How Kamala Harris Views the Economy & Delta Still Reeling from IT Outage

0:00Tuesday on NBC, Jimmy Fallon and Bozma St John host the highly anticipated new competition show. I hired 10 creatives from all walks of life. They will be battling it out to see who can impress the world's biggest brands. This is a huge opportunity. This is the battle for the next big idea. This is not play play. We're spending millions of dollars. I'm so excited to embark on this adventure with all of you. Make the best idea win! On Brand with Jimmy Fallon. Series premiere Tuesday on NBC. Good morning Brew Daily Show. I'm Neil Freiman. And I'm Toby Howell. Today, the global IT outage was resolved four days ago, but Delta didn't get the memo.

0:40What is going on in the Sky Club? Then the results are in from the largest universal basic income study in history. It's Tuesday, July 23rd. Let's ride.

0:54Well, here is a crazy stat that was making the rounds yesterday. This will be the first presidential election since 1976 that doesn't have a member of a Bush, Clinton, or Biden on the ticket. 1976 was 48 years ago when George Lucas was filming the first Star Wars and the first Apple computer came out. I think we are over-indexing on history a little bit here because you can find plenty of other three-name or three-family dynasties throughout U.S. politics. I mean, you can get a chain running from 1932 to 1972 between Roosevelt, Truman, and Nixon, only one election off. And then a Nixon-Johnson-Mondale chain gets you nine of nine elections from 1952 to 1984.

1:37It's kind of like saying that there has been a LeBron James on the Lakers for the last eight years between LeBron James and Bronny James. So I don't know. I think we're over-indexing a little bit. I still think it shows how family dynasties kind of run U.S. politics. My favorite stat from this also is that the winner of that 1976 election is still alive. That'd be 99-year-old Jimmy Carter. Jimmy Carter. Now a word from our sponsor, Beehive. I want to start today's ad off by talking to a very specific person listening to this, the wannabe writer. The wannabe writer reads a lot of books, subscribes to a lot of newsletters, and has lots of unfinished Google Docs and half-baked ideas floating around in their head.

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3:33Yesterday was day number two of the Kamala Harris experience as the VP appears to be steamrolling to replace President Biden at the top of the Democratic ticket. More influential Dems, including Nancy Pelosi, endorsed Harris while she raised$81 million in the first 24 hours since announcing her presidential bid, a sum the New York Times called one of the greatest gushers of cash of all time. But who is Kamala Harris? What does she stand for? What are her economic policies and how do they differ from Biden's, from Trump's? Well, Harris comes mostly from a legal background, having served as the district attorney of San Francisco, then the attorney general of California, where she became known for prosecuting big banks and mortgage lenders following the financial crisis.

4:17She also focused on consumer protection, threatening Uber with legal action if the company didn't remove its driverless cars from the state's roads. In 2016, she was elected to the Senate in California before running for president in 2020 and dropping out before a single vote was cast. Toby, my big takeaway from reading Harris's economic policy proposals is you probably wouldn't notice much of a difference between a Harris administration and a second Biden one. Yeah, you wouldn't believe it. But the president and his vice president have pretty similar views on a lot of things. A lot of what we know from Kamala's potential policies come from when she was running for president in 2020.

4:54And also, so take it with a grain of salt, because she was looking to stand out from a sea of other candidates. But if you just go down the list, start with climate change a little bit. Both Biden and Kamala Harris have proposed putting historic sums of money towards fighting climate change. Kamala's plan would have gone even further. She proposed a$10 trillion climate plan. She's also come out and said she'd ban fracking, which Biden has said that he has no moves to do so. One of Kamala's big initiatives, too, is student debt relief. As the California Attorney General, she pushed for loan relief specifically from people defrauded by for-profit colleges.

5:30So if you want to draw a battleground between Trump, who ran Trump University for a while, and then Kamala, who has called him out for doing that, that's one of them. And then she also is big on free college. She was a co-sponsor from Bernie Sanders' plan for free college back in 2017. She's aimed to eliminate tuition and fees for all students attending two-year college, which is something Biden has also pushed for specifically on the two-year college front. So there's as you go down the list, I'm sure you have more as well. But they are dovetailing for the most. They are dovetailing. They are very much aligned.

6:03I think if you just look at both of them, you'd say that Kamala is maybe a little to the left on Biden on certain economic policies, especially taxes. She proposed a three tax credit of three thousand dollars per person for most middle and working class Americans. So taxes are going to be one of the biggest issues of this campaign because in 2025, the 2017 Trump tax cuts are coming up. They're going to expire. So there's going to be a huge debate about what we do with taxes. Are we going to leave them? Are we going to leave the tax cuts? Are we going to implement more? So that is a big issue. Another one is free trade.

