July 24, 2024 • 26 mins
Protestant minister, social activist, and Yale Divinity School professor, Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II, joins Jon Stewart to explain the misrepresented statistics of poverty in America and his latest book, “White Poverty: How Exposing Myths About Race and Class Can Reconstruct American Democracy.” Also, New York Times global economics correspondent and author of "How the World Ran Out of Everything: Inside the Global Supply Chain," Peter S. Goodman, sits with Michael Kosta to explain American dependence on an unstable supply chain.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
You're listening to Comedy Central.
Speaker 2 (00:03):
Yew Hey there, this is Jaisi Lidik. The Daily Show
is on break this week. I know, I know, but
don't worry. We picked some of our favorite recent moments
from the show in case you missed them. We'll be
back with brand new shows next week, but until then,
enjoy today's episode.
Speaker 3 (00:22):
How what about Nadella show I got tonight. He is
a Protestant minister, social activist, Yale Divinity School professor whose
latest book is called White Poverty. How exposing myths about
race and class can reconstruct American Democracy? Please welcome to
the show. Reverend Doctor William Barber.
Speaker 4 (00:39):
Sir A a pleagub The booty's called white poverty. I'm
holding hell about everything. He's that white poverty. You, sir,
are famously not twhite. Well, so why write white poverty?
Speaker 1 (00:55):
Well?
Speaker 5 (00:55):
Actually, I come from Caucasian Black and tuscarro and descended.
Speaker 1 (01:00):
Oh wow.
Speaker 5 (01:01):
So, and my people are free people in eastern North
Carolina A lot of those community and so in some
ways this book is me, and so to deny any
part of my reality would be to deny myself. But
here's the problem. I'm concerned about the way we measure
poverty in this country is not only a lie, but
(01:22):
I can say on this show it's a damn lie, sir.
Speaker 3 (01:24):
You can do more than that if you are Okay, Okay, okay,
we got plenty more roots room for that.
Speaker 5 (01:30):
I only use the ones that are approved by the Bible.
Speaker 6 (01:32):
Okay.
Speaker 5 (01:33):
So, but we say we use official poverty measure says
that poverty if you make above thirteen thousand dollars a year,
you're not poor. If you make about thirteen thousand dollars
a year, you're not poor.
Speaker 1 (01:46):
You're kind of in the lower lower middle class.
Speaker 3 (01:48):
When was the last time they adjusted.
Speaker 5 (01:50):
Well, it's been since the sixties really in some ways.
And so what happens with that is we marginalize poverty
and then we racialize it. Whenever we have a a
brief discussion about polity, because we're very seldom have it
in the news in political arenas, we put up a
black woman with the on welfare, which racializes and demeans
(02:10):
black people, but then it dismisses tens of millions of
white poor people.
Speaker 3 (02:15):
You right, this sixty sixty.
Speaker 5 (02:17):
Six million of the one hundred and thirty five million
poor and low Watt people in this country. Sixty percent
of black people are poor low well, that's twenty six million,
thirty percent of white but that's sixty six million, forty
million more. This book says we need to face all
of our poor and recognize that we have something what
(02:38):
Desmond because author out of Princeton, calls poverty by America,
not the poverty in America, but the particular kind of
poverty by America that's unnecessary and abolishable because.
Speaker 1 (02:50):
It makes no sense.
Speaker 5 (02:51):
In the richest nation in the world, we have over
one hundred and thirty five million poor, low wage people,
over forty one percent of our population, and over fifty
percent of our children, and it's unnecessary. So white poverty says,
we're not playing the game any.
Speaker 3 (03:05):
Let's not look at this through the prism of race.
Let's look at it through class. And do you think
that that division was a purposeful one?
Speaker 1 (03:13):
I think so.
Speaker 5 (03:13):
And to expand race, you have to deal with race
in America. But what you cannot allow someone to do
for something this serious where two hundred and ninety five
thousand people are dying a year from poverty and low wage,
how many two hunred nine five thousand, eight hundred people
a day are.
Speaker 3 (03:27):
Dying, are dying from what they would consider probably prod.
Speaker 5 (03:31):
Is the fourth leading cause of death in the country,
higher than respiratory disease.
Speaker 3 (03:38):
It even impacts respiratory disease because if you're low wage
and you're living in an area, chances are the pollution
and the toxes probably higher where you lift all of
those things.
Speaker 5 (03:46):
And so here we have something that's the fourth leading
cause of death, eight hundred people a day. When seven
people died from vaping, it was a congressional hearing, it
was presidential level.
Speaker 1 (03:56):
Right.
Speaker 5 (03:57):
Imagine if eight hundred politicians were a day.
Speaker 3 (04:01):
Oh I have well, I can't do that.
Speaker 5 (04:06):
But my point is how everybody would be just up
and our eight hundred middle class.
Speaker 3 (04:15):
One hundred thousand people, that's clearly epidemic.
Speaker 1 (04:17):
Right. You just talked about crime.
Speaker 5 (04:19):
That's a crime that's a former part and especially when
it's unnecessary, it does not happen.
Speaker 3 (04:24):
And entrenched, it seems in a lot of communities. It's
just it's a cloud that never lefts Well.
Speaker 5 (04:31):
The thing about it is John is in every community. See,
that's the point we're making in the book. Whether it's
Appalachia where I met women in West Virginia who have
to sell tacos on Tuesdays, so they have a community
fund to help women deal with their monthly issues. Or
whether it's out in eastern Kentucky where I met black
(04:53):
and white coal miners who watched the minds be taken
over by multinational companies that moved the union rights out
of it, or whether it's in the Delta, it's everywhere.
There's not a counting in this country now where a
person making seven twenty five that's what the minimum wage is.
Federal minium wage is seven to twenty five. It's been
(05:16):
like that for fourteen years. John has been raised for fourteen.
Speaker 3 (05:19):
They're trying to raise the tave in fifteen. I mean,
the fight is everywhere you go. There's a huge fight
about trying to bring it to fifteen. And it's going
to kill all the jobs.
Speaker 5 (05:27):
Which is a lie. Three Nobel Peace Prize economists said
it wouldn't kill jobs. In fact, would put more money
in the economy and it would actually expand jobs.
Speaker 1 (05:37):
But here's the thing. We had.
Speaker 5 (05:39):
Fifteen in a union proposed in twenty twenty eight. Democrats
and every Republican stood against fifty five million people, fifty
five million people who make fifty two million people who
make less than a living wage of fifteen dollars out
Now here's the thing. In sixty three, the March on
Washington called for a raise of the minimum wage to
two dollars, which, index with inflation, would be over fifteen
to day.
