Yes, let me tell you, the bridge would’ve been a savior, for sure. PAUL SOLMAN: As Claude Monet himself would have known, his iconic pond at Giverny created by water diverted from local floods. But here in New Jersey, the increasingly troubled waters have helped imperil the National Flood Insurance Program itself, which started sinking back in 2005, when Hurricanes Katrina, Rita and Wilma forced it to borrow $17.5 billion from the U.S. Treasury to pay claims. Interest payments and later storms have since submerged the program, so that it’s now nearly $25 billion underwater, and that’s before Hurricanes Irma and Harvey. The Gulf states, Texas, Louisiana top the list of repetitive loss claims, but the so-called Garden State is no slouch, ranking third in homeowners who file again and again. JOHN A. MILLER, Water Resources Engineer: And again and again. PAUL SOLMAN: On the banks of the Passaic River in Little Falls, New Jersey, flood expert John Miller. JOHN A. MILLER: This is one of the ground zeros for flood repetitive claims. In this area, we had flooding in 2007, 2010, and 2011 twice. PAUL SOLMAN: So how high did the river rise? JOHN A. MILLER: The water’s about one foot right now. It came up another 13 feet, twice as high as I am tall. PAUL SOLMAN: So the water came up — well, it would be almost to the second story of houses like that, right? JOHN A. MILLER: Yes, certainly well over the first floor of those homes. PAUL SOLMAN: Around Houston, only 15 percent of homeowners were insured against Harvey’s water damage, partly because the government’s outdated flood maps didn’t reflect the true risk. In the Passaic Watershed, though, which has been flooding famously since 1903, about a third of homes are covered. And if built before the government started publishing flood zone maps in the 1970s and’ 80s, owners get a hefty discount. Leni Shuchter pays only $200 a month for a risk that no private insurer would cover at anywhere near that price. LENI SHUCHTER: The shed back here is 12-by-32. In 2011, that became an ark. And it floated. It broke down the fence. (LAUGHTER) PAUL SOLMAN: I don’t mean to laugh. LENI SHUCHTER: And it ended up in the driveway. PAUL SOLMAN: And this raises the question that prompted our trek to the Garden State: In bailing out homeowners like Leni Shuchter, are we taxpayers encouraging them to buy, and stay put, in places so flood-prone, it puts them, and taxpayers, at inordinate risk? JOHN A. MILLER: Back in the 1960s, when the National Flood Insurance Program was created, the private market wasn’t insuring flood-prone areas. PAUL SOLMAN: Because they were going to lose money on it, because… JOHN A. MILLER: Because they were going to lose money. Flood risk is different than auto. It’s different than homeowners, fires. PAUL SOLMAN: Because if insurers pay out more in claims than they get in premiums, they go broke. But in places like Pequannock or Little Falls: JOHN A. MILLER: You’re in a floodplain, right? The people that are purchasing flood insurance are flood-vulnerable. PAUL SOLMAN: That is, the people who are most vulnerable are the ones buying the insurance. JOHN A. MILLER: Absolutely. PAUL SOLMAN: And we’re talking up to $350,000 per claim. But then, if you provide insurance at below market rates, you’re encouraging people to come live in a dangerous place? JOHN A. MILLER: That’s why the flood insurance program is not just an insurance product. PAUL SOLMAN: From the get-go, that is, federal flood insurance included money for mitigation, measures to prop up substantially damaged homes, or tear them down. JOE GOLDEN, Pequannock Township Engineer: We bought out approximately 75 homes here on both sides of the highway. PAUL SOLMAN: Engineer Joe Golden, Pequannock’s point man for flood insurance. After Irene, the town, well, wised up, and secured funds to buy out the most flood-prone homes. So, this is housing lot after housing lot reclaimed by nature. JOE GOLDEN: Right. PAUL SOLMAN: The other form of mitigation, elevating homes, at $100,000 to $200,000 a pop. JOE GOLDEN: The larger holes up on the second story, that’s where they put the steel beams through, and where they put the jacks to jack the home up. PAUL SOLMAN: Federal grants reimburse homeowners for the cost of raising their houses, and living expenses for several months while the work is being done. JOE GOLDEN: Those openings that are near the ground, those are flood vents that allow water to go in and out during flooding. And that prevents the block from collapsing. That’s why FEMA’s giving us the money. They don’t want to pay out $80,000, and then we have another flood, and they pay another $80,000, we have another flood, and they pay another. PAUL SOLMAN: So Pequannock now boasts a home with a Roman aqueduct. JOE GOLDEN: This is particularly good for floodplain management because of the openness. PAUL SOLMAN: A French chateau. JOE GOLDEN: The whole bottom floor, they have made it look as if it’s living space, whereas it really is just storage space. PAUL SOLMAN: A country cottage. JOE GOLDEN: In my opinion, it’s probably the nicest elevation in the community. PAUL SOLMAN: A colonial on steroids. And how much is this house worth now? JOE GOLDEN: This house recently sold, I’m told, for $490,000. PAUL SOLMAN: Four hundred and ninety thousand dollars? JOE GOLDEN: Yes, $490,000. PAUL SOLMAN: Because it’s supposedly protected. JOE GOLDEN: In a floodplain, yes. But it is protected. Their insurance is going to go way down. PAUL SOLMAN: Down to about $600 a year, vs. up to $9,000 for the un-elevated, once federal subsidies are phased out. But that still begs the big question: the continued role of government flood insurance even in the face of rising tides. JOHN A. MILLER: Some do say that it encourages development in the floodplain. Some would say that it’s an affordability issue. Floodplains are some of the affordable properties. PAUL SOLMAN: Well, but they’re affordable because they’re dangerous. JOHN A. MILLER: That is right. PAUL SOLMAN: Leni Shuchter wishes she’d been offered a buyout, but has applied for a grant to elevate instead. The grant is for $196,000, more than her house is now worth. So, if you didn’t have flood insurance, would you just leave? LENI SHUCHTER: Probably not, because I wouldn’t be able to sell it. JOE GOLDEN: Now, here’s our map that shows the areas that have been redefined as floodways. PAUL SOLMAN: Pardon the metaphor, but a lot more people are going to be in Leni Shuchter’s boat once new government flood maps take effect. JOE GOLDEN: We went from 250-feet floodway to now 3,000. PAUL SOLMAN: Wow. An additional 284 homes in tiny Pequannock, says engineer Joe Golden, hiked to the highest risk category of flooding just two weeks ago. And in a hitherto dry part of town: JOE GOLDEN: This purple area was added into the floodplain. PAUL SOLMAN: And hadn’t been there before? JOE GOLDEN: Hadn’t been there in the history of Pequannock. There’s 229 houses in that area. Any of these people go to sell their home, the buyer won’t be able to get his mortgage unless he purchases flood insurance. That house just lost $100,000 in value, just from producing these maps. PAUL SOLMAN: And none of the people in these houses know that yet? JOE GOLDEN: Not yet, no. PAUL SOLMAN: Joe Golden believes the new maps go overboard, and has vowed to fight on behalf of affected homeowners. RADLEY HORTON, Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory: The maps are showing you sea level rise in the New York region. PAUL SOLMAN: Fact is, says climate scientist Radley Horton, even if Pequannock wins, its victory will probably be Pyrrhic. Though it’s away from the coast, where rising ocean levels would make it even more vulnerable, property values are at risk of plunging here, insurance of shooting up to reflect the true economic risk. Is that fair, given all the uncertainty around the science of this? RADLEY HORTON: Well, it’s probably not fair to the individuals. But with rising seas, more moisture in the air, we do expect to see areas that aren’t currently in the flood zone becoming vulnerable in the future. And, in fact, we could see property values fall, not because water touches or doesn’t touch some of these homes, but because of systemic risk, the inability of insurance to cover all these assets, or investors finally realizing that a lot of critical infrastructure isn’t going to be fundable. PAUL SOLMAN: And this prompted my last question: Why doesn’t someone like Leni Shuchter just move on, and out? LENI SHUCHTER: Where would I move to? PAUL SOLMAN: So, you’re stuck? LENI SHUCHTER: Pretty much. PAUL SOLMAN: For the PBS NewsHour, this is economics correspondent Paul Solman, reporting from the floodplains of New Jersey. The post After Harvey and Irma, what’s the future of flood insurance? appeared first on PBS NewsHour .…
