Welcome friends to another edition of
Economic Update, a weekly program devoted
to the economic dimensions of our lives,
jobs, debts, income, our own, those of our
children.
I'm your host Richard Wolff. I've been a
professor of economics all my adult life,
and I hope that that has prepared me to
offer you these economic updates about
what's been happening over the last week,
and sometimes a bit longer. Well in the
very recent past many of us were
affected by two notable suicides in the
news: one was Kate Spade, a fashion
designer famous for the bags that she
developed, and the industry that grew up
around them, and the other one was the
celebrity chef for lack of a better term,
Anthony Bourdain, who was also a an
author and a travel writer of
extraordinary depth and excitement for
many many of us. These were tragic
suicides of course but they forced us
all to wonder about our own lives, to
wonder about what might have brought
these two highly successful, much-beloved
in their ways, people to make that
decision to take their own lives. It
prompted me as I thought about it, to
look into what's happening in the way of
suicide in this country. Were these
isolated events, or do they have maybe
some more general message for us and in
particular given this program? Where's
the economics in all of this? Well I went
to the Center for Disease Control, a very
important branch of the United States
government that keeps track of our
illnesses, our deaths our health in short;
and there I found some results I want to
bring to your attention and then offer a
brief economic interpretation. The rate
of suicide in the United States between
1999 and 2016, that's roughly over the
last twenty years, has increased by
thirty percent. That is an astonishing
situation. Basically a one-third increase
in the rate at which people take their
own lives. Here are some more information
that is relevant one half of the
suicides occurring now occur by the use
of firearms. To give you a sense of how
many people we're talking about in the
year 2016, which is the last year for
which data are available, the number of
suicides in the United States, forty five
thousand. That makes suicide the tenth
leading killer of Americans, when you
take every source of death. Only 1/2 of
those people had any known quote-unquote
mental health problems. Half had no such
problems that were known, and a good
number of those who had known health
problems had what most of us would
consider to be occasional depression and
a variety of other activities and moods
that most of us have. So what's going on?
The decisions of Kate Spade and Anthony
Bourdain are obviously not unique and
not restricted to them as individuals. I
would argue the following: we are living
in a time when American capitalism, our
system, is in deep trouble. Many of the
leading industries have moved out of the
country many of their production
facilities continue to move out of the
country the new center of economic
growth is in China and India and Brazil
and places like that as a result the
quantity and the quality of jobs in this
country are less and less important to
American businesses because they're more
and more invested
somewhere else as they develop the
technology what jobs they don't move
abroad they replace people with machines
and artificial intelligence promises to
take that further people see you all of
that their sense of economic opportunity
is being constricted the pressures on
them of jobs that are not as secure as
they once were of benefits that have
shrunk from what they were once were the
fact that they're children to get a
college education now have to go into
enormous debts or put drains on family
finances it's too much and you're
putting the burden on too many people
with no way out and suicide is one way
people respond you know I've talked on
this program about the opioid crisis in
a way that's another kind of death you
don't stop breathing your brain doesn't
stop but it almost does we're in a
society that is showing us in these
symptoms something is terribly wrong. My
next update has to do with the building,
the housing system in this country. You
know last week I had Bob Hennelly here and
we talked about housing and I did some
work inspired by what he had to tell us
and here's what I discovered the vacancy
rate at the highest level most expensive
apartments most expensive houses 13% the
vacancy rate at the bottom end six
percent we are building houses for the
richest of our people way ahead of what
they can afford and we're under building
everywhere else which is one of the
reasons why rents are going up and going
up quickly because there isn't enough
housing being built because we don't
build housing in a capitalist system to
meet people's needs we build housing
where and when it
profitable and you know up building a
house especially a multi-unit house
takes years between the planning and the
permits and the excavation and the
building and the zoning and all the rest
of it so there's always a lag so when
the economy looks good too many people
start the process by the time the
housing comes ready to be sold or rented
it's two three four years later when the
economic situation will go you might
think that this awareness of this
pattern would lead there to be some
coordinated planning when it comes to
housing but there isn't because we don't
have the government doing public housing
