A System Can Be Rich And Still Fail People

A country can post great numbers and still feel like it’s falling apart. We start with a flashpoint: Trump’s inflammatory rhetoric about immigrants and political opponents, and how quickly it turns a policy conversation into a moral reckoning. The real tension isn’t just tone, it’s whether public cruelty gets treated as background noise as long as the stock market looks good.

From there, we unpack the core clash between hard-nosed capitalism and moral accountability. One view says the American economy is powered by entrepreneurship and “executional excellence,” not where you’re from. The counterpoint is sharper: no capitalist economy survives without trust, integrity, honesty, and the rule of law, and wealth means little if a huge share of people still live in poverty. That’s the contradiction at the center of economic inequality, and it forces a question many leaders dodge: working for whom?

Then we pivot to the kitchen-table reality of inflation and the cost of living. We talk through how policy choices, tariffs, and foreign conflict can show up as higher prices, wages that lag behind, and voters who feel ignored. We also examine the corruption-shaped optics of ballooning budgets, pet projects, and no-bid contracts, and why those stories matter even when they seem small next to bigger crises.

We close with a hopeful, practical frame: economic populism aimed at corporate power. Farmers trapped by locked equipment and right to repair fights, and immigrant ride-share drivers squeezed by fees and lockouts, reveal the same problem from different angles. If you got something from this, subscribe, share the episode, and leave a review, then tell us what you think: what would make the economy work for you?

Transcript

SPEAKER_06 0:47

I'm not saying that. I'm saying that with that one. I'm not saying that. I'm saying that no economy can survive without some notion of trusting design. This wasn't supposed to be a moral debate, but that's exactly what it turned into. On one side, you've got Kevin O'Leary pure capitalism, pure numbers, pure the system works.

Trump’s Rhetoric Lights The Fuse

SPEAKER_07 1:15

On the other, Cornell West not talking about profits, but something far more uncomfortable. Morality, poverty, and who actually benefits from that successful system. And right in the middle of it all, Donald Trump's rhetoric lighting the fuse. Watch how this escalates, because this doesn't stay polite for long.

SPEAKER_11 1:37

Tonight, President Trump ratchets up the rhetoric against a familiar foe.

SPEAKER_03 1:42

I love this Elon Omar, whatever the hell, her little with the little shoe, the little turban. I love her. She comes in does nothing but bitch. She's always complaining. She comes from a country where. I mean, it's considered about the worst country in the world, right? But she comes to our country and she's always complaining about the constitution allows me to do this. We want to get her the hell out. Throw her the hell out. She does nothing but complain.

SPEAKER_00 2:17

Now I find this to be rich because is it most of everything Donald Trump's been saying since he stepped on the national stage? Complain, complain, complain, complain. His most famous speech is the America Carnage speech. So it it's it's very interesting that he'd say all this person ever does is complain. The entire slogan is make America great again, which would mean what? America's not great currently. Sounds like a complaint.

SPEAKER_11 3:00

And that's not all. He also revived an old remark that he made behind closed doors back in 2018 about shithole countries. Listen to this.

SPEAKER_03 3:26

Do you mind sending us a few people? Send us some nice people. Do you mind? But we always take people from places that are a disaster, right? Filky, dirty, disgusting, ridden with crime. The only thing they're good at is going after ships.

SPEAKER_11 3:53

Let me just play that denial.

SPEAKER_03 3:57

Did you see what American Senators in the room said about my comments? They were there. I am delighted you and I remember that.

SPEAKER_11 4:12

Well, I you were there. Yeah, I remember.

SPEAKER_15 4:14

And uh and and there were some some senators that were at the White House that day and came back and reported uh what he had said uh that day. Dick Durbin and others structure or anything. Yeah, and and uh that was that's the difference between the first term and the second term. The first term you would deny. No, I've never said that. Right. Say it, but you wouldn't admit to saying it.

Xenophobia As A Recurring Cycle

SPEAKER_11 4:36

Now it's just out in the open. It is out in the open. I it it I I'm thinking about what you were saying in that last segment because this feels like exactly what you were referencing.

