Welcome friends to another edition of Economic Update, a weekly program devoted
to the economic dimensions of our lives, jobs, debts, incomes going up, going down,
for us, for our kids. I'm your host Richard Wolff. I've been a
professor of economics all my adult life and I hope that it has prepared me well
to present these weekly updates to you. So let's jump right in.
Filling the airways confronting us at every turn is news these days of a so
called tax reform. President Trump, the House, and the Senate are all busily
writing tax laws and the way that works in the United States the president talks
a lot about it but he doesn't do much the work of defining what we pay in
taxes is done by the House of Representatives and the Senate and they
do it separately so two groups of politicians writing laws about how taxes
will change and of course every single one of those politicians is besieged
year round but especially now by highly paid lobbyists begging pleading
threatening them to do what their payers want them to do and of course who can
afford to send a lobbyist to Washington to play games there all day every day
year round it's the biggest richest corporations
and associations of corporations and specialty interests of all kind that can
afford the lobbyists you can't and the results are very predictable I won't
bore you by going over what the media already teaches us that the winners from
this tax reform are the usual winners the biggest corporations number one and
the richest people number two and everybody else stands further down the
line to get what little crumbs may be left what you may not know this
all of this is that the law is very complicated it has many many details
details that can make a difference of millions of dollars for a company for an
industry for a region that's why the lobbyists are there to take care of the
interests who pay them to be there and here are a couple you may not have heard
about one plan which seems to be agreed by both the House and Senate or they
differ on the details is to eliminate the estate tax there's only two or three
thousand people in America rich enough to pay the estate tax these days because
it exempts everybody who leaves less than ten eleven or twelve million
dollars to their heirs which means you and me so these two or three thousand
families that are super-rich who are leaving so much that they actually have
to pay some tax don't want to pay it and being as rich as they are they can
afford the lobbyists and so I have to report to you that the estate tax is
sure to be reduced or eliminated altogether wonderful news for two or
three thousand of the richest families in America bad news of course for the
rest of us because if they don't pay their taxes the government has three
choices it can either cut spending on government programs because it doesn't
have the money from these rich people who don't pay estate taxes anymore or it
can raise our taxes to make up for the government what they're not getting from
these rich families or they can borrow the money that they're no longer raising
from these rich families and here's the wonderful joke there when the government
borrows because it hasn't taxed rich people it's typically the rich people
who lend to the government the money they don't have to pay in taxes anymore
this either makes you smile by the sheer horror of it or cry because we are the
victims anyway this plays out here's a couple
more you may not have heard about the version of tax reform passed by the
House of Representatives has a wonderful gift
this time of year gifts are big for graduate students going to school in
America in many American graduate programs at universities it is the
custom to give graduate students who need financial help which is most of
them the following benefit it's called the tuition waiver you don't have to pay
the tuition that is high at these schools and they give you a stipend it's
usually in the neighborhood of six to twelve thousand dollars per year that's
level poverty below poverty level for a graduate student so the graduate student
has two benefits a low amount of money and a waiver on the tuition the House of
Representatives which has proposed massive cuts in taxes for corporations
and the rich has proposed taking away from graduate students the tuition
waiver so that they will get it but they'll have to declare it on their
income tax because it's like an income and so they will be required to pay a
tax on it making the cost of a graduate education
more expensive to a graduate student than it was before around the world
particularly in Europe college costs are being brought down here in the United
States we're going the other way basically the tax rewrite is a scandal
and let me clue a close on this by quoting to you Professor Jeffrey Sachs
of Columbia University who referred to the tax bills working their way through
Congress as quote a war of the rich against the poor end quote much of
today's material let's call it is about the big corporate leaders to whom we
entrust such enormous power in future programs I'll be talking about the
merger wave that is huge companies to get together with one
another and become even huger but even before we get to that I want to talk
about what it means to give such extraordinary wealth and power to such a
relatively tiny proportion of the American people who therefore have
economic power which they use to get political power etc but it helps I think
to be specific so let's start majorities of workers who are polled say they would
like more say on the job they would like to have more input on what goes on at
the workplace where they spend most of their adult lives you know that on this
program we often advocate for real democracy at the workplace to give
workers what they want by making it a democratic arrangement the workplace one
person one vote no matter what you do you have a stake in what goes on you
have to live with the consequences and democracy says you ought to have a right
to participate but of course that's not the way capitalist corporations work so
let's see some examples of what that means I want to start with Joe Ricketts
all I seek a ETTs if you haven't heard of him let me introduce you he is the
founder of TD Ameritrade one of the largest discount stock brokerages in the
United States his family owns the Chicago Cubs baseball team you know just
like your neighbor he's worth more than two billion dollars few years ago he
started a very interesting local news site in New York City called the DNA