E
Economy – PBS NewsHour
![Economy – PBS NewsHour podcast artwork](https://cdn.player.fm/images/13861/series/RfhExg3Myci0lkbA/32.jpg 32w, https://cdn.player.fm/images/13861/series/RfhExg3Myci0lkbA/64.jpg 64w, https://cdn.player.fm/images/13861/series/RfhExg3Myci0lkbA/128.jpg 128w, https://cdn.player.fm/images/13861/series/RfhExg3Myci0lkbA/256.jpg 256w, https://cdn.player.fm/images/13861/series/RfhExg3Myci0lkbA/512.jpg 512w)
![Economy – PBS NewsHour podcast artwork](/static/images/64pixel.png)
JUDY WOODRUFF: But first: one on one with Michael Bloomberg, the billionaire philanthropist, businessman and former mayor of New York City. As world leaders and other notable dignitaries gather in New York this week for the U.N. General Assembly, Bloomberg hosted a special forum today about economic challenges facing the country and the world. We spoke just a short while ago about that and more. Michael Bloomberg, welcome. You said earlier today that, after an appeal from one of your partners, you were sending some of your people and aid down to the U.S. Virgin Islands because of the crisis there. What are you hearing? And how important is it for private individuals and private organizations to get involved? MICHAEL BLOOMBERG, CEO, BLOOMBERG L.P.: Well, Judy, based on my experience with Hurricane Sandy in New York, the federal government actually does a very good job. The trouble with the federal government is, it’s a big organization and it takes a while to mobilize. And, at the moment, they also have a lot of their resources expended in helping Texas and Florida. So, small territories like the American Virgin Islands, at the very beginning, they can’t get there quick enough. And the people there didn’t have a roof over their head. They didn’t have food, they didn’t have electricity, they didn’t have water, they didn’t have medicines that they take or penicillin or tetanus shots if they have an injury. And so that’s where the private sector can come in. One of my partners has a house down there. He went down there. He called me right away and said, we have just got to do something. I said, OK, we will marshal the resources. We took some of employees who had worked on Hurricane Sandy, got them on the plane. I got Johns Hopkins to send us up a whole bunch of the medicines that they needed, put them on a plane, took it down with some other things that they could use. And we were able to help them while they wait for the federal government to come in. JUDY WOODRUFF: Different subject. You’re holding your forum for government and business leaders the same week President Trump makes his first address to the United Nations, making news because he’s saying to North Korea, we will totally destroy you if you make the wrong move. What are you hearing from these other leaders about that? And what do you think about it? MICHAEL BLOOMBERG: I didn’t agree with a lot of what he said. I think that, at the United Nations, whether you inside are seething or not, diplomacy calls for a certain level of discourse. And, in diplomacy, that’s the way you get things done. Threatening, cajoling and being in your face doesn’t really work in the diplomatic community. And we do need to have good diplomatic relations with lots of other countries. I think, if there’s anything you can — that comes out of the North Korean problem is, you realize you can’t do it alone. We have to employ the — get the rest of the world to join us, particularly China, since China’s the country, the main trading partner with North Korea. So they’re the ones that, through them, anything we want to do is going to have to be affected. But I think that the president has — obviously has some views. I hope he has the best advisers that are competent and understand what’s going on, because he’s going to have to make decisions based on what they say. And, remember, he does not have a long history of working in the diplomatic world, doesn’t have a lot of experience with overseas businesses or overseas governments or the military. And so what he’s got to do is build the best team. And, so far, he’s got a lot of holes in his team. And if I were him, I would focus on filling those holes, getting the smartest people he can. I have always used the criteria I always want to hire people smarter than me. A cynic would say that’s easy. But, nevertheless, you need very good people to deal with all the problems of the world. JUDY WOODRUFF: And on the subject of immigration, Mayor Bloomberg, the — as you know, this president is reflecting the views of many Americans who think too many immigrants have been allowed to come into this country. Just recently, he said he’s rescinding the move by President Obama to protect the so-called dreamers, the DACA agreement, young people who came to this country without documentation as children. What is the overall effect of that? MICHAEL BLOOMBERG: Well, the dreamer thing is a separate issue, I guess. These are people who it’s really ridiculous to say that they committed a crime. And just think. a woman carries her newborn baby in her arms, walks into a bank, takes out the gun, holds up the bank. The cops grab the woman. Are they going to arrest the infant? No, nobody thinks the infant had anything to do it. So, the dreamers, this is — it is nothing to really do with immigration. They are here, brought here without them doing anything active. Their parents brought them here. They become, if not legal citizens, they become productive members of our society. And to throw them out, I cannot conceive of the president actually doing that. Just there is no congressman that would get elected if you saw screaming people being — young people being dragged in handcuffs to the border or put on a plane. That’s just not going to happen. In terms of general immigration, this — I think what’s happened here is, some of the president’s supporters have probably misinformed him about the impact of immigrants. Every reputable study shows that immigrants create a lot more jobs than they take away. Most immigrants that come here either do jobs that Americans absolutely wouldn’t do at any price, or they come here to start businesses or take jobs that are additive. When there is another business or more business in a given company, they hire more people. And for people who think that they have lost their jobs because of immigrants, maybe some of them have, but we have got to find ways to help them and not make it worse. If you want jobs, we need more global trade. If you want more jobs, we need TPP, the Trans-Pacific trade agreement. If you want more jobs, we have to keep NAFTA in place, so that Canada and Mexico and the United States together can create more jobs. We have to do all these things. We have to