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Sam. Saint Gonna change one of these days. Welcome, friends, to another edition of Economic Update weekly program devoted to the economic dimensions of our lives. Our jobs, our incomes, our debts, the future for our children and their jobs and their incomes and their debts. I'm Richard Wolff. I've been a professor of economics all my adult life. I'll be your host on this program as I am each week currently. I teach at the New School University in New York City. Before we jump in, today's economic updates, and we have quite a list of them, I wanted to present you with some announcements and a thank you. Let me start with a thank you. I just came back from a week of ten speeches in six days on the West Coast. People in Fresno, California, Seattle, Washington, Bellingham, Washington, and then Berkeley, California, welcomed me in an extraordinary way. The audiences were large, the audiences were enthusiastic. It was a wonderful opportunity for me to meet many of you and to see some of the impact that the world is having on you. But also, in a small way, this program and I want to thank every one of you that showed up. Your questions were great. The whole feeling of a change in the air was palpable and exciting. No other way to say it. In the next week, I will be visiting three other places and if you're in the area, do look us up. All the details are found on our websites, rdwolff with two f's.com and democracy at work, all one word democracyatwork.in fox. But over the next 10 days, I will be in Tampa, Florida, Houston, Texas and Ames, Iowa. I'm happy to report that we're back on itunes with our podcasts of each and every one of these programs. For those of you that noticed when we shifted to our new and improved and upgraded website, we lost that connection for a little bit. That's been repaired now. And for those of you that would like to use the itunes connection to for podcast ways of listening to the program that is now available. And while I'm at it, let me thank those of you that follow us on Facebook and Twitter. My Twitter handle, for those of you that work with that is professorwolff or rather profwolff. P R O F W O L F F. So it's roffwolff is the Twitter connection and you can find me on Facebook just under profit. Richard Wolff. Once again, Those websites, rdwolff with two Fs com and democracyatwork.info visit them, use them, sign up for our newsletter, follow us on Facebook and Twitter. All of that and more available on those websites. Let me then turn to updates, and the first one is actually a set of updates about college education. So let me say a few words about it and then jump into them. A college education can, and for some people, is, an absolutely crucial turning point in your life. When you get to the age that most of us go to college, you're old enough to know your reading, your writing, your basic arithmetic. You've had that in high school, you've had that in your mind now for a while. You're ready to learn. You're ready to learn how to think, how to look something up, how to answer the questions that life presents to you. If you have a good teacher, someone that you can look up to, someone that conveys to you the wealth of information they've mastered, who conveys to you the excitement they feel about what they've learned and what learning enables them to understand, to see, and to do. If you have a close relationship to a teacher, the one that is not just what is said in the classroom, but the mood, the facial expressions, all of the subtle signaling that one person conveys to another when the one is trying to teach and the other one is trying to learn. There's something very, very special about college education if and when it can be done right. And that means the the student has to have the support to be able to focus his or her attention, to want to learn, to pursue learning, to have the space, the leisure, the time. And the same applies to the teacher. He or she has to be able to keep up with their field, to see how it's evolving, to shape their own understanding in the light of what other people who study their topics are also doing and thinking and learning. Given the right opportunities for the teacher and the student, the combination is an excitement of learning that will shape and improve the lives of both teacher and student for many, many years. And it can be, and our country needs it to be that kind of an experience. However, it isn't anymore for most people. And I want to drive that home with three updates about college education. The first has to do with Youngstown State University, an important school in the middle of our country, Youngstown, Ohio, one that caught my interest because of the numbers I'm about to go over with you. And let me be honest, because I was born in Youngstown, Ohio, many years ago, and so whenever it comes up, it kind of catches my attention. Youngstown State University is now using adjuncts. That's not regular faculty, not people hired to be a professor. Taken through a whole series of evaluations where he and she have to be able to show that they are good at what they do, that they excel in thinking, in researching, in presenting, in making the experience for their students what it can and should be. Well, nowadays colleges are run like businesses. Some people actually think that that's a good idea. And as most businesses go, colleges are trying to cut costs. And one of the ways they cut costs is by not hiring and not using regular full time hired professors, but instead using adjuncts. What's an adjunct? Typically, it's a person who's not given a regular university appointment. He or she is hired to teach a particular course, not to be part of the department in any meaningful way, not to participate in setting policy, not to participate on all the committees that help make education what it can and should be. Instead, these folks are hired to breeze in, teach a course and go out. They try to do well. Heaven knows these are people, people who would have in earlier years gotten a proper job, but they're not offered one anymore. In the case of Youngstown State, here's how it works. And this statistic is so overwhelming, I'm going to have to say it twice. Adjuncts get paid exactly