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The Rick Smith Show 9-16-2026 · The Rick Smith Show

0:00
[SPEAKER_04]: It's time for the Rick Smith show.
0:05
[SPEAKER_03]: Now, here is the voice of a working class, Rick Smith.
0:12
[SPEAKER_04]: And welcome, brothers, sisters working class heroes.
0:16
[SPEAKER_04]: This is the Rick Smith show.
0:18
[SPEAKER_04]: Thanks so much for being here.
0:20
[SPEAKER_04]: Today on the big program, lots to get to, lots to talk about.
0:23
[SPEAKER_04]: You know, the old lines of blind squirrel finds a mouse, another every once in a while, a broken clock is right.
0:29
[SPEAKER_04]: Hmm, what twice a day?
0:31
[SPEAKER_04]: We've heard it, never in my life did I think that I'd be reaching for either of those
0:40
[SPEAKER_04]: But with the Roberts Court, here we are.
0:44
[SPEAKER_04]: On Monday night, the Supreme Court block Donald Trump's plan to slap sweeping new restrictions on male ballots right before the midterms seems convenient and look, I want to be honest with you.
0:57
[SPEAKER_04]: I, uh, I gotta tell you, I feel fairly relieved that they're on the right side of this, but furious that relief was ever necessary because this should have never gotten anywhere near the nine robes in DC.
1:11
[SPEAKER_04]: uh... we've got a president who's trying to force the hand of every state ought to make the hand over to the postal service their voter list so they can slap bar codes on ballot envelope so we can track you i'll let mail carrier scanners decide whether tens of thousands of ballots in one batch get to get thrown out over the potential of a single mismatch sorry not not a plan for vote election integrity sorry it's not
1:40
[SPEAKER_04]: That's a landmine planted under the ballot box of every rural voter, every elderly voter, every disabled voter, every well, all male state voter like Colorado or Utah, who they mail in their ballot because that's how their system is built.
1:57
[SPEAKER_04]: And about a third of us, vote by mail, so well, they're going after about a third of us, and here's the part that should make you really angry.
2:07
[SPEAKER_04]: Even in a win, it wasn't unanimous.
2:10
[SPEAKER_04]: Justice Alito joined Clarence Thomas as descent arguing that state's fighting this Actually caused their own timing problem.
2:19
[SPEAKER_04]: It's the victim Kevin all signed on to a block of it for the midterms But told you flat out he thinks Trump probably has got the authority to do it.
2:29
[SPEAKER_04]: You know down the road
2:31
[SPEAKER_04]: So Mark your calendar, this ain't over.
2:34
[SPEAKER_04]: Maybe down the kick down the road a bit, pause the bit, but it's gonna come back because while the ink was drying on this ruling, Trump was already pushing the Senate for his quote unquote, Save America Act.
2:47
[SPEAKER_04]: Asking the same Supreme Court to unlock social security data to challenge voter eligibility, firing the bipartisan election commission, and also threatening to pull funding from states
3:02
[SPEAKER_04]: Now, a federal whistleblower literally called the mail system, they built a design to disenfranchise millions of Americans, you know, which ones poor disabled elderly, you know, the ones you generally vote for Democrats, Senator Blumenthal made that complaint public himself.
3:20
[SPEAKER_04]: So, no, a broken clock being right once doesn't mean the clocks fixed.
3:26
[SPEAKER_04]: This is a win for voting rights.
3:29
[SPEAKER_04]: But it's not going to stop the GOP from throwing more landmines in front of working people who are just trying to exercise their right to make the one that makes every other right possible that ability to vote the right to exercise your your your part of the franchise
3:48
[SPEAKER_04]: And I've said before, you can't have a functional democracy if huge swaths of us are excluded, blocked or slowed down from casting our ballot, ballot, having our voice.
3:59
[SPEAKER_04]: Sorry, that's not a bipartisan opinion.
4:01
[SPEAKER_04]: It's simple math.
4:05
[SPEAKER_04]: It's simple.
4:07
[SPEAKER_04]: So here's what has to happen.
4:10
[SPEAKER_04]: I know the good people at Free Speech TV are working with the folks at Common Cause Colorado and they are having a non-partisan election protection training on September 24th and I know Common Cause all across the country is doing these kind of trainings so that people can learn in person how to catch a problem before, you know, before you, me, somebody loses their right
4:37
[SPEAKER_04]: And if you're in the Denver area, if you're in that area, development at freespeech.org is who you email.
4:45
[SPEAKER_04]: But go to the Common Cows' website, because they are running these things literally everywhere.
4:51
[SPEAKER_04]: Go find one, because, well, Monday night, the clock got lucky.
4:56
[SPEAKER_04]: It did.
4:58
[SPEAKER_04]: Truth be told, the clock got lucky.
5:00
[SPEAKER_04]: So we can't depend on the clock being lucky next time.
5:04
[SPEAKER_04]: because Kavanaugh's already kind of given the way forward.
5:08
[SPEAKER_04]: And you have a conservative majority who I got to tell you.
5:14
[SPEAKER_04]: You know, still that's sure which way they're going to go on a lot of stuff.
5:19
[SPEAKER_04]: This is huge, especially this close to to the midterms.
5:24
[SPEAKER_04]: So I want to hear your thoughts.
5:26
[SPEAKER_04]: Email me ricketerxmithshow.com.
5:27
[SPEAKER_04]: I'm going to show up to one of these trainees.
5:34
[SPEAKER_04]: I do it now before you show up on Election Day and find out it's been stolen.
5:39
[SPEAKER_04]: Want to hear your thoughts?
5:39
[SPEAKER_04]: Look at the ricksmiths show.com right back.
5:47
[SPEAKER_04]: I'm Rick Smith and this is Labor History Inter.
5:50
[SPEAKER_04]: On this day in Labor History, the year was 1931.
5:54
[SPEAKER_04]: That was the day that came to be known as the Invergordon Mutiny in Scotland.
6:00
[SPEAKER_04]: The global depression had begun to sweep across Europe.
6:03
[SPEAKER_04]: In response to the economic crisis, the British government began cutting the pay of public sector workers.
6:10
[SPEAKER_04]: This included those in the armed forces.
6:13
[SPEAKER_04]: This came at a time when more workers were joining the armed forces because of the rising unemployment that ravaged the private sector.
6:21
[SPEAKER_04]: For those in the Navy, the proposed pay cuts were 10% for officers and as high as 25% for those under the rank of petty officer.
6:31
[SPEAKER_04]: As news of the pay cuts spread, sailors at Invergordon held meetings to discuss their response.
6:36
[SPEAKER_04]: Invergordan Scotland had become an important harbor for the British fleet during World War 1.
6:42
[SPEAKER_04]: The sailors decided to strike.
6:45
[SPEAKER_04]: On the day of the strike, several ships were scheduled to participate in exercises, but the sailors on four vessels
6:52
[SPEAKER_04]: Refused to take their ships out of the harbor, many men did not report for duty.
6:56
[SPEAKER_04]: Naval leaders gave in quickly, reducing the severity of the pay cuts.
7:01
[SPEAKER_04]: But many of the leaders of the strike faced reprisals, some were jailed.
7:06
[SPEAKER_04]: Others were drummed out of the Navy, spies for the Admiralty, went below decks to monitor the sailors and report those who might cause future trouble.
7:16
[SPEAKER_04]: Government leaders tried to keep the news of the strike out of the news.
7:20
[SPEAKER_04]: But workers rallies against public sector cuts spread to cities like Glasgow and London.
7:26
[SPEAKER_04]: The strike also caused a panic at the London Stock Exchange.
7:31
[SPEAKER_04]: Labor history in two brought to you by the Illinois Labor History Society and the Rick Smith Show.
7:35
[SPEAKER_04]: For more information, go to laborhistoryintu.com, like us on Facebook and follow us on the Twitter's at Labor History in two.
7:50
[SPEAKER_03]: Welcome back to the Rick Smith Show.
7:52
[SPEAKER_03]: Now, here is Rick Smith.
