Facing American Poverty and Global Supply Chain Issues
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He is a Protestant minister, social activist, Yale Divinity School professor, whose latest book is called White Poverty, How Exposing Myths About Race and Class Can Reconstruct American Democracy. Please welcome to the show, Reverend Dr. William Barber. Sir, a pleasure. A pleasure. Thank you.

WHITE POVERTY. YOU, SIR, ARE FAMOUSLY NOT WHITE. SO WHY WRITE "WHITE POVERTY"? WELL, ACTUALLY, I COME FROM CAUCASIAN, BLACK, AND TUSCAROAN DESCENDANTS. OH, WOW. SO MY PEOPLE ARE FREE PEOPLE IN EAST AND NORTH COLLEGNE. THERE ARE A LOT OF THOSE COMMUNITIES.

And so in some ways, this book is me. And so to deny any part of my reality would be to deny myself. But here's the problem I'm concerned about. The way we measure poverty in this country

It's not only a lie, but I can say on this show, it's a damn lie. Sir, you can do more than that if you want. Oh, okay, okay, okay. We got plenty more room for that. I only use the ones that are approved by the Bible. You're reverent, you're reverent. But we say, we use the official poverty measure says that poverty, if you make above $13,000 a year, you're not poor.

If you make above $13,000 a year, you're not poor. You're kind of in the lower, lower middle class. When was the last time they adjusted? Well, it's been since the 60s, really, in some ways. And so what happens with that is we marginalize poverty. And then we racialize it. Whenever we have a brief discussion about poverty, because we very seldom have it,

IN THE NEWS, IN POLITICAL ARENAS, WE PUT UP A BLACK WOMAN ON WELFARE, WHICH RACIALIZES AND DEMEANS BLACK PEOPLE, BUT THEN IT DISMISSES TENS OF MILLIONS OF WHITE POOR PEOPLE. YOU'RE RIGHT. THERE'S 66 MILLION -- OF THE 135 MILLION POOR AND LOW-WAGE PEOPLE IN THIS COUNTRY,

60% of black people are poor, Lowell. That's 26 million. 30% are white, but that's 66 million, 40 million more. This book says we need to face all of our poor

and recognize that we have something what Desmond, who's an author out of Princeton, calls poverty by America. Not the poverty in America, but the particular kind of poverty by America that's unnecessary and abolishable because it makes no sense in the richest nation in the world. We have over 135 million poor, low-wage people, over 41% of our population, and over 50% of our children

And it's unnecessary. So white poverty says we're not playing the game anymore. Let's not look at this through the prism of race. Let's look at it through class. And do you think that that division was a purposeful one? I think so. And to expand race, you have to deal with race in America. But what you cannot allow someone to do for something this serious, where 295,000 people are dying a year from poverty and low wage. How many? 295,000, 800 people a day.

are dying are dying reasons from what they would consider poverty like is the fourth leading cause of death in the country higher than respiratory disease. High hired even impacts respiratory disease because if you're low wage and you're living in an area of chances are the pollution and the taxes by higher where you live all of those things right and so here we have some that's the fourth leading cause of death, 800 people a day when 7 people died from vaping it was a congressional hearing was presidential level.

Right imagine if 800 politicians were dying a day. Oh I have Well, I can't do that

But my point is how everybody would be just up and out or 800 middle class people or 800 wealthy people. You're talking about 100,000 people. That's clearly epidemic. Right. You just talked about crime. That's a crime. That's a form of, especially when it's unnecessary. It does not have to be. And entrenched. It seems in a lot of communities, it's a cloud that never lifts. Well, the thing about it is, John, it's in every community. See, that's the point we're making in the book.

Whether it's Appalachia, where I met women in West Virginia who have to sell tacos on Tuesdays so they have a community fund to help women deal with their monthly issues, or whether it's out in eastern Kentucky, where I met black and white coal miners who watched the mines be taken over by multinational companies that moved the union rights out of it, or whether it's in the Delta,

It's everywhere. There's not a county in this country now

where a person making $7.25, that's what the minimum wage is, federal minimum wage is $7.25. It's been like that for 14 years, John. It hasn't been raised for 14 years. - When they try and raise it to even 15, I mean, the fight is everywhere you go, there's a huge fight about trying to bring it to 15 and it's gonna kill all the jobs. - Which is a lie. - Which is a lie. - Three Nobel Peace Prize economists said it wouldn't kill jobs, in fact, it would put more money in the economy and it would actually expand jobs.

