Who should get overtime pay?

Make Me Smart August 30, 2023 Transcript

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Kai Ryssdal 

Everybody, I’m Kai Ryssdal. Welcome back to Make Me Smart, where we make today make sense.

Kimberly Adams 

And I’m Kimberly Adams, the long lost. And thanks, everybody for joining us on this Wednesday. It’s August the 30th. And I’m here, I’m back.

Kai Ryssdal 

We’re gonna do the news. Well, we’ll say we’ll say welcome back to Kimberly, first of all, yeah, Kimberly’s back. And then we’ll do some news. We’ll do some smiles. And then we will let everybody get on about their merry way. So in your travels, as we were talking about before we turned the microphone on, you were distinctly out of the news, because smart, what have you chosen for us today?

Kimberly Adams 

Um, I’m back in Washington. And so I’ve been digging into Washington things and you know how much I love a good regulation story. So I’ve got two regulation. Well, one regulation and one sort of letter. So today, the Department of Labor came out with a new proposed regulation on overtime rules. So right now, if you make, there’s a salary threshold of $35,500, a year that basically says if someone says your salary at that point, you can basically not get overtime. And so the classic example of how this works out is if you’re in a fast food restaurant, or a coffee shop, or something like that, you may be an air quote, manager, doing a lot of the same tasks as your colleagues. But because you are a manager, or you’re salaried, you, even if you’re not making that much money, you no longer get overtime. So the Biden administration is proposing to bump that up to $55,000 a year, which would be very meaningful for a lot of people. And also, there’s another category of sort of, when you’re automatically exempt from overtime. And that’s typically if you make more than $107,432, I’m reading off of Reuters here. Then if you make that much money, your employer can pretty much say you’re you’re exempt from overtime, if they want to it with some caveats, of course, the new proposal would bump that up to $144,000 a year. So this has a lot to do with money for people, both at the low end of the income scale, and also people at higher income scales. And so the proposed regulations, which means that it’s got like a 60 day comment period, people can weigh on how they think about it, participatory government and all. But the Trump administration actually raised this in 2020 to where it is now and make sure I’m getting that date. Right. Yeah. 2020 raised it to where it is now. But people said, of course, it didn’t go far enough. And by doing this, as Reuters points out, Biden could potentially give himself something nice to talk about in the campaign, which is coming up upon us.

Kai Ryssdal 

I would suggest it is upon us. And the President needs some nice things to talk about, about this campaign in this campaign about people’s, you know, own economies, because as much as he’s trying, his message, which is valid, by the way, the economy is generally good, we have to be clear on that. It does not getting for some reason, right? Right and he’s probably tearing his hair out.

Kimberly Adams 

He’s just not getting credit for it. So also over in the executive branch of the government, the Department of Health and Human Services, Bloomberg was the first to report this, I believe, the Department of Health and Human Services has written a new letter basically calling for the reclassification of marijuana to be a Schedule III substance instead of a Schedule I substance. So right now, it’s basically lumped in with like heroin, and cocaine and all of these other things. And this would put it more in the category of like, ketamine or something like that, where there can be medicinal benefits, that can be legitimate usages. But, you know, a little less controversial, shall we say? And, you know, this is basically just the federal government catching up potentially, if this all goes through with the rest of the country. And you know, the federal government, Biden has already work to vacate federal convictions for people who just had marijuana possessions. They’re doing that in a lot of states. But it’s just wild to think about how many people who’ve had, you know, their lives kind of up ended by control auctions for something that’s likely to now be just not that big of a deal in many, many places.

Kai Ryssdal 

It’s the government following people. You know,

Kimberly Adams 

That’s my little tour of federal regulation today. What about you?

