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  • BILL MOYERS: This week on Moyers & Company

  • RICHARD WOLFF: Our system capitalism, which we finally have

  • to debate now that it’s so dysfunctional. Our system isn’t working. It isn’t producing

  • for the mass of people. And an economic system that is only as acceptable or should be as

  • it’s performance.

  • BILL MOYERS: And

  • SARU JAYARAMAN: It’s an incredible irony that the people

  • that who put food on our tables use food stamps at twice the rate of the rest of the U.S.

  • workforce. Meaning that the people who put food on our tables can’t afford to put food

  • on their own family’s tables,

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  • BILL MOYERS: Welcome. There’s hardly a sentient grown-up

  • in this country who isn’t aware that our economy is no longer working for vast numbers

  • of everyday people. The rich and powerful have more wealth and power than ever; everyone

  • else keeps losing ground. Between 2009 and 2011 alone, income fell for the 99 percent,

  • while it rose eleven percent for the top One Percent. Since the worst of the financial

  • crisis, that top One Percent has captured the increases in income while the rest of

  • the country has floundered. Stunning, isn’t it? The behavior of many of those One Percenters

  • brought on the financial crisis in the first place. We turned around and rescued them,

  • and now their wealth is skyrocketing once again. At the bottom, working people are practically

  • flat on their back. President Obama has finally recognized they need help. In his State of

  • the Union, he proposed an increase in the minimum wage:

  • PRESIDENT OBAMA: Tonight, let’s declare that in the wealthiest

  • nation on Earth, no one who works full-time should have to live in poverty, and raise

  • the federal minimum wage to nine dollars an hour.

  • BILL MOYERS: But as the economist Dean Baker points out

  • this week, “If the minimum wage had risen in step with productivity growth it would

  • be over $16.50 an hour today.” We talk a lot about what’s happening to the middle

  • class, but the American Dream’s really become a nightmare for the poor. Just about everyone

  • has an opinion about the trouble were inthe blame game is at fever pitch in Washington,

  • where obstinate Republicans and hapless Democrats once again play kick-the-can with the problems

  • we face. You wish they would just stop and listen to Richard Wolff.

  • An attentive and systematic observer of capitalism and democracy, he taught economics for 25

  • years at the University of Massachusetts and has published books such asDemocracy at

  • Work,” “Occupy the Economy,” andCapitalism Hits the Fan: The Global Economic Meltdown

  • and What to Do about It.” He’s now visiting professor at The New School University here

  • in New York City where he’s teaching a special course on the financial crash. Welcome, Richard

  • Wolff.

  • RICHARD WOLFF: Thank you, Bill.

  • BILL MOYERS: Last night, I watched for the second time

  • the popular lecture that is on this DVD, “Capitalism Hits the Fan.” Tell us why you say capitalism

  • has hit the fan?

  • RICHARD WOLFF: Well, the classic defense of capitalism as

  • a system from much of its history has been, okay, it has this or that flaw. But it quote,

  • unquote, "delivers the goods.'"

  • BILL MOYERS: Yeah, for most everybody.

  • RICHARD WOLFF: Right.

  • BILL MOYERS: That was the argument.

  • RICHARD WOLFF: And so you may not get the most, but it'll

  • trickle down to you, all the different ways

  • BILL MOYERS: The yachts will rise.

  • RICHARD WOLFF: That's right. The ocean will lift all the

  • boats. The reality is that for at least 30 years now, that isn't true. For the majority

  • of people, capitalism is not delivering the goods. It is delivering, arguably, the bads.

  • And so we have this disparity getting wider and wider between those for whom capitalism

  • continues to deliver the goods by all means, but a growing majority in this society which

  • isn't getting the benefit, is in fact, facing harder and harder times. And that's what provokes

  • some of us to begin to say, "It's a systemic problem."

  • BILL MOYERS: So we put together some recent headlines.

  • The merger of American and US Airlines, giving us only four major airlines and less competition.

  • Comcast buying NBC Universal, also reducing competition. The very wealthy getting a trivial

  • increase in taxes while the payroll tax of working people will go from 4.2 percent to

  • 6.2 percent. Colossal salaries escalating again, many subsidized by tax breaks and loopholes.

