Walmart Employees Strike Back & Twinkie's End | TDS Time Machine

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November twenty seven, twenty twelve, Comedy Central's Worldviews headquarters in New York.

This is the Daily Show with John Stewarts.

Welcoming to Daily Show Prison.

Why are we down? Show?

Miname is John Stewart.

My guest tonight, Warren Buffett and financial journalist Carol Loomis. They are on the show tonight and tonight meeting for the first time on this show, so they wrote a book together. As you know, if there's one thing all Americans can agree on, we love Black Friday, whether you're a fan of shop thing or trampling. Which is why I was just I was so upset to see on this holiest of days a news story about people protesting in front of their local Walmart.

Thousands of Walmart employees or stagey walkouts and protests over this holiday weekend. The workers are upset about having to work on Thanksgiving Day, and they're also speaking out for better pay and benefits.

What past.

You get to work at Walmart on Thanksgiving Day?

A ringside seat to the greatest show on Earth. It's a Black Friday tradition, Carol, We'll stand. What do you want?

Do you know how much people pay to go to fights like that.

You get paid some to see it.

Isn't that benefit enough?

Truly? Your vest runneth over.

But that's not enough for you greedy hourly slightly over the federal poverty line employees.

Now you want to unionize.

Besides, everyone knows comparatively speaking, in the Walmart world, you've got it pretty big good.

Violent protests in Bangladesh this morning after a deadly garment factory fire. Saturday's fire killed at least one hundred and twelve factory workers. The factory is owned by an exporter whose clients include Walmart.

See where I work at Walmart in the United States, I can't avoid to take my kids to the doctor.

Well, at least where you work there are.

Exits and the worst part of that fire, the worst part of that fire is the devastating impact that it's going to have on Walmart.

This is the big giant prize for for for unions. This is a big giant prize for those who are anti capitalism. If it's not this, it will be something else. I think it's a stretch of amazing stretch to sort of try to pin this on Walmart.

I can't think of a worst target. Oh I actually I believe.

That's Walmart's slogan, think of a worst target. But I'm sorry, Yeah, that was Joe.

Joe came up with that in the meeting, and we're all like, we're using that.

But I'm sorry you were.

I'm sorry you were being callously dismissive about the working conditions in Bangladeshi to score points against American unions.

Continue.

Don't think that the people in Bangladesh who perish that didn't want or need those jobs as well. You know, I know we like to victimize everyone in this kind you're particularly when it comes to the for profit motivation, which is being assaulted again. It is tragic, and you know, listen, it's one of these things. I don't think something like this will happen again.

Okay, that's a relief.

So your first argument appears to be, yes, okay, they died in a fire, but they had jobs. You know, I think it's reasonable to assume your job won't entail some kind of inferno unless it's mentioned in the ad, which it's oh, okay, well that I didn't realize. Now

If you love twinkies, sorry, brace yourself for this one.

Let me stop you right there.

If you love twinkies, you've probably already used to being told to brace yourself for bad news, only usually from a guy who looks like this.

But all right, continue.

If you love twinkies, sorry, brace yourself for this one. Time is run out for America's iconic baking company.

Chapter eighty two years.

Hostess is shutting down following a bankruptcy filing.

No more Twinkies, no more hoes, no more snowballs.

No more ring dings, no more ding dongs, no more dong rings.

No right, Oh my god, that's not cream Hostess.

Will it's jelly.

Hostess? Will be no more? Oh no?

Where will I go now for my stomach aches and self medication? Where will I get the crap to fill the bottomless pit? And me that will never be filmed? Boxed wine.

Armies.

I'm not going back there.

What could have destroyed this beloved American diabetes dispensary?

That the unions really did it in because they would not allow host Us to operate efficiently.

Hostess, which was forced to close its doors due to union demands they couldn't afford to stay in business during a long worker strike.

The union preferred killing the company to accepting what they thought was a bad deal unions.

You gotta imagine Gingrich has taking this hard. He is, after all, half snowball on his father's side, just to play devil dog's advocate here. Could there be another reason Hostess went bankrupt?

This company could not run itself efficiently.

In the last ten years, they've had seven CEOs. Oh uncertainty, I'm told the market abhorse it.

After the two thousand and four bankruptcy, the workers took wage and benefit cuts.

It wasn't enough. The CEO gave himself a three hundred percent raise, so the.

Unions had already taken a cut in somewhat inverse proportion to the CEO's rising compensation, which he totally deserved for convincing the union.

To take that cut.

Anything else other than unions that could have sabotaged the company.

