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Welcome, friends, to another edition of Economic Update, a weekly program devoted to the economic dimensions of our lives and and those of our children. I'm your host, Richard Wolff. I want to thank Shane Knight for putting together the last few weeks of the Best of series. It gave us time to rebuild and to plan for the autumn, which I'm about to tell you about. I want to welcome you, of course, to the return of a more or less normal life into the autumn of 2025. Now, to the events that we have planned. It begins with the collaboration between the Democracy at Work organization and the Left Forum. That group, which has been around for 40 years holding conferences every year in New York City, used to be called the Socialist Scholars Program and other names. We're very proud to be working with them. And one of our immediately new programs is a class, a series of classes, four to be exact, starting September 15th. It's called this First Course. And it'll be, by the way, every Monday in the afternoon, four times. That's what it'll be. And it'll be presented as a course on understanding capitalism. Three professors are collaborating to produce it. I'm one of them. But my colleagues who will be working on it with me and you will be seeing and hearing them, is Professor Clara Mataj from the University of Tulsa in Oklahoma and Professor Shahram Azer from Bucknell University in Pennsylvania. It's a really superb course and I urge you, urge you to consider registering for it. To do so, you just go to the LeftForum website, that's www.LeftForum.orgLEP and that's for Left Educational Project, www. LeftForum.orgLEP for the course, I also want to remind you of a new book that we are helping to distribute, very timely, called from the Flag to the Cross, Fascism American Style, just released. It has essays by Chris Hedges, by Margaret Kimberly, by Kassama Sawant and a whole group of others on a topic that could not be more timely. The book will be formally launched and you are all invited on September 24th at 6pm at the Francis Fight Club in the East Village, number 40 Avenue C. You do need to RSVP, so if you want to do that, go to our website, democracyatwork.info and you'll see the banner there that will allow you to do that again. September 24 at 6pm Francis Kite Club in New York City. Welcome. We are also proud to announce a book sale. Our series is now complete. Understanding Marxism, Understanding Socialism, and the final new book, Understanding Capitalism. You can get them all at a discount by simply going again to our website democracyatwork.info books and you can learn all about it. Finally, we have two large open public events scheduled in October, one on October 9th and the other one on October 11th. Very briefly, the one on October 9th is open public meeting on where we Go From Here. It's time for a Change and it'll be presented as a discussion by four of us who have done this kind of work together in the Cornel West, Chris Hedges, Laura Flanders, Alex and myself at the John Jay College of the City University of New York on October 9th. And again go to our website democracyatwork.info for information and registering for that. And finally, Women Building up in Brooklyn, New York on October 11th. It will be a remarkable presentation by the People's Network for Land and Liberation, the Cooperative Economic alliance, and it'll be a whole program about the solidarity economy and the work you can do learning about it and participating in it. Sorry for all these events, but we have been busy. Okay, let's go into our normal programming once again. I want to begin with a segment on something called Housing First. You may not be aware, but for several decades now, both Republican and Democratic governments at the federal level have adopted the program Housing First. And what that means is when there are people that are homeless who may also have problemsmental health problems, drug addiction problems, all kinds of disabilities and so on, that we give them housing first. In other words, we make sure that people have a decent place to live and then address the other problems in their lives where they need some help. The Trump administration, in its hysterical cutting of government programs, has decided, of course, to cut Housing First. It cites fraud, no evidence, crime even no evidence. But it's the excuse for almost everything, as by now you must have noticed. And so we're now going to go back to the old game of saying, well, we can't get you housing until you have treatment or until you have something else, refusing to face the fact that getting treatment, getting help solving your other problems, is only made harder if you don't have a place to live, which anyone with half a brain would understand. Here's my the issue isn't which comes first. I like the idea of housing first because it seems obvious to me that that's a basic creature need to have a warm, safe, dry place to sleep and to live your life. And solving the rest of your problems comes later. But the issue isn't which comes first. The issue is we have an economic system that's failing you Measure an economic system first and foremost by how well it provides food, clothing and shelter to the people in it. If you have hundreds of thousands or millions of people without adequate housing, which we do, who are either living in the tent or living in the street, or living too many in too little space, well, our economy hasn't succeeded. The price of homes is too high and the income of people is too low. And the combination means we have this horrible problem. To solve this problem, you either have to bring everybody's wages up or bring the price of housing down or. Or some combination. Anybody with a brain can see it, but we as a society can't seem to figure it out. Deciding whether housing is first or something else is first is a little bit like that old story of being busily rearranging the chairs on the deck of the Titanic as it sinks. I want to talk about a wealth tax. Spain is currently struggling over the establishment which the government has proposed of a tax on wealth. And let's be clear, Norway and Switzerland already have taxes on wealth. What do I mean? I mean wealth, which is first and foremost. Stocks, bonds, cash, housing and land. That's wealth. You can own that. We don't have that in this country. The federal government doesn't tax wealth. State governments don't tax wealth. The only part of the government that taxes wealth is the local governments in America. And they only tax real wealth, land, buildings. If you have a home, you own it, you pay a wealth tax. But on the stocks and bonds you have, do you pay a tax on the value of that wealth? The answer is no. Please be careful and understand. You are required to pay a tax on income you get from the wealth, but not on the wealth itself. If you get a dividend, you pay an income tax on that. If you get interest, you pay an income tax on that. What do you pay on the value of the property? Nothing. That's why it's so unfair. We tax housing. And guess what? If you own a home and it generates rent for you, you pay a property tax on the home plus an income tax on the rent. But if you own shares of stock, you only pay an income tax on the dividends, not on the value of the property. You know who that helps? The people who own stocks and bonds. And who are they? 10%. Richest Americans own 80% of the stocks. By not taxing the wealth in those forms, you are simply subsidizing the richest people in the country. You know, the top 10%, you know, those who need it least are getting this enormous benefit. Spain is doing something about it. Norway and Switzerland already have. Why not here? Why not be able to do extraordinary things for the people of New York, for the people of America by taxing wealth? 