Marketplace - A more equal nation?

Episode Date: November 18, 2024

There are various ways to measure economic inequality. Sure, pandemic-era aid programs helped low-income Americans grow their wealth. And overall, wages have gone up since COVID hit. But did the gap between the wealthiest and poorest shrink? We’ll get into it. Also in this episode: Walmart is expected to report a robust third quarter tomorrow, boosted by e-commerce and affordable prices. Plus, retailers fret over a holiday shopping slowdown and the U.S. dollar grows stronger.

A dollar is a dollar, of course, until you want to exchange it for something else. From American public media, this is Market Class. In Los Angeles, I'm Kai Rizdal. It is Monday today, the 18th of November. Good as always to have you along, everybody. On the foreign exchange markets today, it went like this. One euro will cost you about $1.06. One British pound, $1.27.

One Chinese yuan, about 14 cents. The specifics, honestly, aren't all that important. What you need to know about the currency markets is that the U.S. dollar has, broadly speaking, appreciated about 3% since election day. That is to say, the dollar has gotten stronger, which is interesting because President-elect Trump has promised to weaken the dollar as a way to make American exports more attractive, cheaper, that is, for the world to buy. Thing is, though, that the incoming administration policies might actually do the opposite,

as we're seeing of what Mr. Trump intends. Marketplace's Sabri Benishor gets us going. The dollar is getting stronger because people here and around the world want more dollars. They're buying them, and they want certain want more dollars. They're buying them, and they want certain other currencies less. They're selling those. Paul Ashworth is chief U.S. economist at Capital Economics. So why the interest in U.S. dollars? In general, it is because investors can make more money with dollars. And a few things are screaming that right now. One, and this might sound odd, is inflation. The October inflation data came in

a bit stronger than we were expecting. What happens when inflation sticks around? The Federal Reserve tries to fight it by keeping interest rates high. And what happens when interest rates are high? Investors make more money. So investors want dollars to get in on that. The other thing making dollars look good is that other currencies are looking less good. investors make more money. So investors want dollars to get in on that.

The other thing making dollars look good is that other currencies are looking less good. In Canada, their economy is slowing down a little more. Amarjit Sahota is executive director of Clarity FX. They've been confident in cutting interest rates more aggressively and that's weakened the Canadian dollar. So if your neighbor's grass is a little brown, yours looks a little greener. But one big thing making the dollar look good is the election result. Eric Winograd is chief economist at Alliance Bernstein.

Most of the policies that President-elect Trump has talked about, at least in economic terms, are dollar positive. That is, of course, despite his desire to weaken the dollar, Trump's spending plans are expected to increase the deficit, the government will borrow more and pay more to do it. Investors want dollars to get in on that. And the other dollar growing item is tariffs. So what's the connection between tariffs and the dollar? If you impose tariffs, we will presumably import less. If we are importing fewer goods from foreign countries, we don't

need as much currency from foreign countries to pay for those goods. Demand falls. Those currencies weaken. And that means that the dollar should appreciate as a result. Markets are anticipating all of that. So the dollar has already

started its upward move. In New York, I'm Sabri Beneshor for Marketplace. Wall Street today, not a lot of dollars moving around, little up, little down. We'll have the details when we do the numbers. Not for nothing, but we are 11 days out from Black Friday, the day, perhaps apocryphally, when retailers go into the black for the year.

I mention that because a bunch of big retailers are going to be reporting earnings this week, among them Target, Lowe's, The Gap, and TJ Maxx. Those earnings calls could give us a preview of what's expected as we close on Black Friday and the rest on the holiday shopping season. Marketplace's Kristin Schwab takes stock of where spending is headed and what it might say about how consumers are feeling. The winter holidays are here. Stores already put up decorations, they're blasting holiday music, and it isn't Thanksgiving

yet, but many retailers are offering Black Friday discounts early. Especially last week, they started getting more 50% off a site wide, 60% off. Jessica Ramirez is an analyst at Jane Holly and Associates. She says, usually you'd only see deals like 20 or 30% off right now. The deeper discounts could mean retailers are a bit anxious. Deals are especially good if you're in the market for a winter coat. Weather right now, it's warm. So outerwear, I'm concerned about. Heather Cullen, National Retail Federation, Home Furnishings, USA Home furnishings isn't

expected to be a strong category either, since not many people are buying homes. But as usual, tech will be popular. Same with beauty, an affordable luxury for all ages. Catherine Cullen at the National Retail Federation says this mix shows how people are budgeting. Heather Cullen, National Retail Federation, Home Furnishings, USA Home Furnishings, USA They're thinking about pulling back in other areas, maybe pulling back in dining out. They may be using some options like buy now, pay later. All in all though, this year, Colin expects holiday spending to increase two and a half

