Mounting Economic Problems

Economic Update with Richard D. Wolff

Democracy at Work

Coops, Economics, Economy, Workercooperative, Capitalism, Politics, News, Government

4.8 • 1.9K Ratings

🗓️ 1 April 2025

⏱️ 31 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In this week's episode of Economic Update, Professor Wolff discusses certain minimum wages by the Trump administration, the costs of Germany's rearmament, and how Trump's tariffs and deportations have hit central America with economic catastrophe. The second half features a detailed discussion of the historical blaming of foreigners for the internal problems of capitalism in the U.S.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome, friends, to another edition of Economic Update, a weekly program devoted to the
0:25.8	economic dimensions of our lives and those of our children.
0:29.9	I'm your host, Richard Wolfe.
0:32.7	As usual, I begin by reminding you that Charlie Fabian is available to take your ideas, suggestions,
0:39.2	criticisms of what we do on this program. And I want to thank you for all that you have sent in.
0:45.1	You can reach him at Charlie.Info-438 at gmail.com. And likewise, I want to remind you that we have this new book, Understanding
0:56.6	Capitalism, which is something of a companion book, you might say, to this program. Many of the
1:03.5	points we bring up here are developed in detail in that book and made accessible and understandable. It's like a course in what capitalism
1:13.4	really is, punctuated by what we do on a weekly basis here. And I recommend it to you.
1:21.1	You can find out more about it by going to our website, www. Democracy at Work.info slash books.
1:31.3	Today we're going to be talking about a remarkable act by the Trump Labor Department.
1:37.3	We're going to be talking about what Elon Musk proposes for Amtrak and the post office.
1:43.3	The German decision to rearm, which those of you
1:48.1	with a notion of history will want to think about long and hard, and then an analysis of
1:55.5	Trump's tariffs. In the second half of the show, we're going to talk about a longstanding obsession in the
2:03.6	United States, and I mean that, an obsession with foreigners, a need and a tendency to constantly
2:11.6	blame foreigners for the problems we have at home because it is so difficult to face the problems we have at home.
2:22.3	It's a little bit like what we do sometimes in our personal lives when we blame others for something where we ourselves bear a good bit of the responsibility.
2:33.3	So let's jump right in. The United States
2:37.7	Labor Department and the Trump administration made a decision. Actually Mr. Trump made it. He
2:44.5	let everyone know he made it. He instructed the Labor Department to change the existing law.
2:53.8	Under the existing law here in the United States, any business that does work on contract
	...

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