Speaker 1: You're listening to Comedy Central, from.
Speaker 2: The most trusted journalists at Comedy.
Speaker 3: Central is America's only source for news.
Speaker 1: This is the Daily Show with.
Speaker 4: Your host show Storm.
Speaker 5: Show right, job good, thank you, Oh man, we got
Speaker 5: thank you, Oh god, We've got a great job boy tonight.
Speaker 5: I'm very excited, as you can see, I am. I
Speaker 5: am fully healed or re see. This is what caused
Speaker 5: all the commotion. They glued it back together.
Speaker 1: Where is it? They gluted back together?
Speaker 4: But that's all. That's it. That's what nearly brought.
Speaker 2: An old man down, A tiny puncture wound that all
Speaker 2: the blood in my body went.
Speaker 4: Let's go, we got to help a show to night.
Speaker 2: My guess sociologists and author Matthew Desmond's gonna be going.
Speaker 6: I love him, They love him fresh off his upset
Speaker 6: win as Best Supporting Actor, and the crowd goes well.
Speaker 2: But first, if I can just pick up something from
Speaker 2: the last time that I was out here, I'd made
Speaker 2: a bit of a critique of Elon Muskin and the
Speaker 2: Doge program. Let me, let me reset the scene. I
Speaker 2: am not allowed to have big boy mugs anymore. There
Speaker 2: was there was an actual meeting of the safety Department
Speaker 2: of Paramount and Viacom. That was like, no most ceramics
Speaker 2: for mister Stewart, so they wanted to babyproof.
Speaker 1: So this is anyway. We had some critiques about Douge.
Speaker 2: After the show, Governor Musk tweeted or ext I guess
Speaker 2: that he would like to come on here and talk
Speaker 2: to me as long as the show airs unedited.
Speaker 1: So I thought about it, and after a.
Speaker 2: Prayer full week with my family, well.
Speaker 1: A family family hall pass situation.
Speaker 2: You don't want to know, I mean, you don't want
Speaker 2: to know, and quite frankly, I don't want to know.
Speaker 2: But after thinking about his offer, I thought, you know, hey,
Speaker 2: that's actually how the in studio interviews normally air.
Speaker 1: Is unedited. So sure.
Speaker 4: We'd be delighted.
Speaker 2: As a matter of fact, let me sweeten or on
Speaker 2: Sweeten the pod. The interview can be fifteen minutes, it
Speaker 2: could be an hour, it could.
Speaker 1: Be two hours whatever. I'll be honest, I don't think
Speaker 1: this network.
Speaker 2: Makes any other programming, so we do whatever we want.
Speaker 1: As long as we wrap.
Speaker 2: Before the new season of South Park, which comes out
Speaker 2: like May or June of twenty twenty six.
Speaker 4: So I am game.
Speaker 2: I think it'll be a very interesting conversation. But then
Speaker 2: I checked X again and I saw another tweet from
Speaker 2: Elon because you can't not And he then said, after
Speaker 2: saying I'd like to come on, John Stewart cannot be
Speaker 2: trusted and that I am a propagandist and you give
Speaker 2: me too little credit, and that I am not bipartisan. Again,
Speaker 2: the guy who custom made his own dark Maga hat
Speaker 2: that he wears to opine in the Oval office with
Speaker 2: the president who he spent two hundred and seventy million
Speaker 2: dollars to elect, thinks I'm just two partisan.
Speaker 1: I'm really not sure what.
Speaker 2: He thinks by partisan means, but it's generally not I
Speaker 2: support Donald Trump and also German in these AfD party
Speaker 2: that's not by partisan, that's just the same shit. So
Speaker 2: I guess what I would say is this, Look, Elon,
Speaker 2: I do have some criticisms about DOSE. I support in
Speaker 2: general the idea of efficiency and delivering better services to
Speaker 2: the American public in cheaper and more efficient ways. And
Speaker 2: if you want to come on and talk about it
Speaker 2: on the show, great. If you don't want to, sure,
Speaker 2: but can we just drop the pretense that you won't
Speaker 2: do it because I don't measure up to the standards
Speaker 2: of neutral discourse that you demand and display at all times,
Speaker 2: because quite frankly.
Speaker 1: You know it, I know it bullshit. So let's get
Speaker 1: to the big story.
Speaker 2: Americans are still trying to process the global realignment that
Speaker 2: has occurred following the disastrous Oval Office meeting between the
Speaker 2: President JD. Vance and Vladimir Zelensky. They say, are we
Speaker 2: still America? They say, oh, side a way on, they say,
Speaker 2: it's complicated. The best way that I can explain what
Speaker 2: happened and show Americans how to process this new reality
Speaker 2: was with another shocking turn of events from this weekend.
Speaker 7: On Saturday Night, at the Elimination Chamber, the WWE shock
Speaker 7: the world is John Cena turn heeled, joined the rocks
Speaker 7: and attacked Cody Rhodes.
Speaker 8: Now, if that does not immediately explain to you our
Speaker 8: current geopolitical climate, you must have grown out of watching
Speaker 8: wrestling through the normal course of aging. I, on the
Speaker 8: other hand, understand this in my booze.
Speaker 4: This explains it, folks.
Speaker 2: All of your shock, all of your disappointment, all of
Speaker 2: your anger, it's in there.