  • The postal service ending service on Saturday. What's the picture you get from that montage

  • of headlines?

  • RICHARD WOLFF: Well, for me it is captured by the European

  • word "austerity." We're basically saying that even though the widening gap between rich

  • and poor built us up, many of the factors that plunged us into a crisis, instead of

  • dealing with them and fixing that problem, we're actually allowing the crisis to make

  • the inequality worse.

  • The latest research from the leading two economists, Saez from the University of California in

  • Berkeley, and Piketty in France confirms that even over the last five years of the crisis,

  • through 2012, the inequality of wealth and income has gotten worse, as though we are

  • determined not to deal with it. All of those headlines you talked about are more of that.

  • I mean, the astonishing capacity to make it harder for people to have a delivery of their

  • mail on Saturday, to save what is in a larger picture, a trivial amount of money, but that

  • will really impact-- thousands of people will lose their jobs, everyone will lose a service

  • that is important, particularly in smaller places around the United States that are not

  • served by anything comparable to the Post Office.

  • And then as you pointed out, and I have to say a word about it, this amazing display

  • in which we raise the top income tax on the richest people from 35 percent to 39.6 percent

  • only for those over $450,000 a year, while for the 150 million Americans who get a weekly

  • or a monthly check, their payroll tax went up a whopping 48 percent from 4.2 to-- this

  • is so grotesque an inequality that you're watching a process that is sort of spinning

  • out of control in which those at the top have no limits, don't recognize any constraint

  • on how far they can take it.

  • BILL MOYERS: If workers at the bottom get the increase

  • in the minimum wage that President Obama proposed in his State of the Union message, they will

  • still be faring less well than their counterparts did 50 years ago.

  • RICHARD WOLFF: That's right.

  • BILL MOYERS: What does that say to you?

  • RICHARD WOLFF: The peak for the minimum wage in terms of

  • its real purchasing power was 1968. It's been basically declining with a couple of ups and

  • downs ever since. So that if you adjust for the current price, the minimum wage was about

  • $10.50 roughly, back in 1968 in terms of what it could buy.

  • And it's $7.25 today in terms of what it can buy. So you've taken the folks at the bottom,

  • the people who work hard, full-time jobs, and you've made their economic condition worse

  • over a 50-year period, while wealth has accumulated at the top. What kind of a society does this?

  • And then the arguments have come out, which are in my profession, a major staple for many

  • careers, are arguments that, "Gee, if you raise the minimum wage, a few people who might've

  • otherwise gotten a job won't get it because the employer doesn't want to pay the higher

  • wage."

  • Well, if that logic is really going to play in your mind, then you should keep lowering

  • the wage. Because if you only made it four dollars an hour, just think how many more

  • people could get a job. But a job under conditions that make life impossible.

  • BILL MOYERS: Who decided that workers at the bottom should

  • fall behind?

  • RICHARD WOLFF: Well, in the end, it's the society of the

  • whole that tolerates it. But it was Congress's decision and Congress's power to raise the

  • minimum wage, as has happened from time to time.

  • Even this time, not to be too critical of our president, but when he was running for

  • office, he proposed a $9.50 minimum wage. Here we are in the beginning of his second

  • term, and something has happened to make him only propose a nine dollar minimum wage. So

  • even he is scaling down, perhaps for political reasons, what he thinks he can accomplish.

  • When, if we just wanted to get it back to what it was in 1968, it would have to be $10

  • or $11 an hour.

  • BILL MOYERS: Many economists say, "We just can't do that

  • because it would be devastating."

  • RICHARD WOLFF: Well, the truth of the matter is that there's

  • an immense economics literature, I'm a professional economics person, so I've read it. And the

  • literature goes like this. On the one hand, there may be some jobs that are lost because

  • an employer having to pay a higher minimum wage, will not hire people or will hire fewer.

  • That will happen in some cases. But against that, you have to weigh something else. If

  • the 15 million, that's the estimate of the White House, the 15 million American workers

  • whose wages will go up if we raise the minimum wage, we have to count also, the question,

  • those people will now have a higher income.

