Recession is Business as Usual Under Capitalism

The Socialist Program with Brian Becker

The Socialist Program

Politics, News

4.7 • 587 Ratings

🗓️ 7 June 2023

⏱️ 28 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

On today's episode Walter Smolarek and Prof. Richard Wolff discuss how economists around the world are agonizing over the question – Will the United States enter a recession, and how bad will it be? New economic data shows that the job market remains relatively strong, but under the twisted logic of capitalism this may in fact lead the Federal Reserve to implement policies that could make an economic downturn more explosive.

Professor Richard Wolff is an author & co-founder of the organization Democracy at Work. You can find his work at rdwolff.com.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Economists around the world are agonizing over the question, will the United States enter a recession, and how bad will it be?
0:10.0	New economic data shows that the job market remains strong, but under the twisted logic of capitalism, this may in fact lead the Federal Reserve to implement policies that could make an economic downturn more explosive.
0:24.9	We need a new system. We need a new society.
0:29.0	We need to demand that which may have sounded impossible even a few weeks ago,
0:33.7	but is not only realizable, but an imperative necessity. We were very excited to have Professor Richard Wolfe join us for a regular weekly segment where we discuss the biggest stories relating to the economy, the state of the working class, and the crimes of big business.
1:13.1	I'm Walter Smolerick, filling in for Brian Becker.
1:17.6	The Socialist Program brings you content three days a week thanks to the support of our patrons at patreon.com slash the Socialist Program.
1:20.9	We appreciate all of your support and encourage you to become a patron today if you enjoy
1:25.6	listening to the show.
1:27.7	Richard Wolfe is the co-founder of the organization Democracy at Work and the author of many
1:32.7	books, the latest being The Sickness is the System when capitalism fails to save us
1:36.8	from pandemics or itself.
1:38.3	You can follow all of his work at r.d.wulf.com.
1:43.7	So, Professor Wolfe, there was a new jobs report that came out at the end of last
1:48.1	week. It was stronger than most people expected. The number of jobs created was reportedly
1:54.0	339,000 that's up from the month before, and that remains, you know, considerably above what would be considered sort of the historical average, the historical norm for a month's worth of job creation.
2:07.7	Sounds like great news for almost everybody in society, but just walk us through the dynamics at play here.
2:15.2	Why is this actually considered to be bad news in the boardrooms at Wall
2:20.3	Street? If you will allow me, before I answer your good question, let me say a couple of words
2:27.2	about these unemployment statistics. They measure what it is that the statisticians working for the government, mostly in the Bureau of Labor
2:38.8	Statistics, but in other agencies as well, what they are told to do by their ultimately political
2:46.4	supervisors. How to count, what to count. It's a sensitive topic. Elections are won and lost
	...

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