have training programs. And cutting back a lot of the stuff that the president wants to do doesn’t help create jobs. If anything, it takes away jobs. JUDY WOODRUFF: Just finally, you have got some strong views on a number of issues out there. You decided in 2016 not to run for president. Was that a mistake? MICHAEL BLOOMBERG: No. I think the conclusion was that you could not run as an independent. The Constitution, with the Electoral College, means that no independent is going to get a majority of electoral votes. And if you just had a plurality, it doesn’t mean anything, because the House would then pick the president, and the Senate would pick the vice president. And they would pick from whatever party was in control of the House or the Senate. They certainly wouldn’t pick an independent. So, we weren’t going to win. And I — there is a lot of ways to effect change. I’m a very lucky guy. I would like to leave this world better for my daughters and for my grandkids. And that’s what I’m doing with all my money. My companies’ profits virtually all go to our foundation, and we work very hard to improve the quality of government that you have at the local level. We have some expertise. We work very hard on public health issues, on the arts, on the environment. There are a lot of things that we are working on. And, hopefully, we can have let people have longer and healthier and more fun lives. JUDY WOODRUFF: Businessman, former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, we thank you. MICHAEL BLOOMBERG: Judy, all the best. JUDY WOODRUFF: And tune in tomorrow night. I talk with philanthropist Melinda Gates about the importance of U.S. aid abroad. The post Threatening doesn’t work in diplomacy, says Bloomberg of Trump at the UN appeared first on PBS NewsHour .…
MEGAN THOMPSON: This summer, when President Trump withdrew the U.S. from the 2015 Paris climate accord — a voluntary pact to cut emissions of gases that cause global warming — some opposition came from what is perhaps a surprising place: big business. In response, hundreds of large U.S. companies publicly pledged to reduce their reliance on fossil fuels and increase energy efficiency. In tonight’s signature segment, NewsHour Weekend Special Correspondent Stephanie Sy reports on some big companies leading the way. This story is part of our ongoing series “Peril and Promise: The Challenge of Climate Change.” STEPHANIE SY: With sprawling supercenters and close to twelve thousand stores worldwide, Wal-Mart, may be best known for low prices that local stores can’t match. Now, the planet’s number one company, by revenue, wants to be known as a leader in the fight against climate change. KATHLEEN McLAUGHLIN, CHIEF SUSTAINABILITY OFFICER, WAL-MART: At Wal-Mart, Sustainability really is core to our mission. STEPHANIE SY: Kathleen McLaughlin is Wal-Mart’s Chief Sustainability Officer, she’s charged with selling Wal-Mart’s climate vision to shareholders. KATHLEEN McLAUGHLIN: It’s critical for business. It’s important for customers and for communities. We’re seeing effects already in things like supply security of different food commodities. STEPHANIE SY: Wal-Mart’s response to climate change began more than a decade ago. In 2005, then CEO Lee Scott pledged to curb Wal-Mart’s emissions of greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide, which cause the atmosphere to trap heat and warm the earth. Scott started moving the company toward clean power sources like wind and solar, with a goal of eventually getting 100 percent of its energy from renewables. KATHLEEN McLAUGHLIN: It was a realization about capability and about scale and about how we can use that for good. Wal-Mart has unique assets as a retailer, just given the reach that we have across categories, the reach we have across countries and across suppliers, and the recognition that we could bring those capabilities to bear on the most pressing social and environmental issues that our customers face in ways that are really relevant for business.. STEPHANIE SY: Wal-Mart, headquartered in Bentonville, Arkansas, began by improving the fuel efficiency of its vast fleet of trucks that deliver goods to its stores. ERIC BENGE, WAL-MART: So Mike, when you’re ready, we’ll crank it up… STEPHANIE SY: Using a simulator, Wal-Mart retrains its truck drivers on gear-shifting to increase their fuel savings. Operators can have up to a 30 percent impact on fuel efficiency based on how they drive, and their job performance is judged accordingly. The company says, improved driving and upgraded trucks have saved the retailer nearly $1 billion since 2005. MARK VANDERHELM, WAL-MART: Wal-Mart has been the driver of a lot of new technologies in the energy efficiency space. STEPHANIE SY: Mark Vanderhelm is Wal-Mart’s Vice President of Energy. Wal-Mart has saved energy and money in its store operations by demanding more efficient equipment from vendors that provide its lighting, refrigeration, and heating and cooling systems. In its push for more renewable energy, the company has installed solar panels on the rooftops of 364 Wal-Mart and Sam’s Clubs. That only about eight percent of all its stores in the U.S., but the panels make Wal-Mart the nation’s second biggest commercial generator of solar power. KATHLEEN McLAUGHLIN: The biggest challenge in the U.S. is making it economic. We would love to see more availability of renewable energy sources that is at price parity with other sources. STEPHANIE SY: In other words, Wal-Mart’s ambitious energy goals aim also to save money. So, in its home base of Arkansas, where a lack of state government incentives for renewables make conventional fossil fuel power cheaper, you won’t see any solar panels on the local Wal-Mart stores. While the company has pledged to be 100 percent powered by renewables, it hasn’t said when, and right now only 17 percent of Wal-Mart’s domestic power comes from renewable sources. To provide guidance in achieving its climate change goals, Wal-Mart has partnered with the Environmental Defense Fund, or EDF. Fred Krupp is the group’s president. Is Wal-Mart doing enough? FRED KRUPP, ENVIRONMENTAL DEFENSE FUND: The scale of Wal-Mart is hard to wrap your head around. They have 220 million people shopping there every week. In the United States, they sell about a third of all the food that we buy at retail stores. They can always do more. But what they have shown so far is a serious commitment, and the journey is an ongoing one of improvement. STEPHANIE SY: Jenny Ahlen is an EDF supply chain specialist based in Bentonville, Arkansas. JENNY AHLEN, ENVIRONMENTAL DEFENSE FUND: The things that we buy and consume and how they are made and used and disposed of have a huge impact on the planet. So grocery is contributing half of all greenhouse gas emissions in the U.S. retail sector. And that’s due to both the volume, but also the high level of greenhouse gas impacts embedded in that food. STEPHANIE SY: And Wal-Mart is the largest grocer in the world. JENNY AHLEN: They are. STEPHANIE SY : So this is a hot spot. Wal-Mart’s mission has grown to not only reduce its own stores’ impact on climate change, but to compel its tens of thousands of suppliers to transform their practices. At Wal-Mart’s urging, EDF helped pork producer Smithfield to optimize fertilizer use on crops used to feed its pigs, reducing the amount of the greenhouse gas nitrous oxide released into the atmosphere. The reductions by Smithfield and other suppliers contributed to Wal-Mart taking credit for meeting a goal, in 2015, of reducing emissions by 20 million metric tons, the equivalent of taking nearly four million cars off the road for a year. Wal-Mart’s newest initiative is called “Project Gigaton,” which aims to persuade suppliers to remove 50 times more greenhouse