(upbeat music) - [Narrator] Major support for Carolina Business Review provided by Colonial Life, providing benefits to employees to help them protect their family, their finances and their futures.

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- From mass mandates to opioid settlements to children and social media, South Carolina's Attorney General Alan Wilson is engaged in all of it.

I'm Chris William and welcome again to the most widely watched and longest running program on Carolina business Policy and Public Affairs seen each and every week for more than 30 years, here in the Carolinas.

In a moment we will start this week's discussion and later on here is the top law enforcement official for the Palmetto State, Alan Wilson joins us, stay with us.

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(upbeat music) On this edition of Carolina Business Review, Antjuan Seawright from Blueprint Strategy, Aaron Nelson, from the Chamber for a Greater Chapel Hill-Carrboro.

And special guest, Alan Wilson, South Carolina Attorney General.

(upbeat music) - We try not to play favorites but the folks joining us on this program are some of our favorites because they are willing to talk about just about anything.

Antjuan Seawright and Aaron Nelson, gentlemen, welcome to the program, good to see well.

And before we kinda kick this off, you know the Carolinas, depending on where you live, if you say Carolina, it might mean North Carolina or it might mean USC, just wanna be clear, Aaron in deference to Chapel Hill and to North Carolina, and that rivalry that goes on between Chapel Hill and Duke, I wanna make sure that we know Antjuan that Dawn Staley in the USC women basketball, National Basketball champs are really something.

- It is known affectionately as the dynasty of Dawn.

(Chris laughs) Because she is by far, in fact, she represents the Carolinas being that she did play for the Charlotte thing.

As World Champion and so many ways.

And so, Dawn Staley is the Carolinas.

- That's legit and well said.

Antjuan I will stay with you and Aaron, we're gonna bring in this dialogue.

This idea of inflation is everywhere.

We're obsessed with it for good reason.

But Antjuan, when we talk about inflation, are we talking about the tipping point and the changing of lifestyles now that we see these kind of dramatic increases in everyday expenses?

- Well Chris, in yoga, my instructor reminds me all the time that life much like the practice of yoga is about making adjustments.

And no doubt in my mind, I don't care if you're rich or poor, I don't care if you're from upstate North Carolina or downstate South Carolina, inflation has caused and forced all of us to make some sort of adjustments.

The question remains, whether those adjustments are going to be temporary, or are there going to be more long term and we adapt or move around this being the new norm.

What I do know whether you're a democrat or whether you're Republican, whether you support this president, whether you do not support this president.

Inflation is an issue that impacts all of us, in particular industry.

And so, when the price of goods has increased for many people, including the price of gas, it has a ripple effect on the least of these and that should be a concern for both parties, regardless of what your politics may be.

So, Aaron, to quote the existential Antjuan Seawright here about the making adjustments (Antjuan laughs) through his yoga self.

(Antjuan laughs) But in all fairness, is this a tipping point?

Are we gonna look back and say that's when the recession began, or that's when the not as good times began?

- Well, I'm always frustrated on how recessions work 'cause they tell you six months afterwards that it happened six months ago, and that we're running on behind.

For me as we're talking to employers and some of the workers.

Wages went up substantially, just prior to this.

Folks who were making $9 an hour might be making $15 an hour for the same job.

So, there's this moment of having more revenue than before, as our economy was coming back, it's hard to find workers.

And now with prices going up, I don't know how to get that balance of our folks now back to where they were.

'cause they're buying power or not?

Is it similar to what it was when they were making pre-pandemic wages?

What will be this long-term effect?

Many of local businesses are reporting, they feel this pressure is a time now to raise prices are holding off as long as they can.

But yes, I think we'll look back and say something big happened here, just as we were emerging from a pandemic, a chrysalis of the pandemic and now starting to come out this sort of this drag of inflation, I think we'll look back on us as having the spring.

- Chris, I think it's important to remember why we're going through this phase and I call the phase of inflation.

Job growth continues to soar and I call it the Biden rebound, or the economic rebound or rebound, as some economists have called it, is still starting to happen.

And so, what you're starting to see is more of a push and a pull effect on our economy.

What we do know is none of it is sustainable.

