Major corporate media outlets like Politico and
New York times would have you believe that everything is actually going stupendously.
As women's rights are being stripped away from them here in the United States,
as inflation is crushing, working people in this country, Politico just
wants you to know, the only thing that we need is for wage growth to slow down.
>> We just need it to slow down.
>> [LAUGH] >> That's it.
And then everything will be fine.
This is a piece that was written by Victoria Guida, and
here's her perspective.
And by the way, this was not a commentary piece,
I mean it is a commentary piece, but it wasn't listed as such.
>> This is what hard news reporting looks like in politico,.
>> Yeah.
>> Wage gains for American workers are beginning to slow,
threatening one of the few positive trends for the economy since the pandemic.
But that could be good news for the nation's labor force.
>> How so?
>> I had to reread this several times, because of how incoherent it was.
>> But then it was clear to me what the point was.
And the point is, the Federal Reserve, making it more expensive for
corporations to borrow money by increasing interest rates is really bad,
and we want them to stop doing that.
And so, a good way to get them to stop doing that is if we just lower wages,
please, can we do that.
So, here's our argument.
Prices rose across the board, referring to inflation, but
not because of salary increases which have actually leveled off in recent months.
So that sentence is perfectly fine.
>> Yeah, and by the way, that totally defeats the point of your entire article.
So, if prices keep rising, even though wages aren't,
then obviously the wages aren't doing it.
It's other factors that are causing the prices to increase.
But, don't increase wages so
it can keep up with rising prices.
>> No, no.
>> They're super frustrating.
>> You know what the headline of that article originally was?
>> No, what was it originally?
>> Yeah, and had to change it because they got so much pushback on it.
But the text is the same exact thing.
The original title was, pay raises are getting smaller.
>> That could be a good thing for workers.
>> My God.
>> [LAUGH] >> That was the headline.
>> It's a big blaring headlines, okay?
>> Amazing.
>> Because in their,
Alison wonderland alternate reality of establishment Washington.
They think, wages rising is the worst thing.
I mean, letting the masses have a little extra wages.
No, they should know their role.
>> Only the lobbyists get all the money.
>> Look, listen, we can't share that revenue that
was created by the workers with the workers.
That would be bad.
>> Okay, so- >> No, we need to let all the prices rise,
but not your wages.
>> So, you're totally and utterly screwed.
How come there's no headline about CEO pay going too high?
>> No, no, no.
>> Wait a minute, they get paid so much more.
>> Now, I've never seen that headline in my life.
>> Have you ever seen a headline from mainstream news that says,
profits too high for corporations.
>> No, no way.
>> Leading to inflation.
Because those are all extra money.
They could run a sustainable business, make a little bit less profit, and
they could do that by lowering prices.
It control the prices of goods.
That's a far more logical argument.
No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no,
profits always have to be at an extreme maximum wages.
No, no.
>> Make them lower.
>> Okay, so let's be fair to her.
Let's get to more of Victoria Guida's argument here in this
important analysis that's being sold to us as unbiased news story.
So she mentioned, wages have actually leveled off in recent months.
And she says, that's a great thing.
That's because, if prices and wages keep pushing each other up,
the Federal Reserve already under tremendous strain to rein in inflation,
might be forced to move even faster to ramp up interest rates,
throwing people out of work, and thrusting the economy into a painful recession.
Instead, you should engage in slave labor.
Instead, slower wage growth could help bring down prices, and
ultimately mean less sting for the average worker.
Okay, that last sentence, let me read it again.
Instead, slower wage growth could help bring down prices, and
ultimately mean less sting for the average worker.
>> But she previously said, let's go to graphic two again,
prices rose across the board, but not because of salary increases,
which have actually leveled off in recent months.
>> So, why did you write this article?
>> What, what was that?
>> That was 100% contradictory.
But you've got to drive your wages lower.
Why, all of their advertisers are giant corporations.
They hate when you have higher wages, they hate it.
Politico, get out there and tell everybody that they need to have lower wages, okay?
