The Young Turks - Money Matters

Episode Date: June 22, 2022

Staggering Inflation Exposes The FAILURES Of The American Government | Elizabeth Warren Grills Fed Chairman On How We Can Fix Inflation | Biden Appoints Corporate Goon That Wants To Destroy The Social Security System | Disgusting Uvalde Cops Prevented Their Colleague From Saving His OWN Wife | STUDY: There’s Major Disconnects Between Journalists & The American Public Host: Ana Kasparian *** The largest online progressive news show in the world. Hosted by Cenk Uygur and Ana Kasparian. LIVE weekdays 6-8 pm ET. Help support our mission and get perks. Membership protects TYT's independence from corporate ownership and allows us to provide free live shows that speak truth to power for people around the world. See Perks: ▶ https://www.youtube.com/TheYoungTurks/join SUBSCRIBE on YOUTUBE: ☞ http://www.youtube.com/subscription_center?add_user=theyoungturks FACEBOOK: ☞ http://www.facebook.com/TheYoungTurks TWITTER: ☞ http://www.twitter.com/TheYoungTurks INSTAGRAM: ☞ http://www.instagram.com/TheYoungTurks TWITCH: ☞ http://www.twitch.com/tyt 👕 Merch: http://shoptyt.com ❤ Donate: http://www.tyt.com/go 🔗 Website: https://www.tyt.com 📱App: http://www.tyt.com/app 📬 Newsletters: https://www.tyt.com/newsletters/ If you want to watch more videos from TYT, consider subscribing to other channels in our network: The Damage Report ▶ https://www.youtube.com/thedamagereport Indisputable with Dr. Rashad Richey ▶ https://www.youtube.com/indisputabletyt Watchlist with Jayar Jackson ▶ https://www.youtube.com/watchlisttyt TYT Sports ▶ https://www.youtube.com/tytsports The Conversation ▶ https://www.youtube.com/tytconversation Rebel HQ ▶ https://www.youtube.com/rebelhq TYT Investigates ▶ https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCwNJt9PYyN1uyw2XhNIQMMA #TYT #TheYoungTurks #BreakingNews Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You're listening to The Young Turks, the online news show. Make sure to follow and rate our show with not one, not two, not three, not four, but five stars. You're awesome. Thank you. Welcome to TYT, I'm your host, Anna Kasparean, and we've got some spicy takes today. In fact, one of my favorite stories is in the second hour of the show where CNBC cremuchin and bombastic figure, of course, Jim Kramer, decided to wag his fingers over young people buying margaritas instead of investing in the stock market, which, by the way, is currently crashing.

But we're going to get to that story, and to be quite honest, it's a very economics, heavy program today, which I'm very excited about. It's kind of nice to move away from endless stories about ludicics in Congress to talk about what's happening to our economy, what the reality is in regard to inflation, and what is likely to come for ordinary working Americans as we enter a recession. Now, before we get to any of that, I do want to encourage you to like and share the stream if you're watching us on YouTube or you can become a member by clicking on that join button. You can also go to tyt.com slash join to become a member. You'll have access to our archives, meaning if you don't catch the show live, you can watch it whenever you want. You also get exclusive content, including our daily bonus episode, which I'm looking

forward to today with John Iderola. And you also get to help support TYT and keep us sustainable and free from any corporate influence, which is my favorite way to be. So thank you so much for those who have already supported us. I'm looking forward to hearing from you guys in our member chat and our super chats. Without further ado, let's get to Larry Summers. Larry Summers has been ringing the alarm over inflation for quite some time now. And to be quite frank, he is not the most articulate when it comes to expressing his views on the economy.

I disagree with him on many issues pertaining to the economy. But one of the things that he said recently that was clunky to say the least was that look, in order to combat inflation, we just need to increase unemployment. Now keep in mind, this is after the American people heard over and over again that their unemployment benefits needed to be taken away from them prematurely to essentially make them so desperate that they'd be forced back into the job market. But now all of a sudden, you're hearing calls for a higher unemployment rate in order to tackle inflation. So how does this all work? Well, first let's get to his statements, and then I'll break it

down for you. So he says during a speech in London, we need five years of unemployment above 5% to contain inflation. In other words, we need two years of 7.5% unemployment, or five years of 6% unemployment, or one year of 10% unemployment, there are numbers that are remarkably discouraging relative to the Federal Reserve view. So the federal reserve is really key here, right? Because what he is specifically talking about is how the economy, it's hot. The economy is too, too hot. Too many ordinary people have too much cash in their pockets.