the same in 2015 for each three credit course they teach as they were paid in 1991. That's right. For 25 years, the pay for that teaching that one course in one semester is $2,400. By comparison, most of my adult life, I was a regular tenured professor at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst. And if you figure out what I got paid for each of the three credit courses per semester, it was roughly 10 times what the adjuncts at Youngstown State are paid for doing the same job. Here's the problem. Of course, the adjunct cannot live on $2,400 a course. So the typical adjunct teaches four, five or eight or some absurd number, often as an assistant to somebody, often while they are doing other part or full time work. End result, they do not have the support, they do not have the time. They do not have the capability under these awful conditions to be the kind of teacher. They're worried about the other course they have to teach later that same day. They have to worry about the other job. They have to to make ends meet. They can't give themselves to the learning experience and that hurts the education of the young people that are in the school to learn. It gives them less. It saves money for the school, by the way. Does it save money for the students? Not at all. Over the last 25 years, the tuition Youngstown State. And this is typical. I didn't pick on Youngstown State for any other reason. It's very similar to what goes on elsewhere. Tuition over the last 25 years has gone up four times. The pay for the adjuncts who now do most of the teaching hasn't risen at all. So the students are paying more and more, but they're basically getting less and less. This semester at Youngstown state there are 409 full time faculty and there are 608 adjuncts teaching there. For United States as a whole in 2011, the last numbers we have from the U.S. department of Education, adjuncts account for over 40% of teaching. This isn't a clever new mechanism. This is making education cheap and it's saving money on education by providing a much poorer quality. And when schools were supposed to function to allow intelligent, studious, hardworking young kids, often from families where no one else had ever gone to college, to, to give them finally a chance. This is a betrayal of the American dream that these young people had that if they go to a good school and get a good education, it will transform their lives. It could have. It should have. Once upon a time it did. But in the modern era of a capitalism that doesn't work for the majority of people, this is an example of, of how it is really hurting those who need desperately and want and are prepared to work at getting the education they're capable of. But we as an economic system do not provide for them. It's something to think about and maybe just a little to cry about. Next update about higher education. City University of New York City, a remarkable institution with 275,000 students, the vast majority coming from low income minority households. Again, a vast population whose hope, whose dream, whose aspiration is to get a good education and use that to become part of a successful generation of, of young hardworking men and women. But the City University of New York, like Youngstown State, like so many schools, it's being run more and more like a business. Mayor Bloomberg helped transform, Governor Cuomo helped transform. They want to run it like a business. So they're saving money to. It takes a different form. That is they make use of adjuncts. Oh boy, do they. But that's not the part I want to talk about today. I want to talk about something else. Here's the statistic for you to chew on. There's been no raise in the salary for the faculty, the regular faculty, the full time faculty, since 2010. Let me say that for five years there's been absolutely no increase in their pay. Every one of those years, the cost of living, especially here in New York, has risen. In other words, they have suffered year in and year out for the last five years. What is in effect a pay cut. Because if you're salary is the same and the prices you pay for everything keep going up, you're falling behind. Meanwhile, can we say that this is saving money for the students? Not at all, not at all. Once upon a time, City University was famous around the world for being free. That's right. The city of New York was proud. The, the state of New York was proud that it made a college education available. If you had the grades, if you had the motivation to come and learn, we, the city of New York, would take care of providing you with a first class education. But now that we run schools as a business, we don't do that. We charge. So here's the latest City University budget. So you know where the money comes from? 45% comes from the state of New York. An equal amount, 45% is paid by the students, many of whom come from families for which this is a very difficult expense to meet. And 10% comes from the city of New York. Recently, the Board of Education offered the teachers a 6% increase from 2010. In other words, over the last five years, having gotten nothing, they would now get 6% for those five years. But the cost of living rose significantly more than 6% over those five years. So what the city is offering and what the state is offering is, is actually a pay cut. Dear teachers, please take less. This is in a city which boasts more millionaires than any other. This is a city which recently passed the milestone that a one bedroom apartment costs more than a million dollars in on the average, the money is here, the wealth is here. But for 275,000 young people trying to realize the American dream. Sorry, it's not available for you. We can't afford it. We the rich who run the city. Hats off to the faculty at the City University of New York. All 25,000 of them, they are protesting. A bunch of them got arrested this week protesting at the Board of Education. An unconscionable treatment of them as working people and of their students as those who deserve an education. South Africa, far away, same story. A country 20 years after the end of apartheid, still treating people in a way that is really unbelievable. This last year, this country, South Africa, which boasts an official poverty rate of, of 53%, raised