Economic Update: Capitalism's Shadow: Poverty

[Music] welcome friends to another edition of economic update a weekly program devoted to the economic dimensions of our lives our jobs our incomes our debts those coming down the road and facing us and even more those facing our children I'm your host Richard wolf I've been a professor of economics most of my adult life I'm still doing it if I can actually talked this morning and I want to use what I learned as a teacher to bring these economic updates to you each week so thank you very much for listening and let me begin as I often do with a couple of announcements we are now on over 90 stations I'll have a bit more to say about that in a moment we're very gratified very pleased and very grateful but it means that this program is actually heard at different moments of the day over a two or three day period in different parts of the United States north south east and west and that means at the end of the month which is where we are now that some of you will actually hear this before the end of June and some of you will hear this early in July and that raises the problem that the guest I have at the beginning of each month dr. Harriet fraud will sometimes actually be heard by some of you on the second day of the month the second day this program airs rather than the first I just wanted to assure and reassure all of you that dr. fraud will be my guest next week in the normal way early in the month of July I also want to say how proud we are to be carried now by I Heart Radio comm this is a huge and important deliverer of radio programming across the United States and it is a sign of our own growth that we are now being carried by iheartradio comm just go if you wish a podcast version of this program and several that they've accumulated out of our archives just go to I Heart Radio come and search for economic update and you will find us there and be able to listen to this program in that way as well and as I say we're very proud of that and finally I want to remind you that if you would rather or in addition see this program as a television program as a video program just go to patreon patreon comm slash economic update and you will be able to see this program in a video format and you might find that interesting as well so let me jump then into the economic updates for this final program in the month of June 2017 earlier in the month I was invited to and I went to a conference in Frankfurt Germany and I actually want to report briefly to you about it because of the important economic issues it raised this conference was called sanctuary cities was a decision by the German organizers of this conference which was for all of Europe was a recognition by them of the leadership taken in the United States by churches by communities to be sanctuaries and the word sanctuary means to keep themselves open to the free entry of immigrants people from other parts of the world coming in this case to the United States fleeing the lack of safety where they live fleeing the lack of jobs and incomes for themselves and their families indeed the very reason that all of the immigrants to the United States for 150 years or more have come here at least when we're talking about those who came voluntarily the slaves of course had a different story the people who populated the United States initially the Native Americans were mostly killed off by the folks who came not so happy part of our history but one that has to be faced and acknowledged as well and so having done that to those who were here originally this is a country populated by immigrants who came here for one reason or another and the immigrants typically came to and settled in our cities so that the cities of Western Europe like those in the United States when you look at them are in fact and always have been sanctuary cities they've been the places to which people came who were driven off the mostly rural areas that they had lived in they were driven off by economic changes they're mostly the change in Agriculture from small individual family farms to huge agricultural combines and nowhere has that been more dramatic than in the United States driven off the ability to live in the rural areas an economic change often magnified by political struggles Wars and so on for example the flow of immigrants into Western Europe in recent years has been prompted by Wars and bombings in the Middle East particularly and there's no loss of irony in the fact that the very countries who led the bombings in Syria in the Middle East elsewhere in Libya are the countries to whose cities the refugees flow when they don't want to be bombed in the countries where they have lived for generations the European conference and you might be interested to know it was organized by an organization you can learn about if you're interested called medical meed ico and our website is medical dot de the de stands for the German Way of saying Germany namely Deutschland de ceux médico de we'll give you all the information they've been around for decades they're interested in providing help and support to the people of the global south and they have been engaged in doing that in a variety of ways and they organized this conference called sanctuary cities to bring together all those across Europe and some from North America like me to talk about the role of the struggle over immigration the role of the struggle to provide immigrants with homes and jobs and incomes and respect because they need it badly that's why they are immigrants after all and I was struck at this conference by one of the many lessons I learned and that was that in Europe there's a vast mobilization to help immigrants not only out of Christian charity and I might mention that this conference was organized by medical but took place in the Roman Catholic Conference Center across the street from the Cathedral in downtown Frankfurt Germany which is one of Germany's major cities it shows the support of the Roman Catholic Church partly I'm sure because of the new pope who's not so new anymore but who's made his impact on the church clear that this was something the church also believed in but it wasn't just