But here's the thing. We had 15 in the union proposed in 2020. Eight Democrats and every Republican stood against 55 million people, 52 million people who make less than a living wage of $15 an hour. Now, here's the thing. In 63, the March on Washington called for a raise of the minimum wage to $2, which indexed with inflation would be over 15 today. Really? Yes.

And people forget the March on Washington in '63 was titled "For Jobs and Justice." It wasn't just about black civil rights. It was about a broad, inclusive, just-filled democracy. And so here we are in this reality, and people are hurting everywhere. There's not a county where you can work a minimum wage job and afford a basic two-bedroom apartment.

And waiters and waitresses on minimum minimum wage, not a county in the country, not accounting. If you had a minimum wage job, there's not a county in this country where you could afford it. You've got a federal federal. No, you couldn't. And this is the working poor. This isn't you know, I think in the country there's a sense of it's an entitlement mentality. That's why there's a certain character flaw that keeps you there. These are people that are working.

Yeah, the entitlement is in the politicians that keep raising their wages and giving corporations tax breaks, but they won't help the working people. That's the entitlement. So, so, and we're talking about during COVID. COVID did not exacerbate poverty. It exposed it.

And we did a study called the death during COVID, and we found that whether you were in a poor county in West Virginia or a poor county in the Delta, poor people died at a rate three to five times higher during COVID because of their poverty. Not because the germs somehow discriminated, but we did. Access to good health care. Well, 350,000 people died during COVID so far, one study said, from the lack of health care. And if you don't face this, John, this is the point of the book.

We have to face this. We have to look at it. We had 15 presidential debates in the last election. 40% of the adult population in poverty, 800 people dying a day. Not one debate was focused on it. We've not had an oval office discussion. Why don't politicians value what is...

an incredibly large population in many different, I'm sure, in swing states. So why don't they... Do poor people need better lobbyists? What is it that can be done to get a politician to listen? Well, I think that what we're saying now is we just had a study. I asked it to be done as a part of our movement, Waking the Sleeping Giants.

And this is what we found out, that all of these numbers also tell us that poor and low-wage people now represent 30% of the electorate in the country. 30%. And over 40% in states where the margin of victory was less than 3%.

And it's Texas where it's less than 5%. So what we're saying to poor and low-wage people of every race, it's time to mobilize your vote. There's not a state where 20% of poor and low-wage voters that didn't vote, 57 million voted, 30 million didn't in the last election. But if 20% that didn't vote moved, they could change every election. And in most states, Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Florida, it's less than 4%.

So what we're doing is organizing a massive movement. In fact, on June 29th in Washington, D.C., there's going to be a massive poor people, low-wage workers assembly and mall march on D.C. and to the polls.

Saying that poor and low-wage people right have to find themselves white black brown Asian native and unite around attacking what we call five interlocking injustice systemic racism systemic poverty ecological devastation denial of health care the war economy and the false modern that religious nationalism and and John You know in our gender we're saying to Carlton if you want these votes. I

Bring them in at the top level. President Biden, bring a group of poor, low-wage folk and religious leaders to the White House. Do people even listen to them? Do they even hear them? What has the response been when you reach out to our political class? What's the response been?

Well, because we've been lied to so much. You know, at first they said, well, it's not that big. And then we proved that it's actually 135, 140. And then they don't expect that people are going to organize. You know, in a democracy, you have to engage in agitation, legislation, litigation, and voter participation. So what we're saying to poor and low-wage folks...

Let's use this power. And so we're having this gathering before the conventions

We're going to touch 15 million poor and low-wage voters with the facts on where people stay in a nonpartisan, where they stand on the issues and say, let's mobilize. And we because that's the true swing vote. So Linda Lake, who's a major pollster, says the truest, most powerful, biggest swing vote right now is poor and low-wage people. And, you know, John, folk often ask me and you and I've talked about this.

