← Economic Update with Richard D. Wolff
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- [00:10]
A
Welcome friends, to another edition of Economic Update, a weekly program devoted to the economic dimensions of our lives. Jobs, debts, incomes, ours and our children's. I'm your host, Richard Wolff. I've been a professor of economics all my adult life and I think that has prepared me to offer you these economic updates. I want to begin today with a remarkable story that appeared on 19 September issued by the Bloomberg News Service. That's a pro business business operation, part of the Bloomberg empire. What made Michael Bloomberg a billionaire. And the story was by Lee Miller and Wei Lu Lu and the authors. The report that they offer are the results of the Bloomberg Health Index. This is what they call the Bloomberg Health Efficiency Score. They look at health care in 200 countries. How is it doing? What are the results in the quality of the health of the people? What does it cost to provide them with health care? In a word, how efficient is health care in these countries? And here are the results, so stunning that I wanted to begin the program with it. The United States spends the second highest amount of money in the world on Health Care. $9,536 per person. Wow. But I said we're number two. Who's number one? Switzerland. Yet Switzerland scores much higher than the United States. Why? Because in Switzerland, the average length of life is 4.2 years longer than in the United States. And if you're measuring efficiency of health care, you measure what it costs to get it and what it delivers in the way of the service called health. When you look at all the numbers, here's what you get. And I'm going to quote from the Bloomberg article because it is so remarkable to see that in a business pro business study of health care. Here we go. And I'll read it to us. Health system ranked among the least efficient in the world before and during the first year of Obamacare. Wow. We are among the least efficient countries in health care. Why is that? Because the outcomes in American health are poor and the cost astronomical. And why is that? Because we have a private health care system. We basically provide health care in a market mechanism. The more money you have, the better health care you can purchase. The less money you have, the less quality or quantity of health care you can afford. And the result of a private health care system, much more private than in any of the countries that are more efficient than we are, is the result that the Bloomberg survey shows we allow in the United States for a medical industrial complex, doctors, hospitals, drug and device company makers and medical insurance companies to work a system that squeezes US for payments and delivers to us very mediocre results. That the American people permit this, that we are the least efficient healthcare provider in the world by many of these standards, is stunning. It speaks louder than anything. Further, I could say my next update has to do with Poland and In particularly on 22nd September, a huge march of 15,000 workers through downtown Warsaw, Poland. I wouldn't bring this up if it were just another strike, but Poland has played an interesting role in modern history. It's often been a weather vane for changes that then would spread and show up in many other countries. So maybe what I'm about to describe is the beginning of something. The demonstration in Warsaw was not just about better wages, better working conditions. The demand there was very specific. Here is what it Poland, the demonstrators said, has been showing good economic growth. Growth. But the benefits of that growth have gone to the richest 10% of the Polish people, leaving everybody out. And the argument of the workers was, we all helped to produce this rising wealth. Why are we excluded from distributing its benefits? In other words, the union was mobilizing its people not just for the members of the union, not just for the immediate benefit of the union and the workers there, but for the vast majority of the people. The union was becoming what it had once been, the leading force demanding and pointing the way to fundamental social change. It's a whole new world. If the justice, the notion of social and economic justice says that the mass of people want to be involved in deciding how wealth that has been created by everybody is distributed in capitalist systems, that decision is left to the capitalists, a tiny minority. They decide what, what to do with the profits, who to give them to, what to use them for. What those Polish workers were saying was, no, no, no, no, no. We help to produce the profits, we get a say in distributing them. I urge everyone to think long and hard about a labor movement that goes in that direction. Bravo for a long overdue demand. My next update is quick, short and blunt. The Duluth, Minnesota News Tribune adopted a new policy. If you write a letter to the editor endorsing one or another candidate, you have to do something you didn't have to do before. You have to pay the newspaper. Letters to the editor used to be free. Newspapers offered that as a public service to let people air their thoughts. Well, you can still do it for free if you have a thought about an issue, but you can't do it if you have a thought about a candidate. Why? Because the newspaper said campaigns were organizing supporters to send lots of letters in so they could get free publicity. Well, the answer to that is to understand that politics is corrupted when money plays that role. Money shouldn't determine whether you get your notice in the paper or anything else. That's no basis for a democratic politics. That's a basis for a capitalist politics, for a market politics, for getting the best government money can buy. Wrong solution. Duluth, Minnesota News Tribune. You should have started campaigning to get money out of politics. Final update for today. President Trump is posturing as usual by hitting the Chinese with tariffs. Oh, we're going to punish the Chinese. They are cheating, they are stealing our technology, all kinds of charges. And I'm the big president who's going to do something about about it. And so there are tariffs and among other things, tariffs on cars. And I just wanted to suggest that people think through in a way, clearly the president and his advisors don't what some of the consequences are. And I thought I'd bring one set to your attention. The tariffs on cars and car parts hit a Peak on July 9. Some people have begun to say it was the end of the US auto industry July 9th. You might have missed it. Let me explain. China is not going to deal with the United States anymore. The tariffs are hurting China. No question about it. They don't want to face problems with the United States. So guess what? The Chinese are cutting deals, big ones with Volkswagen, BMW, Daimler, basf, Siemens. I'm mentioning huge German companies that are rushing in to fill