Hello from Washington. I'm Chuck Dot with a special edition of Meet the Press. We just wrapped up our sixth season of Meet the Press Reports. This is our single topic news magazine show that focuses on everything from the politics of artificial intelligence to the fight over drag brunches and secret wars that are military fighting that you don't know about.
You can watch the full season on demand on Peacock, YouTube or NBC news.com for this special edition. Meet the Press for sharing two of the latest topics we covered on the Press reports, the United States secret wars on terror and our investigation into the cost of living in America. Take a listen. Hello again, I'm Chuck Ty and welcome to another episode of Meet the Press Reports.
Today we'll look at the secret war on terror that the United States is quietly fighting across the globe. What are the front lines of this war you ask? On terror is Afghanistan and Iraq. The average American might be able to name those two countries, but few know the actual extent of this country's global war on terror.
A 2022 report by the Brennan center for justice found that the United States has fought secret wars in at least 20 countries over the past 20 years, one of them Somalia and East Africa. TV cameras have never allowed to evidence the US Special Forces there until now. NBC News Patreon correspondent Courtney Kubric recently returned from Somalia with a behind the scenes look at this tense battle against the Islamic terror group with ties to Al Qaeda known as Al Shabaab. We learned quite a bit, Chuck.
This deployment to Somalia began just over one year ago and it is so sensitive that as you'll see, we had to blur the faces and withhold the names of some of the key players in confronting Al Shabaab. The US Special Forces and their Somali partners are facing an uphill battle against one of most brutal terror networks in the world. The name Al Shabaab may not be familiar to many American ears, but their attacks are well known around the world. It's an urgent fight against one of the world's biggest terror threats, Al Shabaab, an arm of Al Qaeda that has been terrorizing Somalia for nearly two decades.
Their targets, citizens, government officials and diplomats in southern and central Somalia, even attacking civilians in neighboring Kenya and Djibouti. The terror group is the largest and richest Al Qaeda affiliate. They overpower the Somali forces in sheer number of fighters and in weapons and equipment. The terror network has shown no mercy in trying to topple the government and take over the country to establish an Islamic state.
Re embatted with US Forces training the Dana. Elite Somali military troops as they participated in live fire drills hand to hand combat and learned how to face their biggest threat from Al Shabaab. Roadside bombs or IEDs. Counter IED training takes place here, which is very important in Somalia.
This is the senior enlisted Navy SEAL in charge of working with the Somali troops. We cannot identify him for security reasons. IED are also significant problems. So some of our troops provide that support as well.
And basic marksmanship, patrolling tactics, small, small unit warfare. Officials here say as many as two of every five of these Newtownab soldiers will be wounded or killed in combat. About 350 recruits graduated today. They're now Somali Special Forces.
And dozens of these men and women will be on the front lines in the battle against Al Shabaab in a matter of days, including a handful of women like Second Lieutenant Shukri Yusuf Ali. Yeah, it's giving women opportunities. That's a very big opportunity. That's something like we're proud of.
At 21, Ali was one of the first females to join the Somali troops. Now at age 24, she's seen combat firsthand. I was not afraid at all. I would actually go again.
You would go again. Do you see yourself staying in the military for your entire career? Yeah, since it was a hobby from childhood, yes. And I see myself going up this graduation.
A harsh reminder of Al Shabaab's brutal tactics, including assassinating political and military leaders at Balladoglay Airfield, a former Soviet air base where the US trains the elite Somali Dinab forces. The training camp was officially renamed after Major Hassan Taur, targeted and killed earlier this year by Al Shabaab. His death is driving the Danab to fight even harder. And for U.S.
troops here, it was like losing one of their own. It's almost like losing a teammate. You know, I never thought I would say that in my many years, but I've come to really be proud of what the Somalis are doing. I haven't seen this in Afghanistan or Iraq.
This mission is not unique to Somalia. Small elite teams of U.S. military special operators are working with local forces around the world, fighting Al Shabaab in Somalia and East Africa, battling ISIS in Iraq and Syria, and ISIS offshoots in Afghanistan and into Pakistan. And combating the spread of Al Qaeda's ideology through a number of terror groups and affiliates in West Africa.
This is much different US military presence than the presences of the past in Iraq and Afghanistan. Chris Mayor focuses on special operations and counterterrorism at the Pentagon. These are not large combat deployments, and they're focused principally on empowering the local partners to deal with the threat themselves. You see these small groups as more for the norm going forward take on terror.
I would say it already is the norm because we don't have large combat formations like we once did. Hundreds of thousands in some of the areas that Americans are familiar with in Iraq and Afghanistan. Is this a dangerous mission for your? Absolutely, it's a dangerous mission, but I think one we take with well conditioned and well considered risk.
The Somali government has vowed to drive Al Shabaab off the land they control. But their military is too small to hold areas after they're cleared, leaving local militias to police the newly freed land, often with no training and armed only with their own personal weapons. The African Union provides almost 20,000 troops and helicopters to support the Somali military, but their presence is now scheduled to end in late 2024. Ambassador Mohammed El Amin Sueb leads the African Union mission in Somalia.