SPEAKER_02 4:47

Oh, it's true. And of course, a hundred years ago they were saying that about precious Irish brothers, that's a Jewish brother that's Italian. Oh, that's no, no, no, no. Samuel Beckett forever. But so that this is just a cycle, it's a human thing. You know, we're all human beings. We got to keep track of organized hatred and weaponized greed and institutionalized indifference toward the weak and vulnerable. These moral and spiritual issues are perennial. Every generation has to come to terms with it. Thank God a hundred years ago. Voices that were moral and spiritual spoke out against it and called it for what it was. It's just hatred, it's a revenge, this is xenophobia. But when you say that, you don't put them outside of the human race. They're still continuous with us. They're just the worst in us, because that same hatred and same greed is inside of us. It's in the civil war on the battlefield of our own souls every day. We have to fight it every day. And if we don't die every day, as biblical text says, we gotta die every gotta fight that greed and hatred every day. If you don't, you're gonna slide down a slippery slope.

SPEAKER_11 5:49

Is the American project supposed to be about treating people as individuals, not as representatives of where they came from, about who their parents were or whatever, but about who they are and what they can individually contribute to this country. However, what Trump is doing there is basically saying you are worthless if you come from a part of the world that he doesn't think has value. Is that really what we're doing in the United States of America? That's not true in America. That's true.

SPEAKER_08 6:17

No, we we in America we do treat people as individuals and appreciate them as individuals. It's one of the greatest things about this country. On the other hand, and uh I am no fan of Elon Omar, and she is in a lot of deep doo-doo now because she is very tangled in this billion-dollar Somali Medicaid fraud scandal in Minneapolis, and she may be touched by this.

SPEAKER_11 6:41

And of course, I'm not I haven't seen any evidence of her being a few. Well, I have to except for her being.

SPEAKER_17 6:50

This kind of rhetoric doesn't matter because the economy, the American economy, is based on entrepreneurship. I'm just one random investor. They're millions like me. We don't give a damn where you came from. We only ask do you have executional excellence? I hire everybody, regardless of where their origination was or their race, religion, their skin color. I don't give a. It doesn't matter. If you can actually execute, you fit in an American company. And that exists today regardless of who's the executive. I don't agree with those comments, but it's the economy that saves us all. The 200 years of success, the number one economy on earth, driven by every race and color and religion because of executional skills, nothing else.

SPEAKER_11 7:36

That's it. Yeah, I could I could not agree more. And I in this moment, what is happening, the government policy right now is that if you are from a list of countries, I think right now it's 19, but they want to expand it to 30, you're going in, you've gone through the whole immigration process. You're going in to take your oath of allegiance to the United States and become a citizen, and they are pulling you out of line. Uh, the executive director of an immigration organization says, we have 15 clients whose oath ceremonies have been canceled. They were fully vetted and approved. We have others whose interviews have been canceled, they're all from those 19 countries. How is that not um punishing people for things that they themselves did not do, but but that other people from who happened to be from the same country might have done?

SPEAKER_12 8:26

And this is all political. It's a distraction. I'll go back to your comment about the economy. People that were watching that rally, even the people standing behind, at the end of the day, all they care about is the economy. Can they pay their bills right now? Can they afford the squeeze that they are feeling every single day? Donald Trump doesn't like to tackle things that are difficult: health care, inflation, tariffs, dealing with foreign countries. These are tough issues, policy issues. So what does he do? He makes fun of people. He goes after people, particularly women, and particularly women of color, which is just so offensive on so many levels that he goes after wit female journalists, he goes after members of Congress. You see him doing it with Nancy Mace, with Marjorie Taylor Green, and I'm naming Republicans right now. It's a perpetual problem and pattern that he has, and it's a distraction from the economy, which he is failing on.

SPEAKER_08 9:18

I do believe that people coming in from certain countries that have posed terrorist risks to us in the past should be more adequately vetted. And if listing the countries and saying people coming in from these countries must be more thoroughly researched, more thoroughly verified before they're admitted to this country, I have no problem with that because the president is also responsible for the national security of this country.