these sorts of religious or charitable impulses it was also and I was struck by this supported by working-class movements who said the following that I found moving what the immigrant wants who comes to our country in this case Germany but it was true for the others who came from other European countries what the immigrant wants is a secure job a secure income safety and that's what we all want that's what every worker who was born in Germany wants to and the immigrant who comes here wants what we want what we want that's the basis for us to have an alliance with them we should work together to get for all of us what is our birthright and when you add that the immigrants who come here are often coming because of the economic political and military burdens put on them in the countries from which they come well then we have a double obligation to work with them but we can together make the changes in Europe that will give us what we all seek and deserve rather than allowing the employer class to set us against each other by bringing in immigrants who are paid less than the folks who were here by making changes in those countries they're coming from that destroyed livelihoods we have a common enemy as well as a common alliance to get what should be provided by any economy in the world that deserves the respect of the people so it was a very valuable conference I was proud to have been asked to participate and to give some talks as part of it and I thought you might be interested in what was discussed there the movement to build sanctuary cities is very strong in Europe as strong or stronger than it is here in the United States but they took their inspiration from those cities and towns those churches in America that have declared they will be sanctuaries for the latest wave of immigrants into the United States the second update I want to talk to you about is about McDonald's hamburgers I assume I don't have to explain to you who and what they are they have made themselves at great expense a household name they announced this year that they are so excited having be had a very good year just for example since January 1 of 2017 the value of a share of stock of McDonald's has gone up 25% that's in six months that's an extraordinary run they are at the highest level of value of their shares in a long time they're doing real well and as part of doing real well they made this proud announcement over the next little while they are going to fire 2,500 cashiers at McDonald's restaurants and replace them with automatic kiosks that's their word for a machine in short that will do what a cashier used to do bye-bye 2,500 people's jobs and incomes and why are they doing that they are doing that for the same reason that McDonald does everything else to make money to make greater profits and they see profits by firing 2,500 people whose salaries they don't have to pay anymore and to replace them with machines which over time will be a cheaper way to get that work done than having those people and therefore McDonald's profits will go up which is why they are doing this okay let's talk about that number one this doesn't exactly go along with creating America great again does it because there's no prospect for McDonald's to lower its prices it made no claim or announcement that it was doing that if it's been saving money on these kiosks we're not going to see it we're only going to see our fellow citizens lose their work number two this is partly a response to the fight for 15 there's a strong movement in America to get people particularly folks like those who work at McDonald's to get their salaries raised up to the glorious sum of $15 an hour barely enough to live on as it is but many McDonald's workers among others get paid well below that and here's one way that McDonald's is responding to the demand of working people to get a minimum wage to live a decent life basically what McDonald's is saying to them is what the business community has always said to people looking to raise their wages namely you shall be happy with low wages because if you protest you'll get no wages at all in other words if you press for higher wages we will respond by not hiring you in the first place by replacing you in this case with a kiosk with a machine this threat low wages are no wages is part of how capitalism has always worked is it necessary for things to be handled this way and the answer is of course and all here's why society ought not to handle it this way because of course even though McDonald's is just saving the wages of those 2500 people we know socially that the costs of having 2500 people suddenly become unemployed or enormous many of those people will have medical problems how do we know that because every bout of unemployment has produced them many of them will become depressed many of them will have family troubles because the income isn't there anymore and the relationship between man and wife husband and wife or same-sex couples doesn't matter the tensions that are already always part of a relationship become more difficult if one or the other of them loses their job and they will have to go for medical attention or mental health attention their children will be in an agitated household their schoolwork will suffer you get the picture the local community with these people unemployed won't get the taxes from their incomes that it used to get and that will hobble what the local communities and indeed what the whole country can do with revenues that are reduced the social consequences are enormous and highly costly but nobody counts them McDonald's doesn't care because not its problem we live with the costs they get the profit of this technological change so here's an alternative let's have the kiosks let's save the labor of people but the way we'll handle it is everybody else at McDonald's will have their workweek reduced not their salary just to work week that'll mean extra work has to be done and you know by whom by the 2500 people no longer needed to be cashiers they will now work because they'll fill in for the reduced work done by everybody else at McDonald's who has a shorter work week in other words will actually deliver the