Speaker 1 (06:00):
Really yes, and.
Speaker 3 (06:01):
People forget The March on Washington sixty three was titled.
Speaker 5 (06:04):
For jobs and justice, and justice it wasn't just about
black civil rights. It was about a broad, inclusive, just
feel democracy. And so here we are in this reality
and people are hurting everywhere. There's not a county where
you can work a minima's job and afford a basic
two bedroom apartment and waiters and waitresses.
Speaker 1 (06:26):
On minimum minimum wage.
Speaker 3 (06:27):
Not a county in the country.
Speaker 1 (06:28):
Not a county in the country couldn't.
Speaker 3 (06:30):
If you had a minimum wage job. There's not a
county in this country where you could afford it.
Speaker 1 (06:33):
To, not a federal federal noe, you couldn't.
Speaker 3 (06:35):
And this is the working pour.
Speaker 1 (06:37):
This isn't you know.
Speaker 3 (06:37):
I think in the country there's a sense of it's
an entitlement mentality. That's why there's a certain character flaw
that keeps you there. These are people that are working.
Speaker 5 (06:47):
The entitlement is and in the politicians that keep raising
their wages and giving corporations tax breaks, but they won't
help the working people. That's the entitlement rank. So and
we're talking about during COVID. COVID did not exacerbate poverty.
It exposed it. And what we did a study called
(07:10):
the death during COVID, and we found out whether you
were in a poor county in West Virginia or a
poor county in the Delta, poor people died at the
rate three to five times higher during COVID because of
their poverty, not because.
Speaker 1 (07:21):
The germ somehow discriminated. But we did access to get well.
Speaker 5 (07:26):
Three hundred and fifty thousand people died during COVID so far,
one storey said. Study said from the lack of health care.
And if you don't face this job, this is the
point of the book. We have to face this, we
have to look at it. We had fifteen presidential debates
and the last election forty percent of the adult population
(07:46):
in poverty, eight hundred people dying a day. Not one
debate was focused on it. We've not had an Oval
Office discussion.
Speaker 3 (07:55):
I think why don't politicians value what is an incredibly
large population in many different I'm sure in swing states,
So why don't they do? Poor people need better lobbyists.
What is it that can be done to get a
politician to listen?
Speaker 5 (08:13):
Well, I think that what we're saying now is we
just had a study. I asked her to be done
as a part of our movement Waking the Sleeping Giant,
and this is what we found out. That all of
these numbers also tell us that poor, low waste people
now represent thirty percent of the elector in.
Speaker 3 (08:31):
The country, thirty.
Speaker 5 (08:32):
And over forty percent in states where the margin of
victory was less than three percent, and it's Texas where's
less than five percent.
Speaker 1 (08:41):
So what we're.
Speaker 5 (08:42):
Saying to poor and low waste people of every race
is time to mobilize your vote. There's not a state
where if twenty percent of poor, low wage voters that
didn't vote, fifty seven million voted, thirty million didn't then
the last election. But if twenty percent that didn't vote moved,
they could change every election. And in most states Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Florida,
(09:03):
it's less than four percent. So what we're doing is
organizing a massive movement. In fact, on June twenty ninth
in washing DC, there's gonna be a massive poor people,
low wage workers assembler in marl march on DC and
to the polls, saying that poor and low wage people
have to find themselves white, black, brown, Asian Native and
(09:23):
unite around attacking what we call five interlocking injustice systemic racism,
systemic poverty, ecological devastation, denial health care, the war economy,
and the false moder natural religious nationalism. Wow, and John,
you know in our gender, we're saying to Calton, if
you want these votes, bring them in at the top level.
(09:45):
President Biden, bring a group of poor, low wage folks
and religious leaders to the White House.
Speaker 3 (09:49):
If people even listen to them, do they even? What
is the response been when you reach out to our
political class.
Speaker 5 (09:56):
What's the response been, Well, because we've been lied to
so much, you know these at first they said, well,
it's not that big, and then we prove that it's
actually one hundred and thirty five hundred four men, and
then they don't expect that people are going to organize.
You know, in a democracy, you have to engage in agitation, legislation,
(10:17):
litigation and voter participation.
Speaker 1 (10:19):
So what we're saying, the poor and.
Speaker 5 (10:21):
Low waite vote, let's use this power, right, And so
we're having this gathering before the conventions. We're gonna touch
fifteen million poor and lower wage voters with the facts
on where people stay in a non partisan where they
stand on the issues, and say let's mobilize and we because.
Speaker 1 (10:40):
That's the true swing vote.
Speaker 5 (10:41):
So Linda Lake, who's a major poster, says, the truest,
most powerful, biggest swing vote right now is poor and
lower waged people. And you know, John Folk often asked, men,
you and I have talked about this is does our
current society required things be like this?
Speaker 1 (10:57):
This was the real Crux sedition.
Speaker 5 (11:00):
And what this book says is, well, it's kind of
like putting your hand in an electric socket that's connected.
It requires that you get shot because you put your
finger there. You don't have to do it. But if
you keep doing things the way you are doing it,
you're going to get shot. So if you keep paying
less than a living wage, if you keep denying people
(11:21):
health care, if you keep giving greedy, wealthy folk two
trillion dollars tax cuts, but you won't even spend the
money to fully fund public education. If we keep doing
what we're doing, we're going to keep having the level
of poverty that we're having and we don't have to
do it.
Speaker 1 (11:38):
It is actually, I believe.
Speaker 5 (11:40):
Criminal a form of a policy violence to continue down
the road.
Speaker 3 (11:45):
And doesn't it weaken the system as a whole. You know,
you could almost make the case that if the system
is requiring a permanent, entrenched underclass, and it makes itself
ripe for instability. And I'm wondering, is there a way
to change the mindset because the mindset in America is
there is a moucher class. These poor people are mutures
(12:08):
and they're taking resources from me. I work hard, they
get poor people get healthcare, they get food, they get
whatever they need. I don't get it. Is there a
way to change the mentality to view things not as
entitlements but investments, and maybe to get labor not to
be viewed as shareholders. That corporations have to view labor
(12:32):
not as a means to an ends, but as shareholders
in that and cannot change the dynamic.
Speaker 5 (12:39):
It can, but one of the first things that we
believe we have to do, and we talk about Maral
fusion organizing is First of all, we should be examining
every policy, not by the color of a president's hair,
or how many porn stars he touched, or how.
Speaker 1 (12:54):
Or what's the gate of his walk.
