Economic Update with Richard D. Wolff: Recent Episodes
Democracy at Work, Richard D. Wolff
Economic Update is a weekly nationally syndicated radio 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 their own financial situation as well as the economy at large. By focusing on the economic dimensions of everyday life - wages, jobs, taxes, debts, and profits - the program explores alternative ways to organize markets and government policies.
This week on Economic Update, Professor Wolff delivers updates on new U.S. government rules that are universally hostile to international students, the reduction of prosecutions for white collar crime by the U.S. Justice Department while increasing pressures on Shawn Fain, head of the powerful United Auto Workers union, an that there are now over 200 people in the Caribbean and Pacific that have been killed by the U.S. military without lawyers, trials, or judges in show of disregard for law. The second half of today's show features an interview with Dr. Wilmer J. Leon III, Professor of Political Science and specialist on U.S. politics.
We hope you enjoy this discussion and look forward to joining you next week for another all-new episode of Economic Update.
Economic Update with Richard D. Wolff is a production of Democracy at Work, Inc., and any reproduction in whole or part is strictly prohibited without written permission. We make it a point to keep the show ad-free and rely solely on viewer support to continue doing so. Every donation counts and helps us reach a larger audience with the information they need to better understand the events around the world that they won't find anywhere else.
We want to thank our devoted community of supporters who help make this show and the 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
Professor Wolff's latest book, "Understanding Capitalism," is available now for purchase: https://linktr.ee/understandingcapitalism
© 2026 Democracy at Work, Inc. All Rights Reserved
The rational approach is to ask which works better in an industry or to meet any social need: private enterprise or government enterprise. It is irrational and dogmatic to think only one or the other is allowed. For 100 years we have wasted time debating which is good and which bad. It's time to move on. Let's talk less about macro-issues like private vs public and more about the micro issue: what is the best way to organize enterprises (factories, offices, and stores): top-down hierarchical or democratic. That could bring much-needed change and improvement to today's economic systems.
We hope you enjoy this discussion and look forward to joining you next week for another all-new episode of Economic Update.
Economic Update with Richard D. Wolff is a production of Democracy at Work, Inc., and any reproduction in whole or part is strictly prohibited without written permission. We make it a point to keep the show ad-free and rely solely on viewer support to continue doing so. Every donation counts and helps us reach a larger audience with the information they need to better understand the events around the world that they won't find anywhere else.
We want to thank our devoted community of supporters who help make this show and the 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
Professor Wolff's latest book, "Understanding Capitalism," is available now for purchase: https://linktr.ee/understandingcapita...
© 2026 Democracy at Work, Inc. All Rights Reserved
This week on Economic Update, Professor Wolff devotes the entire show to a critical analysis of profit. The point is to show that it is a very biased way to look at capitalist economies and a biased way to make investment decisions. Both biases are shown to be deeply undemocratic.
We hope you enjoy this discussion and look forward to joining you next week for another all-new episode of Economic Update.
Economic Update with Richard D. Wolff is a production of Democracy at Work, Inc., and any reproduction in whole or part is strictly prohibited without written permission. We make it a point to keep the show ad-free and rely solely on viewer support to continue doing so. Every donation counts and helps us reach a larger audience with the information they need to better understand the events around the world that they won't find anywhere else.
We want to thank our devoted community of supporters who help make this show and the 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
Professor Wolff's latest book, "Understanding Capitalism," is available now for purchase: https://linktr.ee/understandingcapitalism
© 2026 Democracy at Work, Inc. All Rights Reserved
This week on Economic Update, Professor Wolff presents updates on the Australian dockworkers' union's fight against A.I., the German auto workers' fight against VW layoffs, Private Suites running private terminals for rich U.S. flyers, and Bayer/Monsanto profiting by manipulating U.S. farmers' organizations. The second half of the show features an interview with Donald H Whitehead, Jr., the director of the National Coalition of the Homeless.
We hope you enjoy this discussion and look forward to joining you next week for another all-new episode of Economic Update.
Economic Update with Richard D. Wolff is a production of Democracy at Work, Inc., and any reproduction in whole or part is strictly prohibited without written permission. We make it a point to keep the show ad-free and rely solely on viewer support to continue doing so. Every donation counts and helps us reach a larger audience with the information they need to better understand the events around the world that they won't find anywhere else.
We want to thank our devoted community of supporters who help make this show and the 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
Professor Wolff's latest book, "Understanding Capitalism," is available now for purchase: https://linktr.ee/understandingcapitalism
© 2026 Democracy at Work, Inc. All Rights Reserved
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 central concept of Marx's contribution to a critical understanding of the capitalist economic system - the entry point into his distinctive analysis - is "the surplus." Today's show is devoted to making clear (1) what the surplus is, (2) how and why the surplus is central to understanding capitalism's key features, and (3) how the surplus explains such flaws in capitalism, such as the endless class struggles it provokes and the extreme inequalities of wealth and income it generates.
This week on Economic Update, Professor delivers updates on the so-called Social Security Crisis, the gross inequality of stock ownership in the U.S. today, the exploited and underpaid non-tenure track faculty ("adjuncts," etc.) who are joining unions, especially the UAW, which won a union election on June 3 at the University of Southern California, which includes 2,700 members. The second half of the show features an interview with Ann Larson, author of the new book, Cleanup on Aisle Five: Essential Work, Poverty Wages, and the View Behind the Supermarket Register. You can find here book here:
https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Cleanup-on-Aisle-Five/Ann-Larson/9781668094501
On this week's episode of Economic Update, Professor devotes the entire program to the why and how of China's passage from abject poverty and colonial humiliation to become, in unprecedented, record historical time, a superpower economy challenging the US today.
This week on Economic Update, Professor delivers updates on the big union wins for 40,000 workers in the UC system, the ongoing strike of graduate student workers at Harvard, and basic statistics on the extent of hunger in US households (between 1 in 7 and 1 in 5 households). In the second half, Professor Wolff interviews Professor Ida Susser, author of the new book, "The Yellow Vests and the Battle for Democracy: Taking to the Streets of Paris in the 21st Century."
On this week's episode of Economic Update, Professor delivers updates on why and how worker co-ops are a strategic direction for socialism, and Europe's deindustrialization. The second half features an interview with Anne McGrew and Will Chaney about the Center for Popular Economics and its work since 1978, teaching economics in ways that neither college and university departments nor labor unions do.
This week on Economic Update, Professor Wolff briefly discusses two current large strikes by workers fighting back: the British Columbia nurses in Canada and the commuter rail workers in New York (LIRR). The rest of today's episode is an analysis of the 7.4 million Americans who are unemployed today, the causes and effects of that unemployment, the irrationality of that unemployment, and the current failed "policies" to deal with it.
This week on Economic Update, Professor Wolff delivers updates on the tentative agreement reached by the unionized portion (85%) of the staff at the Los Angeles Unified School District (400,000 students, 83,300 workers), the three separate labor unions that unified to win major improvements in wages and working conditions, how capitalist versus socialist enterprises would install AI, and how progressive mayors like Mamdani of New York could counter billionaires' threats to evade taxes by moving their businesses if any political leader taxed the rich (or moved to make the rich pay their fair share of taxes). The second half of the show features an interview with Dr. Harriet Fraad, a practicing psychotherapist in New York City, on the global movement to not have children, its social causes, and its social consequences.
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
On this week's episode of Economic Update, Professor Wolff provides updates on the 3 major teachers' unions struggling with the LA Unified School District, rising electricity costs in the U.S., and corrupt utility commissions, and on the extreme redistribution of wealth from the lower 99% to the richest 1% in the U.S. from 1990 to 2025. The second half of today's show features an interview with public health professor Stephen Bezruchka on the economic and political roots of widespread sickness in the U.S., as analyzed in his new book, "Born Sick in the USA: Improving the Health of a Nation".
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 week on Economic Update, Professor Wolff discusses the 3800 Colorado meatpackers on strike before diving into a presentation on how the war on Iran and the closure of the Strait of Hormuz have disrupted the production and transportation of oil and gas sufficiently to drive up oil and gas prices globally, while also raising the prices of fertilizer and plastic and, via rising diesel fuel prices, all products brought to retail by trucks. In short, inflation was stoked by the war. Requesting $200 billion for the war on Iran deepens the U.S. fiscal crisis even further, stretching NATO almost to the breaking point. Trump's popularity appears to be in a tailspin.
