Ralph welcomes Heidi Shierholz, president of the Economic Policy Institute, to break down the budget bill passing through Congress that is the largest transfer of wealth from the poor and working-class to the wealthy in United States history.
Heidi Shierholz of the Economic Policy Institute does a masterful job in outlining and filling in the details of how the upward movement of money in the budget will severely harm ordinary people in the US and millions of those who voted for Trump.
The march to harm ordinary people began with Reagan and has reached its summit with the scowler-in-chief, Trump. He will cause harm to ordinary peoples’ health, safety, education, and a host of other variables while causing a massive increase in the national debt. This is not exactly making America great again!
Robert Hunter provides an excellent perspective on the auto insurance industry. That industry has had its hand in my pocket for decades despite a pretty much perfect driving record. My family got nothing back on our insurance during the pandemic even though we hardly drove. But my insurer was quick to raise my rates when a rock in the road hit my front bumper and did some damage. It was only through appealing to Massachusetts and going to a hearing that I was able to stop that ripoff.
"UN-PRECEDENTED"❓ U.S. Americans are NOT so Young, Drug-Addled, Aged or BrainDead to forget that Depraved Corporate Criminals CEOs & Boards of Directors have been ABOVE The LAW since Clinton signed Bidenz 1994 Crime Bill❗️
Saif AbuKeshek, member of the international committee of Global March to Gaza, describes a growing international movement of over 1,500 people from more than 35 countries preparing to march from Al-Arish, Egypt, to the Rafah border on June 15 to demand an end to the genocide in Gaza and the opening of the border for humanitarian aid. AbuKeshek calls Gaza “the last stand of humanity,” condemns world leaders for their complicity, and emphasizes that ordinary people are stepping up where governments have failed. “I don’t want to sit with my grandchild one day and have no answer when they ask: What did you do?”
I've been a Naderite since my days on the Minnesota PIRG in the 1970s. The problem today is that the politicians see that they can treat the voters with contempt, but we will still vote for the candidates that the financiers and the financier-controlled media approve, which means that the politicians don't have to care what we think. We can't afford to hope for that to get better. We need a focused organizational campaign with a platform that will benefit and attract working people from across the current political divide. It must show that the fake issues and fake solutions the financiers have sold are just distractions, and we can agree on solutions to our real problems. It must break the power of financiers. It must be laborist, like the Nonpartisan League of a century ago, and it must adopt their strategy of seizing control of the parties from below. The attached has a laborist platform and strategy that we should be able to agree upon. https://laboristmovement.substack.com/p/laborism I am sure Ralph and company could add a number of broadly popular laborist details. Unless we get behind that, we can protest and raise hell until we turn blue, and the Uniparty will still take us straight to hell to please the financiers.
Remember when they promised jobs and rationalized tax cuts for the rich with "trickle down economics"? Now they don't even bother with rationalizing tax cuts.
What are the best ways citizens or communities can minimize or avoid federal taxes in order to avoid this theft?
National taxation is necessary to give value to the national currency. With national taxation, a nation can, at the most fundamental level, provision itself by requiring citizens to work to earn the national currency so they can pay their taxes and fees.
Now, while this is how things work at the most fundamental level, this explanation may not have much meaning to most people. Practically speaking, federal taxes for most people should be lowered. Things such as the FICA taxes should be eliminated. However, the federal government must be circumspect in how they lower taxes on lower tax brackets, as compared to higher tax bracket individuals, because lowering taxes on the majority would have a larger impact on the propensity to spend than lowering taxes on the higher income brackets. Long story short, lowering taxes on lower-income brackets could present an inflationary risk in certain sectors. Thus, ideally, it is better to lower taxes on lower-income brackets during times of slower economic activity.
That said, there are many fiscal policy choices government could make to reduce inflationary risks which would make lowering taxes more feasible, such as implementing more regulation to ensure competition and to reduce monopolistic business behavior. Implementing a federal job guarantee would increase national productivity and keep labor in a more work-ready state. It would also act as a labor buffer stock which would improve labor price stability.
The monetarist national deficit fear mongering in this RNRH episode is entirely false and does not at all apply to a country with a floating national currency, such as what the US has, as compared to a nation using a commodity-backed currency. The key is to move away from inflation management done via monetary policy and move it to a more fiscally-based policy approach. Now, this would involve much more action from Congress, and it is debatable whether Congress is even remotely responsive to the national economic needs.