Does our current society require that things be like this? This was the real crux of the issue. And what this book says is, well, it's kind of like putting your hand in an electric socket that's connected. It requires that you get shocked because you put your finger there. You don't have to do it. But if you keep doing things the way you are doing it, you're going to get shocked. So if you keep paying less than a living wage,

If you keep denying people health care, if you keep giving greedy, wealthy folk $2 trillion tax cuts, but you won't even spend the money to fully fund public education. If we keep doing what we're doing, we're going to keep having the level of poverty that we're having. And we don't have to do it. It is actually, I believe, criminal.

a form of policy violence to continue down the road. And doesn't it weaken the system as a whole? You know, you could almost make the case that if the system is requiring a permanent entrenched underclass, then it makes itself ripe for instability. And I'm wondering, is there a way to change the mindset? Because the mindset in America is...

There is a moocher class. These poor people are moochers, and they're taking resources from me. I work hard. They get, poor people get health care. They get food. They get whatever they need. I don't get it. Is there a way to change the mentality to view things not as entitlements but investments? Yeah. And maybe to get labor not to be viewed as shareholders, that corporations have to view labor not as shareholders,

means to an ends but as shareholders in that and and cannot change the dynamic it can but one of the first things that we believe we have to do and we talk about moral fusion organizing is first of all we should be examining every policy not by the color of a president's hair or how many porn stars he touched or how the heat what's the gate of his walk

Does the policy you propose, do they line up with establishing justice? Do they line up with providing for the families

common defense and promoting the general welfare, do they line up with our deepest moral and religious values? Secondly, we must expose the level of death that's happening because this is not benign. Thirdly, we must make sure that folks see it all, that it's not one group of people. We've been lied to so much about this is an anomaly, this is just a small group. We cannot allow this to be marginalized anymore. And then we must have massive organization of poor and low-wage people of every place, every geographic and every race.

And in doing that, we can put poverty and low wages at the center of our political discourse. And then, yes, isn't that isn't that America first? Isn't that making America great again? Like if you hollow out a country, how can you expect it to be strong? Wouldn't that be the absolute acme of of strengthening a country from the bottom up as opposed to the top down?

You would think it would be, but if you've got people that are still living when they first wrote the Constitution and said even poor white men that didn't own jobs or didn't own land couldn't vote, if you have people with that kind of mentality, that this should be an exclusive democracy rather than an inclusive. But listen, the numbers tell us, though...

They're more of us. The thing is, you can't be lazy in a democracy. You got to fight like heaven. I mean, really. And what we're trying to show people, the numbers are there. Listen, Wisconsin, margin of victory, 20,000 votes, number of poor low-wage voters didn't vote.

over a million. Didn't vote. Didn't vote. Michigan, 10,000 votes. The number of poor and low-wage vote, a million. Pennsylvania, 40,000 votes determined the president. Number of poor and low-wage vote, about two million. North Carolina, 160,000, over a million. So it's not a big lift. And the number one reason, though, we did a study called Waking the Sleeping Giant, that poor and low-wage people didn't vote, nobody talks to them.

politicians don't go in those communities. I've gone in communities and people literally cry and say, Reverend Barber, nobody comes back here. So what I say to them is, we're back here now, but let's mobilize to make sure they never forget you again. That they never forget you ever again. White Poverty, available now. Welcome back to The Daily Show.

My guest tonight is a global economics correspondent for The New York Times and author of the new book, How the World Ran Out of Everything Inside the Global Supply Chain. Please welcome Peter Goodman. Yes. So, how the world ran out of everything. During COVID, we ran out of toilet paper. Sure did. Baby formula, computer chips. We had cars that were ready to run, but no computer chips.

What the f*** happened? And did we fix it?

We've not fixed it. I'm sorry to say the vulnerabilities are still there. What happened was a reveal of something that had been there for decades. We are dependent upon this really improvised, ad hoc, rickety supply chain. It's really a bunch of supply chains. We've been devoted to this kind of reckless, ruthless form of deregulation. And during the pandemic, just as we were in our darkest hour of need, it buckled. And yeah, we ran out a lot of stuff.