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
On this week's episode of Economic Update, Professor Wolff presents updates on European turmoil that include how the French municipal elections are revealing Macron's weaknesses, Germany's opposition of the war on Iran, the UK waffling on Iran and helping the U.S., and Europe's deepening subordination to the U.S. and China as economic giants in today's world economy—especially in advanced technological areas. The show's second half features an interview with Professor Teresa Ghilarducci on the crisis of pensions in the U.S., the "reforms" being proposed, and the grim realities to be faced if pensions continue to decline.
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 week on Economic Update, Professor Wolff discusses the flaws in the argument that profit is an appropriate, just return to the risk taken by a capitalist who invests. The critique focuses on (1) what it means that a capitalist can withhold means of production from production, and (2) how workers, their families, and communities also take risks in any productive enterprise yet get no profits, thereby invalidating the justification of profit as a reward for risk. In the second half, he shows that technical innovations such as AI do not cause unemployment; rather, the capitalist system does. An example is offered of how AI could be installed to advantage every enterprise's majority—its employees—rather than profit its employers (a minority in enterprises).
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
On this episode of Economic Update, Professor Wolff provides updates on job losses in February 2026 in the U.S. economy, how California unions are actively protecting immigrant workers from ICE, capitalist crashes and politics (1929 vs. today), and Europe's economic dead end. In the second half, Professor Wolff interviews journalist-critic (and Bernie Sanders' speechwriter) Richard RJ Eskow about AI.
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 week on Economic Update, Professor Wolff explains how and why Trump's tariff policies add uncertainties to global trade that undermine the very benefits he promised tariffs would bring. He also explains why the United States has never truly been a democracy, but rather an authoritarian society whose current shift is from a polite authoritarianism to a blunt, unvarnished one. The core argument is that the workplace—whether a factory, office, or store—is organized in a fundamentally authoritarian way, and that this structure then extends to and infects the rest of society.
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
On this week's episode of Economic Update, Professor Wolff discusses the history of highly successful government-built and-operated housing launched in 1918, the gains won by UAW workers in the first contract at the Volkswagen factory in Chattanooga, TN, and the story of the three-year strike by the Newspaper Guild against the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, which was finally won—only for the paper's owners to shut it down. The second half features an interview with Rob Robinson about housing, affordability, and homelessness in the U.S. 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
On this week's episode of Economic Update, Professor Wolff breaks down the simultaneous huge spending increases on the military in the U.S. and Europe, suggesting a shared crisis leading to a shared self-protective solution found by the ruling classes both in Europe and in the US. The shared end of colonialism plus the rise of global competition from China and the BRICS plunges their ruling classes into parallel crises, for which they prepare their last node of self-protection, namely building up domestic military. Europe does so in disguise and for self-protection against Russia. The U.S. does it by claiming self-protection from China, plus the rest of the world. We hope you enjoy this discussion and look forward to joining you next week for another all-new episode of Economic Update.
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
On this week's episode of Economic Update, Professor Wolff provides updates on the shared significance of three major strikes: New York City nurses, San Francisco teachers, Kaiser Permanente health workers in California; the cause of U.S./European discord at the 63rd annual Munich Security Conference in Germany in February. The second half of today's show features an interview with a New York City psychotherapist on the social significance of the Jeffrey Epstein scandal.
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 week on Economic Update, Professor Wolff provides an assessment of the first year of Trump's second term in office, covering how he inherited the problems of a declining empire and proved unable, or unwilling, to stop or reverse the decline, and how that flows in part from the ways the Republican and Democratic parties operate and in part from the difficult conditions both face. The results at the end of the first year are very poor for both parties.
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 week on Economic Update, Professor Wolff delivers updates on U.K. PM Starmer's trade visit to China, the new head of the Federal Reserve, and the escalation of a general strike in Minneapolis and its spread across the U.S. as people gear up against government assaults on cities. In the second half, Professor Wolff interviews Professor Ray Madoff of Boston College Law School to discuss the flaws in the U.S. tax system and her new book, The Second Estate: How the Tax Code Made an American Aristocracy.
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
On this week's episode of Economic Update, Professor Wolff delivers updates on how 73% of U.S. credit card debt is needed for everyday purchases, the issues with Venezuelan oil, and MAGA splits as Trump panders to the voting masses at the expense of a few giant corporations. The second half features an interview with Geo Maher, author, educator, and activist, on the crisis in Venezuela and its long-term implications for the U.S. and the rest of the world.
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
On this week's episode of Economic Update, Professor Wolff delivers updates on the Pentagon's investments into private companies, the end of electric vehicle subsidies in conjunction with the arrival of Chinese EVs in the U.S., the growing trade and produce exchange between Canada and China, and the nurses' strike of NYC private hospitals grows to include 15,000. In the second part of today's episode, Professor Wolff talks with Professor Clara Mattei about her new book, "Escape from Capitalism."
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 week on Economic Update, Professor Wolff analyzes topics from Israel and Gaza to Epstein scandals to U.S. neocolonialism to Europe's failure to seize Russian wealth held in European banks with a focus on the historical importance of key developments shaping the global crisis emerging 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
This week on Economic Update, Professor Wolff devotes the first half to New York's new Mayor Zohran Mamdani. He discusses how and why he defeated so many efforts to block him, and what he needs to do to succeed, deliver on his campaign promises, and create a lasting legacy of his time in office. The second half of today's show features an interview with Sabrina Salvati on her new documentary film, "REMOVED: Black Erasure in Boston."
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
On this week's episode of Economic Update, Professor Wolff delivers updates on the Black Friday strikes against Amazon in Germany and against Zara in Spain, the rapid decline of New School University as an example of a deepening crisis in U.S. higher education, and a new U.S. national security paper that throws Europe under the bus, further signaling the end of the U.S. empire. The second part of today's show features an interview with author, activist, and host of "The Muckrake Podcast," Jared Yates-Sexton, on his political analysis and campaign for change in the U.S 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
On this week's episode of Economic Update, Professor Wolff provides an analysis of "globalization" as a fancy slogan to hide a profit-driven, profit-boosting period (1970-2015) that saw US capitalists move factories abroad. It destroyed so many well-paid factory jobs (especially of white, male Christians) that it produced massive suffering among the affected communities. As their rage built and both Republican and Democratic politicians turned a blind eye to their suffering, right-wing politicians saw an opportunity. Find a candidate really different from the old Republican and Democratic establishments - a Trump - and have him express the rage, anger, and bitterness of those who had lost the American Dream. Trump blamed globalization, foreigners in general, immigrants in particular, liberals, and Democrats: all lumped into "globalists," a term that changed from celebration to total evil. Conveniently for the leaders of major US corporations - the people who had actually made the decisions to move production abroad and profited from that escaped from Trump's blame. Now he promises to lead them to more profits by switching back to economic nationalism. But like globalization, it will prove profitable for the same corporations now as it did before. America First will hide the suffering it imposes every bit as much as globalization did. Capitalism is the problem.
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 week's episode of Economic Update is an adaptation from a talk Professor Wolff gave at Yale University on December 2, 2025, to the Yale Political Union. In this presentation, he discusses the significance of the title "Marx was Right," which Yale offered, and points out that, over the last 75 years, such a topic or event would not likely have occurred on that campus. He provides a basic summary of critical points throughout Marx's work where he has been proven "right." Professor Wolff also discusses how and why socialism has evolved, from the rise and fall of the USSR to the rise of the People's Republic of China.
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
On this week's episode of Economic Update, Professor Wolff delivers updates on the internal struggle inside the U.S. Teamsters Union between O'Brien leadership and Hooker challenge group (pro- vs anti-Trump), Trump-McMahon attack on the nursing profession in the U.S., and Trump's own reduction of tariffs and thus of government revenue from tariffs. Then, Professor Wolff interviews Abby Martin about her new film, "Earth's Greatest Enemy," which explores the U.S. military's disastrous ecological impact on the planet.
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 week on Economic Update, Professor Wolff delivers updates on the nationwide Starbucks strikes and on the results of Trump's tariffs: facts and fakery. The second part of the show features an interview with journalist and podcast host John Fugelsang about his new book: Separation of Church and Hate: A Sane Person's Guide to Taking Back the Bible from Fundamentalists, Fascists, and Flock-Fleecing Frauds.
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
On today's episode of Economic Update, Professor Wolff delivers an introduction to the key economic concept of "the surplus." He explains economic structures as ways of organizing the production and social distribution of the surplus. Then he briefly applies this concept to the economies of slavery and feudalism before focusing on the role of the surplus in capitalism. Finally, we use the surplus to delineate the ways alternative post-capitalist systems, such as socialism or communism, distribute it.