Instead of trying to take an empirically backed economic approach, Mr. Nader and the guest decided to push austerity narratives which will only continue the trend towards greater income inequality and will also continue to support a system where Congress is inept and unresponsive to the economic needs of the citizenry. It is truly appalling that Mr. Nader is going down the route of advocating for social reform through austerity and economic liberalism (smaller government) rather than through more government. Mr. Nader may not be a Trump, Musk, or Democratic Party supporter, but he is sure acting like one in this episode.
Arrest and imprison Legislative and Judiciary for not enforcing the laws and authorizing Tempertantrump to re-write laws in his favor and those he is in debt!!!
If Tempertantrump didn’t like big government, he shouldn’t have applied for the job! 330 MILLION + people in USA! Not a business! Mind your own business!!!
Why all the benefits? As kids we had nothing except for vaccines. We were fine. Humans existed for thousands of years without meds. We are made to survive on water, food, and exercise. My few surgeries were mostly from athletic endeavors. I don't take any medications, but was on painkillers for a week after a couple of surgeries. That's it.
Why are Medicaid expenditures so high? Are all these people old and on meds?
Why are so many drugs being purchased by Americans?
Medicaid is the only lifeline for disabled people to live in the community with dignity and safety. Of course the republicans and many democrats don't think they deserve a life. Trump for sure doesn't think disabled people should live. He has told one of his nephews to let his disabled son die and he also called his own son, Baron, "retarded" because he believes vaccines cause Baron to be autistic (I don't know if he is, although he does show some traits - and deserves dignity, like all the millions who are not rich and depend on Medicaid services like community services, therapies and support staff, for example)
Steve, let me first congratulate and thank you for asking the astute question during the Wrap-Up segment about state and local budgets. I am pleased to see that someone is asking questions from an empirical base of knowledge about the monetary system. I am not sure how many listeners know of this even though it happened during the lifetime of most of the RNRH listeners, but Richard Nixon, Richard Nixon!, championed the idea of federal ‘revenue sharing’ with state and local governments and this lead to the passing of the State and Local Fiscal Assistance Act in 1972.
With this, the federal government provided a meaningful amount of block grants to state and local governments at a time when local governments were struggling to provide necessary services to the public. While I do not like the ‘revenue sharing’ name for this as it was often called and I also question providing block grants versus funding for specific purposes, the Act did provide the opportunity at least for improved services for the public. The ‘revenue sharing’ was eliminated via bipartisan support in 1986, during the neoliberal period obviously, due to concerns with the national deficit.
Given what I just wrote about the deficit, I am absolutely distraught that, aside from Steve’s statement, the Ralph Nader Neoliberalism Hour has returned this week. First the listeners deserve to know that the Economic Policy Institute is very much a partisan Washington DC think tank even if they claim to be nonpartisan Their leadership has regularly come from and joined Democratic Party administrations. Heidi Shierholz was the chief economist for the Department of Labor under the Obama administration. EPI’s own publications show ‘wet-noodle’ criticism of the Democratic Party’s pro-austerity policies, something which was exhibited in Shierholz’s flaccid criticism of the Biden administration. While I cannot and will not pin Obama’s labor economic policy failures on Shierholz, the simple fact of the matter is that Obama’s neoliberal policies hampered economic recovery, especially for the lower-income citizens, and has helped fuel the rise of Trump I and II.
Now, the criticism of Trump II’s austerity is correct. If anything, Mr. Nader and Shierholz could have criticized Trump’s austerity measures more deeply than they did. At the same time, Shierholz can make excuses for the Biden administration by talking about macroeconomic indicators, but the fact of the matter is that the Biden administration showed how government could spend to help support unprecedented economic recovery and growth. Unfortunately, they emphasized this with corporate causes while cutting government support aimed towards lower-income brackets at a time when the Democrats controlled Congress. There are no excuses for this. The Biden administration failed to use direct government action to swiftly improve the lives for the bulk of the population, as FDR had done with the New Deal, and instead tried to use public-private partnerships/’derisking’ (corporate welfare...neoliberalism) as stimulus. That doesn’t work well, and even when it does kind-of work, it may take years for there to be any appreciable progress. This is a big reason why we have Trump II.
