On this week’s episode of Economic Update, Professor Richard Wolff offers a special episode discussing the unscary origins of the ideas of communism and socialism before the Cold War demonized them. We will discuss how socialism's history evolved into separating socialism from communism and creating multiple, different meanings of what is considered communism today.

The d@w Team Economic Update with Richard D. Wolff is a DemocracyatWork.info Inc. production. We make it a point to provide the show free of ads and rely on viewer support to continue doing so.

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On this week’s episode of Economic Update, Professor Richard Wolff draws attention to the 10,000 hotel workers who recently conducted a strike impacting major hotels across 19 US cities. We highlight the contested merger of the two largest grocery chains in America. Albertsons and Kroger threaten to become the third largest retail giant after Amazon, and Walmart plus the Canadian government forces 9000 Canadian railway striking workers back to work, with murmurs of a general strike looming. We also give a shout-out to a small Brooklyn pizzeria unionizing with Starbucks workers.

Finally, an exclusive interview with world-renowned economist, politician, author, and the former finance minister of Greece Yanis Varoufakis discusses global economic change and the working class, topics discussed in his latest work "Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism".

The d@w Team Economic Update with Richard D. Wolff is a DemocracyatWork.info Inc. production. We make it a point to provide the show free of ads and rely on viewer support to continue doing so.

You can support our work by joining our Patreon community:

https://www.patreon.com/democracyatwork Or you can go to our website: https://www.democracyatwork.info/donate

Every donation counts and helps us provide a larger audience with the information they need to better understand the events around the world they can't get anywhere else.

We want to thank our devoted community of supporters who help make this show and others we produce possible each week.

We kindly ask you to also support the work we do by encouraging others to subscribe to our YouTube channel and website: www.democracyatwork.info

On this week's show, Prof. Wolff presents updates on how capitalism gets in the way of fighting Covid-19, systemic racism and Covid-19, why Europe did not allow the mass unemployment imposed on the US, and Wells Fargo CEO's fake excuse for lack of diversity among bankers. In the second half of the show, Wolff explores why capitalism fears the modern state and how it controls that state.

On this week’s special Labor day episode of Economic Update, Professor Richard Wolff honors both Labor Day and President Abraham Lincoln. President Lincoln once said in 1861 that "Labor is the superior of capital." Yet, capital in the United States has only two major political parties, the Republicans and the Democrats who both are currently advocating for capital over labor and essentially operating as a two-party monopoly excluding all others.

In today's political discourse, Labor has no party advocating for what Lincoln once advocated. The injustice and inequality generated in and for society by capitalist economies is neither necessary nor welcome. A genuine labor party is the missing solution.

The d@w Team Economic Update with Richard D. Wolff is a DemocracyatWork.info Inc. production. We make it a point to provide the show free of ads and rely on viewer support to continue doing so.

You can support our work by joining our Patreon community:

https://www.patreon.com/democracyatwork Or you can go to our website: https://www.democracyatwork.info/donate

Every donation counts and helps us provide a larger audience with the information they need to better understand the events around the world they can't get anywhere else.

We want to thank our devoted community of supporters who help make this show and others we produce possible each week.

We kindly ask you to also support the work we do by encouraging others to subscribe to our YouTube channel and website: www.democracyatwork.info

On the first half of this week's episode, Prof. Wolff discusses the following: graduate student strike at University of Michigan, Johnson & Johnson charged in opioid deaths, the richest Americans gain $845 billion from March-September 2020, New Jersey raises taxes on millionaires, and real unemployment is at 18%. On the second half of the show, Wolff talks with rising podcaster Mexie on how she brings the left together.

On this week’s Economic Update, Professor Richard Wolff discusses Kate Pickett's and Richard Wilkinson's best-selling study in the book "The Spirit Level" (2009), showing how economic inequality correlates with most of the major social problems of our time.

We will juxtapose their latest paper "The Spirit Level at 15: The Enduring Impact of Inequality" Which details how economic inequality has only gotten worse since the past fifteen years, despite government laws and programs aimed to "reduce" inequality.

Wilkinson and Pickett show how inequality leads to severe social ills, divisions, and disintegration. What we need is to face that it is capitalism that generates the inequality that generates the hostilities and social tensions intruding upon and damaging our lives."

Important reading "The Spirit Level at 15: The Enduring Impact of Inequality:
https://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/215026/1/The_Spirit_Level_at_15_2024_FINAL.pdf

The d@w Team Economic Update with Richard D. Wolff is a DemocracyatWork.info Inc. production. We make it a point to provide the show free of ads and rely on viewer support to continue doing so.

You can support our work by joining our Patreon community:

https://www.patreon.com/democracyatwork Or you can go to our website: https://www.democracyatwork.info/donate

Every donation counts and helps us provide a larger audience with the information they need to better understand the events around the world they can't get anywhere else.

We want to thank our devoted community of supporters who help make this show and others we produce possible each week.

We kindly ask you to also support the work we do by encouraging others to subscribe to our YouTube channel and website: www.democracyatwork.info

On this week's show, Prof. Wolff presents updates on the 'Social Progress Index" and US capitalism's decline; how most young Americans, 18-29, now live with their parents; Argentina's debts are cut in half; and lastly, why most of the US economy is now on welfare. The second half of the show features a major discussion of a social transition beyond capitalism.

In this week's show, Prof. Wolff presents a critique of monopoly and oligopoly; past efforts and success in popular control over mega-corporations - in US and abroad; the fight back by mega-corporations to nullify reforms and regulations. Finally, some real solutions to the social problem and costs of an economy dominated by mega-corporations.