Speaker 5 (12:56):
Does the policies you propose do they line up with
a staflishing justice? Do they line up with providing for
the common defense and promoting the general welfare? Do they
line up with our deepest marligious right. Secondly, we must
expose the level of death that's happening, because this is
not benign. Thirdly, we must make sure that folks see
(13:17):
at all that it's not one group of people we've
been lied to so much about. This is an anomaly,
This is just a small grid. We cannot allow this
to be marginalizing itmore. And then we must have massive
organization of poor of every place, every geographic, at every race,
And in doing that we can put poverty and low
wages at the center of our political discourse.
Speaker 1 (13:40):
And then yes, isn't that isn't that America?
Speaker 3 (13:43):
First? Isn't that making America great again? Like if you
hollow out a country, how can you expect it to
be strong? Wouldn't that be the absolute acme of strengthening
a country from the bottom up as opposed to the
top down.
Speaker 1 (13:57):
You would think it would be.
Speaker 5 (13:58):
But if you've got people that are still living when
they first wrote the Constitution and said even poor white
men that didn't own jobs or they didn't own land
couldn't vote. If you have people with that kind of
mentality that this should be an exclusive democracy, that an inclusive.
But listen, the numbers tell us though they're more of us.
(14:19):
The thing is, you can't be lazy in a democracy.
You got to fight like heaven.
Speaker 3 (14:30):
I mean, the count.
Speaker 1 (14:35):
I mean, and what we're trying to show people. The
numbers are now. Listen.
Speaker 5 (14:41):
Wisconsin marginal victory twenty thousand vote number poor low wage
voters didn't vote. Over a million didn't vote. Didn't vote.
Michigan ten thousand votes. The number poor low ways vote
a million, Pennsylvania forty thousand votes determined the president number
poor low wage voted two million, North Carolina one hundred
(15:02):
and sixty thousand over a million. So it's not a
big lift. And the number one reason though we did
a study called Waking the Sleeping Giant, that poor low
waste people didn't vote. Nobody talks to them politicians don't
go in those communities. I've gone in communities and people
literally cry and say red Bober. Nobody comes back here.
(15:23):
And so what I say to them is, we're back
here now, but less mobilized, to make sure they never
forget you again, that they never forget you ever again.
Speaker 6 (15:38):
White poverty abound.
Speaker 7 (15:40):
Now.
Speaker 1 (15:49):
Welcome out to the Daily Show.
Speaker 7 (15:51):
My guest tonight is a global economics correspondent for The
New York Times and author of the new book How
the World Ran out of Everything Inside the Global Supply Chain.
Please welcome Peter Goodman. So, how the world ran out
(16:21):
of everything? During COVID we ran out of toilet paper,
baby formula, computer chips. We had cars that were ready
to run, but no computer chips. What the happened? And
did we fix it?
Speaker 8 (16:36):
We have not fixed it. I'm sorry to say. The
vulnerabilities are still there. What happened was a reveal of
something that had been there for decades. We are dependent
upon this really improvised, ad hoc rickety supply chain.
Speaker 6 (16:50):
It's really a bunch of supply chains.
Speaker 8 (16:52):
We've been devoted to this kind of reckless, ruthless form
of deregulation.
Speaker 6 (16:57):
And during the pandemic.
Speaker 8 (16:58):
Just as we were in our darkest hour of need,
it buckled, and yeah, we ran out a lot of stuff.
Speaker 7 (17:05):
When I was reading your book, I kept asking myself
the same question, which was, why don't we just make
this shit here?
Speaker 1 (17:11):
Yeah?
Speaker 7 (17:12):
Why aren't we making all of the shit here? Well,
but you you answer that, but explain, explain it. Explain
to me again.
Speaker 8 (17:22):
We could make more things here, and there's a movement
to make more things here, and that's helpful. It's in
the margins. But we're not going back to self sufficiency. Look,
if there was no trade, you and me wouldn't be
having this conversation. We'd be out trying to feed our
families with bark or whatever. Right, And you know I'm
not that good at growing food.
Speaker 1 (17:40):
I'm sure you're not either.
Speaker 6 (17:41):
So here we are.
Speaker 8 (17:42):
We're dependent upon a gold I.
Speaker 7 (17:47):
I did lose a tomato in the wind last night
on my rooftop.
Speaker 6 (17:50):
Garden, but good luck with that.
Speaker 8 (17:52):
Yeah, I don't want to try to feed my family
through my own labor. So we have trade, and we've
got a lot of jobs in this country that are
upon a global supply chain. And it's been a consumer
of bonanza we've just done a very poor job cushioning
the people who've lost jobs. We don't need to throw
out globalization, we need to reconfigure it. We need sensible regulations.
(18:13):
We need working people to get more of a piece
of the action so we have a more reliable supply chain.
Speaker 7 (18:17):
You tell the story in the book about one company
that is trying to make these glow in the Dark toys,
even has a contract with Sesames Trade, and he wants
to actually use American manufacturing, but can't find American manufacturers
to do it right.
Speaker 8 (18:36):
I mean, he calls around these are these I follow
this one container from a factory in China to the
west coast of the United States and then across the
continent to Starkville, Mississippi, where his warehouse space. He couldn't
find somebody to make the molds for these products unless
he paid twelve times as much as the price in China.
You try to get somebody to make up kind of
children's pop up book style package for his products, and
(18:57):
he was told, this is just too complicated, go make
this in China.
Speaker 6 (19:00):
It was the path of least resistance.
Speaker 7 (19:02):
You follow this path, this container ship from China all
the way to Mississippi and literally this is this is
the path it takes.
Speaker 1 (19:08):
I mean it is.
Speaker 6 (19:09):
It's a harrowing journey.
Speaker 7 (19:10):
And as an American that buys a lot of stuff, yeah,
I'm going, holy shit, I didn't know that all this happened.
I just pressed click and then it shows up.
Speaker 6 (19:21):
Yeah, well then it worked.
Speaker 1 (19:22):
Yeah yeah.
Speaker 7 (19:22):
Do I do we need to buy less dumb shit?
I know that's like not the most intellectual question. Do
we need to buy less dumb ship?
Speaker 6 (19:31):
It's a legitimate question.
Speaker 8 (19:32):
Look, I rode for three days with a long haul
truck driver from Kansas City to Dallas and back.
Speaker 7 (19:38):
That sounds like my worst nightmare.
Speaker 8 (19:40):
It's everyone's worst nightmare, which is why we don't have
enough truck drivers. And the best part of that moment,
we're somewhere in Oklahoma and this truck driver looks out
the window and he says, people just buy too much
the word you just use. And we could we could
do well thinking more carefully about what we buy and
what we need. But let's face it, like we're going
(20:01):
to keep making stuff, We're going to keep consuming stuff.
