Loading summary
Transcript13 lines
- [00:10]
A
Welcome, friends, to another edition of Economic Update, a weekly program devoted to the economic dimensions of our lives. Jobs, debts, incomes, our own and those of our children. I'm your host, Richard Wolff. I want to begin today by talking about one of the ways economists evaluate an economic system, you know, like the capitalist system we're living with today. And one of the ways economists do that is to ask how does this system reward the people doing the different work that has to be done to maintain a system, to keep it going? You learn something about a system when you evaluate who gets paid how much for doing what, and you can draw conclusions about a system based on that as well, along with the other measures, the other criteria, and I'm going to use as my example the recent rerun or reunion, I should rather say, of the television program the Friends, which was very, very popular. The reunion was very popular as well a few weeks ago, and one of the supporters and viewers of Economic Update, Vincent Scala, brought it to my attention, and I'm grateful to him for doing so. So let me tell you a little bit about the Friends, that television show. It started in 1994 and it ended in 2004. So it had a good run, especially good for TV programs like this of 10 years. When it started, each of the six or seven cast members was paid $22,500 per episode of the program on TV. By the third year, it had proved so popular that each cast member got $100,000 per episode paid. By the ninth season, they were getting paid $1 million per episode, each of them. Now, you might think, wow, that is an extraordinary rate of increase, you're right. And it's an enormous amount of money. You're right. And let's remember, and I don't mean to pick on this program at all, I'm using it merely as an example. There are loads of other examples. This tiny number of people lucked out. They were part of a TV show that became popular and they cashed in big time, as I've just told you. But of course, what these workers got, because that's what they are, they work in the business of television. What they got is nothing compared to the corporation that produced their program. That one is pretty well known, Warner Brothers. Many of you know it, and it has been generating, get ready, $1 billion a year. In other words, what's being paid to these cast members is a tiny fraction of the enormous amount of money Warner Brothers is generating. And where does the billion come from? Reruns. This program is rerun all the time. On all kinds of television stations, both in the United States and abroad. And each cast member gets a piece of that action, too. Namely, 2% of the total gross is paid to each other cast member. And that works out if you're getting a billion a year to $20 million a year since 2004. For each of those cast members whose names many of you know, that's an extraordinary amount of money to be paid to a handful of actors, not to diminish in any way their skill, their. Their importance. But now let me remind you of some other skilled and important workers in our society. School teachers, health care workers, child care, the people responsible for the next generation, those who attend to the elderly, who've given us all a lifetime of work and community activity, Amazon workers, McDonald's work. There's a lot of people working very hard and arguably as hard as these folks did, but they're not paid anything remotely like it. The numbers are hard to come by, but for the one event of the reunion a few weeks ago, each cast member got somewhere between two and a half and $4 million for one event alone. What does a society value? What does it not value? Whom does it pay, and for what? Under capitalism, don't ever make the mistake of thinking people are paid what they are worth. My next update has to do with, you guessed it, the China issue, because it is being kept forefront in our minds by the Biden administration, pretty much the way the Trump administration tried to do as well. And it is having an equal level of success, that is to say, none at all. And I'm going to give you an example. For some years now, the Chinese have been the dominant player in the production of solar panels. They're the world's best producers in quality and the world's cheapest producers. And so the United States completely out competed by the Chinese, who, by the way, got government help, no question. But if you know something about the United States, this government here in the United States has also helped the solar panel industry. It just didn't work out well here. It didn't work out well there. So Mr. Trump and now Mr. Biden have slapped tariffs on solar panels. In other words, the advantage of the Chinese in price is nullified because everybody who buys from the Chinese in the United States has to pay not only the price of the solar panel, but the tariff, which is a tax to the US Government. On top of that, what did the Chinese do, faced with the loss of their US Market, since in the United States, once you had to pay the tax, the tariff to the US Government for imported Chinese goods. The cost to you became so high that you might have switched to some other goods coming from some other place. Here's what the Chinese did, and it's very typical. They ended the subsidies to their own people. In other words, you didn't get to buy solar panels cheaply in China the way you had before because the government basically picked up a part of the cost. The government stopped doing that. So the cost to Chinese people of solar panels went up because they lost the subsidy. So the producers in China had to find, you guessed it, alternative markets. So they went around the world really working to find other markets. They lowered the price because they had huge inventories that they couldn't sell to their own people in China. And it worked. They found customers in the rest of the world, they lowered the price. They that even offset part of the U.S. tariffs. And here we are years afterwards and they're still the dominant player, more dominant today than they were then. It didn't work and it often doesn't. It may look good, we're slapping them with tariffs. It may sound tough and rumble, but