Welcome, friends, to another edition of Economic
Update, the weekly program devoted to the
economic dimensions of our lives, our jobs,
our incomes, the conditions of our jobs, our
debts, those of our children, and those looming
down the road.
I'm your host, Richard Wolff.
I've been a professor of economics all my
adult life.
And my hope is that I've learned as a teacher
how to understand and present things in a
way that makes sense and that holds your interest.
So let's turn to some of the biggest events
of the last week since I've been on this program.
And of course the biggest one probably is
what happened over the weekend, this last
weekend, when literally hundreds of thousands
of young Americans, high school students in
the main, took to the streets, took to the
parks of the United States to express their
pain, their suffering, their anger, and their
demands about the gun violence which is off
the charts in this country.
We have more shootings, more killings with
guns, than any other country on the face of
the earth, and none of the others is even
close.
And we all know what happened in Florida a
few weeks ago.
I want to say something about the economics
to contribute something beyond the powerful
and the poetic that these high school students
have articulated.
But before I do I want to take my hat off.
Those young people are acting in the way that
a really democratic society can and should
applaud.
They feel strongly about an issue.
They're explaining themselves.
They're sharing their commitments and they're
acting collectively to make a difference.
Bravo to them for exposing how many of us
don't get together with our fellow human beings
to make this society better for all of us.
Now to the economics of the situation.
The big pusher for guns in this country is
not the gun companies that make the guns.
Of course they want to sell more, because
that's how a capitalist enterprise works.
They don't worry about the secondary consequences.
It's so much collateral damage.
They want to sell guns because therein lies
the profit, which is why they are in business.
So I understand that.
I want to look at the NRA.
You know, it could have been a typical association.
You know, like the archery association.
It would then be something that would interest
hunters and that would interest people who
are, who enjoyed target practice with guns,
just like an archery society would have people
who use bow and arrow for hunting and people
who like to become proficient in using that
particular item.
And it would be no problem in this society
virtually at all.
It would be an association for hunters and
sharp shooters, and people looking to do those
things.
No problem.
But the NRA long ago had ambitions to be much
more, and those ambitions have been realized.
What did the NRA choose to do?
Number one, to become an ad agency for the
gun makers.
Whatever the gun makers decided to spend on
advertisements in sports magazines, et cetera,
the NRA took them to a whole new level.
It explained to the gun makers, or maybe the
gun makers explained it to them, we'll never
know, that there was a way to get many more
guns sold than you could ever sell to hunters
and sharp shooters.
Could you get Americans to buy lots of guns,
not for hunting, not even for target practice,
just to have them?
And the NRA's answer was yeah, we can do that.
How do we do that?
We latch on to an ideology here in America
that is very useful for us.
Here's the ideology: Whenever something goes
wrong with the economy, unemployment, bad
jobs, low pay, poor benefits, insecure jobs,
don't blame the companies.
They don't want that.
Blame the government.
When you lose your home to foreclosure, don't
blame the bank that forced you out.
Blame the government.
Wow.
That would be a wonderful ideology for capitalism,
because it would allow the company to really
screw you, and you don't get angry at them,
you'll get angry at the government.
You'll paint the government as the ultimate
evil.
The government is behind it all.
The government is what's hurting you.
Not only does that help capitalism, but it
gives the NRA a new idea.
It can go to the mass of people and say, you
know that evil government?
Well, it wants to take away your gun.
It wants to threaten you.
It wants to hurt you even more than this economy
has already hurt you.
But here's something you can do to protect
yourself: Get a gun.
Get two.
Get one for every closet, every room.
Protect yourself.
It's really all you have left here in America.
You can buy a gun, and maybe that'll help
you.
This idea makes the NRA able to be a better
ad agency for the gun companies than they
could ever buy.
It creates a market to buy the guns bigger
than any one ever dreamed of.
Americans have more guns per person than any
other society on the face of this earth but
it also makes the NRA a real friend of big
business because they participate in demonizing
the government, making the government the
bad guy in all of our life's problems.
Not the economy, not the employer, not the
store that charges us too much money or gives
us bad service or takes away the benefits
of our job.
No, no, no.
The government is the problem.
Every capitalist's dream is to make somebody
else take the fall.
The second big news of this week had to do
with tariffs.
President Trump imposed a whole bunch of tariffs,
mostly on China.
Punishing China, he said, because it was hurting
America by its economic power and growth and
achievement.
He was cashing in on an opportunity and on
a campaign promise he had made.
Let's take a look at the tariffs.
First, let's begin by being sure we all understand
what a tariff is.
