← Economic Update with Richard D. Wolff
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Sam. Saint gonna change. Welcome, friends, to another edition of Economic Update, a weekly program devoted to the economic dimensions of our lives, our jobs, our incomes, our debts, those of our children facing them as they look into an uncertain future that has become even more uncertain in the last few weeks. I'm your host, Richard Wolff. I've been a professor of economics all my adult life, and currently I teach at the New School University in New York City. Before jumping into today's program, I wanted to explain something. I told you in the last couple of weeks that in response to your comments and your suggestions, I am going to be working with Dr. Harriet Frad on the first program of each month. Today is the first program of this month of December, but I have a different person here because I made those arrangements before we adjusted for for the schedule. Therefore, I want to announce that Harriet Fraad will be my guest next week instead of today and thereafter on the first program of each month, exploring the interaction between economics and psychology as we work through the hard times that are now upon us. And I will introduce today's guest later, as I usually do. I also wanted to remind you to make use of our websites that I will bring to your attention a little bit later in the program. This week there have been a couple of events that require a brief comment because this program tries to talk about the economic realities of the immediate week behind us and times Coming up in the news this week was Bob Dylan yet again. This time it was not because he had decided not to go to Sweden to accept the Nobel Prize, but it was that he decided not to go to the White House, where President Obama had called for a meeting of Nobel Prize winners to whom he could give a talk and maybe yet another medal. Bob Dylan isn't going to that either. And I thought it might be useful to comment on one interpretation. Bob Dylan is a musician, and Bob Dylan is the musical child of a man named Woody Guthrie that many of you know about. And so it isn't at all surprising that when a prize in Sweden named after the producer of dynamite to be used in warfare, and the President of the United States, with whom Bob Dylan surely has many disputes, as he has with that office, that he would decide not to go. And it reminded me of a song that Bob Dylan was famous for having written many years ago, where he was a young man and tried to articulate what the future, the job future of a young man or woman looked like here in the United States. And as with so many of Bob Dylan's poetry and songs, which is by the way why he got the Nobel Prize. This one is as pertinent today as it was many years ago when. When it was written. So I'm going to read a few lines from it to drive the point home. Here we go. The name of the song is Maggie's Farm. I ain't gonna work on Maggie's farm no more no I ain't gonna work on Maggie's farm no more I wake up in the morning fold my hands and pray for rain I got a head full of ideas that are driving me insane It's a shame the way she makes me scrub the floor I ain't gonna work on Maggie's farm no more I ain't gonna work for Maggie's brother no more no I ain't gonna work for Maggie's brother no more he hands you a nickel, he hands you a dime he asks you with a grin if you're havin a good time Then he finds you every time you slam the door I'm not gonna work for Maggie's brother no more I ain't goin to work for Maggie's PA no more he puts his cigar out in your face just for kicks his bedroom window it is made the National Guard stands around his door I'm not going to work for Maggie's PA no more and I'm not going to work for Maggie's ma no more she talks to all the servants about man and God and law Everybody says she's the brains behind pa she's 68 but she says she's 54 I ain't going to work for Maggie's ma no more I ain't going to work on Maggie's farm no more I try my best to be just like I am but everybody wants you to be just like them they sing while you slave and I just get bored I ain't going to work on Maggie's farm no more the next update has to do with the response to one of your questions about the importance of co ops in economies around the world. As you know, I talk a great deal about worker co ops as the new economic system that's emerging. And so the question came in about something called the John Lewis Partnership in Great Britain. Is it a co op? What kind of co op is it? And does it indicate a kind of interest in co ops that we don't have yet in the United States? Well, the answer to the last part of the question is an enthusiastic yes. The John Lewis Partnership is an employee owned company in Britain. It operates the John Lewis Department stores The Waitrose supermarkets and a bunch of other businesses. It is one of the largest businesses in Great Britain, the third largest private company by sales in the whole country. It has 84,000 employees, most of whom are partners. It is a cooperative and it is a sign that in Great Britain, as in so many countries, cooperatively run businesses are normal, routine and something that has survived very well in competition with private capitalist enterprises. For those of you that keep wondering whether co ops are financially viable, every partner in these 84,000 receives an annual bonus which is a share of the profit. It is calculated as a percentage of the salary with the same percentage for everyone from top management down to the shop floor and the storage rooms. In many years the profits have been equaled