gases — or one billion metric tons — by 2030, about the same amount of pollution as Germany emits in a year. Wal-Mart, known for squeezing suppliers to keep prices low, is putting a green squeeze on them now, though one that’s voluntary. FRED KRUPP: It sends a message to their 100,000 suppliers all around the world: If you want your products on our shelves, cut your pollution. STEPHANIE SY: Ninety percent of Wal-Mart’s overall greenhouse gas impact comes from its supply chain, and dozens of its major suppliers have already signed on to project gigaton. Wal-Mart hopes that encouraging its suppliers to cut emissions will have a multiplier effect. One of those participating suppliers was already forging its own path to sustainability. The candy maker Mars, Inc, best known for M&M’s and Snickers bars, has set an aggressive target of using “zero carbon” in its operations by 2040, eliminating all greenhouse gas emissions. BARRY PARKIN, MARS, INC. CHIEF SUSTAINABILITY OFFICER: Field is actually 18 acres, so it’s pretty big… STEPHANIE SY: Barry Parkin, Mars’s Chief Sustainability Officer, showed us the vast solar farm in New Jersey the company built eight years ago. It now provides about five percent of the power used by the Mars chocolate factory in nearby Hackettstown, which churns out half of the M&M’s sold in the U.S.Parkin says the falling price of renewable energy technology, like solar, makes the investments pay off. BARRY PARKIN: We’ve done this at cost parity or better. In some cases, our costs are now lower as a result of using renewable energy. STEPHANIE SY: So we’re not going to see the price of M&M’s skyrocketing because Mars has made commitments to the environment? BARRY PARKIN: No, absolutely not. So this is not just good for the environment. It’s it’s good for Mars. It’s good for consumers, and it’s also good for the landowners that we’re working with. STEPHANIE SY: Mars has a long-term contract to buy the power produced by this massive wind farm in West Texas – enough to offset the electricity used in its entire U.S. operation. Parkin believes that global efforts to curb climate change will eventually lead to fossil fuels becoming more expensive. BARRY PARKIN: We believe there will at some point be a price on carbon. We’re thinking long term, we’re thinking that if we are ahead of the curve here and we’re reducing our carbon footprint in line with the science faster than our competitors, then we can have a competitive advantage. STEPHANIE SY: Food companies like Mars are also planning for disruptions to their agricultural supplies caused by climate change, including the cocoa for its chocolate. BARRY PARKIN: Seventy percent of the world’s cocoa comes from a small region in West Africa. And all of the climate models say that that region is going to become drier and that is not good for cocoa. So those millions of farmers there, all the predictions say is they’re going to start to struggle. STEPHANIE SY: This month, Mars announced it is investing a billion dollars over the next three years, in part, to help its suppliers reduce carbon emissions, including hundreds of thousands of small farmers around the world. Mars hopes the effort will help the company’s supply chain reduce emissions by 67 percent by 2050. The risks of climate change to business have now led half of the world’s 500 largest public companies to set sustainability goals. And a report released this April by several environmental researchers found energy efficiency projects saved these companies nearly $4 billion last year. In addition, after President Trump pulled the United States government out of the Paris Climate Accords, Wal-Mart and Mars were among the companies that signed a letter pledging to continue to meet their voluntary targets. But Wal-Mart’s growing business may be in conflict with its sustainability mission. Wal-Mart’s total retail square-footage has expanded by 43 percent in the past decade, and along with it, its self-reported carbon emissions went up 9 percent, even as the pace of its emissions slowed. Wal-Mart is still building new stores. It is still increasing its carbon footprint. How do you answer the broader question of whether Wal-Mart can ever be truly Earth-friendly? KATHLEEN McLAUGHLIN: We’re expanding our footprint, but we believe that our model, so the way we manage our own store operations, the way we work with suppliers, actually optimizes and lowers the footprint to deliver the same amount of product to people. If you look at the scale and ambition of our efforts and what we’ve actually achieved, I’m actually quite excited about it. STEPHANIE SY: By 2025, Wal-Mart says it plans to reduce its carbon emissions by 18 percent from its 2015 levels. As ever, the company that has transformed communities and consumers is striking a path… and expecting others to follow. Peril and Promise is an ongoing series of reports on the human impact of, and solutions for, Climate Change. Lead funding for Peril and Promise is provided by Dr. P. Roy Vagelos and Diana T. Vagelos. Major support is provided by Marc Haas Foundation. The post Large companies see payoffs in sustainability appeared first on PBS NewsHour .…
HARI SREENIVASAN: But first: Tech giants are increasingly under scrutiny from politicians, regulators and experts on the left and the right. Some are concerned about their growing power, even calling them monopolies. And the tension keeps building, whether over privacy, politics or the displacement of workers by automation. Yet their role in contemporary life certainly isn’t shrinking. We, too, at the NewsHour have worked and collaborated with Facebook, Google and many other new media businesses. A new book zeros in on some of these criticisms. Economics correspondent Paul Solman has a conversation for his weekly series, Making Sense. PAUL SOLMAN: So, what’s the problem? FRANKLIN FOER, Author, “World Without Mind”: Google, Facebook, Amazon, Apple are among the most powerful monopolies in the history of humanity. PAUL SOLMAN: Journalist Franklin Foer, former editor of “The New Republic” magazine, author of the new book “World Without Mind: The Existential Threat of Big Tech.” FRANKLIN FOER: So, the problem is, is that they have tremendous ability to shape the way that we think, the way that we filter the world, the way that we absorb culture. And if they were just companies, maybe we shouldn’t be so concerned about them, but they play an incredibly vital role in the health of our democracy. PAUL SOLMAN: The most powerful gatekeepers ever, Foer calls them, the first, second, fourth and fifth most valuable companies on the U.S. stock market. Microsoft is third. Add them together, and they account for some 10 percent of the stock price of the S&P 500. FRANKLIN FOER: And it’s not just the size of these companies that we should be worried about. Their ambitions are to essentially control the entirety of human existence. And I know that sounds outrageous, but it’s true. They’re trying to stay with us from the moment that we wake up in the morning until the moment that we go to bed at night. They want to become our personal assistants. They want to become the vehicles to deliver us news, entertainment, to track our health. They want to obey our every beck and call through Amazon Alexa and Google Home. They’re… PAUL SOLMAN: And Siri. FRANKLIN FOER: And Siri. PAUL SOLMAN: But corporate titans have always wanted to control everything. John D. Rockefeller, oil, but the trains that bring you the oil. FRANKLIN FOER: Yes. You’re right. We have always had ambitious corporations, but we have never had everything stores and everything companies in quite this sort of way. And I think the crucial difference is that John D. Rockefeller never really set out to control the way that you think or to