← Economic Update with Richard D. Wolff
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Welcome, friends, to another edition of Economic.
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Update, a weekly program devoted to the.
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Economic dimensions of our lives.
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Jobs, debts, incomes, our own, those of our children. I'm your host, Richard Wolff.
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I been a professor of economics all my adult life. And my hope is that it has.
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Prepared me to offer you these updates.
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On the economic system we depend on.
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And that surrounds us every day. Well, it's election season, or at least this time of year. On this occasion, many elections have happened and they're changing the world we live in.
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I want to comment mostly about the.
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Midterm elections coming up here in the United States, but before that, two comments on two other elections that have been in the news recently.
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The first is the election of an.
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Extreme right wing quasi fascist leader in Brazil, the largest economy of Latin America. A man who openly denounces all kinds of minorities, who praises torture as a mechanism of political and military activity. An extraordinary choice for an enraged and upset Brazilian population. The second one I want to talk.
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About is in Germany, in the state.
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Of Hesse, where the governing coalition of left of center socialists and right of center Christian Democratic Union took a tremendous beating, opening the space for left wing political parties, particularly the Greens, and also right wing political parties, particularly the anti immigration Stand up for Germany party party, a new party. I think these elections have something in common. The rejection of the mass of people in Brazil, in Germany and here in the United States as well, with conventional politics, with the old establishment, with that cozy arrangement between slightly left of center politics and slightly right of center politics, changing places as time required, but all of them presiding over a capitalism that they thought would never end. Well, the mass of people don't want that anymore. The capitalism they've had to live with since 2008 and the terrible crash then has been awful. First there was the crash itself and the massive suffering in unemployment. Then came the quick bailouts of the banks and big corporations who were mostly responsible for the crash in the first place. And as if that wasn't ugly enough, it was followed by the last 10 years of austerity politics in which the cost of bailing out those big corporations was borne by mass withdrawal of government services, mass dying out of wage increases, austerity. And of course people are angry. They're angry at what happened, but they're angry at the political parties that presided over all of that. That's also what prompted the British working class to vote for Brexit, as if cutting yourself off from Europe would solve your problems. And it also explains the votes here in the United States for Mr. Trump. And all that he represents. And the GOP in its rush into the right wing, well, I'm not surprised that right wing is the direction most of the upset of the mass of people is taking as they contest with and deal with a dying capitalism. Where else would we have expected them to go? The last 50 years have been an endless drumbeat of anti leftism, antisocialism, anti communism. The right has been able to take over. Liberals went more to the right with each passing year. So, yes, people look to the right as maybe the kind of change that will help them. They will discover soon enough, and indeed some already are, that the right wing has no solutions for this problem of a dying capitalism, since mostly they pretend that that problem isn't there. So what will happen? Well, the right will fail. It's already failing where it has taken over. Brexit is a disaster. Mr. Trump is going in that direction. The danger for all of us is that a right wing that cannot solve the problems it promised to will need to blame somebody for its failure. It won't blame itself. It won't blame its own lack of a solution to the problems of a capitalism that that is failing and that they cannot recognize as such. So they will blame the left. They are already trying to do that, as I will explain in a few minutes. That's the danger we face. As to the midterm elections here in the United States, mostly I'm struck by what's not on the ballot. Are we going to stay in the wars that we are losing in Iraq and Afghanistan and elsewhere or not? That's a big question. It's not on the ballot. Are we going to have more tax cuts with promises of how well they'll help the mass of people just after the December 2017 tax cut has shown us it didn't help the mass of people worth a damn. No, it's not on the ballot is the contest between capitalism and socialism. Now that polls show us that a huge percentage of Americans don't like capitalism and are more favorably disposed to socialism, is that on the ballot? Hardly anywhere. Indeed, if any of the major issues that we contend with as a society are on the ballot, where you're voting, you're in a rare and unusual situation. Elections can be not how we choose the direction we take. Elections can be the substitute for making the decisions about the future, deflecting us into secondary issues as a way of avoiding dealing with the hard ones. Big issues are confronting us in these elections, but even bigger ones are hiding behind what this election is about. The last Week also brought us a remarkable document from the government, something called the Council of Economic Advisers. A council that