Economic Update with Richard D. Wolff is a weekly nationally syndicated program produced by Democracy at Work and hosted by Richard D. Wolff. The program explor...
How Marx's Class Analysis Could Solve Inequality Now
In this week's episode of Economic Update, Professor Wolff discusses how Marx's class analysis presents a solution to today's inequality and the challenges to overcoming it we have faced throughout history. In short, since the early existence of human society, people lived in tribes, clans, and villages that exhibited equality of wealth, income, and political power among their members. As modern history began to unfold, slavery, feudalism, and capitalism evolved as society as we know it took shape. In each of those three systems, huge inequalities separated people into masters vs slaves, lords vs serfs, and employers vs employees. Exploited and oppressed slaves, serfs, and employees opposed the inequalities of those systems but were unable to overcome them despite repeated efforts (revolutions). Marx questioned why modern societies failed to install and sustain systems of egalitarian wealth and power distribution (democracy). His answer lay in the understanding that class differences within the organization of production produce inequalities and sustain them. Overcoming those inequalities thus requires ending the class divisions within the organization of production and instead organizing in favor of a worker-cooperative structured method of production. The d@w Team Economic Update with Richard D. Wolff is a DemocracyatWork.info Inc. production. We make it a point to provide the show free of ads and rely on viewer support to continue doing so. You can support our work by joining our Patreon community: https://www.patreon.com/democracyatwork Or you can go to our website: https://www.democracyatwork.info/donate Every donation counts and helps us provide a larger audience with the information they need to better understand the events around the world they can't get anywhere else. We want to thank our devoted community of supporters who help make this show and others we produce possible each week.1:01 We kindly ask you to also support the work we do by encouraging others to subscribe to our YouTube channel and website: www.democracyatwork.info
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29:59
Build and Fight: The Resistance Forms
In this week’s episode of Economic Update, Professor Wolff discusses the economic causes and effects of the global demographic’s decline, the Trump administration's colonial plans for Greenland, and examples of resistance and fighting back as the Trump/Musk firing of federal workers gets underway. In the show's second half, Professor Wolff interviews the activist, organizer, and people's lawyer, who is organizing multiple fronts of resistance, David Cobb. The d@w Team Economic Update with Richard D. Wolff is a DemocracyatWork.info Inc. production. We make it a point to provide the show free of ads and rely on viewer support to continue doing so. You can support our work by joining our Patreon community: https://www.patreon.com/democracyatwork Or you can go to our website: https://www.democracyatwork.info/donate Every donation counts and helps us provide a larger audience with the information they need to better understand the events around the world they can't get anywhere else. We want to thank our devoted community of supporters who help make this show and others we produce possible each week.1:01 We kindly ask you to also support the work we do by encouraging others to subscribe to our YouTube channel and website: www.democracyatwork.info
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33:12
Federal Employees Fight Back
This week on Economic Update, Professor Wolff delivers updates on the firing of government workers by Trump/Musk with an economic analysis showing it to be an attack on the U.S. working class followed by a discussion of Trump's foreign policy of turning against Europe as merely an adjustment to an "American Capitalism First" project that is as old as the U.S. The second half of the show, features an interview with U.S. federal employee Colin Smalley, a sixteen-year member of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and an IFPTE union member who discusses how and why workers are fighting back. The d@w Team Economic Update with Richard D. Wolff is a DemocracyatWork.info Inc. production. We make it a point to provide the show free of ads and rely on viewer support to continue doing so. You can support our work by joining our Patreon community: https://www.patreon.com/democracyatwork Or you can go to our website: https://www.democracyatwork.info/donate Every donation counts and helps us provide a larger audience with the information they need to better understand the events around the world they can't get anywhere else. We want to thank our devoted community of supporters who help make this show and others we produce possible each week.1:01 We kindly ask you to also support the work we do by encouraging others to subscribe to our YouTube channel and website: www.democracyatwork.info
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32:10
The Nobel Prize in Economics Exposed
This week’s episode of Economic Update features updates on the economic risks and costs Europe faces from deporting or blocking immigrants as compared to Spain's prosperity through a pro-immigrant policy, the work of Michael Burawoy, a Marxist sociology professor at UC Berkeley, and how the inflation of meat prices is affected by a four-company oligopoly that controls 85% of the U.S. meat supply. In the second half of this week’s show, Professor Wolff interviews economics professor Shahram Azhar of Bucknell University on his recently published critique of the 2024 Nobel Prize in Economics. The d@w Team Economic Update with Richard D. Wolff is a DemocracyatWork.info Inc. production. We make it a point to provide the show free of ads and rely on viewer support to continue doing so. You can support our work by joining our Patreon community: https://www.patreon.com/democracyatwork Or you can go to our website: https://www.democracyatwork.info/donate Every donation counts and helps us provide a larger audience with the information they need to better understand the events around the world they can't get anywhere else. We want to thank our devoted community of supporters who help make this show and others we produce possible each week.1:01 We kindly ask you to also support the work we do by encouraging others to subscribe to our YouTube channel and website: www.democracyatwork.info
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31:22
U.S. Policy toward China: A Failing Effort to Contain Historic Change
In this week’s episode of Economic Update, Professor Wolff discusses unionizing Whole Foods workers VS. Amazon and Trump and the contradictions, dangers, and global retaliation of the new administration's tariff program. The show's second half features an interview with political scientist Dr. Wilmer J. Leon III on the China-U.S. competition: its costs, the stakes, and why the U.S. is losing. The d@w Team Economic Update with Richard D. Wolff is a DemocracyatWork.info Inc. production. We make it a point to provide the show free of ads and rely on viewer support to continue doing so. You can support our work by joining our Patreon community: https://www.patreon.com/democracyatwork Or you can go to our website: https://www.democracyatwork.info/donate Every donation counts and helps us provide a larger audience with the information they need to better understand the events around the world they can't get anywhere else. We want to thank our devoted community of supporters who help make this show and others we produce possible each week.1:01 We kindly ask you to also support the work we do by encouraging others to subscribe to our YouTube channel and website: www.democracyatwork.info
Economic Update with Richard D. Wolff is a weekly nationally syndicated program produced by Democracy at Work and hosted by Richard D. Wolff. The program explores complex economic issues and empowers listeners with information to analyze not only their own financial situation but the economy at large. Beyond focusing a critical eye on the economic dimensions of everyday life - wages, jobs, taxes, debts, interest rates, prices, and profits - the program also explores systemic solutions to our economy's problems including alternative ways to organize production and distribution of the goods and services we all depend on.