← Economic Update with Richard D. Wolff
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Sam.
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One of these days I ain't gonna change. Welcome, friends, to another edition of Economic upd, a weekly program devoted to the economic dimensions of our lives. Our jobs, our incomes, our debts, those coming down the road and facing us, and even more, those facing our children. I'm your host, Richard Wolff. I've been a professor of economics most of my adult life. I'm still doing it if I can actually talk this morning. And I want to use what I learned as a teacher to bring these economic updates to you each week. So thank you very much for listening and let me begin, as I often do, with a couple of announcements. We are now on over 90 stations. I'll have a bit more to say about that in a moment. We're very gratified, very pleased and very grateful. But it means that this program is actually heard at different moments of the day over a two or three day period in different parts of the United States, north, south, east, east and west. And that means at the end of the month, which is where we are now, that some of you will actually hear this before the end of June, and some of you will hear this early in July. And that raises the problem that the guest I have at the beginning of each month, Dr. Harriet Fraad, will sometimes actually be heard by some of you on the second day of the month, the second day this program airs rather than the first. I just wanted to assure and reassure all of you that Dr. Fraad will be my guest next week in the normal way, early in the month of July. I also want to say how proud we are to be Carried now by iheartradio.com this is a huge and important deliverer of radio programming across the United States and it is a sign of our own growth that we are now being carried by iheartradio.com just go, if you wish, a podcast version of this program and several that they've accumulated out of our archives, just go to iheartradio.com and search for Economic update and you will find us there and be able to listen to this program in that way as well. And as I say, we're very proud of that. And finally, I want to remind you that if you would rather, or in addition, see this program as a television program, as a video program, just go to Patreon P A T R e o n patreon.com economicupdate and you will be able to see this program in a video format and you might find that interesting as well. So let me jump then into the economic updates for this final Program in the month of June 2017. Earlier in the month, I was invited to and I went to a conference in Frankfurt, Germany. And I actually want to report briefly to you about it because of the important economic issues it raised. This conference was called Sanctuary Cities. Was a decision by the German organizers of this conference, which was for all of Europe, was a recognition by them of the leadership taken in the United States by churches, by communities, to be sanctuaries. And the word sanctuary means to keep themselves open to the free entry of immigrants, people from other parts of the world coming, in this case to the United States, fleeing the lack of safety where they live, fleeing the lack of jobs and incomes for themselves and their families. Indeed, the very reason that all of the immigrants to the United States for 150 years or more have come here, at least when we're talking about those who came voluntarily, the slaves, of course, had a different story. The people who populated the United States initially, the Native Americans, were mostly killed off by the folks who came. A not so happy part of our history, but one that has to be faced and acknowledged as well. And so, having done that to those who were here originally, this is a country populated by immigrants who came here for one reason or another. And the immigrants typically came to and settled in our cities. So that the cities of Western Europe, like those in the United States, when you look at them, are in fact and always have been sanctuary cities. They've been the places to which people came who were driven off to the mostly rural areas that they had lived in. They were driven off by economic changes there, mostly the change in agriculture, from small individual family farms to huge agricultural combines. And nowhere has that been more dramatic than in the United States. Driven off the ability to live in the rural areas, an economic change often magnified by political struggles, wars, and so on. For example, the flow of immigrants into Western Europe in recent years has been prompted by wars and bombings in the Middle east particularly. And there's no loss of irony in the fact that the very countries who led the bombings in Syria, in the Middle east, elsewhere in Libya, are the countries to whose cities the refugees flow when they don't want to be bombed, in the countries which, where they have lived for generations. The European Conference, and you might be interested to know it, was organized by an organization you can learn about, if you're interested, called Medeco M E D I C O and their website is medeco.de the DE stands for the German way of saying Germany, namely Deutschland DE. So medeco.de will give you all the information. They've been around for decades. They're interested in providing help and support to the people of the global south. And they have been engaged in doing that in a variety of ways. And they organized this conference called Sanctuary Cities to bring together all those across Europe, and some from North America, like me, to talk about the role of the struggle over immigration, the role of the struggle to provide immigrants with homes and, and jobs and incomes and respect, because they need it badly. That's why they are immigrants, after all. And I was struck at this conference by one of the many lessons I learned, and that was that in Europe there's a vast mobilization to help immigrants, not only out of Christian charity. And I might mention that this conference was organized by Medico, but took place in the Roman Catholic Conference center across the street from the cathedral in downtown Frankfurt, Germany, which is one of Germany's major cities. It shows the support of the Roman Catholic Church, partly, I'm sure, because of the new Pope, who's not so new anymore, but who's made his impact on the church clear, that this was something the Church also believed in. But it wasn't just these sorts of religious or charitable impulses. It was also, and I was struck by this, supported by working class movements who said the following, that I found what the immigrant wants who comes to our country, in this case Germany. But it was true for the others who came from other European