advises the President, issued a document called the Opportunity Cost of Socialism. It's an odd choice of title. The concept of opportunity cost is taught in economic classes and is generally unknown in the public. Why they would choose that as a title, One of the many mysteries. In any case, it's sophomoric. It's the kind of document which, if a student handed it in at any significant university in America, that student would flunk. Not just flung from a person like me, anyone with any competence. This must have been done overnight, maybe on a weekend when there was a lot of partying going on. But this is not serious work. It's mostly about how a medical insurance program, which is called socialist, even though every developed country in the world has a national health program. Why you call this socialist? Mystery to me, but they do. And they're obviously upset because Americans want this overwhelmingly by polling and may help the Democrats in the elections, which is clearly what they were worried about. They might have said that, but instead they enlarged their topic to talk about capitalism versus socialism. And here was their critical argument. Socialism, they said, promised to increase people's standard of living. And then they pointed to Venezuela and a couple of other small countries to indicate that there were examples of where socialism didn't do that. Wow. That's where you flunk, Jack. Let's go through the obvious fact. There is one country in the world that isn't mentioned in their document in terms of what it has done for the standard of living of the people there. And I'm not commenting on the People's Republic of China as a political society or in its culture. Those are other questions, and people disagree about that. But there can't be any disagreement about the following facts which the Council of Economic Advisers document conveniently evades. Over the last 20 years, one country has grown faster than every other. It's not the United States, it's the People's Republic of China. Their economy has grown faster than the United States every year. Even this year, when the Chinese economy is slowing, its growth rate is over 6%. And we're terribly proud here in America that ours is growing at 3%. Get the idea? That's the normal range. China is growing faster two to three times. And the wages of Chinese workers have gone up way faster in the last 10 or 20 years than Americans. So this silly idea that you have criticized socialism when you've avoided the example, which happens to be the largest country in the world, that has done the opposite of what you claim. That's why you flunk. Moreover, the Council of Economic Advisers was supposed to be advising the President. That's what happened when the law that created it, the 1946 Employment act that created the Council of Economic Advisers, said its job was to advise the President on how to manage the instability of capitalism, the recurring cycles. It wasn't supposed to write lousy papers on broad subjects. One more way the Trump administration is making America, let's see great again. Here's another statistic that ought to be in people's minds. Billionaires did really well. The statistics show in the year 2017, according to the Guardian and major British newspaper, there are 2,158 billionaires in the world. Their combined wealth last year increased by $1.4 trillion. That's a 20% increase in the wealth of the richest billionaires. Compare that to the increase in, let's say you your wealth. And this increase in wealth of these 2,158 billionaires was an amount of wealth equal to the national product of either Spain or Australia. So guess what, friends? The capitalist system can boast that it is literally making the rich richer. And the rest of us, well, not so much. The Army Times, a major newspaper that covers army, caught my attention when it carried a story also picked up by the Wall Street Journal this last week, that in June 2016 a two volume 1300 page study was completed on the Iraq war. Mistakes that were made, achievements, you know, an attempt to have a balanced study. But it hasn't been released even though it's now over two years old. Because apparently, according to the Wall Street Journal, the generals in charge of surges don't like the conclusions of the report that maybe they weren't a good idea. Folks, this war has cost us hundreds of billions of dollars. Not to speak of the lives lost, of the brains and muscles damaged. Of course the American people need an assessment, otherwise our leaders don't have any judgment at all about undertaking new military adventures. What a shame that the army keeps it quiet and we don't know even members of Congress have so far failed to to get that report released. My final update has to do with the state of Maine. They did something extraordinary recently and I want to bring it to your attention. They noticed sharpies that they are that students are suffering from excess debt in this country. So they came up with an idea that's really American these days. Sadly. Here's what they if you come to Maine and you have student debt and you take a job in Maine. The government of Maine will give you a tax cut equal to what you're paying off on your student debt. That's right. If you come to Maine, leaving another state here in the United States, they will subsidize you. Your employer won't give you a nickel more, but you'll have more after taxes because the state of Maine was will use public taxpayer money to help your employer get you without having to offer you more money. You know, the employers love the market system. Well, the market system says you want more employees offer higher salary. They're not doing that. They're getting the government to subsidize them. And here's the last point I want you to understand. Maine is putting Maine first. Just like Trump puts America first. He's going to yank people out of every other state, hurting them to help Maine. And if other states do that to Maine, Maine will in the end be the loser. And that's the lesson of making America first in the world, too. Thank you for being with me. We've come to the end of the first half of Economic Update. Stay with us. We'll be right back.
