Episodes
Saturday Feb 29, 2020
Economic Update - When Stale Debates Distract
Saturday Feb 29, 2020
Saturday Feb 29, 2020
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. 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.
Saturday Feb 22, 2020
Economic Update - Larger Social Changes to Support Worker Coops
Saturday Feb 22, 2020
Saturday Feb 22, 2020
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.
Saturday Feb 15, 2020
Economic Update - Socialism and Left Unity in the US
Saturday Feb 15, 2020
Saturday Feb 15, 2020
Updates on Trump's 2019 $ 1 trillion plus deficit, burden of poor countries' debt, Amsterdam forgives young peoples' debts, "strong man" governments' fund-raising strategy, and gross failures of Trump/GOP's 2017 tax cut. Interview Karen Ranucci (Center for Critical Thought) and Rob Robinson (Left Forum) on their programs and their collaboration to serve the rising US interests in socialism and building a movement for transition.
Friday Feb 07, 2020
Economic Update - Capitalism's Uneven Development
Friday Feb 07, 2020
Friday Feb 07, 2020
Introduction to capitalism's systematically uneven economic development. From Marx's original criticism of capitalism for producing and reproducing unevenness to the many historical examples, today's program argues that there are heavy social costs that flow from capitalism's uneven development. Those costs then become bases for arguing the need to move beyond capitalism.
Friday Jan 31, 2020
Economic Update - Exposing Economic Myths
Friday Jan 31, 2020
Friday Jan 31, 2020
Discussions of (1) "unemployment rate" as inadequate measure of economy's well-being; (2) decline of real value of US minimum wage; (3) multiple failures and flaws of markets, (4) corporations as less economically efficient than worker coops.
Friday Jan 24, 2020
Economic Update - Military Spending and Debt
Friday Jan 24, 2020
Friday Jan 24, 2020
Updates on France's successful mass uprisings (Yellow Vests in 2019; mass union strikes in 2020) that forced gov't to back down on changes that workers opposed; how endless wars impose huge debts; and how US Catholic Church uses bankruptcy law to keep assets from compensating victims of pedophile priests. Interview journalist Bob Hennelly on military spending and debts in the US economy.
Friday Jan 17, 2020
Economic Update - Independent Media
Friday Jan 17, 2020
Friday Jan 17, 2020
Updates on sale of coop craft brewery, US medical costs highest in world, and the "overcoming poverty" defense of capitalism's inequality and instability. Interview Laura Flanders on independent media.
Saturday Jan 11, 2020
Economic Update - "Answering our Critics"
Saturday Jan 11, 2020
Saturday Jan 11, 2020
Three major criticisms of Economic Update are considered: (1) that we don't praise capitalism for reducing world poverty, (2) that we don't admit that "socialism has never worked anywhere," and (3) that no inventor of a new product or technique who starts a business will ever accept that employees in such a business are equal partners with the inventor, originator of the business. Today's program answers these criticisms, refuting their arguments systematically.
Friday Jan 03, 2020
Economic Update - US Capitalism and the Family: Myth vs Reality
Friday Jan 03, 2020
Friday Jan 03, 2020
Updates on Job Quality Index and its US decline, the French activism against President Macron's effort to cut pensions, Gartman Letter urges investors to sell stocks in face of Trump's policies deteriorating the economy, Obamas purchase $11.5 million Martha's Vineyard mansion, and Kansas City cuts public transport fares to zero. Interview with Dr Harriet Fraad on myth vs reality of US capitalism and the family
Friday Dec 13, 2019
Economic Update - Libertarianism, Capitalism and Socialism
Friday Dec 13, 2019
Friday Dec 13, 2019
Libertarians defend capitalism by saying its many current flaws/faults flow from the state's economic interventions, not from the system itself. Libertarians oppose socialism as even more state-dominated. We criticize libertarians based on capitalism's long history of strong state interventions and socialism's long-standing anarchistic components. We conclude by inviting consideration of possible agreements between some libertarians and some socialists.