Pages tagged "AskProfWolff"
Ask Prof Wolff: Pollution - Capitalism’s Creation, Everybody’s Problem
A Supporter of Democracy at Work asks: "GDP accounts for what we produce, but abjectly fails to take into account what we destroy to produce it, nor does it accept in its estimation the vast value of the natural world, and how this...
Read moreAsk Prof Wolff: Western Capitalism’s Decline
A Patron of Economic Update asks: "Hello Professor Wolff, I’m not sure how familiar you are with Canadian economics but things are very bad here. The average home price in 1980 was $47k ($163k adjusted for inflation), in 2000 it was $119k ($190k adjusted for inflation). Between January 2020 and March 2022, the average home price soared from $504,350 to $795,952. The average home price in my town, with a population of 100,000, is $1 million now. My entire generation has been...
Read moreAsk Prof Wolff: Athenian Democracy & Capitalist Propaganda
A Patron of Economic Update asks: "I noticed that in the Merriam-Webster dictionary result on Google Search for the word Marxism it listed antonyms as democracy, self-governance, self-government, self-rule. This seems very off and yet it comes from such a reputable source. Marxism is not by any stretch the...
Read moreAsk Prof Wolff: Free Markets & Monopolies
A Patron of Economic Update asks: "In college many years ago I took a couple introductory courses in economics. There I learned that a free market was a market with perfect competition where buyers and sellers could freely enter the competition. From this definition, it followed that a free market would set the price on a good so that supply equaled demand. And there was enough of a discussion on...
Read moreAsk Prof Wolff: The Transition to Worker Ownership
A Patron of Economic Update asks: "I’d like to ask a question because it seems to me that whenever a situation occurs where unionized workers try to take over a business from their employers, offering to buy it, the employers would rather...
Read moreAsk Prof Wolff: Journalist Cooperatives - An Antidote to Corrupt Media
A Patron of Economic Update asks: "Can you imagine that journalist cooperatives could exist, function well, and possibly help us out of some of our current problems? (Maybe such have existed, or do exist, but I just am not aware of them?) We know that the present media system is ethically bankrupt, where corporate or government (or quasi-government) directed agencies distract, manipulate, and...
Read moreAsk Prof Wolff: Will Politicians Ever Stand Up to Big Business?
A Patron of Economic Update asks: "I am confused by the 7/12/22 article in the Washington Post: 'Republicans threaten Wall Street over climate positions' by Steven Mufson (https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment). Are Republicans really...
Read moreAsk Prof Wolff: The Impacts of a Wage-Price Freeze
A Patron of Economic Update asks: "My question is about the wage-price freeze concept. If we are to assume that workers would have their wages frozen after decades of stagnated real wage growth and a collapse in purchasing power and we freeze prices how they currently are, then how would workers be able to pay for necessities when such a huge...
Read moreAsk Prof Wolff: Marx on the Role of the State
A Patron of Economic Update asks: "I recall having heard you say that Karl Marx never really talked much about the State because he wasn't all that interested in the State. People tell me their beef with Karl Marx is that he advocated for...
Read moreAsk Prof Wolff: Human Needs Should Not Be Tied to Profit
A Patron of Economic Update asks: "This is a question that I hope Dr. Wolff will discuss regarding US profit extraction from basic necessities for workers and families. How much does the extraction of profit from basics like health care, energy, housing, transportation, communication and food hurt the competitiveness of US workers by...
Read more









