Richard D. Wolff

The peoples means of investing in their futures with a government secured savings account yeilding a sustainable rate (3-6%) was quietly taken away from the middle class. Now the only avenue of investment available to average folk is to get on the stock and bond market roller coaster with all the kickbacks, fees and insecurity that come with the ride. Regardless of the present Fed overnight rate, would it be possible for a bank or credit union to set a prime rate of say 5%, with savings accounts yielding 4%, and capital loans for small and mid sized businesses (preferably worker coops) set at 6%?

I wanted to point you to this article which states that reducing the workforce and not hiring the appropriate security personnel by Walmart leads to higher crime rates and having to spend tax dollars through police on security that they are not providing. Just another example of the insane system we have. http://www.bloomberg.com/features/2016-walmart-crime/

The Invisible Disabilities Association has successfully trademarked the term “Invisible Disabilities”. What are the implications of trademarking a personal identity?

Hey Richard, I apologize if this comes off as ranting, I had a question in mind and then another idea popped into my head I'll also include. I appreciated your sharing of Virginie Pérotin's research in an economic update a week and a half ago. A friend of mine conducted some similar research for his thesis. Do you know if there is any research on the success of co-ops where they are less prevalent? I am curious whether an economic case can be made for new business owners in USA to make their business a co-op, or more interestingly current non-co-op USA based businesses to restructure themselves as cooperatives. This brought me to my second idea which is about franchises. Franchises I find to be one of the most viscerally unsettling things about our current system of capitalism. I am deeply bothered by the homogeneity it implies and is often then a mediocre product being replicated at that. I then often think of Staples and how if you wanted to simply buy a pack of pencils, a business as large as staples can buy in larger bulk and sell them for cheaper than a mom and pop store. I would think that a co-operative would have less incentive to become a franchise especially a very large one, as the democratic decision making would become unnecessarily challenging with so many workers. What is to be done with the current franchises we have? I find it almost a bit ironic in the same update you shared Pérotin's research you also spoke about Macy's closing 141 stores which of course is in one light a bad thing. Thanks so much, Murray Levy

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-08-16/suing-a-debt-collector-now-they-can-buy-your-lawsuit

I was hoping you might delve into the notion of "spectacle" and how it affects a capitalist society. Perhaps Dr. Fraad might delve into something in the human psyche that is easily drawn to spectacle and manipulated by it.

Can you talk about Simon Johnson and Farmers Co-Ops.

I'm curious if you have any alternative solutions for the Federal Reserve. Recently I've found out that there is more debt in this world than there is money, because of the Federal Reserve. Do you think this should get government controlled? Should there be a specific amount of currency? Or currency that fluctuates with something, say population?

http://www.alternet.org/food/healthy-snack-invented-indian-reservation-now-faces-stiff-corporate-competition can you talk about this?

Hello Prof. Wolff, you have often referred to capitalism as exploitative to the workers, because the capitalists take the fruits of the workers labor through profit. What do you say to the neoclassical Marginal Revenue Productivity Theory of Wages, which states that wages are equal to a worker's marginal product? Labor is the source of value I suppose, but what about machinery? Doesn't it create value too? If it creates value, wouldn't the capitalist be able to profit off of their machine's value in the long term?

Looks like this website got a recent update. It looks great but I am wondering where I can find the old courses by Dr. Wolff, there was a couple on Marx and I beleive one on worker coops.

Unemployment is not merely an unfortunate flaw in the capitalist system that can be corrected by taxing the rich, as you suggested in your closing remarks last week, professor. Unemployment is a structural feature of capitalism which disciplines the workforce and drives wages down in order to maximize profits, thus reproducing the capitalist class and the overall system. The only viable alternative is for a democratic mode of production to generate its own surplus to create new jobs in democratic enterprise, thus reproducing economic democracy.

1. Creative class is the driving force of the transition from capitalism to a cooperative model. Capitalism creates the creative class, but the creative class, unable to meet their higher-level needs in Maslow's pyramid in the framework of capitalism, brings the transition to co-operatives. Not the proletariat, as Marx believed, but the creative class brings the end to capitalism. 2. The transition from capitalism to cooperatives confirms dialectics of German philosopher Georg Hegel, namely, that the struggle of opposites (thesis and antithesis) is overcome in the synthesis. In economics, the struggle of trade unions and corporations owners is overcome by combining them into a synthesis - collective worker-owner of cooperatives. From Manifesto of the Creator Society Movement: http://www.creatorsociety.org/index.php/en/manifesto-eng/manifesto-eng

Charlie Rose recently interviewed Ted Koppel about his book "Lights Out" which is a expose on the dangers posed by cyberterrorists to the power grid and on a government that has done nothing to safeguard that system. I did some follow up reading which revealed the fact that it is the industry itself that is refusing to confront the danger because of the costs of doing so; moreover, I learned that although power distribution is overwhelmingly controlled by public companies, only 10% of power generation is under public control. Capitalists simply will not spend any money that does not contribute to their bottom line, even if the failure to safeguard power production exposes society to unimaginable calamity: without power, there is no water, no system of human waste disposal and consequently an increased likelihood of a public health crisis. I imagine that this failure is grounds enough to nationalize the entire energy system.

After listening to the economic inequality statistics mentioned in your August 12 program, I would love to hear you address an issue that goes virtually unacknowledged, much less challenged: Our culture suffers from a mass delusion about the nature of money (inequality being one end result). Money is almost universally considered to be a possession to be *owned* whereas in actuality, it should be viewed as a government-supplied utility (like roads, sewers, and water systems), supplied to facilitate the business of the nation - something to be *used* not owned. (Yet how often do we hear sentiments like "It's *my* money" or "taxation equals government theft of my money"?) One might refer to the street one lives on as "my street" but few would think of putting up barriers on "my street" and charging passing vehicles "interest" for using it. Yet because money can be hidden away in one's pocket (or bank account) and kept from others, the illusion of ownership is easier to maintain. The former sentiment probably derives from a time when money consisted of precious materials that could be self-mined and pocketed, whereas virtually all of today's money comes to us as merely a symbol, an agreement -- originating at the behest of the national government. (And the latter points to another unquestioned absurdity: that the government's hands are tied only to the amount of money it can collect in taxes.) Because of the above, money currently serves two opposing functions: store-of-value and medium-of-exchange. The more it does of one, the less is available for the other. Our current inequality crisis is due to a relative few who are hoarding up all the value, leaving insufficient money circulating to serve its commercial transaction function. If a group of individuals or corporations somehow managed to commandeer our national highways and turn them into toll roads for private gain, thus interfering with free transport, there would certainly be an uprising and a forceful response. How have we become comfortable with the same action for the public utility known as money?