That's really like the thought process that this man is going through, completely ignoring the fact that Americans are being price gouged by corporations that are making record profits. But let's put that aside for now. His argument is, listen, there's limited supply, there's too much demand. and what we need is for the Federal Reserve to intervene and lower the demand, meaning lower the purchasing power of ordinary people. And a good way of doing that, of course, is unemployment. Now, it's really unclear if he's calling for companies to just fire workers,

or if he is arguing that this will be the inevitable outcome of the Federal Reserve increasing interest rates. Even though I'm unsure of what he specifically means, let's be clear that the Federal Reserve raising interest rates absolutely will increase unemployment. And I'll explain how in just a moment. The rest of his comment, the gap between 7.5% unemployment for two years and 4.1% unemployment for one year is immense. Is our central bank prepared to do what is necessary to stabilize inflation if something like what I've estimated is necessary?

So I think we get a little more clarity there where he's essentially arguing, look, we need the Federal Reserve to increase interest rates and to do so aggressively. And to be sure, the Federal Reserve has increased interest rates. And I think that that is the right way to go. And I'll explain why, because it does have a downside for ordinary working Americans. But if we actually had a Congress, if we had a government, rather than this unelectable, group of people in the Federal Reserve making decisions about how to make people whole in an economic downturn. We would be in much better shape. But the Federal Reserve engaging in

incredibly low interest rates, essentially easy money for corporations, for banks, for private equity firms, that has led to inflation specifically of assets. So when you look at the stock market, we have had an incredibly long run of the stock market just doing really well. There was a little bit of a downturn, not a little bit. There was a crash in the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic. But what did the Federal Reserve do? They came in and they used a monetary policy known as quantitative easing, something I've talked about on the show before, where they essentially buy stocks, bonds, assets to provide liquidity for these corporations. corporations for these banks. Essentially, it's easy money for these corporations, for these banks,

for these companies. And what did they do with that money? What is the thinking behind it? Well, you give them more liquidity. And the thought is the economy will keep chugging along, chugging along, chugging along. What ended up happening with that money was the wealthy took it and they invested in themselves. And they got even richer. So when you see inflation in our housing market, yes, it is partly caused by the low inventory of homes available for ordinary Americans to buy. And then that has a domino effect. It impacts the rental market because there's an increased demand for rentals from individuals who can't afford to buy homes. Private equity firms took the money from the Federal Reserve and they bought up entire

neighborhoods of homes at a time when we're having a housing crisis because of limited inventory. So raising interest rates, I think is absolutely necessary. You also had the issue of corporations taking the easy money and doing corporate stock buybacks, record corporate stock buybacks, thus artificially inflating the value of shares for their company in the stock market. Okay. So there is a bubble everywhere, right? You see a bubble in the housing market.

It's different from the bubble we experienced in 2008. There is a bubble, you know, artificially inflated stock values in our stock market. And eventually the market is going to have to correct itself. You can't continue doing this because if you just allow the economy to chug along, not based on the fundamentals of these companies and how they're performing, but rather the manipulation of money, eventually this House of Cards will come crashing down. But there is a downside for ordinary Americans. And I want to talk about that because that is the, in this system, ordinary Americans can't win.

And part of the problem is Congress deciding to hand over these responsibilities to the Federal Reserve so they don't have to do their jobs. They don't have to make difficult decisions about regulations, like let's say banning companies from doing corporate stock buybacks or putting regulations in place that would prevent private equity firms from. snatching up available homes in the real estate market. They are unwilling to do that hard work. So instead, they turn it over to the Federal Reserve. And the Federal Reserve has very, very limited tools in its toolbox, if you will, right? So they can do very little when it comes to inflation. And so I want to go to this next video because Jerome Powell explains exactly why he is increasing interest rates.

And I'll talk about the impact it will have on unemployment in America. Let's watch. Chair Powell, you said last week that interest rate increases, quote, moderate demand. Can you just explain a little more about what that means? Sure. So we think about interest rate increases as affecting financial conditions and then the economy through three broad channels, the first of which is introsensitive spending. So that's durable goods and automobiles and things like that.

So interest rates go up, people's demand as a result of higher interest rates will moderate or decline so that supply and demand can get into better balance. The second channel is just asset prices generally. Interest rates as they go up will cause asset prices to moderate across the economy and people spend a little bit less out of their lower level of wealth. So again, the whole point here is we want to limit. the amount of income or the demand for products because the economy is too hot. And that, of course, is overwhelmingly going to impact normal working people, okay? Average working people. So to give you those details since March, when the Fed first started raising interest rates with a modest 25 to 50 basis point target range, the Dow has fallen 12%.

