Episodes
Saturday May 09, 2020
Economic Update - Unemployment: Cruel, Wasteful, Unnecessary
Saturday May 09, 2020
Saturday May 09, 2020
On this week's show, Prof. Wolff criticizes unemployment - as a specifically capitalist irrationality - and advocates "re-employment" as a far better policy. Gov't jobs and worker-coop development are key means for re-employment. Very socially necessary jobs are detailed that further encourage re-employment, instead of unemployment.
Saturday May 02, 2020
Economic Update - Honoring May Day, 1886 and 2020
Saturday May 02, 2020
Saturday May 02, 2020
"From May Day 1886 to 2020, workers wage long, hard struggles to reform capitalismFrom the fight for an 8-hour workday to the fight for a safe, Corona-free workplace now. Employers block and delay reforms, and try to undo them once won. They use what capitalism gives them: dominant power, incentive (profit), and means (profits). If we change the system from capitalist to worker-coop, workers alone democratically make and secure reforms. Employers, the constant enemy of reform, vanish as a separate group dominati
Saturday Apr 25, 2020
Economic Update - Capitalism's Unemployment Problem
Saturday Apr 25, 2020
Saturday Apr 25, 2020
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.
Saturday Apr 18, 2020
Economic Update - Virus Triggers Capitalist Crash
Saturday Apr 18, 2020
Saturday Apr 18, 2020
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.
Saturday Apr 11, 2020
Economic Update -The Psychological Aspects of Today's Crises
Saturday Apr 11, 2020
Saturday Apr 11, 2020
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.
Friday Apr 03, 2020
Economic Update - Corona and Our Mental Health
Friday Apr 03, 2020
Friday Apr 03, 2020
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.
Friday Mar 27, 2020
Economic Update - "#MeToo and Corona: System is Key"
Friday Mar 27, 2020
Friday Mar 27, 2020
This 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.
Friday Mar 20, 2020
Economic Update - Comedy and Tragedy of Capitalism
Friday Mar 20, 2020
Friday Mar 20, 2020
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.
Friday Mar 13, 2020
Economic Update - Capitalism, Jobs, Depressed People
Friday Mar 13, 2020
Friday Mar 13, 2020
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.
Saturday Mar 07, 2020
Economic Update - Using Unemployment Against Workers
Saturday Mar 07, 2020
Saturday Mar 07, 2020
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.