And that's going to be the reality that some of us have to face.

What happens next?

How do we get back to this new sense of norm and what does not look like and particularly for regions like the Carolinas, both North Carolina and South Carolina, - One of the things for both of you, one of the things that we saw coming, and it's just been gasoline poured on a fire in a good way, when it comes to pricing and asset prices is real estate, commercial residential, I think we all know that.

That has been a bright spot that continues to be a bright spot in the urban cores, at least.

Some numbers are coming out about housing starts leveling out or even dropping in some areas.

But let's go to a subset of that.

And Aaron, let's start with you.

Affordable housing, there's a lot of talk about affordable housing, especially given as you both describe this increase in the living this increase in the cost of living.

But do you get the sense that people understand affordable housing, and I had a developer say this affordable housing is really a one off, it's a good idea.

But once you put an affordable housing initiative in place, it's good, but then it becomes a market-based housing project or house like everything else.

- I disagree.

- You disagree?

- I would disagree with that developer.

There's ways to do it.

We've got a lot of practice here to make it permanently affordable.

I agree, you sell someone $115,000 house and let them resell it for 450, then you did not accomplish anything.

But there are home trust and land trusts and projects ways that you can deliver affordable housing.

It's one of our key top priorities.

Our goal is 1500 permanently affordable units in the next five years in this sort of Greater Chapel Hill market.

And we're looking at all sorts of whether it's publicly owned land, down payment assistance provided by the employer direct rent subsidy, and sort of the bag of tricks of what you have to recruit and retain employees.

We've used lots of things over time, but housing and housing support has not been one of them.

And we think it's time to engage there.

So, I think a series of strategies can be developed, can be implemented, the private sector has a role and not just the developer side, but I think the employers can play a role in helping us support their employees.

And then we just got to get more housing faster.

So, adding supply, I think will have a big impact.

Luckily, witness is the Ghost of Christmas Future, we've seen happen in other places, we go to Vail, go to Boise, Idaho right now.

(clears throat) California, other places on how they address this, take some lessons from them and apply that here in our communities.

- Antjuan-- - Aaron and Chris, I'll tell you this, going back to my yoga lessons, Chris.

Most things are temporary, including this housing boom that we're experiencing across the country, and some of my private conversations with Secretary Foote, she comes to the same conclusion.

And we oftentimes talk about housing being affordable.

But Chris, what I think we miss in the conversation is making it accessible.

So, it has to be accessible and affordable for everyone.

Now that word affordable is subjective versus objective.

If you go to Charleston, South Carolina, and you see an affordable housing development, well, that home may be a three to $400,000 home, of someone who's making wages around 28 to $32,000 a year.

And that is going to be the question, what does affordable look like, and then whether it's accessible?

Because it can be affordable in the eyes of some, but it cannot and may not be accessible in those who have to pay for it.

And I think that is going to be the question both the private sector and government because government will play a role in that, it's going to have to answer.

- And Antjuan, we've just met.

And so, I don't wanna disagree too much with you on our first engagement, but I think it is objective, absolutely.

For us affordability is, can somebody make an 80% of median income, afford to spend 30% of their pre-tax dollars on housing, that's the definition, it only has one definition.

That's the definition of affordable housing.

So, in our community, 80% of median income for a family of four might be 55,000.

So, affordable housing is something that they can spend $1,300 a month.

In another place, median income might be 38,000.

But then you can peg your affordability.

And I think one of our challenges on affordability is that we've not been clear on the definition.

So, we all use a word.

But we don't know what we mean.

And I think if communities can agree that that is the definition, that is our goal.

And let's make sure that it is accessible to everybody.

And then we'll have to target 60% of median income or 80% of median income or a firefighter married to a first-year teacher, to set our goals however we want and then price it appropriately.

- Okay, Antjuan, I'm gonna give you about 30 seconds, and we're gonna move on quickly.

Any observation?

Is that a fair characterization?

- Maybe, it's one thing to get home, it's another thing to be able to keep the home.

And for most people who are particularly first time home buyers, it's almost like a first time college student.

This is your first kinda engagement in that level.

