Economic Update with Richard D. Wolff
Democracy at Work, Richard D. Wolff
Economic Update with Richard D. Wolff is a weekly nationally syndicated program produced by Democracy at Work and hosted by Richard D. Wolff. The program explores complex economic issues and empowers listeners with information to analyze not only their own financial situation but the economy at large. Beyond focusing a critical eye on the economic dimensions of everyday life - wages, jobs, taxes, debts, interest rates, prices, and profits - the program also explores systemic solutions to our economy's problems including alternative ways to organize production and distribution of the goods and services we all depend on.
Episodes
Mentioned books
Nov 9, 2017 • 57min
Economic Update: Socialism: Past, Present, Future
Updates on critique of Uber and gig economy; WI Sen Johnson endorses inequality; Norway to pay male and female athletes same; corporations buy back their own shares; deaths of overworked Japanese; 10% NY school kids homeless; and majority of major US corporations already pay much below official 35% tax rate. Major discussion of changing economics of socialism.
Nov 2, 2017 • 56min
Economic Update: Morality and Economics
Updates on mostly low-paid service jobs in US future, Senate deregulates banks, college spending per student reinforces income inequality, US loneliness a factor in illnesses and premature death, Univ of Chicago grad students unionize, Brazilian civil and religious authorities push almost-rotten food for the poor, and costs of pollution. Interview Dr. Harriet Fraad on psychology and economics of sex work industry.
Oct 27, 2017 • 58min
Economic Update: How Economies Change
Updates on privatized probation, New Zealand rejects austerity, electricity cutoffs refute "recovery," declining medical insurance, neo-liberalism attacked, rich funders of fake 'public interest groups.' Interview with two professors (Umberto Lorenzo and Richard McIntyre) on Cuba's socialist economy changing toward worker coops.
Oct 19, 2017 • 58min
Economic Update: Success of New York Worker Coops
Updates on passage of CA Disclose Act; Monarch Airlines fails; Equifax, Yahoo, and Johnson & Johnson are untrustworthy US corporations, 2 Sisters Food Group is the same in UK, Washington sues big pharma corporations for contributing to opioid crisis; and socially destructive corporate behavior. Interview with Emma Yorra, specialist in the development of worker coops, Sunset Park, Brooklyn.
Oct 12, 2017 • 58min
Economic Update: Transition Beyond Capitalism
Updates on economic costs/benefits of refugees, rise of BRICS nations in world economy (vs US decline), closing and privatization of US public libraries, size of slavery and forced child labor in world economy now, and how the "gig" economy is just another effort to profit by lengthening the working day. Major discussion: what the historical transition to capitalism suggests about transition from capitalism to a worker-coop-based economic system.
Oct 5, 2017 • 58min
Economic Update: Economics, Psychology and Mass Murders
Updates on Trump/GOP tax plan, Americans having "trouble paying bills," post-1989 Russia more unequal than USSR, Eastern now colony of Western Europe, targeting finance vs entire system, closing rural US hospitals, Puerto Rico as US colony. Interview Dr. Harriet Fraad on economics, psychology and mass murders.
Oct 1, 2017 • 58min
Economic Update: Strikes and the Labor Movement Today
Updates on closing 6,400 retail stores in 2017, decline in US housing starts, 800 major corporations oppose Trump on DACA, US child poverty rates, US to rely on banks' "self-reporting" of their misdeeds, and significance of California Disclose Act. Interview investigative journalist Bob Hennelly on Local 3 strike in New York and its importance to the US labor movement today.
Sep 22, 2017 • 58min
Economic Update: Capitalism, Revolution, and Socialism
Updates on major capitalist failures, buying senators on health care, opioid addiction's effects on insurance and on labor force participation, price gouging in emergencies, and US income inequality. Major discussion on 100th anniversary of Russian Revolution in 1917: lessons of USSR economic history for 21st century socialism.
Sep 14, 2017 • 58min
Economic Update: Corporate Capitalism in Decline
Updates on capitalism and hurricanes, the business of drug addiction and overdose, with poverty, hookworm too returns to America, and the economics of elite universities' tax avoidance. Interview with Chris Hedges on a declining, decaying capitalism.
Sep 7, 2017 • 58min
Economic Update: Capitalism's (Uncounted) Health Costs
Updates on Wonderwoman, Archbishop's critique of UK economic system, a US Labor Day comment, McDonald's workers strike in UK, economics of hurricanes, and economics of the Trump/GOP tax cut "reform." Interview Dr. Harriet Fraad: the capitalist system's impacts on health - from stress to death - are mostly unacknowledged or taken account of in its key decisions.
