Economic Update with Richard D. Wolff
Democracy at Work, Richard D. Wolff
Economic Update with Richard D. Wolff is a weekly nationally syndicated program produced by Democracy at Work and hosted by Richard D. Wolff. The program explores complex economic issues and empowers listeners with information to analyze not only their own financial situation but the economy at large. Beyond focusing a critical eye on the economic dimensions of everyday life - wages, jobs, taxes, debts, interest rates, prices, and profits - the program also explores systemic solutions to our economy's problems including alternative ways to organize production and distribution of the goods and services we all depend on.
Episodes
Mentioned books
Apr 23, 2020 • 29min
Capitalism's Unemployment Problem
Capitalism's recurring unemployment problem was never solved and makes the system fundamentally unstable. Today's high levels of unemployment are hugely costly in both human and financial terms. We analyze why capitalism prepares so poorly for and then endures its recurring unemployment. We also examine several alternatives to unemployment that would serve society better but threaten capitalism.
Apr 16, 2020 • 29min
Virus Triggers Capitalist Crash
Analysis (part 1): how, why capitalism - especially in US - failed to prepare for or cope with a virus thereby enabling it to trigger another crash of capitalism (third this century: dot.com in 2000, sub-prime mortgage in 2008). Analysis (part 2): how to respond to crash better than the US govt by emphasizing re-employment in millions of new jobs rather than unemployment, emphasizing worker-coops, etc.
Apr 9, 2020 • 29min
The Psychological Aspects of Today's Crises
Social divisions undermine the solidarity needed to fight both virus and economic crash: an analysis. A sense of out-of-touch, non-caring, inconsistent leaders provokes millions to feel society is literally falling apart. Widespread loneliness and powerlessness are psychological factors making the existing crisis worse. The mental health profession has important knowledge to contribute on how to understand and respond creatively to the psychological aspects of today's crises. We talk with Tess Fraad-Wolff, psychotherapist practicing in New York City for the last decade.
Apr 2, 2020 • 29min
Corona and Our Mental Health
The Corona virus's threat to physical health is clear. Far less well known are the virus's serious impacts on mental health (loneliness, depression, feelings of isolation, anxiety) worsened by the total failure of private and government leaders to anticipate, prepare for, or cope with the pandemic. With Dr. Harriet Fraad we explore the psychological costs of the pandemic and some ways we can better cope with them.
Mar 26, 2020 • 29min
#MeToo and Corona: System is Key
This week's program focuses on how the capitalist economic system plays crucial roles in the #MeToo examples of Weinstein and Cosby and also in the failed response to the Corona virus crisis. The organization of capitalist enterprises - power and wealth concentrated at the top in a tiny minority - invites and enables sexual harassment and abuse by people positioned like Weinstein and Cosby. A profit-driven medical-industrial complex did not invest in preparing for the virus and a profit-subservient gov't failed to mobilize private and public resources to test for, contain, and overcome the disease.
Mar 19, 2020 • 29min
Comedy and Tragedy of Capitalism
Updates on capitalism's failures exposed by the Coronavirus; Sanders and the re-entry of socialism into US politics; US social mobility goes down; and Macron evades democracy to try to force pension cuts (alias "reform") onto French people. Interview Lee Camp on his comedy and his critique of capitalism.
Mar 12, 2020 • 29min
Capitalism, Jobs, Depressed People
On this week's episode of EU, Prof. Wolff presents updates on Vancouver, BC, taxing its richest; JP Morgan Chase recognizes climate change threat and market's failure to cope; ways money shapes US politics today; why US women's soccer gender discrimination lawsuit helps all soccer players vs profit-driven soccer federation. The second half of the show features an interview with psychotherapist Tess Fraad-Wolff on why our jobs get us depressed and what to do about it.
Mar 5, 2020 • 29min
Using Unemployment Against Workers
Updates on high US maternal death rate, wealth inequality and the Pope, #MeToo hits the banks, Macron and Black Rock plot French pension "reform," dying Newsweek caught in corruption scandal using bible college. Interview Perf. Gertrude Goldberg on US unemployment, its social costs, and struggle for a universal job guarantee.
Feb 27, 2020 • 29min
When Stale Debates Distract
On this week's show, Prof. Wolff presents updates on how air-bnb reflects workers' falling living standards, price-gouging anti-virus masks, purpose of Trump's record deficit, end of Brexit distraction makes UK face its real problem: capitalism, and cause of San Diego's pension crisis. The second half of the show features a major discussion of the economics' centuries-old, #1 debate - more vs less govt economic intervention. That debate mostly distracts from the feared debate over capitalism vs really alternative systems.
Feb 20, 2020 • 29min
Larger Social Changes to Support Worker Coops
This program responds to a criticism that D@W focuses too much on the transition from capitalist firms to worker-coop firms with too little attention paid to the larger social changes needed to get beyond capitalism. Discussion focuses on the broader social changes needed to sustain a worker-coop based economy including a government that administers an economy-wide democratic sharing of profits and resources among the worker-coop enterprises.
