It's now time for Member's Statements. Member for Waterloo. Thank you very much. In Schedule 6 of this year's budget bill, the Ford government is undermining conservation authorities across the province. The head of the Upper Thames River Conservation Authority says Ontario's proposed overhaul of conservation authorities would weaken environmental protections and put more power into the hands of private developers while negating its fundamental role. This is the Premier's latest pro-developer, anti-environment move. He dismantled cap and trade, loosened protections on endangered species, tried to open up the green belt twice, the list goes on. None of the province's conservation authorities were consulted on this bill. Locally the GRC has raised serious concerns about the impact these changes will have on their operations. They manage water and other natural resources on behalf of 39 municipalities, close to one million residents. Conservation authorities are similar to public health in many ways. They're working when we don't see problems. CEs prevent flooding, protect species, address soil erosion, and keep the water in our rivers and lakes clean. The government chooses not to understand the inherent value of protecting our environment, but let's talk in their language. Do you know what's bad for the economy? Flooding. Horrible for the economy and people's livelihoods. Insurance companies are now actively campaigning for flood mitigation strategies. Pollution. Also bad for the economy, health outcomes, and productivity. All those to say the move to undermined conservation authorities stinks of bad-prone politics. CEs do vital work, and their mandates deserve to be protected. Thank you very much. Member Statements. The Member for Scarborough Centre. Thank you Mr. Speaker. Every year on December 25th, my family and I joined billions of people around the world to celebrate Christmas. For us Christmas is many things. A time for family, a time for love, a time for good cheer and food, and most importantly a time for celebration. On Christmas we commemorate the birth of Jesus Christ, a truly great reason to celebrate. For me, this holiday reminds me to be thankful and reflect on all of the blessings that I have in my life. I'm truly thankful this Christmas for my family and my faith. And as our cohort begins our final full day before the Christmas season, I can't help but feel excited at the prospect of spending quality time with my little ones and making memories that will last a lifetime. We have all endured an incredibly difficult year. More difficult for many than any other year they have been through. But we have made it through. 2020 is almost over. And I believe that both Christmas and New Year's are opportunities for us to not only celebrate but mark new beginnings. I have faith that we will usher in 2021 and it will be a better year for all of us. We must always have hope for the future, and this time is perfect for finding that hope within ourselves. And reflecting on this year, let us acknowledge the difficulties, but also find the silver linings. Perhaps we have strengthened our familial bonds during the additional time that we have had with our loved ones. We're gained a better understanding of ourselves. Maybe we have grown more committed to learning and living our faith. I encourage you all to try to find the good, even in the most difficult of times, and believe doing so means we will not allow ourselves to be defeated or broken by our circumstances. I encourage you to find joy and pride in your beliefs and convictions. And so I wish you all a very Merry Christmas to all of everyone in Scarborough Center and in Ontario and a holiday season full of faith, family, love, health, success and hope for all of our futures. May you know peace during this blessed time. Thank you. Thank you very much. Member Statements, the member for London West. Thank you, Speaker. I rise today to share the voices of some of London's most vulnerable residents, those struggling to survive on ODSP. People with disabilities in London West have told me they can barely afford rent, much less groceries, a phone and a bus pass on a monthly income of $1,169. During a time of unprecedented hardship and stress, people with disabilities have been forgotten by this government. Speaker, please listen to what they are saying. Quote, it seems everyone has had help with this difficult time, except people with disabilities. I am so saddened by the dignity we must lose once we are disabled in this province.  Quote, why does Ontario pride itself on keeping those who are unable to work held to a life of poverty? Speaker, this government had an opportunity to improve supports for people with disabilities but chose not to. Tabling a budget that included no increase to social assistance rates and cutting the meager pandemic top-up benefit after just four months, a benefit that required an application process, as few people with disabilities knew about. It is devastating and gut-wrenching to hear of the increasing number of people with disabilities choosing medical assistance and dying because they have lost the will to live. Speaker, this government can and must do better. Thank you very much. Member's statements. The member for Mississauga, Erin Mills. Thank you, Mr. Speaker. It has been tough, tough year for all of us. However, I am proud to be part of the government that listens to the people. That's why in my great riding of Erin Mills and Mississauga, we held multiple roundtables and virtual town halls to make sure that the Erin Mills community is here in Queensborough. Roundtable for stakeholders of hospitality and tourism sectors to hear about the impact of COVID-19 and how can we help their recovery? I hosted Minister of Education Stephen Latch here on the table to ensure a safe opening to the schools while continuing to lead in providing the best education for our children. I also hosted a brief budget consultation town hall with Minister of Finance Rod Phillips and Mississauga Board of Trade to better shape Ontario budget and listen to the people and businesses. It is getting harder for businesses in deal due to the lockdown. That's why our hard-working Premier Ford has announced a historic $600 million in total to help these small businesses which have been closed. Thank you, Premier Ford. I want to thank Minister of Health Christine Elliott for the announcement of extra $22 million for Beale and Trillium Health's partners in Mississauga. We'll get 141 new beds to help elevate the capacity and elevate the pressure and reduce wait times. Our government protects what matters most and what matters most is the health and safety of all interns. While we are celebrating this holiday season of art and safely at home, my office will be offering personalized holiday loan signs and Christmas cards through our online portal. This will help us feel much closer while we are apart. We will get through this together. Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Member Statements and Member for Nicobelt. Thank you, Speaker. Since I last spoke about the problem with LifeLab, my constituents are having, waiting outside in the cold, things have gotten worse, not better. Mr. Philip is not computer savvy and couldn't use the online portal, so he waited three hours on the phone before the call dropped. Jean-Pierre Lausanne's wife needs blood work every 10 days. She can't book an appointment of any of the LifeLab Centre in Sudbury for December 3rd. Online, everything has a bid, red X, nothing available. Victor Boulard tried the 1877 number for three days. He never got through, so he tried the online portal, but for some reason it will not accept his password. Mr. Denis knocked on the door of our constituency office. He had given up on the 1877 number for LifeLab. He could not navigate the website on his own, so we tried in our office the online portal but it would not let him book because it would not accept his password. Suzanne and Adolf Charbonneau will have to wait three weeks, Speaker, for a simple blood test. Adolf asked me, why is this happening? This is paid for by public taxpayers' money. This is not right, and I agree with him, Speaker. LifeLab is paid by the government and represents an important part of our healthcare system and their customer service is just atrocious. That's not all. Access to flu vaccine is not any easier. Whether primary care, public health or pharmacy, nobody has flu vaccines in Nickel Belt. Thank you, Speaker. Member Statements, the member for Scarborough Guildwood. Thank you, Speaker. It's an honor today to rise and recognize a significant milestone. This week, the Scarborough Business Association celebrated its fifth anniversary. They had over 120 participants at their annual general meeting last night, and while this year has not been business as usual, the Scarborough Business Association has been laser-focused on helping small businesses survive the COVID-19 pandemic. They have been sharing information, tools and resources to their membership. They've also taken an advocacy role to fight for unique needs of Scarborough businesses, such as access to broadband infrastructure for the last mile. The Scarborough Business Association has also given back to the Scarborough community by fundraising for the Scarborough Health Network, providing PPE and much relief for our frontline healthcare workers. Despite the pandemic, their work has not slowed. Every week, this SBA hosts a virtual networking breakfast. They have featured many guests, such as Dolph de Jong, the CEO of the Toronto Zoo, and many other colleagues and leaders in Scarborough. I would like to thank all of the members of the SBA, its board, its volunteers, President Hazel and Vice President Ashwani Bardwa for their excellent work in keeping Scarborough connected to its businesses and staying open. Small businesses need our help now, more than ever, in the midst of a second lockdown. And I urge all Ontarians to shop local this holiday season, especially next Wednesday. Thank you, Speaker. The member for Markham Unionville. Thank you, Speaker. SSE Care Solution Inc. is a local surgical mass manufacturer located in the city of Markham. All masks produced by SSE Care Solutions are 100% made right here in Ontario. In September, I had the opportunity to tour their production site to learn more about the detailed process that takes place in manufacturing their high quality masks. And I'm very impressed with the safety protocols implemented in their plans. Last Friday, I had the pressure to connect SSE Care Solutions to local long-term care facilities in Markham Unionville. And witnesses, as their manufacturer donated 12,000 surgical masks to each facility, Bethany Large Long-Term Care Home and Unionville Long-Term Care. I want to give special thanks to donors Steve Diakanastasis, Albert Aoud and Frank Slaw from SSE Solution Inc. for their generous donation to help to keep our seniors and frontline workers safe. Mr. Speaker, the government has committed to do whatever it takes to protect Ontarians during the COVID-19 pandemic. To deliver the resources necessary to help and support our frontline heroes, since March, the government has purchased 1.1 billion in PPE to ensure our heroes have the essential equipment they need to work safely. This is a 300 million masks, 900 million gloves, 50 million gowns, and 6 million face shields. Mr. Speaker, as COVID-19 continues to evolve, our government will continue here to protect the people of Ontario. Thank you. It is 10.29 a.m., and as per the requirements of the Trans-Daver Membrance Act 2017, the Assembly shall now pause and observe one moment of silence in honor of trans people who have died as a result of anti-trans violence. I'll ask members to rise and observe a moment of silence. Thank you very much. Members may take their seats again. We'll resume members' statements. Member for Parkdale High Park. Thank you, Speaker. Toronto has been experiencing a housing crisis for years, and the pandemic has made it so much worse. Yet, at the landlord and tenant board, they are currently in the middle of an eviction blitz. Evictions are being carried out at record speed, destroying the lives of individuals and families in minutes. The second wave is raging. Toronto is in lockdown and the cold weather is here. And still, tenants are being evicted and thousands are at risk of homelessness. Shelters have no available beds and can become crowded and unsafe. The only alternative for people experiencing homelessness has been to build encampments, where they can at least rely on the support of a network of neighbors who take care of each other. Now, people are being evicted from encampments as well. Where are people supposed to go? All levels of government have done absolutely nothing to address the housing crisis. Worse, governments are actively working against the people. From the eviction bill ran in this house through the pandemic to standing in the way of every creative idea and grassroots initiative to keep people housed this winter, people have had to fight their own governments to gain access to shelter. This is beyond shameful. I call on all levels of government to take immediate action with a response equal to the massive scale of this crisis. And in the meantime, stop getting in the way of people doing something about this crisis. Thank you. Thank you very much. Member Statements, the Member for Durham. Thank you, Speaker. November is Women Abuse Prevention Month. Today, I'm wearing a purple scarf as a symbol of the courage it takes a woman to leave her abuser. However, the courage of a woman is not enough. It takes the support of an entire community to end violence against women. This month, Bethesda House, a shelter for women fleeing domestic violence in Bowmanville, is partnering with shelter agencies across the province for the eighth annual Wrapped in Courage campaign. Anyone can go to WrappedInCourage.ca to support local shelters and join the fight to end violence against women. Speaker, this week also marks victims and survivors of crime week. Ontario's Victim Service Providers are an important network of support for women fleeing abuse and violence. During COVID-19, providers reported an increase in calls, particularly from victims of domestic violence, sexual assault, and human trafficking. In my area, Victim Services of Durham Region has been on call 24-7 to be of immediate assistance to these victims. Across the province, the 44 members of the Ontario Network of Victim Service Providers provides help with planning for safety, shelter, clothing, and food. They also help find counseling and immediate financial support. I want to thank all of Ontario's Victim Service Providers for the work they do every single day. Member Statements. Member for Perth Wellington. Thank you, Speaker. Speaker, this year marks the 100th anniversary of Lions Club Canada. In 1920, the first Lions Club outside of the United States was founded in the great city of Windsor, Ontario. Today, there are over 48,000 clubs around the world made up of 1.4 million men and women. Speaker, I've been alive since 1987. And when you become a lion, you make the choice to join a global network of volunteers who serve their communities. Melvin Jones, the founder of Lions Club International, had a simple vision for improving his community. Melvin's personal motto was you can't get very far until you start doing for somebody else. By extension, the Lions motto is we serve. Across the globe, Lions Clubs are making a huge difference in areas like caring for children, dealing with blindness, diabetes prevention and treatment, and partnering with Habitat for Humanity. Speaking at Alliance Convention in 1925, the great American author and disabilities advocate, Helen Keller, charged Lions with this mission. She said, I ask you to be the knights of the blind in the crusade against darkness. And during this challenging time, let's keep Helen Keller's message in mind. Speaker, out of the darkness of this pandemic, through our service to others, we will rise to new heights. I would like to conclude by congratulating Lions Club Canada on this remarkable milestone. Roar, Lions! Thank you very much.


