← Economic Update with Richard D. Wolff
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Welcome, friends, to another edition of Economic Update, a weekly program devoted to the economic dimensions of our lives, jobs, debts, incomes, our own, and those of our children. I'm your host, Richard Wolff. I want to talk first today with you about something that's been in the news now for quite a while. It has to do with the large portion of the American people who are not vaccinated and who are opposed to becoming vaccinated. And I want to talk about what's going on here and how I think we need to understand what is going on even as we try to cope with its implications. First of all, I think most of the people who are not vaccinated understand perfectly well that our individual freedoms have to be limited in all kinds of ways because of our collective security, because of our need to survive as communities. Let me give you examples. Many of the people opposing vaccination because they are angry that it limits their freedom or is government intrusion or government over reach, are perfectly comfortable with a traffic light. Let me remind you, a traffic light is when the government says to you, if you go through this traffic intersection when there's a red light, we're going to ticket you or arrest you because that endangers all of us trying to get through that intersection. People understand it perfectly well. We understand it likewise when a private entity, a building, for example, says there can be no smoking in the building because secondary smoke has been shown to cause cancer, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. We have accepted that. We know the famous story of somebody who shouts fire in a crowded movie theater is violating the law that we understand. So your freedom to go through an intersection is limited. Your freedom to shout in a crowded theater is limited. Your freedom to smoke is limited. But let me give you a couple of more. We say you cannot drive a car at all unless you have a government mandated license because we don't want to take the risk to ourselves, our families, of people driving who don't know how to do that and haven't qualified in terms of getting a license. Let me give you another example. When we get sick and we visit a doctor or are treated by a nurse, we need to know that it's safe to be treated by that person. So we have mandated all kinds of tests and qualifications individuals have to satisfy before they can be a nurse, a doctor, a practitioner of a whole variety of medical interventions. And everybody understands that. The vast majority of those opposed to vaccines understand it. So what's going on? Well, there's an anger about government mandates, governments telling you what to do. And part of that is perfectly rational. We have come to learn, I'm going to give you examples in a moment that corporations are continuously using the government to, to push something that's profitable for them, whether or not it's healthy or safe or good for us. So being suspicious about government mandates is perfectly reasonable. Ditto being suspicious about Big Pharma drug companies. We have thousands of examples of drug companies making claims for drugs that aren't valid, pushing medicines that haven't been actually tested properly. That's why we have the fda, the Food and Drug Administration, because of the experience throughout our history of this problem. So distrusting mandates from the government, drug company pushes and campaigns. And you know, for most workers, they don't want the boss telling them what to do. If there's a change at the workplace, for example, if we're all going to get vaccinated, you come to the workers and you talk about it. That's what collective bargaining is about. That's what a democratic workplace would insist upon. Let's stop this mandating. It makes people angry and it makes people avoid things. And now my biggest point, I think much of the opposition to vaccination is rational. But I think the response to those suspicions is that's irrational. Because the way to react to this problem is not to forego the vaccination that can save your life and that can make you less of a danger to the people closest to you and to the community in which you live. The suspicion, the action, the reaction to the whole story is perfectly understandable and reasonable. And we should be very suspicious of the politicians who get up on the high oars and pander to this kind of craziness. That's sort of like the QANON folks telling us it's a great conspiracy from outer space. Let's use some examples to get at this. In the aftermath of 9 11, which we're going to be remembering in the weeks to come, Christy Whitman, at that time the head of the agency in Washington, responsible, and Mayor Rudy Giuliani of New York told New Yorkers it was safe to go back into the World Trade center area. They reopened schools in that area that has caused lingering cancers and other diseases to this moment. That was a mandate to reopen, governed by political considerations, not by our health. We all remember that even if we couldn't at this moment bring it to mind, the government mandated limiting the pollution out of the exhaust pipe of your car. And the car companies, all of them went to work to fraudulently show that they had complied and the government managed not to notice for years that we were polluting ourselves, threatening our own lungs, our own asthma conditions by not having that problem solved. So are we suspicious of government mandates and corporations cooperating? Of course we are, and we have every reason