What are your thoughts on affordable housing?
July 13, 2017
I came across this interesting piece concerning NIMBY and YIMBY positions on San Francisco housing. Just curious to hear your opinion on the matter. https://juliagalef.com/2017/07/13/should-we-build-lots-more-housing-in-san-francisco-three-reasons-people-disagree/
Is it possible to stop globalization and at what cost? Would we even want to?
July 13, 2017
Hi I understand that you are a busy man and I apologize in advance for not being able to keep my letter short. I also apologize if some of the terminology is lacking since I don’t live in the US and English is only my second language. I’ve been thinking about globalization and how it effects workers, especially when outsourcing. President Trump talked about bringing the jobs back to America. Is that even possible? It seems to me that this is next to impossible unless workers in the western world are willing to accept a lower standard of living (if by high standard of living you mean being able to consume). If America (or the western world) decides to make it harder or impossible for companies to leave, the jobs may stay in America. However, the companies will still look to increase profits and if they can’t do that by lowering employment costs (by moving production abroad where the wages are cheaper and safety regulations and labour legislations are weaker), they have to make up for it by rising the price of the product they are selling. This will lead to American workers no longer being able to afford the product they are producing. As an example, a smart phone being made in some Asian countries is cheaper than a phone being made in America with American wages. Another example would be clothes. The big companies in the clothing industry using child workers and exploiting them terribly just to keep the prices down and the profits up. Now, would American workers accept this? Everything becomes more expensive and yes, while you may have a job you still can’t buy anything anyway. Another possible result could be that while the production stays in America, most of it will be automized and the workers will lose their jobs to machines rather than foreign labour force. Is it possible that we will see the economy and welfare decline in the western world and eventually Asia and South America will take ”our place”. That the tables will turn? And how will we handle that? If the west stop outsourcing, what will happen in the countries where the jobs are now? What will happen there when the factories close down and move back? Will that alone effect us? I'm sure those jobs helps those economies and if weakened, they would not be able to trade with us in other areas. Is the solution to somehow introduce a limit to how much profit a company can make? In that case it wouldn’t benefit the cooperations to move abroad. On the other hand, I guess they could just register as a foreign company and somehow by-pass it. Or is part of the solution to find new markets, creating different kind of jobs and spend more time and money on education and innovation? How do we handle people that struggle in school and won’t be able to qualify for these new jobs? Another dimension of globalization is the environment. Trade agreements like TTIP and Ceta makes it easier to send goods across the world in planes and trucks, and yet most of us agree that we need to do something about how humans effect the environment. Doesn’t these international trading deals add to the problem? Have you addressed these questions in depth earlier or is it something you are willing to talk about in the future? Thank you for doing what you do and thank you for your time. Regards, Daniel from Sweden
Transforming political dialogue
July 12, 2017
I was just invited via a phone call to take part in a one-hour discussion with Senator Bernie Sanders. 15000 people apparently dialed-in from in and around the country to listen and ask questions. I wish that I had been chosen to ask a question because the first thing I wanted to ask was how do we transform the political dialogue in this country so that we can actually talk about the true source of all of the issues on the table as far as politics are concerned, that being the issues relating to capitalism. Everyone wanted to call in and ask about a different topic, Healthcare, the judicial system, Trump, the health-care bill. No one asked specifically about what was causing all of these ills or questioned whether the system under which we all live could be causing them. There was vague talk about all Americans coming together and fighting the rich upper class and the Republicans and the Koch brothers but again the system was never questioned. Dr. Wolf after listening to your lectures and televised appearances for over a month now I think this is ongoing proof that the politicians are also responsible for keeping us separated as far as understanding what is causing the pain under which we suffer. How do we change this? Who will be the one to change it? Even Bernie Sanders didn't seem to want to come near that topic. The closest I heard him mention was that we need to transform politics and remove the influence of big money. But that still wasn't close enough for me. I would like to hear your thoughts on this sir. Thank you.
Neoliberalism's Poison on Higher Education and How Co-Ops Could Help
July 12, 2017
Definity right up your alley, Mondragon is used as a guiding light as a possible solution to this very real problem. https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2017/07/12/author-discusses-ideas-his-new-book-toxic-university
Which Marxian economists colleagues do you like? Why?
July 12, 2017
Have you ever heard about the Resource Based Economy?
July 12, 2017
Have you ever heard about the Resource Based Economy and The Venus Project? If yes, which thoughts do you have on it?
Recent Economic & Public Policy successes in Ecuador & Worker Committees/Worker Co-ops: 1930s Spain
July 11, 2017
Topics for your consideration. If at all possible, I would be very interested in a longer discussion of the above on Economic Update!
You need to interview Dr. Elisabeth Rosenthal, author of "An American Sickness"
July 10, 2017
Dr. Rosenthal is now Editor-In-Chief of Kaiser Health News. She was a correspondent for the New York Times for 22 years. She wrote the series entitled "Paying Till It Hurts", a multi-part examination of our dysfunctional healthcare system published in the Times in 2013-14. “American Sickness” is a critical examination of the four pillars of the U.S. healthcare system, doctors, hospitals, pharmaceutical and equipment manufacturers and insurance companies. As just one example of the many outrages described in her book, one stands out in my mind. Pharmaceutical companies have increased the price of their drugs so much that even people who actually have insurance coverage can’t afford the deductible. Apparently, it’s illegal for a doctor to waive the deductible for his patients. The industry has come up with a clever and cynical strategy to keep this growing fraction of their market. The drug makers have created non-profit, charitable programs to give financial aid to these people enabling them to pay their deductible. In turn, the patients can now put in a claim to their insurance companies. For a relatively small charitable donation, the drug makers are able to increase their sales.