Thank you, Anne-Marie, and to our panelists who I'll introduce in just a second.  And just to frame a little bit our discussion coming up, I think over the course of the day, there are really three deep underlying themes that for me are jumping out that I know we'll get to in a little bit. The first is stepping back from sort of the wonkery of policy design to think about what are the real human community and moral values at stake, right? How are people actually struggling to get by in the economy? What are the ideal values that we want to try to realize when we're designing social policy for individuals, families, and communities? And the second theme is then diagnosing the kind of gaps and failures or limitations of our current policy regime. And then the third is we've heard a lot of talk about innovation, different kinds of innovation, calling back to different sort of models of innovative, creative response, whether historical, thinking back to a century ago in the first progressive era that Senator Warren mentioned, or innovation in areas of business or entrepreneurship that Gene Case mentioned. So I think we're going to see a lot of that come together in the context of social policy and debates around families. And so to help us think that through, we've got a great panel. So I'll just introduce them starting from my left. Jillian White is a senior associate editor at The Atlantic covering issues of business and economics and also helps manage the next economy project. Then Heather Boucher is executive director, a chief economist at the Washington Center for Equitable Growth and a senior fellow at Center for American Progress. She's written for a bunch of outlets and has a recent book as well on issues of inequality and social policy. And then Kathy Eden, one of the nation's leading poverty researchers working in areas of welfare and low-wage work, authored many, many books and journal articles, including a couple which I'm sure she'll talk about shortly. So actually, Kathy, I wonder if we could start with you. And you've written a lot about the new findings from your research about how many households are living on really low levels of income, $2 a day threshold that you've talked about in your work. So I wonder if you could talk a little bit about the experience for so many families of economic insecurity and how you've seen what's going on in the economy today. So many of you know that I'm an ethnographer. I go and talk to people and it was in 2010 that I began to do research in Baltimore among very low-income households. I'll never forget the day I arrived at the household of Ashley in the Latrobe Homes when she met me at the door. She was visibly unkempt. She had a two week old baby that she was passing from one shoulder to another and she was having a hard time supporting that baby's head. When I went into the apartment, there was virtually no furniture, only a trash pick couch and a table with only three legs, useless, pushed up against the wall. Some of you know that I spent my 20s in the era prior to welfare reform going around the country and interviewing alone single mothers about their budgets. So this impulse to get at Ashley's budget sort of overtook me. And I was stunned to learn that there was no cash income at all coming into this household, nothing from welfare, nothing from work. And so you never know when you're gonna have an epiphany and this was an epiphany. For me, I wondered if despite sort of the mantra that welfare reform had been such and singular success, a new kind of poverty had arisen right under our noses that was so deep, we didn't even know to look for it. So I tucked that insight sort of into my back pocket and went on with my study, which was about a completely different topic. But when I was joined at Harvard that fall by Luke Schaefer who was visiting, I told him the story of Ashley and of course he is the expert on the one government data source that could really tell us whether Ashley's experience was widespread or a one off. And when he came back to my office with the first charts that formed the backbone of our book $2 a day, Living on Virtually Nothing in America, I think we both were stunned. We saw the growth in the number of families with children living on less than $2 per person per day in cash income as reported to the SIP growing. From about 600,000 families in 1996 on the eve of welfare reform to 1.5 million adults with 3 million children. And if you follow children over the course of a year currently, 3.3 million American children are living under that threshold for at least a quarter and that is as many children as we lift from poverty through our $70 billion earned income tax credit program. So a lot of kids, what are behind these numbers? What is behind the fact that things have really changed fundamentally at the very bottom of our economy for families with children? So the three legged stool of causation we advanced in $2 today begins with the death of welfare. It is profoundly dead in the numbers. We used to have about five million adults on the rolls in 1996. We're down to about a million now. Half of those in just two states, California and New York. Of the $16.5 billion that the federal government sends to states for TANF, states divert all but five billion for other purposes, leaving almost no money going into the pockets of the poor. And nowhere is welfare more dead than the imaginations of the people who would technically be eligible for it, a story that we tell in $2 a day. Second work is perilous. The bad jobs of 20 years ago are simply not nearly as bad, nearly as fragile as the bad jobs of today. I want to talk about two themes. I think Heather will cover many of these themes. But I want to point to the degradation of the employer-employee relationship and the fact that more and more these jobs have less and less give. The poor are working under conditions that all of us would find fundamentally unacceptable. Ray McCormick, for example, two-time cashier of the month at Walmart, an award she receives by memorizing barcodes of commonly produced produce items, by reading the barcodes into a recording device on the phone and then putting it on continuous replay, gets fired after missing a single shift of work when she finds there is no gas in the car. Third, the affordable housing crisis. You may know that rents have increased by about 6% since 2000, but renter incomes have decreased by 12%. And this puts very poor families into multiple, perilous double-ups that are the site at which their children are exposed to adverse childhood experiences such as physical, sexual, and emotional abuse. And we know from research that these tend to follow children throughout the life course, leading to deleterious outcomes that can even have intergenerational consequences. Great. And just to build off of this sort of diagnostic of where we are today, Heather, to bring you into the conversation. So I know you've looked a lot at the experience of families, not just those in poverty, but sort of up and down at different levels of income who are experiencing other kinds of insecurity and precariousness. I wonder if you could talk a little bit about your work. Yeah. So a couple of things I want to pivot off of that have been said. I mean, first in Anne-Marie's introduction, I love that we're talking about families, not just individuals. Because when you think about, I mean, I'm an economist, when you think about how families spend their money, we typically do it as families, but we earn our money as individuals. And that creates a lot of sort of methodological difficulties when you're thinking about how to measure inequality, how to think about what's going on. Are we thinking about individual wage earners or are we thinking about how it adds up into what's happening inside family units? And I think that we should be thinking more about what's happening at the family level. So I'm excited that we're having this conversation.  