The SNP has fallen 16% and the NASDAQ has fallen 20%. Part of the reason why is because that house of card starts to come crashing down once corporations don't have access to that easy money thanks to the Fed's monetary policy of providing that easy money. But what tends to happen to companies when, remember, they have a fiduciary responsibility to return or provide a return of investment to their shareholders. That's the whole point. That's how this market system works, right? So what are they going to end up doing? Well, they're probably going to end up cutting jobs so they can maximize profits. Or if you have less ordinary people being able to buy things within the economy, there's going to be less demand. And some companies might even go under. And there might be unemployment as a result of that. So at this point, there seems to be a consensus that we are entering a recession. Okay? So the question is,

If you do have the Federal Reserve raising interest rates, and it will have a negative impact on ordinary workers, what would the solution be? A solution that would adjust the artificial values that we see in the stock market that would help with the housing crisis that we have now without hurting ordinary Americans. Well, I'm worried that the ship has kind of sailed, right? Because there are robust social safety nets in other countries. So when you enter a recession, there's something in place to prevent people from being homeless, from suffering, from not being able to feed their families. There's something for them to fall back on. In the United States, we don't have that.

And that is a huge problem. We should have had a system in place that in the very least regulated the housing market to make sure that these goons weren't buying up the limited inventory of homes to then become, you know, to be monopolized slum lords in this country. Ship has sailed on that, okay? The Fed's monetary policy was disastrous. So Larry Summers is right about that, as much as I hate to admit it. I disagree with him on a lot of things.

Easy money is not good for the economy because it overwhelmingly benefits the rich, and it increases the gap in wealth between the rich and the poor, okay? And you can see how that exploded after the 2008 economic collapse when the Federal Reserve really engaged in quantitative easing. But Summers repeated his prior calls that the Fed's task of tempering price gains is similar in scale to that of former Chair Paul Volker, who had to engineer a deep recession and double-digit unemployment 40 years ago to get inflation under control. When the Fed pushed interest rates to double digit levels in the early 1980s, in an effort to bring down rapid inflation, it set off brutal back-to-back recessions that pushed the unemployment rate to nearly 11%. Look, we're talking about tens of millions of Americans who will lose their livelihoods as a result of this. And we have no social safety net in place. And I mean, it's hard to point to the specific issue here because it's just the failure.

of our feckless elected lawmakers who refuse to pursue the right regulations in the very least, but also decided to withdraw from their own duties and have unelected people make decisions about interest rates as if that is the only thing that would help keep the economy healthy. The Fed has done the exact opposite of that. So it's not just a question of where we are in this very moment, it's a question of whether or not we're going to fully reform a system that always puts ordinary people at a massive disadvantage. That is what we're experiencing right now. Larry Summers just thinks, well, this is what the system calls for.

Yeah, there's pain and suffering for ordinary people, tens of millions of working Americans, but this is how the system works, nothing we can do about it, except there is. The system doesn't have to work this way. I'm not in favor of the rich having access to easy money, which screws us over further. So I, again, agree with what the Federal Reserve is doing. But there should be a lot more done, including, by the way, the Biden administration using the Wars Power Act to, not the Wars Power Act, but essentially using its power to unilaterally ramp up production and manufacturing of items we need within our borders. He could do that, right? And he could also call out the corporations that are currently price gouging us,

because that's a huge part of the inflation issue that gets ignored in the press. In fact, I'm going to read two things, and then we'll wrap this up. A new paper published Tuesday, and I apologize, guys, this is a graphic from a different story, but it's relevant for this. A new paper published Tuesday shows U.S. corporate price markups and profits surged to their highest level since the 1950s. So what the authors over at the Roosevelt Institute found was that the difference between the actual cost of a good or service and the selling price were both the highest level on record and the largest one year increase in 2021. How high companies can increase their sales up and above their cost matters for the economy more generally because these markups distribute economic gains from workers and consumers to firms and shareholders.

This is especially the case when almost 100% of these firms' earnings derive from markups and distributed upward to shareholders rather than retained and reinvested. So you have corporations price gouging us, okay? You have insane manipulation in our financialized capitalist system by the people at the very top to ensure that they make themselves richer. advantage and exploit every type of economic downturn to their advantage. They do it over and over again. And to hear Larry Summers say, well, we need to just accept that unemployment is a part

of this and sad day for you. I don't accept that. We could have a better system in place, but I don't really see a single lawmaker advocating for that today. All right, we gotta take a quick break. When we come back, we've got more news for you, including Elizabeth Warren taking Jerome Powell, the head of the Federal Reserve to task, and later in the show, we'll lighten things up with a dunking contest on Jim Kramer from CNBC. Come right back.

