What "Capitalism's Decline" Means (REPEAT)
Economic Update with Richard D. Wolff
Democracy at Work
4.8 • 2.1K Ratings
🗓️ 15 December 2022
⏱️ 29 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
This week's show is dedicated to a discussion of the signs of US capitalism's decline. US history as the passage of US capitalism from its birth, through its state-supported growth and expansion, to its global peaking from 1945 to 2000. Wolff presents the causes of its ongoing decline this 21st century, and then offers a conclusion on the right, center and left political responses to decline.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome, friends, to another edition of Economic Update, a weekly program devoted to the economic |
| 0:16.4 | dimensions of our lives, jobs, debts, incomes, our own, and our children. I'm your host, |
| 0:22.9 | Richard Wolfe. Today's program is about the decline of U.S. capitalism, and I mean that seriously |
| 0:30.8 | in a way that I haven't before, even though I've mentioned the idea. What do I mean by the |
| 0:37.0 | decline of U.S. capitalism? |
| 0:39.8 | Well, I mean that there are signs that could be read, and I believe should be read, as symptoms |
| 0:45.9 | of that decline, that we were finished just now choosing between Donald Trump and Joe Biden, |
| 0:56.9 | as if those were the best this system could do at a moment of crisis, which would be a stretch, I think most of you would agree, that we |
| 1:04.2 | have failed to deal with a public health emergency on a scale that would embarrass any country, but for one of the richest countries |
| 1:13.3 | in the world to have made such a mess at its own peril and at the cost now of almost a quarter |
| 1:20.7 | of a million people dying, that's a sign that the footprint of the United States in the world economy is really less than it was 10 years ago, and even less than what it was 20 years ago. |
| 1:35.4 | That's a sign of something. |
| 1:38.3 | And I think more and more Americans recognize it, that that American dream we thought was our heritage is now out of reach |
| 1:46.3 | of the vast majority of people, that the standard of living is threatened at every turn, |
| 1:53.7 | that we have a million less people producing public services in this country than we did |
| 1:59.5 | in February of this year, at a time when we need public services in this country than we did in February of this year. |
| 2:01.6 | At a time when we need public services more than ever, we have less than what... |
| 2:07.6 | There are too many signs, and I think they point to something that we can and should call |
| 2:13.6 | the decline of American capitalism. Well, some of you may wonder, how could we talk about |
| 2:19.8 | decline? Isn't the United States extremely powerful these days? Yes, it is extremely powerful. |
| 2:26.1 | But that's not really relevant. Let me remind you. Feudalism came into the world around 500, 600 |
| 2:33.5 | AD, at least into the European part of the |
... |
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