7:58
[SPEAKER_04]: So I want to thank everyone who's been sending me emails, having an awful lot of fun with the $5,000 where we're never going to get.
8:05
[SPEAKER_04]: But I haven't joined people's, you know, hey, I'm going to go on vacation, I'm going to can't cune, I'm going to repaint the house, I'm going to put shoes on the dog, you know, there's been a ton of great ideas of what they're going to do.
8:18
[SPEAKER_04]: And the sad reality is, while there've been some really great ideas, most people are just like, yeah, I got to pay the electric bill.
8:25
[SPEAKER_04]: I'm a little bit behind on the on the rent got to pick up on that.
8:29
[SPEAKER_04]: So $5,000 for some could be really, really helpful, but I look at someone like me.
8:38
[SPEAKER_04]: It's not life-changing.
8:40
[SPEAKER_04]: And we could use that kind of money in much better ways, 1.3 trillion, I guess they're putting it out.
8:46
[SPEAKER_04]: But here to share some thoughts on well if this is a good idea bad idea or even just an idea I'll start with that I've asked our good friend Bobby Cogan to share some thoughts Bobby's a senior director of budget policy there at the Center for American Progress.
9:00
[SPEAKER_04]: You check out their work at americanprogress.org.
9:04
[SPEAKER_04]: Bobby, thanks for looking time for us.
9:06
[SPEAKER_01]: Hey Rick, thanks so much for having me back on.
9:08
[SPEAKER_04]: So what are you doing with our five grand and play money?
9:11
[SPEAKER_04]: Cause remember, we're $40 trillion in debt.
9:14
[SPEAKER_04]: We got a budget deficit bigger than it's been.
9:16
[SPEAKER_04]: As far as I can see, we got a president who's run up about 30% of that debt.
9:21
[SPEAKER_04]: And yet now, just come out of the, out of some office, he pulls out a $5,000 bribe.
9:30
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, if I got five grand, I'm not sure how to spend it.
9:34
[SPEAKER_01]: Maybe I might have a love of dog.
9:37
[SPEAKER_01]: I think, look, I think it's a joke, right?
9:41
[SPEAKER_01]: The president just did the largest cuts to the social safety net in all of the US history, and if he gave five grand to every single person in the country, the people who lost their Medicaid because of his bill would still be significantly in the fall.
9:53
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean I think behind it speaks to a lot of real frustration from a lot of real people in terms of struggling to pay their bills and even if they can pay them kind of struggling to feel comfortable as they're going by and one time check doesn't address that.
10:11
[SPEAKER_01]: I think the government should do more to help people that comes with lower and cost of things instead of doing a one time you know one one time kind of check.
10:22
[SPEAKER_04]: Now, you know, the sad reality in this is that, you know, Trump believes he can do it without Congress, and because he's been getting away with everything anyway, but he says he is guaranteeing, guaranteeing that we're all getting the five grand.
10:35
[SPEAKER_04]: It's going to go to all America.
10:36
[SPEAKER_04]: It's 100% going forward.
10:38
[SPEAKER_04]: Um, not again, the caveat.
10:41
[SPEAKER_04]: And this we can talk about this as well is if Republicans win the midterms and I've got to think he's seen the polling like everybody else and knows that you know this is kind of a no cost offer because the chances of them winning I think are pretty slim but he says he's going to do it because nobody thought he was going to get money for the 1776 thing that he had and nobody thought he was going to do you know all kinds of other things that he claims he has already
11:10
[SPEAKER_04]: Oh, what do you make of that?
11:12
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I mean, to the point that you are making, the president's promise checks, you know, a thousand times in this presidency, we're supposed to get tear-off rebates, we're supposed to get those dividends, you know, you name it, lots and lots of times these promise checks.
11:25
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't really see any reason why we should expect this one to be different.
11:29
[SPEAKER_01]: It's not something he's the loud to do, you know, gradually.
11:32
[SPEAKER_01]: It is something that, you know, he says, oh, well, if we maintain the trifecta, you know, Republicans have a trifecta right now.
11:36
[SPEAKER_01]: They want to do it right now.
11:37
[SPEAKER_01]: They could do it right now.
11:38
[SPEAKER_01]: because the reason that it's some time in the future because, uh, and tomorrow never comes.
11:45
[SPEAKER_04]: Um, so Bobbi, wouldn't this, wouldn't this be a great moment to go?
11:49
[SPEAKER_04]: Okay, you know, if you're really going to buy votes, if we're really bribing people, if we're really doing that, now it would be a great time to do it because it's before the election.
11:58
[SPEAKER_04]: People would be happy going into the election going, look, I got my Trump check.
12:02
[SPEAKER_04]: I got my bribe.
12:04
[SPEAKER_04]: I'm gonna throw, I'm gonna throw that lever there away because there might be another bribe on the other side.
12:09
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I mean, look, strategically you might want to do something right before or the promise of another one, but again, to that point, I don't think this is real and think anyone really thinks this is real.
12:20
[SPEAKER_01]: And and and even if it were real, again, it doesn't actually address the fundamental issue that the Americans are facing one five thousand dollar check once doesn't make health care affordable one five thousand dollar check once doesn't make housing affordable.
12:36
[SPEAKER_04]: Didn't he just say the other day that they were going to send out $500 checks to the ACA people who we believe they were getting cheated.
12:43
[SPEAKER_04]: So I mean, if he thinks 500 bucks makes a health care more affordable in his mind, 5,000 has got to make it really affordable.
12:53
[SPEAKER_01]: It's funny.
12:53
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, that one is, you know, there's a little bit to disentangle for the health care checks.
12:59
[SPEAKER_01]: The ACA, the charges, the charges fees to run the ACA, the fees on the, on the insurers.
13:07
[SPEAKER_01]: And it's, you know, sometimes you kind of overcharge, sometimes you kind of undercharge, you know, more than you might need or a little bit less than you might need.
13:14
[SPEAKER_01]: And so then the fees will be a little bit higher and a little bit lower on the year after because of that.
13:19
[SPEAKER_01]: By virtue of him saying, I'll want to rebate the money, that means that it actually drives up premiums next year.
13:27
[SPEAKER_01]: Because it means the fee instead of being able to lower the fees instead of being a lower the fees next year.
13:32
[SPEAKER_01]: It is it kind of eats into these savings.
13:35
[SPEAKER_01]: And so quite literally it would be if you were to do that it would be done at the expense of lower premiums for every market place and kind of everywhere else because they're all the same company.
13:44
[SPEAKER_01]: So fees on lower it would raise premiums in the average person and then I don't know, you know, there wasn't really much stink made about this, but he specifically was focusing on the people in the exchange who don't get any subsidy, which means it's the richest people on the exchange.
13:59
[SPEAKER_01]: And so quite literally his proposal was
14:01
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm going to give a one-time check to the richest people on the exchange at the expense of lower premiums for everyone else.
14:11
[SPEAKER_01]: That track totally awful policy.
14:14
[SPEAKER_04]: No, that tracks, but it tracks.
14:15
[SPEAKER_04]: I mean, this is who he is, right?
14:19
[SPEAKER_01]: give money to the rich and take money from the poor.
14:20
[SPEAKER_01]: That's what the big beautiful built it, right?
14:22
[SPEAKER_01]: Quite literally give thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands and tens of thousands of dollars hundreds of thousands of dollars to the very richest and it took money from the course 30% of America.
14:32
[SPEAKER_01]: So yeah, it is part and parcel for the president's budget agenda as fiscal agenda so far.
14:38
[SPEAKER_04]: Now, as a budget guy, you're keenly aware of all of this stuff, all the moving parts.
14:43
[SPEAKER_04]: If I remember right and help me, because I'm trying to remember this, because it's been a long time.
14:47
[SPEAKER_04]: Joe Biden gave out 1400 bucks as a stimulus when he took office.
14:53
[SPEAKER_04]: It was supposed to be 2000, but they subtracted the 600 that Trump had given.
14:57
[SPEAKER_04]: So they made the 2000, it was 1400.
15:00
[SPEAKER_04]: That evidently, according to my red hat friends, and helped me hear if I'm getting this wrong.