So those localities, those remote areas, there is no rule of law. Suef says the country will still need support after Al Shabaab is pushed out of areas. There is no governance. There is nothing, including, I mean the basic infrastructure.
So what we are doing now, and we appel the international community to support the Somalis once they liberated some of those localities. The Somali government has asked the US to train more to nab as many as 5,000 and to lift an arms embargo so the Somali military can compete with their well equipped, well funded adversary. In addition to training, US troops provide critical support to the Somali troops, including surveillance from overhead drones and airstrikes. This exclusive video shows Somali forces taking back territory that Al Shabaab once held.
This is the Joint Operation Center. The video was first seen here where the US military monitors drone feeds of Somali special operators during missions. When trouble arises, the US can provide support with airstrikes. There's very deliberate considerations in a checklist that we take into account before we provide this requested support to defend our partners.
Decisions like these made by the commander of the U.S. special Operations Task Force East Africa. We can identify him for his own safety. As live fire drills blast in the background, he tells us he turns down more strikes than he approves, often to avoid civilian casualties.
One strike won't win or lose this war, but one bad strike will take that authority and capability away from us and have ramifications that impact not only us, but also the international community that's here supporting small. He knows that often means not being able to help the Somalis he works with every day. It's something I think about every day. Like I said, it's a human aspect of this job that we all have to take very seriously.
Another human aspect. The population here is vulnerable. More than 90% of the country's weed comes from Russia and Ukraine, which remain locked in a fierce war, putting Somalia's food supply at risk. And for months, the country has been suffering from its worst drought in recorded history, destroying crops and killing more than 3 million livestock.
Today, nearly half the population of Somalia is starving. To make matters worse, as the Danab clear an area, the fleeing Al Shabaab fighters burn the crops, kill the livestock and poison the wells, leaving locals on the brink of a famine. Is the world doing enough to help the Somali people? No.
Larry Andre served as US ambassador in Mogadishu until May 30. We need the other rich countries, traditional partners of Somalia, and those who have not traditionally supported Somalia during times of drought to step up as the American people have. Without international help, Somalia's food crisis could turn into a full blown famine. The threat remains.
So we really need to see Somalia's partners, traditional partners, new partners, respond to this human tragedy and bring about the support that is necessary to keep famine at bay. As they do in Somalia, US Troops in Syria face risks every single day. The mission to stop ISIS from growing its next generation of fighters, many living in camps like this one, the Al hall refugee camp in northeast Syria. In 2019, when ISIS collapsed, thousands of family members of captured or killed ISIS fighters fled here.
Now some of these refugees enforce the terror group's brutal rules inside the camp's walls. Kidnapping, raping and beheading those not loyal to ISIS. There's more than 50,000 residents here at Alhal. The vast majority are women and kids.
And with overcrowding, poor sanitation, and at times shortages of food and water, this population is extremely vulnerable to violent extremism from groups like isis. ISIS is certainly trying to prey on this population. We met Major General Matt McFarlane here. His troops support the local Syrian Democratic Forces who secure this camp.
Do you think that this camp is secure right now? I think the camp is secure, but there's opportunity here for ISIS to fulfillment its violent ideology. Camps like these are breeding grounds for ISIS to recruit and train fighters, even growing an army of young boys loyal to the terror group. Meanwhile, the roughly 800 US troops in Syria helped the local Syrian opposition forces secure this camp and the roughly 12,000 ISIS detainees held in prisons, all while battling yes's fighters still on the loose.
Are these missions having a real impact on these terror Networks, I think they are, I think we're seeing on a regular basis these networks being really attributed in Somalia. Ambassador Andre says the small elite US military units are having an impact supporting local forces who are fighting terrorists there so the US doesn't have to face them at home. We know that Al Shabaab has killed Americans. They have, they have as an Al Qaeda Ilia, they have fired for attacks on the homeland.
So this is in our interest and it's in Somalia's interest. So we have a shared objective, shared goals, shared interest. And Courtney Kuby joins me now. Courtney, the first time we heard the name Somalia, at least for people of a certain age, was back in the first term of Bill Clinton, 1993.
Have we American forces basically there since then? No, not at all. In fact, and I think a lot of people would be surprised exactly what the makeup is. We focused a lot on the US Military for is these small elite special operators who are there working as trainers.
There's actually a lot of US contractors there as well. One thing I was surprised by when we were in Valladolid, which is this former Soviet airfield where they do a lot of training, there's quite a few US contractors there doing some of the hands on training. Is this a proxy fight between the west and Russia in a lot of these places? How involved is Russia in some of these spots?
We're going up against terror groups. Are the Russians kind of helping behind the scenes too? There's definitely a proxy war going on in Syria. It's not so much the case in Somalia right there.
It's more of a case of there is this very dangerous terror network that as of now they've been really focused on the region, specifically East Africa. But they are wealthy. They give a big tens of millions of dollars to core Al Qaeda every year. And the concern is that they could eventually move outside that region.