the way we once did it's all a private
gamble for private speculators to decide
when and how to build housing and they
build it for the top where the money is
and we live with the results is it a
critique of this system you bet
here's some good news and yet one that
carries a lesson a federal judge has
granted class-action status to nurses
and nurse practitioners working at the
Veterans Administration hospitals across
the country why the nurses and their
lawyers argued that for years the VA
administration was requiring many of
them to do extra work on their own time
for no pay sometimes it was the
innocuous little oh I hope you can stay
available on your cell phone for an hour
or so after this evenings end of workday
or maybe you need to be accessible by
email
the reason this caught my eye is that
this tool is a sign a symptom of a
declining capitalism when the employer
feels entitled fields in neighbor
to squeeze in this little way in that
little way more time more work more
effort more energy more attention from
workers without paying them counting on
those workers being under the pressure
of economic difficulty so they're not in
a good position to say no or to protest
so they go along first with this little
thing and then that little thing and
pretty soon it adds up and when you sit
down with a pad and paper they're being
deprived of thousands of dollars of
income that the law actually says they
ought to have been paid for the work
that they did and so my hats off to the
nurses and nurse practitioners at the VA
for getting together and saying enough
is enough I'm not gonna do this anymore
and I'm gonna get together with others
similarly squeezed in ways that they
should never have been to do something
together later in today's program you'll
learn about how college students
burdened with debts are coming to the
same conclusions and beginning to move
in similar kinds of directions the last
economic update I have time for in this
portion of the program has to do with
that perennial issue money in u.s.
politics and today I want to talk to you
about the uline family spelled so you
get it right if you're interested in
pursuing this UI h l e aí n you line
family well where does it come from and
why is it important the U line family is
an extremely wealthy family here in the
United States which traces the origins
of its wealth to the Schlitz beer
company Milwaukee the beer that well I
won't bore you
shal it's was never known for its again
I'll be polite quality if you wanted a
quality drink and you had a glass of
water and Schlitz
it was a tough call okay but that didn't
make any difference to making the money
so the uline's take their money and
here's some of the things they've been
doing with it one they believe in the
importance of making broad access
available to assault weapons they are
deeply opposed to rights for
transgendered people they like to
support right-wing newspapers and they
were enthusiastic supporters of Alabama
candidate Roy Moore even after he was
accused of sexual misconduct with
underage girls in the last in this
current election cycle I should say the
you Lions have already committed twenty
six million dollars to sixty over sixty
candidates in this election cycle so why
am I telling you this
are they the only ones of course not are
they the biggest donors no but they are
among the few hundred people who give in
the millions of dollars and that's what
I want to talk to you about the notion
of democracy from its earliest
articulations going back to ancient
Greece all the way through to the modern
United States has always meant pretty
clearly that people are equal in terms
of the say the role they are to have on
the decisions we live with for example
the people who represent us in the city
or the state or the government of the
country where we live we're supposed to
have one person one vote and that's not
just a literal detail it's the notion
that each of us is equal when it comes
to make
the political decisions because we all
have to live with them and we all have
to cope with them then we should all
participate equally allowing money in
politics and the men on the matter of
the Uline family makes a joke and it's
not a good joke about this there is no
democracy if one person can spend twenty
six million dollars making sure you hear
about the candidates they like more than
you hear about others who can't raise
that money you learn what the candidates
they want you to learn about say they
can buy expensive advertising they can
pay people to knock on your door to tell
you how wonderful this candidate is you
get the picture mr. Uline has one vote
and I have one vote but are we equal in
shaping this democracy of course not
money in politics is the enemy of
democracy and always has been and if you
leave the money in there you're writing
the democracy out we've come to the end
of the first half of the program I want
to invite you to stay with me I will be
talking with Eli Campbell about student
debt and I think you'll find it very
interesting
welcome back friends I'm sitting here
with my guest for this part of the show
Eli Campbell and I want to tell you a
little bit about him but first Eli
welcome to the show Eli is a recent
graduate of the State University of New
York at New Paltz there he majored in
fine arts as I recall digital design and
fabrication but he's really gotten a
passion for the whole problem of student
