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Economic Update with Richard D. Wolff

Militarism and Decline in Europe and the U.S.

Economic Update with Richard D. Wolff

Democracy at Work

Politics, News, Government

4.82.1K Ratings

🗓️ 3 March 2026

⏱️ 31 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

On this week's episode of Economic Update, Professor Wolff breaks down the simultaneous huge spending increases on the military in the U.S. and Europe, suggesting a shared crisis leading to a shared self-protective solution found by the ruling classes both in Europe and in the US. The shared end of colonialism plus the rise of global competition from China and the BRICS plunges their ruling classes into parallel crises, for which they prepare their last node of self-protection, namely building up domestic military. Europe does so in disguise and for self-protection against Russia. The U.S. does it by claiming self-protection from China, plus the rest of the world. We hope you enjoy this discussion and look forward to joining you next week for another all-new episode of Economic Update.


The d@w Team Economic Update with Richard D. Wolff is a DemocracyatWork.info Inc. 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 Or you can go to our website: https://www.democracyatwork.info/donate     Every donation counts and helps us provide a larger audience with the information they need to better understand the events around the world they can't get anywhere else.  We want to thank our devoted community of supporters who help make this show and others we produce possible each week. We kindly ask you to also support the work we do by encouraging others to subscribe to our YouTube channel and website: www.democracyatwork.info

Transcript

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0:00.0

Welcome, friends, to another edition of Economic Update, a weekly program devoted to the economic

0:27.2

dimensions of our lives and those of our children.

0:31.0

I'm your host, Richard Wolfe.

0:35.1

Today's program begins by recognizing a certain link between two crucial facts.

0:44.0

Fact number one, led by Germany, Europe is committing itself to a rapid, enormous remilitarization.

0:58.4

The German economy has committed to hundreds of billions of dollars in military buildup

1:06.9

over the next few years.

1:09.7

A commitment to military buildup, unlike anything we have seen in Europe

1:14.8

for generations. France is talking like that and the rest of Europe also. Fact number two,

1:25.8

Mr. Trump has announced that he will be going for an increase of the U.S.

1:32.2

military budget to $1.5 trillion in the coming fiscal year.

1:41.7

The current expenditure is at the rate of about $900 billion. So that's an increase of

1:51.1

$600 billion on a base of $900 billion. That's a two-thirds increase of our total military budget in a year. This is an enormous

2:07.3

build-up. It hasn't gotten anything like the attention it deserves. It means the government

2:15.6

will go much more into debt than it ever imagined it would have

2:20.5

to pay for that.

2:23.6

The tariffs, for example, are bringing in $200 billion a year, and he's talking about a

2:30.3

$600 billion a year increase in military spending, not even close.

2:37.3

What's going on?

2:39.5

Why?

2:41.2

That's what we're going to talk about today.

2:44.3

But before we do, I want to remind you that my course, Marxian class analysis, that I'm teaching together with Professor

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