15:04
[SPEAKER_04]: But according to them the $1,400 cause the massive inflation and this is all Joe Biden's fault because the inflation was bad because of that $1,400 If that's true, and let's let's just argue for the sake of arguing that that is Fat it's economic law now.
15:23
[SPEAKER_04]: What would $5,000 do if 1,400 triggered?
15:24
[SPEAKER_04]: Well, all of that
15:31
[SPEAKER_01]: Um, it's funny.
15:33
[SPEAKER_01]: I've, as a former Biden official, I have to defend just for a minute, um, the, the, I've pushed in the Biden agenda, uh, all over Europe, I'm all over the advanced world.
15:43
[SPEAKER_01]: We saw massive inflation and only one of, only one country past the American Rescue Plan, only one country to the checks.
15:50
[SPEAKER_01]: It doesn't really make sense, but it will be the, it will be the checks.
15:52
[SPEAKER_01]: But for the sake of argument here, I think the thing behind it all is,
16:01
[SPEAKER_01]: The reason you are supposed to do fiscal stimulus when the economy is bad is that there's an output gap and the economy is kind of producing less than it ought to be able to in that time and so the government fills the hole.
16:14
[SPEAKER_01]: And if you do it right, it's not inflationary.
16:17
[SPEAKER_01]: You get you get good multipliers.
16:18
[SPEAKER_01]: It's not inflationary because because it's not causing the economy to overheat.
16:24
[SPEAKER_01]: contrast that with the time where the economy is running at or near potential, you know, we think we're around this potential right now.
16:31
[SPEAKER_01]: Now, if the economy is kind of using the money kind of productively, you know, kind of at the aluminum, what we can do if you sink more money into that, we don't really get to produce more goods.
16:43
[SPEAKER_01]: And so as a result of that, it ends up being inflationary.
16:47
[SPEAKER_01]: And so basically that that's a a long way of saying a standard Keynesian economics says that when the economy is bad, you're supposed to choose the economy and when the economy is good, you're supposed to tap on the brakes.
16:58
[SPEAKER_01]: During COVID level recessions, great recession during any recession, you're supposed to throw money into the economy.
17:05
[SPEAKER_01]: During times like this, you are not supposed to throw money into the economy because because then it really is quite inflationary.
17:11
[SPEAKER_01]: And so what happens is either causes a bunch of inflation or.
17:15
[SPEAKER_01]: the fed response by massively raising rates to try to slow things down and then the Americans feel that through the higher rates.
17:23
[SPEAKER_01]: And so probably what would be what would happen is a mixture of the two.
17:27
[SPEAKER_01]: There would be a one-time level level increase in crisis.
17:30
[SPEAKER_01]: It would be inflationary.
17:32
[SPEAKER_01]: And also we'd suffer higher rates which pushes up mortgage costs for anyone mocking in a new mortgage and auto loan credit card, student loans, and any sort of that
17:44
[SPEAKER_04]: So let me ask you this, because if you listen to the administration, the economy is fabulous and yet most of the people who have been emailing me back and forth on what they're going to do with their their fantasy five.
17:54
[SPEAKER_04]: You know, it's it's paying you know 650 for a gallon for diesel.
17:59
[SPEAKER_04]: It's in California, 999 a gallon for diesel.
18:03
[SPEAKER_04]: Not even sure what they're going to do one of the hit when it breaks the 10 mark.
18:06
[SPEAKER_01]: I'll get to go back down to zero.
18:08
[SPEAKER_04]: I see how what it is.
18:09
[SPEAKER_04]: Okay.
18:10
[SPEAKER_04]: I think there's going to go out and physically move the decimal point on the signs.
18:15
[SPEAKER_04]: But when you're looking at this or told the administration said this is the greatest economy ever and yet people are really struggling and I think this is what happened during the Biden years as well.
18:25
[SPEAKER_04]: There are a lot of people saying the economy is doing good, the inflation looks good, and yet average every day people
18:30
[SPEAKER_04]: who would love to have the five grand just to make it to the next month, they're struggling.
18:35
[SPEAKER_04]: So things aren't great.
18:38
[SPEAKER_04]: And yet now I hear the Fed may, there's a potential that the Fed might even not just leave interest rates alone, but potentially raise it.
18:45
[SPEAKER_04]: Is that possible?
18:46
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, we have a distribution problem in our economy.
18:50
[SPEAKER_01]: It's not that the economy isn't producing.
18:52
[SPEAKER_01]: you know, our economy in terms of what it's producing is the strongest that it's ever been.
18:58
[SPEAKER_01]: Where the problem is, is where that money is going, is the growing inequality that that the market kind of creates.
19:07
[SPEAKER_01]: And so the Fed tries to make sure that the economy is not running too hot.
19:12
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, as a dual mandate of working on inflation and employment,
19:18
[SPEAKER_01]: And we have strong employment, we have robust employment, the problem that the economy has right now is that you can be employed full time and not making enough.
19:28
[SPEAKER_01]: Either, you know, you could be in poverty or you could be not, you know, not technically in poverty but struggling to, struggling to pay your rent, struggling to afford your groceries, struggling to afford your healthcare.
19:40
[SPEAKER_01]: And the Fed doesn't have a lever that says, cool, let's fix how the money is distributed.
19:46
[SPEAKER_01]: That's a job for Congress, but the Fed is trying to do is balance inflation and employment.
19:55
[SPEAKER_01]: And that's what the rate, you know, that's what the rate increase would be like.
19:57
[SPEAKER_01]: We are inflation is still
19:59
[SPEAKER_01]: is still too high, higher than the Fed wants it to be, things like the $5,000 checks and actually things like the run, make it significant and tear us, make it all worse.
20:10
[SPEAKER_01]: And the Fed can't say, oh, shoot will just redistribute how the money is working inside of it.
20:15
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, so all the Trump policies and this goes back to the $5,000 why I'm sure that he's not going to have to do it out because I don't know anyone who's going to go to the polls and go gee for five grand I'm going to keep these same crummy policies that we've been living under for the 19th and the last 19 months.
20:30
[SPEAKER_04]: I just don't know that that I know I don't want the what we've seen and I'm watching a lot of the red hat books not thrilled, but I'm a flip side.
20:39
[SPEAKER_04]: The good thing is if you listen to Elon Musk, AI is coming.
20:43
[SPEAKER_04]: and the era of abundance, the era of us not needing money, so the five grand will be immaterial, it doesn't matter.
20:50
[SPEAKER_04]: We're going to just have everything we want, because AI is going to solve all of our problems.
20:57
[SPEAKER_01]: I sure hope it does.
20:59
[SPEAKER_01]: We don't really know how AI is going to play out right now.
21:04
[SPEAKER_01]: It could be labor succumbing or it could be labor replacing and I think in some in some industries it could be supplementing and some will be replacing.
21:15
[SPEAKER_01]: That is to say, for some people, it will increase their productivity and for other people it will take their jobs.
21:20
[SPEAKER_01]: And that's true.
21:21
[SPEAKER_01]: That's true for all technologically disruptive advancements.
21:25
[SPEAKER_01]: Think about the internet.
21:27
[SPEAKER_01]: For some places, the internet kind of destroyed certain industries.
21:31
[SPEAKER_01]: And in others, it made certain industries more productive.
21:34
[SPEAKER_01]: We actually see that in the productivity data, where there was kind of a one-time decade,
21:43
[SPEAKER_01]: Hey, I don't really know.
21:45
[SPEAKER_01]: We know what it does right now.
21:47
[SPEAKER_01]: And there isn't much evidence right now that has killed any jobs.
21:52
[SPEAKER_01]: I think there are less nuance and more nuance ways to look at it, but if you look at kind of the industries that are more exposed to AI, you don't see a slow down and employment there, that's unique to them.
22:04
[SPEAKER_01]: So there's much evidence that's right now killing jobs, but two years now, a year from now, three years from now, it could look very different.