The question is are we going to have a more
resilient supply chain or one that's just optimized for basically
big box retailers and investors, because that's what we've had
now for decades.
Speaker 7 (20:14):
I had before reading your book, I had always kind
of seen China as this aggressor that has taken American
jobs and manufacturing. And do you feel that's the case.
Is that an accurate portrayals I think what you painted
the picture so well in here was that it's American
(20:35):
business executives, right, that are saying we can make more money.
It's not the American worker that's saying this, it's the executive.
Speaker 8 (20:42):
Factory jobs moved to China because publicly traded corporations governed
by the imperative to lower their costs and produce lower
priced products, but fattened their margins as well.
Speaker 6 (20:55):
They sent production to China.
Speaker 8 (20:58):
They were encouraged to go there by the investor class,
and it worked out really well for them. And look,
this is an old story, right, Chinese labor was brought
in to build the railroad. Talk about the States, Yeah,
and the Walmart going to the People's Republic of China.
That's just a continuation of the old story of basically
undercutting American labor unions, undercutting American working people. These are decisions,
(21:21):
you know, the hollowing out of our factory towns that
are not made in Beijing. These are decisions made in
boardrooms in New York and Seattle.
Speaker 6 (21:27):
In Congress, It's.
Speaker 7 (21:29):
Not always portrayed that way, right, you know, it's portrayed
as there's China taking our economy.
Speaker 1 (21:35):
Right.
Speaker 7 (21:35):
But what we have a big debate coming up Thursday night.
Trump in correct me if I'm wrong, But Trump puts
some tariffs on China, and Biden has kept a lot of.
Speaker 6 (21:45):
Those, has advanced them, has advanced that.
Speaker 7 (21:48):
What can we expect when this question comes up Thursday night?
Where do they stand on?
Speaker 8 (21:55):
You know, I don't know how much nuance there will
be in that debate, but let's face it, there are.
Speaker 7 (21:58):
Very few things I think, well, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 8 (22:03):
There are not many things that garner agreement in American policies,
but one of them, unfortunately, is the sort of cartoonish
depiction of China as this job killing juggernaut without any
of the details that we've already discussed. I mean, I
think in terms of the differences between these two candidates,
Donald Trump is a threat to the global supply chain.
He's proud to be a threat to the global supply chain.
(22:25):
He likes the photo op of slapping tariffs on steel
and mugging for the cameras with steel workers going back
to Wark. Never mind that there are six to eight
times as many people who go to work at factories
in America that buy steal as there are people who
make steel, so those companies are less competitive.
Speaker 6 (22:42):
Now.
Speaker 8 (22:42):
Biden is also bashing China. This is a bipartisan initiative,
but it's a much more nuanced kind of industrial policy.
It's less about containing China's rise. I mean, Trump is
really about let's have a cold war with China. Biden
is more let's embrace industrial policy. Let's try to make electric.
Speaker 6 (23:03):
Vehicles in the US. These are some significant difference.
Speaker 7 (23:06):
I was in Vermont this weekend performing I eat a
lot of ice cream in my life. I wanted to
go see the Ben and Jerry's ice cream factory where.
Speaker 1 (23:16):
It all started.
Speaker 7 (23:16):
These were two men in nineteen seventy eight who started
making ice cream out of a gas station. And then,
as I kind of dug into it, I was also
reading your book. It's kind of a perfect tie in,
I realized, Oh, they sold the company to Unilever in
year two thousand and all of a sudden, these two
men who really care about keeping things local, who really
cared about social issues. It felt like the big evil
(23:40):
corporation was constantly pushing back against them and was constantly
looking at profit margins. Is there something that I can
feel optimistic about? Is capitalism always just defeat us? And
these two little Ben and Jerryman scoop it's capitalism.
Speaker 8 (23:54):
I mean, you know, the people who benefit from the
status quot would have us believe that regulating in taxiing
and enforcing anti trust laws, we might as well, you know,
be advocating Venezuela style, you know, I mean, it's just nonsensical, right,
Capitalism needs markets, Markets need regulation.
Speaker 6 (24:13):
They can't function with that.
Speaker 8 (24:14):
But in terms of what we can do, you know,
consumers are not going to save us from the vulnerabilities
in the globally comty.
Speaker 7 (24:20):
We're busy dealing with y So I can I can
keep buying plastic shit from my four year old daughter
on Amazon.
Speaker 6 (24:24):
I'm not turning you in. I mean it's gonna take anti.
Speaker 8 (24:28):
Trust enforcement, labor mobilization so that working people get a
piece of the action, so they're less likely to quit
their jobs in the middle of a pandemic. I mean,
you know, Henry Ford, problematic character Newer a thing or
two about making things in the supply chain, you know,
he said explicitly as he raised wages for workers in
twenty fourteen and was called a communist by some. He said,
(24:49):
I just want to make things reliably. Any business that's
premised on low wage labor is inherently unstable.
Speaker 7 (24:55):
Right And that's where we're at right now.
Speaker 8 (24:58):
It feels like normalcy is built on this idea that
huge numbers of people have to do dangerous jobs away
from their families, with little control or understanding about their schedules,
and they just have to suck that up for the
benefit of our sort of just in time, ruthlessly efficient
that turns out not to be so efficient global economy.
Speaker 7 (25:19):
You personally that I can steal from you? What can
I do? What do you do? What any habits of
yours that have changed since researching and writing this?
Speaker 8 (25:27):
Yeah, I mean I try to give my business to
people who are actually in control of their businesses. I mean,
if you're mostly transacting with big companies that are answerable
to Wall Street, then you're ultimately transacting with entities that
are thinking about shareholder interests a bubble. They can't afford
to be kind to their workers necessarily because their competitors aren't.
(25:47):
They can't afford to think about keeping production local, they
can't think about the highest quality ingredients, and they can't
think beyond the next quarter. So certainly local small production.
But again, consumers are not going to say of us
from the vulnerability and the global supply chain. It's going
to take regulation, it's going to take labor mobilization.
Speaker 7 (26:05):
But it helps to know that my fourteen dollars strawberries
at the farmers' market is probably going to better use
than the nine dollars strawberries at the Amazon.
Speaker 6 (26:16):
You need to boltop somewhere else, exactly.
Speaker 7 (26:20):
These are the celebrity prices that I get.
Speaker 6 (26:23):
Look how the world.
Speaker 1 (26:24):
Ran out of?
Speaker 3 (26:24):
Everything is available now, Peter Goodman.
Speaker 8 (26:27):
Everybody explore more shows from the Daily Show podcast universe
by searching The Daily Show wherever.