between 9 and 20% of the partner's annual salaries. There are councils which workers elect the majority of people to who have a lot of say over what the company does. Does that make it a worker co op? Here the answer is no. Why? Because a majority of the board that handles all the financial issues, that not the non financial issues like relations with the community, like charity, like all kinds of secondary issues, but the core economic issues are decided by a board that only allows a minority of its members to be elected by the workers. The majority is not. And at that moment the inadequacy in relationship to a worker co op is revealed. They can't take that last step in the John Lewis partnership of giving the workers the actual right and control over their own workplace on a democratic majoritarian basis. So it's not a worker co op, but it's a sign of the importance of cooperatively owned enterprises in which working people have levels of influence and participation that most Americans haven't even imagined to be possible. Germany has that too, as do many other European countries. And I will have more to say about that in the future. The next update. Well, another event in the news this last week was the death of Fidel Castro. Economically, since that's what this program is about. This is a very interesting man and his country. A very interesting economic case. Why? Well, back in 1959 when the revolution in Cuba that was led by Fidel Castro happened, this small country, 8 million people at the time, dared to say to the United States that it would no longer be the colonial subordinate of the United States that it had been throughout its history. It would no longer be a place for prostitution, drugs and so on, to entertain American tourists who could fly down there as it had been. It would no longer be a plantation colony producing the sugar, the tobacco and so on that would be sold in the rest of the world. While the people who produced these things on the island of Cuba lived in poverty stricken misery. He broke from the colonial system and he persisted. It's amazing. Nobody would have thought it possible. He persisted despite the invasion organized by the United States in 1961. He persisted despite endless hostility and the difficulties of an economic embargo that was almost complete. It is a remarkable sign that breaking with your subordinate status in the world economy is actually feasible, which is why it is the important example. For example, you can see that Greece, under the leadership of Alexis Tsipras, made a move in that direction, but couldn't carry it through. Could not break from the German control of the European Union in the way that Cuba did. Perhaps looking at the Cuban example as too high a price to pay, that's possible, but perhaps just fearful of the whole unknown quality of making that break. Well, you deserve a certain place in history if you make that kind of a move and you succeed for half a century with it, which Castro did so when he died last week, there were various comments made, some befitting statesmen and women and others befitting sleazy politicians looking for another advantage. I'm going to read not the latter because you don't need that, but one of the former. I'm going to read very quickly the statement released by the Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in Canada upon the death of Cuban President Fidel Castro. Here we go. It is with deep sorrow that I learned today of the death of Cuba's longest serving president. Fidel Castro was a larger than life leader who served his people for almost half a century. A legendary revolutionary and orator, Mr. Castro made significant improvements to the education and health care of his island nation. While a controversial figure, both Mr. Castro's supporters and detractors recognized his tremendous dedication and love for the Cuban people who had a deep and lasting affection for El Comandante. I know my father was very proud. By the way, Justin Trudeau's father was also the Prime Minister of Canada. I know my father was very proud to call him a friend. And I had the opportunity to meet Fidel when my father passed away. It was also a real honor to meet his three sons and his brother, President Raul Castro, during my recent visit to Cuba. On behalf of all Canadians, Sophie and I offer our deepest condolences to the family of friends and many, many supporters of Mr. Castro. We join the people of Cuba today in mourning the loss of this remarkable leader. That was the statement made by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on November 26, 2016. Next item, immigration. It's in the news every day. It's going to be more of the news. President Elect Trump has announced that he plans to deport 2 to 3 million undocumented immigrants. And there are people in his administration who say the actual number will be many times larger than that. And that leads to the question for this program of the economics, if that's the right way to describe this, the economics of immigration. And since we have heard a great deal about the problems and difficulties that immigration causes, and indeed that's correct, it does. Like all historical events in society, they cause dislocations and have costs associated to them. Those are pretty well known. Mr. Trump has made a specialty of stressing those. So it is my job, in the interest of balance, to talk a little bit about the economics of immigration that perhaps doesn't get the attention it deserves. I'm going to be talking here about undocumented immigrants. They are, first of all, absolutely the poorest people in the United