Speaker 1: It's in the square circle you see Saturday night. Oh,
Speaker 1: we're doing this.
Speaker 9: Saturday night, Johncina, the good guy of professional wrestling, mister hustle,
Speaker 9: the champ, the man who stood for everything, truth, justice,
Speaker 9: the guy who literally holds the record for the most
Speaker 9: Make a Wish Foundation meetings of all time. People would
Speaker 9: get cancer just to meet John Cina. Last weekend, Sina
Speaker 9: flipped the script and went from being a face a
Speaker 9: good guy, to a heel a bad guy. Now, if
Speaker 9: you don't follow professional wrestling, and I'm guessing if you
Speaker 9: watch this show, you do, God.
Speaker 1: From all right, but let me continue to bore you
Speaker 1: with this metaphor.
Speaker 4: So here's what happened.
Speaker 2: The current WWE champion is won Cody Rhoads.
Speaker 1: Seven people say around.
Speaker 2: Cody Roads is the people's champ unquestioned bravery. He stands
Speaker 2: in for Zelenski in this metaphor. A couple of weeks ago,
Speaker 2: the rock now evil owner of the WWE putin in
Speaker 2: our story, made Cody Rhoads an offer.
Speaker 3: The one thing that I want more than anything in
Speaker 3: this world.
Speaker 1: Is that I want your soul.
Speaker 4: He wants Zolenski.
Speaker 2: But sir, but sir, I am smaller and weaker than you.
Speaker 2: It will take incredible bravery for me to protect my
Speaker 2: soul and the soul of my people. But luckily I
Speaker 2: am not protecting my soul alone, for I have the
Speaker 2: support of the Great Johnsena. So Cody Rhodes Zelenski told
Speaker 2: Vladimir Putin Rock no soul for you, mother, and that's
Speaker 2: when they met in the Oval office. America went to
Speaker 2: hugs Zolensky. But when America looked up, somehow Putin had
Speaker 2: given John c to the International time for its time,
Speaker 2: and rather than repudiate Putin, America smelled.
Speaker 4: What the rock was cooking and threw that boards.
Speaker 2: Tea days America delivered the nutshot They're not shot to
Speaker 2: the hopes and dreams of Ukrainians everywhere. And then, for
Speaker 2: no reason, America jumped on to Lensky and started punching
Speaker 2: in the face as many times as he got.
Speaker 4: To simplistic.
Speaker 2: This is it, am I being too simplic, assigning to
Speaker 2: the delicate art of real politique, a scripted outcome.
Speaker 1: Perhaps a judge for yourself.
Speaker 8: Putting broken twenty five times his own signatship twenty five
Speaker 8: times he broken seys fire.
Speaker 2: Nor you're in no position to dictate what we're gonna feel.
Speaker 4: You're not in a good position.
Speaker 1: You don't have the cards right now, seeing you're gambling
Speaker 1: with World War three. You're gambling with World War three.
Speaker 10: Have you said thank you once the fire meetings we
Speaker 10: gave you through this stupid president, three hundred and fifty
Speaker 10: billion dollars.
Speaker 4: You either gonna make a deal or we're out.
Speaker 1: This is gonna be great television. I will say that.
Speaker 4: It sure wasn't.
Speaker 2: But isn't that what you want from the high stakes
Speaker 2: diplomacy and real life urgency.
Speaker 1: That ending war demands. And you know, even reporters got
Speaker 1: some nutshots in why.
Speaker 11: Don't you wear a suit?
Speaker 4: Oh shit, no you did. Let's do that doesn't oh.
Speaker 2: Z, let's get you're so poor and war torn, you're
Speaker 2: down to one Brooks brother.
Speaker 4: Oh shit, you've you've so war.
Speaker 2: Torn, you've given up the meaningless protocols of business attire.
Speaker 2: If you think I'm pushing this metaphor, look at the
Speaker 2: stunned faces in the crowd at WWE when John Cena
Speaker 2: turned heel. I now present you the equally stunned faces
Speaker 2: of those watching this Oval office pay per view.
Speaker 10: Scott, I've never seen anything like that.
Speaker 1: You've never seen anything like that. Wow, just wow, that
Speaker 1: was something, Caitlin, I want to start with. Look at
Speaker 1: her face. I mean Christian, you broke Christiana and plo.
Speaker 2: The woman wanders unprotected through Taliban control Afghanistan.
Speaker 4: Doesn't give ten minutes of Trump diplomacy.
Speaker 1: She's like, is anyone else?
Speaker 4: Dizzy?
Speaker 1: My A one c is plenty Now.
Speaker 2: Of course, there is one big difference between the WWE
Speaker 2: and the world of politics. In the WWE, they seem
Speaker 2: very clear on who the good guys and who the
Speaker 2: bad guys are. Nobody walked out of the match pretending
Speaker 2: that the guy who got nutshotted was the bad guy.
Speaker 2: There was this attitude of ungratefulness, seeing his smirk, seeing
Speaker 2: him roll his eyes, seeing him refer to JD Vance
Speaker 2: the Vice president as JD.
Speaker 4: He shows up in his equinox chic outfit to the
Speaker 4: dog on.
Speaker 2: President Zelenski was also antagonistic and frankly, he was rude,
Speaker 2: so impertinent, so disrespectful, tone.
Speaker 12: Deaf, going in and fighting back, getting sassy with the president.