with you. Let's get to Elizabeth Warren, because I might disagree with her a little bit on her recent take during a hearing. Let's watch. Inflation is like an illness, and medicine needs to be tailored to the specific problem. Otherwise, you could make things a lot worse. And right now, the Fed has no control over the main drivers of rising prices. But the Fed can slow demand by getting a lot of people fired and making families poorer. That was Senator Elizabeth Warren during the Senate Banking Committee hearing with Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell. Now, there has been much discussion and debate about inflation and how to combat inflation. And the Federal Reserve has decided that it makes sense to raise interest

rates in order to cool this very hot market, this very hot economy. In other words, there are, there's too much demand, too little supply, and the best way to deal with that to tame inflation is to lower demand by lowering the amount of money Americans have in their pockets. And so when you increase interest rates, what happens is it becomes more expensive to borrow money. And if it's more expensive to borrow money, you're spending more money on interest and less money. You have less money in your pocket to buy things like homes or cars. For the banking industry, for corporations, they have less money to essentially invest in themselves and make themselves richer, which is what they've been doing since the 2008 economic collapse.

So there are both good parts of raising the interest rate, particularly putting a stop to the very rich becoming even richer, but there are downsides as well. And so this is an interesting discussion because Elizabeth Warren's take here has some components I disagree with, but I do think that she makes a lot of great points as well. So without further ado, why don't we get to Elizabeth Warren pointing out exactly how disastrous raising interest rates could be for ordinary Americans. But before we do that, I do want to go to the next video where she really tries to question whether the Federal Reserve even has the power to deal with where the key inflationary issues

lie. Let's watch. Let's start with gas prices. The price of gas is up 40% since Russia invaded Ukraine in February. Chair Powell, will gas prices go down as a result of your interest rate increase? I would not think so now. Okay. And that matters because gas prices are one of the single biggest drivers of inflation. Energy prices overall drove a third of the inflation last month, but the Fed's tools, as you say, have no impact here. So let's look at another necessity, food. Price of groceries is up nearly 12% this year. Americans feel the pinch. No matter how much groceries cost, people still got to eat.

Chair Powell, will the Fed's interest rate increases bring food prices down for families? I wouldn't say so, no. Okay. So what Warren is trying to do with that line of questioning is important because there are misunderstandings and also intentional misinformation in regard to what is causing inflation. So the idea that the Federal Reserve can do something about higher gas prices is ridiculous because as we know, gas prices are controlled by multinational corporations, the corporations that are drilling, the corporations that are using these fossil fuels and making decisions about prices, about where to export the resources that they've taken from the earth, right? And so it's, and also you have manipulation when it comes to fuel. When it comes to energy, because what oil producing countries can do, and they're members of what's known as the OPEC cartel, is decide, we want to increase profits, so we're going

to manipulate the cost by decreasing supply. We're not going to produce as much. And if there's less supply, more demand, well, then we can charge a lot more for gas at the pump. And that's a big part of what's happening. Federal Reserve can't do a damn thing about that, nothing, okay? Federal Reserve also can't do anything about inflation that we're experiencing when we go to the grocery store. Because think about groceries, think about the products that we buy, those products need to be transported. And so high gas prices impact that as well. Okay, so what can the Federal Reserve do by increasing interest rates?

How would that tame the issue of inflation? Well, let's go to the next video, and I'll break it down. If I understand what you've said and what economists are saying across the board is that when you raise interest rate, there's going to be less money to invest. And that is, it's going to dampen business investment. Is that a fair statement? I think the idea is to moderate demand so that it can be in better balance with supply. And the current situation demand is well in excess of supply and supply. some areas of work. More expensive to invest, which in turn is going to throw workers out of work.

And when they're out of work, they have less money to spend. So Warren is not a proponent of increasing the interest rates, right? Because as she mentions there, it increases the cost of borrowing money. and if these companies are not able to borrow money at low interest rates, they're less likely to invest in their companies. I think the issue I have with Warren, where there's a disagreement, is that she seems to make this assumption that these companies and these corporations have been taking easy money that's been provided by the Federal Reserve's monetary policy, and then they've turned around

and invested it in their company, not in the form of corporate stock buybacks, but invested it in their company to expand their company. But what we've seen with the Fed's monetary policy has actually been the exact opposite. Low interest rates has translated into these corporations, essentially investing in themselves, buying shares of their own stocks. We've seen private equity firms buy up entire neighborhoods of single family homes that typically would go to ordinary working Americans. So the low interest rates have had a pretty disastrous impact on inequality in America.