Beyond that, Mr. Nader and Shierholz continue to push neoliberal narratives about the national debt. The only meaningful economic impact of the national debt, which wasn’t even discussed in the episode, is that the rising debt combined with the current elevated interest rate means the government is giving considerable amounts of free money to those who already have money who can afford to buy risk-free government debt instruments: Treasury bills, notes, and bonds. This fuels income inequality and may even be inflationary in some aspects even if the Federal Reserve’s stated purpose for the increased interest rates is to lower inflationary risks.
Under a fiat currency, issuance of these debt instruments is unnecessary as they are relics of commodity-backed currency. Furthermore, insinuations from Shierholz that increasing national debt will lead to higher interest rates and so forth is absurd. Japan has a much higher debt-to-GDP ratio than the US and maintains a near 0% interest rate policy and has done so for over 20 years now and has a stable economy with lower inequality and unemployment than the US. The failure of Congress to properly use fiscal policy versus monetary policy via the Federal Open Market Committee to combat inflation and economic instability is the problem. Instead, Shierholz is spinning fairy tales about national debt on completely faith-based beliefs rather than any empirical reasoning. Once again note that we have another failed economist who talks about the dangers of increasing national debt without being able to explain how the increasing debt will cause problems. In addition to the example of Japan, all the monetarist cries about the US debt being unsustainable before the global financial crisis, soon after the GFC, and after Covid have all proven to be wrong.
Mr. Nader and Shierholz may have convinced themselves that their plain (plain stupid) economic narratives are a winner with the public, but it is only a winner for neoliberalism. What Mr. Nader and Shierholz are essentially telling the public is that the federal government is practically bankrupt. Since insurance was the topic of the second segment of the show, let me ask if any logical person would buy insurance from an insurance company near bankruptcy?
Well, of course not. So then why would anyone want healthcare reform where a ‘bankrupt’ federal government is the funding source for healthcare coverage?
In reality, the federal government is not ‘bankrupt,’ aside from any artificially-caused barriers such as the debt ceiling. Mr. Nader and Shierholz are foolhardily causing people to push for austerity narratives. Based on what Mr. Nader and Shierholz are incorrectly advocating for, the public might well be left thinking fiscal surpluses should be the goal for the federal government rather than increased public spending on social programs. We already know what fiscal surpluses lead to since we saw it with the Clinton-Gingrich budget in the 1990s. It pushes growth to be led by the private sector, and the push for deregulation which comes from that, rather than from the public sector. That failure by the Clinton administration, which might well have been a bigger blow to the living standard of the majority of Americans than anything Trump is doing even as bad as Trump’s failures are, directly led to the early 2000s recession and, ultimately, the late 2000s GFC.
A few RNRH episodes ago, Erica Payne discussed how progressives are often their own worst enemy when it comes to macroeconomic narratives. Unfortunately, Mr. Nader and Shierholz perfectly exhibited this failure during this episode. It is easy to find fault with Trump’s austerity, but countering austerity with more austerity is only a solution for increasing inequality and increasing the oligarchic nature of government. As encouraging as it is to see Steve’s growth, it is excruciating to listen to Mr. Nader befoul himself by inadvertently promoting neoliberalism to his multitude of followers. Mr. Nader needs to put the stubbornness aside and desist in acting like a gimcrack progressive version of Lee Atwater. The listeners of this august program are not imbeciles. They deserve the opportunity to learn about how their federal monetary system actually operates so that they can correctly advocate for beneficial fiscal policy.
The idea of "no tax on tips" is misleading. Most tipped workers do not earn enough money to pay taxes anyway. Since Project 2025 is anti-worker and anti-union, this feels like a tactic to return us to the era of the Robber Barons, when workers had few rights and earned very little.
Ralph Nader, is an American treasure and he’s the go to for the truth ❤️🇺🇸❤️
We’ve got to form a coalition pleading, if necessary, for Ralph to once again for president.
Can’t think of anything that would energize people more.
Heidi Shierholz of the Economic Policy Institute does a masterful job in outlining and filling in the details of how the upward movement of money in the budget will severely harm ordinary people in the US and millions of those who voted for Trump.
The march to harm ordinary people began with Reagan and has reached its summit with the scowler-in-chief, Trump. He will cause harm to ordinary peoples’ health, safety, education, and a host of other variables while causing a massive increase in the national debt. This is not exactly making America great again!