to three and a half percent. It's a lot less than the nearly 12 and a half percent increase we saw in 2021, but it is closer to what we saw in 2019. Mari Schor is an analyst at Columbia Threadneedle Investments. I don't know if I would specifically say we're back to 2019, but I feel like in a lot of ways when I look high level, we are back to all the same trends that we discussed before the pandemic. In other words, a consumer who's careful with their wallet,

but is willing to open it up. I'm Kristen Schwab for Marketplace. Walmart is on that list of retailers reporting earnings this week and expectations are that the world's biggest retailer is going to be sharing some good news. Ticker symbol WMT is up almost 60% year-to-date, 6-0%, which puts it on pace for its best year since 1999, when the company was building a bunch of new super stores and making a bigger name for itself in Canada and Mexico. This is Marketplace on Connor Riffle. This is marketplace on Connor Riffle, looking for the secrets of Walmart's success a quarter century on. I found three. The first one says Dia Iyer with SMP Global.

They're the largest grocer in America. Iyer says roughly 60% of Walmart's business is groceries. It's improved its delivery and curbside pickup services, and that's made it an attractive option. And I think that is a lot about their own execution actually, not just sort of a natural need for cheaper groceries. Although in this economy, the price point is a plus too, says Joe Feldman with Telsey Advisory Group.

You know, the consumer has money to spend and has shown resiliency all year, but they've definitely focused on value and basics and getting food on the table. And groceries help Walmart make other sales. Come for the onions, stay for the scarves and iPhone chargers. They're seeing the customer on a regular weekly basis. And so that is different from many others in retail that have fully discretionary assortments.

In other words, you're not going to buy toothpaste at Macy's. The final not-so-secret secret to Walmart's success? A digital package of services that is a worthy rival to Amazon. Shiraz Mian is director of research at Zaks Investment Research. He says the site, the app, the annual membership, all that has brought in customers. As the lower end of the income distribution has struggled, Walmart has been able to more than offset that by attracting higher income households. Walmart's fourth quarter is likely to be strong too. Dia Iyer with S&P Global says the holiday season is shorter than usual

this year, so more people will shop online. Good news for Walmart's growing e-commerce business. I'm Kaylee Wells for Marketplace. says the holiday season is shorter than usual this year, so more people will shop online. Good news for Walmart's growing e-commerce business. I'm Kaylee Wells for Marketplace. This is going to run counter to the perceived wisdom abroad in this country right now, but the data-based fact of the matter is that American Gross Domestic Product, the final value of all goods and services produced in this economy is up nearly 13% over the past four years. And that is adjusted for inflation. So to put it another way, the U.S. economic pie is bigger than it was in 2020. The question, of course, is

how that pie is being divided and who is getting the biggest slices. Marketplace's Matt Levin has that one. Soterios Johnson Most Americans are a lot richer now than they were before COVID. From 2019 to 2022, the last year good data is available. Total household wealth grew 25%. And that rising tide really did lift all boats, including the poorest 20% of US households. Lauren Henry So they had in that three year period, 83% growth, so almost doubling their wealth. It's something that we haven't seen as far back as the data goes. Anna Hernandez Kent is a senior researcher at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. Wealth here is basically all the assets a household owns, a house, stocks and bonds,

savings, minus its debt, mortgages, student loans, credit cards. But it wasn't the fevered post-pandemic housing market or Wall Street that helped poor households, the vast majority of which don't own stocks or homes. Government aid programs like the stimulus checks and enhanced employment benefits, these things disproportionately benefit at lower income families. Wealth grew significantly among Black and Hispanic households and never married women. But since some households had so little to begin with, seven grand or so in net worth for those in the bottom 20%, those big gains did not narrow the divide between rich and poor.

The gap between the wealthy, the top 80%, and the not wealthy, the poor, the bottom 20%, has grown by about $200,000 between 2019 and 2022. Wealth though isn't the only way to measure equality. There's also the first step towards building wealth, wages. Wage inequality generally declined the first few years after the pandemic. That red hot,, low-skilled labor market meant low-skilled wages grew faster than inflation. But Michael Strain with the American Enterprise Institute says that with today's cooling labor market,

We probably will look back at 2024 and say, okay, you know, the reductions in wage inequality kind of petered out. We've done lots of stories about how Americans are disenchanted with this economy, despite all that growth in wages and wealth and a zillion other metrics. And yeah, part of that's inflation. But economist Bruce Meyer at the University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy says inequality may also be throwing off the vibes. A lot of people look to others for how they judge whether or not they're well off. Even when things are getting better in terms of the level of expenditures people can afford at the bottom.