And so, who knows what expenses may come up, and what could happen that could force you going back to the word adjustment, to make some adjustments and those adjustments could put you outside of that home, even though it was your first home you had to purchase.

- Our guest joins us from a South Carolina family dynasty in politics of sort, He's of course, Father Joe Wilson in Congress.

And now we are joined again by South Carolina's top law enforcement cop, if you will.

Attorney General Alan Wilson, Your Honor, welcome to the dialogue again.

Thank you for joining us.

- Thank you for having me.

I don't think I've ever been referred to as a dynasty before, but it's great to be with you.

- Hope we start a good thing here.

Your Honor, again, welcome to the program.

But let's talk about COVID for just a second.

So, we've had a vaccine mandate.

We have the Supreme Court recently upheld President Biden's COVID-19 vaccine requirement, we've had you and your office join a complaint against the CDC around a mass media and transportation.

Lemme ask you this way, sir.

And not to couch it in politics.

But lemme ask you, hasn't there been a final word on everything around COVID?

And how we're going to assimilate and live with it by at large community and the individual?

Don't we already have this behind us to some degree?

- First off, there hasn't been a final word on the law yet.

Actually, as you recall, the Supreme Court upheld the injunction against the OSHA mandate.

That was the mandate forcing 85 million Americans, the Supreme Court did rule on the health care worker mandate, only on one provision of it, it's actually still being litigated this summer.

So, there are still some claims under the CMS mandate or the health care worker mandate, they're still being litigated.

The Headstart mandate has been enjoined, as well as the Federal Contractor mandate, and that is currently the Court of Appeals.

So, there's still questions of law for the courts to address for states and private sector folks to engage in, as it relates to people.

I think the American public by and large, has kind of turned a page on COVID, it is my personal belief, that is an individual decision.

If you have an underlying condition of comorbidity and you wanna continue to wear a mask, you should be free to do so, I would encourage people to do so, if that is in fact the case with the individual but it's about individual liberty.

It's also about the federal government can't enlarge federal laws and federal right regulations beyond what they were created to do.

And that was my beef.

My beef was federal government wasn't supposed to stretch OSHA or stretch CMS or CDC regulations to incorporate industry wide mandates when it was originally developed just to deal with quarantining procedures.

So, you got to follow the rule of law.

With that being said, President Biden the other day on the tarmac, I believe said "It's up to the individual."

I actually agree with him on that one point, that it is up to the individual.

And I think by and large, the American public has turned to page.

One last point on that, the administration is appealing the decision that the court did in Florida, they're not seeking a stay to the injunction, meaning they're not trying to start it right back up.

To me that kinda signals that, I think they're gonna do the obligatory challenge to what the court has said, but I think they're ready to turn to page to at least I hope that they are.

- [Chris] Yeah, Antjuan.

- First of all, Joe, thank you for your service.

And thank you for being a longtime personal friend.

I'll ask you this when it comes to the issues you think we face in the Carolina, of course, the North Carolina AG have different parties but similar strategies.

I think you both want the Carolinas to succeed.

What do you think is the biggest issue facing the Carolinas from the seat that you sit in?

- Well, Antjuan, thank you.

And I will second what you said, you are a close personal friend.

And it's always great to see you, sir.

Josh Stein and I, like you and I are in different political parties.

But we have worked together on a number of issues, consumer protection issues, namely the recent opioid settlement.

He and I have worked very closely as someone have a lot of respect for, the opioid epidemic is something that I've been very significantly concerned about, for both of our states of North and South Carolina.

I think human trafficking is a major issue in the Carolinas as well as the region in this country.

When you look at human trafficking, it is a worldwide epidemic, it is $150 billion a year industry, the United States is the number one destination and Charlotte and Atlanta.

If you look at it Colorado to the top 20 Human Trafficking hubs in the country.

So, that is feeding both of our states in that illicit trade activity or that criminal activity.

So, I think those are two areas that we could all work together on and we are working together on, I think public safety, making sure that local police are adequately funded is something we can all work together on so that we can make sure that they fairly and equitably protect all communities in the best way possible.

- Nelson Aaron, please.

- Sure, with respect to mass mandate, I appreciate your position on that.

