Welcome, friends, to another edition of Economic Update, a weekly program devoted to the economic

dimensions of our lives and those of our children. I'm your host, Richard Wolfe. As usual, I want to begin

by reminding you that we have a volunteer, Charlie Fabian, who's already and willing to take

your suggestions, comments, for segments to be developed for this program. You can email him at

Charlie.com.com, or you can now connect through Twitter as well,

the former Twitter, at Charlie Fab's F-A-B-Z, with the F-Capitalized. Okay, two ways to get to Charlie and provide him, as you have been doing, with valuable suggestions

that we can use.

Today's program is going to be talking about unemployment, about why restaurants are in

trouble in America, the irony of Janet Yellen's commentaries, and new report on tax breaks

for billionaires in the United States. In our second half, we will interview Steve early,

a longtime labor activist talking about the rising labor militancy, why it's happening, where

it's going, very important part of our

culture and our society right now. So let's jump in. Many of you have asked me to talk about

why the unemployment rate in the United States is, at least in historical terms, the official

rate as low as it now is, three to four percent,

etc. And my apologies, I thought I had handled that question, but I probably didn't do it in the way

that it could have and should have been done. So let me do it now. The basic answer to the question, why is unemployment

low, is because it has been made profitable for businesses to hire workers. Let me be blunt and

clear. That's always the explanation. In other words, we have a system in which the only way the vast majority of working people

get a job, earn an income, is if it is profitable for employers to hire them.

We give employers in that way an unbelievable power in our society and economy, And we shouldn't be surprised if they both

use it for their own advantage and abuse it for their own advantage. And they do. So the first

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