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Welcome back. Welcome, friends, to the second half of today's Economic Update. Before I introduce our guest, Dr. Harriet Frad, who we present at the beginning of many of the months of the year, I want to remind you of the importance please to subscribe to our YouTube channel, the channel for Economic Update. It's an enormous service to us, takes a moment of your time and it would be greatly appreciated. I also want to remind you to follow us please on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram and to make use of our website, democracyatwork.info. that's all one word, democracyatwork.info there. You can find more material of the sort that we cover on this program.
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And you can also find out about.
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The different ways you can partner with us in developing and bringing these messages to, to a larger public. And finally, I want to thank especially the patreon.com community that supports Economic Update with your interest and your enthusiasm. And you are an especially welcome part of our large audience and we want.
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To express our appreciation. So let me turn then to introduce.
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Not that she really needs it anymore, Dr. Harriet Fraad, a mental health counselor in private practice in New York City. She comes and talks with us often on this program and many of you have taken the time and trouble, which we also appreciate to let us know that you value the conversations we have and the special insights she brings. She writes for alternate and a variety of other publications. And we're especially proud not only to announce, but to remind you that she.
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Now prepares her own Capitalism Hits Home.
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Podcast, where she develops the kinds of analysis we talk about on this program and that we urge you to follow in that way.
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Those podcasts are available on Apple Podcasts, Google Play, and of course, on our website, democracyatwork.gov info. Welcome very much to the program, Harriet, once again.
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Thank you. I'm really glad to be here.
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Well, you and I have chosen today, and you brought this to our attention to discuss an industry here in the United States. It has become an industry.
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It has a number of names, but.
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The one that seems to be the one that has stuck is the sugar arrangements. I hasten to add, it does have nothing to do with. With a little white powder that we put in our drinks and so forth to sweeten them. It's about something altogether different. But it has become important, not only culturally and personally, as you'll explain, but also economically. And I want to explore that interaction as we often do. So let's begin by having you tell us in the audience what is the sugar arrangements industry?
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The sugar arrangements industry is a 3.5 million person industry right now in the United States. And what it provides is a chance for wealthy men, sugar daddies, to have girlfriend experiences, the most popular kind of sex work experiences with young, attractive women. The biggest group of sugar babies in the United States are college students or graduate students. And it allows a sugar daddy and a sugar baby to have a negotiated arrangement. The sugar daddy doesn't have to figure out the dynamics of a changed gender landscape, and it's worth a lot of money to him. The sugar baby, for example, in the education case, which is the biggest case of sugar babies, a woman can graduate or a smaller minority of men can graduate without the crushing debt that takes 20 years to pay off by providing a girlfriend experience, with or without sex, to the sugar daddy when he's in town. And this is a very useful thing for both parties. As the costs of education and life in the United States become more and more prohibitive, and as our country gets less and less egalitarian.
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Yeah, it seems to me that this is a stark illustration of inequality because as more and more wealth is concentrated in the hands of business and businessmen and they have to travel as part of their business, they can have this girlfriend experience, in part because so many young people are having a terrible time negotiating the costs of a higher education. So it becomes, as happens so often when inequality grows, the dependence of those at the low end on the wealth of those at the upper end. So it is a kind of reflection of what has happened in the American economy now for a long time.
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And although it is basically a financial arrangement, the man gets to delude himself into feeling that he has a personal, emotional relationship. And a lot of rich men confuse themselves with their money. So when they give money, they feel they have an emotional engagement. And you have to remember 40% of high end sex work, and that would be this is high end, often sex work. There is no actual intercourse. There's a girlfriend experience. Because these are men who are lonely or who need the reassurance that they can always go somewhere else if they're having trouble in their marriage or just want the sense of a relationship without strings attached. Nobody's going to be able to be jealous and possessive in part because this is an entirely negotiated, voluntary arrangement. Each negotiates what they want. And that is something that people don't usually do in dating. They don't even know what they want and they can't negotiate it. Neither party has the real joy of knowing they're just chosen as a human being. But a woman gets out of college or graduate school debt free, and a man has a girlfriend experience at negotiated times.
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So I gather then that the amount of money that changes hands as the man buys this experience from the young lady, this must be significant if it is really a factor in reducing the debt loads of the student.
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The average payment is $2,500 a month. So it is significant.