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The totality of today's Economic Update is devoted to exploring (1) the multiple ways that capitalism imposes class warfare on its people, and (2) how class warfare shapes the capitalist system's impact on employers and employees. Specific examples show (1) what kind of class struggle is involved in tariffs such as those imposed by Trump, (2) how inflation exemplifies class war, and (3) how unemployment reflects and includes class war. A question addressed throughout today's program is "Why establish and maintain an economic system that produces and reproduces class war across its history?"
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
The totality of today's Economic Update is devoted to exploring (1) the multiple ways that capitalism imposes class warfare on its people, and (2) how class warfare shapes the capitalist system's impact on employers and employees. Specific examples show (1) what kind of class struggle is involved in tariffs such as those imposed by Trump, (2) how inflation exemplifies class war, and (3) how unemployment reflects and includes class war. A question addressed throughout today's program is "Why establish and maintain an economic system that produces and reproduces class war across its history?"
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
On this week's episode of Economic Update, Professor Wolff's updates include the 60+ people killed by the U.S. military in what it claimed were "narco boats," Socialist Catherine Connolly wins the Presidency in Ireland, Canada hit with nationwide postal workers strike alongside a strike of the entire public workforce (51,000) in Alberta, Canada, and finally a new poll showing that 67% of U.S. college students look favorably or neutrally on socialism. In the second half of today's show, Professor Wolff interviews Robert Ovetz and Kevin van Meter on effective new ways of organizing workers.
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
On this week's episode of Economic Update, Professor Wolff delivers updates on the Italian dockworker unions refusing to load or unload Israeli cargo, the broadened national general strikes in Italy demanding the end of the Italian government's support for Israel because of Gaza, and a discussion of the return of socialism into U.S. politics after 80 years. The second half to the show features an interview with Balakrishnan Rajagopal, Professor at M.I.T. and United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Right to Adequate Housing.
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 week on Economic Update, Professor Wolff delivers updates on the impending U.S. recession, JP Morgan admits failures of the neoliberal period as it turns nationalist, and the causes of mass shootings in the U.S. In the second half of today's show, Professor Wolff interviews two young U.S. union organizers and their organizing method of "workers inquiry": Alex Pyne of the Blue Bottle Independent Union and Anastasia Wilson of Hobart and William Smith Colleges.
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
On this week's episode of Economic Update, Professor Wolff delivers updates on the censoring of U.S. government reports on hunger, changes in U.S. agriculture amid capitalism's decline, the special place of white, male, Christian union members in the MAGA world, and the relation of A.I. and jobs. In the second half of the show, Professor Wolff interviews UCLA Professor Ramesh Srinivasan, host of the podcast "Utopias," on technology, capitalism, and our collective future.
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 week on Economic Update, Professor Wolff delivers updates on the I.C.E. raid at a battery factory in Georgia, the growing inequality in the U.S. during both Trump terms, the 75 U.S. military airstrikes on Somalia in 2025, and France's mass national street actions against the Macron government's austerity policies. The second part of the episode features an interview with Christopher G Beck, the architect who is organizing a union of architects in the U.S. and author of the new book, The Labor of Architecture.
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
On this week's episode of Economic Update, Professor Wolff delivers updates on the non-profit reporters that are unionizing in Ohio, the Hilton Hotel workers striking in Houston, Canada's third party with radical leadership, and Canada's postal strike pits private profits of UPS, FedEx, etc, vs the nation's real postal needs. In the second half of the show, Professor Wolff interviews Kim Westcott, Managing Director of Women Building Up, a new community organization in Brooklyn, New York, dedicated to helping formerly incarcerated women reintegrate into new lives.
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
On this week’s episode of Economic Update, Professor Wolff delivers updates on the non-profit reporters that are unionizing in Ohio, the Hilton Hotel workers striking in Houston, Canada's third party with radical leadership, and Canada's postal strike pits private profits of UPS, FedEx, etc, vs the nation's real postal needs. In the second half of the show, Professor Wolff interviews Kim Westcott, Managing Director of Women Building Up, a new community organization in Brooklyn, New York, dedicated to helping formerly incarcerated women reintegrate into new lives.
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 week on Economic Update, Professor Wolff delivers updates on the flight attendants' union strike in Canada, polls show that U.S. Democrats are shifting leftward, with majorities favoring socialism, Nigel Farage discusses Epstein and prominent Americans, and the French people move against Macron's austerity through mass national street actions. In the second half of today’s show, Professor Wolff interviews attorney Michael S. Smith, co-author of the new book, “From the Flag to the Cross: Fascism American Style.”
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
On this week’s episode of Economic Update, Professor Wolff delivers updates on the Vermont Public Employers who got the contractual right to act with pay to "defend democracy," Tesla’s board offers Musk a $1 trillion CEO pay package, Trump and top corporate executives merge at Intel and other hi-tech corporations, quite like the mergers in Nazi Germany and fascist Italy. The second half of the show features an interview with Joe Berry and Helena Worthen, long-time organizers of 'contingent' scholastic faculty in the U.S. (now comprising 75% of higher education teachers), and who are now activists in Higher Education Labor United (HELU).
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 week on Economic Update, Professor Wolff delivers updates on Bernie-endorsed Independent U.S. Senate candidate Graham Platner in Maine, the latest Gallup poll showing that 68% Americans are pro-union, more than 97% of park workers at Yosemite and Sequoia & Kings Canyon parks vote to unionize, ICE has so far deported half a million, while DOGE has fired a million federal workers (mostly high-wage) resulting in a significant net job loss nationwide. The second half of the show features an interview with Trent Lange, leader of the California movement to get money out of politics.
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
The left-wing surge of the U.S. working class during the Great Depression of the 1930s compelled the Democratic Party to prioritize serving the working class more than it had before or would again. It was called the New Deal. In response, the US employer class, angry that taxes on corporations and the rich were used to fund government programs for the people, turned to the Republican Party after World War II ended in 1945 and directed it to roll back the New Deal, reducing or eliminating all it had accomplished. Because the New Deal made the great mistake of leaving profits in the hands of employers, the employers used those profits to provide Republicans with the means to defeat the Democrats and roll back the New Deal. In response, the Democrats sought funding, finding it in the hands of many donors who had supported the Republicans. For many years, the U.S. was led by one party or the other: the GOP rolled back the New Deal faster, while the Democrats did so more slowly—one ruling class, two parties to serve it. The 2008 Great Recession ended the cozy system, as both parties had to protect the privileges of the corporations and the rich, even as the US empire and economy declined. As the mass of people suffered and neither the GOP nor the Democrats stopped it, people became desperate and elected Trump out of rage and hysteria. He did not and will not solve the fundamental problems any more than his predecessors did. For that, a genuinely new and different political party is needed — one that puts the American Working People First, the American majority. The program concludes with suggestions on how such a new party could truly transform the country and address its most pressing problems.
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 week’s episode of Economic Update features an analysis by Professor Wolff on: 1. How Trump seeks to address the problem of costly American wars and their impact on sharply rising budget deficits, 2. How the rising U.S. debt has led to the loss of the United States’ "AAA" credit rating, 3. How Trump’s response is to seek to slash government spending and raise money by imposing tariffs on the entire world, 4. How this backfires as other countries retaliate, hurting US exports and causing the dollar to lose its appeal as the world's safest currency, 5. How China's economic rise is more substantial than the U.S. measures aimed at stopping or slowing that rise, 6. How the declining U.S. empire undermines the U.S. capitalist economy by making it increasingly difficult for CEOs and other corporate leaders in the U.S., households, and the government to prevail over and dominate the U.S. economy and society.
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On this week’s episode of Economic Update, Professor Wolff delivers updates on the blow back to Iowa Senator Joni Ernst’s rationalization of budget cuts to Medicaid to help fund tax cuts for corporations and the rich, 8,000 Connecticut healthcare workers win contract gains by threatening to strike, and how the advertising industry spawned by capitalism distorts and corrupts human communication. The show's second half features an interview with UC-Berkeley Professor Arlie Hochschild on the reasons why Trump's political base continues to support him.
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On this week’s episode of Economic Update, Professor Wolff delivers updates on U.S. vs Chinese wheelbarrows, the Cold War error against China, the lasting effects of terminated U.S. federal workers, how tariffs alone won't bring manufacturing back to the U.S., further declines in U.S. coal mining, McDonald's hamburgers in the U.S., and the rapid economic decline in Europe.
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This week on Economic Update, Professor Wolff delivers updates on Trump’s cuts to school mental health counselors, the mass strike in LA County, why China is better positioned for a trade war with the U.S., and how profit drives corporate decisions to relocate U.S. factories overseas, thereby making the US economy vulnerable to long, global supply lines.