promise of technical change that it makes life better for the majority of people all of the people at McDonald's and they have tens of thousands of employees will enjoy a shorter work week because technology makes it possible that will be good for the workers won't change the profits of McDonald's but there you have it technology either improves the profits of capitalists or improves the lives of workers capitalists running the show you know how they go they fire the twenty five hundred just like McDonald's said it would but it doesn't have to be that way my next economic update is about Travis kalanick well you may not know his name although some of you I'm sure do he was on till week ago the CEO of the uber car service ah why did he get bounced out of that job because that's what happened he got bounced out he got bounced out because uber has a lot of problems and uber has an internal tradition of sexual and other forms of harassment that are well documented and of which a lot of the things mr. colonic liked to boast unfortunately for him in public so that the big owners of shares of uber basically got together and told him you're out of here because your reputation and your behavior as an autocratic person who dictates in a crude way who has sexual activities that are in the press you've got to go and you're out of here and so he's out but don't cry he's a billionaire several times over and the same people who pushed him out of the CEO job have left him as a member of the board of uber and that will be more than enough for him he follows an interesting tradition earlier this year Roger Ailes was bounced out of the CEO position at Fox News for many of the same sorts of reasons and Jeff Bezos ahead of Amazon is subject to similar in some cases more or less kinds of criticism what does this tell us and why do I talk to you about it because capitalism the corporation as the unit of capitalism is a very very friendly institution for these sorts of people people who are dictators people who do not respect either women or underlings of any sort people who like the culture of sucked up and kicked down as a way to organize the business and they are so often found in these ranks which is why I can so quickly put roger ailes and bezel and colonic into the same category that we have to realize this isn't about them as individual personalities it's about a system that rewards such people that promotes such people that indeed venerates such people that's the issue how do we let them get to such a position rather than get the help they obviously need that's a question of systems I want to close out today by talking about what might seem to be a small example of economic update but I think has enormous implications I want to talk to you about one of America's great restaurants it's called willows in and it's located on Lumi lu MMI Lumi island in the state of washington it is one of those restaurants that boasts said it's a destination that people come and drive or fly hundreds or thousands of miles to eat you might be impressed on I thought you would be once I did the research they have a basic menu that you get when you go there you're not in this situation of choosing the way you do at lesser establishments you get a basic menu with an immense list of things they give you the taste it costs one hundred and ninety five dollars per person to eat it if you would like wine to go with it they offer you a wine pairing that's an additional $90 and then they explain they're not going to leave the tipping to you they are simply going to add 20% to all of that and so I did the arithmetic it's not very hard and came up with the fact that if you're going to eat at the Willows in on Lumiere Island you're going to shell out three hundred and forty two dollars per person before you stand up at the end of the evening and leave if you can handle all the food and alcohol I don't know how many of you listening watching can manage three hundred and forty two dollars a person or would care to do that but that's not why I'm telling you about this although it does tell you something about the gap between rich and poor in the United States even by itself that's not why I'm telling you I'm telling you because in the last week the United States Department of Labor came down with a judgement about the Willows in it turns out that they had underpaid their workers and who are these workers that they under pay a special group young people particularly who want to become chefs and who want to learn at a famous restaurant how to do that and to their ly be able to go and find a job doing that somewhere else so they've got these people who really want the job here's what the Labor Department found they made them do cleanup it's not exactly what a chef does they made them paint buildings not particularly crucial to the chef's career and how bad was it well typically they found these were people who were required to do 14-hour days for the lordly sum of fifty bucks and as a result the US Department labor hit them with a seventy four thousand dollar bill to make up this the unpaid hours that they had forced these workers to work because there are laws saying you have to be paid overtime if you do more than the eight hours a day which had done so they they hit them with seventy four thousand dollars for these workers to be paid so on and then an equal penalty for behaving in this way but of course this is not an unique to the Willows in but what it does is teach us a lesson that I don't want anyone to miss a good part of the extraordinary wealth and life styles of the super-rich are based on and depend on ripping off average people on a massive scale can you enjoy the wonderful meal at willows in I'm sure you can but that enjoyment has to be tempered by an awareness that in the kitchen and in the bath and painting the building you enjoyed looking at is a level of abuse of human beings or to say the same thing in the way that a great analyst one did capitalism is extraordinarily effective at producing and reproducing wealth unfortunately it is a system that is at least as efficient as that in producing and reproducing poverty and abuse and mistreatment of human