22:11
[SPEAKER_04]: And everybody that just be killing jobs, Bobby, it might be killing us because if you listen to some of the the conversation that's going on right now from the people who've made their money and are now getting out, um, they're saying, we know we may have created a monster that we can't, we can't, we can't, we can't defeat.
22:28
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I think so I think they're, you know, I'm going to get quickly outside of my depth here, but I think what they're worried about is the idea that it can, it will do recursive self improvement, that it will be able to build itself.
22:39
[SPEAKER_01]: And at that point, I think they're worried that it can spin out of something that they can control.
22:46
[SPEAKER_01]: I think there are lots of different ways that you could imagine that happening.
22:51
[SPEAKER_01]: But I think the other, for me, when I think about like AI risk,
22:55
[SPEAKER_01]: There are lots of things in the world right now, that's a bad potential in the world that can only happen if people with a lot of people and a lot of money are able to do it, right?
23:07
[SPEAKER_01]: There are some things where only governments can do bad things right now.
23:10
[SPEAKER_03]: Only governments can make nukes where giant multinationals, because you need to acquire the stuff you need to do the enrichment you need to figure out how to do it, et cetera, et cetera.
23:19
[SPEAKER_01]: That's true from any bio weapons as well.
23:21
[SPEAKER_01]: I think the worry is, at least for me, if AI can make it so that individuals or small groups of people, all of a sudden have the power of it, if it makes it easier for badness to happen, the government obviously can look at,
23:38
[SPEAKER_01]: the 200 plus other governments in the world and look at them all and you know you can focus on kind of only a few small actors you can't focus on eight billion people so I don't know how risky these things are I just know that like we're we're entering unknown and when you go into the unknown you should you should tread carefully and lightly and I think that approaching it, approaching it cautiously is really important and I really really really hope that Congress acts
24:08
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, what's that thing about wishing one hand and do something else in the other?
24:12
[SPEAKER_04]: You see, which one feels up first?
24:15
[SPEAKER_04]: Because Congress acting at this point.
24:17
[SPEAKER_04]: Now even Donald Trump has said, you know, we don't need guardrails.
24:21
[SPEAKER_04]: We just need a strong president.
24:24
[SPEAKER_01]: I just stared out to kind of.
24:27
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
24:28
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
24:29
[SPEAKER_01]: It's, I would say the last week has been pretty disappointing.
24:32
[SPEAKER_01]: I think that it felt to me as if a lot of people were taking stuff more seriously.
24:37
[SPEAKER_01]: And again, like no one really knows how dangerous this is, and it's all potential.
24:41
[SPEAKER_01]: But like, you know, and I start with some people saying, well, the human race will survive.
24:45
[SPEAKER_01]: We survived a bunch of other things and that's always true, but you know, I always think like, you know, tuberculosis killed like a third of Europe.
24:54
[SPEAKER_01]: Um, and they survive, but that's not a good outcome.
24:59
[SPEAKER_01]: And so there are lots of things that are short of disaster that like true like everyone dies that are that are really bad.
25:06
[SPEAKER_01]: There are things that are that kill a bunch of people.
25:09
[SPEAKER_01]: There are things that kill no one, but there's massively disruptive for all of our systems and it makes everything more expensive for everyone and breaks a lot of stuff.
25:22
[SPEAKER_01]: don't want all the same.
25:23
[SPEAKER_01]: And that's the sort of thing that can only be fixed by everyone working together.
25:28
[SPEAKER_01]: And the last week has been, as I say, disappointing for this, because you've seen conspiracy theorists deciding that the only reason anyone could possibly care is for nefarious reasons.
25:38
[SPEAKER_01]: You've seen Trump downplay, you've seen other people, he went Ted Cruz said that they're going to be killer robots.
25:43
[SPEAKER_01]: I want them to be American killer robots.
25:45
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
25:46
[SPEAKER_04]: Come on man, I need to be to the next to the last point because is this the new is this the new cold war new crisis I mean is this Is this this technology does this make country like I ran if they have the ability to unleash this stuff to shut down all of our all of our computers or in fact all of our our systems Is this not so disruptive.
26:08
[SPEAKER_04]: It's almost like a note
26:10
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I couldn't tell you, again, now at now I am outside my area that I would say that the AI people seen convinced that in the long run, AI defense is stronger than AI offense.
26:23
[SPEAKER_01]: I think A, we need to make it long run.
26:26
[SPEAKER_01]: That's true.
26:27
[SPEAKER_01]: And then the other worry is that something like the hugging face incident, I think.
26:34
[SPEAKER_01]: That calls into question if you have a good enough AI offense, can it find a way to exploit the good AI defense and turn the defense into the offense, right?
26:41
[SPEAKER_01]: All of a sudden it opens up the possibility that like your defense can be made to work against you.
26:49
[SPEAKER_01]: And so there are lots of things that are not connected to the internet, like our Newx are not connected to the internet and we should be really glad for that.
26:56
[SPEAKER_01]: There's a reason for that.
26:57
[SPEAKER_01]: So lots of our systems are not really breakable, but
27:01
[SPEAKER_01]: Even if those systems are not breakable, there are a whole bunch that are and if the only way to save everything is to take everything off the grid, that is bad.
27:09
[SPEAKER_01]: That's bad for you.
27:10
[SPEAKER_01]: That's great.
27:10
[SPEAKER_01]: That saves everyone, but that's bad for humans.
27:12
[SPEAKER_01]: We have this system set up for a reason because it makes us all, you know, it improves our lives.
27:18
[SPEAKER_01]: And so, you know, I just go back to like,
27:21
[SPEAKER_01]: I think it's really, really we're going into the unknown.
27:24
[SPEAKER_01]: We don't know how we don't know what it'll look like.
27:27
[SPEAKER_01]: And yeah, not like just caution isn't appropriate.
27:31
[SPEAKER_04]: That's the answer.
27:32
[SPEAKER_04]: Bobby, as always, I appreciate the time.
27:34
[SPEAKER_04]: Great talking with you.
27:35
[SPEAKER_04]: Hope you'll come back and share some more with us down the road.
27:38
[SPEAKER_04]: Thanks for having me back on Rick.
27:39
[SPEAKER_04]: Thanks so much, our good friend Bobby Koch and want to hear your thoughts.
27:42
[SPEAKER_04]: So what do you think?
27:43
[SPEAKER_04]: Email me, Rick at therixmithshow.com.
27:45
[SPEAKER_04]: You worried about AI?
27:47
[SPEAKER_04]: Excited?
27:47
[SPEAKER_04]: I've got a friend who's excited.
27:48
[SPEAKER_04]: It's going to cure everything.
27:50
[SPEAKER_04]: It's going to get up us, everything.
27:51
[SPEAKER_04]: It's going to be wonderful.
27:53
[SPEAKER_04]: What are your thoughts?
27:54
[SPEAKER_04]: Rick at Therixmithshow.com, right back.
28:00
[SPEAKER_04]: I'm Rick Smith, and this is Labor History in 2.
28:03
[SPEAKER_04]: On this day in Labor History, the year was 1970.
28:06
[SPEAKER_04]: That was the day 350,000 GM workers kicked off a 67 day strike.
28:12
[SPEAKER_04]: It was the largest auto strike since the end of World War II.
28:16
[SPEAKER_04]: According to historian Jefferson Cowey, it was likely the costliest.
28:20
[SPEAKER_04]: in his book, Stay In A Live.
28:22
[SPEAKER_04]: Cowey notes that the strike cost GM a billion dollars in profits and nearly bankrupted the union.
28:29
[SPEAKER_04]: But he adds, it, quote, lacked the proletarian drama that fired journalist's hearts.
28:34
[SPEAKER_04]: For Cowey, it was an example of labor management cooperation, a civilized affair, but historian Jeremy Breachier points out that the Wall Street Journal drew different conclusions about the strike at the time.
28:46
[SPEAKER_04]: In a series of articles,
28:48
[SPEAKER_04]: The paper noted that labor management cooperation during the strike served ironically to get workers back to work, a long and costly strike served a number of functions.
28:58
[SPEAKER_04]: It wore down strikers' expectations.
29:01
[SPEAKER_04]: After eight or ten weeks, workers would be amiable to terms they initially rejected.
