Today's episode includes updates on Obama's harshness regarding student debt, how much corporations and the rich abuse tax havens, MIT rejects fossil-fuel divestment and Tylenol's profit over safety practices. Prof. Wolff responds to listeners on where...

This week's edition of Economic Update features discussion on: saving capitalism, looming economic downturn, 250,000 against TTIP in Berlin, US plan to give Puerto Rican taxes to banks, and a one-on-one interview with Ms. Laura Flanders, an independent journalist on co-ops vs capitalism.

This article originally appeared at Truth-out.org

Volkswagen (VW), we now know, systematically evaded pollution control regulations. Over the last decade it defrauded 11 million buyers of its diesel-engine vehicles, fouled the planet's environment and...

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 Wolff analyzes several major economic issues...

Updates on Swedish plan for peaceful transition beyond capitalism, ripoffs in car insurance, Ferguson, MO credit downgrade. Response to listeners on the CA drought and on best solution for corporate abuses like VW's. Major discussions of...

Prof. Wolff spoke in Kansas City, Missouri at the All Souls Forum on September 13, 2015, and at the University of Missouri – Kansas City on September 14.. Shortly after his forum appearance...

Sometimes public debates focus on important social issues; at other times, debates distract from them. Disputes over whether the Federal Reserve System should raise interest rates illustrate that second sort. Yes, "serious people" take...

This week's updates include a look into new Detroit book, the Mayor's austerity policy in Chicago, homeless school children and soaring medical insurance deductibles. Prof. Wolff responds to...

This week's updates include the GM settlement, a look at why the Census Bureau proves there is no recovery for 90% and why GE is moving jobs overseas. Prof. Wolff responds to listeners on FED...

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 Wolff analyzes several major economic issues. For September these will include...

This week's updates include the economics of refugees, Ford buys French political wife, LAs homeless, Labor Day history, Seattle Teachers strike and why Japan's jobs are ever more precarious...

Updates on extreme poverty, workers' victory over tech giants, NFL concussions,  Trump's economics analyzed, and Oakland for worker coops. Response to listeners on...

Updates on Dismaland theme park, reghettoization, western fires, Amazon undercuts pensions, and analyzing market chaos vs blaming China. Major discussions of ...

Updates on Labor Day's meaning, Amazon's workplace horrors, Dunkin Donuts' CEO against $ 15/hr, and how capitalism undermines recycling. Response to questions on shifting US federal tax burdens and on state's role in capitalist economies. Major discussion of criticism of capitalism and directions for a better system. 

These programs begin with 30 minutes of short updates on important economic events of the last month. Then Wolff analyzes several major economic issues. For this August, these will include... 

Germany's leaders herded their European counterparts into imposing harsh austerity on Greece. It was the price, they insisted, that Greece had to pay to...

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 this July...

Not for many years has the issue been posed as clearly as it will be on July 5 in Greece's referendum: European capitalists, the political leaders whom the capitalists' money controls, and...

Regulated private capitalism. State capitalism. Socialism. These three systems are entirely different from each other. We need to understand the differences...

Most business leaders, mass media, politicians and academics keep defining capitalism, the main economic system in today’s world, as markets plus private (“free”) enterprises. That definition is wrong...

Today's updates include an analysis of unemployment numbers to show what they hide as well as reveal. Responses to listeners' questions expose the economics of lotteries and why the largest US corporations have recently used their profits to buy back their shares in the stock markets. The second half of the show features an in-depth interview with Prof. Sohnya Sayres where we explore the end of free college and universities in the US, the rise of administrators dominating students and faculty and what these trends have meant for the quality of higher education in the US.

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 Wolff analyzes several major economic issues. For this June...

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 May 13th...

Updates on Alberta election, Kansas closes schools early, Gallup polls on unequal US wealth and on average work weeks over 40 hours, Uber and markets, ignorance about USSR economy. Response to listeners on...

This episode of Economic Update includes updates on the May Day holiday, the Baltimore uprising, the Nepal earthquake and poverty, Varoufakis vs repression, Bud Light pushing beer by endangering women and responses to listeners' questions on varieties of coops, plus an Interview with Prof. Yahya Madra on Turkey, Capitalism, and Islam!