It's simply a tax with a particular name.
Here's how it works.
Goods coming from China, let's say something
that cost $100, would now have to pay on top
of the $100 that you would've had to pay if
there weren't a tariff, there is now a tariff.
Meaning there's a tax applied to this article
as it enters the United States.
Let's suppose it's 25 percent.
That article that you used to be able to buy
from China for $100 would now cost you $125.
Why is that a good idea, says Mr. Trump?
Well, he says, American companies who can't
make that good for $100, who can only make
it at a profit if they charge $120, weren't
able to sell any before because we wouldn't
pay $120 when we could buy the Chinese item
for $100 by slapping a tariff on the Chinese
item.
Its price goes up to $125.
And now we Americans, confronted by having
to pay $125 for the Chinese article, will
instead buy the American one for $120.
And that, we are told, will mean more jobs
for Americans in American companies producing
that now-$120 item we're buying because we
can't buy the Chinese one at $100 anymore
because it's become $125.
That's the story.
Let's take a look at the economics here, so
we aren't fooled.
Number one, the Chinese aren't stupid.
And the Chinese aren't impoverished, and the
Chinese are not powerless.
The first thing the Chinese can do, and they've
already proposed it, is to do tariffs in return.
To do the same thing to the United States
that the United States has just done to China.
And what that will do will be to persuade
the Chinese people to buy from their own producers
rather than to bring stuff in from the United
States because the cost of bringing stuff
in from the United States has just been raised
by their Chinese tariff.
They're particularly going to do that to agricultural
goods and various other kinds of things that
are going to hurt American farmers and American
businesses.
Whatever the extra jobs we get here from a
tariff on Chinese goods will be offset by
the lost jobs here because we can't sell goods
to China anymore.
Anyone who's ever learned any economics gets
this.
Mr. Trump and his supporters want us only
to think about the jobs you get when you levy
a tariff and never ask how it can play out
and undo itself.
But that's the least of it.
Remember what I said about the price going
up, we're all going to now pay $120 for that
item from China, or from the American substitute
for it, and that means prices are going to
go up.
Let me say that again: Prices are going to
go up.
American people can't afford to buy the things
they need now, as we all know.
If the prices go up because of the tariffs,
which is what will happen and it always does,
it's going to mean Americans can buy less
than they could afford before.
It's going to make economic conditions harder
for Americans as a buying public.
Where does that figure in to all of the discussion?
It doesn't.
It's left out.
But it is childishly obvious.
This drives home the central point to keep
in mind: This tariff is being discussed in
mainstream media in terms of what its effects
will be, what the Chinese will do.
Stop.
No one knows what all the effects, it'll take
years to figure out.
We do know prices will go up.
We do know that jobs may go up or down.
But it won't be a big difference.
So what is all of this about?
This is political theater.
This is a president doing what Presidents
so often do.
Our problem in the United States is an economic
system that's not working very well for most
of us.
Yes, it's very good for those at the top.
They are happy.
The 1 percent to 5 percent at the top are
doing great.
The corporations just got the biggest tax
cut they could dream of.
They're in fine shape.
The rest of us, no.
And this is political theater.
We're not supposed to look at this economic
system and say it's not working for us.
We're supposed to be mad at somebody else.
And Mr. Trump has an endless list of somebody
elses.
We should be angry at immigrants.
Ladies and gentlemen, this is a country of
325 million people, roughly.
The number of undocumented immigrants in this
country may be 10 or 11 million.
Do the arithmetic.
Our economic problems, we 325 million, are
not dependent on what happens to 11 million
poor immigrants.
It's silly.
But he can get people very angry at those
foreigners.
That's always easy.
And tariffs on Chinese?
Guess what?
That's slapping some more foreigners.
At least, it sounds like that.
It distracts you.
It gets you focused on something other than
the economic system that is screwing you.
That's the key message.
That's what we need to understand.
Don't get lost in the weeds.
Those are the basics of what has agitated
our economy over the last week.
Now some more quick updates.
I want to follow up on the stories we've been
covering about the West Virginia teachers
who won an extraordinary strike in their state,
and got finally some decent wage increases,
having been among the poorest-paid public
schoolteachers in America.
So successful was the West Virginia movement
that there are now three more states I want
to bring to your attention.
Actually, yeah, three that are following,
that using what happened in West Virginia
as a model: Oklahoma, Arizona, and Kentucky.
I want to take my hat off again to the West
Virginia teachers, and now to these others
who, like the students on the gun issue, are
beginning to understand the power of getting
together to make economic changes that really
matter.
