Economic Update with Richard D. Wolff

Episode: Economic Update: The #MeToo Movement

Date: April 18, 2019

Episode Overview

In this episode, host Richard D. Wolff explores the economic dimensions of sexual harassment and abuse in the workplace, with a particular focus on the #MeToo movement. He is joined in the second half by Dr. Harriet Fraad, a mental health counselor whose work often intersects with political and economic issues. They dissect why issues of workplace sexual abuse have become more visible now, the underlying societal and psychological factors in gender roles, and why real change may finally be happening.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Recent Labor Movements & Economic Updates (00:10–15:50)

Chicago as a Center of Labor Change:
- Highlight of recent labor victories, including the election of a groundbreaking new mayor and strikes by graduate students and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.
- Discussion of a unique strike at Headley Manufacturing, notable for being led not by a union but by Arise Chicago, a faith-based coalition.
World Trade Decline:
- Wolff connects the contraction in world trade to global political instability:
  - "It is hurting the world economy because it's more of a trading world economy than it's ever been." (02:12)
- He critiques the policies of both the UK’s Conservative Party and the Trump administration for using economic distraction tactics such as Brexit and trade wars.
Congestion Pricing in New York City:
- Criticism of congestion pricing as regressive and unfair to working-class people:
  - "For rich people, this is pocket change and will mean nothing. But for middle and low income people... it will be a major burden." (05:55)
- Points out the influence of corporate interests, especially Uber, in promoting policies that benefit them financially at the public's expense.
IMF World Economic Outlook:
- Notes the IMF's criticism of Trump's tariff war and warning about the monopolistic power of American tech giants:
  - "The conclusion of the IMF that Trump's tariff war with China is a colossal mistake." (08:15)
  - "Beware to the whole world of the power of a few tech giants...because they have monopolies." (09:30)
Deregulation of School Lunches:
- Discusses lawsuits over USDA's rollback of nutritional requirements, arguing this is motivated by anti-Obama sentiment and corporate interests at the expense of children’s health.
Trump and Socialism:
- Quotes Trump’s warning to Republicans about the "power of socialism" and flips it:
  - "The kind of capitalism you champion...is precisely the single most important fuel for the rise of socialism." (14:40)

2. The Economics of Sexual Harassment & the Rise of #MeToo (16:22–28:18)

Defining Workplace Sexual Harassment (16:24–19:15)

Wolff reads the EEOC’s legal definition to clarify:
- “Unwelcome sexual advances, requests for sexual favors and other verbal or physical conduct...when this conduct explicitly or implicitly affects an individual's employment, unreasonably interferes with an individual's work performance, or creates an intimidating, hostile, or offensive work environment.” (17:10)
Emphasizes sexual harassment as a legally recognized crime that shapes economic productivity.

Why #MeToo, Why Now? (19:15–24:19)

Dr. Harriet Fraad’s Analysis:
- Shifts in women's roles and attitudes:
  - "The majority of women in the United States are now single for the first time in our history...women are conscious women and who don't want to submit to sex on a man's terms without having a say and participating as equals. That's a big change." (19:20)
- The diminishing role of religion, especially fundamentalist versions that historically reinforced women's subordination.
- Rich discussion of biblical passages to demonstrate the roots of women’s subjugation in scripture.
  - "For example, the Southern Baptist Convention...states that women should be subordinate to men." (20:40)
  - "Women are property in the Bible...the woman is property. Don't covet your neighbor's property." (21:54)
- Concludes that less religious influence and women’s increased independence drive today’s resistance.

Understanding Male Harassment Behavior (24:19–27:15)

Wolff asks: Why do men engage in harassment? Is it increasing, or just more exposed?
Dr. Fraad's Psychological Insights:
- Boys grow up with fewer male role models at home, leading to negative identity formation:
  - "So they grow up with a negative model. I am the not with woman...” (24:42)
- Discusses how gender roles teach stoicism to boys and subordinate behaviors to girls; media and advertising reinforce hyper-masculinity and objectification of women.
- Points out how sexual need is the only "approved" male dependency, but also creates discomfort and violence.
  - "It's a terrible thing. And they're not allowed to be needy and dependent. And sex is a need that depends on women....That's probably why...the average prostitute...because after men need her for sexual release, they often kill her because they're killing their own dependency." (26:30)

