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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. Before we begin today, I hope you all enjoyed the holiday season. Today's announcements will be brief and I want to start by once again thanking all of you who contributed generously to our end of the year fundraising effort. We came close to reaching our goal for the upcoming year, but we won't close the books until the 15th. So there's time to join us and support our work for the year ahead by going to www.democracyatwork.info donate. We're also proud to announce that today's show comes with a little bonus for those of you who signed up to our Patreon. Immediately following today's show, there will be an extended version of of the interview with our guest, Jared Yates Sexton. It'll be available on our Patreon page. The link is in the video description below, or you can go to patreon.com democracyatwork and join for a more in depth and exclusive discussion of today's topic. I won't repeat much about our book, Understanding the companion volume for this program, or the work of our volunteer Charlie Fabian, who takes your comments and suggestions. But I do want a moment to talk to you about fake videos. They are proliferating. You will see me in all kinds of strange environments with strange facial features and wobbling voice. The typical noise of fake videos. Be on the alert for them. They are increasing and we are doing everything to stop them and take them down, but there they are. Okay, let's jump right into today's program on Black Friday, that famous day back in November of last year. You know, that day between Thanksgiving and the weekend that follows is known for the shopping spree that Americans go on, or at least many of us do. But I want to talk about a Black Friday, and it's called that also in Germany. Black Friday on Germany, same date, involved a strike. The workers at Amazon in Germany, it's a big company there too, went on strike, thousands of them, in fact 3,000 of them, led by the German union Verdi, well known as the union for many German services workers. They struck nine different Amazon locations demanding a collective bargaining agreement which Amazon has resisted sitting down and bargaining over with them. And by the way, this is part of Amazon workers across Europe, in many countries, in fact, across all six continents around the world under the banner Make AmazonPay. And it's a rising up of workers that have reacted to the Unbearable conditions of working at Amazon to demand what workers have always decent lives, decent pay, decent working conditions. And as if that weren't enough, in the largest of the world's fast fashion producers, the Zara Corporation, located in Spain, there's also a movement now to mobilize and organize those workers in unions as well. Unionization is spreading all over the world. It's a reaction to the failure of the capitalist system globally to live up to the promises it has made, to the commitments it has entered into and then betrayed. And it is a movement that is affecting everybody sooner or later, in one place or another. And the sooner you get on board, the sooner it can help you in your situation as well. I want to turn next to a very closely related matter, one in which I am personally involved. As some of you know, I am a visiting professor from time to time at the New School University in New York City. And currently something is happening at the university that I'm involved in and that I know about. But it is coming to many other universities across the country. And so it's worth telling you about it so you are aware of it. Dramatic announcements were sent out by the administration at the New School University to faculty and students and staff alike. At first, the announcement, and there have been several of these, at first, the announcement that struck my attention was the sudden decision to Admit no new PhD students this coming year across all departments except psychology. When a university suddenly and abruptly cancels all of its graduate that's a master's program, PhD. But in this case particularly PhD that is never a good sign. That's a sign that the college or the university that is doing that is in trouble. But then more information came from the administration. Let me mention some of the big ones. Salaries are to be cut 5 to 15%. The employer is going to pause, notice the word, the verb pause, its contributions to the retirement funds for all the faculty, freezing employment for the coming year and possibly cutting courses and programs. All right now the handwriting is on the wall. This is a university announcing its own end. Oh, it isn't there quite yet. And a miracle might somehow, but there are few miracles and none of them are coming over the horizon. The New School University has had budget deficits for years. These decisions were made by the administrators, a tiny group of people at the top of the pyramid of American universities. The mass of employees were not consulted about this would have been in uproar about it would have insisted on exploring all of the ways to keep the enterprise of a university like this, which has been around for so many years to keep it going, to keep it alive, to keep it doing for young people what it has been. And by the way, the New School is unique because it really opened itself up to older people, too, and welcomed them into its programs. And I want to stress, nothing good is going to happen from this. Will the students run away and go to other universities? The answer is unquestionably yes. Who will want to go to a university that's doing this sort of thing? Who will want to be associated with something that they'll have to explain to any future employer? Oh, I went to such and such a university. It doesn't exist anymore, but once upon a time, it. It did. This does not enhance your employability. If you're a faculty member, as I am, you can be sure that those people, especially if they need it, are looking for another job and in a hurry. Is it a good time to be doing that? No. Why not? Because Mr. Trump has been cutting funding for colleges and universities left, right, and center, every way he can. And that means all universities and colleges are being squeezed. That's one of the reasons I'm talking to you about the New School, because it is on the edge of going over that edge, but others are getting closer and closer, and maybe the one you're going to, and maybe the one you're thinking of helping your child go to, etc. Etc. And this is not just about universities. A university is a commitment of a society to its own future. That's where you train people, educate people, make them more and more capable. Of what? Of contributing to their society with the extra understanding they have, the extra skills they acquire, the extra relationships they have that connect them to people with whom they can then work for many years afterwards and often do. This is a system that is dying. This is a country that is going through the loss of its empire and now the decline of its whole system. On Thursday, December 4, the government issued a security document. And in that security document, the United States government made plain what I'm telling you now, but in a different language. There they talked about not being the world's policeman anymore. Well, the United States has stopped being able to do that for some time now, however, has to be admitted. That's a sign, just like what's going on at the New School is a sign we're going to be hunkering down. Our president tell us, defending the Western Hemisphere, turning in on what is to become Fortress America. This is not a new idea, but it's now much more serious because it's now Driven not by a dream, a hope of the future, but by a turning in. Because you can't do what you said you were going to do a short 20 or 30 years ago, which was to be the world's policeman. This document, very famous document it will be, commits the United States to ending the war in Ukraine with or without the European allies. Indeed, it demotes Europe to the role of a provider of resources for the Americans to turn inward. Wow. You're asking the Europeans to fund the end of the United States alliance with the Europeans. That's asking them to fund their own decline. Are the Europeans declining? You bet. Do they need to control whatever investable funds they have to try to deal with their decline? Yeah, but what did they just do? They just agreed to buy American natural gas instead of the cheaper Russian option and to invest hundreds of billions of dollars in the United States. How in the world are those leaders going to ever justify to the European people, the voters, what they have just done? No wonder they're angry. No wonder they're bitter in Europe. And you're going to hear more and more about it as they understand that the United States has basically abandoned the role it took on after World War II. The protector, the policeman of the world, the governor, the one who will make it work well for everybody. Uh, America first is a clever way to sell to the American people the decline that would otherwise have been admitted, could have been, hasn't been even in this document. There's an effort somehow to assert that the United States is still somehow in a position to shape world events. And the claim buried in this document is as excessive in its way as it was back at the end of 1945. That period of history is over. We have real competitors, as the document puts it, China, Russia and so on. That's not going to go away. That has been getting stronger, while the United States has not. That is the reality of the process that's underway, and we'll have much to say across this new year as it unfolds. Stay with me. We'll be right back with our guest, Jared Yates Sexton. 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@infodemocracyatwork.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. I'm very happy to bring to our microphones and our cameras Jared Yates Sexton. He is the author of the Midnight A History of Power, Paranoia, and the Coming Crisis. He serves as a political advisor for the Change campaign and is the author of the newsletter Dispatches from a Collapsing State. Given all that's happening around us, I couldn't think of a better person to come and talk to us about exactly the items listed in this set of titles. So let me start, Jared, by welcoming you and thanking you for your time.