Richard Wolff posted an official response
OK, I shall try.
Shouldn't co-ops corporation be held responsible for their impact on the community ?
July 09, 2017
Don't you think that coop corporation should be held responsible for the impact of their decision on the community (in terms of social, environmental's... cost) and so governement and coop should work togetehe
Richard Wolff posted an official response
Absolutely yes. In my writings I try always to include - despite their primary focus on democratizing the workplace itself - some attention to how democratized workplaces and democratized residential communities would be con-determiners (and have veto-power) over one-another's decisions. That's precisely because the decisions taken in each community - workplace and residential - impact the other in multiple ways.
Some worker co-ops aren't any better than regular ownership
July 09, 2017
Not all worker co-ops work out well. I worked at one, Westat, and it treated people absolutely as badly as other places I (and coworkers) have worked.
Richard Wolff posted an official response
I agree. There will be worker coops that fail and go out of business (just as happens to capitalist enterprises) although I would expect that a worker-coop based economy would have cooperative ways to support coop-workers who lose jobs and need help in relocating to other coop jobs etc. Nor are worker coops guaranteed to behave as we want in all cases. Indeed, all sorts of bad habits etc will survive for a while in an economy transitioning from capitalist to worker-coop enterprises; these can and will show up again inside the new worker coop enterprises. Those of us who favor worker coops as a better economic foundation for a democratic society will always need to be vigilant that worker coops do in fact contribute to the larger good society that motivates our support for worker coops in the first place.
Why did you say capitalism didn't decrease poverty? What do you think reduced poverty?
July 09, 2017
https://ourworldindata.org/extreme-poverty/
Richard Wolff posted an official response
My point was focused on poverty understood relatively. Yes, the improvement in human technology/productivity has, across many centuries, increased the total output per person-hour of labor. Some of that improvement has trickled down to the mass of people. They lived better with settled agriculture than as nomads, with feudalism rather than slavery, with capitalism rather than slavery or feudalism, and so on. But there were exceptions and occasional reversals.
Marx's insight was to see how capitalism not only stimulated rapid technological/productivity increases but also reproduced the social dichotomy between rich and poor. It was, as he said, as good at reproducing poverty as at reproducing wealth; it reproduced unequal divisions of wealth and income.
That is why, despite countless anti-poverty programs across the history of capitalism, poverty always returns to characterize the system. Capitalism reproduces relative poverty by its nature, its functioning, its system.
I'm interested in your thoughts on so-called " conscious capitalism".
July 07, 2017
This article below about TOMS shoes sparked my interest. I love the show. Thank you for everything you do. http://www.utne.com/economy/neoliberal-gospel-zm0z14mazros
Richard Wolff posted an official response
Capitalists linking their businesses with social causes, progressive or otherwise, is not so new. It has surged often when social critics of capitalism have, largely as a way for corporations to blunt or undermine social criticism. So it is not surprising now, in the wake of a devastating capitalist crash in 2008/9, to see yet another surge in corporations showing off one or another "good" cause they are furthering. In the past this has never lasted very long. That is why breathless journalists today can write as if this were all new and thus a sign of big changes. It isn't. When the pressures of competition or other aspects of how capitalism as a system works impinge on corporations with social "missions," or "commitments" or "values" etc., they drop them quickly because they respect first and foremost what "the bottom line" means: the dominance of profit and competition that trumps (no pun intended) all else.
Question on a public intellectual with unsavoury views on Marxism
July 07, 2017
Hey Dr Wolff! Thanks so much for everything you are doing! I was curious if you have ever come accross the name Jordan Peterson. He is a public intellectual in Canada, who has gained a lot of popularity in the last few years, mainly because he takes an anti-PC stance, and that seems to resonate with a lot of people these days. But my question is pertaining to his views on Marx, which are pretty outrageous. I will post something from Wikipedia below, but Im curious If you would ever consider debating him. I have put projects together, so could potentially look into doing this. I love reading Marx, and love what you are doing, and most of all, don't appreciate a great thinker like Marx being misrepresented to the general public, especially in a time where more people could stand to check out Das Kapital. Peterson recently raised above 160k from fans, who are supporting the videos he puts out on YouTube. Anyhow, his Wikipedia Marxism excerpt below "I have been studying authoritarianism on the right and the left for 35 years. I wrote a book, Maps of Meaning: The Architecture of Belief, on the topic, which explores how ideologies hijack language and belief. As a result of my studies, I have come to believe that Marxism is a murderous ideology. I believe its practitioners in modern universities should be ashamed of themselves for continuing to promote such vicious, untenable and anti-human ideas, and for indoctrinating their students with these beliefs. I am therefore not going to mouth Marxist words. That would make me a puppet of the radical left, and that is not going to happen. Period.[20
Richard Wolff posted an official response
This statement requires a good deal of ignorance. First of all, there is no "Marxism" or "Marxist" in the singular. Marxism is a set of ideas and theories and also of practices by political parties and by governments. Since Marx lived and wrote, his ideas have influenced thinkers in every country on ever continent for about 150 years. Across that space and time, many different interpretations have grown up as people in different societies, cultures, histories make their different senses of what Marx wrote. It is a testimony to the power and relevance of Marx's thought that so much grew out of it, that his work spoke to so many people in such diverse situations. Any reasonable assessment of "Marxism" would have to show a differentiation among all its different expressions and interpretations. Speaking in the singular about a single Marx, as your quote of Peterson does, reveals an immense lack of understanding of what is being denounced. So the denunciation comes off as a kind of sad reversion to the worst of Cold War rhetoric now sadly behind the times of a period when questioning of capitalism (Marx's task and work) is rising quickly everywhere. Do you think there is much point in debating someone who does that?