It has actually made inequality explode in the country. Where I do agree with Elizabeth Warren is that raising the interest rates very likely will lead to an increase in unemployment. It will lead to some pain and suffering for ordinary Americans, especially in a country that lacks a social safety net to catch them when they fall. She is right about that. But the problem is that we've relied really at this point solely on the Federal Reserve to make decisions about the health of our economy.

And these are typically well connected Wall Street folks who do have limited tools in their toolbox, as Warren pointed out earlier in the segment, but also tend to engage in policies that favor those at the very top. And we've seen that play out certainly since 2008. Now, I want to get to this piece from the New York Times because it's definitely enlightening. And they argue that higher interest rates increase the cost of mortgages. So this will have an impact on ordinary Americans who might want to take out a loan to buy a home. And company borrowing, which slows business growth and translates into less hiring.

As the job market weakens, paycheck growth slows, which further tamps down buying. Less shopping gives supply a chance to catch up. So that's the idea, lower demand, increased supply, and we can combat inflation. But if what would need to happen for people to have even less money than they have now? I'm talking about ordinary people. Well, they'd need to lose their jobs, or they would, if they're jobless now, they're probably going to be offered less money if they're looking for a new job. The challenge for many working families is that their wages might slow down before price increases do.

Fed officials predicted last week that unemployment would begin creeping up by the end of the year, but that inflation would remain elevated at 5.2%. Rising rates have unsettled markets and prompted stock prices to plummet, chipping away at many household nest eggs. Higher mortgage costs are slowing the housing market and could lower home values further cutting into wealth, because for many families, real estate makes up a big chunk of net worth. So it's really easy to get caught up in what's happening in the economy at this moment, especially if you're unwilling to question how this system works, right? If you're unwilling to consider reforming how the system works.

So number one, I think it's a problem that houses are considered really the only way for middle class, working class Americans to build wealth in this country. When housing is seen as a commodity, those who already own homes don't want to build more homes because building more homes or increasing supply would mean the value of their home goes down. I think that's a problem. We need to reconsider whether it makes sense to see housing as an asset rather than something that people need to live and survive. The other issue is just, you know, It is a problem that this is impacting the stock market. And honestly, the stock market is overwhelmingly invested in by people who are very rich.

So the top 10% I think make up 85% of those invested in the stock market. But there are ordinary working people who have their retirement accounts, their 401ks, their IRAs, their IRAs, whatever it is, invested in the stock market. So during a downturn, they really suffer. which is why I think it makes a lot more sense to bolster our social security system, which is not tied to risk and is a safety net that people can rely on when they retire. Again, rethinking how this system works, because there are no easy answers for ordinary working Americans. You keep interest rates artificially low, that gap between the rich and the poor continues to increase. You address it and increase the interest rates, well then you're gonna have an increase in unemployment,

again, in a country that has no social safety net in place to catch them when they fall. It is a broken system from top to bottom. And I don't see anyone really calling that out. I see all this debate about like, do we raise interest rates? Do we not raise interest rates? That is a limited thing that's part of our system. That's actually caused a lot more harm than good. So that's where I really disagree with Warren. I'm curious to know what you guys think. So write in, send us your super chat, send us your member comments, and I'm curious to hear from you. For now, though, one more economy-related story. This time, well, since we're talking about Social Security, it's related to Social Security and a bad decision that Biden has made.

Shocker. President Joe Biden has made a pretty awful decision. He has nominated a man who has absolutely no interest in protecting and bolstering the social security system. In fact, he's a man who has a long track record in wanting to privatize social security. His name is Andrew Biggs, and he has been nominated for a very, very important role. He would essentially serve in a board that the president advises with and takes advice from on what to do with Social Security. So on May 13th, Biden chose to nominate Biggs, a fellow at the right wing American Enterprise Institute, it's a think tank, for a Republican seat on the bipartisan Social Security Advisory Board, which was created in 1994 to consult the president and Congress about the social security system.

So I'm not really interested in hearing from a right winger who served or worked for the Heritage Foundation on the topic of social security. Pretty sure I can figure out what his advice would be. But for anyone who might be in the dark about the American Enterprise Institute, let's give you a little brief on who Biggs is. So the lever reports that in 2001, Biggs was a staff analyst on George W. Bush's commission on social security that advocated privatizing the government program by shifting the program's trust fund investments from U.S. Treasury bills to high fee, high risk personal accounts that seniors could use to invest social security assets in the stock and bond markets like employees do with their 401ks. I don't know what about you guys, but 401Ks relative to what pensions were like, suck. There's a lot more risk involved. There's a lot more onus on the worker. The employer gets a massive break from not having to pay into a pension.