  • They will spend more money. And when they spend more money on goods and services, that

  • will create jobs for people to produce those goods and services. In order to understand

  • the effect of raising the minimum wage, you can't only look at what will be done by some

  • employers in the face of a higher wage in lowering the employment. You have to look

  • at all the other effects.

  • And when economists have done that, economist from a wide range of political perspectives,

  • you know what they end up with? There's not much effect. In other words, the two things

  • net each other out and so there isn't much of a change in the employment situation overall.

  • To which my response is, "Okay, let's assume that's correct. At the very least though,

  • we have transformed the lives of 15 million American working people and their families

  • from one of impossible to get most of what America offers, to a situation where at least

  • you're closer to a decent minimum life."

  • BILL MOYERS: Are you suggesting then that there is no economic

  • reason why those at the bottom should not share in the gains of economic growth?

  • RICHARD WOLFF: Absolutely. There is no economic reason. And

  • in fact, I would go further. We know, for example, that the lower the income of a family,

  • the more likely it is to cut corners on the education of their children because they don't

  • have the resources. So here's an unmeasurable question about the minimum wage.

  • How many young people who are born into a minimum wage family, that is it's so low as

  • we have it today, will never get the kind of educational opportunities, the kinds of

  • educational supports, to be able to realize their own capabilities and to contribute to

  • our society? That alone is a reason, whether you think of it in terms of the long-term

  • benefit of the country, or you just approach it as a moral question or an ethical question.

  • By what right do you condemn a whole generation of young people to be born into families whose

  • financial circumstances make so much of what they need to become real citizens impossible?

  • BILL MOYERS: You remind me of something that President

  • Obama said in his second inaugural address.

  • PRESIDENT OBAMA: We are true to our creed when a little girl

  • born in the bleakest poverty knows that she has the same chance to succeed as anybody

  • else, because she is an American. She is free and she is equal. Not just in the eyes of

  • God, but also in our own.

  • BILL MOYERS: That's eloquent, but hardly true.

  • RICHARD WOLFF: That's right. And it's painful for some of

  • us to hear that, because it is so obviously untrue. It is so obviously contradicted by

  • the realities, not just of those who work at the minimum wage, but all of those who

  • work at or even at 50% above what we call the poverty level. Because when you look at

  • what families like that can actually afford, they have to deny huge parts of the American

  • dream to their children and to themselves as a necessary consequence of where they are

  • put.

  • And I don't need to be an economist to put it as starkly as I know how. We can read every

  • day that in the major cities of the United States, apartments are changing hands for

  • $10 million, $20 million, $30 million, $40 million. People have enormous yachts that

  • they cruise -- we all see it. We all know it. We even celebrate it as a nation. How

  • does that square with millions of people in a position where they can't provide even the

  • most basic services and opportunities?

  • We don't have equality of opportunity. Because there is no shortcut. If you want equality

  • of opportunity, you're going to have to create equality of income and wealth much closer

  • to a genuine equality than anything-- we're going in the other direction. And so I agree

  • with you. It's stark if our president talks about something so divergent from the reality.

  • BILL MOYERS: When study after study has exposed the myth

  • that this is a land of opportunity, how does the myth keep getting perpetuated?

  • RICHARD WOLFF: Well, my wife is a psychotherapist. And so

  • I ask her that question often. And here's what she says to me. Often, people cling all

  • the harder to an idea precisely because the reality is so different and becoming more

  • different. In other words, I would answer the myth of equal opportunity is more attractive,

  • more beautiful, more something people want to hold on, the more they know it's slipping

  • away. And they would like to believe that this president or any president who says it,

  • might somehow bring it back.

  • BILL MOYERS: When you say that there's no economic argument

  • that people should be kept at the-- should not share in the gains of economic growth,

  • the response is, "Well, that's what the market bears.”

  • RICHARD WOLFF: Well, you know, in the history of economics,

  • which is my profession, it's a standard play on words. Instead of talking about how the

  • economy is shaped by the actions of consumers in one way, workers in another way, corporate

  • executives in another way, we abstract from all of that and we create a myth or a mystique.

  • It's called the market.

  • That way you're absolving everybody from responsibility. It isn't that you're doing this, making that

  • decision in this way, it's rather this thing called the market that makes things happen.