Sales dropped as moms began swapping out those fat filled goodies and white bread for healthier lunchbox foods.

Moms, how d you moms?

You know, maybe I just love America this much, but I say, let Mars have them. So Mars needs I see a lot of children's movies because I have children, You.

Know what I also think?

And this is just a marketing tip.

Let's not forget that the hostess mascot is some kind of high spirited country western bildo. But as always, the real victims here be the children.

I just said that they're not gonna know what chinnkeys are. They're gonna grow bat no e, what chickies are? You know, each generation, it's burdens.

My kids might never know the pleasure of doing donuts in their high school parking lot.

In at AMC gremlin. I grew up not knowing polio.

You get both, and if we're really craving a hit a twink we can always make our own.

There are thirty seven ingredients in this little cake. Many you'd expect some flour, lots of sugar, corn syrup, but how about corn dextrin. That's the sticky glue found on the back of envelopes, and that smooth, creamy center. It's made from cellulose gum that's used in hair gel, shampoo, even rocket fuel.

Rocket fuel that explains the blue flame that shoots out of my ass whenever I eat a twinky.

Wreck. Don't we have a problem.

You know what, though, when I was making my twinkies.

I forgot the cellulose gum.

Oh I'm an idiot, but you know what, I made myself twinkie using only thirty six ingredients. They probably won't make that big a difference. I'm sure it's going to be about the same, right, it's going to be. Oh, they're ready, let's see what we got.

Kill me, Please kill for me. I'm so sorry.

We'll be right back.

Guy to He is the CEO of Berkshire Hathaway. She's the senior editor at larger Fortune Magazine, as well as author of the new book tap Dance in the Work Warren Buffett on Practically Everything, nineteen sixty six two twenty twelve. Please welcome to the program, Warren Buffett and Carol Lewis.

How are you never a better? Never better?

Great to see you, guys.

The book is called tap Dancing to Work. Tell me about this collaboration. First of all, you are a very renowned and well respected financial writer. You run so let's as I got into it, overhall, how did this come to be?

How the book coming to be?

Yes?

Oh, well, I got the idea for it actually when we had been covering more and for forty years. I thought we had to pull all this together because we'd had a great collection of stories, many of them written by other writers, not me at all, and I thought we should do it. And then it only took me six years to get it done.

Now, are you a font of wisdom?

To some extent?

Is that the Were you aware that someone was collecting your thoughts from nineteen sixty six on until now?

I've had very few since that, actually, But Carol's been an observer for a long time. We talk almost every day, and she knows more about me than I hope she put in the book.

That's for volume too, vo too.

I like this the more salacious.

Yeah, now we're getting somewhere.

Obviously, you've been at the forefront of the news because of this argument that we're having in this country now about taxation, how to fund the government while dealing.

With a deficit. You have suggested.

Something which coincidentally is called the buffet rule, which I think, like Luke Grig's disease, is very.

Unbelievable that this rule would just happen.

To be.

The diseases were already taken exactly endurable.

It's not right. I assume bufferin has something to do with it.

You have come out and said you would prefer something where the rich pay a flat at least thirty percent on their money.

Why do you say, Well, if they make over a million, I say, on the amount over a million, they ought to pay at least thirty percent, and then over ten million they ought to pay thirty five percent. Most of the people that virtually all of the people in my office, twenty or so people between payroll and income taxes pay more than thirty percent, and a number of the extremely wealthy people pay less than fifteen percent, and some pay less than ten percent.

And now they say, because of capital gains and the Cayman Islands, the whole bags that are kept dangling.

You're getting warm exactly.

What then about the argument where they say, you know that's double taxation if you do capital gains, and that will hurt investment. This is clearly something that you also have to deal with it at the magazine.

Well, we hope soxation.

Double taxation, but what is that a valid.

Well, if somebody out there is making seventy thousand dollars a year, whatever their job, they're paying income tax on it, they're they're paying payroll taxes on they're getting tax twice too. In my own case, I paid a very low rate in two thousand and nine, which I wrote about. Practically all my capital gains came from bonds. There was no double taxation there.

So it's not about investment.

They're saying that unless the rich can pay less, they won't invest in companies and America that the job creators must be and we should also get them.

I guess it's called feather beds.

Maybe I'll do this.

I'll call you at one o'clock tonight, and I will tell you, John, I've got the best idea I've ever had. I'm going to put every penny i've got in it. You want to come along?

And will you say?

How much tax do I have to pay when I make a fortune.

I think the first thing I would say is why are you calling me at one eight?