How do you think that view of its personal choice should apply to vaccination?

Prior to COVID, it was all settled law that we were gonna get our kids vaccinated before they went to public school.

But we've put a whole bunch of politics into medical things recently.

And do you think that in a post-COVID world, there'll be a lot of hey, vaccinating is up to you as a personal decision?

What do you think the state or the federal government ought require certain levels of vaccine?

- Well, the federal government does not have the legal authority to do a nationwide vaccine mandate.

All the vaccine mandates that all of us are old enough to have received and we were in grade school coming up over the years, those were done at the state level, those are under state police powers and whether you agree or disagree with that, that is something that the states are allowed to do.

As I said earlier in the segment, my issue with the national or with the OSHA and the other vaccine mandates administration was doing wasn't whether or not dealing with the mandates to get vaccines was good or bad policy as it relates to the individual, it was the government was doing it the wrong way.

That is a decision for the state government to do not for the federal government.

At the end of the day, I do believe it is an individual decision when it comes to something like this.

Obviously, the states have within their police power, the ability to have those type of mandates, but those mandates are voted on by the people's elected representatives, not by any elected bureaucrats in a far off city in Washington.

So, I think you gotta do it the right way.

But I'm always gonna err on the side of individual liberty and parental choice and how to raise their children.

- And speaking of children, Mr. Attorney General, let's talk about kids and TikTok, global phenom social site, no doubt, is being your part of a class of AG's investigating TikTok, from this point of view, and excuse me if I don't get this completely right.

But children's mental health.

So, help us understand why personally this is important to you.

But why professionally, as the top cop in South Carolina, you would wanna chase this down?

- Well, first off, if you look at TikTok, is a Chinese own company.

But set that aside, when you look at how TikTok is creating an addictive class of young people, they're targeting young people.

And remember, TikTok makes its money on views and the number of people that are engaging in the content.

And when you go to TikTok and you type in certain search terms, it's always gonna direct children to sometimes inappropriate it can be drug-related to sexualized content, content that has them, keeping them on the platform longer.

And that is what TikTok is seeking to do.

And so, we have concerns, there's a bipartisan concern.

Many Republican and Democratic AGs are talking about this.

We are asking for TikTok to show a lot of transparency.

First off, give parents the right to have parental controls to eliminate that type of content from kids.

And also show us how you are directing children to that type of content.

We wanna make sure that they're not violating rules that are directing kids to look at content that would be illicit or illegal or inappropriate and give parents the control to be able to moderate that type of content for their children.

And that those are some of the issues we're investigating right now.

- And what kind of compliance are you getting from this Chinese-based phenom?

- Well, right now we're in the initial investigative stages.

There's some CIDs outstanding, there's some letters being sent out.

We're waiting.

It's a huge company.

It's a large number of states, and it's a large number of questions to be asked.

So, what we're trying to do is, is give them an opportunity to respond to our queries, and then we can move on from there.

- [Chris] Antjuan.

- General, just as a point of follow up, if you can put some background colors in this, does it start with TikTok?

Or do you think this bleeds over to other outside internet-based programming that could be harmful or detrimental to children in some way, shape or form?

- Antjuan, I couldn't agree with that question the way you asked it, I do think it does bleed over to other platforms.

Obviously, I tell people all the time, if you download an app on your phone, and it's free, you're the product.

That's what they're buying and selling, is the individual.

And so, obviously people have a right to do whatever they want.

But when it comes to young children, when big tech companies are writing algorithms that are designed to get kids addicted to their platforms, they stay on the platform longer, and they're getting them addicted by directing them to content they should not be directing kids to, that's a real problem for me.

And I think we need to make sure that parents have a role, and have the ability to moderate that type of content.

We also wanna make sure that corporate citizens in the big tech Arena in that industry are being responsible with the power they have over our young people.

- And that's well said I have to in high school right now.

And I don't recall ever that I signed whatever document you're supposed to sign where you agree that you can sell and buy the data.

I don't know how my 11-year-old had the legal authority to consent to that.

Is that part of what you're asking.

They're asking children to sign these documents, essentially, when they download the app, is that part of the problem?

