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

economic dimensions of our lives and those of our children. I'm your host, Richard Wolfe.

As usual, I want to begin by reminding you that a volunteer, Charlie Fabian, has agreed to

receive and transmit to us any suggestions, comments, requests for materials or topics that we can look into for possibly presenting on this program.

If you have such suggestions, please email them as follows.

Charlie.com.

Forreight.

At gmail.com. Once again, Charlie.com

438 at gmail.com. Today's program might be called U.S. capitalism at a crossroads.

Things that have been developing over time have accumulated.

Whether they be cans kicked down the road rather than problem solved,

or they're simply the way capitalism as a system works,

it's now clear to me that we are accumulating so many of them that we better understand that we are at a

crossroads and basic decisions are going to have to be made sooner or later, and it's probably

now quite much sooner. So let me begin with part A of this story, and that is the labor movement

upsurge of recent years here in the United States. It became particularly noteworthy in the year

just past, 2023. According to the Cornell University Labor Relations and so forth

center, they have what they call a labor action tracker. According to them, there were

413 strikes in 689 locations in the United States from January 1 of 2023 until nearly the

end of December of that year. If you add labor protests, so it wasn't a formal strike, but it was a protest often

different from or alternative to or prior to a strike, then the numbers jump even higher.

988 total strikes and protests and in 1379 locations. Here's another index.

...