Speaker 1 (26:33):
You get your podcasts.
Speaker 6 (26:35):
Watch The Daily Show week nights at eleven ten Central
on Comedy Central, and stream full episodes anytime on Paramount
plus Paramount Podcasts
You're listening to Comedy Central.
Speaker 2 (00:03):
Yew Hey there, this is Jaisi Lidik. The Daily Show
is on break this week. I know, I know, but
don't worry. We picked some of our favorite recent moments
from the show in case you missed them. We'll be
back with brand new shows next week, but until then,
enjoy today's episode.
Speaker 3 (00:22):
How what about Nadella show I got tonight. He is
a Protestant minister, social activist, Yale Divinity School professor whose
latest book is called White Poverty. How exposing myths about
race and class can reconstruct American Democracy? Please welcome to
the show. Reverend Doctor William Barber.
Speaker 4 (00:39):
Sir A a pleagub The booty's called white poverty. I'm
holding hell about everything. He's that white poverty. You, sir,
are famously not twhite. Well, so why write white poverty?
Speaker 1 (00:55):
Well?
Speaker 5 (00:55):
Actually, I come from Caucasian Black and tuscarro and descended.
Speaker 1 (01:00):
Oh wow.
Speaker 5 (01:01):
So, and my people are free people in eastern North
Carolina A lot of those community and so in some
ways this book is me, and so to deny any
part of my reality would be to deny myself. But
here's the problem. I'm concerned about the way we measure
poverty in this country is not only a lie, but
(01:22):
I can say on this show it's a damn lie, sir.
Speaker 3 (01:24):
You can do more than that if you are Okay, Okay, okay,
we got plenty more roots room for that.
Speaker 5 (01:30):
I only use the ones that are approved by the Bible.
Speaker 6 (01:32):
Okay.
Speaker 5 (01:33):
So, but we say we use official poverty measure says
that poverty if you make above thirteen thousand dollars a year,
you're not poor. If you make about thirteen thousand dollars
a year, you're not poor.
Speaker 1 (01:46):
You're kind of in the lower lower middle class.
Speaker 3 (01:48):
When was the last time they adjusted.
Speaker 5 (01:50):
Well, it's been since the sixties really in some ways.
And so what happens with that is we marginalize poverty
and then we racialize it. Whenever we have a a
brief discussion about polity, because we're very seldom have it
in the news in political arenas, we put up a
black woman with the on welfare, which racializes and demeans
(02:10):
black people, but then it dismisses tens of millions of
white poor people.
Speaker 3 (02:15):
You right, this sixty sixty.
Speaker 5 (02:17):
Six million of the one hundred and thirty five million
poor and low Watt people in this country. Sixty percent
of black people are poor low well, that's twenty six million,
thirty percent of white but that's sixty six million, forty
million more. This book says we need to face all
of our poor and recognize that we have something what
(02:38):
Desmond because author out of Princeton, calls poverty by America,
not the poverty in America, but the particular kind of
poverty by America that's unnecessary and abolishable because.
Speaker 1 (02:50):
It makes no sense.
Speaker 5 (02:51):
In the richest nation in the world, we have over
one hundred and thirty five million poor, low wage people,
over forty one percent of our population, and over fifty
percent of our children, and it's unnecessary. So white poverty says,
we're not playing the game any.
Speaker 3 (03:05):
Let's not look at this through the prism of race.
Let's look at it through class. And do you think
that that division was a purposeful one?
Speaker 1 (03:13):
I think so.
Speaker 5 (03:13):
And to expand race, you have to deal with race
in America. But what you cannot allow someone to do
for something this serious where two hundred and ninety five
thousand people are dying a year from poverty and low wage,
how many two hunred nine five thousand, eight hundred people
a day are.
Speaker 3 (03:27):
Dying, are dying from what they would consider probably prod.
Speaker 5 (03:31):
Is the fourth leading cause of death in the country,
higher than respiratory disease.
Speaker 3 (03:38):
It even impacts respiratory disease because if you're low wage
and you're living in an area, chances are the pollution
and the toxes probably higher where you lift all of
those things.
Speaker 5 (03:46):
And so here we have something that's the fourth leading
cause of death, eight hundred people a day. When seven
people died from vaping, it was a congressional hearing, it
was presidential level.
Speaker 1 (03:56):
Right.
Speaker 5 (03:57):
Imagine if eight hundred politicians were a day.
Speaker 3 (04:01):
Oh I have well, I can't do that.
Speaker 5 (04:06):
But my point is how everybody would be just up
and our eight hundred middle class.
Speaker 3 (04:15):
One hundred thousand people, that's clearly epidemic.
Speaker 1 (04:17):
Right. You just talked about crime.
Speaker 5 (04:19):
That's a crime that's a former part and especially when
it's unnecessary, it does not happen.
Speaker 3 (04:24):
And entrenched, it seems in a lot of communities. It's
just it's a cloud that never lefts Well.
Speaker 5 (04:31):
The thing about it is John is in every community. See,
that's the point we're making in the book. Whether it's
Appalachia where I met women in West Virginia who have
to sell tacos on Tuesdays, so they have a community
fund to help women deal with their monthly issues. Or
whether it's out in eastern Kentucky where I met black
(04:53):
and white coal miners who watched the minds be taken
over by multinational companies that moved the union rights out
of it, or whether it's in the Delta, it's everywhere.
There's not a counting in this country now where a
person making seven twenty five that's what the minimum wage is.
Federal minium wage is seven to twenty five. It's been
(05:16):
like that for fourteen years. John has been raised for fourteen.
Speaker 3 (05:19):
They're trying to raise the tave in fifteen. I mean,
the fight is everywhere you go. There's a huge fight
about trying to bring it to fifteen. And it's going
to kill all the jobs.
Speaker 5 (05:27):
Which is a lie. Three Nobel Peace Prize economists said
it wouldn't kill jobs. In fact, would put more money
in the economy and it would actually expand jobs.
Speaker 1 (05:37):
But here's the thing. We had.
Speaker 5 (05:39):
Fifteen in a union proposed in twenty twenty eight. Democrats
and every Republican stood against fifty five million people, fifty
five million people who make fifty two million people who
make less than a living wage of fifteen dollars out
Now here's the thing. In sixty three, the March on
Washington called for a raise of the minimum wage to
two dollars, which, index with inflation, would be over fifteen
to day.
Speaker 1 (06:00):
Really yes, and.
Speaker 3 (06:01):
People forget The March on Washington sixty three was titled.