countries. What the immigrant wants is a secure job, a secure income, safety. And that's what we all want. That's what every worker who was born in Germany wants too. And the immigrant who comes here wants what we want, what we want. That's the basis for us to have an alliance with them. We should work together to get for all of us what is our birthright. And when you add that the immigrants who come here are often coming because of the economic, political and military burdens put on them in the countries from which they come, well, then we have a double obligation to work with them. But we can together make the changes in Europe that will give us what we all seek and deserve, rather than allowing the employer class to. To set us against each other by bringing in immigrants who are paid less than the folks who were here, by making changes in those countries they're coming from that destroyed livelihoods. We have a common enemy as well as a common alliance to get what should be provided by any economy in the world that deserves the respect of the people. So it was a very valuable conference. I was proud to have been asked to participate and to give some talks as part of it. And I thought you might be interested in what was discussed there. The movement to build sanctuary cities is very strong in Europe, as strong or stronger than it is here in the United States. But they took their inspiration from those cities and towns, those churches in America that have declared they will be sanctuaries for the latest wave of immigrants into the United States. The second update I want to talk to you about is about McDonald's hamburgers. I assume I don't have to explain to you who and what they are. They have made themselves, at great expense, a household name. They announced this year that they are so excited, having had a very good year. Just for example, since January 1st of 2017, the value of a share of stock of McDonald's has gone up 25%. That's in six months. That's an extraordinary run. They are at the highest level of value of their shares in a long time. They're doing real well. And as part of doing real well, they made this proud announcement. Over the next little while, they are going to fire 2,500 cashiers at McDonald's restaurants and replace them with automatic kiosks. That's their word for it. A machine, in short, that will do what a cashier used to. Bye, bye. 2,500 people's jobs and incomes. And why are they doing that? They are doing that for the same reason that McDonald does everything, to make money, to make greater profits. And they see profits by firing 2,500 people whose salaries they don't have to pay anymore to replace them with machines, which over time will be a cheaper way to get that work done than having those people. And therefore McDonald's profits will go up, which is why they are doing this. Okay, let's talk about that. Number one, this doesn't exactly go along with creating America great again, does it? Because there's no prospect for McDonald's to lower its prices. It made no claim or, or announcement that it was doing that. If it's saving money on these kiosks, we're not going to see it. We're only going to see our fellow citizens lose their work. Number two, this is partly a response to the Fight for 15. There's a strong movement in America to get people, particularly folks like those who work at McDonald's, to get their salaries raised up to the glorious sum of $15 an hour, barely enough to live on as it is. But many McDonald's workers, among others, get paid well below that. And here's One way that McDonald's is responding to the demand of working people to get a minimum wage to live a decent Life. Basically, what McDonald's is saying to them is what the business community has always said to people looking to raise their namely, you shall be happy with low wages, because if you protest, you'll get no wages at all. In other words, if you press for higher wages, we will respond by not hiring you in the first place, by replacing you, in this case with a kiosk, with a machine. This threat, low wages or no wages, is part of how capitalism has always worked. Is it necessary for things to be handled this way? And the answer is, of course not at all. Here's why society ought not to handle it this way. Because of course, even though McDonald's is just saving the wages of those 2,500 people, we know socially that the costs of having 2,500 people suddenly become unemployed are enormous. Many of those people will have medical problems. How do we know that? Because every bout of unemployment has produced them. Many of them will become depressed, many of them will have family troubles because the income isn't there anymore. And the relations between man and wife, husband and wife, or same sex couples, doesn't matter. The tensions that are already always part of a relationship become more difficult if one or the other of them loses their job. And they will have to go for medical attention or mental health attention. Their children will be in an agitated household, their schoolwork will suffer. You get the picture. The local community, with these people unemployed, won't get the taxes from their incomes that it used to get. And that will hobble what the local communities, and indeed what the whole country, can do with revenues that are reduced. The social consequences are enormous and highly costly, but Nobody counts them. McDonald's doesn't care because. Not its problem. We live with the costs. They get the profit of this technological change. So here's an alternative. Let's have the kiosks, let's save the labor of people. But the way we'll handle it is Everybody else at McDonald's will have their work week reduced. Not their salary, just the work week. That'll mean extra work has to be done. And you know by whom. By the 2,500 people no longer needed to be cashiers. They will now work because they'll fill in for the reduced work done by Everybody else at McDonald's who has a shorter work week. In other words, we'll actually deliver the promise of technical change, that it makes life better for the majority of people. All of the people at McDonald's and they have tens of thousands of employees will enjoy a shorter workweek because technology makes it possible. That will be good for the workers. Won't change the profits of McDonald. But there you have it. Technology either improves the profits of capitalists or it improves the lives of workers. Capitalists running the show. You know how they go. They fire the 2,500 just like McDonald's said it would. But it doesn't have to be that way. My next economic update is about Travis Kalanick. Well, you may not know his name, although some of you, I'm sure, do. He was, until a week ago, the CEO of the Uber car service.
