Richard D. Wolff

Hello Professor Wolff, and to your support staff, I offer the following comment/question though your "askprofwolff" form, as your most recent Economic Update titled, "Economic Update: Capitalism's Craziness (2016.08.25)" posted to Youtube, is not yet available through your D@W portal. Attempts to submit the same comment through your D@W "Contact Us" form appear to freeze or hang in a "Saving" mode. I appreciate all of the work engaged by you and your staff. Concerning your most recent podcast you did raise the topic of the National Labor Relations Board decision to overturn the Brown University decision (342 NLRB 483), prohibiting the formation of Unions by Graduate Students employed by private academic institutions [https://www.nlrb.gov/news-outreach/news-story/board-student-assistants-covered-nlra-0]. I am pleased that you cited the academic institution's unwillingness to cede control, for fear that a unionized student labor force might embolden the tenured staff to likewise work towards organized labor relations. I'm disappointed that this entitlement is not shared amongst the student labor force in public institutions. Would you consider extrapolating upon the other aspects of control that, in addition to the power of collective bargaining, pose a challenge to the administration of institutional academia? To touch upon this subject, I offer an example from your accounting of your own personal student experience to broach the subject of the social controls exerted by an industry focused on distributing selective misinformation and wholesale propaganda. Of course, I refer to the absence of critical analysis pertaining to the discipline of Economics, and the near complete disregard for the works of Karl Marx (amongst other topics of historical and social significance). This topic is truly very significant, and quite large in scope - the contradictions of Capitalism and cognitive dissonance imparted upon a hapless population through propaganda. Regards, Paul