And I think that it's so visceral, just the challenges facing families at the bottom and the fact that so many have fallen so far behind. What I have been focusing on is looking at how economic insecurity has affected families up and down the income spectrum. So where are the commonalities, where are the common experiences in terms of trying to cope with today's economy and trying to figure out how to support your family? So we know that income inequality has been rising in the United States. And for families in the bottom third, we've seen that incomes today are lower than where they were back in the late 1970s. In my data, I found it was about two and a half percent lower in terms of family income today relative to the late 1970s. And one of the things that jumps out when you look at what's happened to families between now and then is that had it not been for the added hours and earnings of women, family income would have fallen even more because male earnings fell so much for families at the bottom. And we kind of go up and you look at the next level. You look at families in the middle, sort of above the bottom third, but not at the very top. You find that actually family income has risen a little bit, about 10 to 12 percent between 79 and today. But again, the only reason that's happened is because of the added hours and earnings of women. And in fact, had women not increased their labor force participation, middle class families also would have seen their incomes decline. And so, you know, families at the bottom struggle, but that you're seeing families up the income spectrum. Of course, once you get to the top, you also have this enormous added hours and earnings of women. But some of that is, you know, that's only added on top of the enormous income gains that men have seen, but families at the top, their incomes would have grown far less than they did. Had it not been those for the added employment of many of the kind of women in this, you know, these kinds of events today, professional women who are really adding to those incomes. But what we see up and down the income spectrum is that families have coped with economic insecurity, which they're still feeling, but they have coped with it by actually putting more time into the economy. So as we're thinking about the set of policies to address what ails the American family, there's challenges for those. We have to kind of think of the unique challenges at the bottom, the middle and the top. But one really common theme is that they've lost time, right? For decades, you used to have somebody at home that could take care of kids and the aging and be at home for the cable guy and everything else, right? Most families don't have that today. And in much of our social policy and our labor market policy is premised on the assumption that there is someone at home. It's not really thinking about that loss of time. And that's everything from thinking about this week we saw the announcement of new regulations around overtime. That's about time use. It's about the boundary between time for work and time for rest and time for home. But how is that connected to what's happening inside families? And I'll stop there and hopefully we can come back to that. Yeah, that sounds great. So, Jillian, you've been writing a lot about sort of some of the different larger structural drivers behind economic inequality and sort of touching on some of the points that Kathy and Heather have had some context for us. So I think one of the things that's important when we think about social policy and the social contract is that when we look at some of these problems, we think of the words systemic a lot. We think of cycles of poverty. But it's really hard. It's really easy to make those kind of clinical terms and to not think about all the different things that really go into that. And I think one of the interesting things that's happening now, as Heather mentioned, is that economic insecurity is something that is touching people at all different levels. The way that it touches them is very different. The outcomes of it touching them is very different. Obviously, these are issues that are much more dire for people who are on the lower end of the economic scale, as opposed to people who have other resources, people who are making six figures and who are living paycheck to paycheck, may have family members or parents or friends who can help them. And that is not an option for people at the lower end of the scale. And I think that we see that in some of the outcomes that lead to this compounding of poverty, this compounding of issues. I think one of the things that is truly broken in our social policy system and in our safety net system is that you can buy into a safety net.  If you are somebody who is living in public housing or needs rental assistance or has a hourly job that is part time and you're trying to take care of a family, you do not have access to things like that. So something as simple as a car not having gas, something as simple as a baby who comes down with a fever could be the end of your job or it could mean that you are punished and you don't have hours this week. That leads to volatile income. That leads not being able to pay your rent on time. That leads to eviction. And if anyone read the very amazing book that Matthew Desmond put out recently, Eviction, you see how easily these things compound on each other and how these lead to things like people not being able to live in communities where their children can go to good schools, where they're knocking the education they need, where then you end up with another generation of people who are in the same circumstances. And I think one of the important things to remember is that the entire American dream is predicated on the belief that people here, no matter where they start, can work really hard, can make a great living for themselves. And even if they're not able to do that, that their children can do better, that their children will be able to go to good schools, that their children will be able to get good jobs and that they will have a better life than their parents did. And that is not a promise that we are fulfilling. It is certainly not a promise that we are fulfilling for low income and minority and single parent households. There was research that came out last year that said that seven out of 10 black children who are born with parents who will fall into the middle income quintiles will end up one to two quintiles below that. So you're actually seeing people move back and fall back. And I think if that's not worth the conversation, I do not know what is. So we've got a really broad and slightly, like more than slightly terrifying sense of the precarity and insecurity at all levels. I wonder if you could talk a little bit about, across all of your comments, we've seen this theme that insecurity is experienced in different ways, but there are some common threads across income levels and across different types of communities. So I wonder if you could speak to your sense of, if we're thinking about sort of policy innovation and what the new social contract ought to look like from your work, what are the key areas that each of you feel like we really need to zero in on, to what extent are these targeted programs, universal programs, or some combination? And you want to speak to that. So if you look at the data, one thing that it's really hard for people to get their head around is that there is really no division between the working poor and the non-working poor. If you look at kids in the survey of income and program participation, for example, you follow them over the course of the year and you look just at poor kids, fully 90%, have an adult in their household who is participating in the formal labor market at some point during that year. 90%. So this really, it really behooves us sort of to shift our focus to work, as Heather has said, and to understand the precariousness and instability within work. What's interesting, though, is there's a mismatch between the kind of work that's available to people and the kind of safety net that we created with the expansion of the earned income tax credit and welfare reform in the early and mid 1990s. And that is that our safety net really only works for full-time, full-year workers. And pretty much everybody else is left out of the equation. The problem is that full-time, full-year work for less educated people has become difficult, if not impossible to find. And on zero hour on-call shifts, unpredictable scheduling is meant that it's not easy to take a second job. So there is a dearth of work at the bottom and perhaps a surplus of work at the top. We really need to think about restoring work opportunity at the bottom and perhaps something else at the top. But instability is really the story at the bottom with regard to work. And it's inconsistent with how our safety net has been transformed. I mean, I'll add to that, I completely agree with you. And one thing that we've seen playing out across, to just sort of start at the bottom and those low-wage jobs, what you see a lot is this, if somebody does get a job, this instability in hours, a lack of predictability of when you're gonna have to work. And some of this is just bad management, but some of it is also connected to market structure. It's connected to the way that supply chains are working. It's