29:06
[SPEAKER_04]: It also provided an escape valve for built-up frustration overworking conditions.
29:11
[SPEAKER_04]: And a long strike served to coalesce internal union factions around a common enemy.
29:16
[SPEAKER_04]: strengthening the Union's leadership and the process.
29:19
[SPEAKER_04]: For management, a long and costly strike let hope that workers would be reluctant to strike in the future.
29:25
[SPEAKER_04]: But breach your notes, these ideas about workers' motives nearly backfire.
29:29
[SPEAKER_04]: Strikers simply wouldn't budge on their demands.
29:33
[SPEAKER_04]: They made gains in wages, pensions, and cost of living allowances.
29:37
[SPEAKER_04]: and they were finally able to retire after 30 years.
29:41
[SPEAKER_04]: But critics argued the agreement fell short of initial demands and workers lacked more say in the workplace.
29:47
[SPEAKER_04]: This would be a key issue in the many strikes and wildcats in the years to come.
29:52
[SPEAKER_04]: For more information, go to laborhistoryn2.com like us on Facebook, follow us on Twitter at LaborHistoryn2.
30:00
[SPEAKER_00]: A West Texas cowboys saying advises never sign nothing by neon.
30:06
[SPEAKER_00]: But that's exactly the key operational method of the AI data center hucksters who are foisting their expoative multi-billion dollar scams on local folks all across America.
30:17
[SPEAKER_00]: corporate slicks for outfits like Amazon, meta, open AI, and Google are slithering through the countryside, luring locals to surrender land, water, electric power, and democratic rights to profiteering billionaires who promise pie in the sky prosperity.
30:34
[SPEAKER_00]: These deals are typically cut and the dim light of secret meetings where corporate lawyers whisper to bedazzle local officials just sign here cowboy.
30:44
[SPEAKER_00]: The key to this mass deception is a legalistic corporate contravence called an NDA, non-disclosure agreement.
30:52
[SPEAKER_00]: It allows data center owners and a small group of insiders to negotiate a raw deal for area residents.
30:59
[SPEAKER_00]: They hide essential details from the public.
31:02
[SPEAKER_00]: Details like, who pays, how much, who profits, what are the side effects, who's responsible for damages, and what the hell is this room so dark?
31:13
[SPEAKER_00]: These NDAs even have corporate code names like Project Lightning.
31:17
[SPEAKER_00]: What's the rush?
31:19
[SPEAKER_00]: As one opponent of a Louisiana Rush job said, we live here.
31:22
[SPEAKER_00]: We want to know how it impacts us.
31:25
[SPEAKER_00]: The inside schemers pushing that deal, clocks sympathetically, winked at each other, then assured bothersome locals that an independent study had shown the proposed data center would cause no harm.
31:37
[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe, but the profiteers then said, the study itself could not be released for public review.
31:43
[SPEAKER_00]: Why?
31:44
[SPEAKER_00]: Because the developer had covered it with an NDA.
31:47
[SPEAKER_00]: This is Jim Heichauer saying, government by corporate imposed secrecy is totalitarianism.
31:53
[SPEAKER_00]: Didn't we, the people, have an armed revolution against that 250 years ago?
32:11
[SPEAKER_04]: So last week, we were talking about this labeling thing.
32:16
[SPEAKER_04]: You go to the story, and you see on the shelves, there's a little electronic tag, and that's where the price tag is now, evidently, in a lot of places.
32:24
[SPEAKER_04]: And we talked about the FLCIO's tech institute priced out, pushed out, uh, study.
32:30
[SPEAKER_04]: And interestingly enough, a bunch of people had questions that we didn't get to.
32:35
[SPEAKER_04]: Part of it was,
32:36
[SPEAKER_04]: I've never seen one.
32:38
[SPEAKER_04]: Where are they?
32:39
[SPEAKER_04]: How do I find them?
32:40
[SPEAKER_04]: And are they in stores near me?
32:42
[SPEAKER_04]: Which I thought would be a great opportunity to reach out to the folks at the AFFL CIO's Tech Institute and talk about their report, price, doubt, push doubt.
32:50
[SPEAKER_04]: That's why I've asked Sunnyglotman to come share some thoughts.
32:52
[SPEAKER_04]: She's the co-author of the piece you can check that out at AFLCIOTechInstitute.org.
32:58
[SPEAKER_04]: Sunny, thanks for looking time for us.
33:02
[SPEAKER_04]: So last week we talked about the study we talked about, you know, just the whole use of technology and AI and all this stuff and I guess I didn't hit the baseline stuff.
33:13
[SPEAKER_04]: So for people who've never seen one of these these dohikis, these electronic shelf labels, where are they?
33:20
[SPEAKER_04]: What are they?
33:29
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, happy to answer that question.
33:31
[SPEAKER_02]: So first off, as you well know and I know and everyone probably listening knows who anyone who eats food knows, grocery prices are just unaffordable for many Americans, and they are continually rising.
33:43
[SPEAKER_02]: These technologies, electronic shelf labels are being implemented across the US retail sector.
33:49
[SPEAKER_02]: at a time when food prices have surpassed inflation and wage gains, increasing 33 percent over the past seven years.
33:56
[SPEAKER_02]: We're looking at companies like Whole Foods, Groger, Walmart, they have plans or have already implemented these technologies in their grocery stores.
34:09
[SPEAKER_02]: And I guess going back into the concerns we have, these labels connect to the same exact algorithmic pricing software, the online retailers are already a dynamic pricing.
34:22
[SPEAKER_02]: Exactly.
34:23
[SPEAKER_02]: So this is the technology that, well, the retailers claim, oh, it lets us take an expiring banana and mark down the price.
34:33
[SPEAKER_02]: It's also the very same technology that lets them raise the
34:39
[SPEAKER_02]: in a given town or city.
34:42
[SPEAKER_04]: Now, according to the, from what I read, and you built this entire thing off of basically what the industry that builds these electronic shelf label makers, what these things, it's their marketing material that you've looked at.
34:57
[SPEAKER_02]: Exactly, so I mean, you know, the reality is is these tools, these electronic shelf labels, they are being implemented two day.
35:05
[SPEAKER_02]: We wanted to take the companies out their word.
35:07
[SPEAKER_02]: We wanted to better understand what a world would look like if everyone who walked into a grocery store, when they went in, it became the norm that they would be picking up groceries, looking at electronic shelf labels, instead of traditional paper price tags,
35:22
[SPEAKER_02]: And what is that going to look like for the workers who are in these stores?
35:26
[SPEAKER_02]: So what we did, and it was, it was, was we took the marketing claims, which there were claims from two manufacturers, one arguing that a store would cut up to 5,200,
35:46
[SPEAKER_02]: And then we said, OK, well, let's assume that every single grocery store in America adopts these and what would that mean.
35:54
[SPEAKER_02]: We found was that it would lead to potentially 1.6 billion to $6.9 billion in lost wages annually.
36:01
[SPEAKER_02]: And would impact anywhere from 44,000 to 191,000 jobs.
36:06
[SPEAKER_02]: What that looks like in terms of lost wages per worker per week year, it would be anywhere from $600.
36:13
[SPEAKER_02]: to roughly $2600 for prospective sake, median rent in America as of 2024, which is when they published the most recent federal data set, was at $1,413.
36:27
[SPEAKER_02]: At the high end of these estimates, a grocery worker could lose close to two months rent.
36:31
[SPEAKER_02]: So these are very, very real implications.
36:33
[SPEAKER_02]: And beyond that, my in-laws actually, they were in town visiting this weekend, and I told them about the report, and they had the same question that many of your viewers have.
36:41
[SPEAKER_02]: And in fact, they live in a small town of New Hampshire and they have not seen these yet.
36:46
[SPEAKER_02]: But when I describe to them as I was like, imagine you go to the grocery store, you're doing your shopping.
36:51
[SPEAKER_02]: You pick up, you know, your weekly bag of coffee and it's 999 and you put it in the store in your cart.