Speaker 1: And then he was sassy.
Speaker 4: He was sassy.
Speaker 1: He was a real scallywag.
Speaker 2: You know what I would say if I was there
Speaker 2: in the Oval office with him, might say, you better
Speaker 2: watch your tone, mister, I think it was Churchill who,
Speaker 2: during World War Two was roundly criticized for being a
Speaker 2: bit lippy. Excuse me, mister, will decide where you're going
Speaker 2: to fight them, whether it's on the beaches or not,
Speaker 2: or with him.
Speaker 1: Poor guys z Olenski, his nation was invaded.
Speaker 2: He's against all odds, health off of much bigger army
Speaker 2: for three years, and we're like, would kill you to smile,
Speaker 2: a little more dressed, a little nice to your beautiful country.
Speaker 2: Nobody would know show off what you guys. You know
Speaker 2: what I'm talking about. Maybe some of those rare medals
Speaker 2: have been hearing.
Speaker 4: Some about it.
Speaker 1: But of course, if you criticize Trump's very.
Speaker 2: Clear hostility to Zelenski and very clear appreciation of Putin
Speaker 2: as being suspicious or a repudiation of American values as
Speaker 2: they've been outlined since World War Two, Trump's people quickly
Speaker 2: set up straw men north of Richmond.
Speaker 13: If there are no negotiations, what is the alternative another
Speaker 13: four years of war.
Speaker 1: We're not saying there should be no negotiations. We're just
Speaker 1: surprised at the side you seem to be negotiating for.
Speaker 1: President Trump recognizes the urgent need to end this war
Speaker 1: after three long, bloody years.
Speaker 4: President Zelensky has different aims in mind.
Speaker 2: Yeah, bullshit. I'm pretty sure everybody wants. Everybody wants to end.
Speaker 2: Hitler wanted to end the war, just not the way
Speaker 2: it ended.
Speaker 4: You're pretending that we have.
Speaker 1: No other options.
Speaker 4: Our hearts all break for the suffering and loss and death.
Speaker 4: But you know what would be even worse, World War three.
Speaker 2: Yes, I'm sure your heart in quotation marks is breaking,
Speaker 2: But in your little zero sum formulation you are correct.
Speaker 2: Total capitulation by Ukraine, loss of all their mineral wealth
Speaker 2: and no security guarantees is still better than World War
Speaker 2: three for now. But you know everything sounds better if
Speaker 2: the only other option you're presenting us is world War three.
Speaker 2: You can listen to the Amelia Perez composer freestyle another
Speaker 2: verse at.
Speaker 1: The Oscar or World War threat.
Speaker 4: Eventually you will.
Speaker 1: Agree to hear another verse by Ham.
Speaker 2: These guys are so up Trump's ass they can't even
Speaker 2: admit that this meeting was Russia's wet dream.
Speaker 12: The world is now watching how Trump behaves and acts
Speaker 12: when he's pressed.
Speaker 4: I thought he stood up for America, that we're a
Speaker 4: good people.
Speaker 1: We want to.
Speaker 4: Help you, but we're going to be respected.
Speaker 12: So I think Moscow is probably more afraid of Trump
Speaker 12: than ever.
Speaker 2: Yes, people get terribly afraid when someone viciously takes their side.
Speaker 2: They must be quaking in there. What are Russians wearing
Speaker 2: their feet? I don't is it shoes inside other shoes?
Speaker 2: And then they get very small until the last shoe
Speaker 2: that you take off as a tiny shoe and you
Speaker 2: you're really, you're positive, this has got to be the
Speaker 2: last shoe.
Speaker 1: And then but no, little baby, no.
Speaker 14: You don't.
Speaker 1: You know what Putin must be quaking.
Speaker 2: Let's get the This is the actual Russian state television
Speaker 2: view on Russia's fearfulness.
Speaker 11: The new administration is rapidly changing all foreign policy configurations
Speaker 11: from Union. This largely coincides with our vision.
Speaker 4: America said, do whatever you want. It has nothing to
Speaker 4: do with us.
Speaker 11: It's such a pleasure to watch.
Speaker 4: Yeah, basically he is taking our bread and butter.
Speaker 1: We wanted to sell the Western world into pieces, but
Speaker 1: he decided to saw through it himself.
Speaker 2: Not only are the Russians not fearful, they'reing delighted.
Speaker 1: Do you know how hard it is to delight a Russian?
Speaker 1: There's only two ways.
Speaker 2: To do it, break up the Western democratic order or
Speaker 2: bear on roller states it's the only two ways, or
Speaker 2: social media dash cam death. Three things really look None
Speaker 2: of this is to say Zelenski handled this meeting well.
Speaker 2: Everyone knows by now. Trump's love language is subservience. If
Speaker 2: he calls your wife ugly, you praise him. If he
Speaker 2: calls you widow, you run his state department. And if
Speaker 2: you're a foreign leader who wants to be on good
Speaker 2: terms of America, you got a butter Trump up Lakei's
Speaker 2: Texas toast.
Speaker 1: British PM Kritarmer knows how it's done.
Speaker 15: It is my pleasure to bring from His Majesty the
Speaker 15: King a letter he sends his best wishes. It's an
Speaker 15: invitation for a second state visits.
Speaker 4: This is real special.
Speaker 15: This has never happened before. This is unprecedented, and I
Speaker 15: think that just symbolizes the strength of the relationship between us.
