Economic Update: The Missing Economics of the 2024 US Presidential Election

[Music] 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 wolf I want to quickly remind you that Charlie Fabian is available if you have suggestions and ideas for our programs you can reach him at charlie.in 438 gmail.com and I also want to remind you about our new book understanding capitalism available via our website which you know if you like this program I think you will like that book it is an attempt to give you an overview of

the capitalist system that incorporates the many particular analytical arguments that we offer week after week year after year if they have proven interesting to you I think this book will do that as well and it's particularly useful for people who want who are active who want to be teachers or students to get a concentrated dose of a critical understanding of capitalism to go along with and to balance the celebration of capitalism that is literally the air most of us breathe okay today's program is different from others it's not a collection of particular pieces of analysis

it's rather an attempt to respond to what a great many of you have asked an assessment of the economics of the election of the Trump versus uh Harris effort that is now coming to a head and where you have asked me to talk about what the differences are what their economic programs look like what we can or should expect so here's my response to that perfectly reasonable uh request here we go first of all there are plenty of reasons to support Mr Trump over Harris or vice versa they have important differences on issues you know

about abortion is an obvious choice the war in Ukraine a little bit of disagreement there maybe a little bit hard to tell the language from the reality whether or not to extend the tax cuts from 2017 how harsh to be on who might be an immigrant and so on there are the traditional Republican versus Democrat Tendencies the Republicans generally favoring the employers and the Democrats generally the employees with lots of exceptions and lots of crossovers I know so there are many reasons and if you focus on them gun control is another and I could go

on you don't need me to do that in the press all the time but the question is do they really differ on the basic Contours of the United States economy and of the position of the United States in the world economy look these are very important matters the basic economics of the United States is going to impact you me your family my family right on Down the Line in every community of this country crucial as important or more important than anything else I'm happy to to say so we ought to be able to will say

here is a clear difference between them on the economy now how would we go about doing that well we might ask them and they certainly offer to do it to give us a straight story about how they see the condition of the US economy today because out of that will come their proposal for what's a problem and What needs the action that they would do if they were elected that'd be a reasonable way to go about this well how do you evaluate an economy do they do that let alone give us a program for where

to take the economy they evaluate and the answer is for both of them no they don't what do I mean to evaluate an economy is to take a look at the whole thing which is complicated to do I'm going to give you a metaphor I often use that works the metaphor is this that an economy is like the human body if your body hurts you somewhere your leg your arm your hair you will eventually if it doesn't go away and if you can't self manage your problem you will go to a doctor a specialist who

will answer the question what's wrong doc by doing a whole host of examinations your temperature your blood your urine inspecting your your face checking your limbs maybe doing a CAT scan maybe doing x-rays there's a battery of tests to begin to give the doctor a comprehensive sent s sense of what your ailments are if all the doctor did was to take your temperature and then tell you either it's good news or it's bad news you would be smart to get a different doctor this doctor isn't doing the proper job if he tells you you're fine

it's 98.6 well that's very good news but do you really want to rely on it now why am I telling you this because neither Mr Trump nor Miss Harris nor their advisers are doing any of this they're not good doctors they're not giving you an evaluation Miss Harris clearly believes she has to De defend the record of the Democrats in office Mr Biden as president over the last four years so she cherry-picks tests that make it look like the economy is doing well Mr Trump being the out does the opposite he cherry-picks a different set

of Statistics in order to come up with the conclusion the econom is in bad shape and you Harris are responsible this is not news to any of you we've been there a hundred times times before when Mr Trump ended his first term he tried to get a second one by claiming he'd done a great job he cherry-picked then to make it look like he had done a good job the way he's cherry-picking now to make it look like Biden didn't and the Democrats do the reverse that's why so many Americans don't listen anymore why should

they it's a little bit like advertising we all know that the advertiser of something that we're thinking of buying is only going to tell us everything good they can think of about this thing so lopsided that we wonder even if they're true or just made up The Advertiser doesn't think it's his job to give you a balanced view of the pluses and minuses of the strengths and weaknesses neither does Mr Trump when he tells you about the economy or his people do nor Harris or her people do so it's left to people like me people

who are not paid by partisans for either of the two who are giving you such an lopsided advertising like hustle instead of an analysis you have to get another doctor okay so here are for me the key things about the US economy right now we have an absolutely extraordinary degree of inequality let me give you just one idea about this at the end of World War II roughly 75 years ago the United States had a smaller gap between the richest and the poorest than any of the major economies of Europe we were less unequal than