6:40Harris has said that she is not a protectionist Democrats. This is a time in the world where a lot of companies are raising tariffs to promote their own industries. Well, she says she's not a protectionist, but actually the two recent free trade deals, she opposed the U.S.-Mexico-Canada agreement, which was NAFTA's replacement that Trump proposed and enacted. She opposed that. And then she also opposed TPP, the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which she said both times. She cited they didn't have enough environmental regulations, which shows how at the top of her agenda climate change is. And she also said that they didn't protect American jobs, which, again, tends to track with the left because she wants to court the union vote, the blue collar vote.

7:25Final big topic issue that we need to talk about is AI. She's been a lot more outspoken than Biden when it comes to regulating AI. Biden has taken a little bit more of a hands-off approach in letting the companies kind of set the standards for it. She wants to regulate it. She wants to address AI's danger. She wants to kind of she says she rejects the false choice between promoting innovation and then protecting the public. She says you can do both at the same time. So potentially a she would take a more hands on approach to this very present issue right now, which is artificial intelligence. And I called it the Kamala Harris experience because I don't know what's going on, but she is going kind of wild on social media.

8:06She's become the latest social media star. If you've gone on TikTok or Instagram for the last 24 hours, it is very likely you've seen at least one, if not an infinite amount of Kamala Harris memes. People are remixing some of her more eccentric phrases from the past on the campaign trail. She's also leaned into this brat aesthetic, which has to do with Charli XCX's recent album this summer. Charlie XCX says Kamala is a brat and her campaign team has completely leaned into that changing their colors on their social media to reflect the lime green aesthetic of the of this album. So I don't know what's going on, but she's become the most memeable candidate I think we've ever seen.

8:48I would just say be careful if you're the Kamala Harris campaign. This is me putting my like social media hat on for a second because these things are only fun if it feels very organic, if it feels very user driven. And if you lean in too hard, you come off a little bit as pandering. Let your supporters do the crazy stuff. Let people post pictures of them climbing up coconut trees. Let people lean into it more. Jules Turpak, who is an internet writer, said, leave the outright unseriousness to everyone else. You have to remain cool and calm and focused above it. So it is a fine line to walk, but you're right.

9:21Something has shifted. The vibe has shifted. I mean, think about it. We went from Biden, who is an 81-year-old candidate, to now Kamala Harris, who has more of that fun aunt aesthetic, if you will. So the vibe has totally shifted in the Democratic Party and this election in general. Meanwhile, they're going to focus on Trump now as the old candidate because he is now the oldest presidential candidate in history. What happens when you give people living below the poverty line cash payments for three years with no strings attached? Well, Sam Altman of OpenAI wanted to find out, and the results from the largest study in the U.S.

9:55ever on the effects of universal basic income are finally in. The study enrolled 3 ,000 Texas and Illinois residents who earned less than$28 ,000 per year. A third of the group was given$1 ,000 a month, while the other participants acted as a control and were only given$50. And what the study found was no discernible difference in employment levels between the two groups by the end of the three years, aka no one was taking the$1 ,000 and quitting their jobs. What did happen, however, was the 1K a month group was able to increase their spending on basic needs like food, housing, and transportation, and even find a little leftover to give to others.

10:34Neil, these findings are generally in line with other UBI studies carried out. Recipients spend more to meet their basic needs, offer up a little cash to assist others, and certainly don't drop out of the workforce. but it seems the overall takeaway here is that money provides flexibility. Money provides flexibility and cash, just giving cash to people with no strings attached allows them to make choices that they wouldn't normally be able to make. The participants in the study when just interviewed by the experimenters said, yeah, just the main thing here was I had peace of mind. My stress levels went down.

11:08I wasn't living on the edge anymore. That was the main vibe. But look, this universal basic income has been percolating for years. It really became, you know, top of mind when Andrew Yang ran for president in 2020 and he proposed this freedom dividend. A bunch of AI guys and Silicon Valley guys like Mark Benioff, like Elon Musk, like Sam Altman have said this is important to do, especially as AI and automation perhaps takes people's jobs. We're going to need to provide them with a basic income. So they are heavily invested in learning more about what happens when you just give people a check of$1 ,000 per month.

11:44I guess my takeaway from this study is like, yeah, it's not a huge difference. It's$1 ,000 a month. People do spend more on those basic needs. But in terms of health outcomes or the labor market and their relationship with work, does it really move the needle in a huge way? Yeah. Yeah, and one thing that people are pointing out is that the control group ended up working a little bit more than the$1 ,000 a month group, which critics of UBI say that what would happen if you give people money is that they'll start working less. So we did see and observe one hour less per week working, but a lot of people said that that was mostly from single parents who suddenly had a little bit more time for child care.