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This week on Economic Update, Professor Wolff begins by presenting updates on the death of libertarianism and the rise of US economic nationalism, and US universities become big businesses, governed by money concerns. In the episode's second half, Professor Wolff interviews Professor Geert Dhondt, the Chair of the Economics Department and Economics Professor at John Jay College of the City University of New York, on how colleges and universities are reacting to Trump's attack on higher education.
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On this week’s episode of Economic Update, Professor Wolff discusses U.S. Universities and Politicians' repression of student protesters, the continued global demands of indigenous people for liberation from colonialism's legacies, and Harvard's corporate administration sacrificing its students' and faculty's freedom of expression to pander to some of its donors.
Finally, an interview with Professor Jerome N. Warren, editor of the newly published Routledge Handbook of Cooperative Economics and Management.
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In this week’s episode of Economic Update, Professor Wolff discusses the economic repercussions of Western sanctions and how the retaliations they provoke. We then turn to the latest labor strikes and wage & benefit gains achieved by unions at Boeing and East Coast dock workers. We highlight China's dominance of the global energy markets; and U.S. spending on military and police.
Finally, we close with an economic analysis of Israel's ongoing violence in Gaza.
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On this week’s episode of Economic Update, with the 2024 U.S. Presidential Election 8 days away, Professor Richard Wolff explores the shared refusal of both major candidates and their parties to face and debate solutions to the major problems facing US capitalism in 2024: (1) Inequality, (2) instability and (3) a declining empire. Instead we are witnessing both Trump and Harris compete to be the "cheerleader in chief" for capitalism.
Missing from the discourse is a genuine opposition party that might dare to offer an alternative non-capitalist vision and solution to the system's deepening problems.
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On this week’s episode of Economic Update, Professor Richard Wolff discusses the new law signed by California Governor Gavin Newsom banning "legacy and donor" favoritism in private college admissions to foster a "merit system." We also bring your attention to Javier Milei and his regime in Argentina as they impose austerity measures on the country: the masses will suffer to pay off debts that enriched the elite few in classic ways.
Finally, we Interviewed economics Professor Ian Seda-Irizarry of the City University of New York about the conditions provoking the rise of the political left and left unity in Puerto Rico.
Ian Seda-Irizarry is an Associate Professor and Graduate Program Director at the Economics Department of John Jay College, City University of New York. His work focuses on the current socio-economic crisis of Puerto Rico and its relation to the island’s first fiscal crisis in the mid-1970s.
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On this week’s episode of Economic Update, Professor Richard Wolff discusses how FED Chair Jerome Powell admits capitalism's intrinsic instability, a Tennessee plastic plant won't let workers leave before storm Helene hits, we examine new drugs for obesity (Ozempic and Wegovy) which highlights the failures of for-profit medical care.
Finally, we interview Jordan Chariton on his new book "We, the Poisoned: Exposing The Flint Water Crisis Cover-up and the Poisoning of 100,000".
Jordan Chariton is an independent investigative reporter known for reporting on the ground across America on major stories like the Flint water crisis, the Native American protests at Standing Rock over the Dakota Access Pipeline, the 2016 and 2020 presidential campaigns, and in-depth authentic reporting on union drives, worker strikes, poverty, homelessness, and state and local corruption. Chariton has broken significant investigative stories in The Guardian, VICE News, The Intercept, and Detroit Metro Times; other work from Chariton has been featured on CNBC.com, TheHill.com, Mediaite, and the popular YouTube news channel Breaking Points.
Twitter (X) - @JordanChariton
Chariton’s in-the-trenches, gritty reporting has amassed a large following. While covering the 2016 campaign, his tough questions sparked viral videos garnering hundreds of thousands of views. In 2017, he was arrested while covering Black Lives Matter protests in St. Louis. In 2018, he launched his own independent news outlet, Status Coup News, which is on YouTube.
He is best known for his tireless reporting on the Flint water crisis, making 21 reporting trips to the Midwest city to break several major stories on the cover-up of one of the worst environmental catastrophes of the 21st century.
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.
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On this week’s episode of Economic Update, Professor Richard Wolff addresses the numerous requests for financial planning or investment advice that he receives from many of you. We touch on the truth about investing in the stock and/or bond markets. In addition, Professor Wolff offers a basic understanding of the economics of US capitalism's century-long, profit-driven failure to adequately provide housing to its people.
Finally, an interview with Professors Eleni Schirmer and Sofya Aptekar about their new book "Lend and Rule", from Common Notions Press, and their fight against the financialization of US public universities, and why it is so necessary.
Sofya Aptekar is an associate professor of urban studies at the City University of New York School of Labor and Urban Studies. She is the author of Green Card Soldier (MIT, 2023) and a delegate of the Professional Staff Congress. She can be found on X/Twitter at @sofyaaptekar
Eleni Schirmer is a writer living in Montréal. She currently holds a postdoc at Concordia University's Social Justice Centre and organizes with the Debt Collective, the nation's first union of debtors. She can be found on X/Twitter at @EleniSchirmer.
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On this week’s episode of Economic Update, Professor Richard Wolff offers a special episode to continue the previous discussion on communism. We will discuss how socialism's history evolved into separating socialism from communism and creating multiple, different meanings of what is considered communism today.
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On this week’s episode of Economic Update, Professor Richard Wolff offers a special episode discussing the unscary origins of the ideas of communism and socialism before the Cold War demonized them. We will discuss how socialism's history evolved into separating socialism from communism and creating multiple, different meanings of what is considered communism today.
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On this week’s episode of Economic Update, Professor Richard Wolff draws attention to the 10,000 hotel workers who recently conducted a strike impacting major hotels across 19 US cities. We highlight the contested merger of the two largest grocery chains in America. Albertsons and Kroger threaten to become the third largest retail giant after Amazon, and Walmart plus the Canadian government forces 9000 Canadian railway striking workers back to work, with murmurs of a general strike looming. We also give a shout-out to a small Brooklyn pizzeria unionizing with Starbucks workers.
Finally, an exclusive interview with world-renowned economist, politician, author, and the former finance minister of Greece Yanis Varoufakis discusses global economic change and the working class, topics discussed in his latest work "Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism".
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On this week’s special Labor day episode of Economic Update, Professor Richard Wolff honors both Labor Day and President Abraham Lincoln. President Lincoln once said in 1861 that "Labor is the superior of capital." Yet, capital in the United States has only two major political parties, the Republicans and the Democrats who both are currently advocating for capital over labor and essentially operating as a two-party monopoly excluding all others.
In today's political discourse, Labor has no party advocating for what Lincoln once advocated. The injustice and inequality generated in and for society by capitalist economies is neither necessary nor welcome. A genuine labor party is the missing solution.
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On this week’s Economic Update, Professor Richard Wolff discusses Kate Pickett's and Richard Wilkinson's best-selling study in the book "The Spirit Level" (2009), showing how economic inequality correlates with most of the major social problems of our time.
We will juxtapose their latest paper "The Spirit Level at 15: The Enduring Impact of Inequality" Which details how economic inequality has only gotten worse since the past fifteen years, despite government laws and programs aimed to "reduce" inequality.
Wilkinson and Pickett show how inequality leads to severe social ills, divisions, and disintegration. What we need is to face that it is capitalism that generates the inequality that generates the hostilities and social tensions intruding upon and damaging our lives."
Important reading "The Spirit Level at 15: The Enduring Impact of Inequality: https://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/215026/1/The_Spirit_Level_at_15_2024_FINAL.pdf
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.
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On this week’s Economic Update, Professor Richard Wolff discusses the growing Labor movement and the nuclear disarmament movements in the United States; we will also examine the economic impacts of people under 50 not having nor wanting to have children; we highlight the UK Conservatives fearmongering claiming Free Speech is in danger from "cancel culture" and how anti "cancel culture" legislation was blocked by the new Labor gov't; We also discuss an Ohio court ruling that favors employers over the general public around boneless chicken that had bones.
Finally, we end the show with an interview with psychotherapist Tess Fraad-Wolff on gender, the patriarchy, and recent changes in capitalism.
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On this week's program, we question the effectiveness as well as the economics of US sanctions (Economic Warfare), also the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) endorses the United Auto Workers (UAW) plan of setting all union contracts to expire on May 1, 2028, essentially laying the groundwork for a "General Strike". We also highlight the latest rhetoric from the US Chamber of Commerce's declaration of a "labor shortage" which only masks their desire for government help in procuring more workers without having to offer higher pay and better working conditions to overcome the "phony" labor shortage.
Finally, we Interview Professor Clara Mattei from Rio as Brazil hosts G20 meetings and discuss the protest events calling for an end to the suffering of the people of Gaza.