Speaker 5 (06:04):
For jobs and justice, and justice it wasn't just about
black civil rights. It was about a broad, inclusive, just
feel democracy. And so here we are in this reality
and people are hurting everywhere. There's not a county where
you can work a minima's job and afford a basic
two bedroom apartment and waiters and waitresses.
Speaker 1 (06:26):
On minimum minimum wage.
Speaker 3 (06:27):
Not a county in the country.
Speaker 1 (06:28):
Not a county in the country couldn't.
Speaker 3 (06:30):
If you had a minimum wage job. There's not a
county in this country where you could afford it.
Speaker 1 (06:33):
To, not a federal federal noe, you couldn't.
Speaker 3 (06:35):
And this is the working pour.
Speaker 1 (06:37):
This isn't you know.
Speaker 3 (06:37):
I think in the country there's a sense of it's
an entitlement mentality. That's why there's a certain character flaw
that keeps you there. These are people that are working.
Speaker 5 (06:47):
The entitlement is and in the politicians that keep raising
their wages and giving corporations tax breaks, but they won't
help the working people. That's the entitlement rank. So and
we're talking about during COVID. COVID did not exacerbate poverty.
It exposed it. And what we did a study called
(07:10):
the death during COVID, and we found out whether you
were in a poor county in West Virginia or a
poor county in the Delta, poor people died at the
rate three to five times higher during COVID because of
their poverty, not because.
Speaker 1 (07:21):
The germ somehow discriminated. But we did access to get well.
Speaker 5 (07:26):
Three hundred and fifty thousand people died during COVID so far,
one storey said. Study said from the lack of health care.
And if you don't face this job, this is the
point of the book. We have to face this, we
have to look at it. We had fifteen presidential debates
and the last election forty percent of the adult population
(07:46):
in poverty, eight hundred people dying a day. Not one
debate was focused on it. We've not had an Oval
Office discussion.
Speaker 3 (07:55):
I think why don't politicians value what is an incredibly
large population in many different I'm sure in swing states,
So why don't they do? Poor people need better lobbyists.
What is it that can be done to get a
politician to listen?
Speaker 5 (08:13):
Well, I think that what we're saying now is we
just had a study. I asked her to be done
as a part of our movement Waking the Sleeping Giant,
and this is what we found out. That all of
these numbers also tell us that poor, low waste people
now represent thirty percent of the elector in.
Speaker 3 (08:31):
The country, thirty.
Speaker 5 (08:32):
And over forty percent in states where the margin of
victory was less than three percent, and it's Texas where's
less than five percent.
Speaker 1 (08:41):
So what we're.
Speaker 5 (08:42):
Saying to poor and low waste people of every race
is time to mobilize your vote. There's not a state
where if twenty percent of poor, low wage voters that
didn't vote, fifty seven million voted, thirty million didn't then
the last election. But if twenty percent that didn't vote moved,
they could change every election. And in most states Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Florida,
(09:03):
it's less than four percent. So what we're doing is
organizing a massive movement. In fact, on June twenty ninth
in washing DC, there's gonna be a massive poor people,
low wage workers assembler in marl march on DC and
to the polls, saying that poor and low wage people
have to find themselves white, black, brown, Asian Native and
(09:23):
unite around attacking what we call five interlocking injustice systemic racism,
systemic poverty, ecological devastation, denial health care, the war economy,
and the false moder natural religious nationalism. Wow, and John,
you know in our gender, we're saying to Calton, if
you want these votes, bring them in at the top level.
(09:45):
President Biden, bring a group of poor, low wage folks
and religious leaders to the White House.
Speaker 3 (09:49):
If people even listen to them, do they even? What
is the response been when you reach out to our
political class.
Speaker 5 (09:56):
What's the response been, Well, because we've been lied to
so much, you know these at first they said, well,
it's not that big, and then we prove that it's
actually one hundred and thirty five hundred four men, and
then they don't expect that people are going to organize.
You know, in a democracy, you have to engage in agitation, legislation,
(10:17):
litigation and voter participation.
Speaker 1 (10:19):
So what we're saying, the poor and.
Speaker 5 (10:21):
Low waite vote, let's use this power, right, And so
we're having this gathering before the conventions. We're gonna touch
fifteen million poor and lower wage voters with the facts
on where people stay in a non partisan where they
stand on the issues, and say let's mobilize and we because.
Speaker 1 (10:40):
That's the true swing vote.
Speaker 5 (10:41):
So Linda Lake, who's a major poster, says, the truest,
most powerful, biggest swing vote right now is poor and
lower waged people. And you know, John Folk often asked, men,
you and I have talked about this is does our
current society required things be like this?
Speaker 1 (10:57):
This was the real Crux sedition.
Speaker 5 (11:00):
And what this book says is, well, it's kind of
like putting your hand in an electric socket that's connected.
It requires that you get shot because you put your
finger there. You don't have to do it. But if
you keep doing things the way you are doing it,
you're going to get shot. So if you keep paying
less than a living wage, if you keep denying people
(11:21):
health care, if you keep giving greedy, wealthy folk two
trillion dollars tax cuts, but you won't even spend the
money to fully fund public education. If we keep doing
what we're doing, we're going to keep having the level
of poverty that we're having and we don't have to
do it.
Speaker 1 (11:38):
It is actually, I believe.
Speaker 5 (11:40):
Criminal a form of a policy violence to continue down
the road.
Speaker 3 (11:45):
And doesn't it weaken the system as a whole. You know,
you could almost make the case that if the system
is requiring a permanent, entrenched underclass, and it makes itself
ripe for instability. And I'm wondering, is there a way
to change the mindset because the mindset in America is
there is a moucher class. These poor people are mutures
(12:08):
and they're taking resources from me. I work hard, they
get poor people get healthcare, they get food, they get
whatever they need. I don't get it. Is there a
way to change the mentality to view things not as
entitlements but investments, and maybe to get labor not to
be viewed as shareholders. That corporations have to view labor
(12:32):
not as a means to an ends, but as shareholders
in that and cannot change the dynamic.
Speaker 5 (12:39):
It can, but one of the first things that we
believe we have to do, and we talk about Maral
fusion organizing is First of all, we should be examining
every policy, not by the color of a president's hair,
or how many porn stars he touched, or how.
Speaker 1 (12:54):
Or what's the gate of his walk.
Speaker 5 (12:56):
Does the policies you propose do they line up with
a staflishing justice? Do they line up with providing for
the common defense and promoting the general welfare? Do they
line up with our deepest marligious right. Secondly, we must
expose the level of death that's happening, because this is
not benign. Thirdly, we must make sure that folks see
(13:17):
at all that it's not one group of people we've
been lied to so much about. This is an anomaly,
This is just a small grid. We cannot allow this
to be marginalizing itmore. And then we must have massive
organization of poor of every place, every geographic, at every race,
And in doing that we can put poverty and low
wages at the center of our political discourse.