States. Two to three million poor undocumented immigrants make up roughly 1% of the population. It is the poorest 1%. Why? These are people who come into the United States literally with the clothes on their back. They have no money. They have no assets, they have no credentials. They go to the bottom of the economic ladder. But what's worth is that because they don't have documents, they are an open invitation for unscrupulous employers to take advantage of their lack of documents. So if you don't pay the worker at the end of the week that he's worked or she's worked, what's the worker going to do? Go to the authorities and complain? Not without documents. They're not going to do that. The last person they want to see is a government official who might send them back to where they struggled so hard to leave. So they can't complain. They are completely at the mercy of employers, and that's not a good place to be in an economic system like us, like ours. Okay, so they are the poorest of the poor, the most abused and exploited you can think of. They're the ones who work invisibly in the backs of the restaurants, the car washes. You all know. You don't need me to explain it. Thus, we have in the Trump administration a man who represents the richest 1% telling the rest of us that the solution to our economic problems is to do a hammer blow against the poorest 1%. For those of you take ethics, Christian or otherwise, seriously, please think about the spectacle of the richest 1% demonizing and hounding the poorest 1%. But I said I would do economics. Let me do it. 2, 3, 4 million poor immigrants in this country, you deport them. Here are some of the economic consequences. Those people made purchases. Why? Because they eat, they sleep, they need shelter, they have to have clothing. They earn money, however little, and they spend it. And if you throw them out of the country, that's the spending of millions of people that won't be there anymore. And that is going to destroy thousands and thousands of businesses that depended on what these immigrants purchased. Many industries only survive at the profit level they want because they can get away with paying so little to undocumented industrial immigrants. What's going to happen to all of these industries when there are no undocumented immigrants left to be super exploited? Will you have to pay higher wages to American citizens or to immigrants who are documented? And if you have to pay higher wages, what will that mean? Will you go out of business? Will you raise prices? Will you absorb the loss? You employers, now that you have to pay proper wages to people and can't exploit them the way you did the undocumented, what impact on the American society will that have? And guess what? If millions of immigrants don't buy things the way they used to, that means they pay less in sales taxes, don't you know? And they don't pay other kinds of taxes, don't you know? And that means local governments, especially where immigrants were sizable parts of the population are going to find their revenues squeezed. And what are they going to do? Cut outlays for schools and hospitals? Are we all ready for that? Do we understand that we as an economy brought these people here, welcomed them, gave them jobs, integrated them into the economy. And to kick them out is going to have economic consequences typically impacting most those who can afford it least. No, the economics of immigrant persecution, because that's the word that belongs here, are left out in the conversation. And they shouldn't be. They really shouldn't be. Next item, the relationship between the biggest bank in Germany, Deutsche bank, and Donald Trump. We're going to hear more about that. So I thought I'd tell you about it. Mr. Trump has had a number of bankruptcies, as most of you know, in his complicated, I'm being polite here, career as a real estate hustler in the New York area and beyond. One of the banks that stayed with him even when other American banks didn't, has been Deutsche bank. They're into Mr. Trump really big. They've lent him huge amounts of money and they are still now one of his major creditors. The problem is Deutsche bank has also been misbehaving as large banks do. So let me give you an idea of the misbehavior of the Deutsche bank with its close relationship to the incoming president. On 23 April 2015, Deutsche bank agreed to a combined $2.5 billion in fines by the American regulators mostly and a little bit by the British for its involvement in the Libor scandal. That's when private banks illegally manipulated interest rates around the world. Deutsche bank was guilty and paid 2.5 billion in fines. All of us suffered because the interest rates we faced were manipulated by the Deutsche bank, among other banks in ways good for them and bad for us. In 2008, during the financial crisis, the Deutsche bank was involved in all kinds of illegal activities around the mortgage business. The United States Department of Justice is currently, right now, as I speak, seeking to get a fortnight $18 billion civil settlement with Deutsche bank over its role in artificially propping up the US housing market. On 5 November 2015, Deutsche bank was ordered to pay US$258 million to the new York State Department of Financial Services and to the United States Federal Reserve after it was caught doing business with the following countries that were under US Sanctions at the Burma, Libya, Sudan, Iran and Syria. That's right. Deutsche bank was contravening the sanctions of the sort Mr. Trump champions. And he was doing business with the bank that was doing business. Has this led