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Why did he get bounced out of that job? Because that's what happened. He got bounced out. He got bounced out because Uber has a lot of problems. And Uber has an internal tradition of sexual and other forms of harassment that are well documented and of which, among other things, Mr. Kalanick liked to boast, unfortunately for him, in public. So that the big owners of shares of Uber basically got together and told him, you're out of here because your reputation and your behavior as an autocratic person who dictates in a crude way, who has sexual activities that are in the press, you've got to go and you're out of here. And so he's out. But don't cry. He's a billionaire several times over, and the same people who pushed him out of the CEO job have left him as a member of the board of Uber. And that will be more than enough for him. He follows an interesting tradition. Earlier this year, Roger Ailes was bounced out of the CEO position at Fox News for many of the same sorts of reasons. And Jeff Bezos, the head of Amazon, is subject to similar, in some cases more or less, kinds of criticism. What does this tell us and why do I talk to you about it? Because capitalism, the corporation as the unit of capitalism, is a very, very friendly institution for these sorts of people, people who are dictators, people who do not respect either women or underlings of any sort, people who like the culture of suck up and kick down as the way to organize business. And they are so often found in these ranks, which is why I can so quickly put Roger Ailes and Bezos and Cohan into the same category. That we have to realize this isn't about them and as individual personalities, it's about a system that rewards such people, that promotes such people, that indeed venerates such people. That's the issue. How do we let them get to such a position rather than get the help they obviously need. That's a question of systems. I want to close out today by talking about what might seem to be a small example of economic update, but I think has enormous implications. I want to talk to you about one of America's great restaurants. It's called Willows Inn, and it's located on Lumi L U M M I Lumi island in the state of Washington. It is one of those restaurants that boasts that it's a destination that people come and drive or fly hundreds or thousands of miles to eat. You might be impressed, and I thought you would be once I did the research. They have a basic menu that you get when you go there. You're not in the situation of choosing the way you do at lesser establishments. You get a basic menu with an immense list of things they give you to taste. It costs $195 per person to eat it. If you would like wine to go with it, they offer you a wine pairing that's an additional $90. And then they explain they're not going to leave the tipping to you. They are simply going to add 20% to all of that. And so I did the arithmetic, it's not very hard. And came up with the fact that if you're going to eat at the Willows Inn on Lumi island, you're going to shell out $342 per person before you stand up at the end of the evening and leave. If you can handle all the food and alcohol, I don't know how many of you listening or watching can manage $342 a person or would care to do that. But that's not why I'm telling you about this, although it does tell you something about the gap between rich and poor in the United States, even by itself. That's not why I'm telling you. I'm telling you because in the last week, the United States Department of Labor came down with a judgment about the Willows Inn. It turns out that they had underpaid their workers. And who are these workers that they underpaid? A special group, young people, particularly, who want to become chefs and who want to learn at a famous restaurant how to do that and to their eye, be able to go and find a job doing that somewhere else. So they've got these people who really want the job. Here's what the Labor Department found. They made them do cleanup. It's not exactly what a chef does. They made them paint buildings not particularly crucial to the chef's career. And how bad was it? Well, typically they found these were people who were required to do 14 hour days for the lordly sum of 50 bucks. And as a result, the US Department of Labor hit them with a $74,000 bill to make up just the unpaid hours that they had forced these workers to work. Because there are laws saying you have to be paid overtime if you do more than the eight hours a day, which they hadn't done. So they hit them with $74,000 for these workers to be paid some more and then an equal penalty for behaving in this way. But of course, this is not unique to the Willows Inn, but what it does is teach us a lesson that I don't want anyone to miss a good part of. The extraordinary wealth and lifestyles of the super rich are based on and depend on ripping off average people on a massive scale. Can you enjoy the wonderful meal at Willow's Inn? I'm sure you can. But that enjoyment has to be tempered by an awareness that in the kitchen and in the back and painting the building, you enjoyed looking at is a level of abuse of human beings. Or to say the same thing in the way that a great analyst once did. Capitalism is extraordinarily effective at producing and reproducing wealth. Unfortunately, it is a system that is at least as efficient as that in producing and reproducing poverty and abuse and mistreatment of human beings. And you might want to wonder whether we can't do better as a human community than a system that is constantly showing us that what is beautiful and successful and wealthy is wrapped up with all the things that are the opposites of that. Can't we do better than that? I think we can. And it's a premise of this program. Well, we've run out of time for the first half, but this note of poverty is something that capitalism reproduces because, after all, underpaying workers, not paying for overtime, abusing them, taking advantage of their