Before going on, let me remind you: We maintain
two websites.
Make use of them.
That's why we prepare them and update them
literally every day.
The first one is democracyatwork.info.
All one word, democracyatwork.info.
The second one is rdwolff, with two F's, dot
com.
You can follow us there on Facebook, Twitter,
Instagram, and so on.
You can communicate what you like and don't
like about the program.
What you would like to see us do.
I want to particularly also let you know that
those websites are available to you 24/7,
no charge whatsoever.
I want to urge you, particularly if you're
a listener and would like to see the program
as a television program, please go to patreon.com,
P-A-T-R-E-O-N.
Patreon.com/economicupdate.
And there you can see the program as a television
program.
And I want to also announce that we have a
new episode of Puerto Rico Forward.
That is a special program.
It's on our website.
And it is also available on patreon.com.
Just go there.
Again, patreon.com/puertoricoforward for the
latest episode, and you can also get it as
a podcast through iTunes and Google Play.
Next update.
It's the turn of BMW to get caught with emissions
cheating devices.
Last month BMW quietly recalled 11700 cars
to, quote, fix an engine management software
issue.
Uh-oh.
Then later last month, BMW admitted that prosecutors
in Germany were looking into, quote, erroneously
allocated software in about 11400 vehicles
of the BMW 750D and the BMW 550D luxury models.
And then last week the police, a hundred of
them, raided BMW headquarters in Munich and
the production site in Austria.
They were one of the companies that hadn't
yet been caught cheating on emissions, polluting
the world for profit.
But they now have joined the others in showing
that profit dominates over human health in
a capitalist enterprise-based system.
Also in the news this last week, difficult
negotiations continued between Britain and
Europe.
The British, as you know, voted a year or
more ago to leave the European Union.
The Brexit, it's called.
The angry British working people voting against
their elite government.
The Conservative Party, and even the Labour
Party, supported it.
The vote to stay said, the elite and the people
said, we're not voting the way you want us
to.
We don't like what you're doing in this society.
We want out.
They kind of fell for the idea that their
problem was Europe and being part of Europe.
It's a little bit like Mr. Trump trying to
have us believe that the economic problem
in America has to do with immigrants or Chinese
prices.
All of these deflections away from the core
economic problem of a system that doesn't
work for most people.
And the poor British are now locked in this
sad debate and negotiation, British government,
European government, on the terms of Britain's
departure.
Here's one thing that the British people have
learned and that the rest of the world has
to learn, too.
In the hands of the business community that
runs Europe, and in the hands of the business
community that runs England, they're working
out the separation to make sure that the rich
stay rich on both sides and the elites stay
in power on both sides.
The missing member at the negotiation are
the mass of people.
Leaving Europe had little to do with the real
problems the British working class faces,
and the same is true in Europe.
And nothing these negotiators from the two
elites work out will change that.
It'll have to be a bitter lesson learned that
voting about a foreign policy issue doesn't
solve your problem.
ProPublica, a remarkable independent website
that you might want to look at, ProPublica.org,
did a remarkable study that came out last
week about discrimination against older workers.
In this case the target was the IBM Corporation.
ProPublica did a big survey of former workers
at IBM, particularly older ones.
And that's in a remarkable study about systematic
discrimination against older people.
Here are some of the results of that survey
I thought would interest you if either you
are an older worker or your parents might
be.
Pretty much includes all of us.
And here are the results: 183 respondents
said the company recorded them as having retired
by choice even though they had no desire to
retire or flat-out objected to the idea.
Forty-five people were told they'd have to
uproot their lives and move thousands of miles
from the communities where they had worked
for years.
Fifty-three said their jobs had been moved
overseas.
I could go on and on.
You get the point.
The remarkable thing is many workers are still
siding with the company over having been dumped
at various stages in their career.
You know, a bill was passed not that many
years ago called the Age Discrimination in
Employment Act, ADEA.
Forbids doing this.
And that may have something to do why, as
ProPublica points out, in the year 2009 IBM
stopped publishing its American employment
total.
In 2014 it stopped disclosing the number and
ages of older employees that it was laying
off, even though that's a requirement of this
bill.
In other words, companies find ways to get
rid of older workers and replace them with
younger ones.
The older workers have more experience.
The older workers know how the company works.
But the older workers cost more money than
the young ones.
And therein lies the story.
The damage done to these older workers?
Who cares.
Profit rules and we live with the results
so long as a system like this is allowed to
continue.
Tennessee public employees did something interesting.
They went against the governor there, a right-wing
governor in Tennessee, spearheaded by the
United Campus Union of the University of Tennessee.