shape the way that you think. PAUL SOLMAN: Worse still, Foer claims, we don’t realize what’s happening to us as a result. FRANKLIN FOER: Fifty years ago, the way that we consumed food was revolutionized. We began eating processed foods, and it seemed amazing. And then we woke up many, many decades later, and we realized that food was engineered to make us fat. And I think that these companies are doing the same thing with the stuff that we ingest through our brains. They’re attempting to addict us, and they’re addicting us on the basis of data. So, right now, Facebook wants to make money off of video. And so, even though I prefer words to video, it’s giving me video constantly when I look at my Facebook feed. And even though I’m somebody who likes to read conservatives, likes to read people on the far left, it’s essentially only giving me screeds against Donald Trump, because that’s what, based on my data, it thinks that I want. PAUL SOLMAN: So, it’s actually even funneling you. I mean, it’s narrowing your vision in terms… FRANKLIN FOER: It’s funneling my vision. It’s leading me to a view of the world. And it may not be Facebook’s view of the world, but it’s the view of the world that will make Facebook the most money. PAUL SOLMAN: You use the word pander several times in the book, pander to our taste. But what could be better, says economics, than that we get exactly what we want. FRANKLIN FOER: Yes. PAUL SOLMAN: That’s consumer preference. That’s the whole point. FRANKLIN FOER: Sure. Well, that’s fine when it comes to picking out socks and diapers, but it’s different when it comes to the information that we use to understand and process democracy. We exist right now in two separate political tribes. And those tribes are delivered information that confirms their biases, and that does pander to their instincts. It tells them what they want to hear. PAUL SOLMAN: Well, wait a second. I have got The New York Times here. I subscribe. The New York Times is a gatekeeper kind of pandering to my interests, isn’t it? FRANKLIN FOER: Well, The New York Times and PBS are gatekeepers of a sort. And they perform that role of gatekeeping with a set of rules and aspirations about where they want to lead their viewers and their readers. They value objective facts, and they attempt to transmit a comprehensive view of the world. And they do have values. And they do lead their viewers and their readers to certain conclusions. But it’s different than these companies which are dissecting information into these bits and pieces, which they’re then transmitting to people. And it’s about — really, it’s about clicks. PAUL SOLMAN: A vivid example, Cecil the lion. FRANKLIN FOER: So, Cecil the lion was killed by a hunter from Minnesota who posted a picture on the Internet, and this picture went viral. It became — it generated 3.2 million articles, according to The New York Times. PAUL SOLMAN: Articles. This is not hits? FRANKLIN FOER: Articles. Articles. And so every publication saw that this was a topic that was trending on Facebook, and they tried to glom onto it. And so everybody wanted their piece of this traffic rush. And so even publications that we couldn’t respect more, like “The New Yorker” or “The Atlantic,” ended up writing pieces about Cecil the lion. And the reason that this is important is, it shows the way in which something that’s kind of relatively trivial can go viral, and it also shows the way in which we have a certain amount of conformism in our culture. And my argument is that Donald Trump started off as a curiosity and a joke, but the media glommed onto Donald Trump and covered him, perhaps even when he didn’t deserve coverage, because he brought clicks. PAUL SOLMAN: In your book, you say this all began with hippies, basically, a hippy, Stewart Brand, the Whole Earth Catalog. FRANKLIN FOER: Yes. So, one of the fantastic things about Silicon Valley is that it’s both the birthplace of technology and it was one of the birthplaces of the counterculture. The Internet and the personal computer were going to be like the communes, where we would all be networked together, and we would be able to achieve this state of global consciousness. PAUL SOLMAN: And it was utterly benign. It was a benign vision, right? FRANKLIN FOER: It was a beautiful vision. And so, the idea of this network in one context could be this hippy dream, but in another context could be the basis for the biggest monopolies in human history. PAUL SOLMAN: And that’s what we have got? FRANKLIN FOER: That’s what we have got. PAUL SOLMAN: Shortly after we talked, Foer’s fears appeared to be supported. The liberal Washington-based think tank New America, recipient of millions in funding from Google, announced it’d fired scholar Barry Lynn, just after he criticized Google’s monopoly power. New America denied that Google forced the firing. But Foer, once a New America fellow himself, wrote to say it’s a prime example of the abuse of power he’s worried about. Finally, how do the tech companies respond to Foer and his concerns? We solicited their thoughts on Foer’s book. Amazon declined to comment on the record. Google, Facebook, and Apple didn’t respond. For the PBS NewsHour, economics correspondent Paul Solman, reporting from Washington, D.C. The post Are big tech companies trying to control our lives? appeared first on PBS NewsHour .…
JOHN YANG: Now we return to our Rethinking College series. This week, we take a look at efforts to help unemployed coal miners earn community college degrees and get on-the-job training. Hari Sreenivasan has our report, part of our weekly segment Making the Grade. HARI SREENIVASAN: In the heart of Appalachia, generations of coal miners have lived through good times and bad. CHRIS FARLEY, Former Coal Miner: We will have some early tomatoes. Then we will have… BERTHA FARLEY, Grandmother of Chris Farley: Middle. CHRIS FARLEY: Middle tomatoes. Then we will have late tomatoes. BERTHA FARLEY: Late tomatoes to can. HARI SREENIVASAN: When coal miner Chris Farley was laid off two years ago, he began growing food on his grandmother’s West Virginia lot to feed his family. BERTHA FARLEY: I’m telling him, you have got to grow what you eat. You have got to survive. In this area, most of all, you have to eat. CHRIS FARLEY: I got laid off, and there was no jobs around here to be found. They went from jobs everywhere to nothing. And I was actually at the point of going from door to door with my neighbors, seeing if they need grass mowed or weeds cut, or just any odd jobs to try to pay the power bills and anything, whatever it took to provide for my family. HARI SREENIVASAN: Between 1980 and 2015, the number of coal jobs fell by 60 percent, due to automation and competition from natural gas. But even before the decline, Bertha Farley had lived through many coal industry downturns. BERTHA FARLEY: My daddy got laid off, and I had five brothers, and they all had to leave here. No work. HARI SREENIVASAN: Still, her son Floyd and grandson Chris both became miners. CHRIS FARLEY: My dad, when he got old enough, he went into the coal mines, so I followed his footsteps, and went into the coal mines. HARI SREENIVASAN: It wasn’t a choice Floyd Farley wanted for his son. FLOYD FARLEY, Former Coal Miner: I wanted him to go to West Virginia University. I tried to explain to him, I said, you don’t have to be like you’re old man. You won’t have to be out here, breathing this dust. You can sit in an office somewhere. I said, it sure beats the heck out of coal mining. HARI SREENIVASAN: But, in 2002, when Chris Farley graduated from high school, working at the coal mine meant top wages. CHRIS FARLEY: I made over $50,000 a year as soon as I started out, straight out of high school, with no college, nothing. HARI SREENIVASAN: Some believe