Economic Update

Economic Update - 03/19/13

Professor Wolff is joined by Victor Wallis to discuss ecology and economics comparing capitalist and socialist responses to environmental crisis.

Part 2 deals with Keynesian economics as a theory that clashes with both the mainstream economics (“neoclassical”) that celebrates private capitalism and with critical theories such as Marxian economics that are opposed to capitalism.

Economic Update - Capitalism: Critiques and Alternatives - 03/12/13

Updates on defeats for Walmart, recovery for the tiny minority, Qatar royalty buys, and European moves to limit exec pay and tax financial transactions. Analysis of capitalism’s history, its critics, and the alternatives they proposed. Discussion of workers’ cooperative in Wisconsin and an analysis of the difference between capitalist competition and competition among cooperatives.

Economic Update - Economics and Family Values - 03/05/13

Updates on the “sequester,” the US auto industry, and lessons from South Africa. Interview with psychotherapist Dr. Harriet Fraad on capitalism, family, and “family values.” Comments on a coop cafe and bookstore business, on banks using bailout money to evade taxes, and on social versus private investment.

Economic Update - 02/26/13

Economic Update - Where Profit Motive Leads - 02/19/13

Updates on worker takeover of Greek factory, minimum wage debate, and European horsemeat scandal. Detailed analyses of Post Office cutbacks, economics of educational decline, and paying for war with taxes. Comments on Cambridge, MA workers who reopen and run pizza closed by capitalist owners; responses on relation of capitalism and democracy and labor as source of all value.

Economic Update - Lessons from Megabanks’ Megascandals - 02/12/13

Updates on big bank misdeeds, internet provider monopoly, and social effects of unemployment. Critical analysis of proposal to break up big banks, capitalism and the tomato industry, and expose of real goals of austerity policies. Response to listeners with example of successful worker coop (WSDE), Union Cabs of Madison, WI., differences between ESOPs and WSDEs, and beginning of analysis of how WSDE’s raise the capital they need to start and continue.

Economic Update - Stock Market Up, Economy Down: Mystery Solved - 02/05/13

Updates on declining higher ed in US, rising unemployment for all education levels, big money in politics. Discussions of (1) last week’s falling US GDP, rising unemployment and stock market peak, and (2) tragic scandals of profit-driven medical corporations. Replies to listeners on worker coops, whether Marx endorsed violence and worshipped government, and “real” capitalism fantasies.

Economic Update - Beyond Austerity to Economic Democracy - 01/29/13

Updates on global capital’s devastating moves and on the FED’s huge recent expansion of the money supply. Interview with Prof. Jan Rehmann: a Gramscian analysis of the Occupy movement. Response to listeners (1) how transition to workers self-directed enterprises (WSDEs) would change education and (2) an  example of WSDEs today, New Era Windows of Chicago.

Economic Update - Economics and Banking - 01/22/13

Updates on Gerard Depardieu's individual tax evasion, corporate tax evasion via profit repatriation, worst CEOs of 2012, and phony DC "debt-ceiling" theatrics. Discussion of Swiss bank crimes, Keynesian vs Marxian economics, political turmoil in 2013, and criticism of markets. Response to question on new capital gains taxes. On Economic Update with Professor Richard Wolff, Wolff and guests will discuss the current state of the economy, both locally and globally in relation to the economic crisis. Wolff will focus on wages, jobs, taxes, and debts - and on interest rates, prices, and profits. We aim to explain why certain economic changes are happening and other changes get postponed or blocked and we will explore alternative ways to organize enterprises, markets, and government policies. Economic Update is a weekly show for people who want to understand and change not only their own financial situation but also the larger economy we all depend on.

Economic Update - Contending Economic Theories - 01/15/13

Trying a new format, we use the full hour to examine the two basic kinds of economic theory mostly widely used now to understand economic issues. On one side, the dominant mainstream theories ("neoclassical economics" and "Keynesian economics") celebrate the capitalist economic system. On the other side, Marxian economics is the dominant critical theory of capitalism whose premiss is that society can do better than capitalism. Today's discussion builds on R. Wolff and S. Resnick's new book, Contending Economic Theories: Neoclassical, Keynesian and Marxian (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2012).