Clara E. Mattei is an Associate Professor in the Economics Department of The New School for Social Research.
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This week's episode features updates on the UK and French elections showing dramatic shifts to the left contradicting US mass media, US self-induced global economic isolation in pursuit of punishing countries doing business with China, Trump and Biden equally unwilling to solve Social Security's financial problems by taxing incomes of the rich as Congress could and should. Professor Wolff closes with an interview with Dr. Harriet Fraad on global declines in marriage and birth rates and those declines' connections to capitalism.
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On this week’s Economic Update, Professor Wolff devotes the entire program to explaining clearly and accessibly what government deficits are, why they occur, and who benefits from them.
We show how deficits and debts reward corporations and the rich at the expense of the mass of employees. This show will equip our audience to see through the misuse of deficits and debts in the 2024 election campaigns.
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On this week’s Economic Update, Professor Wolff discusses a huge victory for Uber and Lyft drivers' struggling for better wages in Massachusetts; we also bring to your attention six United States senators who criticized Jamie Dimon, CEO of JP Morgan Chase for failing to curb fossil fuel investments as he promised. In addition, we discuss the unfortunate new law passed by the new right-wing government in Greece extending the working week to six days.
Finally, we close our program with an Interview with longtime activist Rob Robinson, on the latest Supreme Court decision Grants Pass v. Johnson, which essentially criminalizes the homeless poor as part of its extreme right-wing change.
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On this week’s Economic Update, Professor Wolff discusses the remarkable bursts of unionization at Starbucks in the US, award-winning New York nurse fired for referring to "genocide" in Gaza, and critique of Paul Krugman's argument that "democracy" is at stake in the 2024 election.
Finally, we close with a major discussion on the tension between the realities of climate change and the profit-driven fossil fuel industry that dominates our global economy
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On this week’s Economic Update, the entire program is devoted to how old socialism's rapid growth and global spread in the 19th and 20th centuries entailed a focus on the state. Key issues were: (1) would the socialist state limit itself to regulating capitalist enterprises and the market (as in many Western European nations) to enhance the well-being of the employee class or would the state itself own and operate enterprises and replace the market with state planning (as in the USSR), and (2) would the socialist strategy to acquire state power be reformist and electoral or revolutionary and armed. Concrete experiences in and with both kinds of old (i.e. state-focused) socialism led to self-criticisms from which a new socialism has emerged for the 21st century. The new socialism criticizes the state-focus of the old and prioritizes the transformation of the workplace over the social positioning of the state in and for the socialist vision and strategy.
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In this week’s Economic Update, Professor Richard Wolff discusses the rise of the Chinese car industry, the struggle between employers vs employees over in-person vs remote workplaces, and the US military's anti-vax program in the Philippines as part of the US-China Cold War that is already underway. In the second half of our program, we interview Kristen Gonzalez, New York State Senator, District 59, on progressives winning elections.
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In this week’s Economic Update, Professor Richard Wolff discusses the latest US and EU tariffs against China's electric vehicles, 27,000 Virginia teachers vote to unionize, and students and workers at all 6 University of California campuses strike against attempted repression of students peacefully advocating a Gaza ceasefire.
In the second half of our program, we interview Oscar-nominated and Emmy Winning writer, director, and anti-fracking activist Josh Fox of the award-winning films GASLAND Parts 1 and 2 on his latest film "The Edge of Nature"
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In this week’s Economic Update, Professor Richard Wolff devotes the entire program to an analysis of tariffs. We discuss why tariffs are not a worker's issue, why capitalism's continuous swings between free trade and protectionist periods and phases make little impact on workers, and why competing capitalists seek to get workers to support their positions on tariffs.
We end our show with an interview David Van Deusen, a socialist and leader of Vermont AFL-CIO.
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In this week’s Economic Update, Professor Richard Wolff discusses The Washington Post's exposure of the corporate rich sponsoring police repression against student protests and how Boeing rewards CEOs while it exhibits the airlines' worst safety record. In addition, the UAW loses union election as German capitalists and southern governors join forces to intimidate workers with job threats. Finally, we highlight why mass public transport is a better alternative to gas-powered vehicles than electric vehicles.
We end our show with an interview David Van Deusen, a socialist and leader of Vermont AFL-CIO.
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Third Party Politics and Social Change We would like to present a special edition of Economic Update featuring an exclusive discussion between Professor Richard Wolff and Dr. Cornel West. This program was recorded in June, 2023, but unfortunately we were unable to air this important discussion at that time. You will hear Dr. West explain why he undertook the challenge and burden to run for President of the United States. Given the political reality of US politics, as exhausted by the two major parties, we thought it would be a public service to invite Dr. West to be heard in this form. No endorsement is intended.
If you haven't already, please subscribe to our channel, follow us on social media and of course be sure to sign up on our website: www.democracyatwork.info And as always, we thank for your attention, support and solidarity. The d@w Team
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In this week’s Economic Update, Professor Richard Wolff comments on US megabanks once again taking new off-the-books risks, Elon Musk endorsing right-wing undemocratic census proposals and Fossil Fuel industry executives bribe Trump with campaign donations. In addition, we highlight the many US and global labor unions and workers who have joined the movement in supporting of ending the Israeli military actions in Gaza.
Finally, we Interview with Jaz Brisack and Casey Moore, organizers of Starbucks stores and of Inside Organizer School (IOS), a new organization that trains workers how to unionize their workplaces.
The Inside Organizer School (IOS) is a unique program aimed at making inside organizers as effective as possible in motivating and mobilizing their co- workers. The IOS branches off from traditional union organizer training which addresses staff development, focusing its curriculum instead on developing inside organizers who organize from within the workplace.
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[EU S14 E20] Roots of a Surging US Labor Movement
In this week’s Economic Update, Professor Richard Wolff discusses the reasons why the official United States unemployment rate is currently low in comparison to historic rates; We also highlight why U.S. restaurants are losing business. We then turn to the hypocrisy of Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen in the face of repression of growing American protest movement against Israeli policy in Gaza. In addition, we discuss Gabriel Zuckman's report on the economic impact of the dramatic cuts in taxes on billionaires vs rising taxes on the poorer half of the U.S.
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[EU S14 E19] Prospects for a Political Turn Left
This week’s Economic Update Professor Richard Wolff discusses the successful unionization drives that is sweeping across US universities (example: Boston University), We highlight the facts that disprove Biden's "great economy" claims and why inflation is much worse in the United States than in China. Finally we have an exclusive Interview with Jared Yates Sexton, writer and political analyst, on prospects for a left turn in US politics.
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[EU S14 E18] Uneven Development a Key Problem of Capitalism
This week in honor of Karl Marx's birthday over this past weekend, Professor Richard Wolff offers a discussion of Marx's important theory of uneven development as central to capitalism. We show its widespread existence, using examples of it from past and present. We conclude by showing how uneven development helps cause key social problems in capitalism.
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[EU S14 E17] The Phenomenon of China
This week’s Economic Update Professor Richard Wolff dedicates the entire show to the economic developmental achievement of China, together with the historical background that motivated that achievement. We analyze the uniqueness of both the economic philosophy and the politics of China.
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[EU S14 E16] A Critique of Government Spending
This week’s Economic Update Professor Richard Wolff devotes this program devoted to how to understand government spending. How it shapes the larger society. We will focus on two questions 1) What is the government spending on? and 2) How is that money going to be used, and who benefits? If government spending only flows to capitalist corporations, they will use it to reproduce capitalism including its inequalities and injustices. This is a crucial impact of government spending but rarely examined. The alternative - spending on worker coops - is explained and explored as a better alternative.
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[EU S14 E15] A Sea Change In US Labor's Militancy
In this week’s Economic Update Professor, Richard Wolff examines US spending on war materials for Ukraine and Israel, we will discuss Chinese Electric Vehicle imports and the US's protectionist response, and we will highlight the possible convergence of worker cooperatives as part of union negotiating strategies, and we discuss the impact of Harvard college workers vote overwhelmingly to join two unions. Finally, we Interview author and union organizer, Kim Kelly.
Kim Kelly is a journalist, author, and third-generation union member based in Philadelphia. She is a a regular contributor to Teen Vogue, In These Times, the Baffler, Rolling Stone, and many more, and her first book, FIGHT LIKE HELL: The Untold History of American Labor, is out now via One Signal/Simon & Schuster.
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.
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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.
