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Welcome, friends, to another Economic Update, a weekly program devoted to the economic dimensions of our lives, jobs, debts, incomes, those of our kids, those facing us as we go down the road of this economic system. I'm your host, Richard Wolff. I've been a professor of economics all my adult life. And that has been the preparation I bring to these economic updates that I offer you each week. Well, a recurring theme of these updates is on the agenda again today. You might call it the struggle between science and profit. The scientific truth about the weed killer called Roundup is quite clear. There's more than enough information, even though some of it is conflicting, as is usually the case with science. But there's more than enough evidence to suggest that it could be very damaging, as in cancer causing for many people who either work with it or eat items that have been sprayed with it. So there ought to be an emergency international effort, since it's used around the world to do the kinds of comprehensive studies that can determine whether it's safe for the human race or not. But here the problem arises. It is produced by a very big company, Monsanto by name, a company that recently got bought by an even larger company, the Bayer company of Germany, and they don't want to give up the profits that come from producing and selling Roundup. So many governments, unfortunately, the Trump Republican government as well, don't do anything. They don't rush. They don't see the problem. They do not want to interfere. Because when caught between science and health on the one hand and profit on the other, they seem to be a little bit like those famous deer caught in the headlines, frozen, frozen, the risk is ours. Letting capitalism and the profit motive into our food system is a dangerous, misguided decision we ought to revisit with urgency. Now, there's elections in the air, of course, and I was struck by an NBC story on October 24 that reported on polls taken in September and October of this year. And they show the following, which I urge you to think most Americans in these surveys, the majority, indicate that their economic circumstances have not improved since the election of 2016, that Mr. Trump into office. Indeed, 27%, more than one in four, said that their economic circumstances had deteriorated since the election of 2016. But even more interesting to me than those facts were the most Americans who said that did not blame either party. And most of them also didn't expect either party to do anything about this. And for me, this was more evidence, if you need it, that Americans have given up on their political system. It isn't a vehicle for Change. It isn't a vehicle to solve their problems. It's lots of noise, lots of propaganda, lots of yelling and shouting and denouncing and attacking. But it doesn't solve the problems, which explains why voters are so alienated from this political process. Look at the idea of going and casting a ballot as an exercise in futility. That's less the fault of those who don't votemistake as it is not to use that tool. But it's more the mistake of a system that gives us a political elite, a political group whose job, apparently is to fake it rather than to change anything. My attention was also caught for another update by a study released by the World Health Organization, a study that is really interesting. It was led by Professor Frank Elgar of McGill University in Montreal, Canada, and it's a study of corporal punishment. And it notes that many countries, actually 54 countries, have now banned corporal punishment of children anywhere in the society. At school, at home, anywhere. You know, this is a new phenomena in the world. It was started by Sweden in 1979, doesn't go back that far. And here's what the study if you ban corporal punishment, if you make it a crime to strike a child, here's what you discover. A dramatic drop in physical violence among adolescents across the board. It's a really robust connection. Don't let the kids be hit, and they won't hit one another to make it real simple. And why is this an important item for a program on economics? Well, because when adolescents physically fight, they incur medical costs that are expensive in a society. They get themselves arrested and involved in the legal system, which have costs for society. They disrupt schools and schooling, which have costs for society. They require more personnel in the schools and in other venues to cope with the violence among adolescents. A ban on hurting children turns out to be a way to make economic systems much more efficient than they now are. Is capitalism efficient? No. But doing something about harming children physically could be. And it's therefore a study we need to think about. The United States is not among the 54 countries that have banned corporal punishment everywhere in society. And we pay the price economically as well as in many other ways for having failed to do that the way those other 54 countries have done. My next update refers to something being argued these days by my classmate from the time I was a graduate student at Yale university getting my PhD in economics. @ about the same time Janet Yellen was sitting there getting her PhD in economics at the same Yale Economics department. She then became, as