Speaker 15: So this is a very special letter.
Speaker 4: That's how you do it. To Lensky, a letter from
Speaker 4: the year. It's going to work. Seal on it. It
Speaker 4: was brought you by Harry Potter's owl. What a delight
Speaker 4: the King is throwing you a ball.
Speaker 3: You'll be the belle of the ball, and then I'll
Speaker 3: sweep your chimney.
Speaker 2: Zelenski shouldn't have gone in there with Russia hasn't abided
Speaker 2: by any ceasefire agreements, so we can't trust him. Should
Speaker 2: have gone in there with a dessert cart and a
Speaker 2: Kiev hotel opportunity. So this meeting has deeply wounded America's
Speaker 2: alliance with Ukraine as well as the rest of Europe
Speaker 2: and the pun detocracy. It's having a hard time figuring
Speaker 2: out the strategy.
Speaker 14: I worry that the President is actually not interested in
Speaker 14: a deal about Ukraine, and but I don't understand it.
Speaker 1: The question now, Jim, is what happens in Europe? How
Speaker 1: does this make America great again?
Speaker 4: It just does not make any sense, you.
Speaker 1: Poor dumb bastards.
Speaker 2: It makes perfect sense if only you watched professional wrestling.
Speaker 4: Do you get it? It was heill turn. I'll explain
Speaker 4: it again.
Speaker 2: It was a designed to create the alliance Trump always
Speaker 2: wanted in the first place. What's to understand Trump and
Speaker 2: the Republicans like putin better just.
Speaker 4: Listen to putin.
Speaker 11: The radical neoliberalism, destroying traditional values, the obsessive emphasis on race,
Speaker 11: modern cancel culture. It turns into reverse discrimination, of reverse racism.
Speaker 11: But they invented five or six genders, transformers trans you see,
Speaker 11: I do not even understand what it is share toilets
Speaker 11: for boys and girls.
Speaker 2: Cats, maddying dogs, will and grace removed. It sounds like
Speaker 2: Putin is primary and Marjorie Taylor Green from the right,
Speaker 2: a woman who, by the way, gives up the whole
Speaker 2: point of this realignment.
Speaker 1: The Ukrainian government is attacking Christians.
Speaker 4: Russia is not doing that.
Speaker 1: They're not attacking Christianity. As a matter of fact, they
Speaker 1: seem to be protecting it by bombing other Christians.
Speaker 2: So everyone's wondering, why isn't Trump aligning himself with the West.
Speaker 2: In his mind, he is Western civilization, not Europe. To
Speaker 2: most of us, Russia is not that because we and
Speaker 2: historically everyone has used the West to mean Western values.
Speaker 2: Europe represents the expansion of liberties advocated by Great Enlightenment
Speaker 2: thinkers like Locke, Voltaire and Rousseau.
Speaker 1: But to Maga, this is Europe.
Speaker 2: It's gay, super gay. When Maga talks about Western civilization,
Speaker 2: they mean the Knights Templar. Still pretty gay, I gotta say.
Speaker 1: But excitingly so. But that's the thing.
Speaker 2: It's not democracy versus dictatorship or capitalism versus communism anymore.
Speaker 2: It's woke versus unwoke, and Russia is not woke. They're
Speaker 2: very tired, they're commotos. It wasn't decided in a particularly
Speaker 2: volatile meeting on Friday. You got to give credit where
Speaker 2: credit is due to MAGA architect Steve Bannon. They've been
Speaker 2: working on taking out the EU for a while now.
Speaker 1: It's a global revolt, it's a zekeeast.
Speaker 4: We're on the right side of history and the beating
Speaker 4: heart of.
Speaker 1: The globalist project is in Brussels.
Speaker 10: By drive the stake through the vampire, the whole thing
Speaker 10: will start to dissipate.
Speaker 1: We'll call it the movement or the cause or something
Speaker 1: like that. And that's literally when we take over the EU.
Speaker 2: Holy shit, what a concise, centrally planned social engine nearing scheme.
Speaker 2: But here we are the end result of a scripted
Speaker 2: arc that culminates in America betraying its old alliance for
Speaker 2: the lore of a strong man partnership that carves up
Speaker 2: the world's rich bounties and places classic democratic values behind
Speaker 2: transactional convenience.
Speaker 1: So say it with.
Speaker 2: Me, conspiracy theorists by design. It's a new world order.
Speaker 2: So Europe sadly, if I may, when we come back.
Speaker 2: Matthew Desmond's here, don't go away?
Speaker 4: What about the fail show? My guest tonight.
Speaker 2: He's a sociologist at Princeton University and a Pulitzerprise winning
Speaker 2: author of Evicted. His latest book is called Poverty by
Speaker 2: America Does Welcome to the program.
Speaker 1: Matthew Desmond, sir, thanks for being here.
Speaker 2: To be here, let me say this fabulous book, thank you,
Speaker 2: filled with such interesting research and unusual and I think,
Speaker 2: really interesting ideas. I mean, does America require poverty to
Speaker 2: function in the way that we do?
Speaker 1: Is it a requirement of our society? Yeah?
Speaker 14: No, I don't think so.
Speaker 1: No, you know what I mean? That is the system
Speaker 1: we run.
Speaker 2: Do they require in the capitalist system people in poverty
Speaker 2: to function that maximum profit?