They refused to allow, in effect, what Governor
Haslam there proposed, which was nothing short
of the privatization of the university system,
and indeed of much of the public sector.
It was a wonderful example not just of workers
pushing back and winning.
It's an example that the movement of production
from the private sector to the public sector
is mostly about saving money for big and wealthy
corporations and wealthy people who don't
want to pay taxes.
We shouldn't be debating so much about public
versus private.
It's not the issue.
The issue is what happens to the mass of people,
public or private, in terms of running their
own lives and job security.
That's the issue, not the relatively less
important detail of whether it's public or
private.
One of the most interesting updates I want
to bring to your attention is the publication
by the Congressional Budget Office, CBO, its
March report.
It did an interesting study, the results of
which I need to tell you about.
They looked at inequality of income in the
United States, but they did it in a new way.
They didn't just measure who gets how much
income looking at it in terms of the poorest
20 percent the less poor 20 percent and all
the way up to the richest 20 percent and even
up to the richest 1 percent.
That's how it's normally done.
But here's what was new and different.
They took into account the taxes we have to
pay.
They took into account the inflation we all
face.
And they also looked at who got the benefit
of social safety net programs, antipoverty
programs, because they wanted to deal with
the right wing argument that we should be
looking just at the money people earn because
some people, the poor, get in-kind of help
in terms of food stamps and things like that.
So the CBO, responding to this criticism,
took all of it into account.
And here's what it did in its report.
It looked at the distribution of income, how
did income change between 1979 and 2014.
OK, so that's 35 years, basically the last
35 years.
And they looked at how did the different parts
of our income distribution, how did they do
when you take into account the taxes they
pay, the inflation they face, and all the
social welfare programs we have in this country?
Here we go.
You might be interested in this.
The poorest 20 percent went up over those
35 years 69 percent.
That's what they got over 35 years, 69.
That works out to 2 percent a year.
Not very bad, not very good.
The next 20 percent, not the poorest 20 percent
the next to poorest.
They only went up 39 percent.
They did 1 percent a year.
They went nowhere.
And that's true for almost everybody else.
Except the top.
Let me give you the top 1 percent of Americans,
when you take an all into account.
Here's how they did over the last 35 years.
Their incomes, including the taxes they pay
the inflation they face, and the social welfare
programs that other people get, their income
went up 227 percent.
There is no way for me to exaggerate the horrendous
ness of what I've just told you over the last
35 years.
The rich got richer and everybody else didn't.
And that's true whether you just look at the
money or you adjust it for all the other social
programs.
The social programs in this country don't
undo our inequality.
They don't even come close.
And inequality has become the overwhelming
problem of society precisely because we have
an economic system that works that way.
And that's the basic problem we have to face
from which everything else is mostly a diversion
that you shouldn't be diverted by.
We've come to the end of the first half of
today's economic update.
Thank you very much for staying with me, and
do stay with me for the next half hour, because
we will have a very, very interesting interview
for you that I think will capture your attention
as well.
Welcome back, friends, to the second half
of economic update.
Before introducing my guest for today I want
to talk a little bit about the topic that
we're going to be discussing.
As I've mentioned, I'm a professor of economics.
I've been doing that all my adult life.
And I've had to face and struggle, as everybody
else has in this profession, with a difficult,
sad fact about economics education in colleges
and universities in the United States for
the last half century.
Basically the story is this: Because of the
Cold War, because of the long years of struggle
between the United States and the Soviet Union
that began in the late 1940s, the previous
way of teaching economics, which included
the presentation of alternative theories,
of those theories that thought capitalism
was a really good system and efficient and
effective, and those who didn't.
Those who were critical, those who preferred
alternative ways of thinking about economics,
an alternative economic system, that kind
of an economics that debated those questions
was pushed aside.
Instead, everything got narrowed to a very
simple orthodoxy that excluded everything
else.
And the orthodoxy was the following: Capitalism,
the economists told us, was the greatest economic
system since sliced bread.
It couldn't be improved upon.
It couldn't be bested.
It had no alternative that was worth studying
in a sympathetic way, from which lessons might
be learned.
None of that.
Marxism, which is the most developed critique
of economic orthodoxy that exists in the world,
it's the most developed critique of capitalism
that exists in the world, was simply excluded
from 99 percent of all economics curriculum
as it is today.
It's an extraordinary narrow orthodoxy.
And the reason I'm telling you this is I've
asked to come and join us today a professor
of economics who is one of those brave souls
growing in number across the United States,
and there were always a few who doesn't want
this orthodoxy to go on, who wants to open
things up.