Speaker 1 (13:40):
And then yes, isn't that isn't that America?
Speaker 3 (13:43):
First? Isn't that making America great again? Like if you
hollow out a country, how can you expect it to
be strong? Wouldn't that be the absolute acme of strengthening
a country from the bottom up as opposed to the
top down.
Speaker 1 (13:57):
You would think it would be.
Speaker 5 (13:58):
But if you've got people that are still living when
they first wrote the Constitution and said even poor white
men that didn't own jobs or they didn't own land
couldn't vote. If you have people with that kind of
mentality that this should be an exclusive democracy, that an inclusive.
But listen, the numbers tell us though they're more of us.
(14:19):
The thing is, you can't be lazy in a democracy.
You got to fight like heaven.
Speaker 3 (14:30):
I mean, the count.
Speaker 1 (14:35):
I mean, and what we're trying to show people. The
numbers are now. Listen.
Speaker 5 (14:41):
Wisconsin marginal victory twenty thousand vote number poor low wage
voters didn't vote. Over a million didn't vote. Didn't vote.
Michigan ten thousand votes. The number poor low ways vote
a million, Pennsylvania forty thousand votes determined the president number
poor low wage voted two million, North Carolina one hundred
(15:02):
and sixty thousand over a million. So it's not a
big lift. And the number one reason though we did
a study called Waking the Sleeping Giant, that poor low
waste people didn't vote. Nobody talks to them politicians don't
go in those communities. I've gone in communities and people
literally cry and say red Bober. Nobody comes back here.
(15:23):
And so what I say to them is, we're back
here now, but less mobilized, to make sure they never
forget you again, that they never forget you ever again.
Speaker 6 (15:38):
White poverty abound.
Speaker 7 (15:40):
Now.
Speaker 1 (15:49):
Welcome out to the Daily Show.
Speaker 7 (15:51):
My guest tonight is a global economics correspondent for The
New York Times and author of the new book How
the World Ran out of Everything Inside the Global Supply Chain.
Please welcome Peter Goodman. So, how the world ran out
(16:21):
of everything? During COVID we ran out of toilet paper,
baby formula, computer chips. We had cars that were ready
to run, but no computer chips. What the happened? And
did we fix it?
Speaker 8 (16:36):
We have not fixed it. I'm sorry to say. The
vulnerabilities are still there. What happened was a reveal of
something that had been there for decades. We are dependent
upon this really improvised, ad hoc rickety supply chain.
Speaker 6 (16:50):
It's really a bunch of supply chains.
Speaker 8 (16:52):
We've been devoted to this kind of reckless, ruthless form
of deregulation.
Speaker 6 (16:57):
And during the pandemic.
Speaker 8 (16:58):
Just as we were in our darkest hour of need,
it buckled, and yeah, we ran out a lot of stuff.
Speaker 7 (17:05):
When I was reading your book, I kept asking myself
the same question, which was, why don't we just make
this shit here?
Speaker 1 (17:11):
Yeah?
Speaker 7 (17:12):
Why aren't we making all of the shit here? Well,
but you you answer that, but explain, explain it. Explain
to me again.
Speaker 8 (17:22):
We could make more things here, and there's a movement
to make more things here, and that's helpful. It's in
the margins. But we're not going back to self sufficiency. Look,
if there was no trade, you and me wouldn't be
having this conversation. We'd be out trying to feed our
families with bark or whatever. Right, And you know I'm
not that good at growing food.
Speaker 1 (17:40):
I'm sure you're not either.
Speaker 6 (17:41):
So here we are.
Speaker 8 (17:42):
We're dependent upon a gold I.
Speaker 7 (17:47):
I did lose a tomato in the wind last night
on my rooftop.
Speaker 6 (17:50):
Garden, but good luck with that.
Speaker 8 (17:52):
Yeah, I don't want to try to feed my family
through my own labor. So we have trade, and we've
got a lot of jobs in this country that are
upon a global supply chain. And it's been a consumer
of bonanza we've just done a very poor job cushioning
the people who've lost jobs. We don't need to throw
out globalization, we need to reconfigure it. We need sensible regulations.
(18:13):
We need working people to get more of a piece
of the action so we have a more reliable supply chain.
Speaker 7 (18:17):
You tell the story in the book about one company
that is trying to make these glow in the Dark toys,
even has a contract with Sesames Trade, and he wants
to actually use American manufacturing, but can't find American manufacturers
to do it right.
Speaker 8 (18:36):
I mean, he calls around these are these I follow
this one container from a factory in China to the
west coast of the United States and then across the
continent to Starkville, Mississippi, where his warehouse space. He couldn't
find somebody to make the molds for these products unless
he paid twelve times as much as the price in China.
You try to get somebody to make up kind of
children's pop up book style package for his products, and
(18:57):
he was told, this is just too complicated, go make
this in China.
Speaker 6 (19:00):
It was the path of least resistance.
Speaker 7 (19:02):
You follow this path, this container ship from China all
the way to Mississippi and literally this is this is
the path it takes.
Speaker 1 (19:08):
I mean it is.
Speaker 6 (19:09):
It's a harrowing journey.
Speaker 7 (19:10):
And as an American that buys a lot of stuff, yeah,
I'm going, holy shit, I didn't know that all this happened.
I just pressed click and then it shows up.
Speaker 6 (19:21):
Yeah, well then it worked.
Speaker 1 (19:22):
Yeah yeah.
Speaker 7 (19:22):
Do I do we need to buy less dumb shit?
I know that's like not the most intellectual question. Do
we need to buy less dumb ship?
Speaker 6 (19:31):
It's a legitimate question.
Speaker 8 (19:32):
Look, I rode for three days with a long haul
truck driver from Kansas City to Dallas and back.
Speaker 7 (19:38):
That sounds like my worst nightmare.
Speaker 8 (19:40):
It's everyone's worst nightmare, which is why we don't have
enough truck drivers. And the best part of that moment,
we're somewhere in Oklahoma and this truck driver looks out
the window and he says, people just buy too much
the word you just use. And we could we could
do well thinking more carefully about what we buy and
what we need. But let's face it, like we're going
(20:01):
to keep making stuff, We're going to keep consuming stuff.
The question is are we going to have a more
resilient supply chain or one that's just optimized for basically
big box retailers and investors, because that's what we've had
now for decades.
Speaker 7 (20:14):
I had before reading your book, I had always kind
of seen China as this aggressor that has taken American
jobs and manufacturing. And do you feel that's the case.
