Welcome friends to another edition of
economic update a regular weekly program
devoted to the economic dimensions of
our lives
jobs debts those of our kids coming down
the road the incomes we need to have a
decent life all of that
I'm your host Richard Wolff I've been a
professor of economics all my adult life
and my hope is that it has prepared me
well to offer you these economic updates
about what's been going on in that
economy we all depend on before jumping
in to the updates for today I want to
remind you of this remarkable event that
takes place in New York City June 1, 2, 3.
It's called the Left Forum this year it
will be kicked off by Jane Sanders, the
number-one advisor to Bernie Sanders who
regularly scores in the polls as the
most popular politician in the United
States Jane Sanders who advises him will
be opening the left forum with a
conversation about how politics looks
from that perspective and there will be
many many others over 300 panels will be
going on during the week the weekend
excuse me and likewise all sorts of
activities organizations art exhibits
and so on it's an extraordinary event
takes place at the John Jay College of
the City University of New York starts
June 1 ends June 3 if you are interested
in social movements in social criticism
this is the number one event of the year
in the United States and I urge you to
look into it and the easiest way to go
there to get all the information you
might need to register is to go to their
website very simple Left Forum, that's
all one word, leftforum dot o-r-g, leftforum.org.
Let's turn to our updates and the first
one is a kind of continuation from an
earlier interview I had with Professor
Miguel Doron Robles because it touches
on what he talked about with us namely
the decline of American cities this
peculiar moment in the history of the
United States when the kind of onward
rush to privatize everything to make
everything the private event rather than
the community or the collective or the
state event this part of the
demonization of government to cover up
all the shortcomings that afflict the
private sector well we're about to
apparently take it one step further you
know of gated communities those parts of
our cities and towns increasingly over
recent decades that close themselves off
from everybody else they begin to have
their own water system sometimes their
own schools their own policing their own
you get the picture well we're about to
take it one step further an organization
called a note the name free private
cities is raising money around the
United States and offering itself to
wealthy people who don't want to live
with anybody else who isn't who don't
want to be part of any public community
event they want to live with carefully
selected people just like themselves in
a city literally separated legally,
jurisdictionally, politically you name it
from everybody else their image is the
city of Singapore in Asia which is
itself not just a city but its own
nation separated from everything else
it's a city / nation combined
they make Singapore their model they do
not mention that Singapore has been a
political dictatorship for many many
years and has thereby excluded the
people that didn't want shaved out all
of the parts of society that rich folks
don't want to see near them it's a
remarkable step in the disintegration of
collectivity of community of solidarity
private cities from which all who
haven't got the money will be excluded
and you know of course that when you
take the rich folks and put them in
their own cities all that will be left
for everybody else is to make it on
their own without the Solidarity of the
people whom they made rich by their
labor whom they continue to make rich by
their labor but who will not share with
those who produce the wealth what the
wealth makes possible if you ever needed
a sign of the disintegration of
contemporary capitalism there it is
moving right along here's another sign
of the problem of capitalism there's a
freelance marketplace called up work
which keeps track of how many of us here
in the United States are working without
a regular job situation you know will
you go to the same place 9:00 to 5:00
Monday through Friday with job security
and so on here's what their research
came up with which I wanted to share
with you there are now according to up
work 57 million u.s. freelancers that's
35 percent of the entire workforce do
not have a regular job they freelance
they get work where and when they can
for a particular job for a particular
period of time during which they can
worry about how much space they'll be
between the next job they get and so
forth among Millennials the younger part
of our workforce the the percentage of
the millennial labor force that is
freelance is 47% just shy of half the
freelance category is growing three
times faster than the rest of the
workforce you know it doesn't take a
genius to understand that if you are a
freelancer it means it's very hard to
plan your life you do not know from one
week to the next from one month or a
year to the next how in the world are
you going to make the basic commitments
of life where to live who live with
whether to have a family and so on
becomes impossible situation and has
more than a little to do with the fact
that the birthrate in the United States
has been dropping in recent years in a
way that is not replicated in other
parts of the world at least not yet the
next update I want to share with you the
Supreme Court issued an interesting
decision recently I wanted to bring it
to your attention they basically have
legalized sports betting every state in
the United States all 50 are now allowed
to make whatever rules they want
governing sports betting well I'm
interested in this not so much on the
issue of sports betting itself I mean we
bet on almost everything else why not
sports - obviously there's a problem of
addiction to all kinds of gambling and
this of course isn't gonna help that
situation much I'm more interested in
the why and the why now parts of the
question and I'm an economist so I'm
gonna go after that legalizing sports
betting
is being done because cities towns but
particularly states can tax that
activity they can go in and get money
it's a little bit like the legalization
of marijuana that was also a taboo like
gambling
but it is a way of raising money without
doing what without taxing corporations
and the rich that's the truth of it you