Immigration Crackdowns And Collective Punishment

SPEAKER_02 9:43

But the thing is, though, you see, that even all the gold in the world, no matter how many gold and calves you have, you can't have an economy unless you're also rich in the things money can't buy. Integrity. Honesty, you can't even have a contract if you're dealing with gangsters. You can't even have a relationship if you're dealing with thugs. You can't have a capitalist economy without some notion of contract with people that you engage in, you have some trust in. That's the kind of stuff money can't buy. They're judged by those things every day.

SPEAKER_17 10:11

That's right, rule of law. They're they're judged by if you are in a moral issuer uh and you and you don't believe in your customers and you do things that are not right with them, you get canceled in two seconds. And even your own partners in business, if you can't trust them, and that person is a difficult that's why the economy works. It's very transparent.

SPEAKER_02 10:31

There's a spiritual and moral dimension of that that's not reducible to just having money. That's why you're at the table.

SPEAKER_17 10:37

You're telling me you can live without money? I'm not saying that.

SPEAKER_02 10:40

I'm saying the problem with that one. I'm not saying that. I'm saying that no economy can survive without some notion of trust of integrity. Sorry, the economy is really surviving. It's the number one economy on earth. You got 20% of the people in poverty too.

SPEAKER_12 10:55

It's a perpetual problem and pattern that he has, and it's a distraction from the economy which he is failing on.

SPEAKER_07 11:04

The moment this ends, one thing becomes very clear. This was never just about Trump. Trump's comments were the trigger, but the real fight was much deeper. Look at what O'Leary keeps doing throughout this entire exchange. He keeps bringing everything back to one argument. The economy works. America is number one, money flows here. End of discussion. That's his shield. But Cornell West doesn't attack the numbers. He attacks what the numbers are hiding. And that's why that one line hits so hard. You got 20% of the people in poverty too. Because it breaks the entire narrative. You can't celebrate being the richest system in the world while ignoring how many people are struggling inside it. That's the contradiction West keeps forcing into the spotlight. And notice something else. Every time the conversation starts getting uncomfortable about real issues like affordability, health care, or inequality, it shifts back to Trump's rhetoric. That's not accidental. Multiple people on the panel basically admit it. This outrage, this controversy, this constant targeting of individuals, it acts as a distraction. It pulls focus away from policy failures and economic pressure people are actually feeling. So while O'Leary is saying the system works, others are saying, then why does it feel like it's not working for so many people? That's the real clash. Numbers versus reality. Growth versus distribution. Success versus fairness. And O'Leary never really answers that. He just doubles down on scale. But scale doesn't equal justice. And that's exactly where West wins this exchange, not by proving the economy is broken, but by proving that working doesn't mean working for everyone. So now the question is simple, and this is where it gets uncomfortable. If a system creates massive wealth, but leaves millions behind, is it still a success? Or is that exactly the problem? Let me know what you think in the comments, because this debate isn't going away anytime soon. And honestly, it's only getting louder.

SPEAKER_05 13:37

And it this isn't just five either. We've got some data, some definitive proof. Today, we learned that inflation hit nearly 4% last month. That's the largest increase of Trump's entire second term as president. And crucially, those increases in prices are now outpacing wage gains, meaning workers are actually seeing less take-home pay. Now, to be clear, usually inflation is mostly out of the president's control, at least directly. Fiscal policy might play some role, but there are usually external factors driving it, like, for instance, the post-COVID supply shocks that plagued the Biden administration followed close on its heels by Russia's invasion of Ukraine. That is not the case here, though. This is really one of those rare cases where it's the president. I mean, the war in Iran has pushed inflation to its highest rate in three years. Gas prices are high because Donald Trump made them that way. Single-handedly, Donald Trump caused this crisis by waging a pointless war on Iran. And voters understand it too. According to one poll, 70% of Americans disapprove of Trump's handling of the economy. 70%, 77%, even a majority of Republicans say he is responsible for the rise in their cost of living. Another poll found Americans overwhelmingly believe that prices were lower under President Biden than Trump, everything from ground beef to housing to electricity. And remember, I mean, at one level that's true, prices tend to go up over time, so they were less uh they were lower before. But remember this, right? We were all there in 2024. Donald Trump's the guy who won the election by convincing voters that he was going to lower the cost of living, that he would bring down prices on day one. He has done the exact opposite from tariffs to the war on Iran. Instead of trying to go out there and persuade voters to get back on his side, he is telling them directly that with every last cell and a 79-year-old body, he couldn't possibly care less.