It has not ended up well for retirees. And we do have a retirement crisis. Baby boomers, even though they enjoyed economic prosperity and kind of screwed over our generation, a lot of them don't have enough money to retire on. That is an issue. And this guy's solution was, let's introduce more risk, let's privatize it. And Biden looked at that guy and thought, nailed it. I'm going to put you on my advisory board.

What are you doing, Biden? In 2013, Biggs justified the idea of raising the retirement age for some, Social Security benefits by saying that Americans biggest, Americans biggest on the job risk, you know, carpal tunnel syndrome from your mouse or something like that. I'm pretty sure there are a lot of Americans that are suffering from other ailments related to the work that they do. Not just physical, by the way, mental health issues as well. But let me continue. Reporters over at the lever also reached out to him to get some clarity on where he's

stands on the issue of Social Security. Remember, Social Security was put in place to prevent elderly people from like insane poverty and homelessness. And it's not a popular position to want to privatize Social Security. Social Security and Medicare, super, super popular. So when the lever reached out to him to get some clarity on where he stands, he took a page out of Trump's book and was like, deny, denied, deny, no, me? What, me? I had to change a heart, I swear. Even though I gave a speech not too long ago talking about how we need to privatize this, he even gave a talk recently, I was watching on YouTube, where he wanted to make it a lot more difficult for people to get disability benefits and argued that a lot of people receiving

disability benefits are essentially liars and they can go back to work. That's who this guy is. That's who Andrew Biggs is. He has dismissed the retirement crisis as a non-issue. And as recently as 2020 blamed problems with the social security system on older Americans game of chicken. And two decades ago, Biggs worked on a Bush administration commission that pushed to privatize social security. And when the reporters over at the lever reached out to him, he denied it. Instead, he said he now believes that the nation's social security like programs should be more focused on guaranteeing against poverty

in old age, while middle and high income individuals take on greater responsibility for, let's just stop. When he says middle and high income earners, he's just talking about working Americans, okay? He's being very careful with his wording here. But anyone who has to work for their living, you know, people who aren't just investors who get to sit around and collect money, you know, either from their investment or from being a landlord, like that's not who he's talking about here. He's specifically talking about working people, okay, many of whom do not have anything near

what's necessary to be able to retire. They are not on track to retire comfortably. But let me continue. Take on greater responsibility for saving for retirement on their own, such as by the government establishing universal retirement savings accounts for every worker. Yeah, the social security model has worked out pretty well. And if anyone's concerned about whether or not we have enough resources to keep it going, you could just lift the social security tax cap, which this year is about $137,000.

So people earning over $137,000, they no longer get taxed for Social Security for income above that. Just lift it. Just lift it. It's super regressive to have a cap that only benefits high earners in the country. But of course, he's not advocating for that. The guys from the American Enterprise Institute. Finally, Biden didn't even have to pick this guy. So that advisory board is traditionally bipartisan, right? But there's no law forcing the president of the United States to make it bipartisan. In fact, Donald Trump refused to nominate a single Democrat, a single liberal to that advisory board. Not one.

But Biden, like a good boy, you know, make sure you. Do right by your Wall Street donors, who you told, you know, nothing will fundamentally change under my watch. Good boy, got to pick Andrew Biggs, the guy who is on the record in endless talks that you can watch yourself on YouTube advocating for the privatization of one of the most popular social spending programs in this country, Social Security. And then Biden turns around and asks himself, along with the Democratic Party overall, why is my approval rating so low? What's going on? I don't get it. Well, you're telling

the American people you don't care about them by rubbing shoulders with clowns like this chump. There are consequences for your actions, and he deserves the low approval ratings that he's suffering from as we speak. All right, we got to take a quick break. When we come back, Some more updates on the handling of the Uvaldi mass shooter. It just keeps getting worse for the police officials in that area. So we've got that and more coming right up. Welcome back to the show, everyone, Anna Casparian with you. I just want to read a pretty funny comment from Waldorf Nation.

Does Biggs own a cat food company? Because that's what old people will be forced to eat without Social Security. Yeah, I mean, it really makes you think. Look, Guy was working for the American Enterprise Institute, a right-wing pro-business think tank. They just want to cut payroll taxes for employers. Like, that's really at the heart of it. Let's keep it real. And I did want to also read, because I think it's an important perspective, and I think

you're right, Trista. So Trista in our member section says, Anna, Senator Warren is saying that the interest rate rises should not be so aggressive that it would enter a global, enter us into a global recession. This is not against any interest rate hikes, but not as aggressively as many hawks are calling for. Okay, that's fair. I don't, but to be quite honest with you, I don't know if there's a way to increase interest rates gradually enough to prevent pain that people are going to feel. Like, just the very mention of increasing the interest rates, that's what he did. I believe it was last year.