>> So,- >> Guys, let me be clear about why
corporations and wealthy people do not want interest rates to go up.
To be clear, interest rates going up do have an impact on,
I guess ordinary people.
For instance, if you're an ordinary person looking to buy a home,
the cost of a mortgage is much higher as a result of higher interest rates.
But, also keep in mind that right now,
we've noticed the housing market slowed down considerably.
There are more houses on the market, because the cost of borrowing has gone up.
And when the interest rates were low, do you really think that
it was mostly ordinary Americans who were able to take advantage of that?
Or was it the corporations and the banks that took that money, that cheap,
cheap money, and did what with it?
They invested in things that would make them richer.
That's why you have private equity firms buying up entire neighborhoods of
single family homes.
Because it was so cheap to borrow that money, right?
And to think that, that mostly trickles down to all of us is ridiculous.
So that's what this is about.
This is about crushing the workers so the Federal Reserve
doesn't feel this need to increase the interest rates.
That's what this is about.
>> Yeah, 100%.
And by the way today, JPMorgan CEO, Jamie Dimon complaining,
they're not letting us do as much stock buybacks.
>> And so, this is this is hurting.
It's not fair, no, no, no, no.
More punishment for the workers.
>> Yeah.
>> More punishment, higher prices, lower wages.
>> Not manipulating the stock market enough.
>> By the way, there has been inflation for quite some time now in assets, okay?
There is a massive bubble in the stock market.
That's why the market right now is just all over the place, okay?
The value of these stocks is ridiculous because it's manipulated by companies
literally buying shares of their own stock,
thus manipulating the value of the shares.
That is what they're doing.
And poor Jamie Dimon.
Did you hear some rhetoric about maybe reigning that in a little bit?
Don't worry Jamie, you control the country, we all know.
So you'll get what you want, I guarantee it.
These people are sick, they're sick.
These people are sick.
We don't really have a democracy when we have this disgusting level of corruption,
where our lawmakers are much more interested in looking after poor baby
Jamie Dimon.
Making sure that he's happy, making sure that him and his family are wealthy for
generations to come, while all of us suffer.
That is what the reality is.
A democracy has politicians who represent the people who elected them in
the first place.
But we don't have that.
We have all these billionaires coming in and
bribing all these politicians to do their bidding for them.
>> So, look, just real quick.
I wanna mention one other story from the New York Times.
And it's a textbook case in how they manipulate you.
So, the headline photographic says,
is the world really falling apart,- >> Yes.
>> Or does it just feel that way, they say.
>> By most measures with one glaring exception,
people around the world are better off than ever.
So why doesn't it feel that way, especially to Americans?
Now, why I say it's the textbook cases.
If you read the article, they didn't make up facts.
So the right wing has it wrong about mainstream media.
They don't get in a room and make up facts.
The facts in there are true, but they are enormously misleading.
Because they constantly do sleight of hands.
They go, well, the developing world is doing much better there.
Infant mortality is down, wars are down, but they do two huge slice of head.
But wait, we're not talking about developing world.
Most Americans feel we're not getting better, we're getting worse.
Why, because in America, things are getting worse.
So why are you talking about the world, when America is dissatisfied?
Those are apples and oranges.
But they never clarify that in the piece.
And then,- >> Max Fischer, by the way,
is the author of that piece.
>> I actually wanna get to debunking his nonsense right now.
>> Okay. >> Because, he argues, look,
there are a lot of bad things happening in America granted.
>> We've got problems with mass shootings.
Women's reproductive rights, abortion rights have been stripped away from them.
I get it.
We also have insurrectionists, and inflation.
I get it, I get it.
But he argues, that sense of chaos can be difficult to square with longer term data,
showing that on many metrics.
>> The world is generally becoming better off.
>> You see that sleight of hand, you started with America, and
ended with the world.
>> Yeah. >> Those are two different things, why?
>> I'll get to why he's doing this later.
>> Yeah, so then he goes into, there are few genocides today than ever before,
and that kind of stuff, right, looking at a world view of what's happening.
But let's just focus on one of the data sets that he pointed to.