connected to the way that technology has worked its way through management practices and quite frankly ways that they don't have to. At our center, we fund academic research and actually one of my grantees, I saw her in the back and I think she's now, she's on the next panel, Joan Williams has been working with Susan Lambert to look at policies inside the gap in terms of scheduling predictability. And they found some really interesting stuff. I recommend that you, whoever's moderating that one ask her about that when they're up here next. But one of the things that we know is that it doesn't have to be that way. That firms can be highly profitable and have stable schedules for workers. And there's just miles high evidence in the economics profession that shows that you can actually do that. But it doesn't have to be these really unpredictable hours in all of this. So that's at the bottom. But then of course that moves up the top because many workers that are well paid or middle class workers or professional workers also don't know their schedules in advance, right? Also, does how many people do not often have to work unpredictable hours while listening online or in this venue? Yet that, and what are the kinds of rules that actually make it possible for people to attend to both all parts of their life? You know, pointing back again to the overtime regulations that came out this week, it's great that we're now covering more higher paid workers with overtime. But what about all those people that continue to be completely left out of that?  But also all those people that are independent contractors or who aren't actually really, you know, the kind of regular employee. I mean, that's just one set of issues. We also need to deal with the care side of the equation as well.  And you have to, if you think about the family, you have to think about that as well. Yeah, so I have two thoughts on that actually. And the first is we're still operating our benefits system as if everyone has a nine to five job with an employer who cares deeply about their employees and is trying to retain people and all these other things that aren't necessarily true anymore. We have people who are working in the gig economy. We have people who are working part-time jobs, even if they wish that they were working full-time jobs. And our benefits system does not treat people the way that they should. It doesn't treat people as if they are full-time employees who get access to leave, who get access to sick days, who get access to all these things, despite the fact that people may be putting in way more than 40 hours a week. So it would be who of us probably to rethink the way that we tie benefits and the way we tie safety nets to work since work has in fact changed so much. And another thing is part of the issue on the income piece is that incomes for many people have stagnated, been stagnating for a while as productivity has been climbing, as productivity has been doing well. And researchers have found that part of the reason for that is that employers have changed the way that they think about allocating profits. Instead of putting that back into employees, instead of putting that back into the business in a specific way, they want to put that back into shareholders and investors. And that creates a very different relationship between employers and employees that's also worth investigating. As we go forward and think about ways to change the social contract in a way that would actually help people in the way that this economy works now. So, and I think that's a really great point that in a lot of ways it's important to remember that these changes that we're talking about, they're not just, it's not like the weather, right? Like there are actors behind these changes that policies have changed that sort of aggregates up into the experiences that each of you are describing. And so I wonder if you guys have a sense about, how do we actually then start moving the ball on these issues? Where do you see the main challenges for actually sort of moving towards a very different type of social policy regime that isn't so tied to full-time work on a sort of certain model of a nuclear family? So when you talk about the bottom of the income distribution, and this is true for all of us by the way, I think we talk too much about work as the solution. We all know that sometimes work won't work and with economically fragile families, we have to address the fact that we no longer have a functioning cash safety net.  We have to sort of come to grips with the fact that our current cash safety net, neither provides a safety net to catch families when they fall, nor gives them a springboard to work. So it is the 20th anniversary this summer of welfare reform. And I think we really need to think about what our families with children are owed, what these children deserve so they can become flourishing adults. Is it okay that we have so many children living in such perilous lives? We haven't had a safety net this week really since welfare, AFDC was expanded in the 1960s through welfare rights movements to really cover excluded groups like African Americans. Even in the late 1970s, AFDC touched the lives of eight in 10 poor families with children. Now we are down to two in 10. So I don't think any of us want to go back to a world where moms stay at home and if you're gonna go to work, you have to put your child in an orphanage, which is why we started AFDC in this country. But I think we do need to recognize that there are times when work won't work and we need to think about what to do about that. Yeah, and just to add a statistic on the other side, of course, only 13% of people with a job have access to paid family and medical leave from their employer. So the logical inconsistency here is I think a big part of our problem, right? We expect people to work, but we're not providing them with the supports if they're at work, and we're not providing them supports to stay home. So it's a little bit of a, you're getting, there's, you're trapped in both ways. I would say actually in many ways, at least on the work side, this is a very exciting area of forward momentum in social policy. We have seen over the past few, past decade or past few years, over two dozen states and localities combined introducing access to paid sick days. We now have four states that have implemented paid family and medical leave. That is the first new set of social insurance programs in this country since the 1950s. This is a remarkable, remarkable step forward, California, New Jersey, Rhode Island and New York now all have paid family and medical leave. That's a huge change and a lot of forward momentum. You're also seeing a lot of excitement and engagement around childcare, and this is the first time, at least in my lifetime, that we've seen this basket of issues be a part of a presidential campaign cycle where it's not just like there's one little two pager on the website or they mention it once in a speech, but it was like these are things that have been debated in huge, in front of huge audiences, so around paid family and childcare. So this is, I think the challenge is that we don't really know what women should be doing. I think we're still kind of confused about that, and there's a little bit of schizophrenia there, but you're seeing communities around the country stepping up and saying, no, no, we get this, we need these supports. We have not addressed what happens when you're too poor and you don't work, but we are seeing, I think, a lot of forward momentum on the work side. I agree that this is an exciting time. I will take a slightly cynical view as to why it's an exciting time, and I think that's because, as we said before, these are issues that are now touching everyone. They are not issues that are just touching the very poor minority groups, so now there's lots of spotlight and there's lots of reason to get some momentum and to fix some things. That's a cynical view as to why it's happening, but you know what, I will take it. And I think that this is a time where we really need to see both the public and the private sector, maybe not even working together, but working independently to fix the problems and then maybe coalescing around something. We are seeing lots of states spearheading new policies on paid leave for kids, for fathers, for elderly parents, which is going to only become more and more important and only touch more and more people. And then simultaneously, we're also seeing a lot of private sector companies expanding their policies and giving people more time off. Thinking more deeply about how they can make work for their employees. So