  • Well, every corporate executive I know, knows that half of his or her job is to tweak, manipulate,

  • shift, and change the market.

  • No corporate executive takes the market as given. That may happen in the classroom, but

  • not in the world of real business. That's what advertising is. You try to create the

  • demand, if there isn't enough of it to make money without doing that. You change everything

  • you can. So the reference to a market, I think, is an evasion.

  • It's an attempt to make abstract the real workings of the economy so nobody can question

  • what this one or that one is doing. But let me take it another way. To say that it's the

  • market is another way of saying, "It's our economic system that works that way." That

  • is a very dangerous defense move to take.

  • BILL MOYERS: Why?

  • RICHARD WOLFF: Because it plays into the hands of those like

  • me who are critical of the system. If indeed it isn't this one or that one, it isn't this

  • company's strategy or that product's maneuver, but it is the market, the totality of the

  • system, that is producing unconscionable results, multi-million-dollar apartments next door

  • to abject poverty, then you're saying that the system is at fault for these results.

  • I agree with that. But I'm not sure that those who push this notion of "the market makes

  • it happen," have thought through where the logic of that defense makes them very vulnerable

  • to a much more profound critique than they will be comfortable with.

  • BILL MOYERS: You graduated from Harvard.

  • RICHARD WOLFF: Right.

  • BILL MOYERS: Then Stanford.

  • RICHARD WOLFF: Right.

  • BILL MOYERS: Then Yale.

  • RICHARD WOLFF: That's it.

  • BILL MOYERS: Was this the economy you were taught at those

  • three elite institutions to celebrate?

  • RICHARD WOLFF: No. No, this is the economy that I came to

  • understand is the reality. For me, and I learn things at all those institutions, it's not

  • that. I came to understand that in America, economics is a split, almost a schizophrenic

  • kind of pursuit. And let me explain. On the one hand, there are the departments of economics

  • in colleges and universities across America.

  • But side by side with them is an entire other establishment that also teaches economics.

  • You don't have that in other disciplines. There aren't two history departments or two

  • anthropology departments, or two philo-- so what is this? I looked into this. It's because

  • there are two separate functions performed by the economics departments and then by the

  • other ones.

  • And the other ones are called business schools and business departments. In fact, in most

  • universities, in all those I've been at, the economics department is in one set of buildings,

  • and across the campus in another is the business school. And there's actually tension in the

  • university about who teaches the basic courses to students that they're required to take

  • and so on.

  • Here's what I discovered. The job of economics, to be blunt but honest, is to rationalize,

  • justify, and celebrate the system. To develop abstract theories of how economics works to

  • make it all like it's a stable, equilibrium that meets people's needs in an optimal way.

  • These kinds of words are used. But that's useless to people who want to learn how to

  • run a business, because it's a fantasy.

  • So they are shunted someplace else. If you want to learn about marketing, or promotion,

  • or advertising, or administration, or personnel, go over there. Those people teach you how

  • the economy actually works and how you'll have to make decisions if you're going to

  • run a business. Over there, you learn about how beautiful it all is when you think abstractly

  • about its basic principles.

  • BILL MOYERS: The invisible hand.

  • RICHARD WOLFF: Yeah.

  • BILL MOYERS: The market.

  • RICHARD WOLFF: All of that. So for me, I began to realize,

  • "Okay, I'm an economist. I'm in that one. But I want to understand how the real economy

  • works." And then I discovered that I needed to reeducate myself. I had to go learn things

  • that I was never assigned to read.

  • BILL MOYERS: After Harvard? After Stanford? And after Yale?

  • RICHARD WOLFF: It actually happened while I was there. I

  • was already, there were a few people--

  • BILL MOYERS: --as heretics.

  • RICHARD WOLFF: Yes, they do.

  • BILL MOYERS: A few.

  • RICHARD WOLFF: You know, but you know, capitalism--

  • I like to say to people, capitalism, like all systems, when it comes into being, is

  • born a few hundred years ago in Europe and spreads around the world, like other systems

  • before it. It has always produced those who admire and celebrate it and those who are

  • critical of it.