Kai Ryssdal 

So I’ve got two, they’re both reasonably quick. And both from The New York Times today, which just whatever that was, what was up on my computer screen most of the day. So the first one is, it’s war news out of Ukraine. And I think honestly, if we’re all honest with each other, we will admit that the war news has gotten a little bit a little bit rode, right, it’s kind of faded in the background. And because it’s not on our shores as it were, we’re not paying as much attention to it as as maybe we ought to be given the fact that we’re spending a lot of money and a lot of Ukrainians are dying. But there’s a super cool piece in the New York Times today about another way to measure that war, right. And you can have correspondents and reporters all over the place, as many news organizations do. But what The New York Times has done in conjunction with they got a copy of the paper that’s out today in the journal Nature, about a new way to measure the impact literally the impact of that war, sorry, no pun intended, by measuring the seismic waves that artillery shells, and air to surface missiles, and good old fashioned bombs have been delivering to the people of Ukraine, the infrastructure of Ukraine and the land of Ukraine. And it’s just a wild representation of the tons and tons and tons and tons of ordnance that had been dropped on that country. And it’s a little distressing, but it’s an interesting way to look at this war. And hopefully it will make more people pay attention. So that would be cool. The second thing

Kimberly Adams 

It is literally how it feels to be in that space. I mean, obviously without the fear of losing your life, but just like the constant barrage of vibration.

Kai Ryssdal 

Yeah, this this is, well, alright, so I’m about to go way off topic here. But my father was a kid in Norway during the, my father’s getting Norway during the German occupation in the second World War. And he would tell stories about bombings and strafing runs by German planes. And well, it was, of course, terrifying. Part of the terror was the air pressure, concussions that all of that stuff would bring. And my father later, not all that much later in life, I mean, after he was like, 55 or 60. His hearing went absolutely to hell. And some of that probably, of course, was just old age. But he to the day he died, he blamed it on the Germans.

Kimberly Adams

Wow.

Kai Ryssdal

Yeah. Yeah. So so that kind of stuff happening to Ukrainians, now young and old is is very real. Wow. All right. That’s a good turn. So let’s come on back. And here’s a weird thing, and it gets filed under what could possibly go wrong. So in The New York Times, again, today, nationwide alert will reach cell phones, TVs and radios on October the fourth, so federal agencies are going to send an alert to ensure the country is prepared by way of informing the public in the event of a large scale emergency. This is going to happen at 2:20 Eastern time on October the fourth, so put this in your calendars. They’ve done these before, but this is the first time it will be done to sell you sorry, second time to all cellular devices. So if you’ve got all those alerts turned on your cellphone on and you can’t turn them off if you want to get ready 2:20 Eastern, October the fourth you’re gonna get one of those messages.

Kimberly Adams 

Yeah let’s hope it doesn’t go like that terrible Hawaii situation.

Kai Ryssdal 

Yeah, right.

Kimberly Adams 

Where they, what it was that they told everybody there was like a nuclear bomb.

Kai Ryssdal 

There was a, no it was it was a North Korean missile.

Kimberly Adams

Oh, god. Yeah, that was bad.

Kai Ryssdal

They were like it’s coming. Oh, no, wait, sorry. Nevermind. Yeah, it was like eight or 10 minutes of yep, inbound. Yeah.

Kimberly Adams 

Yeah. Yeah, totally. Well, let it not be that. We’re prepared, we’ll make it through.

Kai Ryssdal 

Charlton. Alright, I’m gonna go first and then I want to spend whatever minutes we have remaining hearing about your trip because hello, Bhutan. I just, while you were gone and um, you probably saw this in the news.

Kimberly Adams 

I heard it actually, I heard you talking about it before.

Kai Ryssdal 

I am going to return to this for the final time so Luis Rubiales is the head of the Spanish Soccer Federation still refuses to resign has been suspended. FIFA wants him to quit. It’s all over the kiss that he gave Jenni Hermoso, the nonconsensual kiss that he gave her on the mouth after the World Cup that Spain won. His mother is still on hunger strike, by the way. Anyway, through all of that the conversation has been about Louise Rubiales not about Jenni Hermoso who is the soccer player at the center of this, star of the national team, Spanish female sports icon. And today The Athletic which is now part of The New York Times and will soon be The New York Times sports section did a really nice profile on her in which they talked about her and her reputation to this point, and it gives her all the attention that she should have gotten. Not because of this jerk, smash the patriarchy Luis Rubiales is but for her merits on the soccer field. And I just want to point that out because I am as guilty as the next guy of having concentrated on what this jerk did instead of the woman to whom it was done. And I think it’s cool that The Athletic did this. And that’s that.