I think this is a very exciting time and my hope is that all of these groups getting together and all of these social movements saying, no, this is something that we need to do now because things are probably not going back to the way that they used to be, where one person can work from nine to five and make enough money to support an entire family. It's just not real. It's not happening anymore. So we need a change and we need a change really, really quickly and I hope that the fact that this is touching so many people means that that's what we'll get. Can I make one comment? So one comment on just on your point, Jelaine, that I think is both optimistic and also a little bit cynical, which is that the exciting thing about the states that have done this, paid family medically, is that it covers everybody in the state. So it's universal. So it doesn't matter how much you earn, yada, yada, but it covers everybody. However, we know in those states low wage workers are not taking it as much because they still can't afford to it. It's not 100% wage replacement. So there's a big challenge there and while it's really great that some firms have stepped up, one of the sad things is that sometimes firms will get this really big bump in the news because they implemented a paid leave product. They have this great new policy, but then you dig in and it's like only for the people at the top or only for some workers and it doesn't cover people up and down the income spectrum. So I think it's really important to always ask that question, is everybody benefiting? And I will say one last thing and then I will stop. Economic evidence is that the benefits to providing it to everybody are just as good for providing it to that low wage worker as they are to that high wage worker and that's really important. Yeah, that's great. We have a couple of minutes for questions from the audience. So if there are people with comments or questions, they have about 10 minutes or so for discussion. Yeah, please. Love this panel. Not surprisingly. These are traditionally women's issues and all of us are working this set of issues and we know we're normally talking to groups much more of women than the men. I wanna know whether in your work you are starting to see a shift there that more men are paying attention, more men, more people, let's start with that, are seeing these as economic and social issues not women's issues. Well, I study low income men, oftentimes men that were not married to the mothers of their children when their children are born. And I argue in my book with Tim Nelson Doing the Best I Can, which follows 100 of these men over six, eight years in Philadelphia that there's really been a revolution at the bottom of the income distribution in the way that men think about family. It's very interesting that men in some ways in the bottom have taken this new father model from the kind of rows in the 70s and that made all the middle class men started changing diapers to almost an extreme. They now see fatherhood and caring for children as a core part of their identity and as almost a soul sense of meaning. It's almost as if in some ways they've given up on the economic part but they still insist that they can make vital contributions to their children. And what's perverse about social policies we're trying to push fathers into the home at the top but we're trying to push them out of the home at the bottom. And these men have virtually no rights with regard to their children. They see child support as taxation without representation. And their mothers of their children often, I spent my entire career studying single mothers, I love single mothers, but I will tell you that often the mothers of their children treats their contributions as if they have no value. So this is an area that is ripe for policy intervention for sure. Well, and I'm sure you know this but there's a number of surveys now that show that men report more work-life conflict than do women. So that's sort of a change. I think you've seen change in surveys among millennial men and the time use that they're spending inside the home. You're also seeing changes among older cohorts of men who are having to care for aging parents because now that cohort of men is, all of their wives are working and so who's gonna take off time to care for the aging family member? You're seeing a lot of men doing that. So I think that you're seeing some pressure. And I would point to that the policy changes that we've seen have demonstrated the effectiveness of these as political, that people not just women but men, people both left and right, Republican, Democrats have polls keep showing and people keep passing this legislation by high numbers when it's on the ballots. So there is a lot of buy-in at least among men that I think you see. Yeah, I would absolutely agree with that. I think one of the driving factors behind that change is that we are seeing this wave of millennial men and the studies say that, yeah, they want to not only take time off for things like birth of a child, sick child caring for an elderly parent but also that they kind of don't have an option. A lot of them have wives, partners, spouses or do not have any of those things. And they need to be able to take that time off. They need access to paid leave in order to continue to make their household work and also care for their family. So I am seeing a change at least in the people that I talk to. Other questions? Do we have a mic for the back? Hi, I'm Atul, I'm on the New America Board. Question for you, which is there's been, this recent data came out from Raj Chetty, the economist showing that the top 1% lives on average 15 years longer than the bottom 1%. The striking thing are the male-female differences with it being much lower survival for the men at the bottom in particular but also the regional differences and I wanted to ask about that. So in cities like New York or San Francisco you see it's less than five years difference between the top 1% and the bottom 1% that living in areas of density, more immigration, more local expenditure of governments seems to be protective in some way. And there have been these trends. So cities like Tampa Bay are seeing declining fortunes at the bottom end and cities like Birmingham are seeing improving fortunes at the bottom. And I wonder if you have any sense of why, about two things. One is why is it so much worse in rural areas than in urban? And second, any clues from your ethnographic work or other indications about why some cities are declining and others are not? Why from Baltimore? So we're like the poster child for this research and between our communities in the Baltimore metropolitan area there is a life expectancy gap of 20 years. So if you look at these cities and you think about them you can kind of guess where you're gonna see cities with big gaps in life expectancy. So the thing I say about this when I talk about it is that we, and this is maybe an popular thing to say but we have, you know, from the work that one of the biggest correlates of where these places are is the level of segregation and the degree of social capital in these communities. In communities like Baltimore which is a half, half not town there's less and less social intercourse between people both residentially and in terms of social relationships. We now in America are the most residentially segregated that we have ever been in our history. And I think it's time to say that that's wrong and we have to move away from that and toward a more integrated America. Okay. Or I think we have a question in the back. Thank you. Hi, I'm Lisa Guernsey. I'm part of the Family Centered Social Policy Initiative at New America and thank you so much for your comments. We are grappling with this question of how to, to redesign policies as you're describing here and we're also recognizing that the people who may have the most to say about how policies are affecting them are those who are the most time-starved that these are our families who are, you know, rushing from one job to another or are finishing that shift at target at 10 p.m. What have you seen that gives you any kind of hope that we might be able to hear more of the voices of the families who are most impacted? I would actually like to give you some advice on this one first. The question is what has given me hope that we will be able to hear more? I mean, I think the thing that probably gives me the most hope that these people will get more of a voice will be able to talk about some of the challenges that they're struggling with more so that we can understand it and hopefully fix it is just that there's been such, I think, a