see over the last 40 50 years the burden
of taxes in the United States has
shifted at the end of World War two it
was heavily focused on corporations and
much less on individuals that's all
changed the burden of corporations taxes
have been relieved they pay less and
less and less both at the state level
and at the federal level and the burden
of Taxation has been correspondingly
shifted on to the individual that's why
we've had 50 years of quote unquote tax
revolts because the burden of Taxation
has ridden risen disproportionately on
people not on businesses where it once
was
so you've come to the point where the
mass of people will not tolerate it
anymore that's the secret of the
Republican Party's political success
they champion the no taxes which people
feel as a real burden not only that
taxes have also been shifted from
high-income individuals to middle and
low ones so if you take the whole 50
years the last 50 years together the
burden of taxation has been shifted from
corporations to individuals and from
rich individuals to the middle and the
bottom no wonder everybody's freaked out
about their taxes well then how are you
going to run the community needs that we
have the schools the police the fire the
the parks you know the things that make
communities what they are and the answer
is sooner or later we're going to have
the tax the corporations and the rich
who have gotten away with being tax
evaders for half a century and they know
it so they're desperately trying to find
ways that will prevent them from finally
being taxed as they ought to have been
all along enter marijuana oh good we can
get some taxes by charging people who
use marijuana and now the Supreme Court
decision oh good we can tax people who
bet on football games and basketball
games and baseball game anything in the
world even violating old religious and
other kinds of cultural commitments of
the United States long opposed to
marijuana long opposed to gambling
sports betting and so on many of you
will remember the enormous scandals that
have come up as points were shaved in
games to make money for people who
gambled on them all of that is to be
forgotten
because the number one goal is to save
corporations and the rich from finally
having to face the tax burden being put
back on them when it shouldn't have been
taken from them in the first place I
want to take a moment before we doing
the next updates to remind you that
particularly for those of you that are
watching the excuse me listening to this
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things especially here in the month of
May the 200th anniversary of Marx's own
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we also invite you to take a look at the
Puerto Rico forward the podcast that's
also available on Apple podcasts and
Google Play
it's a remarkable free analysis of the
developments in that very important part
of underreported American history Puerto
Rico and again a reminder the left forum
is a thing that is worthy of your
interest and support and you can find
out all you need at left forum org
returning to our updates I have to
report I'm a little sad about it that
yet another company has gotten caught an
automobile company cheating on the
emissions control I've been telling you
about this ever since the scandal broke
around Volkswagen in Germany this time
it's the Fiat Chrysler Corporation and
some of its suppliers such as VM Motori
and Bosch many of you are familiar with
them they are all now embroiled in a
evolving scandal in which these kinds of
cheating devices were installed they
weren't this was not explained to buyers
of things like jeeps and RAM 1500 pickup
trucks I'm not interested in the details
it's the same with all of these
companies and that's the point I want to
drive home with you namely
to trust large capitalist corporations
not to cheat not to lie that's been
given the lie by what's emerged here all
of the oil companies without exception
it looks like and if there are a couple
of exceptions my guess is there won't be
exceptions much longer have been caught
doing this and I want to drive home what
they got caught at it wasn't just
cheating and lying to the buyers of
their cars
it was cheating on something that
deteriorates the quality of the air we
all breathe no one can know how many
people have gotten emphysema lung
diseases of all kinds lung cancers how
many lives were lost by the extra
pollution caused for all of us by the
profit-driven behavior of large
corporations even when the government
comes in as it did to try to control
pollution for our health these companies
went around that legislation it shows
you that state regulation however
valuable you might think is no solution
here that's what we've learned so here's
a suggestion one of the reasons we
endorse and support on this program a an
economy based on worker coops is for the
simple reason that if a business is run
by all the workers together we'll have a
chance that some of them have the
decency the honor the concern for their
own families to not let such a cheat
that hurts everybody go through it's not
a hundred percent but it's better than
what we have which is to rely on
capitalist corporations whose bottom
line is profit and a government tool
easily how shall I say this corrupted
that might be a nice word to be
effective regulators there's a lesson
here and oh just as we were going to
press add another the Porsche come
which just recalled 60,000 porsche suvs
for guess what an apparent error that
had something to do with emissions
controls and if you believe it was an
error well then there is the Brooklyn
Bridge on which I will give you a very
good price if you wish to buy it this
last week for another update three
senators in the United States Senate
senators Gillibrand of New York Booker
of New Jersey and Sanders of Vermont
offered a bill to provide a Federal jobs
guarantee this is in a way a
resubmission
of an old bill that had the name
Humphrey and Hawkins back in the 1970s
because that bill had the same goal the
idea is simple if the private sector of
the United States private businesses are
either unable or unwilling to hire all
the able-bodied adults who want a job
then the solution is not to leave those
people without a job that's not an
efficient solution it's horrible for the
millions affected it's horrible for the
families of those people it's horrible
for all the rest of us who could enjoy
what those unemployed people could be