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So it's kind of a monthly arrangement. And then whenever the fellow comes into town, she's available. In a sense, she's available.
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But they have to negotiate that. So, for example, in one account that I read, the woman had a big exam the next day. He wanted to see her that night, so she had to tell him, okay, but I have to be off at this time in the morning to get to my exam. And we can't have time before this day because I'll be studying. That's negotiated. Everything is negotiated.
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In terms of the history of this, it really has made not just the sex, which has been a commodity from time immemorial, but all the details, all the associated courtship type events, all of that is now a commodity as part of a larger package of commodities that are bought and sold by, as you say, millions of Americans every day.
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That's right. Everything is monetized in this society. Look, the president is monetizing the presidency. His cabinet members are monetizing their cabinet positions. Everything is monetized and this too.
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Is this a purely American phenomena or is this happening in other parts of the world too?
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It's an overwhelmingly American phenomenon. Some foreign men have sugar babies in the United States, but it's overwhelmingly American. We have to remember that the United States was the most equal country in 1970, the most equal of all the wealthy industrialized countries. Now it's the least equal and also the most monetized, the most capitalistic. So it's a very nice confluence of changes in wealth, changes in capitalism, changes in the culture, changes in toleration for sex, work and gender freedom, all of those things. Changes in marriage, all of those things.
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Tell me. I'm a professor all my life. I'm a professor now too. I have never gotten any documentation from any administration in any university I've ever been associated with in which the administration shows the slightest interest or recognition even that this is going on. And yet you're telling us that thousands, millions of students across the United States are in fact financing their education in part by selling sexual services.
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Emotional and sexual services.
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Emotional and sexual services. Seem to me that universities who intrude upon students lives in countless ways, might have something to suggest, might have something to recommend. Or is it that they are just looking the other way because it enables the students to afford an education they might not otherwise have been able to afford because they might not have wanted to take on or been unable to take on the debts involved?
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Well, the fastest growing sugar population, sugar baby population is at nyu. And NYU does not avow this, of course. Sugar babies cannot put this on their vita as a job before school. And the shame around sexuality or whatever, you know, the idea of sexuality is carried by women, not men, and so they have a reason to keep it quiet.
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In your judgment, what are some of the costs, emotional, sexual personality of this arrangement? What is the effect of this accommodation of school costs and inequality? What are the social consequences that we need to think about?
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Well, within the climate that we live in. Emotional intimacy doesn't go with sex. People have sex for relief often, but it doesn't have the same intimate connotations either for men or increasingly for women. So it further removes sex from intimacy. Although there is a relationship, you are buying, if you are a sugar daddy, you are buying a relationship. The person listens with understanding or pretends to have understanding and is accommodating and sympathetic. She's giving you a girlfriend experience. What it does is it monetizes everything and it further increases sex from intimacy. Women, for identifying as the recipients of male wealth in a vastly economically unequal experience. Even though it may be emotionally more egalitarian sometimes, it's certainly economically inegalitarian. And it isn't so much that it changes things. It reflects the change for the first time in our history, the majority of 18 to 35 year olds, the idea they have that that's prime fertility age, are not married and not intending to be married right away. The whole they can't, it's too expensive. They don't have the stability that they thought of as necessary for a marriage. Things are precarious for young people and so it becomes another investment in their education. And if you're a sugar baby and you get out of the average, which is $37,172 of debt, you have a huge advantage in your life. And there's enormous pressure to have a college education and it's enormously expensive. Nyu, if you count tuition and room and board, is over $68,000 a year. It's gone up more than twice in the last 10 years.
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In the time we have.
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Quickly, do you think there's a consequence on the emotional life of both the men and women from having this outlet, if you like, in a way that didn't exist before for the men to have this and for the women to have this? Is something going to happen? Already happening?
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Well, I think something's happening in the society and it's reflected here because one of the things you're not allowed to do is you make a negotiated agreement. You're not allowed to mention the monetary. No money is mentioned in order to foster the man's idea that this is a voluntary relationship.
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Well, folks, we've come to the end and it's gone real quickly.
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I think the topic makes that happen. We've come to the end of this part of our program. I hope you found it as intriguing and interesting as we did. I want to remind you that Economic Update Extra on the patreon.com website will be the continuation of this conversation as we always do. So to you, our audience, thanks for watching and I will be with you again next week.