Is Sexual Harassment Increasing, or Just More Visible? (27:15–28:18)

Conclusion: The amount of harassment hasn’t changed; what’s changed is visibility and women’s willingness to confront it.
- “I think there is the same amount as always. I don't think the amount has changed. I think the ability to call it out has changed...women want to put the shame of sexual aggression back on the men who are aggressive and not hold it themselves.” (27:41)

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

Wolff on economic distractions:
"You have to distract your people from it by Brexit does that in England. And Mr. Trump's posturing as the protector of America against a cheating world trade partnership works that game here in the United States." (03:33)
Fraudulent fairness in policy:
“What a disaster. First of all, it is grotesquely unfair. For rich people, this is pocket change and will mean nothing. But for middle and low income people... it will be a major burden.” (05:55)
On the #MeToo movement’s roots:
"Women are not the property of men the way the Bible designates...letting go of religion...added to women's sense of being equal people who do not have to service men just because men want it." (23:03)
Fraud on the psychological roots of male behavior:
"In our sexist society, men are taught to be stoic, to repress their feelings, not be a sissy, not be a female." (25:08)
On the visibility of harassment:
“The same amount [of harassment] as always...the ability to call it out has changed.” (27:41)

Segment Timestamps

Introduction and Labor Events: 00:10–04:00
Global Economic Trends (Trade/IMF/Tech): 04:00–12:30
US Policy Changes (School Lunches, Trump speech): 12:30–16:00
Introduction of Dr. Harriet Fraad: 16:00–16:24
Legal and Social Definition of Harassment: 16:24–19:15
Rise and Causes of #MeToo: 19:15–24:19
Root Causes of Male Behavior: 24:19–27:15
Is Harassment Increasing?: 27:15–28:18

Tone and Style

The episode maintains Wolff’s signature critical, analytical style, blending economic context with social commentary and direct, often witty, exchanges between Wolff and Fraad. Dr. Fraad’s reflections are thoughtful, historical, and rooted in both theory and lived realities.

Summary

This episode of Economic Update situates the #MeToo movement firmly within larger economic, historical, and psychological frameworks. Wolff’s analysis foregrounds the systemic connections between capitalist structures, gender oppression, and political distraction tactics. Dr. Fraad provides a historical and psychoanalytic look at how religious decline, changing gender roles, and persistent patriarchal norms underpin persistent workplace abuses—and why, for the first time, those abuses are being widely challenged. The result is a thorough and thought-provoking discussion on how personal experiences of harassment are shaped and sustained by larger economic and cultural systems—now facing growing resistance.

Transcript

A (0:10)