SPEAKER_01 15:36

Mr. President, to what extent are Americans' financial situations motivating you to make it deal?

SPEAKER_03 15:42

Not even a little bit. I think about one thing. We cannot let Iran have a nuclear weapon. That's all. That is the only thing.

SPEAKER_05 16:00

Two things there. Remember when the Trump administration bombed Iran last year and said they had completely obliterated Iran's nuclear program, then anyone who questioned that was essentially treasonous. One. Two, he says he's talking about Iran when he says this, but it's politics, okay? The president has to own everything he says. And those 12 words there, you might have seen them before he even tuned in this program tonight. They tell you everything you need to know about your president, an attitude that is on display in public every single day, all day long.

SPEAKER_03 16:30

I don't think about American financial situation. I don't think about anybody, I think about what they.

Pet Projects And No-Bid Contracts

SPEAKER_05 16:37

Yeah, yes, you don't think about American's financial situation. You don't think about anybody. We see it all the time. The man is totally checked out. He demonstrated as much as he always does during an Oval Office meeting this morning. Where boy, it sure looked like he dozed off for a full 17 seconds. Maybe charitably he was just resting his eyes or he was just looking down into the what the most charitable explanation when you watch this happen, and it happens every day, as we often sit here and watch this man doze off or check out, is the guy is bored out of his mind. He is the most bored man in history, our president. And all he cares about, and it's palpable and it's obvious, is the little pet projects he's assigning himself. Demolishing the East Wing of the White House so he can build his expensive ballroom, redoing the reflecting pool of the Lincoln Memorial, both at taxpayers' expense. When MS Now reporter Akala Gardner questioned Trump on the ballooning costs of just those two pet projects, he lashed out.

SPEAKER_03 17:44

So what happened is uh we have a bowroom that's under budget. It's going up right here. I've doubled the size of it because we obviously need that. And uh we're right now on budget, under budget, and ahead of schedule. I double the size of it, you dumb person.

SPEAKER_05 18:04

You are you are not a smart person. Oh, yeah, you doubled the size of it, and so the budget went out? I mean, it costs us more than doubled. What the president of the United States did not do there is actually answer the question from our excellent reporter who posed it to him as to why these projects are worthy of those expansive budgets at our expense, or why the reflecting pool has gone up 7x. His ballroom budget seems to increase every time he mentions it, and it started that it was all going to be donated, and now there's a billion dollars that just magically appeared in the latest Republican bill for it. When it comes to the reflecting pool, the Interior Department now says it will cost more than seven times when Trump said it would. And that was a great question from Michaela because he wanted to criminally prosecute Jerome Powell over cost overruns, right? This reflecting pool, this little pet project, the one that he joy-rode over, the one he talks about, the one he's weirdly obsessed with. It's got more than$13 million of cost overruns so far. And get this, as the Times reports, you might be shocked to hear this, the bidding process for that contract looks as corrupt as you're thinking. Trump supposedly consulted three companies that have worked on his swimming pools and then ultimately picked one that worked on his national golf club in Sterling, Virginia. Essentially, Trump said he basically he knew Agami.

SPEAKER_03 19:22

I said, You know, Doug, I have a guy who's unbelievable at doing swimming pools up the road. We have a club, we have an Olympic-sized swimming pool. He did it 20 years ago.