the orders that the Chinese will no longer place with American companies to avoid all the tariff problems. Well, China is already. So let me explain. A leader in driverless cars in all of that kind of technology. Americans are having terrible trouble trying to figure out how to have a driverless car navigate the way our cities are built. Chinese are going about it completely different. They're building cities in such a way that there will be passageways through them that are separated from passengers on foot and from people so that the driverless car is not a safety problem, etc. They're way ahead of the United States. They are the future and they are also the biggest market. So for the German companies, this is an unbelievable advantage over the American. And you can be sure that the French and the Japanese and the British are right in there cutting their deals with the Chinese as well. The United States will be paying for a long time for the political posturing of the Trump administration. And the sooner we understand that, the sooner something maybe will be done. Bout it. Well, we've come to the end of the first half of economic update. It gives me a chance to be a bit more expansive about something we say towards the end of the first half on many programs. Please remember to subscribe to our YouTube channel. It's an enormous source of support and help for everything we do. Likewise, follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Make use of our website democracyatwork.info where you can find out many more things beyond what we do on this program and where you can also find out how to work in any one of the local groups that work with us around the United States and abroad as well. And finally, I want to particularly thank and appreciate the Patreon community. Those of you know that you can find our work@patreon.com economicupdate that community of Patreon provides in its support for what we do, the resources that enable us to do the research, to prepare these programs, to tape them, to produce these shows, which is an enormous work of labor of love, but also of financial Support. And the Patreon.com community provides all of those things. And this is an opportunity for me to express my gratitude. Last point for today. Our economic system is in a moment of extreme crisis. Whether you look at the tensions over the Supreme Court, or the tensions with China that we discussed, or the movement of women in the MeToo movement to fundamentally alter the unfair gendered arrangements of our society, we are going through fundamental change. And one of the goals and purposes of Economic Update is to be relevant to them, to explain them, and to shine lights on on where others might be hesitant to go. Stay tuned. We'll be right back with our interview for today's program. Welcome back, friends, to the second half of today's Economic Update. As it is the beginning of a month, we are once again lucky to have with us Dr. Harriet Fraad. She is a practicing mental health counselor and hypnotherapist in New York City. Her work is focused on the intersection between personal life and the larger historical and social conditions of our society. She publishes widely and we usually mention some of the places. But today I am very happy to announce something new. Dr. Frad has agreed to produce and has in fact already produced a podcast, a regular podcast that is called Capitalism Hits Home. Capitalism Hits Home. It explores the impact of the larger economic and social changes around us on our personal and intimate lives. These podcasts are available, that is the podcast called Capitalism Hits Home on Apple, Podcasts, on Google Play, and of course on our website democracyatwork.info I strongly urge you to take advantage of the extended analyses and presentations Dr. Frad offers on her podcast, Capitalism Hits Home. Welcome to today's program.
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Glad to be back.
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I want to start off today by kind of reminding you about something you have said to us that listeners have and viewers have asked me to ask you to elaborate on. You've made the point more than once that public policy here in the United States, government policies have had a peculiar history. On the one hand, they have supported profit making enterprises. On the other hand, the very way they've done that has disrupted or maybe even destroyed households and family life. And then the peculiar point you make, not peculiar in your point, but peculiar about our society, is that the same forces that insist on using government policy to help profitability, to help corporations, to help business at the expense of families, then turn around and present themselves as the conservative protectors of the families, even though their economic policies are the major reason those families are in trouble. This is what I want to explore with you and I thought a good way to begin would be to ask you to share with us some of the historical work you've done about how this kind of government policy, which you call public policy, private pain, how this evolved, starting with the Second World War. What happened then that shows something about public policy and private pain?
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Well, there's three big changes that I think are worth exploring. One is the change during World War II. Another is the change after World War II. Another is the Change in the late 60s and 70s. So to begin with, the one at World War II which caused huge dislocation in personal life and family life was, was that since men were drafted, women were needed in the workplace, at the munitions factories, at all the other factories and in the armed forces. So the definition of what is feminine had to be changed. Feminine work was pink collar, associated to childcare and the home that had to be changed. There was an enormous, well financed propaganda campaign. We're all familiar with Rosie the riveter in her overalls showing her biceps, saying, yes, we can. But Rosie was accompanied by many, many others saying, our boys need us. I have them written down. This is my war too. A cute woman with a of course, always white with a bandana and overalls and a wrench. I'm proud and my husband wants me and needs me to do my part. Turns out gals were useful too. Gather round, Americans. Soldiers need our help. America was blanketed with these posters and people were exhorted on the radio and elsewhere to support the troops, get out and work. The government even invested in federally funded childcare. The for 105,000 children wasn't adequate, but it was the first time they really invested in that because they had to get women out of the household, into the factory. Well, that's the campaign they had. And one effect was to expand female sex roles. Women were allowed to be feminine and still work outside the home in what had been, quote, men's work. And that was helpful.