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[EU S14 E14] Economic Update: The Myth of Black Buying Power
This week’s Economic Update Professor Richard Wolff discusses how the capitalist political economy can explain the Baltimore bridge disaster, we explain why raising minimum wages helps big vs small businesses. We highlight the recent court rulings in New York and how cities can lower rents for their citizens as Kingston, NY just did, (if tenants mobilize to do so).
Finally an Interview with Professor Jared A. Ball on the myths of black buying power and black capitalism and the role such myths play in supporting capitalism.
Jared A. Ball is a Professor of Communication and Africana Studies at Morgan State University in Baltimore, MD. and author of The Myth and Propaganda of Black Buying Power. Ball is also host of the podcast “iMiXWHATiLiKE!”, co-founder of Black Power Media
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.
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[EU S14 E13] Resurgent Labor Organizing In The South
This week’s Economic Update Professor Richard Wolff discusses the US Treasury Department charges Apple as monopoly, Georgia's state government sides openly with employers against unions, two union members decide to enter important elections as independent voices in Nebraska and West Virginia, and a critique of the FED's policy that keeps inflation and interest rates high. Finally we Interview Mike Elk, publisher of the Payday Report, on his views regarding the important UAW fight for union recognition at VW plant Chattanooga, TN.
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.
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[EU S14 E12] How Capitalism Distributes Power
Updates on resurging child labor in US, colleges athlete vote to join unions, unionization sweeping not-for-profit charities (hospitals, museums, etc) such as MassMoca in western Massachusetts. Major discussion of how capitalism concentrates power in mass media (including social media), in authoritarian internal structures of corporations, and via donations and other controls exercised over two major political parties and over politicians.
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.
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THANK YOU FOR YOUR UNDERSTANDING, YOUR PATIENCE, YOUR KINDNESSES, CONCERNS, QUESTIONS, DEVOTION, YOUR SOLIDARITY & MOST IMPORTANTLY,
THANK YOU FOR YOUR SUPPORT.
IT HAS MEANT MORE THAN WE CAN SAY OVER THE PAST COUPLE OF MONTHS THAT WERE RIFE WITH TRIALS & TRIBULATION, BETRAYAL & HEARTACHE, BUT WE CONTINUE TO GET CLOSER TO WHERE WE WERE WITH EVERYDAY THANKS IN LARGE PART TO YOU, OUR FAMILY, OUR FRIENDS & THOSE WHO SUPPORT US STILL.
If you haven't already, connect with us for the latest news from d@w by going to our website:
https://www.democracyatwork.info
There you will begin to see bits & pieces of the old @w as well as a few peeks into some of the exciting new things taking shape as a better version of d@w is on the horizon and we're sure you will enjoy.
And don't forget to sign up for our newsletter so you won't miss any of the rollouts we have planned and here's a wink wink hint - Prof. Wolff's newest book is hitting the presses super soon and will be for sale before you know it.
[EU S13 E25] Today's Class Struggles with Chris Hedges
Updates on US small/medium businesses converting to worker coops, strikes at west coast ports and UPS, an employer uses fake priest to get workers' confessions for employers' use, Delaware allows businesses to vote in local elections (alongside individuals). Interview Chris Hedges on class struggles here and now.
Economic Update with Richard D. Wolff is a @democracyatwrk 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:
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Every donation counts and helps us spread Prof. Wolff's message to a larger audience.
Also, a sincere apology for the continued spotty releases of Economic Update. We're ironing out the last remaining wrinkles and should be back(ish) by mid-August.
Thank you all again, and we'll speak to you next week.
WE OWE YOU ALL AN APOLOGY WE OWE YOU ALL AN EXPLANATION WE OWE YOU ALL OUR DEEPEST SENSE OF GRATITUDE THANK YOU FOR YOUR SUPPORT, YOUR UNDERSTANDING, YOUR PATIENCE, YOUR KINDNESSES, YOUR CONCERNS, YOUR QUESTIONS, YOUR DEVOTION, YOUR SOLIDARITY & MOST IMPORTANTLY, THANK YOU FOR YOUR SUPPORT. IT HAS MEANT MORE THAN WE CAN SAY HERE OVER THE PAST TWO MONTHS OF TRIALS, TRIBULATION AND NOW, THE TRIUMPH TO COME.
Please stay connected with us for the latest news from d@w and stay tuned as well as Prof. Wolff explains what's been happening with d@w and the exciting changes to come that we're sure you will enjoy. Sign up for our newsletter for more info and updates as we roll out the next chapter of d@w. https://www.democracyatwork.info/sign_up
*********** [EU S13 E24] Capitalism's Costly Contradictions ***********
Updates on real US unemployment problem; Congress betrays students on student debt issue; huge majorities polled support US teachers, increased teachers pay, teachers' freedoms to teach about race, and teachers' power vs boards of education and state governors, importance of ILWU strike shutting down west coast seaports. Major discussions of capitalism's contradictions around (1) capitalists forever "saving on labor costs,"and (2) capitalists celebrating self-correcting markets." Economic Update with Richard D. Wolff is a @democracyatwrk 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 Every donation counts and helps us spread Prof. Wolff's message to a larger audience. A special thank you to our devoted donor community whose contributions make this show possible each week. ************
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Shop our CO-OP made MERCH: https://democracy-at-work-shop.myshop... ************ Check out the Hardcover edition of “Understanding Marxism,” by Professor Richard Wolff at: https://www.lulu.com/ “Marxism always was the critical shadow of capitalism. Their interactions changed them both. Now Marxism is once again stepping into the light as capitalism shakes from its own excesses and confronts decline.”
Yanis Varoufakis, elected member Greek parliament, joins Prof. Wolff on this week's show and offers his original, critical perspectives on (1) the banking crisis, (2) the decline of the US empire and US capitalism, (3) the mass uprisings of the French and Greek working classes in Europe, (4) the collapse of Europe's efforts to shape an independent (from the US and China) economic position, and (5) class struggle inside China.
Four key changes drive a new world economy emerging from the old. First is capitalism's transition from neoliberal, globalizing to nationalistic capitalism. This includes the shift of capitalism's center from western Europe and the US to Asia and the global south and also includes the deepening economic inequality inside most nations. Second is the end of the stale, old debate between private and state capitalism (misnamed as capitalism vs socialism) in favor of private + state capitalism hybrids. Third is the post-peak decline of the US empire. Fourth is the urgent question of what comes next: a new empire, a multipolar world, or a new post-capitalist system that replaces employer-employee workplace organizations (private and public) with democratically run worker cooperative organizations.
Economic Update with Richard D. Wolff is a d@w production. We make it a point to provide the show free of ads. Please consider supporting our work.
In this week’s show, Prof. Wolff discusses US deaths from Covid, poverty in the US labor force, US and Canada cooperate against immigrants, US warfare vs China's peacemaking, Amazon profits from cutting back on "free" shipping. In the second half of the show, Wolff interviews Dr. William Bronston, advocate for single-payer health care in the US.
Economic Update with Richard D. Wolff is a d@w production. We make it a point to provide the show free of ads. Please consider supporting our work.
In this week’s Economic Update, Prof. Wolff presents updates on the failures of GOP and Democrats to face or solve major crises; layoffs and stock buybacks by US hi-tech companies; a new study of "food insecurity" in LA county. The second half of the show is dedicated to a discussion of how US history of the 1920s and 1930s shows the possibility of a progressive political shift and upsurge in the US today. Economic Update with Richard D. Wolff is a d@w production. We make it a point to provide the show free of ads. Please consider supporting our work.
In this week’s Economic Update, Prof. Wolff discusses the history and diversity of Marxist theories and practices that comprise the Marxist tradition. Wolff also explores why Marxism draws renewed interest globally now. Finally, a detailed examination shows how some basic insights from Marx's work are especially relevant to victims and critics of today's capitalism and especially to those who seek transition to another, better system. Economic Update with Richard D. Wolff is a d@w production. We make it a point to provide the show free of ads. Please consider supporting our work.
In this week’s show, Prof. Wolff presents updates on the US banking crisis, plant closing injustice, growing child labor in the US, Biden's budget's tax "proposals," and a new book that shows US homelessness is an economic problem. In the second half of the show, Wolff interviews Prof. Robert Ovetz on how and why the US Constitution blocks social change.
Economic Update is a Democracy at Work production, made possible by audience donations. Consider supporting us on Patreon.
This week, Professor Wolff interviews Prof. Clara Mattei on her new book "Capital Order: How Economists Invented Austerity and Paved the Way to Fascism."
In this week’s show, Prof. Wolff focuses on the struggle over Social Security- real versus false alternatives- and the East Palestine, Ohio, derailment tragedy. In the second half of the show, Wolff interviews Alexis Colon about the colonial status of Puerto Rico and Puerto Ricans fighting against it.
