Hot strike summer isn’t over

Make Me Smart October 5, 2023 Transcript

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Kimberly Adams 

Let’s do it. It’s what I always say I know. It’s like the brand. Hello, everyone. I’m Kimberly Adams, welcome back to Make Me Smart where we make today make sense.

Kai Ryssdal 

I’m Kai Ryssdal. Thursday, five October. Good to have you along.

Kimberly Adams 

Yes. And today, we’re gonna be listening back to some audio from some of the big news stories of the week. We’ve got a few of them lined up already. And don’t forget, you can send in yours as well. Let’s get to the first one.

Reginald Villanueva

All we’re asking for is for what we are what what is the basic necessities of our hospital, care for us care for our patient, not outsourcing our jobs to other companies or other agencies actually invest in the community invest in the stuff that we have now currently. That’s why we’re here in full and showing that we care more about it, then the company.

Kimberly Adams 

You know, it strikes me that could be played for so many different moments.

Kai Ryssdal 

I literally was saying could be the UAW, you know.

Kimberly Adams 

Could be, could have been the writers that were being outsourced to AI. But in this case, it was Reginald Villanueva who works in inpatient medical transport. He was speaking with Fox5 San Diego from the Kaiser Permanente strikes. This is the biggest healthcare strike ever, right? It’s, the workers are in there’s 75,000 people. The workers are in the second day of their three-day strike today, hospitals and emergency rooms are open, but some non-emergency functions, like certain surgeries, and some apparently chemotherapy treatments have been rescheduled. And, yeah, I mean, it’s been a tough time to be a healthcare worker in this country over the last five years for sure.

Kai Ryssdal 

Yeah, totally has and, you know, so the, the hospitals are filling in with more expensive backup crews, right people that they’re importing from other cities. It’s a it’s just another step in in the labor like year 18 months, I was gonna say labor summer, but that’s overused. It’s been like a year 18 months of labor has been really on the rise and and it’s coming to coming to a head this summer. Anyway.

Kimberly Adams 

You know, it’s interesting, because for so long, this sort of burgeoning renaissance, I guess, I should say, of the labor movement had been, like very small scale, like in individual offices. And in smaller groups, you were seeing a lot of organizing of, you know, I’m remembering some of the Microsoft subsidiaries or Activision subsidiaries, like in the gaming industry, where like these individual shops, were starting to organize but now like these, much bigger unions are making really sweeping demands to change the dynamic. Right?

Kai Ryssdal 

Right, man, it’s and look, they’re having some success. Look, writers, look at the writers, hey.

Kimberly Adams 

And, you know, the UAW seems to be making progress in the direction they want to go.

Kai Ryssdal 

Right? Right, for sure. All right, next piece. Take a

Jamie Dimon

Look, folks, people have to take a deep breath. Okay. Technologies over, always replace jobs. Your children will live to 100 and not have cancer because of technology. And literally, they’ll probably be working three and a half days a week. So technology’s done unbelievable things for mankind. But you know, planes crash. Pharmaceutics get misused. There are negatives. This one the biggest negative in my view is AI being used by bad people to do bad things.

Kai Ryssdal 

So as Jamie Dimon, the CEO, and chairman of the board at JPMorgan Chase, talking on Bloomberg TV, obviously about AI when I heard this quote, I glommed on to that three and a half days a week thing, and it made me think of this is gonna make me sound like a total history dork, a John Maynard Keynes essay from like, the 1920s or 30s, where he basically said we’re going to work 10 hours a week. I know it does. I’m sorry, everybody. Love you. Anyway. John Maynard Keynes, in a really famous essay said, we’re going to have so much time we’re not going to know what to do with ourselves. We’re only going to be working 10 or 15 hours a week within 100 years and we’re almost at that 100 year mark if not actually past that already from that essay. And look, there’s a push for a four day week from the UAW, there’s pushes for four day weekend white collar work, and you know, I, eventually that could happen. And I think Jamie Dimon is right on that part that the three and a half days a week is not is not out of the question. Thanks in part to AI look, I was going to do some some things and people are gonna lose jobs and all of that. But it’s coming anyway. You know, it’s coming.

Kimberly Adams 

It is, I I find it interesting, though, that throughout human history, with every efficiency, we have found something else to do to fill our time, even if it’s invent new things, and new technology, even if it’s to explore or learn new things that just expand us as human creatures, like, you know, I’m, I guess I, I get the fear. But my, my optimism still overrides it. I think still at this point.

Kai Ryssdal 

Yeah, no, I buy that. And I sign on to that. I think I think it’s great that we find ways to not just fill our time, but fill our time productively. Right. That’s yeah,

Kimberly Adams 

Yeah. Or rest also,

Kai Ryssdal 

Or, or rest, yeah.