you lose in the end. Let me push this a little further. When Americans can't buy cheap quality Chinese high quality solar panels, but at a low price, and they have to pay higher with that tariff, it stimulates production inside the United States. That's even part of the purpose. But that production only happens because you can charge a higher price since the American buyer can't shift to the cheaper Chinese good. And you know what that means, higher prices in the United States. And you know what that contributes to rising prices in the United States. Because if people have to pay more to buy an American solar panel, they're going to charge more in whatever they use that panel for. And so it's part of the very inflation being talked about now. Except when it's talked about now, it's not understood that part of the cause of inflation in the United States is US Policy blocking China and indeed other parts of the world from bringing goods. So it's a little bit self defeating. No, let me take that back. It's very self defeating. Let me give you more examples. Nobody in the rest of the world takes seriously that these activities against China, whether it be solar panels or anything else, have to do with the treatment of a Muslim minority, the Uyghurs. That is a very small, tiny part of the Chinese population, the number of Uyghurs asserted to be maltreated. And I'm not commenting on whether that's true or Not, I really have no way to be certain one way or the other. We're talking 2 or 3 million people, you know, roughly the population of Palestinians in Israel, about which you don't hear comparable discussion from U.S. policymakers and certainly no comparable policy actions by U.S. policymakers. Nobody believes it. This is a country that has been at war for the last 20 years against Iraq and Afghanistan, having killed and destroyed Muslim communities, Muslim families, Muslim societies, Muslim infrastructure that our hearts beat for a Muslim minority perhaps badly treated over there. Nobody except a few gullible Americans takes that argument seriously. So what everybody realizes is this is the United States unable to win a competition in the market using political power, ideological power, diplomatic power to try to manage this situation. And here's why. It's self destructive. Every other producer in the world of anything that they're selling in the United States now has to worry about will the American government, maybe not Biden, but whoever the next one comes, weaponize the United States market. Use it to force politically unpalatable decisions on other societies. Take away markets as a threat. That's a message to every other producer. Keep away from the United States. Build your future by dealings with other countries. The United States is losing business, losing jobs because of its own policies here. This is no way to deal with a competitive challenge, something American policymakers used to understand. The last update we have time for today takes us back to France, to the president there, Emmanuel Macron, a brief reminder. In 2017, he came to power and one of the first things he did was to say I have to make France more competitive. What did that mean? Well, I'm going to change the labor laws. I'm going to make it easier for employers to hire and fire, and I'm going to save the government money and not spend it on the mass of people, but build up our capitalist system and all the rest of it. One of the features, big mistake, Mr. Macron, but one of the features was to change the pension system. Of course, that was called the pension reform, because that sounds better. Here's what a key item was. You can't retire at age 62. For my American audience, age 62, you get full retirement benefits. Mr. Macron dared to say, oh, no, we're going to raise it to 64 before you get. You could get a smaller amount if you choose 62, but you want the full one. 64. Oh, no, said the French working class and the unions, led by the CGT and its very dynamic leader and Martinez. But with the crucial addition of a mass political movement, the yellow vests who went out into the streets of 2018 France and 2019 France before the pandemic stopped all that. And they went into the streets and they said, you won't. End result, lots of yelling by Mr. Macron. Early in June, Mr. Macron announced facing reelection in 2022, he's withdrawing the proposed pension reform. The combination of unions in a mass movement defeated a presidential anti labor movement. We don't have that with Mr. Trumka here in the United States. We've come to the end of the first part of today's show. Before we move on, I want to thank all of you who have supported us since we first went on the air 10 years ago and and especially our Patreon community. If you haven't already, please go to our patreon.com economic update site to learn more about how you can get involved in supporting our work. Please be sure also to follow us on YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. And please stay with us. We'll be right back with today's special guest author, filmmaker and co founder of Debt Collective, Astra Taylor. Welcome back, friends, to the second half of today's Economic update. I am very pleased to bring to our cameras and to our microphones Astra Taylor. She is a writer, filmmaker and co founder of the Debt Collective, a union for debtors. Her new book, published in 2021, is Remake the Essays, Reflections, Rebellions. Astra Taylor, welcome very much to Economic Update.
- [15:07]
B
Thanks for having me.
- [15:09]
A
Okay, I want to jump right in to get my audience even more familiar than I hope they already are with your work and your way of thinking. In the foreword to your book, Can't Pay, Won't the Case for Economic Disobedience and Debt Abolition, you make two key points that I would like you to elaborate briefly on for us. One, that a rebellion against debt can have the same mobilizing effect, if you like, as labor struggles have often had in our history. And number two, that struggles against debt can be and have been more successful than some of those who were skeptical about their possibilities as movement generators thought they might be. So could you tell us a little bit about your engagement with debt rebellion?