Speaker 14: I think a lot of us do benefit from poverty
Speaker 14: in ways we don't realize.
Speaker 13: Right.
Speaker 14: We soak the poor the labor market of the healthy market.
Speaker 14: We continue to have a government that gives the most
Speaker 14: the families that need the least by subsidizing affluent instead
Speaker 14: of fighting poverty. We continue to live in segregated lives.
Speaker 14: A lot of us are connected to that problem, but
Speaker 14: it also means we're connected to the solution. I don't
Speaker 14: think we have to live with all this poverty in America.
Speaker 1: This system can work.
Speaker 2: You say something in the book that blew my mind,
Speaker 2: which is there's a part in there where you talk
Speaker 2: about the tax burden, and if we just collected the
Speaker 2: taxes that were owed, it would account for one point
Speaker 2: something trillion dollars. And your calculation of how we could
Speaker 2: end poverty in this country was how much money.
Speaker 14: So if you take everyone below the poverty line and
Speaker 14: lift them above it, that's about one hundred and seventy
Speaker 14: seven billion dollars a year. And it's a super rough estimate,
Speaker 14: but it gives us sense what we're talking about when
Speaker 14: we're talking about ending poverty, because that's so utterly attainable
Speaker 14: for us. Right that's less than one percent of our GDP.
Speaker 14: So I Steady came out to show that if the
Speaker 14: top one percent of Americans just paid all the taxes
Speaker 14: they owed, just the ones they owed, just the ones
Speaker 14: they owed, and not got a tax at a higher rate,
Speaker 14: just paid what they owed, we would net about one
Speaker 14: hundred and seventy five billion dollars a year, so we
Speaker 14: could just about close the poverty gap.
Speaker 2: Just with and without levying other taxes, just collecting what
Speaker 2: we need, right.
Speaker 14: I mean, so like so woa bah yeah right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because like when you say that, I just go no, right,
Speaker 2: that cannot that can't be.
Speaker 4: But b right, that's insane.
Speaker 1: And it's not the one thing I will say.
Speaker 2: It's not like we don't spend money right on alleviating poverty.
Speaker 1: We did.
Speaker 2: The budget for America was what three point seven trillion
Speaker 2: ten years ago, now it's like seven trillion. We do
Speaker 2: spend the money, are we just spending it inefficiently?
Speaker 14: So I think we have to recognize that the things
Speaker 14: that we are doing to fight poverty now really really matter. Medicaid,
Speaker 14: food stamps, you know, housing assistance. These are life savers,
Speaker 14: right right, and so these things, these programs are lifting
Speaker 14: millions of folks above the poverty line every year. We
Speaker 14: also have to recognize that we have to do more,
Speaker 14: you know, because the problem is getting a lot worse.
Speaker 14: So over the last fifty years, we've had wages stagnate
Speaker 14: for too many workers, We've had housing costs sore. We
Speaker 14: now have the lowest wages some of the lowest wages
Speaker 14: in the industrialized world, in the richest country in the
Speaker 14: history of the world.
Speaker 2: And solebrity levels are higher than almost all other countries
Speaker 2: in the industrial world.
Speaker 14: They're not just higher, like our child poverty rate is
Speaker 14: double what it is in Canada, Germany, South Korea. You
Speaker 14: go to Europe, Europeans have this phrase like American style deprivation.
Speaker 2: So it's I don't even want to know what the
Speaker 2: German word for that is, but ensure it's very long
Speaker 2: and sounds like someone has bronchitis. Right, But it's this
Speaker 2: is the part that shocking. We've done things. I'm going
Speaker 2: to go back to the pandemic that there was the era,
Speaker 2: you know, the rent assistance program and the child tax credits.
Speaker 2: Poverty dropped in the pandemic when people were really suffering
Speaker 2: by what percent.
Speaker 14: So the Third Rescue Plan, the Third Rescue Bill under
Speaker 14: Biden signed it in March, right, we dropped child poverty
Speaker 14: by forty four in six months because of that intervention.
Speaker 2: So we naturally at that point had to end it
Speaker 2: very quickly.
Speaker 1: That program, right, well, a lot of that because we
Speaker 1: were quiet.
Speaker 14: We were quiet, you know, we dropped the victions the
Speaker 14: lowest they've been ever on record. We did the most
Speaker 14: for poor kids we've done since the War on Poverty
Speaker 14: and the Great Society, and there was not a lot
Speaker 14: of us saying this is the new America that we want.
Speaker 14: We weren't writing our congress person, we were talking to
Speaker 14: our neighbor about it. We were quiet, and in our silence,
Speaker 14: like five million more kids got tossed into poverty the
Speaker 14: next year.
Speaker 2: And so I think that this is it a question
Speaker 2: of when we think about we always think like, well,
Speaker 2: for people below the poverty line, there's a ton of
Speaker 2: programs for them. But I'm a little bit above it,
Speaker 2: and my parents are getting older, and my kids are
Speaker 2: going to school, and I'm going to tight squeeze, and
Speaker 2: quite frankly, I don't want any resources that I might
Speaker 2: have to paint. Are there too many people even above
Speaker 2: poverty who are struggling but feel like I'm not getting
Speaker 2: any value on my return for tax dollars? Isn't there
Speaker 2: a little resource guarding? And by the way, not without cause.
