COVID and The Rot of The American Ruling Class with Doug Henwood
Upstream
Upstream
4.9 • 2.1K Ratings
🗓️ 28 April 2020
⏱️ 40 minutes
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Summary
Continuing our focus on the coronavirus pandemic and its intersection with capitalism, in this conversation we speak with Doug Henwood, an economist and host of the radio show and podcast Behind the News. Doug is a regular guest on our show, and in this conversation he helped make sense of much of the economics surrounding the coronavirus, explaining the failure of the government's response, the different possibilities of how we might come out of this pandemic in the long run, and what coronavirus has taught us about the failures of capitalism. The interview was conducted by Upstream producer, Robert Raymond. Upstream's theme music composed by: Robert Raymond. Thanks to Haley Heyderickx for the intermission music.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, The American elite now has just had it, everything has gone their way now since |
| 0:25.1 | you know early 1980s, late 1970s and they are absolutely afraid of yielding |
| 0:31.0 | anything to popular demands. The lowering of expectations is one of the great agenda. of benefits out of government, you know, they're going to want more. And despite what could be an |
| 0:45.1 | extremely popular appeal of such programs, they just don't want to do that because it would |
| 0:50.4 | undermine their class authority and they really don't want any part of that. |
| 0:54.7 | I think in a crisis you just have to spend money and not even think about where it's coming from. |
| 0:59.3 | I can understand the rationale for that. |
| 1:01.8 | But you know coming out of this or if we want to come out of this in a |
| 1:04.7 | decent and civilized fashion we need to do things very very differently. |
| 1:09.3 | You are listening to upstream. |
| 1:11.3 | Upstream. Upstream. Upstream. Upstream. I'm Dela Duncan and I'm Robert Raymond. |
| 1:17.6 | Continuing our focus on the coronavirus pandemic and its intersection with |
| 1:21.7 | capitalism. In this conversation we speak with Doug Henwood, |
| 1:25.8 | an economist and the host of the radio show and podcast behind the news. |
| 1:30.4 | Doug is a regular guest in our show and in this conversation he helped us make sense of much of the economics surrounding the coronavirus |
| 1:38.4 | explaining the failure of the US government's response the different possibilities of how we might come out of the |
| 1:44.2 | pandemic in the long run, and what the coronavirus has taught us about the |
| 1:49.1 | failures of capitalism. This interview was conducted by upstream co-producer Robert Raymond. |
| 1:57.0 | It's great to talk to you again. |
| 2:00.0 | Thanks for coming back on upstream. |
| 2:02.0 | Oh, it's good to be here. |
| 2:03.5 | So I guess, yeah, just to start off, |
... |
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