12:21They were able to enter more flexible working arrangements. So, again, if you are a critic of UBI and your main critique is that people will take the money and stop working, that was clearly not the case in this study. Well, they stopped working a little bit. A little bit. One hour less. Yeah, they traded in$125 for five hours of work, which maybe is the point of this. And that's what the AI guys are like. Well, people aren't going to work anymore because of automation. But, yeah, we're going to see more research. We'll see whether this actually comes to policy. You know, there's been a lot of experiments, but it's been anathema for politicians to actually enact this.

12:59And I don't know if that's going to move the needle in the future. Many companies returned to business as usual on Monday following the worst IT outage in history. Others are named Delta Airlines. Four days after a faulty CrowdStrike update crashed computers around the world, Delta was still canceling flights en masse despite all of its airline peers operating regular schedules. Delta shelved 800 flights on Monday, about 21 % of its scheduled departures, which accounted for 6 in 10 flights canceled by all airlines worldwide. From Friday through Sunday, it canceled 4 ,500 flights, more than any other global airline.

13:36It comes as a bit of a surprise since Delta has marketed itself as a premium airline and is known for running one of the smoothest operations in the industry. But all the passengers stranded at its hub in Atlanta over the past few days would probably disagree, and so does transportation secretary Pete Buttigieg, who laid into Delta for its slow recovery, prompting an apology from the CEO. Toby, what went so wrong with Delta? I mean, Delta was just uniquely exposed to this IT outage. One, you actually mentioned, it's usually Delta's strengths that their hub is Atlanta, but when things go wrong in Atlanta, it's the busiest airport in the world, things start to go really, really wrong and it just, the delicate kind of dance that you need to keep the logistics running started to fall apart.

14:20And then also it's just Delta made a decision right when the IT outage happened that kind of put them behind the eight ball and they started just canceling flights. A lot of other airlines just started delaying flights. But the fact that Delta started canceling just started to this cascading effect and they can never get back on schedule, especially when their IT systems that helped place crew members on airplanes was down. So it's just a really bad look for Delta in something that they usually nail. Delta usually is looked at as the top of the top, the creme de la creme of premium airlines. So this is a real big black eye on their reputation.

14:56Yeah, if they don't turn things around, we could be looking at a Southwest level debacle. I'm not saying it's getting there yet, but we'll see what happens today. Southwest, remember, this was December 2022. It canceled 17 ,000 flights, more than a third of those scheduled because of that winter storm that basically knocked out its systems and it was running on old software and it couldn't get crews to the right place and that's exactly what we're seeing with Delta now everybody's scrambled it this CrowdStrike update hit at the heart of their cruise scheduling software so Delta says it's working around the clock and Pete Buttigieg is like you guys better be compensating passengers you better be paying for the hotels you better be giving them refunds if they don't rebook so he is on their butt so they need to figure this out because they don't want to be made an example of like Southwest.

15:44Up next, we got a healthy dose of Toby's Trends coming your way. Eczema isn't always obvious, but it's real. And so is the relief from EBCLIS. After an initial dosing phase, about four in 10 people taking EBCLIS achieved itch relief and clear or almost clear skin at 16 weeks. And most of those people maintain skin that's still more clear at one year with monthly dosing. EbGliss, Librikizumab, LBKZ, a 250 milligram per two milliliter injection is a prescription medicine used to treat adults and children 12 years of age and older who weigh at least 88 pounds or 40 kilograms with moderate to severe eczema.

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16:51I'm Christian McCaffrey, pro running back, and Abercrombie is an official fashion partner of the NFL. I'm not kidding when I say NFL by Abercrombie broke the internet last year, and I think this season's lineup is even cooler. And so does my wife, who keeps stealing all my hoodies. Stay fit for the season and Abercrombie's newest arrivals. Shop NFL by Abercrombie in the app, online and in store.

17:21Have you ever thought about how much it costs to make a phone call from prison? Well, it's very expensive, but following a years long push by activists, prices allowing incarcerated people to speak with their families are finally coming down in a big way. Last Thursday, the Federal Communications Commission voted to dramatically lower the cost of phone calls from prison. The cost of a 15-minute phone call used to be$11.35 in large jails. Now it's going to be$0.90. In small jails, the price is dropping from more than$12 to$1.35. For the first time, the agency is also capping the cost of video calls, which is an increasingly popular method of communication in prisons, dropping those prices to less than a quarter of their current level.

18:06The FCC estimates that about 1.4 million people will be impacted and that prisoners, friends, families and inmates will save nearly 400 million dollars under the change. For prison reform advocates, this step was long overdue to rein in a prison telecoms industry they accused of using predatory tactics to exploit incarcerated people and their families. The FCC commissioner said today's actions put an end to these abuses. So why are these calls so pricey? The problem is about 90 % of the prison and jail calls are facilitated by just three companies. So there's almost a monopoly over the market.