And the phrase he and his colleagues use is
heterodox economics, opening economics up
to alternative perspectives.
Having students learn what's good about capitalism
and what isn't.
What the theories suggest might be a better
system, and what the theories suggest can't
be improved on but to open the space up.
And that's a really important contribution
to this country, particularly at this time
when so many Americans understand all too
well that capitalism, whatever its virtues,
is not doing all that well by the majority
of people.
So let me turn to my guest and introduce him
to you.
He is Professor Ian Seda-Irizarry.
He is an assistant professor of economics
at the John Jay College of the City University
of New York.
There he teaches Introduction to Economics
and Global Capitalism, Political Economy,
Economic Development of the Caribbean, and
Economics in Historical Perspective.
He got his Ph.D. in economics from the University
of Massachusetts at Amherst, and his current
work focuses on understanding the economic
crisis of Puerto Rico, and his popular and
academic writings have appeared in outlets
inside and outside of the United States.
So it really is with pleasure that I welcome
to our program Professor Ian Seda-Irizarry.
Thanks very much for joining me.
Thank you, Rick, for having me yet again in
your space and for your viewers and listeners
for tuning in.
Good.
So tell me what you understand by this term,
heterodox economics.
And I should preface my question by saying
I'm going to be asking you about the fact
that you've created at your college a master's
program in heterodox economics.
So I'm going to explore that with you.
But let's begin by what is heterodox economics?
Well, as you mentioned in your introduction,
heterodox economics is kind of an umbrella
term for capturing alternative perspectives
to the mainstream of the discipline, to the
orthodoxy.
So in that sense it refers to the outside
of the discipline.
The concept itself also is kind of problematic
because it doesn't necessarily imply that
it's a critique of capitalism, it's just that
it might be a different way, for example,
of celebrating the system that's not on par
with the mainstream.
So in that sense it's a very broad, umbrella
term.
So it's not like what some people like to
say, that it's just like, you know, radical
political economy with a new name, right.
Like here in New York City people like to
speak about, oh, salsa music is just mambo,
you know?
It's a different thing.
But we use that term to highlight the openness
of alternatives to the orthodoxy.
OK.
So tell me, why is it necessary?
Why did your colleagues and you choose to
specifically designate your new master's economics
programs as heterodox?
Why, why choose that name at this time?
Well, against all attempts to silence alternatives,
there has always been a demand for alternative
viewpoints concerning the explanations of
how the system works.
And usually this view, there's demand for
alternative viewpoints just explodes in moments
of crisis of the system.
So for example, in the 1970s this happened.
New textbooks were created.
Probably the most famous one which sought
to be an alternative to the classic Paul Samuelson
introductory textbook, which is the bible
of the discipline, was a product by John Eatwell
and John Robinson that didn't get off the
ground very well.
Then you had at the turn of the century with
that crisis that started around 97 and ended
up in 2001 that caused countries like Russia,
Argentina, Turkey, you had calls in countries
like France from students in universities
asking for changes in the curriculum.
And with the latest downturn of the economy
we had the case for example of students walking
out of the classes of somebody like Greg Mankiw,
who right now is the most renowned author
of the basic textbook that most economics
students are reading and are expected actually
to tackle and learn from.
So in that sense we are kind of a product
of the ups and downs of the crisis.
And specifically our deppartment took the
shape it took around 2008-2009, which is,
you know, that critical years of, you know,
the downturn, the most recent downturn of
the system.
So we basically tapped into that demand.
And we had, thankfully, which is kind of lucky,
the support of the institution to precisely
provide these alternative views to our students.
OK.
Just for clarification, will your master's
program also teach the mainstream or the conventional
economics that the vast majority of other
programs teach and only teach?
In other words, will you include what the
others don't include?
So in a sense, I have to be sincere, this
is still a work in progress.
There's big important debates within the department,
within heterodoxy, in terms of how to address
mainstream economics.
So just to give you a good example of this,
students many times if you teach them the
mainstream model and start criticizing it
at the end, they wonder why did you teach
me from the get go something that you think
is wrong?
Why lose my time that way?
So we're struggling with how to do it.
Clearly our students will be exposed in one
way or another to the mainstream.
They have to.
They have to be able to criticize not only
those economic theories but also the political
thought that emanates from those theories,
that they see, you know, when they read a
newspaper or see the television, see politicians
speak about the state of, the health of the
economy, et cetera.
So either directly or indirectly, our students
are asked to precisely engage with the mainstream,
or else we would be committing the same mistake
that the orthodoxy commits in excluding us.
