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.

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.

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

 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.                 

This week’s special topic discusses capitalism's growing problems, such as inequalities, instabilities, and unsustainability. That leads some defenders to argue that the causes of these problems are monopolies displacing competition in many industries. We disagree: capitalism's history is oscillations between competition and monopoly, each causing the other. Capitalism itself is the problem, not its oscillating forms.

Updates on Sawant victory in Seattle City Council election, the US obesity problem's costs and causes, critiquing libertarian arguments for capitalism. Interview Dr. Amy S. Cramer, Prof of Economics, Arizona, on her accessible education project "Voices on the Economy.

Today's program discusses a political strategy for transition beyond capitalism to an economy based on democratic worker-cooperatives. The first half explores the history of how transition was achieved from feudalism to capitalism. The second half draws lessons from that history to provide a strategy for a transition now beyond capitalism.

 Updates on costs of NBA offense to China, worsening global inequality, poverty mocks Nobel prize for 3 economists working on "incremental solutions" to poverty, why Google donated to global warming deniers, and latest crisis in defaults on US auto loans. Interview Richard Hobbs, Human Agenda Director, San Jose, CA, expert on worker coops."