We've heard plenty about the recession in the U.S., but what about the rest of the world? Countries across Europe have faced budget crunches and conservative governments are using the crisis as an excuse to roll back the social safety net that most have enjoyed for decades.
Many of the problems--and the solutions--sound sadly familiar. Lowered taxes on the rich and corporations, falling wages, and deregulation led to the crisis, which is being shifted onto the backs of the working class--as Michael Hudson notes, putting the class war back in business. Hudson joins us in studio, along with Richard Wolff, to discuss the economic crisis in Europe, what we can learn about the response to it and apply back at home. Here's a hint: it involves organized labor.
Michael Hudson’s voice is one that should be heard more often. Thanks for having him on your program. I would love to see Steven Zarlenga on your show too. I believe that a combination of both Mr. Hudson’s and Mr. Zarlenga’s ideas could provide the ideas for a platform that can go beyond the left/ right divide.
By Guillermo on August 1st, 2010 at 2:42 pm
James Galbraith too!
By planck on August 2nd, 2010 at 4:21 pm
That social program in Europe was put there precisely because before the War, all Plutocrats could crash and burn the economy to make huge money for themselves, and damn the rest of everybody else in a depression.
They also set up the masses to vote for demagogues, who the Plutocrats race to see who turns out to be the worst right-wing war mongering demagogue. War $$$ are their ultimate goal to get out of the depression they caused themselves. The Plutocrats then use their money for ploys like anti-gypsy, anti-immigration bill, anti-women, anti-semitism, xenophobia, homophobia. This is the game they play.
These Plutocrats play this game without obstacle in the US. In Europe, the Social Program holds them back from taking all the cash for themselves and using wars against neighbors to solve their business depressions. We’ll learn that here soon enough too after we have to go where they’re taking us!
By planck on August 2nd, 2010 at 4:30 pm
Thanks for providing air time to Michael Hudson and Richard Wolff. May I suggest another dissident economist? Michael Perelman is a prolific author in economic history, as the list below attests. I frequently interviewed him in the 1970s and 1980s for programs on WBBM (Chicago).
Farming for Profit in a Hungry World (1977)
Classical Political Economy, Primitive Accumulation and the Social Division of Labor (1983)
Karl Marx’s Crises Theories: Labor, Scarcity and Fictitious Capital (1987)
Keynes, Investment Theory and the Economic Slowdown: The Role of Replacement Investment and q-Ratios (1989)
Information, Social Relations, and the Economics of High Technology (1991)
The Pathology of the U.S. Economy: The Costs of a Low Wage System (1993)
Class Warfare in the Information Age (1998)
The Natural Instability of Markets: Expectations, Increasing Returns and the Collapse of Markets (1999)
Transcending the Economy: On the Potential of Passionate Labor and the Wastes of the Market (2000)
The Invention of Capitalism: The Secret History of Primitive Accumulation (2000)
The Pathology of the U.S. Economy Revisited: The Intractable Contradictions of Economic Policy (2001)
Steal This Idea: Intellectual Property and The Corporate Confiscation of Creativity (2002)
The Perverse Economy: The Impact of Markets on People and Nature (2003)
Manufacturing Discontent: The Trap of Individualism in a Corporate Society (2005)
Railroading Economics: The Creation of the Free Market Mythology (2006)
The Confiscation of American Prosperity: From Right-Wing Extremism and Economic Ideology to the Next Great Depression (2007)
By Alan Bickley on August 3rd, 2010 at 10:32 am
Great segment. Prof. Wolff’s idea to balance state budgets by massively increasing state taxes on the wealthy is precisely the kind of thing which the left can and should be mobilizing around.
One minor quibble: Ms. Flanders question introducing the segment made reference to “electing a woman” as a means to address the grotesque and increasing disparities in wealth.
Like Margaret Thatcher.
Haven’t we moved beyond this brain-dead identity politics yet?
By John Halle on August 3rd, 2010 at 9:43 pm