A Farmer’s Fallout And A Furious Reckoning

SPEAKER_05 19:33

Well, if he did Trump's Olympic-sized pool, I'm sure he'd be great with the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool built in 1922. That is very definitively not a swimming pool that you should not swim in, by the way. According to the Times, the government awarded that firm a no-bid contract last month, bypassing the requirement to seek competing offers by saying the situation was so urgent that any delay would cause serious injury to the government. The government has not publicly said what that injury would have been. You gotta love the New York Times bone-dry house style on that one. Now, the Trump administration says the rising costs are a result of the desire to get the project done ahead of July 4th. Obviously, you need to have turquoise blue on the bottom of the reflecting pool by then. But quote, government documents obtained by the New York Times show the contract's current value matches down to the dollar and offer submitted to the government by the firm in the middle of the last month. In other words, this is the original contract. That offer included a 20% profit margin the document show. A 20% profit for some guy on a no big contract,$13 million, 7X toss overruns. And again, it's a small story in the scope and scale of what Donald Trump's up to, but it's a pretty illuminating one, right? I mean, these are the kinds of no big contracts that are ripe for political corruption. That's what Trump is preoccupied with right now. With prices, what they are currently, with no end in sight. I don't know how many Americans are thinking about refinishing their pools this summer. Maybe just Trump, perhaps all the oil CEOs who are getting filthy rich from your rising gas prices.

Economic Populism Against Corporate Power

SPEAKER_16 23:04

Brad had supported Donald Trump in 2024, in part because Trump promised to change all that by becoming the most pro-life farmer president you'd ever seen. Instead, new tariffs cut into Brad's potential export market, and the emerging war in Iran had set gas infertiler prices surging by as much as 70%. He was losing thousands of dollars each month and falling behind on his feed bill until he made the call he had been dreading his whole career. He dialed up an auction house to arrange the Watson's family final dairy sale last month. Thoughts and prayers, Brad. I don't care. Farm bank receipts across the country have risen by 46% in 2025 and 70% in 2026. As nearly as a third of the world's fertilizer exports were impacted by conflicts in the strain of harbour. Wow. I hope you have the day you voted for Brad. How's it feel, right? See Brad, you're the reason that we're here as a country. You're the reason that we're not a great country. You, I'm gonna guess because you live in the Bible belt, you actually don't actually follow anything in the Bible unless it has to do with abortion and being gay, right? You went to the voting booth and voted for a rapist, a felon. You ignored officers that were beaten and took their own lives after January 6th. You ignored the women that Trump sexually assaulted. You ignored the victims of Epstein Island that he's protected. They're eating the dogs and cats. Shithole country. They're poisoning the blood of America. You ignored the racism, the misogyny, insulting women, calling them fat and ugly. And you said, let me quote it right here. He promised to be the most pro-former president you'd ever seen. And ironically, in 2017, Donald Trump started a trade war with China. And you and your other white trash farmers went out there and said, Oh, socialism's evil. I can't vote for the Democrats because it's evil. But please, government, give me$25 billion to bail us out, even though you caused this. And then you voted for him in 20, and then you voted for him in 24 again. The man with three failed marriages. How pathetic do you have to be to cheat on every single wife and have three failed marriages? Who added$8.2 trillion to the debt, who has six bankruptcies and two bankrupted casinos. And you went out there and goes, Well, he told me he's gonna be the most pro-farmer guy. So I'm just gonna take him at his word because I'm a dumbass and he's a white man, so you know. Let's just be real, Brad. You were never gonna vote for the white woman, and you're finding out that racism has a cost. It's expensive, isn't it, Brad? How does it feel? How does it feel in the last election? I'm a Christian, Brad. I actually care about other people, unlike you. You're a selfish brat. I voted for universal health care. I cared about the victims of school shootings, I voted for gun reform. I voted to raise minimum wage. I voted to tax rich people. I voted to get people out of student debt. I voted to help small businesses, knowing that my taxes would go up. You know why, Brad? Maybe you'll learn something here if you can get out in your bigotry and your massage for like two seconds. Because I loved my neighbor as thyself. But people like you get stuck in your right-wing echo chambers, and every four years you ask yourselves this question, which is the biggest con in the history of politics. Are you better off than you were four years ago? You know, Ronald Reagan, who said that trick and trickle down economics works, that's working out really great. He was such a genius, right? Yeah, not because you only vote for yourself, right? That's the problem. If you call yourself a Christian and you say, I believe the greatest commandment is to love thy neighbor as thyself, the only person that you vote for is yourself. Which is why you're a selfish brick. And the last sentence in here, it's pretty ironic. Really had begun counseling farmers on how to emotionally endure the aftermath of an auction, suggesting potential hobbies or strategies for debt consolidation. Wow. What kind of counseling should the women get that Trump assaulted? Or the families that are remaining from the dead officers on January 6th, or the victims of school violence like Columbine and Ubaldi, Sandy Hook that you ignored, or the women that are dying from sepsis because you took away their health care by voting for right-wing Supreme Court justices. What kind of counseling should the victims get of Epstein Allen while the man you voted for is defending them right now by not releasing the Epstein files? Oh, but you need counseling because you can't take care of your cows. Wow. What a great man of God you are, Brad. What a great Christian. Just like Jesus would. You are what's wrong with this country, Brad. And you know what the difference is between you and I, not just that, that you don't have a world compass because you only care about yourself and your bank account, is I own a six-hour P320. But if we as a society came together and said, you know what, we really need to address gun violence, because I'm actually pro-life, Brad, unlike you. You're forced birth. You don't care about life once it's born. You don't care if they're shot, if they're assaulted by the president, if they're molested on action Allen, you don't give a damn about life once it's born. So you can shove your crap about pro-life right up your ass. I would walk through broken glass barefoot and turn in my sixth hour if it would save one child. One innocent child, if there was any way, even if there was a 50% chance, that's the difference between you and I, Brad. You care more about a piece of metal and your stupid ass. Freedom, freedom, freedom! But you don't care about the freedom of kids to go to school without being shot. That's the difference between you and I. I have empathy, you have empathy. I care about everybody else in this country, you only care about yourself and your damn bank account. It's easier for a camel to get through the eye of a needle than for Brad to get into heaven. That is exactly what you are, Brad. You built your wealth on the earth, not in heaven, where Moth and Ross can't get. So good luck on judgment day, Brad. That's gonna be interesting. I cannot wait, and I hope I'm there when you're standing before God, and he's gonna say everything that I just said, because everything I said is completely a fair question. What are you gonna tell him, Brad? Yeah, but I needed money. I told you not to build your wealth on heaven. I told you to love your neighbors. What are you gonna tell God when he points at all of the victims of school shootings? All of the women that are up there that Trump assaulted, the officers that died from after January 6th, 40,000 gun victims every year, the people that died from lack of health care, while the man you voted for is building ballrooms and arches and going golfing. What are you gonna tell God? Well, God, he told me I have great cards and more money. Yeah. You can go down there with Jeffrey Epstein. It's up to you, Brad. You can continue to be a selfish prick and be a racist and a misogynist. Or you can stop being that way and actually start caring about other people. Have yourself a white day, Brad. I hope the racism was worth it.