desire to become a chef, to make them do things that will not help them be chefs at all. This is a very old story of capitalism. We were led to believe 50, 100 years ago that laws were passed and decisions were made and rules were put into place that that wouldn't happen. But here I am again in June of 2017, showing you this system does this everywhere, all the time, with or without the rules. And the laws, yes, they can help. But this is a system that's the problem. And just as it was the problem for the heroic people who fought for $15 an hour for McDonald's workers, they too have to face that despite their heroic acts and despite the advance in people's wages they achieved. This is a system that will also go back and say to them, if you don't accept low wages, we'll give you no wages at all. As long as we have a system that works this way and makes that a reasonable decision by people in power, we will live with the results. If you don't want the results, you got to deal with the system. We're going to have an interview in a moment. The second half of this program about poverty. But it's enough to say before we do that that we live in an economic system that is bequeathing poverty to a growing number of people, relative and absolute. The program that you are hearing is brought to you by a group of people, Democracy at Work by name, who want you to take a look at the websites they maintain because there's a great deal more information there than we can give you on this program. The websites, two of them, whose names I'll give you in a moment, are available to you at no charge whatsoever. 24 7. They allow you to communicate with us, tell us what you like and don't like about the program, what you'd like us to be doing. They allow us, with the click of your mouse, to follow us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram. We ask you, as we often do, be a partner, work with us, spread the word about this program and about what you learn here to the other people in your job, in your home, in your neighborhood. We want to reach people with the awareness of these things that we analyze on this program, and you are our best ally in getting that job done. And the websites are materials for you to use in any way you like. The first one is Democracy at Work. That's all one word, democracyatwork.info very simple. And the other one is rdwolf. My name, two Fs at the end. Rdwolf.com either of those websites has all the capabilities I just ran through with you. Please make use of them. Stay with us. After a very short intermission, we will be right back.
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It turns out to be a great thing for me. I don't worry and I don't think because it's not my job to worry or to think. Not me. I'm more like every day I'm here, I'm grateful. And that's the gist of it. Now, you may call that a bogus, bogus New Age point of view, but check out my tattoo says Walt Wall.
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Fun.
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Does everyone know everyone. Mr. Walt Wal, meet Dr. Well, well, well. That cool Papa Bell, the fastest man on earth did dwell as Papa Bell. Mother ugly word ubiquitous and often heard as a substitute for someone's Christian name. And I think, yeah, the word is ugly. All the same. Ugly got a case to make. It's not like every rodent gets a birthday cake. Nor is your chipmunk. How cute is that? But you, you are a filthy rat.
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And, well.
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Is it true, Papa Bell, that my beauties go to heaven and the ugly go to hell? Cool Mama Bell. Have y' all heard the news? Heaven finally found. Okay, it's 6 trillion light years away, but we're all gonna get there someday. Yes, we're all gonna get there one day.
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Welcome back, friends, to the second half of today's economic update. And we're going to have an interview in this second half with a gentleman who's been on the program once before named Rob Robinson. So before I even tell you again about him, let me say to Rob, welcome. Glad to have you on the program.
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Thanks for having me.
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Rob is a staff volunteer at the National Economic and Social Rights Initiative, generally known as nesri N E S R I IT is a human rights organization based in New York City. He has been organizing communities to elevate housing to a human right and for the decommodification of land and housing. He's a good battler against gentrification. If I can add an editorial to this, a person who's committed to making housing something that human beings have as a human right and not depending on how much income or how much wealth they have accumulated. Rob works with social movements around the world and includes the landless workers, the MST movement, and the movement of people affected by dams in Brazil. He works with shack dwellers in South Africa and the platform of people affected by mortgages in Spain. In short, Rob gets around and does his work. All right, Rob, I want to talk about poverty.
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Sure.
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Because I know in the end, that's the summary term for what confronts you, whether it's in Spain or Brazil or in New York City. Many commentators have noticed that in the election race last year and ever since, very little has been said about the issue of poverty, not just by Mr. Trump, who you might expect to be disinterested, but really in a general way, it is not an issue that's at the forefront of. Of the media's attention or of people. So I'm going to ask you a question. I kind of know the answer, but I want to give you a chance to talk about it. Is this a solved problem in the United States? In other words, is poverty somehow been managed so we don't need to think about it or talk about it?
