Crises Deepen: Shifting Socialisms, Exploding Debt, Strange Elections
Co-sponsored by Democracy at Work, Left Forum, and Judson Memorial Church
These programs begin with 30 minutes of short updates on important economic events of the last month. Then Prof. Wolff analyzes several major economic issues. For the month of May, these will include:
1. “Democratic Socialism” declining fast in Europe, rising in US: why?
2. Shared lessons of govt debt crises in Detroit, Puerto Rico, and beyond
3. Presidential candidates’ economic “programs”: what they are and what they mean for the US
Our goal: to develop all participants’ understanding and ability to explain current economic events and trends to others. When time permits, we open the floor to questions and comments.
If you primarily access the videos of the monthly updates posted here on YouTube, we ask you to join our attendees who contribute at least $10 at each event to help defray costs of producing, video-taping, and distributing these videos. Contributions to Democracy at Work are tax deductible (we gladly provide receipts at the event or can mail one of requested). For those able to contribute more than $10, our special thanks.
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I appreciated Prof. Wolff’s explanation of hedge funds. Most of the time when someone attempts to teach you about them, it’s largely in the Wall Street gibberish one would similarly find in having a doctor explain a disease that has seventeen letters and no less than five syllables. How Wolff explained it, in simple terms, is how everyone needs to be taught it. It’s another form of casino capitalism with someone else’s money.
At some point, I think we’ll get to the dire point that there will only be two options that politicians will have when trying to get more money for public services. One is they’ll, at some point if FDR is any example, have to wrest it from the rich. Or two, just let the country/state/municipality collapse. While FDR had to be pushed by the Communist/Socialist/Union forces to get the rich to pay up, there are no such forces today. This is when a modern coalition among the Greens, all socialist parties especially including the Socialist Alternatives, Independents led by perhaps Jesse Ventura, perhaps the Libertarians and others might be in order. I would prefer to leave the Constitution Party out of it altogether.