Weekly Roundup: December 29, 2021

Check out the latest content from Democracy at Work.

New this week: Economic Update, Capitalism Hits Home & Ask Prof Wolff...

Check out the latest content from Democracy at Work!

Economic Update: The Contradictions of 2021

On this week's show, Prof. Wolff presents updates on Columbia University grad student strike, the contradictions of 2021, Cuba's Covid vaccine, Trump clone and French politics' lesson, why US manufacturing jobs keep vanishing, why capital-labor struggles affect high and low-paid workers alike: the baseball lockout, and Mitt Romney's 100% hypocritical attack on Dalio's China investments.

Wolff: "I want to recognize that the picture- the political picture- we deal with is very mixed. It's full, in the language I like, of contradictions: ways things are looking up and ways things are looking down. And I don't want to pretend it's one or the other; it's both.”

Capitalism Hits Home: Addiction and Desperation

In this episode of Capitalism Hits Home, Dr. Fraad looks at the epidemic of deaths in the United States. She examines the five interlocking forces of our for-profit health care system—pharmaceutical companies, pharmacy chains, hospitals, insurance companies, and doctors—that have colluded to bring on the flood of both Covid-19 and overdose deaths. Fraad argues that the solution to this crisis lies outside of the capitalist, profit-based system.

Fraad: "We have to stop capitalism particularly in health care, where it's literally killing people but also in its push for profit: outsourcing and dispossessing people to the point where they're hopeless and look for drugs to ease the pain.”

Ask Prof Wolff: Worker Co-op and Stock Markets

A Patron of Economic Update asks: "Professor, in your idea of a gradual transition to 'Democratic or Co-Op Business' from purely Capitalistic, how do you expect the stock market to react? While I agree that our current system is broken, I still am highly dependent on my 401K to sustain my income. I have to think many of us are." This is Professor Richard Wolff's video response.

Wolff: “These are things nobody who wants a transition to worker co-ops wants to get rid of. It's a question of adapting them to a system that's much fairer, much more equitable and fundamentally much more democratic.”

Ask Prof Wolff: What Defeats Corporate Plutocracy

A Patron of Economic Update asks: "This article says business opposition to Roosevelt's New Deal was exaggerated, and worker power overstated, and offers some explanation as to why. What do you think of that theory?" This is Professor Richard Wolff's video response.

Wolff: “Here's my real concern. What we lack in the United States today is not a concerned population; I would argue that the concerned population left-of-center in the United States is as big and as strong as it ever has been, and as it was in the 1930s. But what is lacking in this country are those organizations. The labor movement is at an all-time low in terms of who it represents and of its own internal strength.”