When I was reading your book, I kept asking myself the same question, which was, why don't we just make this shit here? Yeah. Why aren't we making all of the shit here? Well, but you...

You answer that, but explain it to me again. We could make more things here, and there's a movement to make more things here, and that's helpful. It's in the margins, but we're not going back to self-sufficiency. Look, if there was no trade, you and me wouldn't be having this conversation. We'd be out trying to feed our families with bark or whatever, right? And, you know, I'm not that good at growing food. I'm sure you're not either. So here we are. We're dependent upon a global supply chain. Speak for yourself, Peter. I...

I did lose a tomato in the wind last night in my rooftop garden, but... Good luck with that. Yeah, I don't want to try to feed my family through my own labor. So we have trade, and we've got a lot of jobs in this country that are dependent upon a global supply chain. And it's been a consumer bonanza. We've just done a very poor job cushioning the people who've lost jobs.

We don't need to throw out globalization. We need to reconfigure it. We need sensible regulations. We need working people to get more of a piece of the action so we have a more reliable supply chain. You tell the story in the book about one company that is trying to make these glow-in-the-dark toys, even has a contract with Sesame Street, and he wants to actually use American manufacturing, but...

can't find American manufacturers to do it. Right. I mean, he calls around. These are these, I follow this one container from a factory in China to the West Coast of the United States and then across the continent to Starkville, Mississippi, where his warehouse is based. He couldn't find somebody to make the molds for these products unless he paid 12 times as much as the price in China. He tried to get somebody to make a

kind of children's pop-up book style package for his product. And he was told this is just too complicated. Go make this in China. It was the path of least resistance. You follow this path, this container ship from China all the way to Mississippi. And literally this is, this is the path it takes. I mean, it is, it's a harrowing journey. And as an American that buys a lot of stuff, I'm going, holy shit. I didn't know that all this happened. I just pressed click.

And then it shows up. Yeah, well, then it worked. Yeah. Do we need to buy less dumb shit? I know that's not the most intellectual question. Do we need to buy less dumb shit? It's a legitimate question. Look, I rode for three days with a long-haul truck driver from Kansas City to Dallas and back to try to understand. That sounds like my worst nightmare.

It's everyone's worst nightmare, which is why we don't have enough truck drivers. And the best part of that moment, we're somewhere in Oklahoma, and this truck driver looks out the window and he says, people just buy too much the word you just used. And, yeah!

We could do well thinking more carefully about what we buy and what we need. But let's face it, like we're going to keep making stuff. We're going to keep consuming stuff. The question is, are we going to have a more resilient supply chain or one that's just optimized for basically big box retailers and investors? Because that's what we've had now for decades. I had before reading your book, I had always kind of seen China as this.

aggressor that has taken American jobs in manufacturing. And do you feel that's the case? Is that an accurate portrayal of China? I think what you painted the picture so well in here was that

It's American business executives that are saying we can make more money. It's not the American worker that's saying this. It's the executives. Why did factory jobs move to China? Because publicly traded corporations governed by the imperative to lower their costs

and produce lower-priced products, but fattened their margins as well. They sent production to China. They were encouraged to go there by the investor class, and it worked out really well for them. And look, this is an old story, right? Chinese labor was brought in to build the railroads in the United States. Talk about that, yeah. Yeah, and the...

Walmart going to the People's Republic of China, that's just a continuation of the old story of basically undercutting American labor unions, undercutting American working people. These are decisions, you know, the hollowing out of our factory towns that are not made in Beijing. These are decisions made in boardrooms in New York, in Seattle, in Congress.

IT'S NOT ALWAYS PORTRAYED THAT WAY. RIGHT. YOU KNOW, IT'S PORTRAYED AS THERE'S CHINA TAKING OUR ECONOMY. RIGHT. BUT WHAT -- WE HAVE A BIG DEBATE COMING UP THURSDAY NIGHT. RIGHT. TRUMP -- AND CORRECT ME IF I'M WRONG, BUT TRUMP PUT SOME TARIFFS ON CHINA AND BIDEN HAS KEPT A LOT OF THOSE TARIFFS. THAT'S RIGHT. HAS ADVANCED THEM, ACTUALLY. HAS ADVANCED THEM. YEAH. WHAT CAN WE EXPECT WHEN THIS QUESTION COMES UP THURSDAY NIGHT?

where do they stand on this? Well, you know, I don't know how much nuance there will be in that debate, but let's face it, there are very few things... I think we all know how much nuance there will be in that debate, yeah. There are not many things that garner agreement in American politics, but one of them...

unfortunately, is the sort of cartoonish depiction of China as this job-killing juggernaut without any of the details that we've already discussed here. I mean, I think in terms of the differences between these two candidates, Donald Trump is a threat to the global supply chain. He's proud to be a threat to the global supply chain.