they were now 75 years later the roles have been exactly reversed we are the most unequal more than Britain France Italy Germany or any of the others all right that's a profound change you may enjoy looking at the antics of Jeff bezus or Elon Musk or any of the billionaires trying to outdo one another and who gets to be a trillionaire first but you know they are light years from you you have no relationship to them they can do things that hire a fire Mr musk is funding Mr Trump in a way that I'm not

aware anybody has ever funded a presidential candidate before a million dollars a day for this 45 million a month for that and my guess is kamla Harris has rough equivalent on her side although they're not so much in the public eye but where where's the attention to this basic inequality the answer there isn't any Mr Trump doesn't say anything about it KLA Harris says very little and what she proposes a slight in increase in taxes for people over making over $400,000 giving $25,000 to new families who want to own a home for the first time

these are perfectly nice positive but they're small potatoes against what I just told you here's the second major problem of our economy it's instability we go from Pillar To Post in the the last four years we've had a a serious crash 2021 2020 2021 we've had a really serious inflation now we're worried about unemployment Rising into a recession we have an unstable economy the joke I've made periodically on this program I can repeat if you lived with a person as unstable as capitalism you would have moved out long ago it's a problem to have an

economy it's not it's not enough to have uh the head of the Federal Reserve Pat himself on the back that he's doing something about the inflation uh it took a while but he's yeah but the charter of the Federal Reserve that you're the head of Sir is not to have an inflation not to be all goody goody about bringing it down you weren't supposed to have it and we're not supposed to have million ions of people unemployed which we do all the time and right now where is the proposal from Mr Trump there isn't any

where's the proposal to deal with this instability from Miss Harris there isn't any they're not dealing with these issues they're not dealing with the fundamental problems of our economy they're not offering us a program for how to deal with them because they don't deal with them yes they have this idea Mr Trump wants to give a tax break to tip income okay very nice I'm not going to comment on it because it's like being told you have a Cancer and and your response is yes do I use red or blue Band-Aids for that no no

no the Band-Aids are great I'm glad they were there you you should have some but they're not adequate to what we're talking about Sir we're not going in that direction I'm not going to answer your question I'm going to tell you you got to face what your problems actually are and then come up with a program and you're not doing it that is a fundamental problem and it suggests that whichever way this election comes out neither one of these folks and the teams are going to make the difference that we really need because we have

real problems that they are pretending aren't there we've come to the end of the first half stay with me I'm going to offer you some Alternatives that would begin to address these kinds of problems in the way that the candidates are not [Music] doing friends as you know any project like this takes money and we don't want to bore you or burden you on the other hand you our audience are the source of our funding and we wouldn't have it any other way if you can please consider making a donation it will be enormously appreciated

welcome back friends to the second half of today's economic update in the first half I told talked about the basic problems of inequality and instability of the US economy now I want to mention something about the international situation and then talk about Alternatives that could be should be but aren't being discussed and debated in this election there is a fundamental change in the position of the United States in the world economy it is momentous it is having all sorts of consequences and will definitely have more of those in the years ahead here's the basic way

it works the dominance of the United States coming out of World War II 1945 the position it had as the number one economic power in the world nobody else was close the number one shaper of the World's Trade among countries of the flow of investment money among countries of the literal currency that the whole world used alongside of gold which was the US dollar all of that has changed fundamentally the dollar is in a much less powerful position today than it has been in the previous 75 years likewise the United States accounts for less of

the total production of goods and services less of World Trade less of world Capital flows than it used to the United States cannot play the role in the world that it did and that is shaping our world the United States is currently involved in two major Wars whose whole Foundation was that we were still as powerful as we once were but we're not that's why the war in Ukraine is being lost by the United States that's why the sanctions against Russia didn't work the Russians turned to their allies particularly India and China in that Association

known as the bricks and discovered their sustenance trading partners Capital sources that could allow them to retaliate at against the west and the Ukrainian uh expansion of NATO Etc and to win that war the Israelis are engaged in a war that isolates them in the whole world and the United States supports Israel and supports them with weapons and funds their economic crisis which will last into an indefinite future but these are efforts by the United States acting as though it is still what it once was but is no more what do the candidates have to

say about the reduced status of the United States answer nothing they are instead pretend that none of this has happened that China isn't the economic Powerhouse in the world that it is that it isn't drawing to itself more and more countries that are leaving the orbit of the United States everyone in the world sees it everyone in the world is adjusting to it the United States is pretending that this is not going on and these two candidates in this election are sustaining the pretense that's why they have nothing to say about they talk in abstract

terms about self-determination or countries shouldn't Ina invade others these abstract principles that have very little to do with what's going on here this isn't about principles this is about a change that is altering the way the world works it's going to affect the prices we pay the markets we do or do not have this is crucial and yet in this election silence then there's the bizarre and I mean bizarre way we arrange our finances here in the United States we have politicians who face two big audiences corporations and the rich on the one hand top