36:57
[SPEAKER_02]: And then you go and when you check out, it's maybe 30 cents more expensive.
37:01
[SPEAKER_02]: Now, there's two problems with this.
37:03
[SPEAKER_02]: One is that you're not typically going to grocery store and just buying one bag of coffee.
37:07
[SPEAKER_02]: You're buying your whole week's groceries.
37:10
[SPEAKER_02]: So prices might be much higher than you anticipated.
37:13
[SPEAKER_02]: And two, there's also something to be said for.
37:17
[SPEAKER_02]: You should have perfect information when you are buying a good as a consumer.
37:21
[SPEAKER_02]: You should know how much a good cost before you get to the register.
37:25
[SPEAKER_02]: And with these tools, what's going to happen with you with electronic shop labels is you won't know until you're getting wrung up and then it's too late to leave.
37:33
[SPEAKER_04]: No, and in some assurance that it's not going to change from the time you picked it up because here's the thing I don't know about you, but Rarely now now before you know years ago, I would go in for one or two things.
37:43
[SPEAKER_04]: So yeah, I knew what they were, but now I do the grocery shopping in our house.
37:47
[SPEAKER_04]: So now I'm not getting just one or two things.
37:50
[SPEAKER_04]: I'm getting 30 40 things.
37:52
[SPEAKER_04]: I'm not going to remember every price for every item and who's to say that every time I put something in the carcass and I looked at it together That was a decent price in that moment That by the time I walked to the front all of them haven't changed now I know the argument is they could have come down, but I'm going to say they're probably not going to I mean if you look at the facts food grocery prices increase 33% over the past seven years
38:17
[SPEAKER_02]: We know that grocery prices are going up.
38:20
[SPEAKER_02]: You don't need a PhD in economics to understand that.
38:23
[SPEAKER_02]: So even if one day you get lucky and your cup of coffee is a few cents cheaper, the skew is going to be higher and you're going to have these prices snuckily added in as you go into the stores over time.
38:37
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, I remember the first time I came across dynamic pricing and I've told this before.
38:40
[SPEAKER_04]: I went to a Pittsburgh Pirates game where we were in Pittsburgh and he said, what the heck?
38:44
[SPEAKER_04]: Let's go see a ball game.
38:45
[SPEAKER_04]: So it was the Thursday night we showed up, tickets for way out in the middle of nowhere in the nosebleeds were five bucks.
38:51
[SPEAKER_04]: Like that's fabulous, five bucks.
38:54
[SPEAKER_04]: So we saw that game, we went back, hey, let's go to the next night.
38:56
[SPEAKER_04]: We went back to next night.
38:58
[SPEAKER_04]: It was like 35 bucks.
39:00
[SPEAKER_04]: and I'm going to explain well people want to come now so there's more demand we're getting more out of it and that's the first time I heard the term dynamic pricing and then I started thinking and going yeah this isn't going to end well for we the consumer because this is going to happen a lot.
39:19
[SPEAKER_02]: And I think one thing just to take, I keep going back to this is it's bad, not just for consumers, but consumers and workers.
39:24
[SPEAKER_02]: Electronic shelf labels are squeezing profits out from both sides.
39:30
[SPEAKER_02]: What they're doing in effect is they're reducing potentially worker hours from stores.
39:34
[SPEAKER_02]: so it's going to be coming out of worker paychecks.
39:37
[SPEAKER_02]: And at the same time, they're taking all of our information and knowledge and using it to charges higher prices at the register.
39:45
[SPEAKER_02]: So it's a two-fer.
39:47
[SPEAKER_02]: It's bad for consumers and workers and workers or consumers and consumers are workers.
39:51
[SPEAKER_04]: Now, as you point out in the piece, and I got to wonder, the claim is that by reducing the number of hours changing prices, you know, when you need to raise them or lower them or whatever, that will free up the current workers to be able to then go help.
40:08
[SPEAKER_04]: We the consumers and yet again, I'm going to call BS on that because good luck finding anything other than the the the mobile robot beeping around the the the aisles the people aren't really there to answer questions anymore in fact every time I go to the check out they keep pushing me towards the self check out so I envision a moment where there's nobody in the stores and I'm just going to be the guy who eventually has to stock the shelves before I could not pay for them on the way out.
40:36
[SPEAKER_02]: And there's so many that just makes such a worse grocery shopping experience and it makes it less safe.
40:42
[SPEAKER_02]: Like imagine if there's spills all over the stores because they do what they can to get the smallest number of workers and give them store to give them time.
40:50
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, so if it's sunny, we've got Marty.
40:52
[SPEAKER_04]: Marty, the little machine robot.
40:54
[SPEAKER_04]: He goes around.
40:54
[SPEAKER_04]: Marty's job is to look for spills and and Marty's always in the way, but you know what he'll tell you if there's a spill right in front of him.
41:03
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, but you know what, Marty's kid doesn't need to go to college.
41:07
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
41:09
[SPEAKER_04]: true.
41:09
[SPEAKER_04]: So when you when you look at these numbers because these are some pretty big numbers that you've you've put out.
41:15
[SPEAKER_04]: Somewhere's a 44th over 44,000 jobs to potentially over 190,000 jobs.
41:21
[SPEAKER_04]: Who are we talking about?
41:22
[SPEAKER_04]: I mean, look, I look at my wife for her first job in high school and in college was was a cashier and the person who stocked the shelves and did the the gotten thing with the numbers.
41:33
[SPEAKER_04]: Are they the first to go and as a society are we okay,
41:39
[SPEAKER_04]: Is that or is it more?
41:41
[SPEAKER_02]: Now, to be fair, I am not a business operations specialist at a major grocery retailer.
41:48
[SPEAKER_02]: So there will be business decisions made in certain retailers might decide not to do that.
41:53
[SPEAKER_02]: But what we know is here's what the electronic shelf label companies are advertising their products to do.
42:00
[SPEAKER_02]: So that in and of itself is concerning.
42:02
[SPEAKER_02]: These are how these products are being advertised and not being advertised to help us charge less for bananas.
42:11
[SPEAKER_04]: Now, as I understand, I didn't see a lot of specific retailers.
42:15
[SPEAKER_04]: Is it just a handful?
42:17
[SPEAKER_04]: Is it more persuasive or evasive?
42:21
[SPEAKER_04]: Is it something we fear is going to be the norm?
42:24
[SPEAKER_04]: As I understand, look, be honest.
42:28
[SPEAKER_04]: If corporate American can get rid of us, if they can make their profits a little bit higher by making our experience a little bit worse, they're going to do that.
42:37
[SPEAKER_04]: But how far into this are we now?
42:40
[SPEAKER_02]: So I think that that's where it's, you know, we are seeing planned rollouts, national retailers, including Groger, Aldian Holt Foods, have already started rolling out electronic shelf labels across thousands of stores.
42:54
[SPEAKER_02]: Walmart has deployed them in 2300 of its 5200 US locations.
43:00
[SPEAKER_02]: and they have plant, they've announced that by the end of the year they will have electronic shelf labels and all of their stores.
43:07
[SPEAKER_02]: And to be fair, in many European markets, these are already widely, widely, if not universally adopted.
43:15
[SPEAKER_04]: So let me ask you this because, you know, this seems like like small, I had someone say, well, you know, come on, that's not such a big deal and given the fact that we have given so much of our personal data away and look, I fought the store card thing for years.
43:29
[SPEAKER_04]: I fought not putting my personal information in there and linking it to my credit card.
43:33
[SPEAKER_04]: I fought all of this stuff all along on the grand scheme of things of everything that we've surrendered thus far.
43:40
[SPEAKER_04]: How big of a deal is this do you think?
43:44
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, I don't want to weigh in on how big of a deal or play the what's worse or better, but all I know is that for the worker who's out two months wages, two months rent with, two months wages and rent, that's terrible.
43:58
[SPEAKER_02]: And we shouldn't have to choose that.
44:00
[SPEAKER_02]: We shouldn't say do we want a new technology that
44:02
[SPEAKER_02]: potentially raises prices makes it so we don't know what we're paying when we get to the register and on top of that's it's going to be taking away someone's rep money that's going to be taking away someone's kids college fund.