18:42You can also blame these call charge sharing schemes in which the call providers actually give jails a little kickback on some of the proceeds. That has jacked up prices as well. And there is research that more consistent phone calls between incarcerated people and their family members actually does a lot to reducing reoffending rates. So a lot of prison advocates or reform advocates are saying that this is a public safety measure. This is we're allowing people to talk to their family members is better for the public good. So that's why there's been this huge groundswell of support for the FCC to finally do something about this.

19:16Yeah, and they weren't able to do something about it by law until January 23, which is when President Biden signed the Martha Wright Read Just and Reasonable Communications Act into law. And that allowed the FCC the authority to make these to put these caps on calls interest state before the FCC only had authority over interest interstate communications where somebody was calling somebody from another state. This gave them the authority to do that. And it's pretty interesting. Martha Wright-Reed was a retired nurse in D.C. who was advocating for this for years because she was calling her incarcerated grandson.

19:55And she saw, wow, this is literally one call. It is basically a monthly bill for a non-incarcerated person, just one call. This is so expensive. And so she lobbied the government for years on this. And so that's why they named this bill after her. Of course, the phone service providers are pushing back against the proposed FCC rules. Some of them are arguing that these rate caps would inhibit competition in the market by pricing out smaller firms, which is very ironic to me considering they already control 90 % of it. And then also they said that these new rules didn't factor in some of the security costs that are associated with these phone calls because calls between incarcerated people and the outside world are surveilled.

20:36There are some layers of surveillance and data collection on these calls that need to happen. So of course, you're going to get some pushback from the companies that control 90 % of the market. And when you factor in the fact that they're about to lose$500 million in revenue, of course, they're going to be a little upset. When most major league baseball players hit a deep drive to left field, it typically ends up in a home run. It's an exciting but relatively common occurrence. Last year, 5 ,868 were hit. But a few home runs have a little more weight to them, a little more consequence, if you will.

21:11And those are the home runs that come off the bat of the Philadelphia Phillies right fielder, Nick Castellanos. And it's those hits we need to talk about on today's edition of Toby's Trends, where I find a trend floating around the internet and explain it to you so you have some small talk to whip out at your leisure. So there is this startling correlation between Nick Castellanos' home runs and major world events. The trend started off smaller in scale, with a Cassianos drive interrupting an on-air apology from an announcer. Then Cassianos went yard in the middle of an homage to fallen service members on Memorial Day.

21:45You'd think announcers would learn by then, but no. On TBS, Cassianos hit a dinger while the announcer was describing how a former Phillies manager was faring after a stroke. But Cassianos' influence would only grow more global. Less than an hour after news broke that Willie Mays had passed away, Cassianos hit a walk-off double. He homered on the 20th anniversary of 9-11. The assassination attempt of Donald Trump, Castellanos homered earlier that day. And finally, this past Sunday, Biden dropped out of the presidential race. And I'll let you guess what Castellanos did. Neil, this has graduated from just sports lore to full-on internet lore at this point.

22:23This man is warping reality. It's pretty hilarious what has been going on. I encourage everyone to go to YouTube and just type in Nick Castellanos home runs. And people have put together these 15-minute long compilations of announcers giving these very somber addresses about people who have died or big major global events. And then all of a sudden, they have to make a call that some guy, Nick Castellanos, keeps hitting a home run in the middle of these presentations. And it's just probably, you know, it's a little morbid, but it's also one of the funniest things in the world. Also, Nick Castellanos' home runs during major global events has become a betting sensation.

22:59As soon as anything big happens, people pile into home run bets for Nick Castellanos. This happened this past weekend when Biden dropped out. Everyone was tweeting, OK, Nick Castellanos guaranteed home run. It was plus 550 going into the game. So a lot of people made money. I do wonder whether DraftKings or FanDuel will start rolling out promotions on Nick Castellanos home runs when certain world events happen. Obviously, it has to be benign. It can't be somebody died or anything that tragic. But if like a big thing event, big thing happened, like, you know, Biden stepping aside, I wonder if he'll start running the Nick Castellanos promotion.

23:35I did look into this because obviously there's some sort of cognitive bias going on because obviously he's not causing these world events. And it's called the Bader-Meinhof phenomenon or frequency illusion. This occurs when something you've recently become aware of suddenly seems to appear more frequently in your environment. That being said, though, I would be remiss if I didn't mention that Nick Cassiano's first professional home run in the minor leagues, and I promise I'm not making this up, came on May 1st, 2011, which is the day Obama announced Osama bin Laden had been killed. So Cassiano's has been at this for years now.