the high wages created an unhealthy dependence on coal jobs. BRANDON DENNISON, CEO, Coalfield Development Corporation: You don’t want to put all your eggs in one basket, which is the mistake that West Virginia made with the coal industry. HARI SREENIVASAN: Brandon Dennison grew up in Appalachia, but left to study social entrepreneurship. After earning his master’s, he returned to retrain displaced workers. BRANDON DENNISON: The moral arguments, I’m not interested in on coal, but it’s like investing your money. You never put it all in one investment account. You spread it out, you diversify. HARI SREENIVASAN: In 2010, Dennison formed a nonprofit called the Coalfield Development Corporation. With financial support from the Appalachian regional commission, the nonprofit launched new businesses that Dennison believes will generate sustainable jobs, everything from furniture making and solar installation, to home building and agriculture. BRANDON DENNISON: What we need is a diversified economy, with lots of different businesses and lots of different opportunities for all different types of people. HARI SREENIVASAN: Coalfield crew members are paid $11 an hour and given 33 work hours per week, an amount that doesn’t come close to their former coal job wages. They must also attend three hours of life skill classes, and six hours of community college. Money to pay crew members comes from sales, contracts, and private and public funders. BRANDON DENNISON: We are not just creating a job for these folks, many of whom still need a lot of job training, but we’re also enrolling them in the local community college. And then we’re providing three hours a week of personal development to figure out how business works and to be successful. HARI SREENIVASAN: Chris Farley is now an honors student working toward his associates degree in applied science and agriculture. CHRIS FARLEY: I can still pay my bills. I’m getting an education that I would never thought I would get. I never thought I would be in school. I never thought — never dreamed I would have a 4.0 GPA. BRANDON DENNISON: The bottom line is, if you look at states with low numbers of higher education attainment, like we have, there are not a lot of jobs. And if you look at states and communities with high numbers of people with degrees of higher education, you see a lot more jobs. HARI SREENIVASAN: One project, called Refresh Appalachia, brings former coal miners like Chris Farley back to a mining site. BRANDON DENNISON: We have all of these mine land sites that we have got to do something with, right? These are massive former mountaintop removal sites that are sitting there kind of not being used productively. HARI SREENIVASAN: On this mountaintop in Mingo County. Dennison’s workers are transforming a former mine into a farm that serves local markets. CHRIS FARLEY: We’re planting all this, different types of berries, and pawpaw trees, and we’re going to have a big orchard, different types of stuff to sell, goji berries, blackberries, raspberries, elderberries. HARI SREENIVASAN: James Russell is the farm’s crew chief. JAMES RUSSELL, Crew Chief, Coalfield Development Corps: We have lots of interest with restaurants for our meat and eggs, and our berries also. We have goats, pigs, and chickens, and they give back to the land. And the pigs tear it up. It’s just a good combination of fertilizer when you mix the three together. After a couple of years of working the soil, you can grow anything you want. HARI SREENIVASAN: Crew member Jared Blalock worked for six years in the mine industry. JARED BLALOCK, Former Coal Miner: Running a dozer on the coal pile, taking care of the stacker belt, shoveling, greasing, just your everyday labor. HARI SREENIVASAN: Now he’s refurbishing old buildings for a Coalfield Development project called Restore Appalachia. As part of his employment, Blalock is working toward his associate’s degree in management. He says he’d go back to the mines if a job was available, but worries about the instability of the industry. JARED BLALOCK: I don’t have anything wrong with coal mining. Coal mining is a — it’s a great industry here, but you don’t know. That’s the thing about it. That’s why I’m doing this right now, because I need to take advantage of my opportunity. HARI SREENIVASAN: So far, 23 crew members have completed their degrees and have been placed in full-time jobs; 55 are currently in the program, and 15 are on the waitlist. Chris Farley hopes to use his degree and work experience to start a business of his own. CHRIS FARLEY: I would like to actually start my own restaurants called Homegrown Home Cooking. My little girl, she’s going to help me with the farm. My wife is going to help me. We’re just going to start our own little business. HARI SREENIVASAN: For the PBS NewsHour, I’m Hari Sreenivasan. JOHN YANG: There’s more online from our series Rethinking College, including a look at a Tennessee pilot program that helps ease the financial burden so adults can finish their college degrees. You will find that at PBS.org/NewsHour . The post Job training and community college put coal miners on a new path appeared first on PBS NewsHour .…
JOHN YANG: The days of employees working with one company for their entire career are long gone. In today’s economy, most workers bounce around a lot. That’s true for Carlos Watson, now the CEO of a digital media company. Tonight, he shares his Humble Opinion on the importance of one skill you need wherever you go. CARLOS WATSON, OZY Media: There’s a big push in schools right now to get American kids to learn how to code. The thinking is that good jobs are hard to find, robots may soon take away many blue-collar jobs, at least the ones that haven’t already gone overseas, and that learning how to program computers or even create apps is the perfect idea to protect against this tide. Now, look, while I agree that coding should be a central focus in education over the next decade, I don’t think that alone is going to work without an equal emphasis on teaching the skills that are truly needed to turn the best ideas into money. I’m talking about sales. The most innovative software can amount to little more than a good idea if a coder fails to convince investors to back it. This is even before getting customers to try it and then getting them to buy it. Despite the critical nature of sales, it’s still treated like a dirty word. You know, in fact, when I suggest that people learn how to sell, most people kind of crinkle their noses or quietly look askance, replying: Sales is about tricking people. It’s dishonest. Now, to tell you the truth, once upon a time, I agreed with them. But, today, I realize that sales skills are critical, and, in fact, are only going to become even more so as our work force becomes more fluid and, frankly, more unstable. In this new economy, we’re consultants, service providers, you name it. We have got side hustles. We have got second jobs. Whatever you want to call them, each requires sales in order to flourish. Now, when I started my first business, it was an education company. I didn’t want to sell. But a mentor gave me some really great advice that propelled our flailing start-up into a multimillion-dollar business. He said, Carlos, the only thing that matters is if can you sell. If you expect your good idea to sell itself, you are believing in a fairy tale. After that, I began requiring every staff member to take sales courses, and I mean everyone, from education counselors to members of the finance team, because the truth of the matter is that every job has a sales component. Recruiting top talent? Guess what? You better be able to explain why your company is the best. You want to get a reluctant student to properly prepare for the SAT exam? Well, you’re going to persuade her with a story that connects college to a career and to a broader success. Look, many students are just settling in for the start of school, and I am sure that if you’re a math or a computer science teacher, you have got a number of terrific lessons planned. But I also hope that, in addition to all that greatness, there might be at least a little bit of consideration on helping students attain the sales skills that I think are going to be critical to their success. JOHN YANG: Carlos Watson is also the host of a new program on PBS. Third Rail with OZY premieres tonight at 8:30 Eastern right here on most PBS stations. The post Why everyone should know how to sell appeared first on PBS NewsHour .…