- It's gonna be part of an entire rubric of questions and investigative areas we're gonna be looking into absolutely.

Again, we wanna make sure parents are part of the solution.

But we also wanna make sure that the company is not doing things inappropriate and violating particular laws at the state or federal level.

And so, we're gonna be looking at them in a number of different ways.

I don't wanna project too much what we're looking at, but we are asking a voluminous amount of questions of this company.

And as Antjuan alluded to, we are looking at other social media giants out there, because again, they have created the new public square, and they're creating a public square that I don't think is always very safe for young people, young people have too much access without parental involvement into some of these areas.

I tell parents all the time, would you trust your kids to go around the world by themselves?

No.

But you trust 'em to go around the world wide web by themselves.

And that's the problem.

We got to educate parents, we got to educate kids to be good citizens of the digital internet.

And then we gotta make sure we empower parents.

And then we put the appropriate constraints on big tech companies from trying to create an addictive platform that really just manipulates our kids.

- So, you're really talking about these social sites that we've all heard about that have been called to testify before Congress.

I'm not asking you to weigh it in on this personal opinion or your professional opinion.

But as Elon Musk looks at taking Twitter private, does that change the dynamic when it comes to a social site as well, will that raise a red flag for you?

- For Elon Musk, taking over Twitter-- - Whether it's him or someone else, or just a single owner that can control editorial content?

- Well, from what everything I've seen with Elon Musk, he is trying to take over Twitter to open up Twitter, to make speech more free.

And I can't find a tech company that's out there that we can all talk about that isn't owned by an oligarchy, if you wanna call them that, a bunch of billionaires.

So, to me, the billionaires that are running Twitter now seem to be and again, there's two different issues here.

It's free speech, and making sure content is fairly, the content regulations about big tech media companies like Twitter are being applied fairly and equitably across all ideological spectrums.

And how these companies are also targeting kids, one's more of a consumer issue, the other is more of a free speech issue.

So, I like the fact that Elon Musk is out there shaking things up, I encourage him to do that.

I appreciate the fact that he has the ability to challenge the status quo at Twitter, whether or not he's successful remains to be seen.

But that doesn't concern me as it relates to free speech.

Because there's no such thing as a tech company like Twitter that isn't owned by billionaires.

It just seems to me that the billionaires currently running Twitter, seem to be moderating the content one direction as opposed to fairly.

- General, I'm gonna ask you one quick thing because it personally bothers me.

And I think all of our lives have been or will be impacted by this.

And I'll be curious to know what you think your role would be as an AG, not as a Republican AG, but just as AG in general.

This idea of disinformation that has trickled its way into the ecosystem of our everyday lives, and it is running rampant on internet and many other places.

What do you think your role is as an Attorney General in dealing with disinformation, as that becomes the new norm?

And as we're forced to make adjustments in this country and in our society?

- Before you answer that, sir, what would be disinformation, Antjuan, give us an example of what that is.

- Pop up websites or things on social media sites that indicate that having a vaccine will make you grow with third eye.

(Antjuan laughs) - Okay Antjuan, go a head.

We have about a minute.

- Antjuan, I appreciate your question.

When it comes to disinformation, I want free speech to be wider and broader and more robust.

I don't want restrictions on it.

I think the free market can sort it out.

We've been dealing with disinformation as people say it with the media for 75 years already, but now all of a sudden, we're starting to crack down on it.

You look at how the social media companies have erred on the side of curtailing disinformation, it usually is only done in one direction not the other.

And I want more liberal views.

I want more conservative views.

And if those views are wrong or incorrect, or other laws that make them illegal, there's libel, there's slander, there's consumer protection.

There's all kinds of laws out there that make that type of disinformation illegal.

Otherwise, let the public consume what they consume and believe what they believe in, the free market will sort it out.

- And Mr. Wilson, I wish we had more time.

Thank you for joining us around this table, given your very tight schedule.

We appreciate your leadership.

Best of luck going forward, of course.

- Thank you guys, good to see all of you.

- Okay, Antjuan, good to see you, Aaron, good to see you.

Thank you all for joining us until next week.

I'm Chris William.

Hope your weekend is good.

Happy weekend, be careful, good day.

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