We have operations all over the continent of Africa and there's a lot of these sort of groups with Kai's Al Qaeda all over different regions of Africa. Is this basically how we're going to fight this war on terror over the next decade or two? Yes, in a word, yes. I don't see there being large footprint conflicts in Africa involving US military.
It's not even just a footprint too. It's the fact that the US military is really staying behind the scenes and all this. And I will say there was not all of its training. Right.
There's more. They do airstrikes, they do some surveillance. In fact, there was actually an IED strike that hit us, the US Military in Somalia this week. There are no injuries or no casualties, but it does show that just being there does obviously present some sort of danger to these military.
And what's the legal justification? This is all from the original amuaf. Amf, yeah. And so a lot of it is still from that AUMF that's more than two decades old now.
I remember. I actually know there are members of Congress who have been actively pushing back against trying to get that repealed unsuccessfully. So they're there in Somalia because somebody attacked the World Trade center is, in a word, yes. Again, according to Q.
Great reporting. Pledge your home state. Thanks. So are these secret wars legal?
Are they the right approach to countering terror? Not everyone thinks they are. We're going to tackle those questions when we come back. Welcome back.
It's been nearly 22 years since America was attacked in 9 11. So is this secret war on terror working? And everyone thinks. California Democratic Congresswoman Sarah Jacobs Czarzon, House Foreign Affairs Committee Subcommittee, Africa, Global Health and Global Human Rights.
And she wrote this in December. The United States and the international community poured billions of dollars in fighting terrorism on the continent with bleak results. Extremist violence in Africa has increased by 300% the past decade and violent events have doubled since 2019. So is America's secret war on terror effective?
Jeremy now is former CIA director John Brennan and counsel at the Brennan center for Justice. A different Brennan, by the way, no relation, is Catherine, John Ebright. Catherine, welcome. John, it's good to see you.
Catherine, let me spread some definition for the purpose of our conversations. How are you defining a secret war? So I think the core of it is first, does Congress know that facilities are taking place on any basis, whether active and ongoing or on notionally one off or episodic strikes trades? The other question is, does the public know about it?
And I think at base level, the public needs to know when, where and against whom the United States is fighting and the current authorizations that we have for the war on terror, the scope of which is defined by the present. They do not have clear limitations in terms of when, where, against whom. John, do you have any beef with that definition? No.
I agree that there should be as much transparency as possible about our counterterrorism operations worldwide to the extent that we don't compromise operational security. I think administrations over the years have tried to balance the need, in fact, to be able to make sure the American public are aware and broad strokes about what's going on while at the same time not doing Anything that's going to jeopardize the security and safety of our forces. I want to say recent example, it's been now six years because John McCain was alive then. But this was early in Trump's presidency.
We had some soldiers die in Niger, and so we learned a lot about what we were doing in Niger and Congress didn't seem to know a lot. Take a listen. Do you feel the administration's been forthcoming up to this point about what happened there? Of course not.
We are co equal branches of government. We should be informed at all times. But I didn't know there was a thousand troops in Niger. Why haven't you been brief?
No, I don't believe he was either. The Constitution says Congress has the power to declare war, and if you're in a long term war, Congress ought to keep that ability. So, John, walk me through how in Washington Congress can be brief and not realize they've been brief. I'm guessing that's probably what we're seeing here.
Well, I think there are two things. One is this took place during the Trump administration and I think there was a real lapse in terms of the protocols and processes and procedures during that time. But there are 535 members of Congress and not all of them are privy to the details of these types of military difficulties he highlighted there. What will you assume, like McCain is always on intel committee, that he was a standing member for that, Schumer's the leader.
So those cases should be kept informed, which is part of the oversight function. And it's up to the Department of Defense and related agencies to be able to make sure that the members that have that congressional oversight jurisdiction are kept fully informed. But clearly there's some type of breakdown there. But they need to be able to keep them informed.
Congress establishes the legislative parameters of these activities, but once they establish it, then they need to be informed of what is actually happening. How many troops are going out there, what types of activities are they involved in? What type of collaboration and cooperation are they engaging in with partner forces around the globe? What do you think we've been to in the dark on?
So again, those core questions, when, where, against whom have we been fighting? But with respect to Niger in particular, the activities of special operations forces working, quote, unquote, by, with and through foreign partners, those programs, where we may be even commanding foreign partners, putting them on a US Payroll, are highly classified. Very few members of Congress are actually directly informed about this. And the information that their offices are, or rather that the Armed Services Committee is receiving is classified at such a high level that the member offices often cannot access those notifications or reports.
Is there a success story where a secret war? I mean, we know the general mission is counterterrorism, but we don't know a lot about it. What's the best example of this policy working? So I do want to push back on the premise of that, which is to say if there's a secret war, they're not clearly articulated, publicly articulated objectives.
And while in the counterterrorism context, the objective would be potentially defeating or deterring a terrorist organization that is working in that region, what the success story would be if it simply is not going to be a matter of the public record. And moreover, moreover, in the context of war on terror, we've had Department of Defense officials march into Congress and say that there were, quote, by, with and through foreign partners under the same authorities that were currently being used in Somalia. They'll say, these are such effective authorities. We've seen, you know, 1,000 plus killer captures of various terrorists.