So you'll open it to everything and exclude
nothing, basically, or you'll try to be as
open as you can.
Yeah, but we won't lose our time in using
the orthodoxy as the pillar from which then
the classes are developed.
On the contrary, it's more like we expose
our students to the theories that we think
make more sense of the world, and in occasional
topics, in occasional themes, yeah, we bring
in the common sense that usually pervades
analysis, which is usually tied to that particular
theory.
So we try to make those connections.
And it's a very difficult task, but we try
to do it.
OK.
So you're, in a sense, you're remedying a
defect in the educational system when it comes
to economics in higher education.
It is narrow and orthodox.
You want to be open and heterodox.
Why do you think the rest of economics education
in the United States is so orthodox?
What is the, what's the reason for that?
How would you explain to a person that you
were describing this situation to why it's
that way?
Well, we know that through all the history
of humanity when systems of social thought
have been developed, usually what becomes
the mainstream becomes an argument for the
status quo.
So if you look, for example, in political
theory in the 17th century, those turbulent
times of the English revolution, civil war,
cultural revolution, you had of Thomas Hobbes
making an argument for the English monarchy.
If you look at it in something like philosophy,
a couple of centuries later you have Hegel
making a whole argument out of the virtues
of the development of rational thought embedded,
embodied, in the Prussian state, in the Prussian
monarchy.
And now in economics what we have is precisely
mainstream orthodox neoclassical economics
making an apologetic defense with no basic
criticisms of how the system works in terms
of this is the best we can have.
So in that sense we try to participate in
undermining what becomes a mainstream that
appeals to science and the processes of science
in terms of why is it that they occupy that
hegemonic role.
They appealed to this, let's use the term
positivism, in terms that science advances
on the basis, to quote Paul Samuelson, who
quoted Max Planck, in terms of what was death
by death economics makes progress, or something
like that.
As if, you know, everybody agrees that these
theories have been refuted so we have to move
on, and et cetera.
So we question those discourses that also,
for example, appeal to methods such as extreme
use of math and statistics.
Because supposedly math and statistics imply
some sort of rigor, consistency, and therefore
they are equated with the truth.
So we also have those sensibilities about
method in connection to politics.
And you know, the system of ideas prevalent
in society.
So to answer your question, it's very, very
difficult, but we do know that it's not, the
answer to that question is not that positivistic
vision that is, you know, exposed to most
students in terms of how the science, that
social science has advanced, through time
in societies that are populated by ideas that
are consistently contending with each other.
So it's interesting to me to hear you say
particularly that in every historical period
there has, in fact, been contestation between
points of view that affirm the inevitability,
the superiority of the status quo, and theories
that say no, we can do better as human beings
than this system or this structure, and we
have at least to discuss whether that's the
case, how it might be done and so on.
The orthodoxy in the United States didn't
want to have that conversation, which is typical
of orthodoxies, so there has to be a bit of
a fight.
So you are, or at least let me ask you to
react to the notion, you are in a bit of a
fight with the profession to open it up.
Yeah.
We're trying to just follow that those historical
moments that I mentioned before in terms of
opening up a discipline that has been very,
very explicit in the way it demeanors and
alternative perspectives, and how it basically
has developed a self-referential framework
in terms of institutions like universities,
academic journals, systems of evaluating promotions
within departments, and in the worst cases
just making life impossible for alternatives.
So just to give you an example of one school
within that orthodoxy that you mentioned,
Marxism in the 1950s and '60s, my understanding
is that there was just one tenured professor
in the United States, which turned out to
be one of your professors, Paul Baran in Stanford,
and my understanding is that they made his
life impossible for him.
You know, all types of trouble just to make
his life hell, while at the same time celebrating
like hey, we have a token Marxist here.
What are you talking about.
You know, we have alternative perspectives.
So we're trying to break open by not having
a token heterodox or radical political economist,
but having a whole institution based on it.
So if you look at the composition of our faculty
you'll see that many of them actually come
from institutions that explicitly expose their
students at undergraduate and graduate level
to alternatives to the mainstream.
So that brings me to my next question.
Yours is not going to be the only place in
America where a student can learn more than
the orthodoxy.
There are others.
You are adding to them.
Is that correct?
Yeah, we're just part of a tradition of dissent.
I guess that's something that does separate
us, is that in many heterodox departments,
without mentioning names, that actually celebrate
their heterodoxy at the graduate level, when
it comes to undergraduate teaching they are
more or less still pretty standard.
So we, our starting point was heterodoxy from
the undergraduate level.