  • I used to say to my students, "If you want to understand the family who lives down the

  • street, suppose there's mama, papa, two children. And one of the children thinks it's the greatest

  • family there ever was, and the other one is quite critical. If you want to understand

  • the family, do you choose only one child to interview, or do you think it might be wise

  • to interview both of them?"

  • For me, I began to interview the critics of capitalism, because I thought, "Let's see

  • what they have to say." And that for me opened an immense door of critical insights that

  • I found invaluable. And I've never forgiven my teachers for not having exposed me to that.

  • BILL MOYERS: But so few have done that. As you know, as

  • you've written, as you have said, we've not had much of a debate in this country for,

  • I don't know, since the Great Depression over the nature of the system, the endemic crisis

  • of capitalism that is built into the system. We have simply not had that kind of debate.

  • Why do you think that is?

  • RICHARD WOLFF: Well, I think we have had it from time to

  • time. We have had some of the greatest economists in the tradition, for example, Thorstein Veblen,

  • at the beginning of the 20th century, a great American economist, very critical of the system.

  • Someone who taught me, Paul Sweezy, another Harvard graduate. These are people who have

  • been around and at various times in our history, the beginning of the 20th century, during

  • the 1930’s, again in the 1960’s, there was intense debate.

  • There has been that kind of thing in our history. I mean, we as Americans, after all, we take

  • a certain pride, which I think is justified, we criticize our school system. We just spent

  • two years criticizing our health delivery system in this country. We criticize our energy

  • system, our transportation system.

  • And we want to believe, and I think it's true, that to criticize this system, to have an

  • honest debate, exposes flaws, makes it possible to repair or improve them, and then our society

  • benefits. But then how do you explain, and that's your question, that we don't do that

  • for our economic system?

  • For 50 years, when capitalism is raised, you have two allowable responses: celebration,

  • cheerleading. Okay, that's very nice. But that means you have freed that system from

  • all criticism, from all real debate. It can indulge its worst tendencies without fear

  • of exposure and attack. Because when you begin to criticize capitalism, you're either told

  • that you're ignorant and don't understand things, or with more dark implications, you're

  • somehow disloyal. You're somehow a person who doesn't like America or something.

  • BILL MOYERS: That emerged, as you know, in the Cold War.

  • That emerged when to criticize the American system was to play into the hands of the enemies

  • of America, the Communists. And so it became disreputable and treasonous to do what you're

  • doing today.

  • RICHARD WOLFF: And for my colleagues, it became dangerous

  • to your career. If you went in that direction, you would cut off your chances of getting

  • a university position or being promoted and getting your works published in journals and

  • books, the things that academics need to do for their jobs. So yes, it was shut down and

  • shut off. And I think we're living the results. You know, if I were--

  • BILL MOYERS: Of the silence? Of--

  • RICHARD WOLFF:
Yes. Of the lack of debate. We're living in an economic system that isn't

  • working. So I guess I'm a little bit like one of those folks in the 12-step programs.

  • Before you can solve a problem, you have to admit you got one. And before we're going

  • to fix an economic system that's working this way, and producing such tensions and inequalities

  • and strains on our community, we have to face the real scope of the problem we have. And

  • that's with the system as a whole and at the very least, we have to open up a national

  • debate about it. And at the most, I think we have to think long and hard about alternative

  • systems that might work better for us.

  • BILL MOYERS:
I was intrigued to hear you say elsewhere that this is not just about

  • evil and greed. And yet you went on to say capitalists and the rich are determined not

  • to bear the costs of the recent bailouts or the crisis itself. You even go so far as to

  • suggest, as to question their patriotism, and that they may not have the country's interest

  • at heart. If that's not greed, what is it?

  • RICHARD WOLFF:
Oh, I think it isn't greed. It's-- and let me explain why. Yes, I'm critical

  • of corporations and the rich because they do call the shots in our society, and so that

  • brings on them a certain amount of criticism, even though they don't like it. So I will

  • do that. But beyond that, let me absolve them in the following way. Bankers do what this

  • system goads them to do.