beings and you might want to wonder whether we can't do better as a human community than a system that is constantly showing us that what is beautiful and successful and wealthy is wrapped up with all the things that are the opposites of that can't we do better than that I think we can and it's a premise of this program well we've run out of time for the first half but this note of poverty is something that capitalism reproduces because after all under paying workers not paying for overtime abusing them taking advantage of their desire to become a chef to make them do things that will not help them be chefs at all this is a very old story of capitalism we were led to believe fifty a hundred years ago that laws were passed and decisions were made and rules were put into place that that wouldn't happen but here I am again in June of 2017 showing you this system does this everywhere all the time with or without the rules and the laws yes they can help but this is a system that's the problem and just as it was the problem for the heroic people who fought for $15 an hour for McDonald's workers they too have to face that despite their heroic acts and despite the advance in people's wages they achieved this is a system that will also go back and say to them if you don't accept low wages we'll give you no wages at all as long as we have a system that works this way and makes that a reasonable decision by people in power we will live with the results if you don't want the results it got to deal with the system we're going to have an interview in a moment second half of this program about poverty but it's enough to say before we do that that we live in an economic system that is big queefing power of poverty to a growing number of people relative and absolute the program that you're hearing is brought to you by a group of people democracy at work by name who want you to take a look at the websites they maintain because there's a great deal more information there than we can give you on this program the websites two of them whose names I'll give you in a moment are available to you at no charge whatsoever 24/7 they allow you to communicate with us tell us what you like and don't like about the program what you'd like us to be doing they allow us with a click of your mouse to follow us on Facebook Twitter Instagram we ask you as we often do be a partner work with us spread the word about this program and about what you learn here to the other people in your job in your home in your neighborhood we want to reach people with the awareness of these things that we analyze on this program and you are our best ally in getting that job done and the web sites are materials for you to use in any way you like the first one is democracy at work that's all one word democracy at work dot info very simple and the other one is Rd wolf my name two EPs at the end Rd wolf dot-com either of those websites has all the capabilities I just ran through with you please make use of them stay with us after a very short intermission we will be right back [Music] [Music] okay [Music] [Music] Oh checking the fantasy whoo not just my 401k statement hmm nice good you find the money for that I just been saving a little every month I can't seem to save anything well what about all this what about the money you're spending what money it's gone before and get my hands on it I got a pizza for it Todd hey can somebody spot me when it comes to financial stability don't get left behind it's 547 get tools and tips for saving at feed the pig org all right I know this isn't any fun to talk about but we should okay so who's gonna do what I'll pack the dead batteries great I only put what I don't mean into a duffle bag perfect that's totally unhelpful no problem meanwhile I will try to comfort everyone by speaking in a calm voice and I'm trying to get the generator going without any gas oh let's not forget the cell phones which probably won't work right and who is going to handle supplies I can forget to do this for us thanks pal well I think we couldn't be any less prepared I'm proud of you guys talk to your kids about who to call where to meet what to pack visit ready.gov slash kids for tips and information oh it's uh nope we finally bought a place holy cow seriously have enough save to do that we've been put a little aside each month at the end of the month we have nothing left to save yeah I have no idea where it goes well you're spending a lot on good when it comes to financial stability don't get left behind get tools and tips for saving at feed the pig org when some people struggle with their mortgage payments they become frozen but the people who take action are far more likely to get the most positive outcome call this free government program for the option that's right for you welcome back friends to the second half of today's economic update and we're going to have an interview in this second half with a gentleman who's been on the program once before named Rob Robinson so before I even tell you again about him let me say - Rob welcome glad to have you on the program thanks Evan Rob is a staff volunteer at the national economic and social rights initiative generally known as misery nes RI it is a human rights organization based in New York City he has been organizing communities to elevate housing to a human right and for the decommodification of land and housing he's a good battler against gentrification if I can add an editorial to this a person who's committed to making housing something that human beings had as a human right and not depending on how much income or how much wealth they have accumulated Rob works with social movements around the world and includes the landless workers the MST movement and the movement of people affected by dams in Brazil he works with shackdwellers in South Africa and the platform of people affected by mortgages in Spain in short Rob gets around and does his work alright Bob I want to talk about poverty sure because I know in the end that's the summary term for what confronts you whether it's in Spain or Brazil or in New York City many commentators have noticed that in the election race last year and ever since very little