44:13
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't think that that's innovation or progress.
44:15
[SPEAKER_02]: That just seems like the exploitation.
44:17
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, but we're told that's progress.
44:18
[SPEAKER_04]: You know, we're going to retrain those people to do other things.
44:21
[SPEAKER_04]: Sonny, come on, you know, they do, they really want to work in a grocery store.
44:25
[SPEAKER_04]: And the reality is my grandmother spent 20 some years working in a department store.
44:29
[SPEAKER_04]: I was very happy doing it.
44:30
[SPEAKER_04]: A lot of people supported their families off of those jobs because, you know, that's the best they could do given their situation.
44:38
[SPEAKER_04]: And in an economy, don't we have to have jobs for every skill level up and down the spectrum?
44:45
[SPEAKER_02]: Absolutely, and also grocery store workers provide a service to the community.
44:49
[SPEAKER_02]: There is something not pleasant about going into an empty grocery store to your earlier point.
44:54
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, but the future, I guess, is I'm told, because AI is going to solve all this.
44:57
[SPEAKER_04]: We won't have to go.
44:58
[SPEAKER_04]: AI will just shop for us.
45:03
[SPEAKER_02]: That I will say, I think, is beyond the scope of the research.
45:09
[SPEAKER_04]: You look at all of the tech stuff that's going on.
45:12
[SPEAKER_04]: This is just another part of another simple way to get in our pockets, another simple way to cost working people, their jobs.
45:20
[SPEAKER_04]: It's another way to see a massive redistribution of wealth from the people who are just trying to get by, just trying to make a living.
45:29
[SPEAKER_04]: To people who are trying to game the next system to line their pockets at the expense of people who can't defend themselves.
45:35
[SPEAKER_04]: I see this as another one of those technologies.
45:39
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, I think there is something to be said for asking ourselves when a new technology is being introduced, who does the surf and what good does it do?
45:48
[SPEAKER_02]: The public does it do the industry, does it do workers and when it comes to electronic shelf labels, it just doesn't add up.
45:57
[SPEAKER_04]: So that's a very nice way of kind of wrapping this part of this up, but the reality is is I don't think you guys think a lot of them because you're not saying to regulate it, at least this is what I'm understanding from the report.
46:10
[SPEAKER_04]: You're not saying, hey, we need to regulate this, need to have better rules, like Maryland's trying to do.
46:14
[SPEAKER_04]: You're saying this should just be outright banned.
46:17
[SPEAKER_04]: It should not happen.
46:18
[SPEAKER_04]: Am I getting that right?
46:20
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, I would say what we do say is we call for a ban because the technology is
46:27
[SPEAKER_02]: It's that there's no benefit to consumers, there's no benefit to workers.
46:32
[SPEAKER_02]: That is why the ban is needed.
46:35
[SPEAKER_02]: There are plenty of technologies where they can unlock immense benefits with regulations.
46:41
[SPEAKER_02]: This doesn't appear to be one of them.
46:44
[SPEAKER_02]: Where's the upside to it beyond helping companies be more profitable at the expense of workers and consumers?
46:51
[SPEAKER_04]: It's that I've got to get one more question out of you on the AI front and I it's probably not your area You can go at not my area.
46:58
[SPEAKER_04]: That's somebody else for the tech institute, but I'm sure you've been paying attention to all of the You know AI's gonna end the world.
47:07
[SPEAKER_04]: It's either gonna save the world and we're gonna have a abundance beyond our wildest fantasies And universal high income and all the wonderful things that Elon and company are promising or it's it's the end of humanity
47:21
[SPEAKER_04]: And we've got a president who says we shouldn't regulate it at all.
47:24
[SPEAKER_04]: We just need a strong, strong president, we need him evidently.
47:29
[SPEAKER_04]: Any thoughts on where we are currently in the AI world?
47:34
[SPEAKER_02]: To be fair, that is not my expertise, but I always go back to asking yourselves, progress is only what the technology does for the public for workers and humanity.
47:44
[SPEAKER_04]: There you go.
47:44
[SPEAKER_04]: Sunny, I appreciate the time, I appreciate the work you do.
47:47
[SPEAKER_04]: I hope folks will check out the report price out, push out.
47:52
[SPEAKER_04]: You can find that at AFLCIOTech Institute.org.
47:56
[SPEAKER_04]: We'll get links out on social media.
47:57
[SPEAKER_04]: Sunny, Galatman, thanks so much for your time.
47:59
[SPEAKER_02]: Thank you.
48:00
[SPEAKER_04]: Want to hear your thoughts?
48:02
[SPEAKER_04]: Email me, Rick at theRixMithShow.com.
48:04
[SPEAKER_04]: What do you think?
48:08
[SPEAKER_04]: This is good.
48:08
[SPEAKER_04]: Is this bad?
48:10
[SPEAKER_04]: Would you be okay with it?
48:12
[SPEAKER_04]: Let me know, Rick at TheRixMith show.com right back, stick around.
48:25
[SPEAKER_04]: I'm Rick Smith, and this is Labor History in 2.
48:29
[SPEAKER_04]: On this day in Labor History, the year was 1845.
48:32
[SPEAKER_04]: 5,000 female workers at the Allegheny Cotton Mill went on strike for a 10-hour work day.
48:39
[SPEAKER_04]: The fast streams around Pittsburgh and Allegheny City were ideal to power cotton mills.
48:44
[SPEAKER_04]: The mills were overheated and filled with dangerous dust.
48:47
[SPEAKER_04]: Many of these women and child workers suffered from work-related lung diseases.
48:52
[SPEAKER_04]: The seven factories of Allegheny City employed about 1,500 young women.
48:56
[SPEAKER_04]: These women earn between $2.50 and $6 a week.
49:00
[SPEAKER_04]: They worked from sunrise to sunset.
49:03
[SPEAKER_04]: Six days a week.
49:04
[SPEAKER_04]: Children made $3 a week at most.
49:07
[SPEAKER_04]: In 1843, factory owners cut wages even further.
49:10
[SPEAKER_04]: In the 1940s, a woman who had worked in the mills noted the ear filled with the noise of thousands of spindles.
49:17
[SPEAKER_04]: Anger over the deplorable working conditions grew.
49:19
[SPEAKER_04]: In early 1845, the women and children had had enough.
49:24
[SPEAKER_04]: They walked off the job and demanded a 10-hour workday and a living wage.
49:29
[SPEAKER_04]: Men supported them by gathering to protect the women from police attacks.
49:33
[SPEAKER_04]: After holding out for a month, the women began to return to work to survive.
49:37
[SPEAKER_04]: Some of the remaining strikers decided to try and remove the returning workers from the mills.
49:43
[SPEAKER_04]: They armed themselves with axes, but could not dislodge the workers.
49:47
[SPEAKER_04]: Public opinion turned against the striking women.
49:50
[SPEAKER_04]: Then, in September, workers marched on one of the largest area mills.
49:54
[SPEAKER_04]: The women broke down the factory gates and forcibly evicted the scab workers.
49:58
[SPEAKER_04]: The strike lasted for six months, but slowly out of desperation, more and more of the women workers went back to the mills.
50:06
[SPEAKER_04]: Although the women did not get their demands, the strike drew national attention.
50:10
[SPEAKER_04]: On Independence Day in 1848, the Pennsylvania legislature put into effect a 10-hour day law.
50:16
[SPEAKER_04]: But sadly, the law had numerous loopholes and had no real enforcement.
50:21
[SPEAKER_04]: Like what you hear, check out more at LaborHistoryInto.com.
50:25
[SPEAKER_03]: So Donald Trump's presidential approval rating, tank.
50:46
[SPEAKER_04]: The bottom of the tank actually 35% Disciple approval rating 63% not a lot of middle ground there.
50:55
[SPEAKER_04]: It seems to be you love him.
