Review of 2024: The U.S. Economy Not So Great

Economic Update with Richard D. Wolff

Democracy at Work

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

4.8 • 1.9K Ratings

🗓️ 7 January 2025

⏱️ 30 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In this week's episode of Economic Update, Professor Wolff discusses the "catalog" of 2024's economic problem areas: (1) Slow growth relative to China/BRICS; (2) the war in Ukraine; (3) the crises in Gaza and the greater Middle East; (4) Biden & Trump tariffs policy; (5) scapegoating immigrants; (6) corporations disinterest in climate change and DEI initiatives; (7) rising U.S. labor militancy and public support,' (8) rise of violence; (9) social security benefit increases' failure keep up with inflation.

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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 economic
0:26.9	dimensions of our lives and those of our children.
0:31.1	I'm your host, Richard Wolfe.
0:34.1	I want to begin with the announcement that we welcome and appreciate those of you who
0:39.5	write in to Charlie Fabian, our volunteer who works with us to collect and to transmit
0:47.8	suggestions, ideas, questions, comments that you may have about the program and about ways to make it better
0:56.4	serve your interests. And as usual, you know his address, but I'll repeat it.
1:04.5	Charlie. Info-338 at gmail.com. Later in the program, I'll have something to say again about our new book
1:14.9	understanding capitalism that is available as a special part of our fundraising. But let me get
1:23.7	into today's program. We're taking advantage of the fact that we are at that period of time when one year
1:32.7	passes and a new one is welcomed into our lives or we into it.
1:40.2	And I wanted to use this moment to do a kind of review of the economy in the year 2024.
1:50.5	And I want to give it a title that the economy is anything but great.
1:56.3	And here I'm obviously pushing back against those who want to believe, oh, they want to believe
2:03.3	it so badly, that our economy is some sort of great economy in great shape.
2:11.7	And they list off things that are good about it.
2:15.7	And there are, by the way, good things about it. But I want
2:19.9	to balance the story with something you will hardly ever hear. What are the problems? What
2:28.5	are the failures? What are the weaknesses? Not because they're the only thing to hear and there aren't any good ones,
2:36.4	no, that that would be as silly on the negative as mainstream media are on the positive.
2:43.2	But I'm not here to be a cheerleader for capitalism. I'm a critic, no question about it.
2:50.2	And so I thought it might be interesting for those of you who believe it's great too.
	...

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