has been said about the issue of poverty not just by mr. Trump who you might expect to be disinterested but really in a general way it is not an issue that's at the forefront of the media's attention or of people so I'm going to ask you a question I kind of know the answer but I want to give you a chance to talk about is this a solved problem in the United States in other words is poverty somehow been managed so we don't need to think about it or talk about it I just I think Rick honestly people try to ignore it they don't want to face the truth we saw a wave of people moving to the suburbs in the 90s early 2000s then jobs started to disappear in this country but it's a problem that has been here long before that right people have been impoverished in this country for years probably since its creation right and it's never been addressed and that's the bottom line and that's why people suffer you know but periodically we have a war on poverty we have we have these things that the government does or that private enterprise does with lots of fanfare usually we're going to deal with this problem once and for all that so you're basically telling me either that was all fluff or it didn't work which is it and how do you respond I think it's a cup I think it's both of those right it is the government trying to Pat itself on the back saying we're addressing this problem but then that they don't come up with real solutions you know I said on this program in the past I'm homeless I don't formerly homeless and I don't think this country has ever found an answer to homelessness right they don't want to get at the root cause they'll throw money at a problem right and think that's going to be a solution so if I give people you know a few entitlements that's going to change everything it's about wages work a steady income a decent place to live it's all of these things combined and having a secure future right as you said earlier in the program you want to leave the place secure for your children behind you and when not in that situation right now jobs have left this country at a record rate this was a country that was built on manufacturing jobs those jobs don't exist you had a president that sold us a bill of goods that said he's going to bring those jobs back but when they started exploiting labor overseas they're not coming back because I would have to pay somebody a union scale right and if Union scale susceptance a shirt make a $38 an hour but you can ship it overseas and pay somebody $4 an hour what do you think is going to happen I'm going to leave it all to Caesar you know it's funny because let's look at the one implication of what you if the issue of poverty periodically surfaces and then the government throws a bunch of money at it but doesn't deal with the root problem then you can see that throwing the money will not solve the problem and then you allow the Conservatives to come back five years later and say hey we threw all this money didn't solve the problem let's not throw the money in which case your even have the money throw in many more it's sort of a Republicans and Democrats a Democrats say let's throw some money but don't really attack the basic issue that doesn't work the Republicans come in make fun of what the Democrats did and get people who don't want to pay taxes to say a it's just a waste anyway it doesn't solve the problem and then your even throw the money and then the problem gets worse and then the Democrats commit and we do this over and over and over it has to be the only way you're going to solve this problem it is a redistribution of wealth and folks don't want to face that fact right you want to have to tax the rich at a higher rate and give it to the poor right you have to change that balance that's the only way to do it but the the fight is so strong so I think we have to learn from from movements across the world which is why I enjoy so much learning from these other social movements the political education you take paw in Spain folks realize that the elected officials weren't really getting into root cause of this problem now that movement in Spain has now elected their one of their own the mayor of Barcelona and she's putting in social welfare programs that is changing that balance in Spain so I think it begins right there where would stuck with the two-party system here that has done nothing for us right and we've aligned ourselves as people directly affected by poverty we've I aligned ourselves with the Democratic Party thinking they're going to do something for us but it is a couple of people that are controlling everybody's lives and that has to change yeah instead of interesting to me to draw you out on one one aspect of this there is some talk recently that the kinds of social problems particularly poverty that at least some people said were concentrated in non-white communities across America there's some notion these days that something has changed because a whole host of those problems that we honestly or dishonestly associated with non-white communities clearly are now affecting white communities and here I'm thinking of poverty but I'm also thinking of the opioid crisis right drugs and so forth is there a meaningful way in which the poverty problem has changed its racial or its color dynamics its composition is that that you can tell us about it is definitely changes I was alluding to earlier I said there's been a movement of people to the suburbs right started to walk back is the 70s I grew up on Long Island and it's a perfect picture of this right everybody got away from the city you want the better life after World War two you go out to you know the suburban areas and people start to go out there they were good manufacturing jobs problems started to arose right the manufacturing jobs left people didn't have steady income all of a sudden they fell behind on their mortgages they faced foreclosure and eviction right all of these things add up they had a high tax base some of those have you look at parts of Long Island where I grew up and you see it looks desolate boarded up houses falling into a state of disrepair because people have they have no way of keeping up with it