- [16:03]
B
Yeah, thank you so much for that question. I think so many of your listeners and viewers probably know this because they're indebted. But increasingly in the United States of America, we have to debt finance what I believe and what I bet you believe should be public goods, right? So we have to put health care on a credit card. We have to take out student loans to go to college. The Crisis of personal debt has really exploded since the 70s when wages started to stagnate and when the right wing attacked what limited welfare state there was, right? The wages stagnated and debt exploded. Exploded. So our insight at the debt collective is basically that just like workers come together and form a labor union to fight the boss for higher wages and benefits, debtors can also exercise economic power because our debts are somebody else's assets. Right. Our obligations, though they feel very oppressive, can be turned into a source of power when we come together in solidarity. So our slogan is you are not alone. A space L O a N. Right. So you are not just what you owe, but also you're not in debt because you made poor choices. You're in debt because of poor, poor policies. Actually policies that are designed to exploit you and make you poor and keep you in debt because that's profitable to a certain class of people. So this theory, debtors have revolted throughout history. There's a rich history of debtors revolts and democracy going back to millennia. But the debt collective is a modern experiment. It's not something that people are familiar with. And so, yeah, there was some skepticism when we began. Our roots are in Occupy Wall street. But in 2015, we launched the nation's first ever student debt strike with students from a predatory for profit college. And that campaign has won over $2 billion in student debt cancellation to date and also put the issue of student debt cancellation on the national agenda. Now, it's something that everybody's talking about, right? We've also used other legal strategies and creative strategies of economic disobedience to keep money in debtors pockets while also keeping our eye on the transformative horizon of creating a society where we don't have to debt finance our basic needs. Right. Where those are publicly provided in a universal and democratic way. So yeah, over $2 billion of relief and also changing the, the public conversation, I think is a pretty major success for something that started as a small experiment in the aftermath of Occupy Wall Street.
- [18:32]
A
Okay, very good. I'm struck also by the fact that you're linking it in some of your work to labor is an awareness that I think is all too rare in our society, that we need a dynamic combination of the struggles of workers in the workplace and, and the struggles of themselves and their families and their friends in the broader society. And if we have the two working together, the power combined is greater than each of them has on their own. And that's a basic lesson of struggle. Okay, here's another question that comes up to me just so often that I have to ask guests like you, given all that you've written about, participated in the debt rebellion and so on. How do you react to the notion that American capitalism is somewhere and somehow in a new position, a position of decline, historically losing its global self confidence, its global position, and losing also the self confidence in an economic system that seems to have so many faults, so many victims, so much trouble. Does the notion of the decline of US capitalism the makes sense to you?
- [19:50]
B
I mean, I suppose it does if we think about it declining from the heyday, right. Of the mid 20th century, the height of the New Deal era, which was also, of course, the height of labor organization unionization. But decline, I think doesn't mean that it's over in a way that I would approve of. Right. I mean, I think what we see is that capitalism adapts and finds new ways to shore up the profits of the ruling class. So that's what debt is. Right. In other words, there was a crisis of profitability in the 70s. There was a kind global recession. And what happened? Well, then people realized that they could make money not only by reducing people's wages, but indebting them. So capitalism is very creative. I do think what gives me hope is that there's a rising generation of people who came up after the Cold War. They aren't stuck in this binary of thinking that capitalism is synonymous with democracy and freedom. In fact, they see all the ways that they're unfree in this economic and political regime. And so they're organizing to challenge it. And so, you know, and hopefully then can turn this decline or this deterioration of our living conditions into a positive opportunity. So that's what I'm always really concerned about is kind of not historic inevitabilities, but how do we organize? How do we come together to transform again, our oppressions, the ways that we are unfree, into solidarity so that we can change this economic regime. And so I do think that's, that's something that we, you know, that is new. When I was in my 20s, there weren't a lot of socialists. You know, it wasn't something that you could just take for granted. And that's something that, you know, I just really hope that we can keep building on.
- [21:34]
A
Well, let me follow that up right quickly. What do you think about the new generation of young socialists, at least those that are in the news? I mean, there are many that aren't, but, you know, AOC and Cori Bush and all of that. How do you understand that process?
- [21:52]
B
Yeah, I see them as incredibly bright lights, but they can't change the system on its own. Right? I mean, we have to build democratic power from below. We have to find forms of economic power that regular people can leverage. So I totally agree with you. We need labor organizing, we need to revitalize that tradition, and we need all these other forms of organizing, debtor organizing, tenant organizing, political organizing, so people engaging in the political process just as those representatives are. We have to do everything, we have to keep organizing. But certainly they're creating space within the political establishment to begin popularizing these ideas and shifting the discourse. But we need more of them and that means we need to organize more and better. But definitely I don't take them for granted because As I said 20 years ago, when I was coming of age, I certainly didn't have a figure like AOC or Cori Bush to look to in Washington.