Last year, those at the bottom 10th percentile of American household incomes made 19 grand a year. Those at the top 90th percentile made 235,000. Coming up. When you go there you just see only beavers or sand. There's no trees. Just beavers. Climate change's no trees, just beaches. Climate change does actually change stuff, you know. First though, let's do the numbers. Dow Industrial is down 55 points today, about a tenth percent. The blue chips closed at

43,389. The Nasdaq picked up 111 points, rather, six Six tenths percent finished at 18,791. The S&P 500 gained 23 points, four tenths percent 58.93. Kristen Schwab was just telling us about some of the major retailers reporting before the holiday season. Target rang up two and nine tenths percent today. Gap subtracted three quarters of one percent. Lowe's built up about nine tenths percent. Walmart down two tenths of 1% on the day.

Spirit Airlines dropped 5.6% today. That's after the budget airline filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. The carrier says it will continue to operate and will honor all existing tickets as it moves through that process. Delta, meanwhile, sank 1.3%. JetBlue shrank about 9.5% today.

United dipped 9 tenths percent. Shipmaker Nvidia and Google announced a physics partnership today in quantum computing that is a super fast ish form of computing that far outpaces the speed of semiconductor based technology could still be years away from broad-scale use Nvidia slipped 1.3 percent today Google's parent company Alphabet sped up about 1.6%. You're listening to Marketplace. Understanding personal finance can feel like an impossible task, but it doesn't have to be that way. I'm Janelia Espinal, and on Financially Inclined, I'll guide you through simple money lessons

that will change your financial future. Learn about credit scores, how to avoid scams, and why you need a savings account. Plus, we explore the brain science behind FOMO and what you can do to make smarter money decisions. Listen to Financially Inclined wherever you get your podcasts. Money, money, money.

Kids always have questions about it, and maybe you do too. That's why Million Bazillion, the webby-winning podcast from Marketplace, is here to answer the awkward and sometimes surprising questions your kids have about money. We explain concepts like savings accounts, retirement, and the differences between brand names and non-brand names. Million Bazillion is the place for you and your kids to learn about money together. We help dollars make more sense. Get it? Listen to Million Bazillion wherever you get your podcasts.

This is Marketplace. I'm Kai Rizdal. You're early? 740 in the morning That diesel rumble you might hear in the background is the ferry or on Just pulling into e by and quadrillion. I talked a month or so ago on the program about a reporting trip I took this past summer to the Marshall Islands for our climate podcast how we survive There's a critical army missile test range out there in the Kwajalein Atoll, to be precise.

The main army garrison is on the island of Kwajalein. Almost all of the native Marshallese who work on the base, though, that's a thousand or so people, live on the next island up, Ibai, it's called, and they take a 20-minute ferry ride back and forth. That same ferry that's just dropped us off at the docks at E-Bai. Most of the island, it's just over a mile long, less than a quarter of a mile wide, most of it is housing because about 12,000 people live on it.

It is among the most densely populated islands on the planet. Good morning. Haley? Haley? No, Kate. Good to see you. Aban Arulong, our fixer, is 35, born and raised here. He left for school,

Honolulu, but came back and now works with the city on disaster response. He met us as we got off the ferry and he got us to our first stop, which was meeting with city officials. This is a big green building. And a conference room. Conference rooms in E-Buy are the same as conference rooms in all of the United States. We're sitting down with Hardin Lelland. I'm the city manager. City manager? Yes, basically... You're in charge, right? I mean, I won't tell the mayor, but you're in charge.

Yeah, okay. Hardin was born and raised here on Ibai as well, and he has seen the changes that climate change has brought. Oh, yes. The islands are sinking. Yeah, that's absolutely the truth. Yeah. But we see the changes.

I see, you know, the physical changes that happens to the coral islands, the reefs, islands that we've been living in for the last, you know, 30, 40 years. Some of the islands within these atolls, they're gone. They're not here. I mean, when you go there, you just see only beaches or sand. There's no trees. It's just... just beaches. Do you... and look, I'm asking you to speak for the whole community, but do you feel forgotten out here? Yes. Yeah. We, I mean I'm a descendant of one of the families that migrated from the Mid-Atoll corridor. It was in the 50s, 60s when they started a U.S. government asking if they could lease

these areas. After the Second World War, between 1946 and 1958, the United States conducted 67 nuclear tests in the Marshall Islands, the most famous or infamous of which were in the Bikini Atoll, a bit more than 200 miles from Meibai. Marshallese who lived in or even near that Mid Atoll corridor that Hardin was talking about were forcibly relocated, many of them to the Kwajalein Atoll. And in the decades since, they've been dealing with cancer and birth defects and other chronic health problems. And areas of the ocean which had kept the islands fed for millennia are now contaminated. Do you feel like the United States owes you something? Not you, but the Marshallese?

