Economic Update with Richard D. Wolff

In this week's Economic Update, Prof. Wolff presents updates on the French School of Economic Warfare and sanctions against Russia; how asset price declines threaten US pensions, electric replace fossil fuel private cars because of profit motive, instead of for a rational transportation policy; US police in elementary schools: bad for students, parents, teachers and even police; honoring Staughton Lynd, US radical academic and labor organizer who died on 11/18/22. In the second half of the show, Wolff interviews Adam Hochschild, author of "American Midnight" how 1917-1921 was a US rehearsal for a parallel right-wing surge of recent years.

The year 2022 produced a daunting, long list of serious problems associated with the economy (inflation, rising interest rates, stock market decline, deterioration of the environment, war, labor uprising, etc.). More than ever, the victims and critics of the problems of 2022 identified them as symptoms of a systemic problem, namely the capitalist system. On the one hand, capitalism is working as it always has, but that is now a problem. At its center capitalism prioritizes profit and profit maximization and we show how they are the core causes of the system's dysfunction now for all but a tiny minority at its top.

In this week's Economic Update, Prof. Wolff discusses explosive labor militancy across 2022 in US and UK, Wells Fargo bank again fined for illegal practices on 16 million bank customers, US-Russia economic warfare undercuts European economies whose response will likely shape Ukraine War's results. In the second half, Wolff interviews journalist Bob Hennelly on the rising US labor movement.

This week's show is dedicated to a discussion of the signs of US capitalism's decline. US history as the passage of US capitalism from its birth, through its state-supported growth and expansion, to its global peaking from 1945 to 2000. Wolff presents the causes of its ongoing decline this 21st century, and then offers a conclusion on the right, center and left political responses to decline.

This is a REPEAT episode. In this week's show, Prof Wolff talks about the social effects of inflation and the lack of accountability on the part of employers. Capitalist employers set prices with the only motive of maximizing. Employees, the vast majority, must live with inflation but are excluded from decisions setting prices. Employers scream labor shortage to get the government to force workers back to work at low wages. Employers recover from economic crashes but undercut workers efforts to do the same. How capitalism works.

In this week's Economic Update, Prof. Wolff presents updates on the Twitter-Musk scandals, critique of profit as return to risk, mass European union-led strikes against inflation, economic crisis of 54 poorest nations today, US General Assembly vote against US embargo (sanctions) against Cuba, and an analysis of crypto-currency collapse.

In this week's show, Prof. Wolff discusses the massive strike of Canadian public employees; economics of the unemployed; business owners,executives and lawyers dominate US state legislatures; and how rising interest rates push the most vulnerable to the margins of US capitalism. In the second half of the show, Wolff interviews Anand Giridharadas on his new book, The Persuaders.

Join d@w for virtual event Marxism For This Moment: A Conversation with Richard Wolff & David Harvey on Friday, November 18th at 1pm ET (New York, UTC-4). Buy your tickets here: https://www.democracyatwork.info/marxism_for_this_moment_richard_wolff_david_harvey **If you cannot make the live event but want to support d@w, consider purchasing a ticket anyway and we will send you access to the event recording. In this week's show, Prof. Wolff presents updates on students' solidarity with workers at Smith College; US car industry manipulates supply/demand to inflate prices, profits; Teamsters strike, solidarity defeat Sysco Systems; Starbucks provokes its 250 unionized stores, and why rising wages do not "cause" inflation. In the second half of the show, Wolff interviews Prof. William I. Robinson on global capitalism and its multiple crises he calls "terminal."

In this week's show, Prof. Wolff talks about a new Congress report on huge US wealth inequality; Angela Merkel on relying on Russian oil and gas, the irrationality of 20,000 immigrants dumped on NYC, and Harvard exploiting its tax-exempt status. In the second half of the show, Wolff interviews Dr. Nomi Prins, former Goldman Sachs director, on the distorted US financial system and its social effects.

This week on Economic Update, Prof. Wolff shows how the economics of existing capitalist and socialist economies make use of both markets and planning. The opposition of markets and planning is largely false and has worked to distract students and observers of economic systems from better differentiations such as how they differently organize their workplaces: hierarchical in the case of capitalist, democratic in the case of worker cooperatives. Some major implications of this critique of the "planning versus market" obsession are discussed in relation to the US, Soviet Union, and China.