10% of our people and the mass of our population the other 90% over here the top 10% say to the politicians we don't want to be taxed but we want you to do a lot of things for us for example the United States government maintains over 700 military bases around the world that came out of world war to that's more of this effort to pretend we can still do in the world what we once could do but we can't wow and they don't want to be taxed for it they push the taxes onto the rest

of us but we can't pay taxes anymore and we're enraged when we're confronted with it so neither the Republicans nor the Democrats dare tax us meanwhile we want them to do things for us we need it our position in the world is shrinking we're spending more look at the money for Ukraine look at the money for isra we are spending to sustain the illusion and where's the money going to come from if nobody wants to be taxed or no one will tolerate it they have a solution it is of course no solution it's more fakery

it's called borrowing so the federal government spends the way we all want it to but doesn't tax us well how do you spend if you don't rais enough money in tax you borrow well who does the government borrow from Mostly from corporate corations in the rich and you know why they lend to the government why they even can because they didn't get taxed what the government is doing is saying you don't have to pay tax you corporations and the rich they pay for example much less today than they did in the 1960s and70s do we

need them less no do they have some excuse for this no they just don't want to pay so we say okay you don't have to pay lend it to the government instead the little detail about that is well if the government borrows you and I the mass of people will have to pay the taxes in the future to pay them back and to pay the interest every year that they get for Lending money to the government so in the end we are being taxed more it's being stretched out on us and our children and their

Generations but we're still being squeeze to pay this year we will pay as a government almost as much in interest to the rich as we spend on Military what happens to the rest of us more and more we pay taxes less and less we get our schools are in trouble our infrastructure we know is in trouble come on this is not working out well and there are Alternatives you don't have to borrow if you tax corporations and the rich just go back to what it was in the 60s and 70s not even asking for more

do that and it would transform our economy that would be a real idea that would be a proposal here's another one a new new deal everybody who's an American citizen gets a job by right if you don't have one now you go to this government office the unemployment office will become the employment office everybody gets a job you either get a job in Private Industry that' be our first choice or the government itself will put you to work the way we did in the 1930s to millions of workers we can do that again we can

make beautiful parks and we can take care of our elderly and we can provide daycare rational important contributions to our society that will put all of those people to work and so there'll be no one worrying about immigrants anymore because they won't be taking your job you've got a job and no immigrant can ever take it from you there was a mythology anyway but we can put it all to rest we can have a rule which says you don't have to fight new technology if there's a new technology in your industry and it makes your

job no longer needed don't you worry we're committed to having you have an income and finding you another job that will be a responsibility of the society right alongside the responsibility to give your child an education from kindergarten through the 12th grade Etc and giving you a park where you can have a picnic and making sure your water and air are clean you know we will make a decent Society we'll put people to work we can deal deal with the basic problems there won't be an up and down you know how we'll control prices by

controlling prices not by waiting for the Federal Reserve which Waits too late until the inflation is under way and then raises interest rates which hurts us in order to stop having the inflation of price stop you know we'll do we'll do what Richard Nixon the conservative president did and 1971 we will have wage price freezes freeze the wages and prices so they can't go up so we don't hurt one another that way and we solve whatever the technical problems are to get the economy going again without an inflation we fix it that way we can

do these things solve many of our basic problems if we admit them I'm here to tell you the same message that Alcohol Anonymous tells the people who come to it the first step on recovery is to admit that you have something to recover from you have to admit what your problem is we have to do that too the kind of candidates we generate in the two political parties seem to imagine that all they're there to do is to be cheerleaders capitalism is good American capitalism is even better okay I understand for 60 to 70 years

there was enough truth in that to let a lot of people get away with making that their pitch that time is gone it is not coming back like every other Empire the American Empire was born grew evolved developed peaked and then faded away we're in the fading away stage we need leaders who understand that and who work out with us as people a way to accomplish that without War without desperate efforts to hold on to an Empire that is over there's still a chance that the rest of the world and here I'm thinking particularly of

China and India and Brazil and all the let's work out an adjustment of the world as they come up into a place of enjoyment and standard of living that we've already had there has to be an accommodation it will happen one way or another it could happen in a good way in a successful way if we Face the problem if we admit that capitalism is a system that like the American Empire has had its day we can do better we don't have to have a tiny group of people making the decision in every Enterprise we

can work cooperatively and we better because that is the future that is the way we will move into a better Universe than the one we've left behind that's the best thing about humans they're always trying to do better it's one of the great things about us as a species and here's a moment where we have to do it we cannot continue to live in a world of make believe it's becoming way too dangerous thank you for your attention I hope this has been of interest in terms of the election and as always I look forward

to speaking with you again next week