Robert Hunter provides an excellent perspective on the auto insurance industry. That industry has had its hand in my pocket for decades despite a pretty much perfect driving record. My family got nothing back on our insurance during the pandemic even though we hardly drove. But my insurer was quick to raise my rates when a rock in the road hit my front bumper and did some damage. It was only through appealing to Massachusetts and going to a hearing that I was able to stop that ripoff.
Even though not part of today’s Radio Hour, my article “Gaza, Genocide, and Antisemitism” might be of interest to listeners: https://thelastnewleftist.com/gaza-genocide-and-antisemitism/
"UN-PRECEDENTED"❓ U.S. Americans are NOT so Young, Drug-Addled, Aged or BrainDead to forget that Depraved Corporate Criminals CEOs & Boards of Directors have been ABOVE The LAW since Clinton signed Bidenz 1994 Crime Bill❗️
How do we get Congress /Senate to hold shadow hearings if we live in a Republican Party held state ?
WORLDWIDE MARCH From EGYPT To GAZA 15 JUNE 2025
▪️ BreakThrough News 2 June 2025
https://youtu.be/1Q3h6uf1igk?si=sHHDVog6Tut02wKo
Saif AbuKeshek, member of the international committee of Global March to Gaza, describes a growing international movement of over 1,500 people from more than 35 countries preparing to march from Al-Arish, Egypt, to the Rafah border on June 15 to demand an end to the genocide in Gaza and the opening of the border for humanitarian aid. AbuKeshek calls Gaza “the last stand of humanity,” condemns world leaders for their complicity, and emphasizes that ordinary people are stepping up where governments have failed. “I don’t want to sit with my grandchild one day and have no answer when they ask: What did you do?”
#breakthroughnews
I've been a Naderite since my days on the Minnesota PIRG in the 1970s. The problem today is that the politicians see that they can treat the voters with contempt, but we will still vote for the candidates that the financiers and the financier-controlled media approve, which means that the politicians don't have to care what we think. We can't afford to hope for that to get better. We need a focused organizational campaign with a platform that will benefit and attract working people from across the current political divide. It must show that the fake issues and fake solutions the financiers have sold are just distractions, and we can agree on solutions to our real problems. It must break the power of financiers. It must be laborist, like the Nonpartisan League of a century ago, and it must adopt their strategy of seizing control of the parties from below. The attached has a laborist platform and strategy that we should be able to agree upon. https://laboristmovement.substack.com/p/laborism I am sure Ralph and company could add a number of broadly popular laborist details. Unless we get behind that, we can protest and raise hell until we turn blue, and the Uniparty will still take us straight to hell to please the financiers.
Fantastic interview with Heidi Shierhotz! A link to it should be posted on her Bluesky page.
Read Lewis Powell's 1971 memo to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce(Caitalists). Nixon apointed this snake to the Supreme Court too.
Thank you Ralph and Heidi. Why do people continue to vote for this Criminal Red and Blue cabal?
Thank You. When i went to the RadioHour Substack just a few minutes ago this wasn't there.
Remember when they promised jobs and rationalized tax cuts for the rich with "trickle down economics"? Now they don't even bother with rationalizing tax cuts.
What are the best ways citizens or communities can minimize or avoid federal taxes in order to avoid this theft?
National taxation is necessary to give value to the national currency. With national taxation, a nation can, at the most fundamental level, provision itself by requiring citizens to work to earn the national currency so they can pay their taxes and fees.
Now, while this is how things work at the most fundamental level, this explanation may not have much meaning to most people. Practically speaking, federal taxes for most people should be lowered. Things such as the FICA taxes should be eliminated. However, the federal government must be circumspect in how they lower taxes on lower tax brackets, as compared to higher tax bracket individuals, because lowering taxes on the majority would have a larger impact on the propensity to spend than lowering taxes on the higher income brackets. Long story short, lowering taxes on lower-income brackets could present an inflationary risk in certain sectors. Thus, ideally, it is better to lower taxes on lower-income brackets during times of slower economic activity.
