Economic Update

Updates on France's successful mass uprisings (Yellow Vests in 2019; mass union strikes in 2020) that forced gov't to back down on changes that workers opposed; how endless wars impose huge debts; and how US Catholic Church uses bankruptcy law to keep as...

 Updates on sale of coop craft brewery, US medical costs highest in world, and the "overcoming poverty" defense of capitalism's inequality and instability. Interview Laura Flanders on independent media.

Three major criticisms of Economic Update are considered: (1) that we don't praise capitalism for reducing world poverty, (2) that we don't admit that "socialism has never worked anywhere," and (3) that no inventor of a new product or technique who start...

Updates on Job Quality Index and its US decline, the French activism against President Macron's effort to cut pensions, Gartman Letter urges investors to sell stocks in face of Trump's policies deteriorating the economy, Obamas purchase $11.5 million Mar...

 Libertarians defend capitalism by saying its many current flaws/faults flow from the state's economic interventions, not from the system itself. Libertarians oppose socialism as even more state-dominated. We criticize libertarians based on capitalism's ...

This week’s special topic discusses capitalism's growing problems, such as inequalities, instabilities, and unsustainability. That leads some defenders to argue that the causes of these problems are monopolies displacing competition in many industries. W...

Updates on Sawant victory in Seattle City Council election, the US obesity problem's costs and causes, critiquing libertarian arguments for capitalism. Interview Dr. Amy S. Cramer, Prof of Economics, Arizona, on her accessible education project "Voices o...

Today's program discusses a political strategy for transition beyond capitalism to an economy based on democratic worker-cooperatives. The first half explores the history of how transition was achieved from feudalism to capitalism. The second half draws ...

Updates on Berlin, Germany's law freezing all rents for 5 years, overindebted corporations threaten world economy, prisoners' slave labor in Los Angeles, French inequality and yellow vests, Bernie's push to put workers on corporate boards. Interview...

 Updates on costs of NBA offense to China, worsening global inequality, poverty mocks Nobel prize for 3 economists working on "incremental solutions" to poverty, why Google donated to global warming deniers, and latest crisis in defaults on US auto loans...