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I just, I think, Rick, honestly, people try to ignore it. They don't want to face the truth. We saw a wave of people moving to the suburbs in the 90s, early 2000s, then jobs started to disappear in this country. But it's a problem that has been here long before that. Right. People have been impoverished in this country for years, probably since its creation. Right. And it's never been addressed. And that's the bottom line. And that's why people suffer.
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You know, but periodically we have a war on poverty. We have these things that the government does or that private enterprise does with lots of fanfare. Usually we're going to deal with this problem once and for all. So you're basically telling me either that was all fluff or it didn't work. Which is it and how do you respond to that?
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I think it's a couple. I think it's both of those. Right. It is the government trying to pat itself on the back saying we're addressing this problem, but they don't come up with real solutions. You know, I've said on this program in the past, I'm homeless. I'm formerly homeless. And I don't think this country has ever found an answer to homelessness. Right. They don't want to get at the root cause. They'll throw money at a problem. Right. And think that's going to be a solution. So if I give people a few entitlements, that's going to change everything. It's about wages, work, a steady income, a decent place to live. It's all of these things combined and having a secure future. Right. As you said earlier in the program, you want to leave the place secure for your children behind you, and we're not in that situation right now. Jobs have left this country at a record rate. This was a country that was built on manufacturing jobs. Those jobs don't exist. You had a president that sold us a bill of goods that said he's going to bring those jobs back. But when they started exploiting labor overseas, they're not coming back because I would have to pay somebody a union scale. Right. And if union scale says you have to pay a shirt maker $38 an hour, but you can ship it overseas and pay somebody $4 an hour, what do you think is going to happen? I'm going to leave it overseas.
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Right. You know, it's funny because let's look at one implication of what you said. If the issue of poverty periodically surfaces and then the government throws a bunch of money at it but doesn't deal with the root problem, then you can see that throwing the money will not solve the problem. And then you allow the conservatives to come back five years later and say, hey, we threw all his money, didn't solve the problem. Let's not throw the money, in which case you don't even have the money thrown at him anymore. It's sort of the Republicans and Democrats. The Democrats say let's throw some money, but don't really attack the basic issue that doesn't work. The Republicans come in, make fun of what the Democrats did and get people who don't want to pay taxes to say, hey, it's just a waste anyway. It doesn't solve the problem and then you don't even throw the money and then the problem gets worse and then the Democrats come in and we do this over.
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The only way you're going to solve this problem, Rick, is a redistribution of wealth. And folks don't want to face that fact. Right. You're going to have to tax the rich at a higher rate and give it to the poor. Right. You have to change that balance. That's the only way to do it. But the fight is so strong. So I think we have to learn from movements across the world, which is why I enjoy so much learning from these other social movements. The political education you take PA in Spain, folks realize that the elected officials weren't really getting at the root cause of this problem. Now that movement in Spain has now elected one of their own, the mayor of Barcelona, and she's putting in social welfare programs that is changing that balance in Spain. So I think it begins right there. We're stuck with the two party system here that has done nothing for us. Right. And we've aligned ourselves as people directly affected by poverty. We've aligned ourselves with the Democratic Party thinking they're going to do something for us. But it is a couple of people out of control everybody's lives and that has to change.
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Yeah. It's sort of interesting to me to draw you out on one aspect of this. There is some talk recently that the kinds of social problems, particularly poverty, that at least some people said were concentrated in non white communities across America, there's some notion these days that something has changed because a whole host of those problems that we honestly or dishonestly associated with non white communities clearly are now affecting white communities. And here I'm thinking of poverty, but I'm also thinking of the opioid crisis in drugs and so forth. Is there a meaningful way in which the poverty problem has changed its racial or its color dynamics, its composition that you can tell us about?
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It has definitely changed. As I was alluding to earlier, I said there's been a movement of people to the suburbs, right. Started as far back as the 70s. I grew up on Long island and it's a perfect picture of this. Right. Everybody got away from the city. You want the better life. After World War II, you go out to the suburban areas and people started to go out there. There were good manufacturing jobs, problems started to arose. Right. The manufacturing jobs left. People didn't have steady income. All of a sudden they fell behind on their mortgages, they faced foreclosure and eviction. Right. All of these things add up. They had a high tax base. Some of those houses. You look at parts of Long island, where I grew up, and you see it looks desolate, boarded up houses falling into a state of disrepair because people have. They have no way of keeping up with it. So I think it has changed. Right? And I think the poverty numbers are changing drastically. You used to say it was concentra in the urban centers. It has now moved to suburban areas and rural areas. It definitely has. And I think as you mentioned earlier, we know that with the farmlands, as you go out to the middle of the country, it is definitely where it is ugly head.
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So it's become suburban as well as urban.
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Absolutely.
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Become white as well as non white.
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Absolutely.
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So in a sense, we've generalized the problem and that can only be accounted as making it worse, not making it.