Is that an accurate portrayals I think what you painted
the picture so well in here was that it's American
(20:35):
business executives, right, that are saying we can make more money.
It's not the American worker that's saying this, it's the executive.
Speaker 8 (20:42):
Factory jobs moved to China because publicly traded corporations governed
by the imperative to lower their costs and produce lower
priced products, but fattened their margins as well.
Speaker 6 (20:55):
They sent production to China.
Speaker 8 (20:58):
They were encouraged to go there by the investor class,
and it worked out really well for them. And look,
this is an old story, right, Chinese labor was brought
in to build the railroad. Talk about the States, Yeah,
and the Walmart going to the People's Republic of China.
That's just a continuation of the old story of basically
undercutting American labor unions, undercutting American working people. These are decisions,
(21:21):
you know, the hollowing out of our factory towns that
are not made in Beijing. These are decisions made in
boardrooms in New York and Seattle.
Speaker 6 (21:27):
In Congress, It's.
Speaker 7 (21:29):
Not always portrayed that way, right, you know, it's portrayed
as there's China taking our economy.
Speaker 1 (21:35):
Right.
Speaker 7 (21:35):
But what we have a big debate coming up Thursday night.
Trump in correct me if I'm wrong, But Trump puts
some tariffs on China, and Biden has kept a lot of.
Speaker 6 (21:45):
Those, has advanced them, has advanced that.
Speaker 7 (21:48):
What can we expect when this question comes up Thursday night?
Where do they stand on?
Speaker 8 (21:55):
You know, I don't know how much nuance there will
be in that debate, but let's face it, there are.
Speaker 7 (21:58):
Very few things I think, well, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 8 (22:03):
There are not many things that garner agreement in American policies,
but one of them, unfortunately, is the sort of cartoonish
depiction of China as this job killing juggernaut without any
of the details that we've already discussed. I mean, I
think in terms of the differences between these two candidates,
Donald Trump is a threat to the global supply chain.
He's proud to be a threat to the global supply chain.
(22:25):
He likes the photo op of slapping tariffs on steel
and mugging for the cameras with steel workers going back
to Wark. Never mind that there are six to eight
times as many people who go to work at factories
in America that buy steal as there are people who
make steel, so those companies are less competitive.
Speaker 6 (22:42):
Now.
Speaker 8 (22:42):
Biden is also bashing China. This is a bipartisan initiative,
but it's a much more nuanced kind of industrial policy.
It's less about containing China's rise. I mean, Trump is
really about let's have a cold war with China. Biden
is more let's embrace industrial policy. Let's try to make electric.
Speaker 6 (23:03):
Vehicles in the US. These are some significant difference.
Speaker 7 (23:06):
I was in Vermont this weekend performing I eat a
lot of ice cream in my life. I wanted to
go see the Ben and Jerry's ice cream factory where.
Speaker 1 (23:16):
It all started.
Speaker 7 (23:16):
These were two men in nineteen seventy eight who started
making ice cream out of a gas station. And then,
as I kind of dug into it, I was also
reading your book. It's kind of a perfect tie in,
I realized, Oh, they sold the company to Unilever in
year two thousand and all of a sudden, these two
men who really care about keeping things local, who really
cared about social issues. It felt like the big evil
(23:40):
corporation was constantly pushing back against them and was constantly
looking at profit margins. Is there something that I can
feel optimistic about? Is capitalism always just defeat us? And
these two little Ben and Jerryman scoop it's capitalism.
Speaker 8 (23:54):
I mean, you know, the people who benefit from the
status quot would have us believe that regulating in taxiing
and enforcing anti trust laws, we might as well, you know,
be advocating Venezuela style, you know, I mean, it's just nonsensical, right,
Capitalism needs markets, Markets need regulation.
Speaker 6 (24:13):
They can't function with that.
Speaker 8 (24:14):
But in terms of what we can do, you know,
consumers are not going to save us from the vulnerabilities
in the globally comty.
Speaker 7 (24:20):
We're busy dealing with y So I can I can
keep buying plastic shit from my four year old daughter
on Amazon.
Speaker 6 (24:24):
I'm not turning you in. I mean it's gonna take anti.
Speaker 8 (24:28):
Trust enforcement, labor mobilization so that working people get a
piece of the action, so they're less likely to quit
their jobs in the middle of a pandemic. I mean,
you know, Henry Ford, problematic character Newer a thing or
two about making things in the supply chain, you know,
he said explicitly as he raised wages for workers in
twenty fourteen and was called a communist by some. He said,
(24:49):
I just want to make things reliably. Any business that's
premised on low wage labor is inherently unstable.
Speaker 7 (24:55):
Right And that's where we're at right now.
Speaker 8 (24:58):
It feels like normalcy is built on this idea that
huge numbers of people have to do dangerous jobs away
from their families, with little control or understanding about their schedules,
and they just have to suck that up for the
benefit of our sort of just in time, ruthlessly efficient
that turns out not to be so efficient global economy.
Speaker 7 (25:19):
You personally that I can steal from you? What can
I do? What do you do? What any habits of
yours that have changed since researching and writing this?
Speaker 8 (25:27):
Yeah, I mean I try to give my business to
people who are actually in control of their businesses. I mean,
if you're mostly transacting with big companies that are answerable
to Wall Street, then you're ultimately transacting with entities that
are thinking about shareholder interests a bubble. They can't afford
to be kind to their workers necessarily because their competitors aren't.
(25:47):
They can't afford to think about keeping production local, they
can't think about the highest quality ingredients, and they can't
think beyond the next quarter. So certainly local small production.
But again, consumers are not going to say of us
from the vulnerability and the global supply chain. It's going
to take regulation, it's going to take labor mobilization.
Speaker 7 (26:05):
But it helps to know that my fourteen dollars strawberries
at the farmers' market is probably going to better use
than the nine dollars strawberries at the Amazon.
Speaker 6 (26:16):
You need to boltop somewhere else, exactly.
Speaker 7 (26:20):
These are the celebrity prices that I get.
Speaker 6 (26:23):
Look how the world.
Speaker 1 (26:24):
Ran out of?
Speaker 3 (26:24):
Everything is available now, Peter Goodman.
Speaker 8 (26:27):
Everybody explore more shows from the Daily Show podcast universe
by searching The Daily Show wherever.
Speaker 1 (26:33):
You get your podcasts.
Speaker 6 (26:35):
Watch The Daily Show week nights at eleven ten Central
on Comedy Central, and stream full episodes anytime on Paramount
plus Paramount Podcasts
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