Example input
"I mean, we're bombarded with anti-union propaganda daily. I like to think of the story of my maternal grandfather, who was born in poverty and who died as a member of the great American middle class. Everybody in the country feels like they're working harder than ever before, but falling farther and farther..."
---> transcribed with OpenAI's Whisper small.en model form the Pitchfork Economics podcast.
Example output
START
Main claim AGU
- Wage suppression and the decline of worker power have negatively impacted the American middle class (handle: "Wage suppression and the decline of worker power.")
Premise AGUs
- Productivity increased but wages for most families stagnated (handle: "wages for the typical family went up, wages for basically everybody went up, and then in the middle 1970s, neoliberalism came along and all of that began to change.")
- Policies that kept wages tracking with productivity and economic growth stopped (handle: "we either stopped doing the policies that kept wages tracking with productivity and economic growth...")
- Bottom 90% of the American workforce has seen their pay shrink since 1979 (handle: "Since 1979, the bottom 90% of the American workforce has seen their pay shrink as a percentage of their total income.")
- Strong unions helped narrow the wage gap and support the middle class in the past (handle: "when unions were at their strongest before the 60s, they had a real impact on narrowing the wage gap, particularly for male workers.")
Counterargument AGUs
- Neoliberal idea suggests that people are paid what they are worth and the market is always right (handle: "the neoliberal idea is that there are these immutable physics-like economic forces at play, and the market is always right, and you are paid exactly what you're worth.")
Rebuttal AGUs
- Wage stagnation is the result of concerted attacks on worker pay and power (handle: "The weather didn't blow in. It was that there was a concerted attack on worker pay.")
- If policies that had been in place since 1979 had held constant, workers would have additional money (handle: "if the policies that had been placed in 1979 had held constant, workers would have $1.35 trillion additional dollars in their pockets.")
- Washington State's strong unions and worker power show that it can lead to a better economy (handle: "Washington State, which still has very strong unions. We've been able to put in place strong protections for workers.")
END