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Better, I would think it makes it worse. But then when you have the poor whites who don't want to align themselves with poor people of color, and then they put somebody like Trump in office thinking that their life is going to suddenly change all of a sudden, then they dig a deeper hole, right? Things get a little bit worse. And I don't think people realize that. Right. This is going to be an education on the fly for people the next three and a half years in this country. It's going to be an education that I don't think they were expecting, you know, to be educated this way. But there's going to be some revealing facts and things are not going to change that easily.
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And there then could beif. I understand your argument. There could be a fairly dramatic shift if white communities that hoped Mr. Trump would somehow solve their problem, middle and low Income white people, if they feel betrayed, let down, deceived, boy, could you have a shift in American politics in a hurry.
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I absolutely believe that, Rick. I think. I think what has to happen is just that. But I'm wondering if those populations will be willing to align themselves. You know, this country is built on 400 years of separatism like that. Right. I don't want to align myself with people of color, but I think at this point you need to. Right. You're going through the same things they did for 400 years. So you don't hear black people raising up so much. I mean, there are movements and folks fighting against it, but they've lived this all their lives. This is something they've always had to live. I think the shit shock for poor whites is like, holy cow, this is happening to us now. This is real. This is something else.
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And that would be the explanation for voting for Trump in the first place.
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Right, Right. And I think you do have movements. There are movements around the country that are organizing this. We all know Reverend Barber from Moral Mondays down in North Carolina has come into New York City. He's with the Cairo center at Union Theological Seminary. They're reenacting Martin Luther King's Poor People's Campaign. Right. Trying to organize people around the country on this issue of poverty. There's the assembly to End Poverty. While I think these are noble efforts, I don't know, I think there's a gap there between elders and young folks. I think that's another collaboration that has to happen. Right. These are voices of elders that have had the lived experience for a number of years, but they aren't so willing to engage younger folks in these campaigns.
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So that will be an issue to.
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I think it will. I think, you know, until they seriously reach out and really reach out to a broad section of the community, they're going to struggle. Right. This is something you have to bring everybody into. Everybody's going to experience this, and it's not going to go away right away. Right. You know, this is something that's going to be long term and it may not go away in you and I's lifetime. And, you know, it's going to be around for folks in younger generations. Generations.
- [42:05]
B
Okay, let me switch a little and ask you, because you're active in this area, are there movements now, and I'm thinking, particularly in the United States, but you don't have to limit yourself, are there movements of poor people with their allies and throughout the community to make poverty an issue around which not just to Mobilize the victims of our economic system. But everybody who sees what's going on, is that happening or are we not seeing it?
- [42:37]
C
I think it is. I think, you know, we had Bernie running for president and I think the movements that came from organizing around Bernie or standing for that, he got it right and he made it real. He made this a real issue. The problem I personally have with Bernie, he aligned himself with the Democratic Party. I think he should have just said I'm a socialist and go on like that and say we need change. Right? And socialism isn't so bad. Right. And just change the way people think. I think we need a drastic shift like that. There are movements, as I said earlier, they're out there. The Kairo center is doing the Poor People's Campaign. The assembly to End Poverty. But the assembly to End Poverty. While I know many of these folks, they've been around for years and much hasn't changed because their message is the same. Right. And they're not. We don't have a habit of pushing people into political office or engaging people in our social movements here in the US around those particular issues. When you go outside of the us you go to places like Brazil, the Labour Party, England with Jeremy Corbyn. These are folks that are organizing around these issues and promoting a candidate that believes in what they believe in. I think we have to get on board with that here.
- [43:49]
B
The establishment, Republican and Democrat seem to feel here that they remain in control, that they are not seriously threatened from below by people who want exactly what you just said. And somehow that seems to be a stumbling block, at least for the moment it is.
- [44:09]
C
Again, I think the best way is for us to replicate what happened in let's say Spain or even. It was a long term move, it didn't end up well in Brazil, but they eventually got their candidate in office. The Labour Party got elected. You look at Syriza, that didn't end well either. But these were folks that said we need change, right? And we need somebody from the ground up, somebody who understands our issues and we need to elect them to office. I don't know. I think the two party system is so ingrained in us here that we say we can't change it, this is it. And you know, status quo. We'll just pick the best candidate between the two and go with it.
- [44:46]
B
Right, the lesser evil.
- [44:47]
C
Exactly. And you know, when, when you look at it, I often like to see when I speak publicly, you have the Republicans on the right, the Democrats on the left, and here's the Middle right. So there's not much of a difference. We really need a different party here. You know, the Greens speak the right language, but they haven't put forth a strong platform. Right. And I think that's the problem. They have the right idea, but they haven't done a strong enough platform. And they usually put people up on the platform who are, who have a big voice. Right. It's not about big voice. You have to have a vision. You have to have a vision and know how to implement that vision. And I think that's an important factor that we often lose in social movements here.