Kimberly Adams 

Yes. All right. Here’s the next piece of tape.

Jay Powell

Hi, I’m Jay Powell. I’m the chair of the Federal Reserve. And I want you to know that the Federal Reserve is now on Instagram and threads. The Fed is America’s Central Bank, working to promote a healthy economy and a strong financial system. That mission starts with you. October is National Economic Education Month, and throughout the month and beyond. We’ll be posting here with information, links to events and other resources about how fed decisions affect you, your family and your community.

Kai Ryssdal 

Yay Jay Powell. Go ahead. What I’ve got some thoughts, I’m gonna do this one, and you’re gonna do the next one. But what are your thoughts? What’s great about that?

Kimberly Adams 

Just the one thing I was gonna say is that I didn’t know that October was economic education month. Which is hilarious given what we do for a living. Okay, go ahead.

Kai Ryssdal 

Right. And and, you know, who was it who said that we did a story actually about those random days that, you know, get decided. And the ones who get to decide that anyway, so that was Jay Powell, Chairman, the board of the Federal Reserve Bank of the United States, on Threads now and Instagram. And the funny part, you couldn’t see it on the on audio, but so it’s Powell sitting in a conference room, no tie, a little disheveled, hair’s messed up, looks nothing like nothing more than just some grandfather who’s like kids are shooting camera and saying grandpa talk into the phone. It was really funny. It was really, really funny. But you know, more power to him more power to him, because lots of people are on threads and stuff. Anyway, so it’s at Federal Reserve Board, by the way, if you’re looking for their Insta, you can get them there. Yeah.

Kimberly Adams 

I wonder if the content will be reposted on Tik Tok given that government offices and officials are not allowed to use Tik Tok in an official capacity. But that’s where the audience that they actually want is.

Kai Ryssdal 

Right, otally. Yeah, totally. Yeah. Anyway. All right. Last one, here we go.

Beyonce Trailer

Everyone welcome. We dress a certain way, we walk a certain way…

Kimberly Adams 

So that clip comes from the trailer for “Renaissance: a film by Beyonce.” So interesting. I’m excited to see this because I did not get to go to the concert much to my chagrin.

Kai Ryssdal

Wait seriously? You didn’t get to go?

Kimberly Adams 

I had another very expensive outlay this summer, and hard choices had to be made. Hard choices had to be made. And I may regret it for the rest of my life, but such is life. Anyway, I will at least get to see the film, which documents the production of the Beyonce’s, you know, Renaissance world tour. And it will be in theaters December the first. Which I was listening to your interview with the theater owner today, where she was talking about films that she thought were going to be in her theater this fall now getting pushed to next year. So I imagine people like that will be very grateful to have the Beyonce film and I imagine the Taylor Swift film is going to be coming out soon as well. To bring people in there. Thankfully, to the producers with some actual numbers and data, Beyonce’s 56-stop tour brought $579 million, and as far as we know, and has generated an estimated $4.5 billion for the American economy, which is about as much as the 2008 Olympics did for Beijing. That is according to The New York Times. Yeah. And I know I’ve sort of alluded to this several times. I’m so but I’ll just say it out loud directly, which it’s been pretty discouraging watching the disparity in which the two tours of Taylor Swift and Beyonce have been covered, especially when it comes to sort of, like, economic impact, and how they were framed. And I, you know, I know that Taylor Swift’s tour was first, but just the language around it. And the attention to it was different when it seems as if the actual impact and actual relevance were quite similar. And maybe it’s just because I’m more of a fan of one than the other. I don’t have a problem with Taylor Swift. I like her music. But, you know, I noticed it.

Kai Ryssdal 

Ya know, and, and it’s a good thing you pointed it out. It’s a good thing you pointed it out. Alright, super quick before we go. So we have less than 360 donors to go to hit our 2,000 investor goal for this fundraiser. Here’s what you might have noticed that we’re talking about numbers of donors rather than donor amount, right, rather than straight dollars. Here’s why. The trend for donations here at Marketplace has been the number of investors going down while the average gift size has been going up. Here’s the deal though. We want to broaden our participation base. We want to get more people invested in this program, even if the gift size go down goes down. So that’s why we’re doing it. That’s why we’re doing that we need to be able to count on a broader base of support than just one underwriter, one advertiser, one, donor, one anything we just need a broad base of support because that’s what’s gonna keep us going into the future. So if you can, please do marketplace.org/givesmart. Today’s episode of Make Me Smart was produced by Courtney Bergsieker with assistance from H. Conley. Audio engineering by Charlton Thorp. Ellen Rolfes writes our newsletter. Our intern is Niloufar Shahbandi.

Kimberly Adams 

Marissa Cabrera is our senior producer. Bridget Bodnar is the director of podcast and Francesca Levy is the executive director of Digital.