info he did something similar in Chicago was really interesting way to bring
local news to an urban area he's also a major right-wing donor to political
activities during the presidential primary
he spent millions of dollars denouncing Donald Trump as an untrustworthy
dangerous misogynist once mr. Trump was secured in
his nomination mr. Ricketts spent a million dollars to
support him I mentioned these details because they are not unusual six months
ago the reporters who work at DNA info in New York City and at the Gothamist a
website that he also owns and operates in New York City announced their
intention the reporters and editors did to join the Writers Guild of America a
trade union this is something that has been done by the reporters at Huffington
Post vice media slate and Thrillist major well-known websites in response
Joe Ricketts the owner of these things shut them down he fired the entire crew
closed the service the public doesn't have access to these web sites anymore
and these people all lost their jobs I don't have much more to say one person
made a decision and that's the result for the public and for the employees
case closed think about it here's another story
about what large corporate executives to whom we entrust enormous power what they
can do and do deal with that power I want to talk to you briefly about
Jeffrey Immelt I am M ELT you may not know him but you should because he was
until recently and for many years the president of the General Electric
Corporation one of the most important and largest corporations in the United
States he isn't anymore and what often happens when an executive retires with
hundreds of millions of dollars in pay and of incredible retirement package and
all the rest but after he's gone things can be revealed about him that somehow
managed not to get so well revealed while he was in power and mr. Immelt
really got filled with a doozie it turns out that
much of his activity involved flying all over the world because General Electric
is a multinational corporation and has activities across the five continents
well that isn't unusual but here's what was when mr. Amell flew a second
equivalent jet empty flee behind him just in case something might have gone
wrong at some point in the flight and mr. Immelt
would have needed another plane the cost of maintaining a second plane that was
most of the time empty is staggering runs into the millions of dollars but
that's what mr. Immelt wanted oh he said he didn't know anything about it this
was in the hands of the flight director for GE the man who has replaced mr. M
melt deeply embarrassed by the stunning self-indulgent luxury imagine mr. e
melts plane might have had a problem he would have had to get on a first-class
flight to finish his trip he didn't want that he wanted his own airplane probably
with his own teddy bear so he could complete the flight he used the money of
General Electric to pay for it and so I want you all to understand that when you
bought that electric toaster for your grandma or the electric clock to wake up
in the morning part of the price you paid was to enable Jeffrey Immelt
to have an empty plane trailing him all over the world you put your faith in the
people who run these corporations as individuals that's what you get
nothing has been in the news more besides the tax bill then the issue of
sexual harassment by people in power over those who depend on them those who
want to get a job those who want their career to move up those who want to keep
a job etc and we have seen unbelievable examples across the spectrum left-right
business politics it really doesn't seem to matter you put a few people in
positions of power that other people depend on and you've created the
incentive and the situation which can turn out as we have seen and I want to
give you one particular example because it illustrates it this has to do with
the highest secretary minister in the government of Teresa May in the United
Kingdom a man by the name of Damien green he's gotten himself into trouble
first he was accused by a subordinate of sexual harassment and intimidation
number two of the one of the highest police officials in London reported that
when they raided his office they found large amounts of pornography on his
computer etc etc this is a big embarrassment for the government of
Teresa May it comes a short time after Britain's Defense Minister Michael
Fallon resigned from his job as Minister of Defence
I should parenthetically explain to my American audience that in other
countries when you get caught doing this sort of thing you're out we here in
America don't move so quickly at least much at a time
now mr. green has defended himself he didn't do anything he said it was not
true that he had done what the wife and the others of the people involved have
suggested and what was that apparently he was in a bar with a young woman
who worked for him and they discussed this is the testimony given her career
aspirations and gossiped about sexual affairs in Parliament then he was
alleged to have done the deed I don't want to reiterate the details you all
know many more details and you probably want to already I want to drive home a
particular point while there are many things that cause particularly men to be
sexual predators particularly towards women there is something that has to be
said here about the economics of it and those have to do with a situation of
hierarchy if you make a few people in a position to give or not give you a job
to let you move up or down in the career path to let you keep the job you are
creating a structure that fosters this problem and you're not going to solve
the problem unless you deal with that structure here's another argument for
worker co-op as a better way to organize an enterprise everybody participates in
hiring everybody the workers collectively are their own boss
everybody is on both sides of that game and therefore you will not see these
kinds of shenanigans at least nowhere near as often or as regularly that has
to be addressed otherwise we end up telling people just don't do that men
you shouldn't do that that's likely to be about as successful as telling people
don't do drugs we've been doing that for decades and we all know how successful
that's been. some short ones, but before I get to them, let me remind you we
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extending the effect and the usefulness that this program seeks to have I want
to go back to Detroit a city I go back to a lot because it's like an emblem of
