Dan Mitchinson: US Correspondent on Trump’s order to shut down Education Department, America’s lowest ever happiness ranking, and how much the astronauts stuck in space earnt.

US President Donald Trump has signed an executive order to dismantle the Department of Education.

It’s been a decades-long goal of the United States to put individual states in charges of running schools.

The Education Department was created in 1979 and cannot be shut down without Congress’ approval, but Trump’s order might have done enough.

US Correspondent Dan Mitchinson talks to Ryan Bridge about why that is, why Americans are less happy than ever, and how much money two astronauts stuck in space earnt.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Dan Mitchison as our US correspondent Dan Grevening. There, Hey,
good to have you. The United States fell to its
lowest happiness ranking, partly due to a rise in the
number of Americans eating their meals alone. This is quite
a sad story.

Speaker 2 (00:16):
Well it is, But you know what, I kind of
enjoy doing that myself, So I don't know why that
would make so many people happy. I guess it just
depends whether or not you're an introvert or an extrovert.
But you're right, I mean, apparently the highest we've ever
come in since this was started back in twenty twelve
was number eleven. Finland is number one. You guys came
in twelve, And I know there's always a competition with
that other country across the ditch, and I hate to

(00:37):
say it, but Australia beat you by one place. This year.
They came in number eleven, and Afghanistan, which I guess
is no surprise, ranked as the unhappiest country in the world.
But you know what, I think, Ryan is kind of interesting.
How they did this was basically they asked one hundred
thousand people in one hundred and forty countries to think
of a ladder, you know, like we go up and

(00:59):
down with the best possible life for them being a
ten and the worst being a zero, and then the
respondents were asked to rate their own current lives on
a scale. But I mean it doesn't seem very scientific.
I mean, we could all be having a great day
when somebody asks us, you know, to rate our life,
or it could be a really sucky day.

Speaker 1 (01:16):
That is a good point. Donald Trump's issould speaking of
psachy day is not a great one if you're in
the Department of Education. He's issued an executive order to
terminate it.

Speaker 2 (01:26):
Well he has. We're going to see how far this
gets because getting rid of the Department of Education entirely
would require an Act of Congress and that would take
some time. So as you can imagine the union that's
representing all these employees and the educators seeing they're outraged.
He has said that the department is basically wasteful. There's
a lot of liberals there. This was created back and

(01:47):
I think it was nineteen seventy nine. So is there
a waste in this department? Well, yeah, you can guarantee
there is. I mean, what does it do a lot? Though?
I mean it provides financial aid programs, a lot of
funding to support elementary and secondary schools over here, and
does a lot of civil rights work. So there's going
to be a continued debate I think, from both the
left and the right on this. Will it happen? Hard
to imagine the department going away completely? But will it

(02:08):
be downsized? Could it be downsized? I think there's a
better possibility of that.

Speaker 1 (02:13):
Yes, Interesting Dan, What about these astronauts. We've heard all
about them coming back to out of space back to Earth,
which is great news. But how much did they did
they earn while they were stuck up there? Do we know?

Speaker 2 (02:25):
Not as much as people thought. They spend two hundred
and eighty six days up there. That's longer than the
six or seven days they were originally supposed to spend.
So people are saying, well, did they get any extra
pay for this? NASA said, I guess they were bombarded
by questions. They don't receive overtime, holiday or weekend pay,
so they get paid for a forty hour work day.
On average, they make about one hundred and fifty two

(02:45):
thousand a year. Now, this is what I found interesting.
Incidental expenses to travel, Now, this is to any location.
This could be from Florida to California. This could be
from Florida to the International Space Station. How much do
you think they get a day for.

Speaker 1 (02:57):
That, well, just for being in space, just.

Speaker 2 (03:01):
Just an incidental expenses for anything they want to want
to spend on. Every day, they get five dollars a day,
So that would give them about fourteen hundred No, it's not,
is it? Fourteen hundred dollars for that entire time they
were up there. So the bottom line is they didn't
come home rich. Hopefully they'll get some kind of bonus

(03:22):
or at least a pat on the back for having
to spend an extra eight months and three weeks longer
than they were supposed to up there.

Speaker 1 (03:29):
A spar sir, Yeah, Dan, thank you very much for that.
Damn mins and now US correspondent. For more from Hither
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