Mr. Trump to say anything critical about the Deutsche Bank? Not a word that I could find and I looked. And it also raises the funding fundamentally. Funny question. When Mr. Trump becomes president, will we go easy on that $14 billion fine that the U.S. treasury Department under Obama levied on Deutsche. Will he be the artist of the deal? Will Deutsche bank get off? Will Mr. Trump get more financing for his private business? Maybe if he. Who knows? And if you didn't know anything about the relationship long and deep between Mr. Trump and the Deutsche bank, well, then you have something else to think about, don't you? Last economic update I have time for Today is a level of outrageous scandal that even I find shocking. And by now, as you can tell, I'm used to a lot. My skin has gotten thicker over time. Okay, here's the story. During the campaign, as I have told you before, both Mrs. Clinton and Donald Trump pledged to reduce the corporate income tax here in the United States from its current legal level of 35% down to I believe Mrs. Clinton's promise was about 20% and Mr. Trump's was 15%. One of the reasons, and I've criticized some of the other reasons, but one of the reasons is the if you do that, you will lead American corporations to bring their profits home to the United States. What a wonderful sounding story. Phony as a four dollar bill, but it sounds good. These companies have money abroad and wouldn't it be better for us if they brought it home? Well, let's do the economics of it so you are not fooled. First, why do corporations have money abroad? And by the way, estimates these days are in the range of $2 trillion worth of profits made by American companies that they have stashed abroad. The answer is it's a mode of tax evasion. It turns out that under U.S. law, and this is not the law in other countries, many other countries don't do this. But under American law, if you earn your money abroad, or you can at least make it look like you do, and you keep that money abroad, you are not required to pay any tax on it to the United States government. Which has a lot to do with why so many companies are showing their profits occurring abroad and keeping them there. Because it's a way to avoid paying Uncle Sam your taxes. If you've wondered about those statistics, you see sometimes about how corporations get away with murder in the way of not paying taxes. Well, here's one of the major ways they do it. They keep the money abroad. Does this mean, however, that it doesn't affect our economy? Answer is stone cold wrong. Actually, Republican Senator John McCain's committee unearthed all of this some years ago. It is perfectly legal to make your profits abroad, keep them there, pay no taxes, deposit them in a bank, say in Ireland or in Spain or wherever you want, then have that bank for you, invest that money in the United States, no problem. That's not considered, quote, unquote, bringing the money home. Because it's the account in the foreign country where you put your profits that is making the investment, and that's not held to be the return of the money. So that all that will happen if they lower the income tax rate on corporations is that they may indeed bring the money home, but it'll just be an accounting process. They've already invested that money. And if they've invested in the United States, that's part of what they decided to do. If they've invested it in other parts of the world, that's what they've decided to do. Those decisions won't be any different after this than before. They just will have gotten away with not paying their taxes. And yet the talk in the mass media, among the Trump advisers and even among the Democrats is always about this bringing home. Back in 2004, this was done. A tax holiday was offered to companies that brought their money home with the same idea. If they bring it home, oh boy, they will invest it and they will have a a time building up the American economy. We did it. They took advantage of it. The money came home, no investment resulted. They used it to beef up their salaries to pay out to their dividends. This is a bad joke. And by the way, let me conclude, you know what? The easiest way would be to have them bring the money home. If you still want to believe in the fakery, here's the solution. Attach a 40% rate of taxation on profits left abroad versus the 35% here at home. They'll bring that profit back right away to avoid the 40 because 35 is cheaper. If there was a government representing the people of the United States, that's what they would do rather than give the corporations yet another tax break. And Mr. Trump is in the forefront. We've come to the end of the first half of this program. Please remember to use our websites rdwolf.com and democracyatwork.info for all the various services. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and so on. Please stay with us. We will be right back. I I when I was younger I, I should have known better and I can't feel no more and you don't feel nothing. I, I got a new girlfriend he feels like he's on top.
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And I.
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Don'T feel alone you can't see past my blind eyes. Welcome back friends to the second half of economic update. For this first week of December 2016, I am very pleased to welcome to the microphone and for a really open ended discussion today a longtime friend, David Barsamian. And before I introduce him, I just want to say welcome David.
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Thank you so much. It's a pleasure to be on Economic Update.