so I think it has changed right and I think the poverty numbers are changing drastically you used to say was concentrated in the urban centers it is now moved to suburban areas and rural areas it definitely has and I think as you mentioned earlier we know that with the farmlands is you go out to the middle of the country it is definitely very it is ugly it so that so it's become suburban as well as urban absolutely come white as well as non-white absolutely in a sense we've generalized the problem and that can only be accounted as making it worse not making it better I would think it makes it worse but then when you have the poor whites who don't want to align themselves with poor people of color and then they put somebody like Trump in office thinking that the life is going to suddenly change all of a sudden then they dig a deeper hole right things get a little bit worse and I don't think people realize that right this is going to be an education on the fly for people in next three and a half years in this country it's going to be an education and I don't think they were expecting you know to be educated this way but there's going to be some real baling facts and things are not going to change that easily and then could be if I understand your argument there could be a fairly dramatic shift if white communities that hope to mr. Trump would somehow solve their problem middle and low income white people if they feel betrayed let down deceived boy could you have a shift in American politics in a hurry I absolutely believe that Rick I think what has to happen is just that but I'm wondering if if those populations will be willing to align themselves you know in this hook this country is built on four hundred years of separatism like that right I don't want to align myself with people of color but I think at this point you need to write you're going through the same things they did for 400 years so you don't hear black people raising up so much I mean there are movements and folks fighting against it but they blip this all their lives this is something they've always had to live I think the shop for for poor whites is like holy cow this is happening to us now this is real this is something else so you know that would be the explanation for voting for Trump in the first right right and I think you do have movements there are there are movements around the country that are organizing this we all know Reverend barber for moral Mondays down in North Carolina it's coming to New York City he's with the Cairo Center at Union Theological Seminary they don't they reenacting Martin Luther King's Poor People's Campaign right trying to organize people around the country on this issue of poverty is the assembly to end poverty well I think these are noble efforts I don't know I think these dizzer there's a gap there between elders and young folks I think that's another collaboration that has to happen right these are voices of elders that have had the lived experience for a number of years but they aren't so willing to engage younger folks in these campaigns so that will be an issue too I think well I think you know until they seriously reach out and really reach out to a broad section of the community they're gonna struggle right this is something you have to bring everybody into everybody's going to experience this and it's not going to go away right away right here this is something that's going to be long-term and it may not go away in your eyes lifetime and you know it's going to be around for folks in younger generations okay let me switch a little and ask you because you're active in this area are there movements now and I'm thinking particularly in the United States but you don't have to limit yourself are there movements of poor people with their allies in throughout the community to make poverty an issue around which not just to mobilize the victims of our economic system but everybody who sees what's going on is that is that happening or we not seeing I think it is I think you know we had Bernie running for president and I think the movements that came from organizing around Bernie was standing for that he got it right he and he made it real he made this a real issue the problem I personally had with Bernie he aligned himself with the Democratic Party I think you should have said I'm a socialist and go on like that and say we need change right and socialism isn't so bad right and just change the way people think I think we need a drastic shift like that there are movements as I said earlier they're out there the Kairos Center is doing the Poor People's Campaign the Assembly to end poverty but these are the Assembly to end poverty while I know many of these folks they've been around for years and much hasn't changed because the message is the same right and then not we don't have a habit of pushing people into political office or engaging people in our social movements here in the u.s. around those particulars when you go outside of the US you go to places like Brazil the Labour Party England with Jeremy Corbyn these are folks that are organizing around these issues and promoting a candidate that believes in what they believe and I think we have to get on board with that here I mean the establishment Republican and Democrat seem to feel here that they remain in control that they are not seriously threatened from below all by people who want exactly what you just said and somehow that seems to be a stumbling block at least for the moment it is I you know I again I think the best way is for us to replicate what happened and let's say Spain right on what even you know it's a long-term move it didn't end up well in Brazil but there they eventually got their candidate in office the Labour Party got elected you look at Sarita that didn't end well either but these are folks I said we need change right and we need somebody from from the ground up somebody who understands our issues and we need to elect them in our office I don't know I think the two-party system is so ingrained in us here that we say we can't change it this is a den where you know status quo we'll just pick the best candidate between the two and go where they