- [45:29]
B
All right, let me push you in a little bit of a different direction. Partly coming out of our program here and what we talk about. One of the ways to see the issue of poverty is to go to the root of it and to say, look, look, you're poor because you don't have a lot of money and you don't, as you stress, and I think you're quite right, you don't have just enough money, but you don't have a secure flow of money to enable you to plan and run your life in a human way. And one of the ways to change that is to change how the job is organized, how the workplace is organized, so that a person who goes to work has a place that can provide the job, the income and the security that is clearly the antidote to poverty. So that rather than taking from the rich and giving to the poor, let's not have rich and poor in the first place. And one of the ways we talk, at least on this program, is about changing the economic system so we don't have top down corporations where the decision of what's to be done with the revenue is made by the people of the, the top who, surprise, surprise, give it to themselves. But if you changed it, if you put all the workers in charge in a democratic way, they would never give most of the money to three people. They would distribute it in one way or another. It's not that everybody gets the same, that's unlikely to happen, but that it would be a much less unequal society and therefore not put us against one another. Because the notion that everybody ought to have a job and an income and some security is one that I think is a majority perspective anyway. Do you see anything emerging in the way of a movement for worker co ops and things like that as being connected to or allied with struggles against poverty?
- [47:19]
C
I think there are patches of folks thinking in these terms around the country, Rick, and I'm impressed by it. Right. We both know cooperation, Jackson down in Mississippi. To have cooperatives take hold in Jackson, Mississippi, you know, is really fascinating, you know, based on the history of the south in this country. But I think there were two problems involved with this. Right. We have to get out of the notion, many of us still think in terms of the narrative that we've inhaled all our lives. Right. This system is going to work for you. Everybody can make it. You buy a home, it's the way to wealth. You know, these are narratives that were just spoon fed to us year after year, generation after generation, and they're proven themselves not to be true, but we still feed into that.
- [48:05]
B
But I think they want somehow to believe it.
- [48:07]
C
They really want to. They want to buy into this. This is the greatest country in the world. You know, maybe it was built on a premise, but it's not holding true for a lot of people. It's certain power brokers sitting at the top, you know, so cooperatives, I do think is the way. It's a way. It's a good start. Right. So you see farm cooperatives coming up now, food cooperatives, you know, many jobs. I think that's. That is the way to go. I talk about decommodification of land and housing. Put land in a community land trust, let the community govern the land changes your life totally, man. Right. Housing will remain truly affordable if it's sitting on a land trust. We have to think differently and creatively and get out of those narratives. We are never going to win that war. When land is a commodity, your life is an upheaval cunt.
- [48:56]
B
You know, it's so interesting to me to hear you say that because I used to teach when I was a regular professor, courses in economic history. And a good number of weeks was devoted to medieval Europe, the way Europe was from about 500 AD to say 16 or 1700. And in many parts of Europe where the Roman Catholic Church, at least until the Reformation, was the universal church for everybody, the following idea was the official church belief that everybody believed. And it went like, land is the earth, the earth was created by God. Nobody can be the private owner of that. That's a sin against God. That's acting as if you put it there when obviously you didn't. You were born, you're going to die, you may become part of the soil, but that's the only way you're integrated with the land. And therefore it's irreligious. It's a sin against God to say, I have the right to decide as an individual what Happens to what is the commonwealth of land for all people on this planet. You know, that was said in religious terms, but for 1,000 years there was no. You couldn't buy and sell land. That would have struck people as bizarre as we would nowadays think of selling human beings to one another. We know that it existed, but we say it's ethically and morally abhorrent. Well, if it's abhorrent to buy and sell human beings for all the reasons we know, why doesn't the same logic apply to something as fundamental to our survival as a species as the earth?
- [50:42]
C
It grows food, you build a house. This is why the Brazilian model in the Brazilian Constitution says land has to serve a social good. It changes the balance, right? That's how the MST became popular, right? They understood their constitution. Okay, here's 10 acres of land that's not being used for anything. Let's move in there, grow food, let's build a house, right? It changes that thinking. Then we can lay claim. It's not so much about the title, it's about the use of that land, right?
- [51:09]
B
Even in American law. And we've had programs about this even in American law. Now there is this wonderful concept called eminent domain, which says, and it's the law of this country now, that if the community, say the city of New York or the city of Seattle or the community of Watsonville, Arkansas, if it has a purpose that is for the social good, then it has the right to take property away from the private owner, no matter who he or she or it is, and use it instead for the public good. It has to pay that person whatever the market value of that piece is. But the ability of a person to say, I'm not going to sell it, it's mine. That's not the law. The law in this country says, and that, by the way, happens all the time, communities take land and use it to build a school or to develop the shopping area, whatever they're doing. So even in our law, it's recognized that you have to, in order to live a civilized life, give the community the final determination of what is done with property. Because leaving it really all in the hands of an individual is an asocial act.