- [22:46]
A
And I think the best of them would say right back in response to you that what they can do is dependent on what we outside of those realms do. It's really a kind of mutual need for one another. I was struck in some of your writings that you gave some particular attention to Yugoslavia's experiments with worker cooperatives and with Kerala in India with some of their experiments in educational reforms. Could you tell us why those experiences struck you as important or valuable or something you could make use of here in your activism in the US?
- [23:29]
B
Yeah, I talk about those examples in an essay in my new book, Remake the World. That's about the popularity of socialism, right. And why, why socialism appeals to rising generation. I think that's because they understand that socialism is required for democracy. Right? That capitalism is an undemocratic system based on hierarchy, the hoarding of economic and political power. And again, they're not. They didn't come of age against the Cold War backdrop. Right. Whereas this binary of the USA versus the ussr. And it's important to remember there are other traditions of non market ways of organizing society. So Kerala is a great example. I mean, it's obviously Yugoslavia as well, attempted to create a system of self management that ended, you know, with the end of communism. But you know, Cuba is keeping a different economic tradition alive. None of these examples are perfect or have all the answers. But I think it's important to remember that the United States isn't the only way of organizing a society. That, you know, there are different economic paradigms. And what's incumbent, I think, on us is to use our imaginations to try to envision a new paradigm moving forward. And for me it's one again, this idea of democracy really has to be at the center. Right. That it's not. This idea that it's either the market or the state, you know, is a false binary. We need to democratize both the economy and to democratize the state and increase participation, increase democratic power at every level. So I think it's just important to remind ourselves that there are other examples of other traditions to point to, to learn from as we attempt to invent something new.
- [25:08]
A
Yeah, I'm struck also, I've been a teacher all my life. That understanding that the world could be other than the way you're living it, other than the way the dominant discourse describes it, is revolutionary because it means you're breaking out of the straitjacket that a system that's unsure of itself imposes on its people precisely because it doesn't think it can compete real well with some of those other images of what could be. My last question for you picks up on a point you just made. You and I are of different ages. I was born into and lived most of my life in the Cold War. And I can tell when I speak that people react to picking that up from me. And you're really talking about, as you put it, a post Cold War generation. Talk to us a little bit about. Tell me how you see openings, future opportunities for what you believe in, that are created, if you like, by being free of the Cold War framework that we grew up in.
- [26:20]
B
Right. Well, I think one thing that really is shaping the rising generation, and I'm thinking about people younger than me, is debt. And that's one reason that I organize around this. And I believe the debt collective is so powerful. So this is a generation that is coming of age during you described as a kind of capitalism in decline. Right. So they're not anticipating that they're going to be able to exceed the affluence of their parents or even maybe meet it. Right. People don't think they'll ever be able to own a home or plan for retirement. And one thing I like to say is that the American dream for this generation is not owning a house. It's actually just getting out of debt or having $0. So part of the critical sensibility I think that's now so common is just a result of the material conditions that people came of age in. But again, they're not shaped by that Cold War dilemma, which is. And I think, you know, this is where I'll end. I think it's actually we're in a really critical moment because that Cold War polarity said the United States represents capitalism and democracy, and those are married. Right. Those are the synonymous. And then there's communism and unfreedom. I think what we're seeing right now as capitalism reigns supreme is that actually it's deeply undemocratic. Right. We're seeing that. And I think this is why there is a turn towards socialism. I think people are realizing that if we want to actually embody our purported democratic ideals, we're going to have to change our economic system. Because you cannot have democracy in a system of concentrated wealth when there's a handful of billionaires who, who are about to be trillionaires, perhaps, thanks to this pandemic, you cannot have democracy. You don't have the political and economic equality democracy demands. So that's, I think that's part of the shift. And so now we're free to question what democracy actually really is, what it requires. And of course, there are new challenges with that. And the challenges, I think, really, again, it's about building the actual political power in the mass movements to put our ideals into practice.
- [28:22]
A
Well, Astra, one of the reasons we invited you was that you are a powerful voice in doing these things. And we need more of people like you. We need more voices, as you yourself have said. So thank you very much for joining us today, and I commend everyone watching and listening. Go get a copy of Astor's work and join in what she's trying to do with her generation, as we are trying to do here. Thank you again for joining us. And to all of you, thank you for the attention you've given our program again, and I look forward to speaking with you next week.