Speaker 14: Yeah, there's something to there. But one thing that blew me.
Speaker 14: I think the thing that blew me away writing this
Speaker 14: book is that if you look at everything the government
Speaker 14: does for us, all those poverty programs to float of
Speaker 14: the poorest families, like food stamps, social insurance like Social Security,
Speaker 14: but also tax breaks. And you got to count tax breaks,
Speaker 14: you know, the cost the government money and they put
Speaker 14: money in my pocket. If you add all that up,
Speaker 14: you learn that the average family the bottom twenty percent
Speaker 14: of the income distribution, so are poorest families, they were
Speaker 14: seeing about twenty six thousand dollars a year from the government. Okay,
Speaker 14: so the average family in the top twenty percent are
Speaker 14: richest families. They're receiving about thirty five thousand dollars a
Speaker 14: year from the government.
Speaker 1: There say that again, so.
Speaker 14: This is the true nature of our welfare state. They're
Speaker 14: getting about forty percent more than the poorest families. And
Speaker 14: then we have like the audacity, the shamelessness to look
Speaker 14: at a program that would like reduce child poverty or
Speaker 14: make sure all of us had access to a dentist
Speaker 14: and be like, gosh, how can we afford it?
Speaker 1: Right? You know, here's where they go with that.
Speaker 2: And this is the thing that I would like you
Speaker 2: to talk about, which is what they would say is, oh, yeah,
Speaker 2: but the top ten percent, twenty percent they pay all
Speaker 2: the taxes. I don't think people understand what a regressive
Speaker 2: tax system we really have for people, not just at poverty,
Speaker 2: but working class middle class that comes from sales taxes
Speaker 2: and everything. People pay much more percentage of their income
Speaker 2: at the lower levels, even though it's not federally taxed.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 14: So you know a lot of folks just look at
Speaker 14: that income tax and they'll say the poorer aren't paying taxes.
Speaker 14: But that's like counting calories only by a county what
Speaker 14: you have for breakfast, right.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 14: And so if you're looking at the whole tax structure,
Speaker 14: you see, you know, a lot of the poor, working class,
Speaker 14: middle class folks are paying the same tax levey as
Speaker 14: rich folks. The folks that have the lowest tax burden
Speaker 14: in the country, of course, are richest families. Makes no sense.
Speaker 16: But we're not bad people, no, So what is going
Speaker 16: wrong is that if you were Doge, if you were
Speaker 16: there to say, how could we do this more efficiently
Speaker 16: to get people that are struggling to alleviate that because
Speaker 16: in many other countries they do do that, what would
Speaker 16: you say?
Speaker 14: So I think we got to do three things. We
Speaker 14: got to deepen our investments in fighting poverty. We got
Speaker 14: to get back to those big, bold programs that we
Speaker 14: had in the Great Society. We saw what we could
Speaker 14: do in COVID.
Speaker 1: What were some of those programs that you would.
Speaker 14: So we expanded social security, We created Medicaid and Medicare,
Speaker 14: We expanded educational opportunities. These are deep investments in the
Speaker 14: poorest families in the country. So we need to get
Speaker 14: back to that. We can fund that by fair tax implementation.
Speaker 14: So the Highers Chair a few years ago told Congress
Speaker 14: that we lose a trillion dollars a year, a trillion
Speaker 14: on tax cheating and invasion, A trillion a trillion.
Speaker 2: Yeah, those poor people are getting away with a ton, right,
Speaker 2: a trillion a year, and alleviating poverty would be two
Speaker 2: hundred billion a year.
Speaker 14: What right?
Speaker 2: What is there something in the system of federalism that
Speaker 2: means those dollars to the like if Walmart has a
Speaker 2: five billion or ten billion dollar profit and yet still
Speaker 2: a lot of their workers are on public assistance or
Speaker 2: struggle who might not be below poverty line, but just
Speaker 2: above it, how are we not penalizing them?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 14: I think we need to move back to that question,
Speaker 14: which I think is this like second piece of the puzzle.
Speaker 14: We need to have new ways of empowering the poor.
Speaker 14: We need to find a way to build worker power,
Speaker 14: to expand housing choice, to finally take on all the
Speaker 14: ways they're getting financially soaked by banks and pay day
Speaker 14: lenders in the country. And so this is a way.
Speaker 1: Is that? So is it that poor people need better lobbyists?
Speaker 1: Is that what this is? Like? How does this get done?
Speaker 14: They need better choice, so they're not accepting the best,
Speaker 14: bad option all the time. So if you think of like,
Speaker 14: how were we going to build worker power in this economy?
Speaker 14: So now you've got to go to one Amazon warehouse
Speaker 14: or one Starbucks location at a time. Right, remember when
Speaker 14: we were losing our minds because one Amazon warehouse the
Speaker 14: Staten Island maybe organized a few summers ago, and they're like,
Speaker 14: oh my gosh. You know, but we have no chance
Speaker 14: of organizing all our warehouse workers or barisas like this.
Speaker 14: So we have to have different approaches. So the new
Speaker 14: labor movement is saying, let's organize entire sectors. Let's get
Speaker 14: everyone in food to hospitality. Let's say if they take
Speaker 14: a boat, then that could trigger process with the Secretary
Speaker 14: of Labors, Like, all right, let's bring worker representatives, corporate representatives.