That said, there are many fiscal policy choices government could make to reduce inflationary risks which would make lowering taxes more feasible, such as implementing more regulation to ensure competition and to reduce monopolistic business behavior. Implementing a federal job guarantee would increase national productivity and keep labor in a more work-ready state. It would also act as a labor buffer stock which would improve labor price stability.
The monetarist national deficit fear mongering in this RNRH episode is entirely false and does not at all apply to a country with a floating national currency, such as what the US has, as compared to a nation using a commodity-backed currency. The key is to move away from inflation management done via monetary policy and move it to a more fiscally-based policy approach. Now, this would involve much more action from Congress, and it is debatable whether Congress is even remotely responsive to the national economic needs.
Instead of trying to take an empirically backed economic approach, Mr. Nader and the guest decided to push austerity narratives which will only continue the trend towards greater income inequality and will also continue to support a system where Congress is inept and unresponsive to the economic needs of the citizenry. It is truly appalling that Mr. Nader is going down the route of advocating for social reform through austerity and economic liberalism (smaller government) rather than through more government. Mr. Nader may not be a Trump, Musk, or Democratic Party supporter, but he is sure acting like one in this episode.
Arrest and imprison Legislative and Judiciary for not enforcing the laws and authorizing Tempertantrump to re-write laws in his favor and those he is in debt!!!
If Tempertantrump didn’t like big government, he shouldn’t have applied for the job! 330 MILLION + people in USA! Not a business! Mind your own business!!!
Why all the benefits? As kids we had nothing except for vaccines. We were fine. Humans existed for thousands of years without meds. We are made to survive on water, food, and exercise. My few surgeries were mostly from athletic endeavors. I don't take any medications, but was on painkillers for a week after a couple of surgeries. That's it.
Why are Medicaid expenditures so high? Are all these people old and on meds?
Why are so many drugs being purchased by Americans?
Who are these people?
Medicaid is the only lifeline for disabled people to live in the community with dignity and safety. Of course the republicans and many democrats don't think they deserve a life. Trump for sure doesn't think disabled people should live. He has told one of his nephews to let his disabled son die and he also called his own son, Baron, "retarded" because he believes vaccines cause Baron to be autistic (I don't know if he is, although he does show some traits - and deserves dignity, like all the millions who are not rich and depend on Medicaid services like community services, therapies and support staff, for example)
Pharmaceuticals are a HUGE business - ask the Sackler family! Opiates anyone?
Steve, let me first congratulate and thank you for asking the astute question during the Wrap-Up segment about state and local budgets. I am pleased to see that someone is asking questions from an empirical base of knowledge about the monetary system. I am not sure how many listeners know of this even though it happened during the lifetime of most of the RNRH listeners, but Richard Nixon, Richard Nixon!, championed the idea of federal ‘revenue sharing’ with state and local governments and this lead to the passing of the State and Local Fiscal Assistance Act in 1972.
With this, the federal government provided a meaningful amount of block grants to state and local governments at a time when local governments were struggling to provide necessary services to the public. While I do not like the ‘revenue sharing’ name for this as it was often called and I also question providing block grants versus funding for specific purposes, the Act did provide the opportunity at least for improved services for the public. The ‘revenue sharing’ was eliminated via bipartisan support in 1986, during the neoliberal period obviously, due to concerns with the national deficit.
Given what I just wrote about the deficit, I am absolutely distraught that, aside from Steve’s statement, the Ralph Nader Neoliberalism Hour has returned this week. First the listeners deserve to know that the Economic Policy Institute is very much a partisan Washington DC think tank even if they claim to be nonpartisan Their leadership has regularly come from and joined Democratic Party administrations. Heidi Shierholz was the chief economist for the Department of Labor under the Obama administration. EPI’s own publications show ‘wet-noodle’ criticism of the Democratic Party’s pro-austerity policies, something which was exhibited in Shierholz’s flaccid criticism of the Biden administration. While I cannot and will not pin Obama’s labor economic policy failures on Shierholz, the simple fact of the matter is that Obama’s neoliberal policies hampered economic recovery, especially for the lower-income citizens, and has helped fuel the rise of Trump I and II.