tuition in double digits. That's right. And the students said, we won't have it October 21, 22 and 23 of this year. The students mobilized. Tens of thousands demonstrated in Pretoria, Cape Town, Johannesburg and Durban. They even went to the headquarters of Jacob Zuma, the president, and forced him to cancel the tuition increase, the double digit for next year. That war is far from over. That struggle is far from over. But the concerted drive of students frightened the political power structure, so they gave in. The lesson should be lost on no one. And indeed it isn't being lost. I am happy to be able to announce to you that there is an action scheduled in the United States for November 12th. It's become called, it's become known as the Million Student March. They want no increases in all kinds of things, but their three major demands are the public universities in America should become tuition free. We should all have what New York City once had. There should be a cancellation of all student debts. It is outrageous to make an entire generation of students go to school, study hard, to be able to make a greater contribution to their society and and for the first time in our history, saddle them with an average of 30, 40,000 and more in debt. And finally, a demand of the students for a $15 per hour minimum wage for all campus workers across the United States. If you're interested in finding out more about this nationwide event, now 100 cities are scheduled to participate. Go to studentmarch.org studentmarch.org and you will get much more information, young people and students on the move. I want to turn next to a phenomena that you're all familiar with, but that needs some economic analysis. It's the development of apps for your computer applications that offer you, in glowing terms and hyped advertisement, all kinds of services without making it clear to you what the real costs of these services are. And I'm only going to give you a few examples because of the limits of time. On November 5, the New York Times carries a story in which the reporter checks into what the extra costs are for the free delivery, particularly of food, meals, things like that goes through a variety of the apps that are now available. So you can just tap your smartphone and have a pizza delivered and indeed other kinds of goods. And the reporter finds which I don't find surprising. But I want you all to know that there are huge added costs. Not at all unusual to have 20 to 30% tacked on to the price of something delivered as compared to what you would have spent if you stopped by the store on your own and picked up the exact same thing. Is it convenient? Perhaps. But it's very expensive. And if you're going to use the convenience, be aware, because they don't tell you very clearly. So some of them don't tell you at all what it is. You're going to be paying extra for the use of this gizmo. The same applies to both Uber and Airbnb. Let's not fool ourselves here. These are ways of providing rides in a cab or in the equivalent of a vehicle, or providing you with a room to stay in that are offered because doing it through a computer arrangement is cheaper than going through a conventional taxi in the case of Uber or a conventional hotel in the case of Airbnb. Let's count the costs. You're not covered in the same way by insurance. If you don't understand that, worry about it. But you're not the same laws don't apply yet to these things. You're saving money because people are providing you with services that remove and destroy the jobs of other people. Cab drivers, hotel workers. They're going to be hurt by all of this. So you can choose to do it and you can choose to support it. But the illusion that this is just a wonderful new, cheaper arrangement makes believe that there aren't real costs to all of this. Can you be sure that there isn't mold in the apartment you're renting? And the answer is, you can't. You don't have anything like the apparatus that makes hotels have to worry about such things. Hotels have to spend the money to make sure that you are safe, that you are secure. None of this applies. You are taking chances. Look, that's why in the first place, the cab industry and the hotel industry, which used to save money by providing things cheaply, now have to charge more because they have the expenses of the insurance and the cleanliness and the security and all the other things, things that help make you safe when you use those services. The only reason you're getting them cheaper is that those costs are being saved. And my guess is, just like the cab companies eventually had to be regulated, and just like the hotel industry had to, so will Uber, so will Airbnb. Because basically, these are scams making money for the people providing the apps. Just like those that deliver pizza to your house and charge you one way or another for it. One more app. There's a movement now pushed by companies like Unisys here in the United States. And a company I will spell for you from Spain, S C, Y, T, L. They are pushing online voting. That's right. You won't have to go to A voting place. You won't have to use a voting machine. You'll do it all from your computer. The problem with this, as has been testified by countless experts, is that hackers, whether they be individuals or more likely your political enemies, or even possibly the Secret Service of one or another country, will get in there and manipulate the votes. That's right. We go through this ritual of voting. It's already a joke, as money is used to buy votes directly or indirectly. But now we have the specter of the computerized voting in which somebody sitting in an office somewhere will cast the 10 million votes or rearrange whatever other people have actually cast as ballots to mean something else. If you're interested in learning about this and in learning how and why to fight it, verified voting.org is the place to go. Verified voting.org you will learn about the movement in this direction and the dangers that it represents. We've come to the end of the first half of our program. Please folks, stay with me. After a short interlude, we will be back to deal with some major issues that deserve economic analysis of the sort we try to specialize in. We will be right back.