  • If you talk to a banker, he or she will explain to you, "These are the things that will advance

  • the interests of my bank. These are the problems I have to overcome. And that's what I try

  • to do." And my understanding, and I've looked at this in great de-- is that-- that's correct.

  • They're not telling a story. They're doing. They're following the rules. They do the things

  • that advance their interests and they avoid the things that would damage their interests.

  • That's what they're hired to do as executives or as leaders of their institutions. And that's

  • what they do to the best of their ability. So for example, I'm not enthused about arresting

  • these people or punishing them in this or that way. And the reason is simple, if we

  • get, I won't mention any names, but we get some banker and we haul him up in front of

  • a court, and we find out he's done some things that are not good.

  • And we substitute the next one. He gets arrested though, he gets fined, he gets removed. The

  • next one is subject to the same rewards and punishments. The same inducements. The same

  • conditions. If we don't change the system, we're not going to change the behavior of

  • the people in it. So in a sense, I do absolve them even when they are greedy, because they're

  • doing what this system tells them to do. And if we don't change the system, substituting

  • a new crop will not solve our problem.

  • BILL MOYERS:
You're also not enthused about regulation, which is what so many liberals

  • and others are calling for now. Is there some parallel reason for that?

  • RICHARD WOLFF:
Yes. I find it astonishing to hear folks talk about regulation. We regulated

  • after every one of our great panics in the 19th century. By the way, in those years,

  • we were more honest. We didn't refer to a "Great Recession." We used much more colorful

  • language, "The panic of 1857." I mean, that describes what people felt. Anyway, after

  • every one of our panics, crises, recessions, depressions, we have regulated. And the regulations

  • were always defended, first by lower-level officials and eventually by the president

  • and the highest authorities, usually on two grounds.

  • "With this regulation, not only will we get out of the crisis we're in, but," and there

  • was a pregnant pause, "we will prevent a recurrence of this terrible economic dilemma." It never

  • worked. The regulations never delivered on that promise. We're in a terrible crisis now.

  • So all the previous promises about all the previous regulations didn't work. And they

  • didn't work for two reasons.

  • BILL MOYERS:
Yeah, why?

  • RICHARD WOLFF:
Either the regulations that were passed were then undone, or they were

  • evaded. And that's the history of every regulation. During the Great Depression, it was decided,

  • as it has happened again now, that banks behaved in an unfortunate way that contributed to

  • the crisis.

  • So in the Great Depression, a bill was passed, a regulation called the Glass-Steagall Act,

  • 1933 Banking Act, which basically said, "There has to be two kinds of banks, the banks that

  • takes deposits cannot make risky investments. For that we need something separate called

  • an investment bank. The first thing will be a commercial bank, takes deposits, and we'll

  • make a wall between them."

  • Okay. The bill was passed. For the banks, this was trouble. This was a problem. They

  • didn't like this. So they spent the first 30 years, 20 to 30 years evading it in a hundred

  • different stratagems. Meanwhile, they began to realize that with some work with politicians,

  • they could weaken it.

  • And after a while, they decided that even better than evading and weakening, why don't

  • we just get rid of it? And so in the 1990s, they mobilized, led by some of our biggest

  • banks, whose names everybody knows, and they finally succeeded. The Congress repealed the

  • Glass-Steagall Act, and President Bill Clinton signed the repeal.

  • BILL MOYERS:
It was a bipartisan repeal.

  • RICHARD WOLFF:
Right. It's a joke. That allowed the banks to make risky bets with

  • their depositor’s money. Eight years later, our financial system collapsed. It's like

  • a joke. This is a system that creates in the private enterprise a core mechanism and a

  • logic that makes them do the very things that need regulation and then makes them evade

  • or undo those regulations.

  • BILL MOYERS:
You probably saw the recent story that Facebook, which made more than

  • one billion dollars in profits last year, didn't pay taxes on that profit. And actually

  • got a $429 million rebate from you and me and all those other taxpayers out there. GE,

  • Verizon, Boeing, 27 other corporations made a combined $205 billion in profits between

  • 2008 and 2011 and 26 paid no federal corporate income tax. What will ultimately happen, Richard

  • if the big winners from capitalism opt out of participating in the strengthening, nurturing,

  • and financial support of a fair and functioning society?