50:57
[SPEAKER_04]: You hate him not a lot of people in the middle going Not what we fight we're finding out a lot of news reports going on around the AI stuff
51:07
[SPEAKER_04]: And, and look, you know, I, I wasn't expecting, uh, you sonny to, to come out with anything, you know, breaking, uh, there from the AFL tech institute, uh, but I just wanted to get, I just wanted to get it out there, uh, the reality is just, we find out now met privately with saw Sam Altman at the Republican convention in Dallas on Thursday and again, this is another one of those moments where you go.
51:32
[SPEAKER_04]: Um, who knows what they talked about, who knows if Sam Altman is actually as freaked out as the claims are, or if this is just a way, you know, the pump up, who knows?
51:45
[SPEAKER_04]: But on Monday, the Washington Sun reported that Trump unexpectedly called into a business and technology conference with the NVIDIA CEO, Jensen Huang, on his cell phone, you know, good national security stuff and dismissed the urgency of the moment.
52:08
[SPEAKER_04]: called it, well he said robots will not be taking over the AI will not be taking over the rest of the world the whole things in giant hoax it's a hoax it's a big hoax it's a hoax and again I really I don't think it can open an open email is now saying you know it's a hoax
52:29
[SPEAKER_04]: And I do find it interesting that the same Washington sun reported that Speaker of the House Mike Johnson said that they don't want to jump in, you know, they don't want to get involved.
52:38
[SPEAKER_04]: They don't want the reflex of legislative bodies is to cover things up with red tape and hyperregulation.
52:46
[SPEAKER_04]: And if you do that, then you lose your edge.
52:49
[SPEAKER_04]: And that's a national security concern for the American people, according to Mike Johnson.
52:55
[SPEAKER_04]: so what he's saying honestly what he's saying is we're doing nothing there will be nothing done by the congressional legislative body uh don't hold your breath
53:07
[SPEAKER_04]: J.D.
53:08
[SPEAKER_04]: Vance came out and said that's well, if there's any regulation that comes of it, it should be a consensus between both Congress and the administration.
53:20
[SPEAKER_04]: He said if there's any chance, Congress will enact comprehensive AI regulation, it will require presidential leadership.
53:29
[SPEAKER_04]: vanset and clearly Trump doesn't believe there's any role for lawmakers in the AI department.
53:35
[SPEAKER_04]: So again, what he's saying is we're doing nothing.
53:40
[SPEAKER_04]: We're going to let this monster roam free because it's what we believe in.
53:45
[SPEAKER_04]: Now the Chinese, the Chinese have criticized calls from U.S. tech leaders to kind of put the brakes on because they don't want to fall behind.
54:01
[SPEAKER_04]: Uh, and this is where Trump is not entirely wrong, whoever wins AI, get a dominate the globe.
54:09
[SPEAKER_04]: And this is one of those things where you go, should we have such technology, should there be such technology?
54:17
[SPEAKER_04]: This is the scary part for me.
54:19
[SPEAKER_04]: Now, do I think that they're going to be, robot, at least in my lifetime, angry robots around every corner, on a furiously plotting to destroy humanity?
54:32
[SPEAKER_04]: Not right away.
54:34
[SPEAKER_04]: But I do have some real concerns.
54:37
[SPEAKER_04]: And the sad reality is our congressional body for too long has been way behind the curve on everything.
54:45
[SPEAKER_04]: They have been doing too much culture warrior.
54:48
[SPEAKER_04]: Hey, look at me, mugging for the camera, trying to get their attention, because after all their job is a popularity contest, where hey, look at me, gets votes.
54:58
[SPEAKER_04]: Instead of going, we need to do a job of ensuring that the American people are safe, secure, and all by the way, we have an economy that works.
55:07
[SPEAKER_04]: So the question that is, how's Wall Street responding to the AI crisis situation, hoax, end of the globe, potential, end of work, and end of need for money and future abundance of plenty?
55:24
[SPEAKER_04]: Well, they've reporting, they've kind of beyond.
55:27
[SPEAKER_04]: There's kind of been really nothing that's come out.
55:33
[SPEAKER_04]: Axiots has reported equity investors largely on Monday at warnings about AI wiping out humanity suggesting traders aren't pricing and and and and the existential threat so it's one of these things where my mind goes has Wall Street not figured out how to put a price on the end of humanity
56:02
[SPEAKER_04]: I have they not figured out how they can profit yet from our humanly demise.
56:16
[SPEAKER_04]: It makes one wonder.
56:18
[SPEAKER_04]: Now, look, I'm not entirely in the camp of smash the machine, but I do think there has to be some transparency.
56:28
[SPEAKER_04]: I do think that creating this monster without any oversight, probably not a great idea.
56:36
[SPEAKER_04]: And I do find it interesting, Trump's positioning.
56:40
[SPEAKER_04]: Now, Barack Obama has come out and said, you know, Democratic candidates, you've got to be talking about this.
56:46
[SPEAKER_04]: You're going to have to start taking a position.
56:48
[SPEAKER_04]: This is where Democrats, I think you're going to again take the position that I've taken is we've got to kind of,
56:55
[SPEAKER_04]: Tap the brakes, we've got to put some guardrails in place, not the kind of guardrails that Donald Trump thinks we need just a strong president, a good unitary executive, a good Trump.
57:06
[SPEAKER_04]: No, some actual oversight, some actual accountability, some actual regulation.
57:13
[SPEAKER_04]: So you've got an interesting moment here for the Red Hat crowd, because in 2024, and I
57:23
[SPEAKER_04]: My red hat friends were so freaked out that Joe Biden and the Democrats were going to institute a social credit score.
57:32
[SPEAKER_04]: And it was all because they're horrible terrible people.
57:35
[SPEAKER_04]: I mean, this is the weird thing.
57:37
[SPEAKER_04]: Most of my red hat friends, they do terrible horrible things.
57:41
[SPEAKER_04]: So it's one of those things where they go, yeah, we don't want to have to be nice to our neighbors.
57:45
[SPEAKER_04]: We don't want to have to not drink and cause a ruckus and not just be Americans.
57:51
[SPEAKER_04]: We don't want to have to pay for it, we don't have to be responsible for it.
57:54
[SPEAKER_04]: We want to be able to rip and tear a man and look, I'm not entirely opposed to it.
57:58
[SPEAKER_04]: Your freedom is to do whatever you want to do as long as it doesn't infringe on mine.
58:02
[SPEAKER_04]: I'm good!
58:03
[SPEAKER_04]: And this is why I've got a lot of redhead friends.
58:05
[SPEAKER_04]: Because I'm okay with them doing dumb stuff, especially if it's to themselves.
58:10
[SPEAKER_04]: But they were freaked out by the prospect that someone would be watching their stupidity and potentially charging them for their idiotsate.
58:20
[SPEAKER_04]: this is an interesting moment because you know I think they believed Trump would be their hero you know coming out against flock cameras and license plate readers and all of this stuff not you know not entirely against it because we need those things in those neighborhoods to keep those people in check but now that it's in their neighborhoods it's watching their
58:48
[SPEAKER_04]: Um, little freaked out by a little concerned, you know, so it's going to be kind of interesting to watch the temperature either rise or fall with the red hat brigade in, in, in how Trump response because it's, I've done it.
59:04
[SPEAKER_04]: It's a hoax.
59:06
[SPEAKER_04]: Where are the, where are the, uh, where all those folks, the conspiracy nuts?
59:14
[SPEAKER_04]: or here's the other thing did the meeting with Altman come up with a way for Trump the profit off of off of killer AI.
59:22
[SPEAKER_04]: Is this a way he's going to stay in power?
59:25
[SPEAKER_04]: I don't know why don't hear your thoughts email me ricketerrixmitcer.com.
59:29
[SPEAKER_04]: Miss any portion of the program grab the podcast and as always thanks so much for being here.
59:35
[SPEAKER_04]: We'll see you back your next time.
59:42
[SPEAKER_03]: You've been listening to the Rick Smith show.
59:46
[SPEAKER_03]: Email, Rick, and Rick at RickSmithshow.com.
59:54
[SPEAKER_03]: Until next time, this is Ben, the Rick Smith Show.
59:57
[SPEAKER_03]: We're working people, come to talk.