What's Coming Is Worse Than A Recession. - Richard Wolff

[00:00:00] Speaker 1: These are empty gestures. If you're going to do something about inflation, say so. Don't tell us you're going to do something about inflation when you never do. And when you choose an instrument such as raising interest rates, when will there be the courage of a politician to say raising interest rates is a remarkably stupid way of dealing with price inflation? After all, interest is a price. And if you raise it to avoid raising prices, there's something wrong here. Something doesn't compute. And we have alternatives. Price control is an alternative. A price wage freeze, which Mr. Nixon, the Republican, did, is an alternative. And the alternatives have problems associated with them. But so does the raising interest rates. I mean, the level of childish make-believe is not a testimony to the literacy of our people. Please like and subscribe me. This is junk. This is junk thinking. It's as if you said, "The problem is rain." Well, rain is going to happen. The question is, what are you going to do about rain? Are you going to build a structure that keeps you dry or not? Otherwise, you're shaking your fist at the sky, which doesn't have much of an effect. Shaking your fist at affordability is an empty gesture. It means nothing. If you want to do something, say something about price control. Oh, you are going to do price control? You're going to raise the level of wages? You're going to bring down the rentals? You're going to have rent control? Oh, those are real issues. And by the way, in those municipalities in America, where rent control is legal, like here in New York City, where I'm sitting, where Michael is sitting, we have politicians who have to take a position on rent control. One of the reasons Mamdani won the mayoral race is he promised to bring down the rents using rent control. Either you talk seriously about what you're going to do or you fake it. When Rahm Emanuel or Vance talks about affordability, their ideologues have handled them a way to gesture in the direction of a topic without taking any position whatsoever that could bring it about. It's a little bit like the last eight or nine presidents in their campaigns saying they're going to reshore American manufacturing, culminating in Mr. Trump. Remember, he was going to bring manufacturing back. Well, take a look at the percentage of American workers in manufacturing. It's a line that goes down across all of the last 10 presidents, including Trump. They all promised it. None of them delivered it. And so they continue to promise it. Why not? The people who might be frightened aren't frightened because it meant nothing. You're just hoping that the average person who doesn't know the history or doesn't pay attention might be persuaded. It's a freebie. You know what it's like? It's like offering $5,000 to voters if they vote Republican. Look how successful that was. These are empty gestures. If you're gonna do something about inflation. Don't tell us you're gonna do something about inflation when you never do. And when you choose an instrument such as raising interest rates, when will there be the courage of a politician to say raising interest rates is a remarkably stupid way of dealing with price inflation. After all, interest is a price. And if you raise it to avoid raising prices, there's something wrong here. Something doesn't compute. And we have alternatives. Price control is an alternative. A price wage freeze which Mr. Nixon, the Republican did, is an alternative. And the alternatives have problems associated with them. But so does the raising interest rates. I mean, the level of childish make belief is not it's not a testimony to the literacy of our people. It's a testimony to the failure of the academic economist, of the mass media, in doing even the most minimal job of explaining what the schools can't do. They could do, but they didn't do it. And they don't do it. And they spend their lives doing high paid consulting, so that they can redefine into a safe territory, the problem of inflation by being all interested in affordability. the ability. I pay attention to France. In France, the people in the streets are demanding higher wages, higher government services, higher pension benefits. Real clear. No way. That's the standard. Are you going to deliver that or not? It's very interesting to me that they manage there to craft demands that have some bite. We are outstanding in avoiding it like the plague, as if we really were beset by a class of politicians whose real skill is in defanging every possible initiative for the mass of people and coming up with only new programs that will enhance the wealth of those already at the top. No wonder the mass of people hate them. No wonder there's this gut level. I was struck by Mr. Tallarico, the Senate winner in Texas. He did at least say this is a vote of the bottom against the top. Granted, that's abstract, but it's getting a little closer. What the others have is not even the courage to say that. There is a difference between Europe and the United States. And I want to make sure that that's part of our conversation. Very briefly. In virtually all European countries, there are multiple political parties. They have something that could at least reasonably be called freedom of choice. They actually have choices: right wing, left wing, in the middle, leaning left, leading right, center left, center. Those are common language usages in European politics. We don't have that. We homogenize all of that difference into two parties and then seem mystified that in the minds of most people, what the hell difference does it make? So they vote Republican because their parents did or their their neighborhood does or their cohort where they work do and so forth. It's a sad commentary. But the difference is shattering. And the question is only when will the political inaction that characterizes the United States, both parties, produce such disaffection the United States, the United States, the United States, the United States, the United States, and the United States, the United States? What would the American electorate do if there was a program that said, "No landlord can charge more than 30% of your income for rental?" Period. End of conversation. That's a massive shift. A massive shift of real estate wealth from one community to another. When? When? Those shifts are going on in the corporate world all the time. But they're not part of our political discourse because the people who work on them don't permit it. And the question then is why do we permit it? Why do we permit to be excluded all such issues that are relevant to us? There again, the minimum wage important not because of the number of our workers that are affected by it is still relatively small, but of the symbolic meaning that the poorest paid workers and getting $7.25, which is the federal minimum wage wage per hour as I am speaking. Having gotten that raised last in the year 2009 means that the Republican and Democratic parties and the donors who keep them afloat found it of convenience to not raise the minimum wage to not raise the minimum wage above $7.25 for the last 17 years, during every one of which prices rose. The capacity to so savage the lowest paid amongst us tells you where the working class is in the political system like the American. Please like and subscribe me.