Speaker 14: Let's have something out that covers every single work there
Speaker 14: in that sector. So this is what policy wants call
Speaker 14: sectoral bargaining, and it's a way to organize all those
Speaker 14: kind of warehouse workers, all those barisism and go.
Speaker 2: Is there something too to getting the government to value
Speaker 2: labor again in the way that they value capital? Right,
Speaker 2: capital being taxed that you know, gains that are much lower.
Speaker 2: There's a lot of rules that ease capital, stock buybacks,
Speaker 2: your only you know, have to answer to shareholders. Is
Speaker 2: there a way to get workers in on that, because
Speaker 2: that seems like where the acume elation of wealth seems
Speaker 2: the greatest. How do we plug labor into that stream
Speaker 2: without necessarily killing the stream, but letting it really getting
Speaker 2: them into the flow of it.
Speaker 14: Yeah, why don't we put workers on corporate boards for example?
Speaker 4: You know, easy?
Speaker 14: Easy?
Speaker 4: Why do they fight that?
Speaker 1: And would sectoral bargaining get that done?
Speaker 14: It could move us closer to something more like a capitalism.
Speaker 14: We deserve a capitalism that serves the people, not the
Speaker 14: other way around. And a lot of the times I
Speaker 14: think the ideas we have about growth are just wrong.
Speaker 14: You know, if you rewind the clock in nineteen sixties,
Speaker 14: we had a higher a corporate tax rate about fifty percent,
Speaker 14: About one and three of us were belonging to a union.
Speaker 14: And we are much more productive as an economy than
Speaker 14: we are now, and we're kind of fed this like
Speaker 14: lie that like we got to slash these unions, We
Speaker 14: got to slash this corporate tax break, and we're going
Speaker 14: to get the economic growth and we we win in
Speaker 14: that bargain, and we got the inequality that we didn't
Speaker 14: get the growth.
Speaker 2: But don't you think the financialization of our economy change
Speaker 2: that calculus. You know, we used to think about IBM,
Speaker 2: the blue chip companies. You would invest in them and
Speaker 2: they would have steady growth, and they would give you
Speaker 2: dividends and you would work for them for forty years.
Speaker 1: You know, I was saying, You know, if.
Speaker 2: You were to reasonably watch the news networks, the little
Speaker 2: bug in the corner is the stock market.
Speaker 1: Right. If you go to a hospital, they plug you
Speaker 1: into a machine. It gives you your pulse, your blood pressure.
Speaker 2: You know all that, you would be well within your
Speaker 2: rights to think that is the measure of my health.
Speaker 2: I'm looking at that, when you watch that, you would think, oh,
Speaker 2: that must be the measure of.
Speaker 1: Our economy's health.
Speaker 2: Is there a way to educate the public that that's
Speaker 2: not actually our economy. That's just a tiny fraction that
Speaker 2: goes mostly to I don't know, the top ten percent
Speaker 2: on fifty percent of the wealth in the stock market.
Speaker 2: What other measures would give people a better sense of
Speaker 2: how we're failing?
Speaker 14: Could we have a ticker that's about, you know, the
Speaker 14: number of families went to a food pantry this month
Speaker 14: to eat right, A ticker that's like the number of
Speaker 14: families have lost our like a ticker about the number
Speaker 14: of kids that can't afford a winter coat this winter,
Speaker 14: you know, yeah, and kind of tracking that it's like
Speaker 14: real the people.
Speaker 2: How many people have parents that need elder care, but
Speaker 2: it's squeezing them because their kids are going to cut?
Speaker 1: Like give a sense of that. By the way, I
Speaker 1: reopened that cut just by hitting like that, just by
Speaker 1: doing that.
Speaker 2: I can't even do this anymore? Are these critique it
Speaker 2: now from the left a little bit?
Speaker 1: Are there things that.
Speaker 2: The left advocates for or does that makes this realignment harder?
Speaker 14: I just don't think the left has fully committed to
Speaker 14: poverty abolitionism. You know, you know, we know where our
Speaker 14: local organic cucumber came from. You know, but we don't.
Speaker 4: Wait we do we do wait?
Speaker 1: Is it written on there to hold it under a
Speaker 1: blue light?
Speaker 4: How do we do it?
Speaker 14: Redo?
Speaker 1: All right?
Speaker 14: Reto you? We don't know how much the farmhand got
Speaker 14: paid picking it. You know, if you go to London,
Speaker 14: you go to the independent stores, they have a sticker
Speaker 14: on the door and they say this store pays a
Speaker 14: living wage. Now, our stores, we've got a lot of stickers,
Speaker 14: but we often don't have that one, you know. And
Speaker 14: so I think that more of us have to just commit.
Speaker 2: You're saying we've got to put up poverty has no
Speaker 2: home heter signs.
Speaker 1: I think that.
Speaker 14: I think we. I think the left needs to get
Speaker 14: more serious about economic justice.
Speaker 1: And do you think so?
Speaker 4: I always worried.