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David Barsamian has been active for a long, long time. He's altered the independent media landscape. He has a weekly radio program, alternative Radio, that airs on 200 stations and is now in its 30th year. He has written books with Noam Chomsky, Eqbal Ahmad, Howard Zinn, Tariq Ali, Arundhati Roy and Edward Said. And even with me, his best selling books on Chomsky have been translated into many languages. And he lectures literally all over the United States and around the world. David is the winner of the Media education award, the ACLU's Upton Sinclair Award for Independent Journalism, and the Cultural Freedom Fellowship from the Lannan Foundation. The Institute for Alternative Journalism named him one of its top 10 media heroes. He is the recipient of the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Rocky Mountain Peace and Justice Center. It's a pleasure to read all those recognitions. Folks like you don't get them as often as they should. All right, David, you're an expert on a specialist, a veteran of alternative radio. Tell me, why is there such a thing as alternative radio? What is there about the American experience particularly that creates this difference between mainstream media, so called, and the alternative world of media of which you have been such a key part?
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Well, I think the alternative media really address a critical public health issue and that is the toxic waste that is generated by corporate controlled media. And let me add as well, PBS and npr, which are both considered high brow, very elite oriented as it is media. The reason I think elites like NPR and PBS is because there's no yelling. People are allowed to speak in complete sentences. They even have command of prepositions and adverbs and use them correctly. So there's an almost an institutional pull toward those establishment type of programs, such as the flagship news programs of National Public Radio, which I sometimes call National Propaganda Radio, Morning Sedation and Some Things Considered. Now, they boast upwards of 15 million listeners a week. So they command a sizable audience here that's been looking for real news beyond the corporate control news, which is like shooting fish in a barrel. I mean, it's. The corporate media are in a deep slump, by the way, as you well know. The young people in particular in large numbers are just, you know, disappearing from watching the cbs, NBC, ABC and all the rest. And they're looking for something different. And that's where independent alternative media, such as your program Economic Update, Alternative Radio, Democracy Now, Making Contact, Counterspin. There's a whole range of of programs that are now available that address the issues that the corporate media either ignore or distort.
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So when you say corporate media help our listeners and our viewers to get a sense of what exactly do you mean? What does the phrase corporate media or the synonym mainstream media, what is that corporate control? Tell us a little bit about how that works and how alternatives like yourself depart from or are different from that.
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Well, a wonderful independent journalist and a friend of mine, Ben Bagdikian, passed away earlier in 2016. He wrote a book called the Media Monopoly. Around 1980, he identified 50 corporations as for profit corporations Controlling the media in the U.S. and said, you know, this could pose problems for the communication needs of a democratic society. Incidentally, a topic which is never addressed, what are the communication needs of a democratic society? Well, he tracked the increasing mergers and takeovers and Bill Clinton with his Telecommunications Reform act had a lot to do with that. And that number is down to 4 or 5 today. Dedicated to what? Not to providing citizens with news that they can use, but for making money. For focusing on trivia on the Brad Pitt Angelina Jolie divorce, for example, which is a lead story on the nightly news. Did Brad Pitt molest one of his children or not, as alleged? Stay tuned for detailed accounts of that. So the corporate media has provided ideologically a mass distraction for a lot of people. And fortunately young people have figured this out on their own and are, you know, as I said, have completely deserted the legacy media. We need media that inform and empower. Now in terms of self criticism of the work that we do in alternative media, I must say we're long on diagnoses, on talking about what the problems are and we need to come up with solutions. We need to be solution oriented rather than just paint the picture of doom and gloom. We need that, but we need the solutions to solve these problems. And that's where I think the alternative media play a crucial role. The corporations that control the mainstream media, so called, are dedicated to one thing only and that is to make maximize profit. That's what they're about. That's in the DNA of capitalism. They have to increase gain so that their shareholders will be happy and will continue to, to vote them in as CEOs of these corporations. That model has failed. It has failed the American people. It hasn't failed the owners of these corporations which are making money hand over fist.
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Okay, so I want to underscore that since I'm the economist here, right? If all the people who run the mass media are corporations who are driven to maximize their profit because that's the name of the game that they're involved in, then we as a nation have left the informing of our people to a group of folks whose major priority is something completely different. So that when and if there's a clash between informing people of something they need to understand and damaging the profitability of the enterprise, we know which way that decision will be made. And I always thought that one idea behind public broadcasting and public NPR and all of that was to say we recognize that this is a terribly stilted way. You're never going to get a criticism of capitalism if it's all capitalists who run the media. That's not a. You don't need rocket science to get that. But you're clearly dissatisfied with the NPR Public Broadcasting System mechanism because it didn't do what it is that this situation should have called for. I noticed that you said in one of your writings that in the early days, in the early documents that set up public radio, there was a recognition that they could and should be a voice for something different. Tell us a little bit about what happened there.