And now thanks again to the work of many of
our colleagues and the support of the administration,
now we're offering the same alternative now
at the more advanced graduate level of a master's
degree.
What's your argument for a student who might
be considering where he or she is going to
do master's level economic studies?
Why should such a student, in your judgment,
choose a heterodox program?
What are the advantages that make that a more
desirable choice than going to the conventional,
the more conventional route?
Well, just to use a concrete example of our
own students at the undergraduate level, most
of our students come from a working class
background.
I say that because in a sense, like in classes
like political economy, where they are exposed
to Karl Marx and his thought, in a sense we're
not teaching them anything new.
They know and they feel and they understand
that's what's written in that book written
150 years ago pretty much describes many of
the things that they have to pass through
in their everyday lives.
What the book does is to organize those experiences
that they have in a coherent way that also
makes them feel empathy with others that are
in the same workplace, outside of New York
City, and around the world.
To understand the system as a whole and the
reality like that.
And our experience has been that students
get very excited about it.
They want to go into things like journalism.
They want to encounter alternative viewpoints,
be it in politics, culture, economics, with
their grounding that they have theoretically
in alternative economic theories.
So they want to confront the world.
Other students, for example, just want to
be very sincere, they want to make a lot of
money.
And they understand that, you know, if I want
to make money, I have to know how the system
works.
So it may sound like a paradox or a contradiction
but many people who are into finance also
benefit from reading Karl Marx.
That's something that, well, should be a topic
for another program.
We have in terms of the background of our
graduate students we have not, only do they
not come, half of them, from economics, they
come from sociology, anthropology.
So we also focus on the interdisciplinary
aspect of a heterodox education which provides
basically the tools to go out in the world
and be a critical, well-rounded citizen that
actively seeks to intervene in this world
as it's falling apart, which is part of our
mission.
Try to combat that, those tendencies right
now.
So it's, it's an uphill struggle, but we benefit
from the types of students that we have.
And we have benefited from the students that
have come from outside of John Jay College,
outside of that system that are interested
in this.
And in terms of job prospects it goes all
over the place, from continuing work and the
Ph.D. level, working for government organizations,
non-governmental organizations, journalism.
We have a couple of journalists, one of them
from our sister institution of Economic Update,
the Left Out podcast , Dante Dallavalle.
We have another journalist writing for the
Intercept.
Very good piece on the crisis in Puerto Rico.
Her name is Kate Aronoff.
We have an undergraduate student, his name
is Nathan [Tankels], who has been cited by
one of her guests here, Stephanie Kelton.
So we have a very interesting group and a
rich environment to push the boundaries of
the discipline in terms of alternatives within
economics and outside the spectrum of the
discipline itself.
Let me ask you, because sometimes when I talk
to people about heterodox economics I get
the impression that they think if you're interested
in that it will bring you into tremendous
conflict either with the administrations of
universities, or make it difficult for your
graduates to get jobs.
Let me ask you then about this.
Is there a problem in the CUNY system, City
University of New York, with your going in
this direction?
Has that occasioned any difficulty?
Or do they welcome this kind of opening?
Well, our immediate experience, not even on
the graduate level, at the undergraduate level,
is that we've graduated students, sent them
to sister departments.
They come back, work for the Bureau of Labor
Statistics.
Some of them come back and teach for us.
So the opportunities are there, and the employers
are also interested in precisely a broader
spectrum of analysis, not this, you know,
mass production of the same.
That's what the education system usually,
you know, pops out on a yearly basis.
So even though there is, of course, the constraints
of public education, the cuts in public spending,
funding, and all of that which, of course,
amounts to real constraints.
We're working through those things.
So our students do have the opportunities.
We have the anecdotal evidence that they will
not be wasting their time either professionally
in terms of, again making a buck, or contesting
the system itself.
So it hasn't been a problem for your graduates.
What about the university administration?
Is this OK?
Because sometimes professors who might want
to go in that direction are frightened that
they will encounter some sort of disapproval
if they do that.
Well, our program in part has been a product
of a turn at John Jay College towards more
of a liberal arts education.
So in that sense the economics department
was more than welcome.
And then within that context of the crisis
this heterodox approach even, you know, open
arms to us.
So at least within the John Jay College that
has not been a problem at all, it's been very
supportive.
We have lots of fantastic colleagues from
other departments that are very supportive,
extremely supportive.
So so far, no.
No major stumbling blocks along the way.
Tell me a little bit so that people understand
about your students at John Jay.
And I would guess they're not all that different
from the students that come to many of the
campuses of the City University of New York.