In this edition of Economic Update we will examine the potential impacts of the UK elections, the economic crisis' long-term effects, how Kansas demonizes the poor and the mustard-ketchup economic war. We’ll also have responses to listeners’ questions on child-support economics and US car production moving to Mexico.

This edition of Economic Update include updates on: Bernanke's new big-bucks finance job, how GM is avoiding billions in victims' claims for faulty ignitions, how a Seattle capitalist raised all of his employees salaries to a $70k/yr, Americans' self-delusion on inequality, how private profit is trumping public policy and anti-student-debt activism...

In this edition of Economic Update, we take a look at inadequate unemployment insurance, where Ted Cruz's campaign money is coming from, a law that’s giving domestic workers real benefits and who’s demonizing the poor. We also hear responses to listener questions on the California drought and the US medical system's experiments on real people. 

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 Wolff analyzes several major economic issues. For this April 8...

As economic crises, declines and dislocations increasingly hurt or threaten people around the globe, they provoke questions. How are we to understand the forces that produced the 2008 crisis, the crisis itself, with its quick bailouts and stimulus programs, and now the debts, austerity policies and deepening economic inequalities that do not go away? Economies this troubled force people to think and react. Some resign themselves to "hard times" as if they were natural events. Some pursue individual strategies trying to escape the troubles. Some mobilize to fight whoever they blame for it all. Many are drawn to scapegoating, usually encouraged by politicians and parties seeking electoral advantages.

This episode of Economic Update features a look into the car parts industry, why and how German courts cut Uber, how Russia's economy is growing despite economic sanctions, why there’s no recovery in declining teaching positions in the US for new PhDs...

In this episode of Economic Update we take a look at the Trans-Pacific Partnership secrets, the Heinz-Kraft merger, the overly costly and underperforming US medical care system, the fines for Graco selling faulty child car-seats, China's real-estate bubble and the estate tax repeal being pushed by Republican House Representatives. We will also hear responses to listeners on property: private versus public and discuss how system change has happened in the past and and how it can and should happen within capitalism today.

Co-sponsored by Democracy at Work, Left Forum, and Judson Memorial Church.

The program began with 30 minutes of short updates on important economic events of the last month. Then Prof. Wolff analyzes several major economic issues. For this March 11...

Thousands of years ago, various religions developed an idea some called “jubilee.” It entailed the acts of canceling or reversing income and/or wealth inequalities (especially of land holdings and debts) that had developed in their societies. Often, jubilees were stipulated to occur periodically every 49 years, more or less. The point was not to change the socio-economic system; it was rather to redistribute property and then restart the same system again as a way to preserve it. Variations of the jubilee idea have survived and occasionally surfaced into public discourse ever since.

Prof. Wolff talks to David Rabin of WPFW, a Pacifica station in Washington, DC about his recent Truthout article on a class analysis of the lessons we need to learn from past revolutions.

CPR News interviews Prof. Wolff about the current situation in Greece, Syriza and the economic issues facing Europe.

The winds of change are blowing harder. The crisis since 2007 has renewed criticism of capitalism, but pressure for change has built far longer than that. So it is time to draw some lessons from the major social changes of the past and apply them now. One of the most important lessons concerns class. How activists see and act on today's class system can make social movements more effective now than in the past - as a brief historical review can show.

“The Economics of a New Year” 

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 Wolff analyzes several major economic issues. For this February 4, 2015...

In the following interview, New School professor and economist Richard Wolff provides his analysis of the causes of the economic crisis in Greece and in the eurozone, debunks claims that the Greek economy is recovering and offers his proposal for what a post-capitalist future could look like for Greece and the world.

“The Economics of a New Year”  

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 this January 14...

The new, more Republican Congress may "privatize" the United States Postal Service: dismantle the public enterprise and turn mail services over to private enterprises. Such a privatization would mimic what the US military has done with part of its activities and what many states and cities did with utilities, transport systems and schools...