In this week’s show, Prof. Wolff presents updates on dying empires and climate crisis; mass shootings; fast-food mega-corps fund referendum to slow California plan to raise fast food workers wages and working conditions, and why the debt ceiling debate in Congress is a phony GOP-Dem political theater. In the second half of the show, Wolff interviews Aaron Mate, independent US media critic with special expertise on Russia.
In this week's show, Prof. Wolff presents a critique of monopoly and oligopoly; past efforts and success in popular control over mega-corporations - in US and abroad; the fight back by mega-corporations to nullify reforms and regulations. Finally, some real solutions to the social problem and costs of an economy dominated by mega-corporations.
In this week's show, Prof. Wolff presents updates on India's extreme inequality and its lesson, employers squeeze employees with "non-compete" job contracts, and how the profit motive distorts the concept of insurance. In the second half of the show, Wolff interviews Dr Stephen Bezruchka on how deeply and globally inequality endangers health with special attention to the US and Covid-19.
In this week’s show, Prof. Wolff shares updates on Starbucks union growth; Texas journalists and Yale graduate students/employees unionize, strike, win; Western Mass Labor Federation denounces Biden's denial of railway workers' right to strike; two major kinds of US tax injustice: (1) exempting bonds and stocks from property tax when 10% richest own 80% of stocks and bonds, and (2) failing to levy excess profits tax on war profiteers as UK and Portugal have already done. In the second half of the show, Wolff interviews Notre Dame Professor Emeritus David F. Ruccio on Marxian economics, its absence from US universities, and its social insights.
Economic Update with Richard D. Wolff is a @democracyatwrk production. We make it a point to provide the show free of ads. Please consider supporting our work. Join our Patreon community: https://www.patreon.com/democracyatwork and help us spread Prof. Wolff's message to a larger audience. Every donation counts!
Identifying and examining the larger economic dimensions and trends of three key aspects of today's global economy: Russia/Ukraine war, Europe's quandary, and the decline of the US empire. Attention focuses on the immense direct and indirect costs of the war in Ukraine; on Europe's desperate position and choices caught between the US and China blocs in the world economy; and on how the US empire is responding to its decline in the world economy. Our approach is to stress what so many others deny or minimize. The risk of war and lessons of the past decline of empires figure prominently in the analysis.
In this week's show, Prof. Wolff explains why capitalism does not deserve credit for improved living conditions, Home Depot billionaire blames US capitalism's problems on US workers being "lazy, fat, and stupid," Southwest Airlines as example of failures by both corporations and their gov't "regulators," George Santos as creature of capitalist advertising. In the second half of the show, Wolff interviews Chris Hedges on the crisis of corporate America in 2023.
In this week's show, Prof. Wolff discusses US spending for war in Ukraine paid for by higher interest rates and inflation hurting middle and small businesses ; a rational transport system is NOT electric cars; an appreciation of the "degrowth" impulse with a critique of the degrowth movement's focus on individuals' consumerism and excess consumption.
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."
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.
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.
In this week's show, Prof. Wolff discusses US sanctions against Chinese semiconductor chip makers, OPEC+ cuts oil production by 2 million barrels per day boosting inflation, desperate UK conservatives abandon Brexit scapegoat to cozy up to Europe, and what US might do to solve "labor shortages." In the second half of the show, Wolff is joined by Ana Kasparian, host of The Young Turks," to talk about the media and today's US crisis.
In this week's show, Prof. Wolff discusses global capitalism's "perfect storm" (inflation + rising interest rates + reduced production = "stagflation"); 1000 SFO food workers strike and win; FedEx reinforces "stagflation" predictions, and hurricane Ian confirms system's failures to plan for predictable disasters to lessen their costs and impacts. In the second half of the show, Wolff interviews Nick Hayes of Means TV on how it has grown as an "anti-capitalist" Netflix.
In this week's show, Prof. Wolff presents a brief summary of last week's Part 1 as basis for analyzing how WW2 provoked the political independence struggles that changed colonialism into neo-colonialism; how and why political independence is not, by itself, a break from colonialism; why neocolonialism lasts into the present and positions a rich minority of each former colony as the ally, collaborator, and agent of continued entrapment of the former colony within global capitalism. Modern neocolonialism likewise positions a poor majority that seeks real economic independence alongside political independence. The politics of most countries in the world - who are mostly ex-colonies - is a deep class war between that neocolonial minority and its majority/adversary.
This week's show focuses on an analysis of capitalist colonialism that begins with the passing of Queen Elizabeth as a monument to the passing of the British Empire itself. Wolff discusses the differences between pre-capitalist and capitalist colonialism, the goals of capitalist colonialism, the development of a world economy, examples of India, US, and Kenya, the centrality of independence for ex-colonies, and neo-colonialism.
In this week's show, Prof. Wolff talks about the large strikes in Seattle (teachers) and Minnesota (nurses), the significance of Sweden's big vote for ex-Nazi party, and how anti-Russia sanctions cause US electricity prices to rise at twice the inflation rate. In the second half, Wolff interviews Leilani Farha, global campaigner for housing as a human right and against the financialization of housing.
This week on Economic Update, Prof. Wolff talks about the unionization drive among minor league professional baseball players, high poverty rates among US families working full-time year round, and the economics of discrimination against pregnant women. In the second half of the show, Wolff interviews Prof. George DeMartino on the harm done by the economics profession and why it denies doing so.
This week on Economic Update, Prof. Wolff talks about the prospects for a labor-union-worker co-op alliance; megacorp stock buybacks; why and how US/UK sanctions on Russia failed so far; the financial abuse of US retirees; and lastly, union popularity in US at 50-year high.
In this week’s show, Prof. Wolff gives updates on China's changed global economic strategy, California's struggle over higher minimum wages, Boston Mayor siding with Starbucks' strikers, and “regulatory capture" issue again as Philip Morris hires top FDA tobacco scientist. In the second half of the show, Wolff interviews Rob Robinson, formerly homeless community organizer, on today's record homelessness despite decades of programs to "solve" the homelessness crisis.
**Min 2:35 correction: China
This program covers the origins, evolution, and current significance of "communism." After a brief history of communism as a utopian ideal of community, we treat Marx's presentation in the Communist Manifesto, and then communism's subordination to "socialism" to World War 1. That War changed everything. It split socialists everywhere into a Socialist Party and a Communist Party with key differences but also commonalities. When most European communist parties collapsed, socialism once again became the only major systemic left position. Yet the utopian longings expressed by communism left many on the left dissatisfied with modern socialisms. They searched for a possible solution, a new kind of communism located in workplaces organized as democratic, worker-coop.
In this week’s show, Prof. Wolff presents updates on record homelessness in New York City, rapidly rising US household debt as recession looms, Washington retreats from globalization to economic nationalism, and 2.2 million in US lacking running water. In the second half of the show, Wolff Interviews Dr. Harriet Fraad, mental health counselor, on capitalism's loneliness crisis.
In this week’s show, Prof. Wolff presents updates on record homelessness in New York City, rapidly rising US household debt as recession looms, Washington retreats from globalization to economic nationalism, and 2.2 million in US lacking running water. In the second half of the show, Wolff Interviews Dr. Harriet Fraad, mental health counselor, on capitalism's loneliness crisis.
In this week's show, Prof. Wolff defines recession and shows its relation to inflation and stagflation in their respective roles within capitalism's inherent instability. Rooted in the structure of capitalism, recessions represent both costly burdens on employers and employees alike and also strong incentives to question, challenge, and go beyond capitalism. The economics profession has been unable to end recessions despite centuries of trying. The profession often tries to hide the capitalist roots of recession instead. Wolff concludes with how system change might finally "solve" capitalism's intractable instability problem.
In this week's show, Prof. Wolff defines recession and shows its relation to inflation and stagflation in their respective roles within capitalism's inherent instability. Rooted in the structure of capitalism, recessions represent both costly burdens on employers and employees alike and also strong incentives to question, challenge, and go beyond capitalism. The economics profession has been unable to end recessions despite centuries of trying. The profession often tries to hide the capitalist roots of recession instead. Wolff concludes with how system change might finally "solve" capitalism's intractable instability problem.
In this week’s show, Prof. Wolff presents updates on successful unionization at Trader Joe’s, lottery tickets as disguised regressive taxation, gasoline inflation brings record profits to big oil companies, and pharmaceutical industries' ad campaign to block gov't plan to buy medications in bulk and pass savings onto public. In the second half of the show, Wolff interviews Vijay Prashad on his new book with Noam Chomsky on the fragility of US global power.