to be. I won't remind you of what the cigarette companies knew and did nothing about for decades. I won't remind you of the struggle around the world that mothers had with babies as they thought about breastfeeding versus formula and a big formula producer. The Nestle company, made sure that was a big debate, even though we now know, and we knew then scientifically, that breast milk is infinitely superior. Okay. Money dominates political discourse in our culture. We shouldn't be surprised. But we should understand that if we're confronted with a crisis like COVID 19, we have to wonder not about whether we ought to do something, but whether what's mandated on us comes out of something we're happy with or unhappy with. The government didn't do it right. It should have come slowly and had a proper conversation and brought the scientists to the fore. The scientists might agree, but at least they're fighting it out over what's best for our health. The minute you allow private capitalism in there, you got a whole nother objective. Make money. Make money. Have one shot, have two shots, have three shots. You can see what's going on. So let's think about a better way to organize a society, something we talk about on this program a lot. Because in the end, that's the only way to get out of this disaster in which we have a social crisis. We're absolutely justified in being suspicious of the government and private corporations, but we end up shooting ourselves in the foot. I'm reminded of the British angry about what was going on and yet voting for Brexit, as if leaving Europe is going to solve the problem of a capitalist system that is hanging you up. My next update for today may surprise you. I call it the Economics of Religion, and it is based on a couple of statistics I want you to think about. The first comes from the St. Louis Federal Reserve bank, and they brought to my attention the. In the year 2003 and 2004, that's roughly 20 years ago, the construction of religious buildings in that year came to $9 billion worth of construction in the year 2021, the year we're in now, given all the contracts signed, there will be $3 billion worth of religious construction. That's the construction of churches, synagogues, mosques. In other words, a collapse of the building of churches. Now, let me Give you a second related statistic. The Gallup poll in March of 2021, that's a few months ago, showed that church membership in the United States is, is at 47% of the population. In the late 1940s, it was 76%. So it's now 47%. This is the first time in the decades that Gallup has asked this question that less than half the American people said they were members, not active in members of a church. This is very profound change in the American population. It's a change in the economics. The footprint, we call it, in economics of the church in our economy has shrunk. The number of people going to church has shrunk. The number of people membership, as you can see, has shrunk. Church finances are in serious difficulty across the board. They have made efforts to revive those, have not succeeded. They've made those efforts throughout the last several decades. And you know, that struck me as something familiar. And then I realized what it was. It's the American labor movement. Organized labor was much stronger in the late 40s, just when these church membership numbers were high than it is today. The decline has been almost continuous and the decline has been huge. I mean, in the private sector of our country, less than 7% of workers are members of or represented by a labor union. That number was much closer to 33 a few decades ago. Think about it. The churches are in decline. The labor unions are in decline over the same period with similar numbers. Wow. Leaving people without the kinds of organizations that were once extremely meaningful in their lives, leaving them lonely and isolated in ways that are shaping everything about both our present and our future, economically speaking. And the last economic update in the first half of this program has to do with Disney. You know, once upon a time, Disney was a word we used for what goes by the name family entertainment. Disney made toys, Disney made cartoons. Disney made films. Disney made TV shows for the children. But for the family as a whole and for the American people as a whole, which is why the name Disney is so well known. Well, America is changing, as you all know. But nothing reveals it better than the latest news from the Disney Corporation. Where are they investing their money? Well, here it the Disney Star Wars Hotel is now complete and you can go there. But I want you to understand when I say you, I'm only talking about the richest 5% of the people. If that, how do I know? Well, let me tell you what it costs for a two night stay in a cabin for two people. Two nights in a cabin for two at the Disney Star Wars Hotel cost $4,809. A cabin for four for two nights. Two nights, four people costs $5,999. So I won't be going. I have to admit it to you because I can't afford that. I'd love to have the experience. I'm assuming Disney creativity will be all over it, but not for you and me. That's how America's economy is changing. We've come to the end of the first part of today's show, and as always, I want to thank all of you whose support makes this show possible each week. In particular, we'd like to thank our Patreon community and other regular monthly supporters. If you haven't already, Please go to patreon.com economicupdate or visit democracyatwork.info to learn more about how you can support this show. Please