E
Economy – PBS NewsHour
![Economy – PBS NewsHour podcast artwork](https://cdn.player.fm/images/13861/series/RfhExg3Myci0lkbA/32.jpg 32w, https://cdn.player.fm/images/13861/series/RfhExg3Myci0lkbA/64.jpg 64w, https://cdn.player.fm/images/13861/series/RfhExg3Myci0lkbA/128.jpg 128w, https://cdn.player.fm/images/13861/series/RfhExg3Myci0lkbA/256.jpg 256w, https://cdn.player.fm/images/13861/series/RfhExg3Myci0lkbA/512.jpg 512w)
![Economy – PBS NewsHour podcast artwork](/static/images/64pixel.png)
RELATED LINKS 55, unemployed and faking normal: One woman’s story of barely scraping by Are you hanging off a financial cliff? Here’s how to cope Column: Broke baby boomers, it’s time to face reality JUDY WOODRUFF: But first: Earlier this year, our economics correspondent, Paul Solman, profiled Elizabeth White. She was once comfortably middle class, but found herself struggling to make ends meet as she got older. Paul recently checked back in with White and discovered that her story has touched a nerve. It’s part of our series Making Sense, which airs every Thursday. PAUL SOLMAN: Every Sunday afternoon, Elizabeth White heads to Malcolm X Park near her home in Washington, D.C., for a therapy session with a drum circle. ELIZABETH WHITE, Author, “Fifty-Five, Unemployed and Faking Normal”: I can work it all out in that park and just dance. And it’s festive, and it’s free. PAUL SOLMAN: We first met White in January, after she had just self-published a book, “Fifty-Five, Unemployed and Faking Normal.” ELIZABETH WHITE: Everybody is pretending. PAUL SOLMAN: And that’s why you call the book “Faking Normal”? ELIZABETH WHITE: Right, because there’s a lot of pressure to seem like you are doing well. PAUL SOLMAN: In fact, White had long been on the edge of the financial cliff. Despite a career at the World Bank, graduate degrees from Johns Hopkins and Harvard, she’d been unable to find steady work since the Great Recession. She’d once made six figures, but she now struggled to pay the mortgage on her townhouse. But you haven’t been in a situation where you literally couldn’t afford whatever it is, the condo fee, or… ELIZABETH WHITE: Oh, absolutely, I have. I right now have to park outside because I’m in arrears on the condo fee, right now. PAUL SOLMAN: And she’s refinanced to the hilt, taken in a boarder. Well, you haven’t used food stamps. ELIZABETH WHITE: But I have. I have had to. PAUL SOLMAN: White worked scattered freelance gigs, but still had to borrow money from friends, like neighborhood free spirit Elijah, a clothing minimalist. ELIJAH ALEXANDER, Friend: I’m not a things person. How much money do you think I’m spending on my attire, OK? PAUL SOLMAN: White is far from alone, as we learned at what she calls her resilience circle. Deborah Burkholder hadn’t had a full-time job since 2009. DEBORAH BURKHOLDER, Job Seeker: I don’t have enough to cover January bills if nothing changes. It’s hard to predict what will happen the next month, and calculating, how many times do I have to go through this until I’m buried? PAUL SOLMAN: Nine months later, the economy has improved with the weather. Although overall unemployment ticked up in August, it’s at a low 4.4 percent. Still, more than 30 percent of job seekers over age 55 have been out of work for more than half-a-year. No wonder White’s story has resonated in the months since her appearance on the “NewsHour.” ELIZABETH WHITE: Spoke to groups in San Francisco, in Boston, in Memphis. PAUL SOLMAN: So, you have become the voice of faking normal? ELIZABETH WHITE: I’m becoming a voice, for sure. PAUL SOLMAN: White has done a number of paid speaking gigs. She even did a TEDx Talk in July. ELIZABETH WHITE: We live in a world where success is defined by income. When you say that you have money problems, you’re announcing, pretty much, that you’re a loser. When you’re a graduate of Harvard Business School, as I am, you’re some kind of double loser. PAUL SOLMAN: The talk has about 100,000 views already. ELIZABETH WHITE: I’m getting a lot of: Thank you for just bringing this topic up. I thought I was by myself. I get a few e-mails every day of stories of what’s happening to people. PAUL SOLMAN: What is happening to people? ELIZABETH WHITE: People are worried. Someone wrote me that they had to move out of their housing into subsidized housing. They never expected to land there. They had to give up their car. They’re doing jobs that they never expected that they would have to do, dog walking and all of this. PAUL SOLMAN: Have you become more reassured about yourself as you encounter more and more people who have had the same experience? ELIZABETH WHITE: I have become more convinced that I’m doing the work I’m supposed to do. I did a great consultancy since I saw you with Senior Service America helping low-income older adults find work. PAUL SOLMAN: As part of her work with the group, White went to speak to ex-factory workers in rural Martin, Tennessee. ELIZABETH WHITE: The factory had been China, Mexico, outsourced somewhere, and then they were left, at 50, 55, 57, maybe with a high school education, maybe a little bit of college, and they were jettisoned out of the work force. And I got a standing ovation there. And then the great recession hit. Two weeks before that, I was at an event at MIT. These were former high earners, long-term unemployed. And hearing the two conversations close together, they were almost exactly the same. It didn’t matter whether you gave up salmon or catfish. It was the same conversation. PAUL SOLMAN: So, were you surprised when you went to Martin, Tennessee, and saw that factory workers were feeling and talking exactly the same way? ELIZABETH WHITE: I have a very urban appearance. PAUL SOLMAN: Yes, you do. ELIZABETH WHITE: Yes. I have the hair and the diamond nose bolt. I didn’t know kind of how this was. And none of it mattered. None of it mattered. PAUL SOLMAN: Because they had been faking normal too. ELIZABETH WHITE: If faking normal means that you’re not sharing with people candidly what’s happening to you and what you’re afraid of, yes. I had a situation here where I spoke, and a woman jumped up, screaming and crying and running out of the room. And what she said is: You are telling my story. How did you get into my head? How did you know this was happening to me? How did you convey the pain that I’m feeling about where I have landed? I have had men cry. And… PAUL SOLMAN: Really? ELIZABETH WHITE: Absolutely. There’s a man, he told me he had been living in his car, had been living in his car. And that was at MIT. He’d been living in his car. PAUL SOLMAN: This guy was a former high earner living in his car? ELIZABETH WHITE: Yes, living in his car. PAUL SOLMAN: So, where are you financially now? ELIZABETH WHITE: I would say a bit better. OK. So, it’s still feast or famine. It is not the Cinderella story, bow on the end. I know that’s what people want. I don’t think it’s going to be that for really any of us. Where I am is, I can see a pathway forward. I like what I’m doing, a lot. I feel like I am contributing. People like