But then if you go and you try to foil information about how many terrorists have been captured or killed under these authorities, the Department of Defense will say, we actually don't collect that information. Okay, John, answer that question. Why don't we collect that? Well, I think we do collect some of the information.
Again, the question is what is publicly released and what needs to be kept within government environments? Well, I do think the ultimate metric of whether we've been successful or not is taking a look at the lack of attacks against the US homelands here in the last 22 years, almost the fact that we have done such great work against Al Qaeda and the neighboring plains, AQAP in Yemen, the fact that we've done and dismantled most of Al Qaeda's infrastructure in Afghanistan, Pakistan, ISIS is not what it used to be because of the work in Syria, other places. And Al Shabaab has really been contained in that area of the Horn of Africa. This is what success.
I may remember when it first started the language war and terror. Global war and terror. The biggest debate you can never win against terrorism, there's always going to be terrorism. What is that?
Be careful using that phrase because you're never going to end that kind of war. Is this the best we can hope for, which is successful blackmail? Well, I think what you're trying to do is reduce the prospects for these types of attacks against US Interests as well against our friends, partners and others overseas. And I think we have been successful in that.
But I do think it's not Just engaging counter terrorism activities and operations. You're trying to build up the infrastructure of these countries so that they can their intelligence, carry military services, their political system, they can rid themselves of corruption that really eats away at these systems. So this again is a multi dimensional effort that has to take place over many, many years, it seems like. I don't know if there's any part of the permanent 5 in the UN that doesn't have troops.
Africa, right. We have somebody who's dealing with some problem in Africa. Is this, what is it about? Is it just too many unstable governments?
Is that why all of these Al Qaeda proxies have had such success, sort of getting some enrichment? Well, I think you do end up with vicious cycles where we have had, the French have had, the Russians have had various military forces operating in Africa for the past again, decade to two decades. And once you have this foreign presence notionally trying to stabilize a country or a region, people in that region or in that country are gonna look at them and say, well, why are there foreign interveners? Why do they think that they know how we should be governed or how our security apparatus should look?
Are they pouring in weapons as well into our country and maybe we should push back against that. And so there are documented examples of how the US presence in various African countries have actually spurred recruitment for terrorist organizations. Let me ask you this, John. Is there an anchor, you know, South Africa or Nigeria?
Can anyone want to be the anchor countries here that could sort of lead on security even if they can't do it all on their own? I think they have to assume a larger role. And I think that's what the United States is hoping is going to happen. But there are a lot of countries in Africa where there are just endemic problems that really undermine the ability of the host governments as well as external forces to be able to mitigate some of these terrorist threats.
The United States doesn't want to absent itself from the continent because NBC have unfortunately. And we're trying to work our way back in. Well, at the time of people they know our presence has ebbd flowed. And I do think the President, Somalia and Courtney's piece, which is very good, I think really tries to explain what the US military is trying to do.
They are working with, I think, a government that is better than has been in quite a while, a president who is committed to trying to address some of these inter clan rivalries and issues. And so what we need to do is be able to enable and empower some of these Somali forces to be able to assume a larger role, but it's going to take time. There's gonna be some trade offs. As Katherine said, there's some people that point to our involvement there as a reason to maintain their style of fight.
So again, this is something administration has to grab with something we should look for when new Congress wants to write a new war resolution. And obviously we know there's enough people who will accept the premise that we have to do these, do these one off interventions, whatever we want to call them, Special Forces. What's that war resolution look like? Yeah.
So there are questions about is this effective, is this increasing stability in the African continent, Is this actually supporting the national security interests of the United States? And that's all a matter of policy, but as a matter of law. Right. Congress is the part of government that holds the reins on when, where and against whom our nation is at war.
And there's a law from 1973, end of the Vietnam War, called the War Powers Resolution that was really meant to put the reins on the President. The executive branch, which had spread the Vietnam War into Cambodia and Laos under the radar. That law, however, across administrations has been systematically dismantled, undermined, watered down. And what this movement in Congress now looks like is patching up some of those loopholes.
For instance, the word hostilities was never defined in War Powers Resolution. And so executive branch lawyers said, unless it's a full blown war, we don't need Congress to go ahead. Yeah. What's your biggest concern?
That the war resolution goes away with nothing that replaces it or something is too two individuals. Well, I like to see the executive emergency that branches work collaboratively on putting together a framework that really is going to govern our military activities and operations globally. Period. Period.
Yes, but there has to again be a recognition that the administration has to be the ones to execute those policies and those activities and operations. So enabling the administration to be able to take actions against terrorist groups working with partner forces, but again setting limits on it so we do not get involved in a lot of secret wars that members of Congress are unaware of. And the American public is also just fully unaware of. We need to have a balance of again, transparency as well as some secrecy.
So needs some trust. Again, public needs to trust the government. The two parties need to trust each other. Diligent Congress and presidency in the presidency.