Yes. Yeah. I mean, in terms of, you know, give us something value. Give us something very valuable that might replace the islands that were here once before. The United States has a compact of free association with the Marshall Islands. It was renewed this year. It covers our lease of Kwajalein and 10 other islands in the Atoll in return for $2.3 billion over 20 years. And Marshallese citizens can live and work in the United States without a visa. The government of the Marshall Islands has laid out its own plan to make their country livable

through the middle of the next century. The National Adaptation Plan, it's called. It estimates the cost to protect the islands and the atolls here at $35 billion. So when you're an old man, when you're 85, and you have grandchildren running around, maybe great grandchildren, what's this place gonna be like for them? To be honest, right now what I'm thinking,

I wanna build this place, you know. I wanna build this place for the generations to come. And I wanna be able to provide better living conditions. We're trying to, you know, make sure this place, you know, survive in the next, yeah, next 20, 30 years, yeah. Are you hopeful? I am very hopeful, yes. Why?

Because it doesn't look good. I think if there's a will, there's a way. We've always had that, you know, can-do attitude, you know, with the culture, you know, with the close knit community that we have, you know, the education that we're getting today, the resources that we know, the friends that we do have, you know, that can provide us the, you know, the resources, the support. And yes. that can provide us the resources, the support. And yes.

While it was developing its national adaptation plan, the government did a survey. The overwhelming majority of Marshallese said they didn't want to leave. So tell us where we're going. What are we doing? We're going for a stroll around Ibai. That's Abban again, our fixer. We load up in his car after our meeting to take a quick tour. Welcome to the slum of the Pacific. Why do you think they call it that?

I don't know, maybe because it looks not that great. We pass densely packed streets, people carrying buckets of water back to their homes. There are kids running around on the side of the road and playing with stray dogs. This whole area right here, this is where when Kingtide came, this was all washed away. There's all sorts of debris near the road, rusted out school bus and abandoned machinery. It's hard to pinpoint exactly what the vibe is like in the car. It's heavy. Grant that I've known you about six and a half minutes, but you seem I can't decide if it's angry or depressed or just I don't know. I think I'm good. Yeah I don't

think I'm angry or depressed. It just saddens me and it's scary to see the sea level rising. It's not looking bright. The ocean is coming quicker than we thought. So I was talking to some of the folks who run that base and work the radars and are responsible for things and I said, you know What are you gonna do climate change is gonna make this place uninhabitable in 40 50 60 years And they said we're gonna fix it. We'll adapt and take care of it Sounds like you think the United States is kidding itself. Yeah

And um, sir, it's not 40 to 50 to 60 years. It's within the 15 to 20 years. Like, there's the ocean right there. We didn't plan to turn the microphone on our fixture. We paid Aban for his time, and paying sources isn't something that Marketplace does. But what he had to say once we started talking is critical to this story, because he sits at the intersection of a gut-wrenching

and legitimately existential reality. Help Ibai and its people fight to stay here, or help his community get out before it's too late. Aban is, as you can hear, not as positive as the older generation, like city manager Hardin Lelen. Like you was hearing from them earlier, they're like, oh, they still see themselves here in the next 20 years. I don't.

That older generation like Hardin want to build the Ibai up, literally higher seawalls, elevated roads and buildings. Aban says money would be better used to come up with an exit strategy. We're already on a mass migration There's there's More Marshallese in the states than in the Marshall Islands I don't know if you're in the room when I was talking to Hardin, but I asked him that same question You know, do you think the United States owes the Marshallese people something? they owe us more than our lives.

Like the nuclear testing, 67 bombs, a thousand times greater than Hiroshima and not getting our justice. Yeah, they owe us. They owe us big. There is radioactive debris from those nuclear tests that's stored in the Marshall Islands. And while the Department of Energy says the risks of a leak are low, the thing we know about climate change is that risks change and threats multiply really quickly.

We spent all in all a week in the Marshall Islands reporting on climate change and the American military. And you can check out the rest of our series, stories of climate change and national security from Alaska to San Diego and Washington, DC. Wherever you get your podcasts, just search for how we survive. This final note on the way out today in which one is reminded yet again that credit scores really matter. It's data from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York that shows applications for all kinds of credit, but especially car loans and mortgage refinancing have been rejected this year at

a rate higher than it's been in more than a decade. 21% rejection rate this year, 17.5% before the pandemic. And said the New York Fed, if your credit score is below 680, you are especially likely to run into loan trouble. Our daily production team includes Andy Corbin, Nicholas Guillaume, Elise Hassan, Maria Hollenhorst,

Sarah Leeson, Sean McHenry, and Sophia Terencio. I'm Kai Rizdal. We will see you tomorrow, everybody. This is APM. Understanding personal finance can feel like an impossible task, but it doesn't have to be that way. I'm Janelia Espinal, and on Financially Inclined, I'll guide you through simple money lessons that will change your financial future. Learn about credit scores, how to avoid scams, and why you need a savings account. Plus, we

explore the brain science behind FOMO and what you can do to make smarter money decisions. Listen to Financially Inclined wherever you get your podcasts.