debt of the burden being put on students
on their families on the whole United
States as a society which knows it needs
and relies on educated young people for
so much of the present and the future of
this society so he's become an
impassioned self learning advocate of
doing something and something severe and
serious about the student debt problem
and that's why he's here he's the author
of a pamphlet which will mention later
but he's someone passionately involved
in something that should concern us all
I recently learned for example that more
than four out of ten students in this
country now graduate with debt and the
number is growing and the burden of debt
is enormous so Eli thanks for doing this
work and thanks for making it available
by joining us let me begin by asking you
about something that caught my eye in
the pamphlet that you wrote that you
refer to the student debt issue as a
strange madness of the United States
what do you mean well in these times
we're witnessing what seems to be the
collapse of the prevailing orders of the
last century and in that you have these
people like Trump and Betsy DeVos who
they've gone to such lengths to isolate
themselves from the rest of society to
preserve their wealth that they're they
would rather sacrifice the future
then you know let go of their their
power in the past and I think about the
words of dr. King we are always on the
verge of being mesmerised by uncertainty
but we must move on and I think it's so
easy to get lost in you know there's so
much that's going on that is just
astounding right now it becomes
counterproductive to even try and
catalogue all of it or you know so but
the madness of these times is is that
willingness to sacrifice the future and
I think student debt is the the perfect
example of that and especially because
the idea of student debt is not really
known in other countries I mean when
you're 17 years old and you're signing
up for student loans in America you
don't know that most other countries in
the world don't have student loans you
don't know that public education in
America only two generations ago was
compared to what it is now
virtually free and you you just don't
understand the fact that these loans
you're taking out they're not made
because the government and and Wall
Street has our best interest in mind
they're made because it's profitable and
and that to me is is the madness of
these times
all right let's explore it a little bit
yeah on the one hand student loan means
or tells us that the student and his or
her family confront something they think
they must do educate their their family
educate the young people but what they
must do they can't afford yeah and the
solution is to talk to us about how do
we get into a situation like that well
when you have a society in which profits
are more important than people it's the
logical conclusion you can't
you you know where we're failing to plan
for the future and in that there's
there's no reason for society to be run
this way and and if you look at the
actual you know how we appropriate money
how we appropriate resources it is
designed it is all part of a plan to
collect profit off of students and one
one thing that I actually only realized
relatively recently the federal
government and correct me if I'm wrong
here the federal government has been
taken in about over a hundred billion
dollars every financial quarter since
around 2010 which is more than it would
cost by the estimates I'm familiar with
to fund all public universities and
colleges in the United States for an
entire year just in one quarter and that
since 2010 and and you know what why is
it that the federal government is making
a profit on loans that they're giving to
students that what what is the point of
that if not to just make a profit it's
not for students it's not for education
and it we really need to stop that you
know one of the logics that's given by
people who defend this is the notion
that there's something inherently
efficient or appropriate in having an
individual student worry about take
responsibility for the payment for their
education and it's sort of remarkable
partly because as you point out a few
decades ago nobody thought like that or
very few people did it's also remarkable
because we teach in America as an
economist I do that that the future of
the American economy in a world system
depends above all on the quality and
quantity of its educated labor force and
college and university is where we do a
great part of that and if you make it
harder and more expensive for people to
do that you are shooting yourself in the
foot
why would you do that or is your answer
again and that will be fine that it's
this private profit ahead of the social
welfare that is at the root of this well
it's it's about profit for corporations
and and for the government but it is
ultimately about suppressing the the
youth and suppressing any movement that
would challenge the capitalist system
and from my conclusion from the research
I've done is that students actually have
a lot to gain from not paying them and
if we were to organize collective
defaults on our loans it could
potentially trigger the kind of economic
and financial crisis on Wall Street that
we saw in 2007 now people might hear
that and say well why would we want to
do that but there is a certain strategic
advantage I think rather than letting
the house of cards fall on its own and