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The Carnegie Commission Report, which was the founding document for the Public Broadcasting act of 1967, incidentally, that was the last piece of LBJ's Great Society legislation that he was able to, to get through contained words like public radio and TV in the United States, I'm quoting here, should be a forum for controversy and debate and should provide a voice for those in the community who may otherwise be unheard. That language was lifted from the Carnegie Commission Report almost verbatim and is passed in. When that bill was signed by LBJ into the Public Broadcasting act, that created National Public Radio and pbs, the Public Broadcasting Service. And they were to be an alternative. They were supposed to be non commercial. But from the very beginning it was manipulated by politicians on Capitol Hill who felt threatened that there may be some really powerful independent voice being allowed to develop in the US and so they really put chains and controls over public radio and TV in the US and no surprise, controlling the money, the purse strings. So what advocates for public broadcasting at the time wanted was a heat shield where they would have Forward funding for 5, 10 years at a time so they wouldn't have to go back every, you know, every year to Congress to, you know, get their money allotted at the same time that that didn't go through, the heat shield was knocked down. It came under tremendous political. I remember, for example, National Public Radio being called Radio Managua on the Potomac. An absurd, an absurd charge that it was somehow promoting Sandinista politics in the United States. Then Newt Gingrich came on in the 90s that PBS and NPR was a plaything, a sandbox for the rich. And so NPR and PBS moved away from its, you know, origins and have now become, you know, pretty much representative of elite thinking. And you see a range of opinion expressed on economic issues, for example, from A to B rather than from A to Z. There should be a wide range of opinion that would fulfill the communication needs of a democratic society where people have a large amount of information, a diverse, broad section of opinion to choose from, rather than these narrow Choices, you know, in foreign affairs, for example, you would get this or that retired Air Force general talking to a retired army general talking about strategy in Syria, you know, should the US bomb full out or should it be tactical bombing? Should they use more drone strikes? No, they would say use folks F16s. You've used F5s. So you really. Citizens are locked into a very narrow space where the so called alternatives are not really alternative.
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Right. So ironic for me, having grown up in the post World War II, Cold War era, that the charge we always learned in school about the Soviet Union was it didn't allow a range of opinion that was all controlled by the government. What you're basically saying is we didn't allow a range of opinion here either, but it wasn't controlled by the government, it was controlled by the corporations. Other than that, the difference wasn't very pronounced. Let me take us in another kind of direction. As you pointed out earlier, and as I know as an economist, the economics of mainstream media are in deep trouble. Newspapers are closing or shrinking all over the country. Networks of radio and television are giving way more and more to a vast array of programming that people have access to. And the mass media are discovering that their own capitalist system, what brought them to their dominance, is now eroding that dominance. How does that change the situation for alternative radio, alternative media in this country? How do you see that evolving?
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Well, it's creating more spaces, it's creating more opportunities for interventions. Now, as you know, the capitalist economic system is not a complete monolith. There are cracks, there are openings. And as Gramsci advised, we should find those openings and make them wider. And that's what I think, you know, your program does and what I attempt to do and others that are intervening, that are creating more and larger islands of audio TV independence. That's what we need in terms of providing citizens with information they can actually use, rather than being bombarded with the latest Kardashian scandal or whatever that's going on, this weapons of mass distraction as I call the media. So there's a lot of opportunities now, but there's also a lot of dangers, particularly with the Internet, where very little information is vetted. And so where someone jokes, you know, we're in a post fact, post truth era where people say, well, I read this on the Internet, you know, as if that's the gospel truth. There's no fact checking, there's no countervailing, challenging opinions, you know, to challenge these statements that are made. So we have to be cautious. I think we're in a. A very dangerous moment where that kind of media can overwhelm the discourse. And the right wing in this country has understood the importance of dominating and controlling microphones and controlling the discourse.
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But it is also the case, right, that the Internet gives criticisms of both capitalism, all those taboo topics that the mainstream media made off the agenda now can come back, whether they come from the left or the right. It is an opening of the range of what counts as truth, what counts as fact, what counts as argument, and so on. It seems to be a remarkable time of danger, but also of opportunity.
