Saturday, November 12, 2011

Bad Theater in a time of crisis

I was listening to Alternative Radio the other night, and I heard Richard Wolff's talk entitled "Capitalism Hits the Fan." It disturbed me more than anything I've read in a long time, so I purchased the transcript, and I'd like to share a little of it on this blog. If you'd like to purchase a copy for yourself, here is the link: http://www.capitalismhitsthefan.com/
Richard Wolff is a Professor of Economics Emeritus at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst.
I'm just going to point out some of the highlights, but listen to the entire talk, its worth the time investment, and the transcript cost me $4.00 from the Alternative Radio Site:
--U-6, an employment statistic that the Bureau of Labor Statistics keeps, which measures not only the unemployed, but those who are working part time but want full time work and those who have stopped looking, is at 17.5%s or one out of six in the U.S., between 20 and 30 million.
--Currently, the government says we are working at about 70% capacity, meaning 30% of the tools, equipment, machines, office space, mall space is sitting empty, idle.
--30 Years ago, the U.S. was one of the least unequal societies in terms of the distribution of income and wealth, now we are the most unequal.
--Between 1934 and 1941, FDR and the federal government created and filled 11 million jobs, paid by taxing corporations, which used to pay $1.50 for every dollar collected from individuals and the wealthy, who used to be taxed at rates as high as 90%.
--Last year, when Obama tried to end the Bush era tax cuts, the debate was about raising the tax rate on the wealthiest from 35% to 39%, and it was defeated.
--While there are plenty of places to throw blame, Wolff points the finger at Capitalism itself, which, by nature is highly unstable.
--The current federal budget, voted on by both democrats and republicans, shows the government spending $3 1/2 trillion and bringing in taxes on individuals and corporations of $2 trillion. The difference in what we plan to spend and take in is $1 1/2 trillion, which is $ 1,500 Billion, which is our deficit for ONE YEAR.
--The Republicans entered the budget debate saying they wanted to slash the deficit by $100 billion. The democrats said that is too much, we can only trim it by $30 billion.
--When you compare the true size of the deficit ($1,500 billion) with the debate about reducing it between $100 and 30 billion, you see that the debates were as Richard Wolff describes, nothing more than "bad political theater."
--The way to reduce our deficit is to tax the wealth. That is the answer.
--The way to change the system long term is to change the way corporations are organized, from merely protecting the needs of the shareholders to looking after all of the employees of the organization as well.
Employee owned organizations seem to be the most logical answer to this problem, but that's my own two cents worth, and I am not an economist. What I do know is that the system is broken, and until we as a society own up to that, we are living in denial, which means we will continue to be unable to face the disease called capitalism. I'm ready to pull my head out of the sand, what about you?