And that's something I think harder than all of. Thank you both, appreciate it and thank you all for being here. Next episode we'll take a look at the idea of a living a wait, what is it? What does it take to get by an American today obviously depends where we live.
I'll see you next time on the Press Reports. Of course, I'll see you this Sunday. You're listening to a special edition of Beats Press. Up next, our episode for Meet the Press reports on the cost of living in America.
And there'll be a familiar face for political junkies. One time presidential candidate ANDREA. Hello again. I'm Chuck Tom and welcome to another episode of MEET THE Press reports.
Today we are asking what is a living wage in the United States? The answer depends quite a bit on where you live. Obviously it's much less expensive to live in York, Pennsylvania than it is to live in New York City. And the minimum wage doesn't come close to the living wage just about anywhere New York or York.
The way people feel about their own economic circumstances can also be a factor in how they vote. So we wanted to know how are they feeling and are they making ends meet? MSNBC's Lindsey Reisberg and producer Andrew Bussell set out to talk to people and ask the very question, what do they consider a living wage where they live? Well, Lindsay goes for now.
Lindsay wish for now. We went to two different states. We went to Ohio and Florida to hear from different families sharing similar struggles, a couple hundred dollars of wiggle room. So saving, paying off debt or investing those are all out of the picture.
And don't get me wrong, their lives are full, but they don't have a security cushion to deal with whatever comes their way from a higher grocery bill to an oil change. Kanika Williams is a simple mom of four boys living in Cleveland, Ohio. She has three part time jobs cleaning homes, delivering food with doordash and sorting mail for ups. She's active at her kids schools, cook some dinner every night and stays present in their lives.
Me and my kids, that's like the number one. So my kids motivate me. I want us to have stuff, I want us to do stuff. Kimika puts her life together like sections of a quilt.
Caring for her sons, making money, spending time with friends. Each piece is sewn together intentionally. When I have a roof over my head, I know when my small necessary bills are paid. Necessary meaning lights, water, gas, insurance, rental.
I'm not talking about Netflix or any of those wanted things. Once I have those things taken care of, I have freedom. Kanika has a medical technician degree and the rise of gig work has given people like Kanika some level of autonomy. But she reminisces about how things used to be for previous generations.
Her mother, Brenda, just Retired from her decades long job as a janitor at an elementary school. I went to that school when I was in first grade and that's what she's retiring from. So those 30 year jobs, those 40 year jobs are gone for us unless we start right now. Between her gig work at 20 an hour and her UPS job at 1650 an hour, both above Ohio minimum wage, she said she brings home roughly 1500amonth.
What is your definition of a living wage? Being able to afford your bill, your monthly bills, being able to put a portion back for savings. And I think for me in my household, if I was to make 3, 500amonth, what would that extra money? What would that get you?
They'll get all bills paid a little bit in the bank and maybe that oil change, I may need it, you know. The debate over how much workers should get paid in America has a contentious history. It took decades of strikes, debates, and a Great Depression for Congress to pass a law in 1938 establishing a federal minimum wage. The federal minimum wage was last raised to $7.25 an hour in 2009.
And wage growth has not kept pace with labor productivity. So workers are more efficient, but they have less to show for it. Studies have found. Since 1980, most American workers have seen modest income growth, but income for the top 1% has grown much faster.
Everybody who works for a living deserves to be paid wage that honors the value of the work that they're doing and meets the possibility. Michael Shields is a researcher for Policy Matters Ohio, a liberal nonprofit economic policy institute. For the last several decades, there's been a real disconnect between how much wealth working people are producing and what's being reflected in their pay. What do you attribute that to?
I think it comes out of power. Larger share of all of the wealth that's produced in our economy is being consolidated by the very wealth and by corporations as well. Working people are being less successful than they have in the past, embarrassing for their share of the wealth that they make possible. How'd you guys meet?
I met upstate New York. We were just friends at first. I actually told my friend I was working with that the guy who trained me was really cute but too short for me. And then we made plans to hang out on a Saturday and everyone, everyone we were working was just like, is it a date?
Is it a date? I think we got home at like 12 in the morning. That's a good date. So you got over the high thing.
When Taylor and Maggie Mendez started a new life in Florida, things were bumpy. Maggie working overnights at Duncan, making $11 an hour, which at the time was a dollar above the state's minimum wage. Taylor was working a factory job and both doordash on the side. We went through some hard times, but it just builds character and it made us a lot stronger than we were before.
Then Taylor got a job at teller at TD bank in Melbourne, Florida. A group called Family Promise helped them with emergency shelter and meals and taught them how to budget. Taylor's new boss helped them find housing. Once I got to banking, I knew that it was that the skies were the limit from there.
But between his job, Maggie's overnight shift and taking care of their two little ones, they never saw each other. Then their daughter got into a brand new school, but there's no bus. So Maggie quit her job to watch the kids and drive her daughter to and from school every day. Have a good day, sweetheart.