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Indeed, we're in that period and interregnum again, as Gramsci talked about, where a lot of morbid stuff, symptoms rise, and we're seeing that now, but also, as you say, opportunities. Now, one of the things that this alternative, our alternative media are doing, I think, is talking about systemic change rather than just something I call the rotten apples versus the rotten barrels approach to the capitalist economic system. So they're great on, you know, zeroing in on Bernie Madoff and how cruel he was and how he ripped off, you know, grandmothers and poor people and, you know, and there's a perp walk on Park Avenue and the media is beating its breasts about how terrific they are, but they don't look at the barrel that produces one Madoff after another. That's what we need now. We need a systemic approach, and that's in terms of climate change. That's what's acutely demanded. Unless we're going to face a very grim environmental future, we need systemic change, not let's recycle more cardboard. That'll take care of global warming. It won't. It makes you feel good. It's one of the palliatives that's dished up. But we need systemic change, and there again, the capitalist economic system, is it equipped to address, does it even want to address the issue of climate change?
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I want to remind the audience, if you're finding what David here has to say interesting, take a look at the website alternativeradio.org org alternativeradio.org and you can get a flavor of many of the activities that David Barsamian is engaged in. Tell me what you think today was the role of the media in Mr. Trump's arriving at his remarkable victory in that election. You're a person who studies the media, who works in the media. Much has been written. What is your sense of the role in this changing media landscape that you've described for us? How did it affect the outcome of this election?
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B
Trump Played the corporate media in particular, like a violin. It was a masterful performance. I think it was very conscious. It was very intentional. He knew that they were interested in ratings. We have the testimony of the CBS president, Lester Mondris, I believe his name is, who acknowledged that Trump may be very bad for the country, but he was great for cbs. Why? Ratings were going through the roof. So there again you go to the political economy of the media and Trump as a TV talk show host. The Apprentice, which was recorded a few blocks from here in Trump Tower, you know, gave him that kind of celebrity and access to the media that he exploited very skillfully. He got millions and millions of dollars, some estimates are in the hundreds of millions of dollars of free publicity. There were instances, by the way, on the mainstream media where cameras were focused on an empty stage waiting for Trump to appear. Meanwhile, Bernie Sanders in a nearby city is getting completely uncovered. So he was very skillful in manipulating the media, and the media went along for the ride because it was good for ratings and good for business. And that's. And that produced, I believe, the Trump presidency to a great extent.
- [47:49]
A
It is interesting that at least the official numbers indicate that Clinton spent twice what he did, and yet he may have gotten twice the value of public exposure that she did because of how he played.
- [48:04]
B
Well, the celebrity itis, for one. And then the sheer audacity of his statements made news. I mean, he was saying things completely off the wall and that was reported as newsworthy.
- [48:19]
A
But the ultimate explanation, if I'm hearing you right, and correct me if I'm wrong, is that the profit driven nature of mass media corporations made them decide, even though they thought he was bad, perhaps for America, to make money, which is their first obligation. And so it's a wonderful example, if I hear you right, that the profit motive trumped, if I can say so, your role as a citizen in deciding who gets the attention, who gets the visual exposure to the mass of people, is that.
- [48:56]
B
No, absolutely. I mean, again, I think the media were central in the ascendancy of someone who just a couple of years ago was a very marginal figure. I mean, he was a TV celebrity, yes, but in terms of power politics, in terms of, you know, being part of the inside, the beltway movers and shakers, Trump was quite out on the periphery. So he was able to manipulate the media, as I said, very well, and getting tons and oodles of free airtime. And that elevated his candidacy. It elevated particularly his visibility because we are, you know, very much an image driven culture today. And you know, using Twitter, using, you know, Facebook and using social media as well. That all, you know, helped propel his campaign.
- [49:52]
A
Let me ask you a question about how the alternative media are going to deal with, with something that just emerged this last few days, because it'll be like a case in point. Trump named Steven Mnuchin, a Wall street banker, basically a financier, to be the new Secretary of the Treasury. It's rather a stunning thing. Having attacked Mrs. Clinton for taking money for giving speeches to Goldman Sachs, he now puts in the most powerful economic position in the country. A person whose father spent a lifetime working for Goldman Sachs, who himself spent 17 years working for Goldman Sachs, who has been involved in all kinds of shady dealings that have brought him the notice of the legal authorities in financing movies and financing mortgage banking misdeeds of various kinds. He's everything that you would want to package as a caricature of a Wall street financial hustler. How is this going to be worked out by the media, both the mainstream and the alternative? How are they going to explain to the American people what Mr. Trump is, given what he said and now what he puts into office? And I won't even go to the question of Wilbur Ross, the new Secretary of Commerce, who's an even richer billionaire than is Mr. Trump himself, et cetera, et cetera. How's this going to be handled by the media in this country?