In this week’s show, Prof. Wolff presents updates on successful unionization at Trader Joe’s, lottery tickets as disguised regressive taxation, gasoline inflation brings record profits to big oil companies, and pharmaceutical industries' ad campaign to block gov't plan to buy medications in bulk and pass savings onto public. In the second half of the show, Wolff interviews Vijay Prashad on his new book with Noam Chomsky on the fragility of US global power.
In this week’s show, Prof. Wolff gives updates on US freight workers strike preparations; progressives and labor targeting municipal government; Chipotle store-closing to stop unionizing, and Occupy Wall Street's "Debt Collective" $5.8 billion student loan forgiveness win. In the second half of the show, Prof. Wolff interviews Noam Chomsky on the decline and fragility of the US empire, the role of US military, and the rise of fascism as a coping mechanism.
In this week's show, Prof. Wolff presents updates on the decline/fall of Boris Johnson and the parallels with Trump; the Sri Lanka collapse and its lessons; Match Corp secretly funding sides in "culture wars" to keep customers, and the latest from UK's Conservative party. In the second half of the show, Wolff talks with Marianne Williamson on the basic social divisions of US politics.
In this week's show, Prof Wolff discusses the unionization efforts by post-doc medical researchers vote union, central bankers mislead on inflation, rising economic footprint and power of BRICS nations, and left victory in Colombia's elections. The second half of the show will feature discussions of the relevance of Marx's Labor Theory of value and the French political shift leftward with wide ramifications.
In this week's show, Prof. Wolff presents updates on SCOTUS decisions, on the chaos of a declining capitalism, French elections and a strongly resurging French left, and on the meaning of recent collapse of the cryptocurrency markets. In the second half of the show, Wolff interviews Eleanor Goldfield, Swedish-US media activist, on why and how Sweden is not socialist.
In this week's show, Prof Wolff discusses the replacement theory's grain of truth amidst its mostly ideological function: to save capitalism from criticism. He analyzes why US capitalists deprived so many white, male, Christian workers of their jobs, incomes, and social standing over recent decades and why that analysis was largely silenced by Cold War taboos since 1945. Were a new US left-labor alliance now to offer that critical-of-capitalism alternative, replacement theory's notion of a great conspiracy (largely by Democrats) to replace white, male, Christians with "others" would be far less socially influential.
In this week's show, Prof. Wolff presents updates on US's groceries inflation; US teacher crisis; capitalists profiting from guns and protection from guns, UN report on global suffering from Ukraine war's and sanctions regimes' costs to world's people in terms of fuel, food, and interest rate inflations; and median New York City rent of $4,000/month make city housing increasingly unaffordable to most New Yorkers. In the second half of the show, Wolff is joined by Katie Halper: podcaster, writer, and filmmaker who talks about political decline in the US.
In this week's show, Prof. Wolff talks about the effect of Ukraine sanctions on inflation, Musk as economic dictator, Idaho progressives’ impressive gains, and offers a practical response to shootings. In the second half of the show, Wolff interviews media host Krystal Ball on US politics.
In this week's show, Prof Wolff discusses the stale old debate (competition vs monopoly) and which to blame for inflation; unionization drives across US campuses, and Eastern Kentucky University in particular; how US stores manage inflation; and Elon Musk's peculiar economic "morals." In the second half of the show, Wolff interviews Thom Hartmann on divided US politics.
In this week's show, Prof. Wolff talks about insurers defrauding pensions, record highway deaths, inflation and risk, interest rate rises, Massachusetts to vote on millionaires tax, Starbucks CEO as dictator, and Mitt Romney's sudden concern with "fairness" exposed.
In this week's show, Prof. Wolff discusses today's US child care workers' crisis; how sanctions on Russia profit fossil fuel companies and worsen pollution; systemic causes of the US infant formula shortage; how food corp executives helped write Trump's 2020 order keeping Covid-plagued meatpacking plants operating; meat price inflation vs. general US inflation; and how cryptocurrencies (including "stablecoins") are as unstable as money has historically been.
In this week's show, Prof. Wolff talks about the GOP's stance on student debt forgiveness, US corporations replacing home ownership with rentals, today's US economy not "strong," and left unity, as 4 French left parties work to defeat Macron. In the second half, Wolff interviews Prof. Marcello Musto on the history of the left and Marxism, and how they deal with war in the past and in Ukraine.
In this week's show, Prof. Wolff presents updates on the unionization of Grinnell College student-workers; US GDP drops 1.4% in Q1 of 2022; food inflation versus rationing; Germany's refugee shame; small US businesses to plan price inflation; and western corporations leaving Russia replaced by eager corporations from China, India, Turkey, Brazil etc. In the second half of the show, Wolff interviews Emily Guendelsberger, author of On the Clock, on how badly paid, insanely stressful jobs are the workplace future facing the US.
In this week's show, Prof. Wolff discusses global impacts of food inflation, endless class struggle over length of the workday and workweek and US deaths by guns. In the second half of the show, Wolff interviews housing activists Manon Vergerio and Velvet Ross (Fannie Lou Diane) on the US housing crisis, homelessness and evictions.
In this week's show, Prof. Wolff talks about Sri Lanka’s economic crisis as a global example, and how US billionaires escape taxation at our expense. In the second half, Wolff discusses how and why the market system produces inflations like today’s.
This week on Economic Update, an analysis of Ukraine propaganda war, US inflation worsens, the US college debt crisis and New York City eviction crisis looms. In the second half of the show, Wolff interviews Gayle McLaughlin, former Mayor and City Council member, Richmond, CA. on winning progressive politics.
This week on Economic Update, Prof. Wolff discusses nurses’ suicides as results of our profit-driven healthcare, sanctions and their effect on inflation, US states where 40% of workers earn under $15/hr, and US corporate profits triple from 2008 to present. In the second half, Wolff talks with host and journalist Chris Hedges about Ukraine and the end of the US empire.
In the first half of this week's show, Wolff evaluates US capitalism as a system of production and distribution of goods and services. In the second half, he compares the evaluation with the very different self-image of dominant voices within US capitalism. His conclusion: US capitalism has peaked and finding it very difficult to face its decline.
This week on Economic Update, Prof. Wolff talks about oil and gas inflation, its impacts, and politicians' phony solutions, the stagnant US gender pay gap and its significance, and why Americans are experiencing economic crisis, while Biden pretends the US economy has "recovered" and is in great shape. In the second half of the show, Wolff interviews Amazon union leader Chris Smalls about union organizing efforts across Amazon and beyond in a revived labor militancy.
This week on Economic Update, Prof Wolff presents updates on Amazon workers' strike, the impact of US inflation, and the underappreciated economic aspects of Russia-Ukraine war. In the second half of the show, Wolff interviews Prof. Joerg Rieger on Christian Socialism, past and present.
This week's show on Economic Update, Prof. Wolff talks about the emerging new world order, Ukraine and inflation, and the economics of sanctions. On the second half of the show, Wolff is joined by Prof. Adolph Reed, Jr. to discuss race, class and the US left.
This week's show features a discussion of what Marx offers in the way of a basic critique of capitalism and an alternative economic system that would be better for most people, and how this differs from mainstream economics.
On this week's show, Prof. Wolff talks about the UK selling visa to the rich, why "non-profit" is really "un-taxed," Apple's CEO's 2021 pay of $99 million, AOC and NYPD arrests for stealing diapers and kids' medicines, cleaning products. Green Party leaders Gloria Mattera and Michael O'Neil join Wolff in the second half.
This week on Economic Update, Prof. Wolff presents a critique of US Megacorp merger (Microsoft and Activision Blizzard), China vs US on inflation and economic growth, and the collapse of Boris Johnson (like Trump's lost election). In the second half of the show, Wolff interviews author Aviva Chomsky on problems and prospects of US labor and left social movements.
On this week's show, Prof. Wolff talks about the recreation of `company towns' (eg., Kalamazoo, MI) by the richest US capitalists, Biden and the reality of US jobs lost, how and why the US follows UK decline, and rising mass alienation from established political leaders and parties. The second half of the program features a discussion of socialism without Cold War taboos.
On this week's show, Prof. Wolff talks about the sharp reduction in US population growth; how "lockdowns" are the anti-Covid policy everywhere, ,some gov't run and focused while others are private, haphazard, and unfocused. In the second half of the show, Prof. Wolff is joined by Fabian Scheidler, author of The End of the Megamachine: A Brief History of a Failing Civilization.
Professor Wolff takes a deeper look at the life and work of Karl Marx in celebration of the 200th anniversary of his birth.