- [52:26]
C
So I. I hear you. I think we don't understand those laws. There was a mayor in Richmond, California, during the height of the foreclosure crisis that was ready to use that against the banks and take back houses in her community and redistribute them to the community.
- [52:42]
B
I forget her name, but you're right.
- [52:44]
C
The power brokers that be the banks and legal entities went to work on her. Oh, they went to work on her. You're not going to bring that here. Right. Why not?
- [52:54]
B
Right.
- [52:54]
C
She's thinking about the social good. Right. It has more of a value. So I think we do need to educate ourselves on these processes and we need to voice our opinions more. Right. This is a mayor who put her career on the line for the people. And, you know, you would hope that somebody would learn from that, you know.
- [53:10]
B
So that also goes back to your notion of a new political movement or tradition or party. That would be the way to articulate these things and to get them out into.
- [53:20]
C
Absolutely. So I'll go back again to the mayor of Barcelona, Arakalao. This is how she became popular. She was voicing these opinions and these thoughts from the collective of the group of pa. Right. And all of a sudden, her voice got very famous and people started pulling her in a direction. Before you know it, she's elected mayor. Right. I think it's a powerful way to do things. We need to learn from those movements. We have a habit here in the U.S. rick, of saying, I call it U.S. exceptionalism. We will charge the social. We will charge the government with cases of exceptionalism. You know, you think you do it better, but our social movements feel the same way. I don't have to learn from PA and Spain. I don't have to learn from Brazil. We do it better. Well, you know what? Everybody can learn. You should learn till you go to your grave.
- [54:08]
B
That's right. And I think that the Europeans like that conference that I spoke about at the beginning of the program, they're eager to learn from what we are doing in the United States. That's why they named their conference Sanctuary Cities. But we need to do the same.
- [54:22]
C
And to recognize it's reciprocal. A professor you and I both know well, Neil Smith once said to me, learning is reciprocal. Right. You can come from the community and teach me as much as I'm teaching my students. And my students can learn from you just as much as they can learn from me. So learning is a reciprocal process, and it needs to continue and the merry go round needs to keep continuing. Right. Everybody can learn.
- [54:46]
B
I do have this sense, and this is a final thought I want from you, that as the jobs disappear, as the standard of living keeps declining as it is, as the quality of the jobs, the security of the jobs, the benefits that go with the jobs, as well as the wages keep shrinking, as the government services, especially now under Trump, being cut Back left and right. People are beginning to realize that the crash of 2008 wasn't something that was going to bounce us back a year later or two. We've now had eight years, nine years, no bounce and no bounce in the offing. Nothing's coming. Does that give you hope? Does it give you any sense that there is a kind of learning that the system we have is going down and that the problem for us may be whether we're going to permit it to take us down with it?
- [55:46]
C
Rick, I do believe it's going down. I think the only way we can go into another system is a revolution. It's a tough thing to say. I didn't see it with the economic crisis in 2008, but it was a message to me where they, you know, the government said, I'm going to take your tax money and give to the bank. It's okay for the banks, it's okay for you to fail, but the banks can't fail. That was kind of bizarre to me, right?
- [56:10]
B
You're small enough to fail, you're too big to fail.
- [56:12]
C
And then, you know, all of a sudden they start, the banks start evicting us and foreclosing on us in record numbers and that's not going to change. And what really raised awareness for me was the majority of the housing movement fighting for principal reduction, right. Instead of transformative organizing, changing the system of which we live. So I think it's going to take a new economic system, but we have to have a vision of a system that we want and we need to know the steps on how to get there.
- [56:40]
B
Thank you, Rob. I appreciate your coming again. I wish we had more time, as I say almost always on these interviews, but we will have you back.
- [56:47]
C
Thanks for having me everybody.
- [56:49]
B
I want to thank you for joining us. I want to remind you that the, the fundamental goal of this program, besides presenting these interviews and the analyses, is to partner with you in getting all of this kind of information and this way of thinking out to the broader community. That means your friends, your family, your co workers, your neighbors, all of that. Partner with us. Use our websites rdwolff with two Fs com and democracywork.info I want to thank you for the partnering you do. I want to thank truthout.org, that famous and well known distribution of thoughts and analysis and news that has been partnering with us for years. Thank you again and I look forward to speaking with you next week. Me things going to change?
- [57:47]
C
Yes, it is.
- [58:09]
B
Sam.