1% would generate 1% of the value of stocks and bonds would generate a windfall of wealth to governments to take care of our poverty, our homelessness and many of the other problems that damage the quality of life for everyone. Why are we afraid to do it? It's just the power of those at the top who have bought the politicians to make sure we don't even discuss a wealth tax when we should. I want to talk about the steps the government has taken to disallow unions for government employees. That's right, disallow them. That was done in the early phases of American history. Then the unions won the right to collect. Lee bargain as a freedom in a so called free society. Mr. Trump and the courts are taking that away and I want to alert you to it because it's going to affect us in thousands of ways that we need to worry about. Then I've been getting many inquiries from many of you. You ask me questions that go something like this. If you're retired, if you're older, if you're alone, what are the ways you can protect yourself against the declining American empire, against the shifts inside the United States as the people at the top make sure to hold on to their wealth as the system declines, which means the rest of us have to bear all the burden of, of a declining system? Well, part of me wants to tell you, well, there are people moving to New Zealand, which is true. Americans are leaving in ways they had never done before, at least not for many, many years. And that is an option. You may also think you can retire on Social Security, but the same forces that are cutting everything else in the government are, are targeting Social Security. Can we assume it will be there the way it has been? No. I'm afraid that the best news I have for you is to plea with you to understand you are not facing a personal problem. You are facing a social problem. The social system going down. Our capitalist system is protecting the people at the top. That's how they use their wealth and their power to preserve what they have, which we who have less wealth and less power can't do so well, that's an injustice. The solution to that social problem problem is a social movement. I hate to tell you this. You've got to get together with other people like yourself to move this country in a different direction. Basically different since unfortunately, Republicans and Democrats don't disagree about the basic society. It's just the Republicans are dismantling it faster than the Democrats would. Stay with me. We've come to the end of the first half of our program. I will be right back. Before we jump into the second half of today's show, I wanted to thank you for your very generous response to our fundraising efforts this year and in particular in the last couple of months. And in part responding to that, we are extending the availability of our limited edition, linen covered hardcover version of Understanding Capitalism, the book I wrote and that we have been making available now for quite a while. If you are interested, I will be signing copies of that hardcover and they will be available to you as they have been over the last few weeks. Just simply send an email to us@infoemocracyatwork.info and put in the subject line limited edition. We will send you all the information you need to order and receive your copy signed copy of Understanding Capitalism in its hardback. And thank you again for your kind attention to the fundraising dimension of what we do. Welcome back, friends, to the second half of today's economic update. At the close of the first half, I mentioned particularly to older folks who've been writing to me that getting involved in a movement of some sort to change the society is the only way to deal with what's going on. Everything in the United States from Reagan to the present has been a movement to roll back what was achieved in the New Deal back in the 1930s, a program of real government service to the mass of people. Let me remind you, it was the depths of the 1930s when the government could have said, we have no money because millions of people were out of work and weren't paying taxes and millions of businesses were bankrupt and not paying taxes. So the government didn't have much. And it could have said, well, we can't do anything for you. You know what they say now? But that's not what happened in the depths of depression with the government out of money. We passed the Social Security system, which gave every person age 65 and older after a lifetime of work, a pension paid for by the government. We had an unemployment compensation which had never existed before. That was also passed then, in which if you lose your job, you get a check every week for quite a few weeks. And then the government hired 15 million people and paid them well. Where'd the government get the money? Well, the answer is where the money always is to be gotten from corporations and the rich. They're the ones who had it. And the Government went and took it and used it to pay for Social Security, unemployment compensation, and the hiring of 15 million federal workers. They did it, but it was a social movement that made that happen. It was millions of people joining labor unions, the cio, which was born and exploded at that time, two socialist parties who had tens of thousands of members, and the Communist Party likewise had. And they all worked together and they got what has been undone ever since. They got the government to take care of the mass of people in a basic way. Oh, sure, you still had to go out and work, you had to earn your living, you had to manage your budget. But there was a safety net and a good one and a fair one, and it helped every American family. That's how you get the support you need. And if you need it now, as more and more Americans do, it is a social movement that'll get you that social change. You can't solve a social movement with an individual act. It's not how it works. Well, let me give you an example then. In the second half of today's program, two examples of people doing exactly that, forming social movements to solve their problems. And