rank the lesser is exactly and you know when when you look at it I often like to say when I speak publicly like you have you have the Republicans on the right the Democrats on the left and his the middle right there's not much of a difference we really need a different party here you know the greens you know speak the right language but they haven't put forth a strong platform right and I think that's the problem they have the right idea but they haven't done the strong enough platform and they usually put people up on the platform who are who have a big voice right it's not about big voice you have to have a vision you have to have a vision and know how to implement that vision and I think that's an important factor that we often lose in social movements here all right let me push you in a little bit of a different direction partly coming out of our program here what we talked about one of the ways to see the issue of poverty is to go to the root of it and to say look you're poor because you don't have a lot of money and you don't as you stress and I think you're quite right you don't have just enough money but you don't have a secure flow and money to enable you to plan and run your life in a human way and one of the ways to change that is to change how the job is organized how the workplace is organized so that a person who goes to work has a place that can provide the job the income and the security that is clearly the antidote to poverty so that rather than taking from the rich and giving to the poor let's not have rich and poor in the first place and one of the ways we talk at least on this program is about changing the economic system so we don't have top-down corporations where the decision of what's to be done with the revenue is made by the tip of people at the top who surprise surprise give it to themselves but if you changed it if you put all the workers in charge in a democratic way they would never give most of the money to three people they were distributed in one way or another it's not that everybody gets the same that's unlikely to happen but it would be a much less unequal Society and therefore not put us against one another because the notion that everybody ought to have a job and an income in some security is one that I think is a majority perspective anyway do you see anything emerging in the way of a movement for worker coops and things like that as being connected to or allied with struggles against poverty I think there are patches of folks thinking in these terms around the country Rick and I'm impressed by it right we all both know cooperation Jackson down in Mississippi to have court to have cooperatives take hold in Jackson Mississippi you know is really fascinating you know based on the history of the South in this country but I think there were two problems involved with this right we have to get out of the notion many of us still think in terms of the narrative that we've inhale or our lives right this system is going to work for you everybody can make it you buy a home it's the way to wealth you know these are narratives that were just spoon fed to us year after year generation after generation and they've proven themselves not to be true but we still feed into them but I want somehow to believe it they really want to they want to buy into this this is the greatest country in the world you know maybe it was built on a premise but it's not holding true for a lot of people it's a certain power brokers sitting at the table you know so cooperatives I do think is the way it's a way it's a good start right so you see palm coop that's coming up now food cooperatives you know many jobs I think that's that is the way to go I talked about decommodification of land and housing put land in a Community Land Trust let the community govern the land changes your life totally man right housing will remain truly affordable if it's sitting on the land trust we have to think differently and creatively and get out of those narratives we are never going to win that war when land is is a commodity your life is in upheaval constantly you know it's so interesting to me to hear you say that because I used to teach when I was a regular professor courses in economic history and a good number of weeks was devoted to medieval Europe yeah the way Europe was from about 500 AD to say 16 or 1700 and in many parts of Europe where the Roman Catholic Church at least until the Reformation was the universal Church for everybody the following idea was the official Church belief that everybody believed and went like this land is the earth the earth was created by God nobody can be the private owner of that that's a sin against God that that's acting as if you put it there well obviously you didn't write you were born you're going to die you may become part of the soil but that's the only way you're integrated with the land and therefore it's irreligious it's a sin against God to say I have the right to decide as an individual what happens to what is the commonwealth of land for all people on this planet you know that was said in religious terms but for a thousand years there was not what you couldn't buy and sell land right that would would would have struck people as bizarre as we would nowadays think of selling human beings to one another in obfuscating we know that it existed let me say it's ethically and morally abhorrent well if it's abhorrent to buy and sell human beings for all the reasons we know why doesn't the same logic apply to something as fundamental to our survival as a species as the earth crow it grows food you build a house this is why the Brazilian model in the Brazilian Constitution says land has to serve a social good it changes the balance right that's how the MST became popular right they understood their constitution okay his 10 acres the land that's not being used for anything let's move in there grow food let's build a house right it changes that thinking then we can lay claim it's not so much about the title it's about the use of that land right you know even in American law and we've had programs about this even in American law now there is this wonderful concept called eminent domain which