He hadn't done it yet. He was just warning, like, hey, in coming months, we're probably going to increase interest rates. The market, like, tanked just from that announcement. So I don't know how that would play out, but I hear you on that. Thank you for sharing your perspective. All right, well, let's move on to something completely different. I want to stay on this Uvaldi story because we're getting more and more information from the state hearings on how the police responded to it.

And it just keeps getting worse. So here's the latest. Ruben Ruiz, the husband of Eva Morellis, who was one of the slain teachers at Rob Elementary School, apparently tried to. to rush in and save her. But unfortunately he was stopped from doing so. Now I should note that he himself is a police officer. He was not in the jurisdiction to respond to this particular school shooting. But nonetheless, he showed up armed and he wanted to save his wife.

And he was stopped from doing so. Now how do we know about this? Well, there is a hearing that's been taking place for several days now. And the head of the Texas Department of Public Safety explained what happened with Ruiz, and more importantly, the lie he was told to kind of get him to move away from the scene. Let's watch. We need to talk about Robin, Officer Ruiz. He knows that she's been shot.

He's talking about his wife. He got a call from his wife. His wife was in room 112 and later died. I know an officer says they need to get out of the hallway to which an officer responds, Chief is in there. Chief is in charge right now. Hold on. So Ruiz was told Chief is in there. Don't worry, there's someone responding to this. They're going to help your wife and the children. Except that is not what happened. He was lied to. In fact, in the next video, you will hear from the head of the Texas Department of Public Safety explain in more detail what happened.

And this is Stephen McCraugh. We got an officer, Officer Weiss, whose wife called him and said she was been shot and she's dying. So certainly those things. And what happened to him was he tried to move forward in the hallway. He was detained and they took his gun away from him. So they took the gun away from him, escorted him off the scene. They were more interested in crowd control because there were parents who were obviously terrified and worried about their kids.

They were more concerned about controlling those people than doing something about a lone gunman in a fourth grade classroom who was shooting and killing Little kids and two teachers. I just, the thing that gets to me about this story is, yeah, I mean, we've talked about the cowardice of the cops here endlessly. And it never ceases to amaze me just how low the situation gets for them. As these hearings take place, as we learn more about their response, how long they waited, how they didn't even bother to check and see if the door was locked.

They used a crowbar like tool in order to get into the room, even though it's very likely that the door was not locked. Like just incompetence, cowardice, it's endless. But the other thing that gets to me is, and I don't think this gets talked about enough, the amount of courageous people who were on the scene, who were stopped from doing the right thing. So in this case, look, look, you might argue, well, Officer Ruiz wanted to save his wife, and that's the reason why he was willing to go in there. You know, it was personal to him. But at the end of the day, he was ready to go in. You know, he wanted to save his wife.

He wanted to save people's lives. His wife, by the way, the teacher, she served as like a shield for the students. So she got shot as she was trying to protect her students from getting shot and killed. And I just, it, it breaks my heart that she died and that she did not take an oath to protect and serve. She didn't sign up to be a cop. She signed up to be a school teacher. And she put her life on the line and lost her life to protect her students. students.

And it, I can't imagine, like I just, how could you not think about your own partner dying, your own partner calling you to tell you that they've, they've just been shot. And then when you try to save their life, you get stopped with people lying to you. Don't worry, Chief is on the scene, he's got it, he's got it, don't worry, boss, no, chief was not on, well, chief was on the scene, but he's an incredible coward who's now trying to point fingers at other, you know, departments to argue that he didn't know. He didn't know that he was the one responsible, even though he's the police chief. This is Aredondo.

He's the police chief for that school's police force. Morella as a teacher of 17 years who fought fourth graders, or sorry, who taught fourth graders at Rob Elementary School was shot and killed by the gunmen while trying to protect her students. And that's according to her aunt Lydia Martinez Delgado, she was in her 40s. super young, obviously incredibly selfless. And it's amazing to see how many people are willing to risk their own lives, even though they haven't signed up to be cops, to save others.