SPEAKER_14 31:00

What does a farmer in Iowa have in common with an Uber driver in New York City? Their struggle, much like the struggle facing millions of Americans, isn't left versus right. It's about who has power and who doesn't. A progressive economic populism is how we rebalance the economy to work for the many, not the few. To explain what economic populism really means, a great champion of the working class, former FTC Commissioner Alvaro Badoya, my time at the Federal Trade Commission, before Donald Trump fired me for doing my job, totally changed the way I see our political divide.

SPEAKER_04 31:37

It turned me into a populist. Here's what I mean by that. I used to think that the defining fight for our country was between Democrats and Republicans, between the left and the right. Now I am much more worried about the money at the top crushing everyone underneath. It sounds grim because it is. But I also think that this way of looking at the world can unite our country across cultural and even political lines in a way that feels almost impossible today. The largest force in American politics right now is anti-establishment fury at a rigged system. I saw this every day when I was at the FTC. I saw it when I talked to farmers in Iowa and Uber drivers in New York City and pharmacists and grocers in Knoxville and Salt Lake City and Pine Ridge, South Dakota, and everywhere in between. Nearly every person I talked to had one problem, and it wasn't DEI or immigration or the trans agenda. No. The people I talked to couldn't stop talking about how corporate power was bleeding them dry. In Iowa, I heard from fourth and fifth generation family farmers who told me about the big ag corporations who'd monopolized the entire food supply chain, from inputs to outputs to every middleman in between. Even the farm equipment they owned outright was locked by John Deere so that only John Deere could fix it and profit from those expensive repairs.

