Economic Update

Economic Update – Capitalism's Crimes – 10.11.15

Updates on Planned Parenthood, Irish and French unions' initiatives. Responses to questions on the VW scandal and the TPP deals. In depth update and analysis of the ongoing Crisis in Greece with Prof. Harry Konstantinides.

Economic Update – Meanings of Class – 10.04.15

Updates on Swedish plan for peaceful transition beyond capitalism, ripoffs in car insurance, Ferguson, MO credit downgrade. Response to listeners on the CA drought and on best solution for corporate abuses like VW's. Major discussions of (1) what class means and what is at stake in different meanings, and (2) guaranteed income vs guaranteed jobs.

Economic Update – Puerto Rico as US's Greece – 09.27.15

Updates on new Detroit book, Mayor's austerity policy in Chicago, homeless school children, soaring medical insurance deductibles. Responses to listeners on VW scandal and Pope's statements on economics. Interview with Prof. Ian Seda-Irizarry on current crisis in Puerto Rico.

Economic Update – Capitalism's Instability – 09.20.15

Updates on GM settlement, Census Bureau proves no recovery for 90%, GE moves jobs overseas; responses to listeners on FED agonies over interest rates and how capitalism mishandles unemployment. Major discussion of WSDEs and capitalist corporations.

Economic Update – Precarious Work = Capitalism's Inefficiency – 09.13.15

Updates on economics of refugees, Ford buys French political wife, LAs homeless, Labor Day history, Seattle Teachers strike, and Japan's jobs ever more precarious. Response to listeners on why rising wages need NOT mean rising prices. Interview with Dr. Harriet Fraad, mental health counselor, on the psychological pains, personal suffering, and huge social costs of imposing uncertainty and precarity on job security, hours and days of work, benefits, and wages.

Economic Update – When Profits Come First – 09.06.15

"Updates on extreme poverty, workers' victory over tech giants, NFL concussions,  Trump's economics analyzed, and Oakland for worker coops. Response to listeners on workers who lost out from 2007-2014 and on injustice of state and local taxes. Major discussions of (1) last week's stock market gyrations and (2) the resurgence of socialism."

Economic Update – System Toxicity – 08.16.15

Updates on China's currency moves, UK'S Corbyn like US Sanders, adjuncts unionize, Pepsi and Coke offer self-serving health advice, Rand Paul's misunderstanding of economics. We answer questions about what happened to US real wages from 1974 to 2014. We analyze why no consensus about global warming, what are toxic effects of rising inequality, and role of psychologists in advertising.

Economic Update - Capitalism's Endless Costs - 07.26.15

Updates on Coke vs Pepsi war, price gouging on cancer drugs, Corwyn good for UK Labor Party, and new Pope's strong anti-capitalist speeches. We respond to listeners' questions on guaranteed basic income and on why public employees are not an economic negative. Major attention is given to supporting countries that refuse to pay certain govt debts and especially to Greece in a review of is dramatic recent struggles.

Capitalism and its Others - 07.19.15

Today's program focuses on two alternatives to capitalism. The first is an alternative to how capitalism organizes enterprises in terms of their internal workings and relationships. We examine workers self-directed enterprises: how they work and how they compare to capitalist enterprises. In the program's second half we look at an alternative to how capitalism organizes the economy as a whole: the socialist tradition that has evolved multiple different forms in the world today. We examine how socialism has evolved, its complex relationship with government, and how socialism compares with capitalism.

Economic Update - Learning from Economic defeats - 07.12.15

Continuing our new format experiment: two in-depth analyses. In the show's first half: The New Deal was both a victory and a defeat. Both offer crucial lessons for today. In the show's second half, a critical review of labor's short and long-run goals, labor's defensive decline, and a new strategy built on lessons of that decline.