remember to follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. And if you're watching this on YouTube, be sure to hit the red subscribe button below. Stay with us. We'll be right back. Welcome back, friends, to the second half of today's economic update. I want to begin this second half by noting the passing at age 72, of Richard Trumka a few weeks ago. He was at that time the head, the national head of the AFL cio, our major union organization in the United States. And in many ways, his death is the end of an interesting long history and I want to draw that out. I don't need to eulogize him. The president did, the head of the Senate did, the head of the House of Representatives did. Indeed, leading Democrats across the country with whom Mr. Trumka was allied have done that and don't need it from me. Again, here's what's remarkable about Richard Trumka. He rose from within the United Mine Workers. Why is that important? Because in the aftermath of the Great Depression, when the working class was really taking it on the chin in the United States with massive unemployment, massive growth of poverty, and all the rest of that horrible 11 year period, one labor leader in particular, the head of the United Mineworkers Union, the same union that produced Trumka. The man's name was John L. Lewis. And he decided that, contrary to the pessimists, this time of depression of US Capitalism could be and should be a moment to organize the working class to, to demand better treatment, especially in a depression. And he went on to lead the greatest union organizing drive in American history. As I have often said, we never had anything like it before and we've Never had anything like it since. Interestingly, Richard Trumka, in the aftermath of the Great Recession, we call it the second worst collapse of capitalism in, in its history, the one that happened in 2008 and 9. In the wake of that, he became the head of the AFL cio, in a sense following in the footsteps of John L. Lewis years before. And he had come up in the United Mine Workers as a young, dynamic reformer, a person who was unwilling to go along with the old ways, demanded a more militant union, became famous above all for two leading a long, bitter strike at the Pittston Coal Company, which they eventually won for the workers, and helping to start an important labor allied organization called Jobs with Justice. With all that behind him, with all that history, and with all those achievements. Nonetheless, if one's going to be honest and give a balanced appraisal of this man, one has to note that his hopes, his dreams, his promises to revive the labor movement, to stop its long decline, his efforts to do that were not successful. The labor movement under his watch over the last decade continued its long, sad decline in terms of labor membership, but even more powerfully in terms of the influence of unions on American life, let alone its politics. And I want to talk about that. He had a strategy. The strategy was to do less in the way of organizing. And let's remember what organizing means. It means taking workers who are isolated and deal with their employer individually and welding them into an organization, a union that can confront the employer collectively as a group. And of course, in union there is strength that you don't have if you're an individual, which is why people join unions, why they did in the 1930s and why they do all the time. He decided not to spend money on that kind of organizing and to do more with the shrinking financial resources of a declining membership by building coalitions with the Democratic Party, which is partly why they eulogized him a few weeks ago when he passed. But the problem is with that strategy, the private sector, the largest part of our economy, now sees unions representing less than 7% of. Of all workers in the private sector. In other words, 93 plus percent of our working class in the private sector has no union negotiating on their behalf, protecting them from whatever employers are doing, the kind of mandates and other things we talked about in the first half of today's show. And I want to talk to you about that. He presided over the decline of the labor movement. Nothing he wanted, but his strategy is partly to blame. And that's the conclusion I want to draw. I think there's A reason why the union movement declined over the last 40 years in this country far more than, for example, it did in most of Western Europe. It did decline there. It's not as though they went soaring up, but not like here. Not in their membership, not in their power with their employers, not in their power in the government. Let me remind you what is a normal benefit that workers in Europe get. In most countries, you get four to five weeks paid vacation by your employer from the day you begin work. You get a national health service that covers you from birth to death with whether you're working for this employer or that one. Whether you're working or not, it's your right as a citizenship. Higher education in most of those countries is much cheaper than the United States. And in many of them, it's free. Those were all things won by the labor movement, but it was a labor movement in alliance with powerful social movements in Europe. Those are organized as socialist, communist and green parties. So the labor movement there has an alliance with radical socialistically oriented political parties. And together they have produced benefits for the working class there that most Americans could only dream about. And there's the Mr. Trumka chose to ally himself with the Democratic Party, a