I hope most of, you know, the head of the Federal Reserve in the United States until she was replaced by Donald Trump. Well, she's been going around giving speeches on something I want to share with you. She is extremely worried that the next economic downturn in the United States, which, like most other observers, she thinks is imminent, that is likely to occur, if not in 2019, then certainly in 2020, as the Chase Manhattan JPMorgan Chase bank has itself predicted, and so on. But here's her concern, and I find it remarkable for what it reveals, beyond even what she says. She's worried that this crash could be worse even than 2008 for a particular reason. Corporations have taken on much more debt since 2008 compared to what they had going into that crisis. And the extra debt means that as a company has difficulty with selling products because of a downturn, it will not only have to shut itself down or cut it back, but it will be unable to pay its debts to all the others who rely on those debts being paid back, who rely on the interest that these indebted companies won't be able to pay. I want to talk to you about what this means, so let's do it. In 2008, capitalism has had its second worst crash since the Great Depression of the 1930s. So devastating was the collapse, particularly in the last third of the year 2008, that a terrified set of governments in the United States, in the United Kingdom, in Germany, in Europe, in Japan, and literally around the world rushed in to have the governments try to cope with the mess, the economic mess created by private banks and private corporations. And one of the things done in many countries, and especially here in the United States, was to help companies out by lowering interest rates. The Federal Reserve brought interest rates down to just barely above zero. They hoped thereby to induce to create an incentive for companies to borrow money, because it's virtually costless at a low interest rate, to have individuals buy homes, buy cars because the interest rates came down. It was a way of helping capitalism get back on its feet after the momentous 2008 crash. But of course, by making money cheap to borrow. It sent a message which we now can see was well received by American corporations, those in difficulty, but also those not in difficulty. Maybe you had a corporate president here, there, or the next place who had made a really bad investment that was now showing up as a problem for the company. He could cover that over by borrowing a vast amount of money and expanding in another direction to distract attention, to make up for the losses of the actual investment, by doing something big and attention grabbing with cheap borrowed money. Whatever the reason, American corporations borrowed money like there's no tomorrow from 2008 to now, making Janet Yellen really worried that a vast amount of borrowing has fueled very questionable investments by corporate leaders who could make those investments look good for a few years, get themselves fat bonuses during that time, and then the catastrophe would come after they've well taken care of themselves. She's really worried about it. I want you to understand that you live in a capitalist system that not only crashes in 2008 and then solves the problem by lowering interest rates, but the very solution they found sets up the next crisis. This is a system that goes from crisis to crisis. And that's why this system is in deep trouble. And it's long overdue for us to ask and answer the question, can't we do better than capitalism that works this way? It's the most important question we have. And in the elections we are now dealing with. It wasn't on the ballot. Think about it. Well, friends, we've come to the end of the first half of Economic Update. I want to remind you and also ask you to please subscribe to our YouTube channel for economic Update. It is an enormous help to us and builds our support and our audience. I would like to ask you also to follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram and take a look at our website, democracyatwork.info. that's all one word. Democracyatwork.info where you can find ways to expand on the information we offer here to learn how you can work with us in an ongoing way to no matter where you are and what your life activity is. We also want to offer a particular thanks to the Patreon community that supports us in such an enormously important way. Patreon P A T R e o n patreon.com economicupdate is a way for those of you who have not yet done so to join that community. And we want to thank those of you that are already in that community and those of you that might be persuaded to join it. Thank you very much. Stay with us. We'll be right back. Welcome back, friends, to the second half of Economic Update. It is my pleasure to offer today a conversation, an interview, if you like, with Reeva Enteen. She is a socialist and has been active since the 1960s. She attended the Hastings College of Law in San Francisco and worked for many years in the National Lawyers Guild and then she worked as its program director and she was also the first chair of the local board of kpfa, one of the many stations that carries this program. And that has been an important part of the economic update community. So it is with pleasure that I welcome Reeva and Teen to the program. Thank you for.