SPEAKER_13 33:01

And we go to turn the combine on to do it. And it doesn't work. It goes into lint mode, it doesn't let you do anything, it shows you an air code, had an owner's manual, and I looked it up and I was able to be like, okay, it's probably this, but I can't just like order up on my phone. I don't know what piece of equipment it is. I don't know exactly that type of stuff. So I have to call the technician to come out, and we have to wait all day while the weather, the wind's howling, it's it's hot, it's the soybeans are drying. Technician comes out, he's able to, you know, use his stuff to tell us, hey, this is the air code you're seeing. This is what we need, this is the part we get. He comes down the next day, we get charged again for him coming back down. We lost countless hours of trying to be out in the field just waiting on them to do that. Instead of like having a local dealer come out, we could have got moving quicker on that, but we were forced to kind of just wait for John Deere to come, also pay them the higher fee of their repair fees, and for the technician to come in to pay for that delivery part to come quicker.

You Can’t Deport A Rigged Economy

SPEAKER_04 34:00

Meanwhile, in New York City, I met with a group of Uber and Lyft drivers, every one of whom was an immigrant. They were getting lured in by promises of lucrative earnings and near total control of their schedules. Many had spent tens of thousands of dollars on new cars to get the best fares, but they were getting nickel and dimed by the ride-sharing apps. They were getting hit with new fees and restrictions, and they were getting locked out of those apps at random times of day, meaning that it would take eight or nine hours to earn what they used to make in just three or four. They were going into credit card debt. They couldn't make rent. And when they weren't locked out, they drive up to 13 hours straight with no bathroom breaks, no food, nothing. In a round table I did with them, a man walked up to the table and told me his wife had died that morning. But he showed up anyway because he was getting locked out of the apps, he was going bankrupt, and no one was listening to him.

SPEAKER_10 34:50

Bundesley, I won. Snow I won. Why he's not listening like you said people? It can't cost me$62,000. Plus the insurance, plus my wife and my kids, what you see I buy for no reason. This is not right.

SPEAKER_04 35:10

Zooming out, if you focus on the conflict between the left and the right, if the most important thing is what you are, your party, your state, your race, your ethnicity, the people I met during my time at the FTC couldn't be more different. On the one hand, you had farmers who are four or five generations into building a life in ruby red rural America. On the other, you had immigrant workers in the biggest blue city on the East Coast. What could they possibly have in common? Everything. If you look at what they need, everyone I met was part of one huge group. People working themselves to the bone who are getting screwed by billionaires and corporations, regardless of their politics or where they lived or whether they were citizens or immigrants. Regardless, even of whether they were workers or the owners of independent family farms and small businesses. And it may not seem that way at first, but I think that the Iowa farmer who can't run his own combine because it was locked by John Deere has a hell of a lot in common with the immigrant dad in New York City, who can't drive the morning commute because he's locked out by Uber and Lyft. Because what they need is the same. They need a government that gives them a level playing field against the powerful and the wealthy. They need regulators and courts that protect them against abuse and exploitation. They need basic dignity and control in their material lives. That is what an economic populist movement can deliver for our country. Donald Trump wants you to think that the least powerful people in this country are the most responsible for your problems. Not Wall Street, not the billionaires at his back at the inauguration. No. He wants you to blame your neighbor. Don't love your neighbor. Hate him. Hurt him. Deport him. But let me tell you this: you can't deport your way out of a rigged economy. You deport the construction worker or the ride chair driver down the street. Those jobs aren't gonna suddenly start offering overtime and health care and benefits. Your landlord isn't gonna stop Nicolin diming you on rent. Your life is not gonna get any better. Who will get rich? The billionaire CEOs who showered Donald Trump in money and are now getting showered by billion dollar government contracts in return. Don't take the bait. Let's focus on the money and the power at the top. Let's focus on what people need. That is what gives me hope right now. That is what feels like the future.