and then we have the problem of the
banks saying well we we need to get
bailed out again please taxpayers we
need we need what was it 14 trillion
dollars or something like that we need
to move we need our money back and I
think there's a certain strategic
advantage if students are to go out
ahead of that and say well we're not
gonna pay our loans and if you want to
take our education away from us good
luck because it's it you know we've got
them and and you know it's it's
interesting because it's not like with
um the the housing market crisis where
there is this asset that the banks can
actually foreclose on and take they
can't take our education away from us
they can't take our our knowledge and
our understanding and I think that is
you know in all of this the education is
the important part the degree has become
a product that students are forced to
buy in order to you know succeed in
society when when so many of us are are
pursuing an education in something
that we're interested in but the actual
are our actual labor and our
participation in the workforce becomes
something totally unrelated because we
have to pay off these extremely high
financial burdens I mean it's it's a
crazy system and I think rather than
wait for the Republicans to die of the
many diseases of the soul that they have
contracted or the Republic the Democrats
to grow spines and finally care about
what's happening to students and and and
everything else that's going wrong in
this country students should take
matters into their own hands and
organize this a default so yeah the word
default I've also heard the word boycott
that the students are going to and I
understand that I would like to hear a
little bit about you that there are
movements already there are activities
where students are organizing in order
to do this to confront the country with
the absurdity of putting a burden on
something that should be a public
benefit namely an educated population
tell us a little bit about those and
then I want to ask you about some of the
problems that kind of a movement has
well I I don't really think there is a
significant movement to do this in the
time that have been working on this I've
talked to a lot of people who are
sympathetic and I think they're probably
a lot of people around the country who
are having similar ideas when they're
looking at their their monthly bill but
I know that in the Occupy movement there
was an organization called strike debt
which was you know in the financial
crisis there were some of these student
loan asset backed securities that were
that went bad that strike that would
then buy and then forgive the loans
within these assets but I don't truly
think there is a movement as of yet that
that's working on that but you are
advocating that there be one in other
words you want there to be an organized
student refusal to honor that particular
debt in order to confront the country
with solving the problems of
and Finance in a different way yeah well
let me then ask you a question I'm sure
you have been asked or will be asked
yeah that that means any young student
who wants to follow your idea who agrees
with you would be taking a personal risk
in terms of their credit rating and all
the rest if they stopped paying this
debt how do you respond to that concern
well first of all it would have to be
organized it couldn't just be
individuals deciding they weren't gonna
pay because as individuals they will
absolutely throw everything they have
you know wage garnishment there's a
number of ways they can really mess with
your life if you if you don't pay your
loans but if if the the defaults were
coordinated so that they occurred
simultaneously they're on theirs from
what I've read a novel is the
corporation that I focused on a lot and
in their financial documents they they
state themselves that their ability to
make revenue from student loan servicing
is dependent on their infrastructure and
being able to actually collect the loans
and I'm not sure if you're familiar with
the concept of a DDoS attack but it's
when when a server online is is spammed
with information and it has to shut down
because it just can't process all of the
the requests for information that's sort
of what a debt boycott would do because
navien would suddenly say well we've got
you know 200% increase of defaults this
month and you know we only have so many
people in our office and you know what
are we gonna do and they're they're
threatening you know they have a
political idea too they're not just poor
debtors they're they've got they've got
an ideology that's behind them I mean
that would really have an impact I think
I noticed a recent statistics suggest
that something like 20 percent of
students are now in arrears in paying
back their loans they're having such
trouble doing it that you already have a
very high rate of the fall so that
you already have a mass movement towards
default it doesn't call itself that but
the question is it's already happening
can it be organized will be your next
kind of issue Eli we've come to the end
of the time that we have for this but I
want to ask you to stay on I want to let
folks know that we will continue this
conversation and that it will be
available the continuation at
patreon.com slash economic update that's
P a Treo n where we put economic update
extras like this continuing conversation
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