Government austerity for the masses (raising taxes and cutting public services) is becoming the issue shaping politics in western Europe, north America, and Japan. In the US, austerity turned millions away from the polls where before they supported an Obama who promised changes from such policies. So Republicans will control Congress and conflicts over austerity will accelerate. In Europe, from Ireland's Sinn Fein to Spain's Podemos to Greece's Syriza, we see challenges to a shaken, wounded political status quo...

Wage growth in the world slowed to an average of 2 percent in 2013. That was less than in 2012 and far less than the pre-crisis rate of 3 percent. Starker still were the differences between wage growth in the "developed world" (chiefly Western Europe, North America and Japan) and wage growth in the major "emerging growth" countries, chiefly China.

The International Labor Organization (ILO) just released a report on December 5, 2014 (http://www.ilo.org/global/about-the-ilo/newsroom/news/WCMS_324645/lang--en/index.htm) sharply exposing what the development of global capitalism means and costs. Here are its key conclusions:

Societies today where capitalist economic systems prevail confront government gridlock. Facing serious and deepening economic problems, even when their leaders can...

Hype went wild coming into last week's 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. "Freedom" had been achieved. The German Democratic Republic (GDR)...

YDS National Organizer Betsy Avila recently sat down withRichard Wolff, Professor of Economics and visiting professor at The New School in New York...

Changes in the capitalist system's operating procedures, rules and regulations are always presented as if they were in everyone's interest, a kind of "everybody wins" social progress. The changes usually turn out to be mostly or entirely in capitalists' interests since they run their system that way. Are we surprised and shocked?

Global capitalism has huge problems coping with the second worst collapse in its history. Its extreme and deepening inequalities have provoked millions to question and challenge capitalism. Yet socialists of all sorts now find it more difficult than ever to make effective criticisms and offer alternatives that inspire.

Recent press reports refer to troubling price increases for such assets as real estate, government bonds, companies targeted for acquisition and artwork. A New York Times front-page headline read “The Everything Boom, or Maybe the Everything Bubble.”

General Motors recently released the report it commissioned from the huge Jenner & Block law firm. The latter's chairman, Anton Valukas, investigated how and why GM failed - for over 10 years - to recall cars it produced while knowing they had defective ignition switches. The eventual recall of 2.6 million Chevrolet...

Widening gaps between rich and poor, the top 1% and the rest, are heating up debates, struggles and recriminations over redistributing income. Should governments' taxing, spending, and regulatory powers redistribute income from the wealthy to others, and if so, how exactly? As opinions and feelings polarize, political conflicts sharpen.

The organized post-1945 destruction of the New Deal coalition - unionists, socialists and communists - and the failure to replace those organizations help explain the muted reaction to the bailouts, austerity and other anti-democratic policies pursuedby US governments at all levels.

Richard Wolff has emerged as one of the most prominent progressive economists in America. He appears on Free Speech TV, Link TV, and Pacifica Radio, and has been a repeat guest on Bill Moyers’s program, as well as appearing on Charlie Rose’s show...

NEW YORK CITY, U.S.A. The economic crisis of 2008 has shown the dark side of capitalism. Due to irresponsibility and risky behavior at the most powerful financial institutions...

If you happen to be looking for your morning coffee near Golden Gate Park and the bright red storefront of the Arizmendi Bakery attracts your attention, congratulations. You have found what the readers of The San Francisco Bay Guardian, a local alt-weekly, deem the city’s best bakery. But it has another, less obvious, distinction. Of the $3.50 you hand over for a latte (plus $2.75 for the signature sourdough croissant)...

An interview with renowned economist Richard Wolff, discussing the current economic situation in Greece, Europe and the United States, plus his proposal for moving on to a new, postcapitalist system. In English. Aired March 20-21, 2014.

President Obama's proven reliability as outsider president extraordinaire - putting a disarming smiley face on capitalism's depredations - is his administration's economic significance.

Richard Wolff talks about "The Shape of a Post-Capitalist Future," his entry in the new anthology Imagine: Living in a Socialist USA, and his conviction that making the transition from capitalism to socialism requires a deliberate critique of capitalist workplace organization.