You should always try to appreciate what you have. The prices of everything, of cars, of food, of housing has gone up so much and income has not gone up a drop. I make a decent wait for what I make and there's a lot of people making a lot less than I do and I have no idea how they're making it. Scattering new inflation numbers out today While high inflation has been making headlines since 2021, it certainly is not the first time in our country's history.
Public enemy number one, inflation in 1974. Inflation has risen steadily since 2005, reaching a 40 year high in 2022, the U.S. bureau of Labor Statistics says. At the same time, real wages, adjusted for inflation, have only risen slightly.
That's led to a growing call to raise the minimum wage from $7.25 to $15 an hour. Congress has debated the issue, with proponents arguing it will lift people out of poverty. No one should work, as millions are doing today, 40 hours a week at a job and still live below the poverty line. And critics saying it will cost jobs if there is too much of an increase too rapidly, they will be forced to shrink their workforces.
Thirty territories have already increased the minimum wage above federal law. New York is one of those states and lawmakers have gone a step further, tying future increases to inflation. Howard Potter owns AMP Master Images, a design and printing company in Utica, New York. He didn't have an easy upbringing.
Raised by a single mom, he bounced from home to home until he became a word of the state. As a person that lived in poverty at certain points knows what it's like to go to food pantries Robin Group Homes. I didn't have someone hold my hand to tell me how to make something of myself. After college, he says he was making good money at a factory, but he had a side hustle and a dream.
So when he was 25, he cashed in his 401k and with hard work and grit, built his printing company from the ground up with his wife. In America, we kind of lose focus on what hard work really is. We think 40 hours a week is all that we should have to contribute. And when we look back at the early 1900s and even after that, most people are working 60, 70 hours a week to be broke.
Howard likes to say his employees are family. He instituted a four day work week and pays them a dollar above the current state minimum wage of 14, 20 an hour. But when the state raised the minimum wage, he spoke up against it. You're kind of leaving small business owners no choice when the state makes those mandates because they have to take on the cost.
So they have to innovate and stay ahead. Otherwise the only option is to keep increasing pricing and hope that their customers keep coming through the door. Why does the increase in pay for employees automatically mean the product costs be more expensive? It doesn't always necessarily guarantee that, but in most cases, if they have a high turnover or things that I need, you got to pay to promote the job, get the next person in, all those costs increase.
Why is it that when a government forces a wage increase that contributes to inflation, but when other businesses are doing it forcing you to drive up your wages, that's not contributing to inflation? Well, when you. It's a very good question because one, when you're doing it as a business, you're doing it in a timeline that you can afford to do it. So it's controlled cost.
When the government does it, it's forced. It's not controlled. Kinika pieces together different sources of income to keep food on the table. I'm functioning on these, you know, I ain't got no rice, just, you know, but how we make it work.
Eels put back what you take out, you got to put it back. If we get out there, we make it happen. I find we find a way. Taylor works 30 to 40 hours a week at the bank at 2050 an hour.
This works out to about 2500amonth. Kanika, Taylor and Aggie all get some form of government help like food stamps, Medicaid and rental assistance. The fact that either family can make ends meet without help begs the question, what constitutes a living wage? MIT has a Living wage calculator which looks at the cost of eight basic needs in each county in the U.S.
according to that, Taylor would need to make $37.97 an hour to support his family, nearly twice his current wage. I mean, it's surprising, but sadly it's not surprising living in Cuyahoga County. Kanika, who makes less than 20 an hour, we need to make $40.44 an hour or roughly $84,000 a year. She said she's afraid to lose her benefits if she makes too much money.
Do you find though that the issue is if you make a certain amount, you won't be able to qualify for this anymore. But that extra amount doesn't replace the help you're getting. It is exactly like that. They're going to take probably Medicaid or a food stamp.
So now when you take my food stamps, what I'm trying to build is, is gone. You're not allowing me to do what the program is meant for. And the program is meant for people getting back to civilization. Despite their constant financial struggles, Kanika, Taylor and Maggie are doing what families do all the time, making the most of what they have.
Kanika isn't immune from worry, but she doesn't let her rule her life. You don't have to. Just because you live in a minimal way doesn't mean you have to act like you're poor or you have to be all down in depressed all the time. Find the light in the dark and just keep moving forward because you can't stop.
All right, so remember that medical technician degree? I talked to Katie Cathing which, the reason why she pisses out these part time jobs is because she has a felon on her record. She rented a car for two weeks past the due date. She thought it was paid for on a credit card.
The rental company declared it stolen. And so now that felony is a red flag for employers. And that's just a whole nother level. There's a lot of people that they paid their debt to society, but society doesn't really let them come back.
She can't pay for an attorney to expunge her record. That says a lot. I want to focus in on the issue of government assistance. There are, it's there, but it's complicated.
So you talked about a little bit there where Kamika, if she, if she makes too much money, she loses something that then unravels the very carefully constructed financial life that she's put together. I talked to some of her friends. They're amazed at all the different Programs that she's been able to find. She qualifies for all of them.
But the idea here is, okay, I'm never gonna get ahead then if you take away some of these benefits from me particular Maggie, they're a little less savvy, I would say. I mean, they basically that family Promise organization is what pointed them to all these benefits. But they're really worried, for example, about losing their house if they don't get the help that they're getting right now. That's a lot of movement they want government to do for them, basically.