the first one, should not surprise you, is about France. France has been in the lead for at least the last two centuries, the 19th and the 20th, in having the people understand in their gut that social movement is how you solve the social problem. And what are the French doing this time? Well, they have a leader, likes to say he's quite different from Mr. Trump. He's also quite similar to Mr. Trump, Mr. Macron. What is he doing? He recently released a new budget, as they do every year. And in the new budget, he said France is having economic troubles. Well, that's honest enough and already an achievement for the politician like him. And so what is he going to do? The typical for a politician like him, he's going to whack the working class. He's going to limit pensions, he's going to demand bigger deductibles for the free national health insurance that they provide to everybody has deductibles. They're going to raise them. The item that caught people's attention first was his intention to cancel two national holidays and require every French person to to work on those two days rather than have time off without being paid anything extra. A free two days to the employer class notice, they benefit and the mass of people pay the price. Wow. And there are more horrible things. They have a name in Europe, these kinds of policies, they're called austerity policies. And the French people said over the last three weeks. No. And they have chosen a date. September 10th. And I want you to pay attention. As I shall be. As that date gets closer. And they have a slogan, Bloc on tout in French. And the English. Let's block everything. That's what it means. And they're going into the streets and the railway stations and the harbors and the canals, and they're going to block every. The country comes to a stop, as the people say. You're not doing this to us. No, no business as usual. This stuff has to be canceled. And then everybody can get back to work but you, Mr. Macron, or you, Mr. Bairou, his prime Minister. We are not going to be handled by you in the way you see fit to benefit the employer. Class A, whopping 5% of France, if that. At the expense of the rest of us. Not going to happen. The last time Mr. Macron tried to make people work more years. Another way of cheating people out of their pension. You don't get it when you're 62. When you're 63, you have to wait. We had another movement in France right away, you may remember it. It was called the yellow vests. Gilez jaune in French. And guess what? Mr. Macron had to retreat. Had to withdraw the proposal and leave the pension year. He's trying it again. Cause France's problems are worse and he hasn't learned anything. And he will have to compromise because the people acted as a social collectivity. Learn the lesson, my fellow Americans. It's long overdue. Now I want to give you a second example, which in some ways is even more remarkable. I wish it could be an example from the United States. I'm hoping I will have many examples from the United States to offer you in the weeks and months ahead. I expect I will. But this example comes from our neighbor to the north, Canada. And I want to tell you the story. I want to make sure you know this story. On Saturday, August 21, 10,000 flight attendants who work for Air Canada, the national airline of Canada, walked off the job. They stopped working, sort of like the French are planning on September 10th, but they already did it. And they said, we've been bargaining for months with the government, which basically runs and owns the airline. And they're not meeting us. And in particular they're not dealing with a very important issue. The way the airline works. When we're in travel and we're getting ready. If there's time that the airline, for mechanical reasons, for layovers, for scheduling problems, is on the ground, we still have to wait until we can get on the plane. But those hours are not paid for. But they're hours we can do nothing else with. We want being paid. We want to be paid for the hours that we're on duty. Oh, no, said the airline. Oh, yes, said the air flight attendants. And they walked out. Now, so far, it's a story of worker solidarity. 10,000 people to mobilize them across the vast expanse of Canada from Vancouver at one end to Montreal at the other. That's already an enormous organizing task. It's hard to make people act together. How about, oh, does it pay off? You bet. So here's what. The Canadian government, in the hands of conservative types, immediately decided to use an obscure clause of Canadian law to order these workers back. While binding arbitration would resolve the question in whatever way an arbitrator might decide to do. Maybe with the union, maybe not. Meanwhile, the workers would have to work. And the 10,000 flight attendants did something, which is why I'm telling you the story. They looked at the government and politely, they said, not going to happen. And they didn't go back to work. They violated the government's order. They were therefore threatened with fines, jail. They didn't go back to work. And it suddenly dawned on that government that they were losing millions and millions of dollars because the airline couldn't move. Air Canada canceled its flights and they have many, many flights all over the place. And so the government, by Tuesday morningstike began on Saturday. By Tuesday morning, the government caved in, gave them the increase in salary to cover, met them about the day, the hours, and now, since then, Canada, Air Canada has resumed under a different program for its workers. Social action by that union solved the social problem of a government that thought it could solve, let me put it this way, solve its economic problems on the backs of workers. If you let the government in any country do that, it will. In most countries, that's the first place they look to solve their problems. They don't tax corporations and the rich to solve their problems the way they could to take care of the housing problem in this country overnight. No, no, no, no, no. They're going to rearrange the chairs on the deck of the sinking Titanic. Instead, social action, something you need organizations to help you do. That's what an organization is, a way to add up the individual feelings, the individual needs into a collective agenda. Workers bargain collectively because they can do much better than when they bargain individually. They learned that hundreds of years ago as they struggled in a capitalist system to have a decent life for themselves and their families. We need to learn from the labor movement's recognition that what applies to a worker relative to an employer applies to all of us relative to the dominant wealth and power in our society, which is the corporations first and foremost and the politicians their money has bought. Thank you for your attention. I'm really pleased and happy to be back. And as always, I look forward to speaking with you again next week.