Inflation with Richard Wolff & Dean Baker
Upstream
Upstream
4.9 • 2.1K Ratings
🗓️ 7 December 2021
⏱️ 64 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In this episode, we're talking inflation — a somewhat slippery topic that has been dominating headlines recently. It's all caught up in the murky and often misleading narratives floating around on the pandemic economy, things we've discussed recently like the quote labor shortage, supply chains, spending bills in Washington. Anyways, the mainstream narratives get a lot wrong. Especially when they're coming from the more right-wing elements — there's just a lot of bad analysis and straight up mis- and even dis- information out there. So, we're gonna take a shot at trying to actually unpack this idea of inflation: what is it? Why are we seeing inflation taking place? Why is the mainstream coverage of it often flawed? We've brought on two guests to unpack things for us. Dean Baker is an American macro-economist who co-founded the Center for Economic and Policy Research. Richard Wolff is an economist, Professor Emeritus of Economics at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, and currently a Visiting Professor in the Graduate Program in International Affairs of the New School in New York.
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Transcript
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| 0:34.6 | No, we don't have an inflation because there's more or less money in the economy. |
| 1:01.4 | That best, that's a part of the story. |
| 1:05.2 | But the crucial part, the one that's carefully avoided, is the power we give to a tiny |
| 1:13.4 | minority of people, employers, to determine what the prices are we pay. |
| 1:19.2 | Let's be real clear, we're allowing a minority that lives off profits to decide what the |
| 1:26.9 | prices are. |
| 1:29.1 | Whereas we, who don't live off profits, we live off wages. |
| 1:34.2 | We are excluded from the prices, even though what the wages are for us depends on the prices |
| 1:40.8 | we have to pay. |
| 1:43.0 | A minority thereby shapes the economic reality of the majority, and that, folks, is not |
| 1:51.7 | democratic. |
| 1:52.7 | You're listening to upstream. |
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