Speaker 2: Here's what I always worry about, and I worry about
Speaker 2: this with climate it always comes down to, for some
Speaker 2: reason on the left, you people have to be better people,
Speaker 2: and that'll put pressure on it. I feel like the
Speaker 2: whole point of joining as a society is that is
Speaker 2: that a system can alleviate that. Like I just don't
Speaker 2: know how we get out of it without it coming
Speaker 2: from legislation, I don't know. I mean when you say, like,
Speaker 2: we've got to call our congressman, I'm like, I've been
Speaker 2: in that situation where you call congressmen. It does diddly pooh,
Speaker 2: like they're not even answering, and half the time they
Speaker 2: don't even know the ins and outs of what you're
Speaker 2: talking about. Like, the country's held together by hundreds and
Speaker 2: hundreds of legislative aids that are working tireless, isn't there
Speaker 2: can't we present them? I would love to see you
Speaker 2: lobby in Washington because I feel like you have interesting
Speaker 2: ideas that haven't tried. We're not walking down the same
Speaker 2: tired path. Is that a possibility or no?
Speaker 1: They don't.
Speaker 14: Are they open to that of me going to watch?
Speaker 4: Yes? But people like you, you know, I have to tie.
Speaker 1: Follow you.
Speaker 4: Did they at least ask yep?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 14: For real?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 14: Yeah? But I think you know that we definitely need
Speaker 14: more political movements. We need new legislation, but we also
Speaker 14: need more skin in the game, I think as a country.
Speaker 14: So like, let's think about segregation, right, So segregation is
Speaker 14: upheld by zoning laws, It's upheld by history, but it's
Speaker 14: also upheld like at soccer games, you know where your
Speaker 14: buddy turns in and you're like, you know, you saw
Speaker 14: that building. We're not gonna we're not gonna build that thing. Right,
Speaker 14: it's upheld a little.
Speaker 2: You mean nimbi, Yeah, sort of like we all want it.
Speaker 2: You can adjustice, yeah for those if.
Speaker 4: You wouldn't mind.
Speaker 2: But doesn't that speak to that the systems then have
Speaker 2: to Here's what I would say. We think of poverty
Speaker 2: as a vice, and we think of entitlements as a
Speaker 2: moral hazard for vice. Why don't we view it as investment.
Speaker 2: Why don't we view what a great economic engine for
Speaker 2: this country to take areas that have suffered entrenched poverty
Speaker 2: and rejuvenate them.
Speaker 14: Yeah, in a different way. There's huge investments. So look
Speaker 14: at food stamps, right, Yes, a billion dollars dedicated to
Speaker 14: foodstamps get you one point five billion dollars in our GDP.
Speaker 14: If you look at what it does for kids, the
Speaker 14: long term economic and health benefit for kids, it's a
Speaker 14: huge return on investment. It's about one dollar in foodstams
Speaker 14: get you sixty two dollars coming back to you in
Speaker 14: a society. Meanwhile, right when we cut the corporate tax rate,
Speaker 14: the benefits that we get are a lot less. We
Speaker 14: get a lot less that we're promised often when we're
Speaker 14: doing that. So investing in American people and stabilizing communities
Speaker 14: that need it the most is the best way for
Speaker 14: all of us.
Speaker 1: I got to tell you that at all. That argument
Speaker 1: that to me was the most concise.
Speaker 2: And powerful because and it's one that I really haven't heard,
Speaker 2: which is, you don't understand, like we're not just giving
Speaker 2: people money. We're investing and getting a huge return, and
Speaker 2: all these corporate subsidies are not.
Speaker 1: Getting us a good return.
Speaker 14: Exactly.
Speaker 2: That's fabulous right there. That is anyone watching this, I
Speaker 2: really appreciate this book. If you get a chance, it
Speaker 2: will blurry. It will open your eyes to a system
Speaker 2: that can often be well meaning but not function in
Speaker 2: the manner that it purports to be functioning. And it's
Speaker 2: really a wonderfully accessible journey through that. So I really
Speaker 2: appreciate the book. Be sure to check out Poverty by America.
Speaker 2: Matthew Desmond. We're going to take it to a bread Law.
Speaker 4: I've got to talk for tonight.
Speaker 1: Before we go, we're gonna check in with your host
Speaker 1: for the rest of the week.
Speaker 2: Mister, Michael Coss to Michael Tooker, what do you got for?
Speaker 14: Oh? John Rustler with John, that's.
Speaker 10: The Trump tariffs are about to kick in, and I'm
Speaker 10: worried about my wallet's specifically the money in my wall,
Speaker 10: not my driver's license that's been suspended for years.
Speaker 2: But your correct tariffs on Canada and Mexico are set
Speaker 2: to take effect, I think.
Speaker 10: Tonight exactly, and so that's why I'm stocking up. I
Speaker 10: just bought four thousand pounds of Maryland crab and ten
Speaker 10: thousand cans of Arizona iced tea, so I'm ready.
Speaker 2: Yeah, those are all American products. So shouldn't you have
Speaker 2: bought like Canadian and Mexican products or.
Speaker 10: You know, this might be all that crab and iced
Speaker 10: tea talking, But I don't think I know how tariffs work.
Speaker 1: All right, Michael, cost everybody, It'll all work out here.
Speaker 2: It is.
Speaker 13: Your moment is that everyone knows the history here, the
Speaker 13: back and forth. We understand that. We all understand that.
Speaker 13: But the question now is can we get them to
Speaker 13: a table to negotiate.
Speaker 1: That's our goal.
Speaker 13: Don't do anything to disrupt that, and that's what Zelensky did. Unfortunately,
Speaker 13: is he found every opportunity to try to Ukraine's plain
Speaker 13: on every issue.
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