“…we’re outraged by politicians and outside special interest groups interfering…” – UAW Secretary-Treasurer Dennis Williams

Nearly daily, mass media report political corruption across the world. Government bureaucrats, from local to national to international, are exposed for having abused their offices for personal gain. That gain is usually financial, but can involve...

“I’ve got to pinch myself; I’m having the time of my life,” Professor Richard Wolff proclaimed to a standing-room-only crowd last week.

Workers' self-directed enterprises (WSDEs) are a response to capitalism's failure to deliver economic prosperity and socialism's failure to deliver economic democracy.

2013 drove home a basic lesson: US capitalism's economic leaders and their politicians now regularly ignore majority opinions and preferences. For example, polls showed overwhelming popular support for higher taxes on the rich with lower taxes on the rest of us and for reversing the nation's deepening economic inequalities. Yet Republicans and Democrats, including President Obama, raised payroll taxes sharply on January 1, 2013. Those taxes are regressive; they take a smaller percentage of your income the higher your income is above $113,700 per year. Raising the payroll tax increased economic inequality across 2013.

Recently, through an e-mail exchange I was able to ask Richard Wolff a few questions about economics and alternatives to capitalism. Dr. Wolff is a Professor of Economics Emeritus at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst...

Capitalism as a system seems incapable of solving its unemployment problem. It keeps generating long-term joblessness, punctuated by spikes of recurring short-term extreme joblessness. The system's leaders cannot solve or overcome the problem...

Barack Obama speaking in March 2013 about the sequester, the automatic spending cuts mandated by Congress. Photograph: Carolyn Kaster/AP

After 200 years of concentrating its centers in western Europe, north America, and Japan, capitalism is moving most of its centers elsewhere and especially to China, India, Brazil and so on. This movement poses immense problems of transition at both poles. The classic problems of early, rapid capitalist industrialization are obvious daily in the new centers. What we learn about early capitalism when we read Charles Dickens, Emile Zola, Maxim Gorky and Jack London, we see now again in the new centers.

The economic aim of both major US political parties is, in the end, the same: to protect and reinforce the capitalist system.

Curators of New York City’s annual arts festival called us a couple of months ago. Would we be interested in having a public discussion with the artist, Steve Lambert, whose work was a major part of this year’s festival? The festival’s title is “Crossing the Line 2013,” and Lambert’s large neon-lighted installation (9 feet by 20 feet by 7 feet) says “Capitalism Works for Me.” Observers can respond by pressing either a “True” or “False” button.

Many Germans in the years before 1933 dismissed the little man with the mustache: He could never take power, let alone keep it. Tzarist Russia’s elites thought the small social democratic party posed little threat. Batista’s minions ridiculed the lawyer and his friends...

From President Obama on down, defenders of the status quo insist that the US economy has "recovered" or "is recovering". Some actually see the world that way. They inhabit, imagine they inhabit, or plan to soon inhabit the world of the infamous top 1%. Others simply seek security in life by loyally repeating whatever that 1% is saying.

Organized labor's decline in the US over the past half century is well-known; what drove that decline, less so. The New Deal's enemies – big business, Republicans, conservatives – had...

A Catalan translation of this article is available at Espai Fàbrica.

Capitalism as a system ought to be judged by its failures as well as its successes.

Detroit's struggle with bankruptcy might find some relief, or at least distraction, by presenting its desperate economic and social conditions as a tourist attraction. "Visit Detroit," today's advertisement might begin, "see your region's future here and now: the streets...

Capitalism and real democracy never had much to do with one another. In contrast, formal voting in elections has worked nicely for capitalism. After all, elections have rarely posed, let alone decided, the question of capitalism: whether voters prefer it or an alternative economic system. Capitalists have successfully kept elections focused elsewhere, on non-systemic questions and choices. That success enabled them first to equate democracy with elections and then to celebrate elections in capitalist countries as proof of their democracy. Of course, even elections were and are allowed only outside capitalist enterprises. Democratic elections inside them -- where employees are the majority -- never happen.