What's going on? I would say, this warrant? What's this really about?

Here's what's been fascinating me is sort of now. The traditional conservative argument is we must have low taxes or the economy won't flourish. But I guess in my mind, I think of traditional economy being the post New Deal economy of relatively robust, high tax rates on high earners and a social safety.

Net that is part of the social compact. To me, that's tradition. That's eighty years.

That's America. And I've you know, I've been working in investments. Well really, I bought my first doog one is eleven. But I started selling stocks when I was twenty, and I sold stocks when in personal income tax rates got as high as ninety one percent. I've sold them on capital gains rates high as thirty nine point six percent, And actually we had some wonderful periods of growth in GDP and the middle class as well as the rich prospered when tax rates were much higher than they are now.

Well, that's what we'll tell you. Commercial will come back.

We'll talk about an op ed that you wrote which laid out some of the math of this and some other financial goings ons in the world. Will be right back, more from Warren Buffett and Carol Loomis right after this.

What about talking with Warren Buffett and Carol Lumits. You know, we're talking a little bit.

I almost I consider you sort of an icon of the value economy as opposed to I didn't want to say the growth economy, but this, like, for instance, the financial sector became I don't know the exact thory, but something like twenty percent of our.

Economy over the last ten or twenty years.

That seems like an awfully volatile sector to be relied upon to drive that much of the GDP.

Is that incorrect or correct?

Well, and more and more of the Forbes four hundred come from the financial arena. I mean it, We've got a huge economy and people that catch the crumbs falling off the table can make a lot of money.

That's an incredibly honorable way to describe them.

I Trump and catch us.

Do you think we have a satisfactory domestic economic policy?

Well?

I think what made America great is going to continue to work. But I think that that you know, the last year couple of years, Washington's kind of tested the patients of the rest of it. But we've got three hundred and twelve million people that I don't think five hundred and thirty five can impede their progress over time.

Now you you guys have been friends for for a long forty five years.

For forty five years, right.

He is I don't know if it's the eighth largest company or the.

I think seventh thing, which is anyway high.

And you were a very nice woman who's done very well for yourself. Do you resent his success?

Are you? Are you? When you talk to him?

Do you say why don't you distribute?

You know, that's the initial five minutes of every conversation we have.

Get that first question. She asked me, why aren't I your will?

I mean, so, well, let me just why isn't she and your no?

I want to hear the answer.

Yeah, let's chase the subject.

I will I will point out in.

The last ten years, I have probably paid taxes counting payroll taxes at a higher rate or a lower rate than Carol has.

Right, is it because we've gotten to a place where we are valuing the investor class more than the working class.

Because I'm I'm stunned now at.

The conflation of unobstructed capitalism and the American dream. Somehow that's been conflated on that side the right wing economics that you cannot impede the capitalists in any way if you want the American dream. But that strikes me as false. At unions, worker protections, that's an inoculation against socialism and communism.

They think I'm a protected that I should be a protected species, you know, kind of like the bald eagle or the some kind of thing. I mean, you know that if anything is done, that he'll safe your ball and I'll play someplace else exactly. And and twenty years ago, the Forbes four hundred had an aggregate wealth of three hundred billion. Now it's more than quintupled. That has not happened in the middle class.

Well.

Also, productivity of workers has I think doubled. Medium median income has stayed stagnant.

Yeah, yeah, and I don't think I don't think the American public really understands that they've kind of snuck up on them.

The tax rate.

I mean, you've got of the four hundred highest incomes in the United States in two thousand and nine, the most recent years, we have figures for a quarter of the people paid taxes at are rate less than fifteen percent. The payroll tax was fifteen point three percent in that year, and six of them paid nothing at all. I mean they were part of they were part of the forty seven percent. I mean, these people were big time movement.

Anyway, it seems like too that this idea of people were black not out of time, but this idea because in Bangladesh and China they accept working conditions that Americans would not consider optimal. That you can't ask for anything anymore because hey man, we'll just send our stuff over there.

And I understand that.

But there has to be some sense of domestic policy that keeps that in there.

Yes, right, well, I'm very glad.

I would like the two of you, if I may, to keep you in a curio cabinet because you are the two nicest people I think I've met, And if I.

Could just keep you in there and open it and go in and visit with you ever Now it's good tap dancing to work.

Warren Buffett on practically Everything. It's on the bookshelves now. Two of the nicest communists you will ever make your life, Warren Buffett and Carol hoom As, Berkshire Hathaway and Fortune Magazine.

We'll be right back after.

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