Welcome friends, to another edition of Economic Update, a weekly program devoted to the economic dimensions of our lives, jobs, incomes, debts, our own and our children's. I'm your host, Richard Wolff, been a professor of economics all my life. And on that basis prepare these weekly updates. First, quickly, a shout out to some Chicago labor events that we pointed to in an earlier program. Chicago is indeed becoming a very interesting place of change here in the United States. A new mayor, first woman, first gay, first non white, all combined in one person got elected to be the new mayor and promises to big changes. It's already a change that such a thing could happen. I'm also happy to announce that the University of Illinois at Chicago, the graduate students and teaching assistants who get terribly badly paid and overworked and under respected, went on strike and won some significant gains they could not have gotten otherwise. However, two other strikes continue. One that's been going on since the 10th of March is the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. It's it turns out the wealthy folks of Chicago may like to have a symphony, but they don't want to pay for it. And that of course isn't so unusual for them. But kudos to the striking musicians who haven't caved in, who haven't gone back, who maintain that they deserve the pensions they once had and they deserve to be paid as much as orchestras elsewhere in major cities. A new strike. Interesting in another way. Headley Manufacturing, relatively small place, but here the strike is not by a union. The workers aren't unionized there. It's a strike led by Arise Chicago, a group of churches working together with workers to change the conditions of labor in Chicago. Bravo to you for getting together and doing that. And to those faith based folks who see a different way to express their commitment to religion. Let me turn now to the bigger ones. In the last quarter of 2018, world trade really contracted and that is continuing. It is hurting the world economy because it's more of a trading world economy than it's ever been. And why has that happened? Well, two things have really damaged world trade. One is the uncertainty of the crazy things going on in the United Kingdom over whether it will or will not stay in the European Union. That is hurting trade all over the place, as everybody has to calculate with that uncertainty. The second cause of world trade's decline is of course the trade war being perpetrated by Mr. Trump and the Republican Party against China, number one. But likewise against Mexico and Canada via NAFTA, against Europe with the trade tariffs being imposed on them and more of them threatened Interestingly, both the conservatives in England and Mr. Trump and the Republicans here have been using the trade war as a distraction for their people. People suffering from the horrors of a capitalism in decline, crashing in 2008, bailing out the very people who bought the crash and then imposing austerity on the mass of people. This is a capitalism in trouble. You have to distract your people from it by Brexit does that in England. And Mr. Trump's posturing as the protector of America against a cheating world trade partnership works that game here in the United States. Here's the irony. To evade the focus, the need to confront the declining system in the United States and the uk, the conservative leaders distract people. That makes the situation worse. That's the meaning of a declining world trade volume and so forth. So as you distract people, the problem gets worse. That's not gonna end well. Next item. The city of New York has committed to congestion pricing. This is so ridiculous that it really requires a bit of time. As many of you know who've ever visited New York, traffic congestion here is ludicrous. It matches or exceeds that in many other urban areas. Los Angeles comes to mind, Chicago, so forth. So there've been a demand by people to do something about it because it is, of course, the height of capitalist inefficiency. You're very efficient in the office, but it takes you two hours to get there because of the traffic there, cancels the efficiency in the office because of the inefficiency outside the office of a traffic system that is arcane, inadequate and overused and therefore breaking down, et cetera, et cetera. What is the solution that New York City has found? Well, it turns out it's going to copy some other world cities, Singapore, London, Stockholm, examples, and do congestion pricing. What does that mean? Below 60th street in Manhattan, you will have to pay a fee, a bunch of dollars every time you go into that area to reduce congestion. What an interesting idea. What a disaster. First of all, it is grotesquely unfair. For rich people, this is pocket change and will mean nothing. But for middle and low income people who have to come into that part of the city to work, it will be a major burden. Who came up with this? Well, let's see. Rich people don't want to pay taxes for the obvious solution, which is mass transit, really do something about the trains, buses and other kinds of vehicles that could move people in and out of the city. Then you discover, as I did when I did the research, a little millions of dollars have been spent by the Uber Corporation in favor of this congestion price. And now, of course, why? Because if you don't let cars in because they can't afford to pay, that will allow more Uber cars to be in there moving people around. Why? Because Uber already cut a deal with the city to put a $2.50 charge on every taxi ride to cover the cost of congestion. Notice not Uber pays it. The rider does. So guess who gets out of paying the cost of a proper mass transportation system? Corporations and the rich. And so they are behind it. They. They get the benefit. And the only thing that would be horrific is to imagine that this is about solving the congestion problem. Let me give you a little example of where this can lead. A few months ago, Mr. Macron In France decided he was going to do something about pollution. Hello, good morning. Only after 10 years. And what was he going to do? He was going to put an extra tax on fuel that everybody had to buy, putting the burden of dealing with pollution on the people who can afford it least. The result there was the last 20 weeks of yellow vests. Who knows, maybe in the United States, congestion pricing could lead people finally to say, of course the goal is very nice and pollution and congestion, but how you're doing it is disgusting in its injustice and who it protects. The imf, the