getting that affirmation. I feel like I am creating a really interesting casserole of work. PAUL SOLMAN: And you’re making money by doing speaking engagements, consulting on this very issue? ELIZABETH WHITE: So, it’s a combination. I sell some books. PAUL SOLMAN: Right. ELIZABETH WHITE: OK? I do some speaking. I teach. And then I have one remaining consultancy from before. The cobbling that together is enough to kind of keep me — I’m OK. PAUL SOLMAN: But, according to White’s friend Elijah, whom we bumped into at the park, she has found her purpose. ELIJAH ALEXANDER: At first, it was like, uh, uh, uh, I need help. But then now it’s like she’s got a enough of a footing, and she sees how there are millions like her. She says: Oh, I have got a purpose. I have got to do this. PAUL SOLMAN: Life hasn’t turned out quite as White expected. She scrimps, doesn’t save. But she’s drummed up work that matters. You knew that line was coming, right? Living a rich life on a modest income, and not faking normal anymore. This is economics correspondent Paul Solman, updating from Washington, D.C. The post How coming clean about financial struggle — and counseling others — became a calling appeared first on PBS NewsHour .…
JOHN YANG: On this Labor Day, the national holiday that celebrates the contributions of America’s working men and women, President Trump said tweeted: “We are building our future with American hands, American labor, American iron, aluminum and steel.” Our William Brangham is talk about how President Trump is doing with his pledge to help workers — William. WILLIAM BRANGHAM: That’s right John. As you well know, the president was elected in no small part because he promise to revitalize jobs in America, especially manufacturing jobs. So, for a look at how American labor has been doing in the Trump era, I talked earlier today with Steven Greenhouse. He covered the labor movement for The New York Times for many years, and he’s currently writing a book about its past and future. And I started by asking him how the president, who’s a billionaire real estate developer from Manhattan, had struck such a strong chord with so many blue-collar workers in the election. STEVEN GREENHOUSE, Contributor, The New York Times: My sense is President Trump was very smart in reading workers’ concerns and anxieties. He saw that a lot of workers, especially blue-collar workers in the Midwest, were very concerned about stagnant wages, jobs lost to trade, closed factories. And he talked very directly and viscerally to them, saying, I’m going to do something about it. Hillary is not going to do enough about it. We’re going to bring back the jobs. We’re going to get tough with Mexico and China on trade. And that really resonated with people. WILLIAM BRANGHAM: So, let’s talk a little bit about his record. The president has been talking about jobs a lot. He touts his record. He talks about the Carrier Corporation example. He talks about coal plants, renegotiating trade deals. What has his record been on job creation and helping workers? STEVEN GREENHOUSE: It’s unclear to me that he’s done much concretely to bring back jobs, except he’s been reducing regulations. And I think that has encouraged many companies. We have seen over the past few months an increase in manufacturing jobs. And economists are wondering, why this big increase? You know, manufacturing jobs were increasing in Obama’s last year. They continue to increase. The dollar has dropped a good bit since Donald Trump was elected. That encourages our exports. And I do think that Trump has excited a lot of business executives and the so-called animal spirits are flowing. And they’re thinking, let’s invest. And he also has, you know, in some of the regulations he’s killed, he eliminated, delayed some regulations that help business, but hurt workers. He sought to delay and perhaps kill a regulation that would make overtime pay available to an additional four million workers. He’s delayed regulations that would protect workers against very dangerous silica dust and beryllium. He’s helping Wall Street firms by delaying and perhaps canceling an Obama regulation that would require investment advisers, Wall Street advisers, to act in the best interest of workers and retirees when they’re handling retirement accounts. He’s canceled an Obama administration regulation that requires federal contractors to disclose when they violate wage laws and race discrimination laws and sex discrimination laws. So I think business has been very pleased that he’s eliminating regulations that might make them feel more ready to invest, but on the other hand, some of these moves have really not helped workers. WILLIAM BRANGHAM: As you mentioned, a lot of employers would point to those regulations and say that those are the very things that hinder their ability to create jobs and to grow the economy and to grow the labor pool. STEVEN GREENHOUSE: There is truth that regulations often create disincentives to investment, but remembering this — President Trump ran on the platform of, I’m going to be a big friend of workers, I’m going to help you out. And in virtually every regulation that he’s acted on, he’s acted for business and against workers. And he will say, and American business will say, this is good because it’s helping to create jobs. On the other hand — and President Trump is boasting that, I have created over a million jobs, more than a million jobs have been created since I came into office. But President Obama’s fans, economists will say, but actually the rate of job growth has been slightly slower under Trump, about 170,000 a month since January, than it was in Obama’s last six months. Now, it’s possible with all these regulations removed that job growth will increase in the next six months, a year, but we will see what happens. WILLIAM BRANGHAM: There is a fair amount of polling out there, including a recent poll by Gallup, and indicates that workers, middle-class workers, feel that they are doing better. They are comfortable about the jobs that are available. They don’t think they are going to be outsourced. They argue that they are doing better. Do you think that that optimism is real, and should President Trump get some credit for that? STEVEN GREENHOUSE: I think President Trump should get some credit. I think Obama should get some credit. Remember, we had the worst economic recession since the Great Depression in 2007 until 2009. And the economy has really improved slowly, unevenly since 2009. And, you know, the unemployment rate is down to its lowest point in 16 years. And Donald Trump gets some credit. Obama gets a lot of credit for that. And it’s understandable that workers are feeling pretty good, because, with unemployment so low, finally, finally they’re thinking they have steady jobs. Wages are finally starting to increase, still way too slowly. Wages just increased just by one-tenth of 1 percent last month. They’re up 2.5 percent over the year, slightly more than the inflation rate. And that’s good. But, again, economists are wondering, with the unemployment rate so low, you know, why aren’t wages going up more? When all these employers are saying I’m having a hard time finding people to fill jobs, why aren’t they paying more? Why aren’t wages going up more? WILLIAM BRANGHAM: All right, Steven Greenhouse, chronicler of the labor movement, thank you so much. STEVEN GREENHOUSE: Nice to be here. The post Has Trump been a friend to workers or just good for business? appeared first on PBS NewsHour .…
Καλώς ήλθατε στο Player FM!
Το FM Player σαρώνει τον ιστό για podcasts υψηλής ποιότητας για να απολαύσετε αυτή τη στιγμή. Είναι η καλύτερη εφαρμογή podcast και λειτουργεί σε Android, iPhone και στον ιστό. Εγγραφή για συγχρονισμό συνδρομών σε όλες τις συσκευές.