But the people who were supposed to be the good guys with the guns, not only were they the immense cowards in this situation, they actively tried to stop other courageous people from trying to save lives, including by the way the mother they put in handcuffs because she was trying to essentially force them to do something and then later when they took the handcuffs off she ran in and got her kids out she was put in handcuffs that woman was this teacher killed as she's trying to save these kids teacher had way more courage than the cops in Yuvaldi that is the takeaway so all these arguments about we just need good guys with the guns. Well, the people that right wingers

tend to think of as the good guys with the guns really failed the people in this community. I'm sure more stories are going to come out in coming days. It's just, it's really hard to stomach this day in and day out, really. All right, final story in the first hour before we bring John in. Let's talk a little bit about the media and it's disconnect with the American people. There's a new and fascinating Pew Research study that perfectly illustrates this significant disconnect between the news media and ordinary people. So this is an issue pertaining to trust, how information is disseminated, and more importantly, whether or not Americans really buy with what the media is selling. But what's also incredible is how delusional members of the

media tend to be about how the public perceives them. Now, for example, the study asked journalists and the public to evaluate how well news organizations carry out the core functions of media. You know, speaking truth to power, spreading accurate information about what's happening in the country and around the world. Well, the results are pretty damning. So in all five areas, journalists actually give far more positive assessments of themselves than the general public does of the work that they're doing. Okay. So 67% of journalists surveyed say the media do a solid job of covering the most important stories of the day, but only 41% of the American public feel the same way. While 65% of journalists say news organizations do a very or somewhat

good job reporting the news accurately, only 35% of the public agrees, while 43% of US adults say journalists do a bad job at this. And when asked if journalists do a good job of serving as a watchdog over elected leaders, 52% of journalists said yes, but only 29% of the public agreed. And while 46% of journalists say that they give voice to the underrepresented, only 24% of the public think that's true. Excuse me. Now, I want to talk a little bit about why I think that is, right? So my theory is what we're kind of of experiencing in government is also taking place in the media. So when it comes to providing a voice to the underrepresented, right?

I think what the media tends to think of is, hey, we're hiring more diverse staff. And we're talking to a Wall Street person. But the Wall Street person we're talking to is a black guy instead of a white guy. We're doing so good. We're representing the underrepresented. But that, no, you should definitely provide a voice to people of all different backgrounds, nationalities, races. I'm obviously in favor of that.

But it's not, it doesn't stop there. That's not the end all, be all, obviously. So are they representing the working class in America? And if you look at corporate media, which usually falls under an umbrella of like this major conglomerate, this major corporate conglomerate, no, they don't do a good job at representing the underrepresented. The underrepresented in corporate media are working people, ordinary working people. So while nearly half of journalists, 46%, say they feel extremely or very connected with

their audience, this is sad, only about a quarter of. of the public, 26% feels that connection with their main news organizations, which also makes a lot of sense. If you look at news consumption trends, like where people get the news, they still overwhelmingly get most of their news, not even online, but from local news. And I don't know when the last time was where you watch local news, but I don't feel connected to what they're up to? I mean, local news people got on my case because I was like, why are we still doing the five-day forecast? Like, just look it up on my phone. They didn't like that. They didn't like that. Okay, got it. Okay, whether people should still have their jobs, I think there are weather

reports that are worthy of coverage. However, I just don't think that what we see, whether it's in national network news or cable news or local news, either really resonates with people. And I don't think people feel a connection with these various new shows. Now, journalists do seem to understand, though, that the public doesn't really trust them or view them favorably. When asked what one word, when asked what one word they think the public would use to describe the news industry, journalists overwhelmingly give negative responses with many predicting that the public would describe the news media as inaccurate, untrustworthy, biased, or partisan. Just 14%, a measly 14% of journalists surveyed, say they think the U.S. public has a great deal or fair amount of trust in the information it gets from news organizations these days. Most believe that Americans as a whole have some trust, 44%, or little to no trust, 42%.

And look, they're pretty spot on. I mean, we see this play out in the way ordinary people talk about the news, critique the news. When a similar question was posed to the general public, if you look at this graph, only 29% of US adults say that they have at least a fair amount of trust in news outlets, while 27% say they have some trust and a whopping 44% say little to none. So this is, I think, important for news organizations to take in and really reconsider, especially when it comes to. to their misconceptions about how people perceive the way they're doing their jobs, but also question, why don't they trust us? And if they don't trust us, is it because we're not representing the underrepresented? Just something to think about. Anyway, we're going to take a brief break.

When we come back, John Ida Roll is going to join us. Johnny Pie, Dragon Daddy, the man with many, many nicknames, many, many thoughts. Someone I adore, and he will be here in just a few minutes. We'll be right back. Thanks for listening to the full episode of the Young Turks, support our work, listen to ad-free, access members-only bonus content, and more by subscribing to Apple podcast at apple.com at apple.com slash t-y-t. I'm your host, Shank Huger, and I'll see you. soon.