International Monetary Fund, released its annual World Economic Outlook a couple of weeks ago. And there were two conclusions I want to share with you in case you missed reading that very long and poorly written report. First, the conclusion of the IMF that Trump's tariff war with China is a colossal mistake. Why? Because other factors, not the pricing of the two sides, are at play here in causing the imbalance in US China trade. It isn't about relative prices. Number two, the spillover effects dangerously undercut economic growth. That goes back to my earlier point about world trade contracting. That was the first thing they said that was interesting that they came to that conclusion. The second one they said is, beware to the whole world of the power of a few tech giants, you know, Google, Apple, Amazon, Facebook, because they have monopolies. They have worked carefully, says the imf, to get a monopoly to jack the prices up, to make it impossible for new companies to get into that business that slows economic growth. Well, you know, maybe that's why the major competitors to every one of those I just listed come from China, where they've been protected and where their government gives them the space to grow because the air has been sucked out of the rest of the world economy by the dominance of those companies, those big tech giants. The United States justifies attacking the Huawei Corporation from Japan because using its telecommunications equipment might enable the Chinese government to spy on the rest of the world. Well, what does the rest of the world use, my fellow Americans? They use the equipment of American companiesgoogle, Microsoft, intel, you know, and they've been using them for all their secret communications. And the American government, you can be very sure, is working with those companies. They admit it on using them for what? If the world were really worried about spying by Huawei, they should be much more worried about spying by these four monopoly companies that are all American. This is theater not to be taken seriously at face value. What is being said here? Monopoly is something capitalism always sees enterprises trying to get because there's a lot of money in it and a lot of power. It's only with pushback by the mass of people, which often takes years, that you break the monopolies up, only to watch the process renew itself immediately thereafter. Final Updates Several states have begun suing the Trump Department of Agriculture, New York, California, Illinois, Minnesota, New Mexico, Vermont and the District of Columbia. Why? Because it turns out the Department of Agriculture has relaxed certain rules for school lunches. Yeah, you guessed it. They are now going to relieve those lunches from having whole grains and relieve those lunches from limiting sodium. Why? Because the Trump administration, to hold on to its popular support, such as it is, needs to be positioning itself as anti Obama, anti Obama, anti. So they're getting rid of Obama's rules about safety in the nutrition for our children. This is craziness, but it is when politics is no longer about serving the people, but reproducing the dominance of small groups in the society. When that becomes not just part of politics, which it always is in capitalism, but the only determinant of then you get the systematic destruction of the health of our children in order to make a bit extra profit for the whole grain companies and whoever puts salt in everything. My concluding update for today has to do with a speech given by Donald Trump to the Republican national committee on 2 April. He does two interesting things there. One, he insults Alexandria Ocasio Cortez. He refers to her as a young bartender, which would position her as different from him, which is an old real estate hustler. But I guess if you're in the world of old real estate hustles, insulting like lying, become normal functions associated with the job you do. The other thing he said, which is of much more importance, is so interesting. I'm going to quote, don't underestimate the power of socialism to get a vote. That's right, Mr. Trump, and you deserve much of the credit for making socialism as attractive as it has become to millions of Americans. The kind of capitalism you champion, the kind of capitalism you're trying to take America back to, is precisely the single most important fuel for the rise of socialism, other than the actual performance of capitalism itself, for most people in the United States. We've come to the end of the first half of Economic Update. I want to remind you. Please follow us on on YouTube, indicate your interests, click on Being a Supporter subscriber. It's an enormous help to us make use of our websites democracyatwork.info and rdwolff with two Fs.com and as always, our thanks to the Patreon community. That is such a support and encouragement for all we do. Stay with us. We'll be right back. I would like to take a brief moment to tell you about my latest book called Understanding Marxism. Marx was a social critic who identified capitalism as not an end of human history, but rather merely the latest phase of human history, which, as we now see, needs a transition to something better. You can get your copy of Understanding Marxism Today by Simply going to lulu.com that's l u l u.com and searching for understanding Marxism by me, Richard D. Wolff. We are also very proud that this book is the first one published by our group, Democracy at Work, and we're proud to be able to bring it to you at this time. Welcome back, friends, to the second half of Economic Update. It is my pleasure once again to welcome to this program and for all of you, Dr. Harriet Fraad. She's been on the program many times and in a minute I'm going to tell you about a new project that I think you will find especially interesting and we are very excited about doing it. Harriet Fraad is a mental health counselor and a hypnotherapist in private practice in New York City. Her work explores the intersections of American personal, economic and political life. And it's on her website@harriotfraud.com the website is also the host of her podcast. It's called Capitalism Hits Home. And that's exactly what it's about. We're very excited about this podcast. It's part of a family of podcasts that we are growing and that make the work that we bring to you on this program more available, more extensive than otherwise. So we urge you take a look, Harriet. Fraud Capitalism Hits Home. The podcast is available on our website, democracyatwork.info and also on itunes and Google Play. Welcome to the program.