- [51:25]
B
Well, what you describe, to use a Yiddish word, is ashanda. It is a disgrace and a shame on all of us that, you know, here we are in 2016, soon to be 2017, you know, arguably the richest country in the history of the world, with such a broken and corrupt political system, where you have people like this being nominated and presumably approved by the Senate to important positions in the incoming Trump administration. It's up to us in the alternative media to point out these contradictions and absolute, I mean, raging hypocrisies that go on where people put on this cloak of immaculate conception. Meanwhile, they're spending all their time in a bordello, enjoying the pleasures of the flesh. To do this kind of work requires an enormous energy, dedication, and sense of keep our good humor as well, because it's going to be a very rough ride in the coming period. This is not to scare people. This is just to be objective about what's in front of us. A kind of administration this country has rarely seen in its history, where the wedding of corporate and political power is cemented in a way that recalls the comment that Mussolini made in the early 20s. I believe he himself was an early socialist, that this is the definition of fascism. You know, I hesitate to use that word because of the kind of images it generates, but when you have that kind of close alliance between centralized corporate power, private power and the state, which can enable corporate power to increase its wealth and dominance, that is a very, you know, dangerous situation. And yes, I will use that term, fascism.
- [53:31]
A
So do you think that the alternative media are, for lack of a better term, up to the task? Will they be able to inform the American public in a way that will make it possible to see this reality emerging rather than to be hoodwinked? It's hard for me not to refer to the theater around the Carrier Air Conditioning Company. Let's be real clear. Let me mention it and get your reaction. Trump and Pence go out to Indiana to celebrate that the Carrier Corporation, which earlier said it was going to move 2,100 workers, lose their jobs and move the production to Mexico. They're now going to only keep 1,000 of the 2,100 here. But besides saying the majority are still leaving for Mexico, this isn't a success, number one. Number two, it is a stunning abnegation of all responsibility. Every corporation in America just got a tell the world that you're about to move to somewhere. Why? The President will ask you not to. You will then say, okay, I won't. Costs you nothing. Meanwhile, what isn't understood is that the state of Indiana is kicking in millions of dollars as an incentive to Carrier to stay there. Oh, I see. So that the state of Indiana will now either have to raise taxes on everybody or cut social programs to put away the money that they're now giving to the company. And no one but that company knows whether they ever had the intention. And every company, whether it has such an intention or not, is now going to play the game. This is a capitulation to private enterprises, extortion of money. It has nothing to do with job manufacturing or job retaining. Is there going to be an independent media that makes these points?
- [55:31]
B
Well, I think there must be. We have to do it. And again, I'm in a Gramscian mode. We have pessimism of the intellect. We see what we what is in front of us, but we have optimism of the will. And there have been times in human history where people have overcome much more difficult situations. Now, what you mentioned about Carrier, that's one of the salient characteristics of 21st century corporate capitalism, and that is the socialism that exists for the corporations, the bailouts, the loans, the tax breaks, the loopholes there's all of this enabling legislation that is enacted by Congress to help the corporations to abet their profit margin to let them, you know, get rich. More and more we've got to focus on these issues like a laser. We have to keep talking about economic justice, about equality, about fairness. You know, we hear a lot about American values. A lot of that is bs but there is something there about fairness and justice. And when you talk about these issues that, you know, we want economic justice in this country and that we have to focus on relentlessly.
- [56:45]
A
David, thank you very much. As always. I wish we had more time. We've come to the end, folks. And again, I want to remind you, please pursue our websites, rdwolff with two Fs.com and democracyatwork.info There you will be able to follow us on social media to communicate to us what you like and want on this program. Please make use of that. If you're interested in sponsoring us, go to that website, democracyatwork.info I also want to thank all of you for your comments, your questions, truthout.org, that remarkable independent source of news and analysis, which has been a partner with us for a long time. And we are grateful and I look forward to being with you and with Dr. Harriet Fraud next week. It. Sam.