strong, powerful and, you know, kind of successful movement around talking about issues like on-call scheduling and talking about issues like low pay and talking about issues like punitive scheduling and things like that. And, you know, we see the fruits of those labors, you know, at places like Walmart where after a long fight, they will finally at least have a conversation with workers about the way that they are scheduling them and how they are talking about promotions and how they are talking about hiring and moving people into higher wage positions. But I mean, in terms of hope, it seems to just still be a very, very difficult thing to deal with because, yeah, these are individuals who are very time-starved, who are really just trying to make ends meet and make their lives work as they are. And what I have found a lot in talking to people like that is that they don't have time to think about the ways to create change. All they're trying to do is make it to the next day. And I think that puts a greater onus on us to, or at least on me as a journalist, to kind of look beyond what I know and what I understand and try and see where some of those holes are. This is also a place where data can play a really important role. I mean, your question was sort of about hearing from the voices and we can hear the stories, but there's also our ability to actually look at, nationally representative surveys that can tell us something or case studies that can tell us something. One of the realities is that many of our data sets at the federal level don't actually ask the kinds of questions that would allow us to get at these kinds of issues. So it's only thanks to the work of a few scholars that there is actually a new module in the National Longitudinal Study of Youth that gets its scheduling predictability. So what we know now at the national level is just for a certain cohort of people, just young workers, but it's great. So we have some new data that tells us how early, do you know your schedule a day in advance or a week in advance or four weeks, some great new research, and that's been done by Susan Lambert and a bunch of her colleagues. But we don't actually, these questions aren't asked regularly enough. We don't actually know how many people are covered by the Family and Medical Leave Act, that unpaid leave that we have at the federal level. We don't know this information on a monthly basis like we do much of other policies. So we could know a lot more without having to burden individuals if we really sort of restructured our federal data infrastructure. So in terms of policy, think about being poor in America. Almost every interaction you have with your government is disincorporating. It is almost as if you have to trade in your citizenship card in exchange for relief. You're meant to feel like scum to experience shame. I wrote a book, another book in 2015 about the EITC and the EITC is a program that builds citizens. People are proud to be Americans. This is what they say at the H&R Block when you hang out there. I'm proud to be an American because I'm a worker and this check is proof that I'm a real American. We know from research from political scientists that when people have incorporating experiences with their government, they are more involved in their communities and they're likely to vote more. So if we want people to be incorporated, the answer is kind of simple. We need to incorporate them in our personal interactions in the way we make eye contact with people on the street or the attendant in the restroom in the way that we vote and in the kind of policies that we advocate for. I think that's a good place to pause. I have two lightest flashes, so thanks to the panel. Thank you.


Never had the world known such a misanthropic yet profound philosopher as it did with Heraclitus. With a pessimism rivaling that of Schopenhauer and a melancholy often so severe that it earned him the enigmatic nickname, the Weeping Philosopher. Who was this obscure man? What were his beliefs and why did he harbor such contempt for his fellow man? Before we get into exploring Heraclitus, make sure to subscribe to the channel if you would like to learn more about Eastern and Western philosophy. Heraclitus was born around 540 BCE in the Greek city of Ephesus. Beyond this bit of information, not a whole lot is known about his personal life. However, his philosophic ideas were passed down through numerous different fragments, 115 to be exact, from various different philosophers, historians, and theologians of antiquity. These individuals range from Plato and Aristotle to Marcus Aurelius in Sextus and Pericus. The fragments covered a wide array of topics from political and ethical issues to mere contempt for those who lacked understanding of what he believed to be true. This contempt was widespread and covered just about all his contemporaries and predecessors. He said that, for all whose discourses I have heard, there is not one who attains to understand that wisdom is a part from all.  According to Aristotle, Ionians were, in general, material monist who took some form of matter as the ultimate reality. In any change in the world, they attributed to that particular form of matter. Heraclitus took fire to be the primordial element out of which everything else had risen. This in contrast to contemporaries' tales who claimed water and inexemnities who claimed air. All things are in exchange for fire and fire for all things, as goods are for gold and gold for goods. This fire is constantly changing and ever living, sort of like a process instead of a substance. As to the soul, he regarded this as a combination of fire and water. The driest soul is the best and wisest, while a soul tainted with water is dead or dying. Throughout antiquity in the modern age, Heraclitus is best remembered by his theory of perpetual flux. Perhaps the most famous is his quote regarding the river. He said, on those stepping into water staying the same, other and other waters flow. In this cryptic fragment thought to be the only genuine fragment regarding the river from the book of Heraclitus, he is thought to be conveying that some things stay the same only by changing. This in contrast to popular opinion believing that all things are changing so that we cannot experience them twice. Flux is not so much the destruction of Constancy, but a necessary condition of it. To better understand this, think of what defines a river. If its water ceased to flow, it would have to be redefined as a lake, a pond, or simply a dry riverbed. In this case it is the perpetual flux of the water that maintains the Constancy of the river. In the same way, if our human body ceased to change, we would cease to be living human beings and would eventually return to its basic elements. Despite this apparent universal remodeling, Heraclitus proposes that there is a single unchanging force that governs these changes. He calls this overseeing force the logos, and fire is a physical manifestation of the logos. And according to Heraclitus, once somebody understands the logos, the path to true knowledge is free and clear from obstruction. Let us move on to a doctrine which he called the mingling of opposites. This doctrine sets out to explain the paradoxical and extricability of opposites. The paradox is a special case of this doctrine, showing how things are the same and not the same over time. For him, unity only results from diversity, and in strife opposites combine to produce emotion and harmony. He gives several examples in this fragment. The same thing is both living and dead, and the waking and the sleeping. And the young and the old, for these things transformed are those, and those transformed back again are these. While these qualities are not the same simultaneously, they are the same in respect that they constitute a complete system. Because of these numerous paradoxes brought about when setting forth his thought, he gained yet another peculiar nickname, the Riddler. Very little is known of his life, and while he is largely known through quotations, his philosophy, melancholic as it is, is nonetheless profound. Out of the countless hours of research done by the authors of whom I took my information, this video would not be possible. If you would like to know more about Heraclitus, make sure you check in the description for the books and e-sources that I use to compile this video. I would also like to know which of the pre-Socratic philosophers you find most interesting. Make sure you like the video and subscribe if you want to learn more about Eastern and Western philosophy. And as always, thank you for talking philosophy with me. Until next time.