says and it's the law of this country now that if the community say the city of New York or the city of Seattle the community of you know Watsonville Arkansas if it has a purpose that is for the social good then it has the right to take property away from the private owner no matter who he or she or it is and use it instead for the public good it has to pay that person whatever the market value that pieces but the ability of a person to say I'm not going to sell it it's mine that's not the law the law in this country says and that by the way happens all the time communities take land and use it to build a school or to develop the shopping area whatever they're doing so even in our law it's recognized that you have to in order to live a civilized life give the community the final determination of what is done with property because leaving it really all in the hands of an individual is a named social ally so I I hear you I think we don't understand those laws there was a mayor in Richmond California during the Hydra foreclosure crisis yes that was ready to use that against the banks and take bat houses in her community and redistribute it to the community forget the end of your house by the power brokers that be the banks and in legal entity when's the world oh they went to work on her they attend here no you bring that here right why not right she's thinking about the social good right it has it has more of a value so I think we do need to educate ourselves on these processes and we need to voice our opinions more right this is a mayor who put her career on the line for the people now you know you would hope that somebody would learn from that that also goes back to your notion of a new political movement or dietician or party that would be the way to articulate these things and again out into the council early so I'll go back again to the mayor Barcelona article ow this is how she became published she was voicing these opinions in these thoughts you know from the collective of the group of PAS right and all of a sudden her voice got very famous and people started pulling her in the direction before you know it she's elected mayor right um I think it's a powerful way to do things we need to learn from those movements we have a habit here in the US rec of saying I call it US exceptionalism we will charge the social will the choice of government with cases of exceptionalism you know you think you do it better but our social movements in the same way I don't have to learn from from paw in Spain I don't have to learn from Brazil we do it better well you know what everybody can learn you should learn to you're great till you go to your grave that's right and I think that the Europeans like that conference that I spoke about the beginning of the program there you learn from what we are doing in the United States that's why they named their conference sanctuary cities but we need to do the same and click it reciprocal a professor you and I both know well Neil Smith once said to me learning is reciprocal right you can come from the community and teach me as much as I'm teaching my students and my students can learn from you just as much as they can learn from me so learning is a reciprocal process and it needs to continue and the merry-go-round needs to keep continuing night everybody can learn I do have this sense and there's a final thought I want from you that as the jobs disappear as the standard of living keeps declining as it is as the quality of the jobs the security of the jobs the benefits that go with the jobs as well as the wages keep shrinking as government services especially now on the Trump being cut back left and right people are beginning to realize that the crash of 2008 wasn't something that was going to bounce us back a year later or two we've now had eight years nine years no bounce and no bounce in the in the offing nothing's coming does that give you hope does it give you any sense that there is a kind of learning that the system we have is going down and that the problem for us may be whether we're going to permit it to take us down with it it I reck I do believe it's going down I think the only way we can go into another system is a revolution it's a tough thing to say I didn't see it what the economic crisis in 2008 but it was a message to me where they you know the government said I'm going to take your tax when you get to the bank it's okay for the banks it's okay for you to fail but the banks can't fail it was kind of bizarre to me right you know all enough to fail right you're too big to write and then you know all of a sudden they stood the banks started picking us and foreclosing on us in recognize and that's not going to change and what really raised awareness for me was the majority of the housing movement fighting for principle reduction right instead transformative organizing changing the system of which we we live so I think it's going to take a new economic system but we have to have a vision of a system that we want and we need to know the steps on how to get there thank you rob I appreciate your coming again I wish we had more time as I say almost always on these interviews but we will have you back everybody I want to thank you for joining us I want to remind you that the fundamental goal of this program besides presenting these interviews and the analyses is to partner with you and getting all of this kind of information in this way of thinking out to the broader community that means your friends your family your co-workers your neighbors all of that partner with us use our websites our DeWulf with two F's comm and democracy at work dot info I want to thank you for the partnering you do I want to thank tooth out and well known distribution of thoughts and analysis and news that has been partnering with us for years thank you again and I look forward to speaking with you next week [Music]

Channel: Democracy At Work

Views: 35,185

Keywords: Richard Wolff, democracy, work, labor, economy, economics, inequality, justice, economic democracy, economic justice, automation, capitalism, poverty, social justice

Id: LWq77_Z0M9Y

Length: 58min 0sec (3480 seconds)

Published: Sun Jul 02 2017