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A
But the pain part, if I can pick up on your basic dichotomy there, the pain part was, if I hear you right, women were moved into the men's jobs, at least they had been defined that way. But they weren't given a lot of the support in terms of childcare help with the household. They were basically told, do more work in the factory in addition to what you already do.
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Right. They did not look at what this costs. They didn't look at what it costs on the job. Women in the munitions factories were called canaries because they turned yellow from the chemicals they used. They often lost fingers or hands because if their hands got hot touching the shells, they often exploded. So then they came home exhausted from their physically tiring jobs to needy kids and no childcare and no government help with dinners or canteens or anything of the sort. Things that other countries have done if they want women to work. So that was a huge strain on families. Another one was that women who had been programmed to be dependent on their husbands, Mrs. John Jones, not even keep their first names, no less their last, were sometimes lost and broke down. There was a telling epidemic of psychogenic tuberculosis during World War II, which hit prosperous, healthy, previously healthy women and who got tuberculosis and had to be sent out at the time. That's the way they cured people to sanatoriums where they could have full rest and fresh air far away from their families who were shipped out. However, they could be foster care, family support from different relatives who didn't want them, et cetera, huge dislocation for children.
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A
Public policy. Private pain.
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Private pain. Very good example.
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Let's move, because I want to get all of this in to what happened after the war, to do it again in a sense of public policy, private pain.
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Just one more thing that I want to keep people in mind, and that is private profits doubled during World War II. So the pain was not experienced by American capitalists, but by American mothers and children and families. Post war, the United States did a big U turn. They didn't want GIs returning, having gotten extensive arms training, to being massively unemployed. They needed to get women out of the factories. Back in the house now for a.
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Lot of women so that those jobs could go to the returning men, those.
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Jobs would go to returning garments GIs who would be rather angry and also trained in armaments when they got home if they didn't have any jobs. So that women's femininity became home and family. Now for many people, well, the way they accomplished this, having pushed women out of the home, is they denied the GI benefits that male GIs got to female GIs, the women who were in the armed forces, all 350,000 of them, they said that they don't have to give them benefits because they're dependents who are privately provided for. Even if they weren't married, their husbands were too shell shocked or sick or wounded to work or anything else. They didn't get benefits.
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So the propaganda, in a sense, the pressure from the government having yanked the women out of the household into the workplace, now pushed them back, pushed them.
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Back at much lower. They got pushed back into the home and if they had to work, they were confined to pink collar trades at far lower wages. Just as a little aside, even when they worked in the munitions factories, they got less than men did, but they got three times more than the average that they got before. Now they're pushed back into $0.59 on the dollar, jobs that can't provide very well for anyone. So they're pushed back into dependence on men, which may not work out. The men may not be there, the men may be too post traumatically shocked to function or may be abusive, but whatever, they're pushed back in the home. And once again, American capitalists did very well with this policy and American women.
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Boom after World War II.
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Absolutely. A big capitalist boom for them.
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Boom. The men had the jobs. The government with a Marshall Plan and so on supported selling all the goods. Corporations did real well, 50s, 60s. But you're saying that the family and the household was subjected to unbelievable difficulties and pressures by this jarring reversal of sending the women back into the home when they had gotten the feeling for the desire for the taste for a different kind of life.
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Exactly. And for a lot of the women who came back who felt trapped and whose husbands were trapped into supporting them, family life was pretty horrible. People got emotional divorces where they lived together and couldn't stand each other and the kids picked it up with all of its unhappiness. A lot of women did work because they had to, but they couldn't make a living.
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And so you could have the point that today, the generation today are the children of those people, as children had to live through this whipsawing back and forth that was as profoundly disruptive as anything I can imagine with a lot.
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Of angry women with no outlet except their helpless kids, which wasn't very good for the children. Also, what happened was since women were bored and angry, their voices started to be heard. When 1963, Betty Friedan published her book and she described a dissatisfaction that has no name, a problem that has no name. It was the rage and boredom of households confined with women and children in a miserable place.
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Well, I just want to tease this out. Women had developed new interests, new desires, new competencies, new confidence in themselves when they were asked to replace the men. And they could see that they were able to do it. Putting them back in the old position was, in a way confronting them with a life contrary to what they had developed, the capacity and the desire for.
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Yes.
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No wonder they were full of rage.
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They were instead of yes, we can, it was no, you can't. And those jobs that they still were in because a lot of women needed to work and wanted to, were so low paid they couldn't support themselves. And then in 1968, the first real women's liberation publication came out from leftist women. It was called Notes from the First Year, where they talked about the horrors of being trapped, about housework being not very fulfilling, and so on. And from there, the impetus of the women's movement was powerful. All the children of the angry women, the young women who didn't want what their mothers had thwarted rageful lives. All of the women who felt pushed down and pushed back joined a mass women's liberation movement.
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We're going to have to hold it there. We've run out of time, but I think this is something that we're going to want to continue. And for those of you that are watching, please note that if you want to see the continuation of this conversation, go to patreon.com economicupdate where we will continue. Thank you very much for joining us. I look forward to speaking with you again next week. Sa.