Kimberly Adams 

So I’ve been like binge listening over the last, like 48 hours to as much as I could catch up on all of our shows. So I heard many episodes of things that like don’t for you. I’m trying to I’m almost caught up. But when I heard you talk about this for the first time, I think you were talking to Nova about it, I believe it I can’t remember I think you talked about a couple times. But the first thing I thought of as like, you know what, there should be a different word than kiss. This kind of behavior, because it’s a sexual assault. That’s what he did, he sexually assaulted her on international television. And, you know, a kiss is precious and, and it’s so gross, you know, on so many levels, what he did, but it’s just like, let’s, let’s shift the language and call it a sexual assault instead of a kiss moving forward, because I don’t want that association. So yeah, but I’m looking forward to reading this article. Because I would love to know more about her other than this.

Kai Ryssdal 

She’s a super star, totally, yeah, totally. Okay, so you leave us for two and a half weeks, and you do what now?

Kimberly Adams 

Many things. So speaking of powerful women, I was led on my trip in Bhutan, where I was with the group hiking on the trans Bhutan trail with one of the very few women trekking guides in Bhutan. And so we were like hiking through, it’s way more tropical than I expected in. Yeah, like you think Himalayas and you know, high and dry and everything. No there’s like, tropical sections, there’s definitely like cold mountainous sections. And then there are sort of like, more, you know, pastures where there’s Yaks and things like that many, many cows. But yeah, it was. So we were hiking on the trans Bhutan trail, not the whole thing, because that takes 36 days, but just pieces of it. And then we went up to this very famous monastery in Bhutan called Tiger’s Nest. And I thought I was gonna die because it’s really high altitude. And for this, it was like, upwards of 10,000 feet. And it’s very, very steep.

Kai Ryssdal 

How do you train for 10,000 feet elevation when you’re in like Washington D.C, basically at sea level?

Kimberly Adams 

So I did a lot of cardio. I also, I got one of those masks that you’re supposed to be able to like, restrict your breathing while you’re working out. I didn’t use it that much, because it was really difficult. But I tried. I did, I did the best I could. We took a lot of breaks on the way up and there was definitely a point where it’s like taking 10 steps and I was like gasping for hair. But we made it there. It was beautiful. It was amazing. And then my friends who I was traveling with and my sister and her husband and then we went to the beach in Thailand. And that was quite an adventure.

Kai Ryssdal

Good for you. Yeah, good for you.

Kimberly Adams

And Marissa asked me for some photos so I did send her to that. I think we’re gonna put in the show notes and then I’ll be putting more on Instagram. Now that I’m not trying to detach I’ll start putting them in little bits and pieces.

Kai Ryssdal 

Well it is it is lovely to have you back, it’s good good.

Kimberly Adams

Thank you I’m happy to be back. And with Wednesday.

Kai Ryssdal

You’re like looking around your shed like this is not Bhutan.

Kai Ryssdal

Yeah I mean right, jesus. Between you and Sabri with the vacations, man. All right, we’re gonna go. We’ll be back tomorrow, keep sending us your comments your questions your thoughts for Kimberly on what her trip was like whatever you want to say 508-U-B-SMART, write us at makemesmart@marketplace.org.

Kimberly Adams 

Make Me Smart is produced by Courtney Bergsieker. Ellen Rolfes writes our newsletter. Today’s program was engineered by Charlton Thorp. And our intern is Niloufar Shahbandi.

Kai Ryssdal 

Ben Tolliday and Daniel Ramirez composed our theme music. Our senior producer is Marissa Cabrera. Bridget Bodnar is the director of podcasts, Francesca Levy is everybody’s boss.