Which is, life expectancy is higher than ever.
Except no, it's not.
So let's take a look at this graph put together by the Kaiser Family Foundation.
They used analysis from the CDC, the Australian Bureau of Statistics, and
the OECD.
And, wow, would you look at that?
It compares the United States to other similar countries when it comes to life
expectancy between 1980 and 2020.
And yes, you can see throughout the decades,
life expectancy increased even in the United States.
But, there is a significant decline starting in 2019.
Interesting that he left that out of the mix in his reporting here.
Why don't we talk a little bit about literacy?
Because he's like, yo, literacy, we're doing real great with literacy, right?
Except we're not.
A study from the University of Virginia showed that early
childhood reading skills are at a 20 year low, 20 year low.
And that 60% of children at impoverished schools are at risk for
functional illiteracy.
And then also, if you wanna look at a global scale.
Because remember, he's trying to mix up the United States with the rest of
the country, even on a global scale.
Not doing so well when it comes to literacy.
On a global scale, the World Literacy Foundation reported in 2020,
that the pandemic is causing a catastrophic rise in illiteracy.
The organization's CEO said, 770 million people in the globe can't read or write
a single word, and a further two billion people struggle to read a sentence.
What about hunger?
People are fed, he says, things are great except, not really.
In 2020 for instance, even before the outbreak of the pandemic,
2.3 billion people lacked regular access to food.
And that's according to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization.
Well, more than 700 million experienced severe food insecurity that year.
How the hell do you see all those videos of the insanely long lines at
food banks during the pandemic and think, no we nailed it.
Things are going great.
>> So, he's cherry-picking facts in an effort to deceive you.
I don't know that Max fisher cares about deceiving you.
He probably doesn't know that at all.
I'll tell you who the real culprit is in a second.
But he says, there's less wars now.
But he doesn't mention, wait a minute.
We had the Iraq war that killed more people than all the wars you mentioned,
the 1990s combined.
And we did that.
Well, that's left out of the story.
Syria, disastrous war.
Yemen, disastrous war brought to you by our allies.
So even if you have less number of wars,
you have these huge wars still that's happening today.
By the way, largely America's fault.
Not all of them, but most of them.
And the number of deaths, and the number of civilian deaths are gigantic.
And now, more displacement from those wars than ever in history.
So, he takes the facts that look positive and puts them all in the piece,
the facts that are negative, he leaves out completely.
So, and then another trick is, what's your time frame?
If you look at the last 200 years, yes,
there's lots of good news about life expectancy, etc.
And we've covered that on the show.
But if you look at the last two years, life expectancy has gone down in America,
wages have gone down.
And then you could look at wages across the world and say, they're rising.
That's true.
If you look at wages in America over the last 50 years adjusted for inflation,
they haven't gone up at all.
But that fact is not in the piece.
None of the facts that would show you how bad it is in America are in the piece.
So who's responsible and why?
It's the editors.
Because this is a country of 330 million people.
There's a lot of Max Fischers, right?
And there's a lot of people who could write the opposite piece, or
a fair piece that's in between.
But the New York Times doesn't want that fair piece.
The New York Times wants you to think that the status quo is great.
So they find Max and go, hey, Max, you with all the happy facts.
And that are all misleading, and makes it seem like things are great in America.
>> That's the one I want, and I'm gonna print that in the New York Times.
>> That's right.
>> Because they're in the business of maintaining the status quo.
>> They love the status quo.
>> It's worked out so well for them.
>> So, the job of the editor at the New York Times is deceive all
of your readers into thinking, it's all okay, don't take any action.
Just everybody, be civil, be civil.
No change, change is radical, change is radical.
Or we're all making tons of money.
Keep it going, keep it going.
Wages lower, everybody, wages lower, corporation profits higher,
you New York Times, the most biased organization.
But I will give New York Times a political credit for one thing.
>> They are far more sophisticated at propaganda than Fox News in
the right wing.
>> Yeah.
>> They both do propaganda, but the New York Times does it so subtle,
that it tricks the most educated people in the country into believing it's real.