helping to produce if they had a job
Franklin Roosevelt with the support of
the Congress back in the 1930s responded
to this situation by saying okay if the
private sector either can't or won't
we the government will we will provide a
job guarantee we'll give everybody a job
well that's what Gillibrand Booker and
Sanders are proposing again and let me
drive home the economics of it when a
person goes to work for a private
employer the name of the game is you
produce as a worker more than it costs
the employer to get you to come there
that more is called profit and it is
pocketed by the employer that's why he
hires you he pays you $20 an hour
because whatever it is you add to his
output to sell each hour that you work
is worth more than $20 so he sells it
gets let's say $25 pays you the 20 he
owes you for your labor and keeps the
other five you produced it you just
don't get it who gets it the owners of
the business who divided up amongst
themselves pay off the big executives
you know the story well if you don't do
that
suppose the government comes in the
government hires you pays you let's say
the same 20 bucks you produce $25 per
hour for the 20 bucks you get now who
gets the extra five bucks well there are
no employers in the private sense so the
government takes the money and what does
the government do with the money the
answer is it provides public services or
it can lower everybody's taxes because
it doesn't need to tax us since it's
picking up the profit that is being
produced by all those public employees
we the people win we win by having
unemployed people be productive they win
because they have decent jobs can keep
their homes and all the rest and then we
win again because the profits of workers
in the public sector can reduce our
taxes or provide more funds for public
services not to do that is a strange
decision and depends only on the
political muscle of private enterprises
they don't want it and you know why
because if you understand it if you
actually live in it and you know what it
works like you would scratch your head
and you would say why are there any
private enterprises taking the profits
workers
and giving it to a few people rather
than making it available to everybody in
the form of reduced taxes or enhanced
public services they don't want that
process to get going they don't want
people to think like that they want to
keep the profits that we all helped to
produce in the tiny number of hands of
those who own and direct American
businesses and we shouldn't be fooled to
imagine it's anything else next update
the Catholic University in Washington DC
is moving forward it was announced with
its plan to and I'm quoting now enhance
the university's prestige and control
its costs and the way it's going to do
that is it's going to be firing tenured
professors now I should explain when you
get what's called tenure in the teaching
profession in the United States it
basically means that you cannot be fired
you have enough confidence expressed in
you by your colleagues and the
administrators of your institution that
you cannot be fired unless the need for
your services disappears they closed a
department or there's a financial
emergency or you have misbehaved in some
egregious way but barring those you have
that job until you retire that's what
tenure means so it's a big step for any
universities such as Catholic University
in Washington to say it's not going to
respect tenure and not declaring a
financial emergency they have not done
that but simply to as I'll quote again
enhance the university's prestige and
control its costs the professors as you
might guess are a bit troubled by this
situation those with tenure thought they
had job protection they're being told
they don't why the Catholic University
would want
do this I will leave to your imagination
I don't know but I want to raise the
fundamental issue here very fundamental
in the United States
professors are excluded at the Catholic
University and indeed at most
universities from participating in the
management of the university professors
job is to come into the classroom teach
work with their colleagues to manage the
curriculum that's it they don't
participate in or to be blunt they are
excluded from managing and this raises a
question because how the university was
managed by people excluding professors
clearly led to the current situation
where they need to enhance their
prestige and control their cost
obviously they didn't do enough of that
before so now they want the professors
to take a cut in their security because
non professors messed up their jobs well
I would suggest to you you can't have it
both ways if you want professors to be
taking it on the chin because
quote-unquote the university needs it
then you've got to let the professors in
on all the decisions that led to this
circumstance otherwise you have one
group of people making the decisions and
another group of people paying the price
when they don't work and of course this
isn't unique to a university it's what
goes on everywhere the boss makes the
decisions and one day tells you gee we
have to lay you off well it turns out
they have to lay you off because they
made the wrong commodity or they made it
in the wrong way or they put the wrong
equipment into it or they use the wrong
materials or they messed up the techni
all the decisions from which workers are
excluded lead to that moment when
there's a crisis and the workers are
told they've got to take it on the chin
too well if you want the workers to bear
the costs of Mis
stakes they have to be in on it
otherwise to coin it a phrase famous
from American history you're gonna have
taxation without representation remember
that's what they threw the boxes of tea
into the harbor at Boston many years ago
that's what the real Tea Party was about
you cannot impose burdens on us if you
exclude us from making the decisions
that led there to be a need for burdens
you can't have it both ways but
capitalism is a system that tries to
have it both ways exclude the mass of
working people from all the key
decisions and then make them pay the
price when those decisions have been
made badly it's a profound reason why
it's time to think about the basic
slogan we can do better than capitalism
thank you very much for your time we've
come to the end of the first half of
this program please stay with us after a
short interlude we will turn to the
second half of the program
you