How how does your program, in a sense, at
least in part, focus on what they, what they
need and who they are?
So, the topics addressed in the department,
topics like inequality, poverty, instability
in the job, household dynamics, international
dynamics, all of these things are part of
the experiences of our students.
Many of them are, for example, the first member
of their family to go to college.
Many of them are the main source of income
of their family.
So that's very common throughout the CUNY
system, very common at John Jay, which is
also a Hispanic-serving institution.
A substantial amount of students are, you
know, from Hispanic background and all that.
So they have to deal with things like immigration.
In terms of the history of their families.
So we deal with those things within the current
context of the Trump administration and within
the larger context of the historical development
of the United States and the development of
global capitalism.
So in that sense we're directly connected
with those experiences in terms of precisely
providing theories that actually do explicitly
address those problems.
So if you take some, you know, versions of
the mainstream they will tell you, you know,
inequality doesn't matter.
What's really important is poverty.
So we tackle those problems.
We show them what does it mean to make that,
what consequences does it have in terms of
the workings of the system at the economic
level and the political level, et cetera.
So in that sense we think that we're very
relevant to their daily experiences, both
individually in relationship to their families,
their neighborhoods, et cetera.
You know, it strikes me listening to you that
when I went to college I tried to take some
economics courses because I was so interested
in what was happening to the economy.
But I found them utterly irrelevant.
They were all mathematical, technical exercises.
Since I had come from a background in the
natural sciences and mathematics I was basically
blown away by the fact that economics the
way it was taught to me was more like an engineering
course, and didn't talk about the current
problems that I was interested in.
And so I tended to shy away, I had to come
back.
I studied economics despite the way it was
taught, not because of it.
I would have been enthralled by a program
that began by saying the student has a whole
raft of economic realities he and she have
to wrestle with; a good economics education
begins by dealing with those and facing those
and drawing out different ways of explaining
those so that people really can get a handle
on their own situation.
If that's what you're trying to do then it's
not just a disagreement with orthodoxy.
It really is a different philosophy of education.
Yeah.
I mean, that was my experience also, even
though I came from business school background.
Yourself.
Myself.
Yeah.
And you know, the class that hooked me up
to economics was a course on business cycles.
And then I went to do a master's degree.
And I got exposed to that fetishism, let's
call it, of the tools that economists are
taught.
So just to give you a quick example of how
this manifested, I was present in a master's
thesis dissertation where the topic was the
socioeconomic determinants of crime in Puerto
Rico.
And you know, when you see that type of title
usually it means that they're going to use
statistics, econometrics, identify certain
variables, find the data through time, run
a regression, check which the variables are
statistically significant, and then make a
story about it.
The person presenting that topic found that
the level of income was not statistically
significant.
So he proceeded to write his whole master's
thesis on the basis of that.
When he presented his thesis, somebody raised
his hand, actually that was taught in a heterodox
department, is a dear colleague and professor
that you know in Puerto Rico.
And he asked the question that you're saying
that this, this variable, that level of income
in relationship to how you're defining crime
is not important, but if you actually look
at the people who are in jail for committing
the crime as you describe that, they clearly
are part of the profile of this strata of
the income.
How do you deal with that.
That didn't even pass through the head of
the person, and the adviser who was a renowned
economist, whose hero is somebody like Gary
Becker trained at University of Chicago.
So it's clear that they don't have the sensibilities
for asking the right questions, and they just
let the theory, you know, vomit reality without
questioning the method, the tools, or being
even conscious that there are alternative
ways and methods of doing stuff.
So that consciousness is also very important
for us in exposing our students to alternative
viewpoints.
You know, it makes you wonder when you hear
stories like this whether the real function
of economics, the orthodoxy, really wasn't
to understand what's going on, but to justify
it, to celebrate it, to make it all look terribly
well organized beyond improvement.
It's remarkable.
Anyway, I want to thank you very much for
introducing our audience to the heterodox
idea and the heterodox program that you are
developing, and I wish you every success in
attracting students and then giving them the
benefit of this kind of openness.
So thank you very much, Ian, for coming.
Thank you so much, Rick.
And to your audience, please tune in and search
for our department, the John Jay College City
University of New York economics department.
Thank you, folks.
I want to also thank all of you for participating,
for listening, for watching.
I want to thank you to be partners of us,
to share what you get on this program with
other people through all the mechanisms of
social media and in your daily conversation
with family members, co-workers, and so forth.
I want to also thank Truthout.org, that remarkable
independent source of news and analysis that's
been a partner with Economic Update for many
many years.
And I look forward to speaking with you again
next week.