You want to improve your touch in this video. I'm going to show you how to improve your ball control for soccer You want to improve your ball control? You want some soccer drills that are going to give you a nice touch In this video, I'm going to go from beginner to more advanced But in reality these drills are not complex. I don't really believe in complex fancy drills I believe in drills that actually create results. So let's improve your ball control Number one. What do we all do? juggling So this is where everyone should start like I said in one of my most popular videos how to juggle a soccer ball five to five hundred I Said if you cannot get to five hundred or at least to a hundred get somewhere where you feel like I don't really have to drop the ball, and I'm just tired accounting But everyone in my opinion young player your first goal Once you really figure out how to juggle soccer ball get to five hundred after that you don't have to count anymore You can do fancy your skills focus on different touches But let's come back to juggling. So Nice relaxed upper body I'm a light on my toes if I have to react the ball is about under under knee height Look at the backspin on the ball Backspin on the ball. It's not going away from me. It's not going left right staying right in front of me left right left right nice rhythm That's the goal. That's the objective But if you're not there yet what you need to start with is just getting good backspin on the ball Okay, so maybe this is where you start if you're at this level right now. That's totally fine But you need to improve kick catch kick catch especially on your weaker foot and As I always say I don't like the word. I don't like to term the phrase weak foot You have two strong feet one just needs a little more practice I will send the better in one day soccer blueprint to anyone who comments hashtag soccer on this video Okay, so especially on your weaker foot. Let's fix it right now it's probably too weak As the phrase goes but you're not flexing it strong enough. You're not making your foot hard enough If you're practicing on your weak foot and it keeps dying into the ground or The contact just doesn't feel the same on here. It's nice and sharp. It's nice and firm Here it feels like it's dying into the ground every time Tighten that up tighten that technique up flex your foot a little stronger If anything it's better for you to have a touch that's way too heavy than a touch that Isn't heavy enough so start there but start with the kick and catch Backspin on the ball if you can do about 10 of those With one touch just go two touch two touch Okay, then you go right left because I want you to get you into that rhythm of right left right left right left But very basic that is where I would start. Okay Next If you're a little more advanced Going to the single leg stuff for the more advanced techniques. So I just call these mini touches put on both feet Good for your balance as well It's just a nice delicate touch that I want to help Single foot but a little higher putting the foot down every time getting a nice backspin On both feet Yes, you can do the thighs head Okay, tracks and that have a better touch than that But one thing I really like to promote is this Directional juggling. So maybe you just start with walking Because in the match you're never juggling on the spot. You don't get the ball in the corner of the field and do this But you might take some touches where you have to move the ball you have to manipulate it in different ways So I would start walking and then You can add a little bit of pace to it running with the ball directional ball control The next ball control exercise that I would encourage you to do is a foot stall I think this is a beautiful exercise for training your weak foot Because the problem with your weak foot or your foot that's not good enough yet Is usually you don't have the strength. You don't know how to flex it properly So practicing stalls, especially on your weak foot Get it in there really flex it turn the toes up Squeeze it in there so that ball doesn't leave that's going to train your foot Really well, but that's a good technique and it's another good ball control drill that I like to do Then I would move into air control. So Maybe it's just popping the ball in the air bringing it down with the toe And again, if you're a beginner it's okay to start with your hands But I would challenge you to always use your feet whenever possible even if you're struggling in the beginning If you don't know about me, I used to be a huge underachiever But through obsessive self-improvement I found my success earned a college scholarship played for my national futsal team a youtube channel with over 100 million views I've helped players worldwide and I'd love to help you improve faster and achieve more Okay, so you can do With the toe inside of the foot Getting your body over the ball. So it's the timing right as that ball hits the ground Boom, then you're on top of it It's not bounce And then try to get down on it Read the ball anticipate the balance get over it Touch and my body controls on top of it Outside the foot we always practice with both feet doing But outside the foot You could do croit the next ball control exercise Would be an air control up out of the air Keep it alive with different techniques So you can do with laces inside Let me tighten up.  You need to be able to control the ball With all parts of the body If you want to improve faster and achieve more this season use the soccer success planner It's 100 free players all around the world have already used it to improve You can download it right now. There's a link in the description below One of the best tools you can use to improve your ball control is a wall So Start with open touch whenever you're comfortable Play a pass against the wall receive And go again When that gets easy play two touch. So one to control one to pass control pass Be on your toes. So if you have a bad touch Or a soft touch you can get there quickly Finally, you can play one touch Which is going to help you with your ball control But also your passing also your ball striking So focus on being light on your toes But making good contact Practicing just as inside the foot is a great place to start And then you can go different techniques From moving up divisions to making national teams players who use the online soccer academy get results Access elite level coaching and training become a complete player Make a difference on the field and get noticed when you play Limited spots available apply today start improving tomorrow Link in the description below