Now, the criticism of Trump II’s austerity is correct. If anything, Mr. Nader and Shierholz could have criticized Trump’s austerity measures more deeply than they did. At the same time, Shierholz can make excuses for the Biden administration by talking about macroeconomic indicators, but the fact of the matter is that the Biden administration showed how government could spend to help support unprecedented economic recovery and growth. Unfortunately, they emphasized this with corporate causes while cutting government support aimed towards lower-income brackets at a time when the Democrats controlled Congress. There are no excuses for this. The Biden administration failed to use direct government action to swiftly improve the lives for the bulk of the population, as FDR had done with the New Deal, and instead tried to use public-private partnerships/’derisking’ (corporate welfare...neoliberalism) as stimulus. That doesn’t work well, and even when it does kind-of work, it may take years for there to be any appreciable progress. This is a big reason why we have Trump II.
Beyond that, Mr. Nader and Shierholz continue to push neoliberal narratives about the national debt. The only meaningful economic impact of the national debt, which wasn’t even discussed in the episode, is that the rising debt combined with the current elevated interest rate means the government is giving considerable amounts of free money to those who already have money who can afford to buy risk-free government debt instruments: Treasury bills, notes, and bonds. This fuels income inequality and may even be inflationary in some aspects even if the Federal Reserve’s stated purpose for the increased interest rates is to lower inflationary risks.
Under a fiat currency, issuance of these debt instruments is unnecessary as they are relics of commodity-backed currency. Furthermore, insinuations from Shierholz that increasing national debt will lead to higher interest rates and so forth is absurd. Japan has a much higher debt-to-GDP ratio than the US and maintains a near 0% interest rate policy and has done so for over 20 years now and has a stable economy with lower inequality and unemployment than the US. The failure of Congress to properly use fiscal policy versus monetary policy via the Federal Open Market Committee to combat inflation and economic instability is the problem. Instead, Shierholz is spinning fairy tales about national debt on completely faith-based beliefs rather than any empirical reasoning. Once again note that we have another failed economist who talks about the dangers of increasing national debt without being able to explain how the increasing debt will cause problems. In addition to the example of Japan, all the monetarist cries about the US debt being unsustainable before the global financial crisis, soon after the GFC, and after Covid have all proven to be wrong.
Mr. Nader and Shierholz may have convinced themselves that their plain (plain stupid) economic narratives are a winner with the public, but it is only a winner for neoliberalism. What Mr. Nader and Shierholz are essentially telling the public is that the federal government is practically bankrupt. Since insurance was the topic of the second segment of the show, let me ask if any logical person would buy insurance from an insurance company near bankruptcy?
Well, of course not. So then why would anyone want healthcare reform where a ‘bankrupt’ federal government is the funding source for healthcare coverage?
In reality, the federal government is not ‘bankrupt,’ aside from any artificially-caused barriers such as the debt ceiling. Mr. Nader and Shierholz are foolhardily causing people to push for austerity narratives. Based on what Mr. Nader and Shierholz are incorrectly advocating for, the public might well be left thinking fiscal surpluses should be the goal for the federal government rather than increased public spending on social programs. We already know what fiscal surpluses lead to since we saw it with the Clinton-Gingrich budget in the 1990s. It pushes growth to be led by the private sector, and the push for deregulation which comes from that, rather than from the public sector. That failure by the Clinton administration, which might well have been a bigger blow to the living standard of the majority of Americans than anything Trump is doing even as bad as Trump’s failures are, directly led to the early 2000s recession and, ultimately, the late 2000s GFC.
A few RNRH episodes ago, Erica Payne discussed how progressives are often their own worst enemy when it comes to macroeconomic narratives. Unfortunately, Mr. Nader and Shierholz perfectly exhibited this failure during this episode. It is easy to find fault with Trump’s austerity, but countering austerity with more austerity is only a solution for increasing inequality and increasing the oligarchic nature of government. As encouraging as it is to see Steve’s growth, it is excruciating to listen to Mr. Nader befoul himself by inadvertently promoting neoliberalism to his multitude of followers. Mr. Nader needs to put the stubbornness aside and desist in acting like a gimcrack progressive version of Lee Atwater. The listeners of this august program are not imbeciles. They deserve the opportunity to learn about how their federal monetary system actually operates so that they can correctly advocate for beneficial fiscal policy.
The idea of "no tax on tips" is misleading. Most tipped workers do not earn enough money to pay taxes anyway. Since Project 2025 is anti-worker and anti-union, this feels like a tactic to return us to the era of the Robber Barons, when workers had few rights and earned very little.