Declining Global Inequality And Socialism
Economic Update with Richard D. Wolff
Democracy at Work
4.8 • 2.1K Ratings
🗓️ 21 September 2023
⏱️ 29 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
NOTE TO SUBSCRIBERS: Despite the multiple setbacks we have experienced over the last several months in our efforts to continue producing and releasing Economic Update here on YouTube, we are very excited to announce the return of Economic Update to YouTube as of today. Over the next few days/weeks we will be releasing episodes of EU we were unable to share with our community of subscribers throughout the summer.
You can find out more about why we were unable to deliver EU to you here on YouTube by going to our website: https://www.democracyatwork.info and signing up for our newsletter that is scheduled to resume weekly distribution next week. Remember to check back here regularly as we continue to resume delivering the content and work we enjoy sharing with you and the rest of the world. Thanks as always for your attention & support,
The d@w Team
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This week's updates focus on the ridiculously low ranking of the U.S. among OECD nations, why & how mega-corps get richer faster than we do, the palpable solidarity between the Labor Unions and the writers' strike in the U.S, the UPS teamsters 97% vote to strike beginning on Aug 1, and how Pfizer fails to maintain supplies of penicillin. The major topics of discussion include why global inequality among nations is now falling, and why the phrase "socialism does not work" is flat out wrong.
Economic Update with Richard D. Wolff is a @democracyatwrk production. We make it a point to provide the show free of ads and rely on viewer support to continue doing so. You can support our work by joining our Patreon community: https://www.patreon.com/democracyatwork Every donation counts and helps us spread Prof. Wolff's message to a larger audience.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome, friends, to another edition of Economic Update, a weekly program devoted to the economic |
| 0:16.1 | dimensions of our lives and those of our children. |
| 0:20.2 | I'm your host, Richard Wolfe. Today we're going to be |
| 0:23.5 | talking about where the United States ranks among the OECD, 38 countries of mostly developed |
| 0:31.4 | economic systems. I think you'll be shocked. We're going to talk about how the 12 largest |
| 0:36.8 | corporations have been doing in terms of how the 12 largest corporations have been doing |
| 0:38.6 | in terms of the prices of their stocks held mostly by wealthy people, and it'll help you |
| 0:44.4 | understand what's happening to the U.S. economy in reality, as opposed to what our political |
| 0:50.7 | leaders are telling us. Then I'm going to talk to you about solidarity, |
| 0:55.2 | other unions going out on strike in support of the Writers Guild of America, striking Hollywood. |
| 1:03.9 | It's a study in internationalism of the labor movement that's very important. Then I'll have |
| 1:10.4 | a few words to say about the |
| 1:12.1 | vote to strike by the Teamsters Union, working for the United Parcel Service, UPS. |
| 1:18.8 | They were voted 97% to go on strike, and I'll talk about what that means. And finally, |
| 1:24.7 | I'll talk about the meaning of the decision by the Pfizer pharmaceutical company |
| 1:30.3 | to announce to us, yes, there's a shortage of penicillin. You know, a drug's been around for, I don't know, 100 years, but they can't keep up because of the way they profiteer. And that's the important issue. Before I jump |
| 1:47.8 | into doing all this, I wanted to remind you that we now have a wonderful volunteer, |
| 1:53.9 | Charlie Fabian, who is gathering materials sent in by you, watchers and listeners. When you see an important story that you think we |
| 2:03.3 | ought to devote some attention to, let us know. It's a way for you to partner with us |
| 2:08.5 | and for us to have a network of people feeding us the material that we then analyze on this |
| 2:14.8 | program. I'm going to give you Charlie's email so that if you'd like to participate, |
| 2:20.8 | you can talk with him and he can help you do whatever amount of work of this sort you might like |
... |
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