Do they have like a specific ask? Like if they had, you know, their congressman right there, they said, hey, can you do this for me? This would allow me to get back on the feet faster. I asked both of them that and neither of them had anything concrete.
I mean, they're not expecting anybody to do anything for them. And picking themselves up by the bootstraps and working hard. I will say both of them have student loan debt and now neither of them are going to get any kind of forgiveness from those pens. That is something King specifically was hoping for, which obviously now if the Supreme Court ruling and it won't happen.
Lindsay, this was a terrific piece and it really was interesting. The small business owner was fascinating and he really, I think, reflected the tension that his small business owner has when it comes to banking. And he and his wife, after three years, just gave themselves a modest race. So he's like, it's not like I'm not here living a grand life either.
All right, thank you. All right. When you come back, you may remember Andrew Yang. He ran for president when the Democrats died in 2020.
He became known because he promoted giving every American adult, even billionaires, a thousand dol month. Does it sound controversial? It is to me. Andrew Yang joins you next.
Welcome back. When Andrew Yang launched his long shot campaign for Democratic Democratic presidential nomination in 2020, he ran an idea that some people called the giddock and he said was a game changer for millions. A universal basic income. If you've heard anything about me and my campaign, you've heard that someone who's running for president who wants to give every American $1,000 a month.
GDP and corporate profits are at record highs in America today. Also record highs, depression, financial insecurity, student loan debt. We are going through the greatest economic transformation in our country's history, the fourth Industrial revolution, and is pushing more and more people to the side. Yang argued that far from being radical, guaranteeing my age to all citizens was an American idea from Thomas Payne to Dr.
Martin Luther King. Jing. Well, Andrew Yang joins me now from New Palt. Mr.
Yang, good to see you. Hey, Jack, how are you? I'm great. Look, you saw our piece on a living wage.
You in some ways were responding to something almost a little bit before. It's become, I think, more mainstream. I think now thanks to AI post Pandemic, where, by the way, cash payments suddenly became a thing by the government. I think it's seen as a much more mainstream idea.
So walk me through what the idea right now, the way you would try to implement it if you could in this moment. Well, the single biggest example of universal based income over the past number of months has been either the stimulus payments, which I dare say most Americans enjoyed and might have kept us out of a depression, but also the enhanced child tax credit that put money into parents hands over 20, 20, 20, 21. Unfortunately, it got discontinued because Congress couldn't get its act together. But anyone who looks at those numbers sees that that money went straight to food and housing and fuel and school materials and kept millions of American children out of poverty.
Unfortunately, we kicked them back into below the poverty line. And that pains me greatly. It also demonstrated just how little political voice the indigent have in America today. Is that how you see that?
Different ways? I mean, you may have simple by saying, look, it's gonna be a thousand for everybody. But if the government designed it as the child care tax credit for parents, maybe a retirement stipend in one hand that we call Social Security, Right. Is that another way to implement this?
Oh, very much so. As you're suggesting. I ran for president on a very simple idea of a thousand bucks a month for every American adult. I do think AI is going to displace millions of American workers and we're having a harder, harder time getting buying power into people's hands, as Lindsey's reporting profiled.
But I'm a very practical person. And so I was advocating very much for the stimulus checks. I was advocating very much for the child tax credit. And if you were to put me in charge today, I would be trying all sorts of solutions to get more economic power into people's hands.
One of the hallmarks of your idea was it was going to be across the board. Is that still the best way to do this or would you be more targeted about it now? Well, one of the problems that millions of Americans experience and their families are an example of this. There's a labyrinth of government programs that are often designed to be tough to access intentionally.
When I was running for president. There were families in Iowa who lived in fear of volunteering because they were. They had some disability payments or other government assistance. They were afraid of having it taken away from them.
And that's a terrible way to live. But millions of Americans live like that right now where they're getting something from the government and they're fearful of it being taken away. So anything that streamlines and simplifies these programs is a win because you have so many Americans right now who are outside of the economy looking in and they feel like they have to stay there or else they're going to lose what meager either getting. So let's say we come to a form of universal basic income.
How do you prevent corporate America from sort of taking advantage of that in wages and the wages that they end up offering knowing. Well, we know you start with a baseline of this so we don't need to pay you this amount. We're going to this starting salary for this is now lower because we know people have basic needs met from the government. Well, the theory is that if you have your basic needs met, then you actually can hold out a little bit more, you can bargain a little bit more.
Because right now there is a power imbalance and exploitation that occurs where employers are saying, look, take it or leave it. And you kind of can't leave it, so you're going to have to take it. But if you can imagine a world where, let's say the waitress of the diner actually had a little bit she could fall back on and she's getting harassed or exploited, then she can say, you know what, I can actually take a few weeks and find a better situation. So the one of the inspirations for this plan was a guy named Andy Stern who used to run the SEIU who wrote a book called Raising the Floor.