He likes the photo op of slapping tariffs on steel and mugging for the cameras with steel workers going back to work. Never mind that there are six to eight times as many people who go to work at factories in America that buy steel as there are people who make steel. So those companies are less competitive. Now, Biden is also bashing China. There's

THIS IS A BIPARTISAN INITIATIVE, BUT IT'S A MUCH MORE NUANCED KIND OF INDUSTRIAL POLICY. IT'S LESS ABOUT CONTAINING CHINA'S RISE. I MEAN, TRUMP IS REALLY ABOUT LET'S HAVE A COLD WAR WITH CHINA. BIDEN IS MORE ABOUT LET'S EMBRACE INDUSTRIAL POLICY, LET'S TRY TO MAKE ELECTRIC VEHICLES IN THE U.S.

These are some significant differences. I was in Vermont this weekend performing. I eat a lot of ice cream in my life. I wanted to go see the Ben & Jerry's ice cream fair.

factory where it all started. These were two men in 1978 who started making ice cream out of a gas station. Right. And then as I kind of dug into it, I was also reading your book. It's kind of a perfect tie-in. I realized, oh, they sold the company to Unilever in year 2000. And all of a sudden, these two men who really care about keeping things local, who really cared about social issues, it

it felt like the big evil corporation was constantly pushing back against them and was constantly looking at profit margins. Is there something that I can feel optimistic about? Is capitalism always just defeat us and these two little Ben and Jerry men scooping ice cream cones? I don't think it's capitalism. I mean, you know, the people who benefit from the status quo would have us believe that regulating and taxing and enforcing antitrust laws, we might as well, you know, be advocating Venezuela style, you know. Right.

I mean, it's just nonsensical, right? Capitalism needs markets. Markets need regulation. They can't function without. But in terms of what we can do, you know, consumers are not going to save us from the vulnerabilities in the global economy. We're busy dealing with our kids. So I can keep buying plastic shit for my four-year-old daughter on Amazon. I'm not turning you in. I mean, it's going to take.

antitrust enforcement, labor mobilization so that working people get a piece of the action so they're less likely to quit their jobs in the middle of a pandemic. I mean, you know, Henry Ford, problematic character, knew a thing or two about making things in the supply chain. You know, he said explicitly as he raised wages for workers in 2014 and was called a communist by some, he said, I just want to make things reliably. Any business that's premised on low wage labor is inherently unstable. Right. And...

That's where we're at right now. It feels like. I mean, normalcy is built on this idea that huge numbers of people have to do dangerous jobs away from their families with little control or understanding about their schedules. And they just have to suck that up for the benefit of our sort of just in time, ruthlessly efficient that turns out not to be so efficient global economy.

You personally, that I can steal from you, what can I do? What do you do? What any habits of yours that have changed since researching and writing this? Yeah, I mean, I try to give my business to people who are actually in control of their businesses. I mean, if you're mostly transacting with big companies that are answerable to Wall Street, then you're ultimately transacting with entities that are thinking about shareholder interests above all. They can't afford to be kind to their workers necessarily because their competitors aren't.

They can't afford to think about keeping production local. They can't think about the highest quality ingredients and they can't think beyond the next quarter. So certainly local small production. But again, consumers are not going to save us from the vulnerabilities in the global supply chain. It's going to take regulation. It's going to take labor mobilization. But it helps to know that my

$14 strawberries at the farmer's market is probably going to better use than the $9 strawberries at the Amazon. You need to shop somewhere else. Exactly. These are the celebrity prices that I get. Look, how the world ran out of everything is available now. Peter Goodman, everybody.

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