party that depends on the same corporate donors that the Republican Party does. And therein lies a big judgment mistake. What the labor movement needs is an alliance not with socialist, communists and green parties because they do not yet have enough power, but with the social movements. Maybe you could get something similar. And that would have been a different strategy than the one Mr. Trumka pursued. And that's a lesson we must learn from his life, just as we must praise what he did in the Pittston coal strike and in Jobs for Justice. My next update for today has to do with manufacturing as a share of the United States economy. A great deal of nonsense is spoken about this all the time, and it is long overdue to that we set the record straight so we can all understand it. Let's go back to the 1940s, right? That's a good 75, 80 years ago. @ that time, manufacturing in the United States was in the range of 30 to 40% of this economy. 30 to 40% of the people holding a job worked in a factory or workshop of one kind or another. It zoomed from 30 to 40% because of the production of materials for World War II, but it was in the 30 to 40% range from that time, from the 1940s to the present, over the last 75 years, roughly the number of people working in manufacturing, the Importance of the manufacturing sector of the United States has been in a decline as steep as that of union membership and of church membership. And maybe that's something to think about. What's the percentage of the US Economy that manufacturing holds now in terms of jobs and social impact? Ready? 9%. The other 91% of our economy is not engaged in producing anything that that's tangible, no physical object. It's all in what we call services. Now here's the point about all this. Every president from the 1940s to the current one has said he promises to bring manufacturing jobs back to reverse this decline. Every president, Republican and Democrat alike, promised it. Not a single one of them delivered it. Please keep that in mind for the future candidates who will no doubt behave the way the last group of candidates did and promise that they will do what none of them has been able to do. But it's even more interesting. Where does the blame fall on all of this? And this is really interesting. Many presidents, including the present one, blame China. Yeah, they find a foreign country. It's not always China, but China's a big popular one. Especially now. The bad Chinese, we are told, are stealing our manufacturing jobs. What a wonderful story. How convenient. You can't change something so you blame somebody else. I'll come back to that in a couple of minutes. Big business blame the workers. How does that work? Well, you see, we have to pay these high wages and in other countries we don't have to pay these high wages. And so other countries steal the jobs because they get away with paying workers. So the reason we don't have manufacturing is our workers in factories have gotten too much money. How convenient. Here's another. The taxes are too high. This government taxes us too much. And so we can't grow our manufacturing jobs. We need lower taxes. Guess what? We've attacked the Chinese in lots of different ways. We have attacked the working class by diminishing their unions and we have cut taxes on business. And none of them of that worked. It didn't stop at all because it had nothing to do with the problem solving. It was a way to use the decline of manufacturing to get more profits for corporations and to get the blame off the shoulder of the American politicians who failed to do anything about it. Well then what is the reason? Oh, by the way, there's the Democrats. They handle it by saying, well, don't worry about it, you see, because yes, we're losing these manufacturing jobs, but we're going to get high tech jobs and those jobs are going to be wonderful. And Pay better and just yeah, it's bad we're losing those, but we're going to get the really good ones. A tiny number of us did. Most of us are working at Walmarts or working in an equivalent. We got a working class that's now precarious, unsure, insecure. We all know what we got. The promises of the Democrats were no better than the promises of the Republicans. Neither one panned out because here's the it was profitable for American business to leave in manufacturing to relocate elsewhere because they could make more money. Chinese workers are a lot cheaper than American workers. That's why they went. The Chinese said, you can come here, you can work here, you can employ our workers, you can sell to our people. But we want in exchange to share your technology. They didn't have to steal it because the American corporations were willing to give it to them. And when American corporations went abroad, you know what they did? They created long supply chains. Instead of producing goods in Minneapolis with the raw materials coming from Arkansas, they came from 10,000 miles away. That's why we are dependent on supply chain interruptions today. That's not something that happened because of God or the heavens. That's a product of profit seeking capitalist investment patterns. Just like the decline of our manufacturing, so it is with our supply chains. This is an economy run by and for large capitalist corporations and the problems we face are the result of their control. They will do everything to suggest it's something else. But don't be fooled. That's the time we have for today's show. Thank you very much for being part of this program and being part of the audience. We appreciate and I look forward to speaking with you again next.