And his argument was that this would actually strengthen workers bargaining power as opposed to getting them kicked or kicked to the curb, which presently happens. But you are not an advocate for raising the minimum wage. Explain that. I'm actually for raising the minimum wage.
If you gave me a choice, I'd rather do something else because, well, I run businesses and I think no one should be working in before. And so if you are working in poor right now because the minimum wage is too low, we should raise it. But if you were to raise the minimum wage across the board, you would see some job reductions at the margins in certain environments. And there are small business owners right now, they're just making ends meet that if you say, hey, you have to Pay your people more, then they'd cut shifts or in some cases maybe cut back.
So I want to try and get more buying power into people's hands, but not necessarily put the onus on small business owners. We have a lot of small business owners around the country who are not made of money, you know, that they're just getting by and throwing another burden on them may not be the right way to go, but anything, you know, so. But if you say to me right now, would I be worries in minimum wage? I would be.
I gotcha. I see where you're coming from. You just think it might be a better way to do it is doing universal basic income versus minimum wage. But at the end of the day, whatever it takes.
Yeah, yeah. I'd be for some kind of federal wage subsidy or augmentation too where if you're working full time, the government throws three or four bucks an hour into the pot. You know, it's one of the misconceptions about my presidential campaign is I think getting people back into the economy is vital. It's especially for men who have lower levels of education who right now aren't working at higher levels.
So anything that gets them plugged in is a win. But I think universal basically would be one way to do that by giving people a leg up. But I'm for anything under the sun that would do the same. Look, one of the hallmarks of why you were bringing this up is you've talked about we're headed for a massive job displacement.
You can call it creative destruction, whatever you want to call it, and perhaps in 30 years there'll be more jobs that need to be filled than what we're staring at now. But we know there's going to be a bunch of displacement to AI. Do we need to radically rethink what is a full time job? Are we going to be cutting back 40 hours to 30 hours because we almost we won't have enough jobs for humans?
Is this a real issue we need to worry about the next 20 years? Oh, Chuck. I think it's going to hit very, very differently in different parts of the economy. But we do have to face facts that ChatGPT can write college level papers in the blink of an eye.
It's just going to get stronger and faster. There's about 40% of American jobs are either repetitive cognitive or repetitive manual and can be automated away. So there are certain segments that are going to see the need for labor reduced very, very sharply. And that adjustment is going to be extraordinarily painful.
For the people who are affected. So there is a need for a much, much bigger picture approach. Unfortunately, we have a government that's kind of stuck in the 60s and getting less functional, not more functional, but I would love to see us take bigger swings at this. It's mission critical.
When you look back, you spent a lot of time crisscrossing Iowa. Iowa is filled with these towns that used to be known for Maytag or Palo Windows. You know where I'm going here, Manufacturing. Now, of course, a lot of those manufacturing towns ended up having opioid crises and all this.
Is there a lesson to be learned from that transition that maybe we need to, hey, you see this federal crisis now? Well, imagine that times another, you know, 3 or 4x exponential displacement. Oh, 100%, Chuck. I mean, if you look at the voter district data, when you got rid of that meat tag plant, that community went straight to Trump.
And so if you're concerned about political dysfunction, it's just going to rise and rise as more people are asking about saying, what is the path forward for me? And if they don't see the path forward and they get represented with terrible leadership, then they take it. That's one of the reasons why we're struggling the way we are right now. We did not uniquely address what happened to those 4 million manufacturing jobs in Iowa, Ohio and other environments.
And now it's going to hit other livelihoods and other communities. You know, it's interesting that the Great Recession, you, I think, saw the fallout from it when you were trying to campaign in Iowa. I don't think we fully appreciate how many people still have recovered from the Great Recession. Is that fair to say?
Completely. And like you said, you saw surges and deaths of despair, Fentanyl overdoses. I met those families. And you asked them how many of you have had an issue with overdoses in your family?
Unfortunately, a majority of the hands would go up. And so then when you go to these people and say, look, things are working, they completely disagree. And that is rising in communities around the country that were left behind during the Great Recession very quickly. Do you fear that what happened with inflation short term, and the fact that some people blame those stimulus checks for inflation is going to scare elected officials from, from doing what they did in early 2021.
I'm so glad you raised this, Chuck, because the stimulus checks amounted to maybe 15% of the money that was issued to the American people. We issued $5 trillion. That's something like, let's call it 15,000 ahead. Did anyone get 15,000 in stimulus checks?
No, we got maybe one or $2,000. And so blaming the inflation on the stimulus checks is just completely wrongheaded. All right. Well, we will see you down the road.
That's all we have today for Media press reports this week and for season six. We're gonna be back in the fall with a new season, but until then, you can see any and all of our meetup press episodes from our six seasons anytime you want on Peacock or YouTube. And as always, thanks for watching. I'll see you here next time.
And of course, I'll see you Sundays on Meat Press. I'm Craig. Mel. Cheers.
Cheers. Cheers. I've always been a glass half full kind of guy, and now I'm talking to some people who look at the world that way, too. Some really fascinating folks who share their defining moments, their triumphs, challenges.
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