what's going on in America recently some big businesses have bought parts of
downtown Detroit and rebuilt it up a bit with hotels and expensive restaurants
and a convention center and that's fine that's better than doing nothing
I got I get that but out of it has come a language about the Renaissance of
Detroit and how the system has built Rock Detroit this is simply not true and
I wanted to find and I have found a statistic that can summarize it before
2007 in the crash the annual number of mortgages written for people in Detroit
was between 6,000 and 8,500 the number of mortgages for homes bought in Detroit
since 2009 that is once the crash hit the average number is a few hundred or
less Bank America and JP Morgan Chase have made claims to be helping to
Detroit turn around in 2016 with Detroit's population of six hundred and
thirty-seven thousand the Bank of America did exactly 18 mortgages and JP
Morgan did six the two bigger bank in the mortgage business
did a total of 24 mortgages when before the annual was in the neighborhood of
66,000 to 8,500 there is no rebuilding of Detroit except for the money making
downtown that will mostly service tourists and other conventions and leave
the vast majority of Detroit in the condition that we know it to have next
item there's been a lot of attention paid to the really disaster across
America's malls huge retail giant's Macy's Sears Nordstrom all announced
huge numbers of store closings in 2017 many of them did it in 2016 too it is in
short a disaster because these malls employed many people because these malls
paid taxes to the local community they will no longer pay and because it isn't
beautiful for a town to have an empty mall with weeds growing up through the
cracks in the asphalt and so the question has been raised what's
happening and the answer because people don't want to face what's going on in
America the answer has been given well everybody's going to the Internet
they're not going to the mall they're staying home and buying etc of course
that's part of this story but there's economics behind this one of the reason
they're going to the internet is they can get the things cheaper that way than
going to the mall and the proof that cheapness is the issue is when you
discover that while Macy's and Nordstrom's and Sears are in trouble
t.j.maxx the stores that are in malls but are very much cheaper are doing much
better than those more expensive stores the bottom line being Americans can't
afford anymore and they're going where their cheapness is because their incomes
are lagging they've had no raises for 10 or 20 years and it's showing up as it
worsens the economic scenario next item tenants in America we keep
track in America of tenants how much of their income are they required to pay
for their rental every month it's an index of how well people are doing or
not here's a statistic for you to think about in 1960 tenants who spent more
than a third of their income on rent numbered about 25% roughly a quarter of
renters had to pay more than a third of their income just for rent in 2015 it
had doubled half of the people in America who rent had to pay more than a
third of their income in rent that's a sign of being fundamentally pinched in
your economic situation in terms of the life you can live and the level of life
you can afford and here's something that staggered me even more
last year 2016 black renters black renters which is the overwhelming
majority of black families in America 12% of them were threatened at one time
or another with eviction because they couldn't make the rent one in eight
black families went through the experience the terror the anxiety the
fear that the mother the father the kids the children would be thrown out on the
street evicted because they couldn't make enough money to make the rent
economic recovery know these are not statistics about recovery these are
statistics about a disaster that keeps unfolding the final economic update that
we will have time for has to do with another one of these corporations to
whom we have entrusted not just our general welfare but literally our lives
and health I'm talking about Astra Zeneca one of the largest pharmaceutical
companies in the world I'm going to read to you
just a few of the achievements of this very profitable huge multinational
pharmaceutical in April 2010 AstraZeneca settled a lawsuit brought by an American
for 520 million dollars oh they must have done bad things here's what they
did they'd afforded ready Medicare Medicaid and other government-funded
health care programs in connection with marketing and promotion of their
blockbuster anti-psychotic drug seroquel in March 2011 that's basically a year
later it settled another lawsuit in the United States
totaling 69 million dollars divided up among 38 states AstraZeneca is the
producer of a drug you may know called nexium nexium it's for gastric distress
in your guts etc in 2007 dr. Marcia Angell formerly editor-in-chief of the
New England Journal of Medicine and a lecturer in social medicine at the
Harvard Medical School denounced AstraZeneca for fraudulent reporting on
the effects of Nexium to get it sold in the United States they
make billions of that drug to give you an idea that this is a really fine group
of folks here at the top in February of 1998 Astra USA a subsidiary sued
Lars build Minh its former president and chief executive officer sitting 15
million dollars from mr. build Minh for defrauding the company the sum included
money he allegedly used to fix up three of his homes plus money the company paid
as a result of an EEOC investigation Astra's lawsuit alleges against their
own president that he sexually harassed and intimidated employees used company
funds for yachts and for prostitutes and so on and so on
the mixture of profit-making corporations and health as we have shown
on this program over and over again is literally a lethal combination
profit-making leads people to make decisions that are
not good for much of the world we live in whether its climate crises whether
it's health crises wherever it's time to face that the solution to many of our
problems goes beyond this or that rule and regulation system change is on the
agenda and we should get on with an honest debate about whether we can do
better than capitalism and how to go about it
we've come to the end of the first half of today's program thank you very much
for staying with us please continue we will be right back
you
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