Economic Update with Richard D. Wolff

This week on Economic Update, Professor Wolff presents an analysis of how markets work, which parts of society they favor and serve, and which they discriminate against. He also unpacks why markets are NOT the same as capitalism, and where markets are NOT allowed to exist in the world today, including in the U.S. He wraps up today’s show with an analysis of why market idolatry now functions as a kind of secular religion, especially in the U.S. but also globally.

This week on Economic Update, Professor Wolff delivers updates on rising wages for app-based NYC food delivery workers, a wave of U.S. firms being sold to their workers, McDonald's disaster with an AI experiment, and how Canada's leader Carney is also a major campaigner for capital and against labor inside Canada. The second part of today’s show features an interview with psychotherapist Tess Fraad-Wolff on the psychological crisis faced by men in US capitalism today. 

The d@w Team Economic Update with Richard D. Wolff is a DemocracyatWork.info Inc. production. We make it a point to provide the show free of ads and rely on viewer support to continue doing so.  You can support our work by joining our Patreon community:  https://www.patreon.com/democracyatwork Or you can go to our website: https://www.democracyatwork.info/donate     Every donation counts and helps us provide a larger audience with the information they need to better understand the events around the world they can't get anywhere else.  We want to thank our devoted community of supporters who help make this show and others we produce possible each week. We kindly ask you to also support the work we do by encouraging others to subscribe to our YouTube channel and website: www.democracyatwork.info

In response to questions about Marx's relevance today, this program explains how Marx's criticism of capitalism was unique (more micro-focused than macro-focused analysis). It shows how Marx's critique of capitalism differs from his critique of slave and feudal class systems, on the one hand, and from post-capitalist ("socialist" or "communist") class systems, on the other. Marx's analysis is shown NOT to prioritize the private vs public enterprises dichotomy that has been debated as "the issue" over the last century. Instead, Marx's relevance for today lies in arguing for a post-capitalist system that is different from the slave, feudal, and capitalist class systems it seeks to replace.   The d@w Team Economic Update with Richard D. Wolff is a DemocracyatWork.info Inc. production. We make it a point to provide the show free of ads and rely on viewer support to continue doing so.  You can support our work by joining our Patreon community:  https://www.patreon.com/democracyatwork Or you can go to our website: https://www.democracyatwork.info/donate     Every donation counts and helps us provide a larger audience with the information they need to better understand the events around the world they can't get anywhere else.  We want to thank our devoted community of supporters who help make this show and others we produce possible each week. We kindly ask you to also support the work we do by encouraging others to subscribe to our YouTube channel and website: www.democracyatwork.info

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. 

The program begins by explaining the economics behind the great US anti-leftist purge (“McCarthyism”) after 1945. It then shows the economic impacts of that purge over the last half century. Finally, it explains how that history produced a very different political response to the crash of 2008 compared to FDR’s response to 1929. *Note: This is a rebroadcast. A new episode of EU will not be released this week in observance of Memorial Day.

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.