  • RICHARD WOLFF:
Well, the worst example I just learned about a few days ago. And I got

  • it actually from Senator Bernie Sanders from Vermont. That during the very years 2009,

  • '10, '11, that the federal government was basically bailing out the biggest banks in

  • the United States, they were busily establishing or operating subsidiaries in the Cayman Islands,

  • in the Caribbean, in order to evade taxes.

  • And it's a wonderful vignette in which the very government pouring money to salvage these

  • private capitalist institutions is discovering its own revenue from them being undone by

  • their evasion of the regulations about income tax by moving to Cayman Islands where the

  • corporate tax is zero instead of paying their corporate tax in New York or wherever they're

  • based.

  • BILL MOYERS:
Your assumption that runs through your books, through your teaching, through

  • this very interesting DVD, is that democracy, theoretically if not practically, but you

  • hope practically, acts as a brake, B-R-A-K-E, a brake on private power and greed. And it's

  • clear that that brake doesn't work anymore. That it's not slowing down the growth of power

  • to the capitalist class.

  • RICHARD WOLFF:
Right. And I think it's very poetic here in the United States. In the 1930s,

  • when we after all had a crisis even worse than the one we had now by most measures,

  • higher unemployment, and greater incidents of poverty and so on, we did still have a

  • political system that allowed pressure from below to be articulated politically.

  • We had the greatest unionizing drive in the history of the United States, the CIO. We

  • had strong socialist and communist parties that work with the CIO, that mobilized tens

  • of millions of people into unions who had never been in unions before. And they went

  • to the power structure at the time, President Roosevelt as its emblem.

  • And they said, "You have to do something for us. You just have to. Because if you don't,

  • then the system itself will become our problem. And you don't want that. And many of us in

  • the union movement don't want it either." Although some of the Socialists and Communists

  • might have been quite happy to go that direction. And I think Roosevelt was a genius politician

  • at that time.

  • He understood the issue. He went to the rich and the corporations of America, the top,

  • who had become very wealthy at that time, and he basically said to them, "You must give

  • me, the president, the money to meet at least the basic demands of the massive people to

  • be massively helped in an economic crisis. Because if you don't, then the goose that

  • lays your golden egg will disappear."

  • And he split the corporations and the rich. Half of them were not persuaded. And I believe

  • they represent the right wing of the Republican Party to this day. But the other half were.

  • And they made the deal. And so we had this amazing thing. Politics, the threat of the

  • mass of people from below to politically act to change the system led us to see something

  • we've almost unimaginable today.

  • A president, who in the depths of the Depression, creates the Social Security System, giving

  • every American who's worked a lifetime of 65 years a check for the rest of their life

  • every month. He created unemployment compensation to give those millions of unemployed a check

  • every week. And then to top it off, he created and filled 12.5 million federal jobs because

  • he said, "The private sector either can't or won't do it."

  • So in the midst of a terrible depression, when every level of government says, "There's

  • no money," Mr. Roosevelt proved there is the money. It's just a question of whether you

  • have the political will and support to go get it. And when people listen to me explain

  • this history, and it's always amazing to me how many Americans kind of never got that

  • part--

  • BILL MOYERS:
Don't know it.

  • RICHARD WOLFF:
But when I do that, and they say, "Well, that's a very risky thing for

  • a politician to do, support the mass of people by taxing the rich, unthinkable." And then

  • I remind them, Roosevelt is the most popular and successful president in American history.

  • Nobody had ever been elected four times in a row before that.

  • And it was so upsetting to the Republicans that after Mr. Roosevelt died, they pushed

  • that law through that gives us a term limit of two presidential terms. So it wasn't the

  • end of his political career, it made him the most powerful popular president we've ever

  • had. There must be a lesson here somewhere.

  • BILL MOYERS:
Well, it was one of the few times in history in which the political elite

  • and a few financial elite formed an alliance for the people.

  • RICHARD WOLFF:
Right.

  • BILL MOYERS:
And yet, Richard, it still took the war the create the spending that

  • pulled us out of the depression, right?

  • RICHARD WOLFF:
Right. Because they were always large groups of corporations and the

  • rich who were angry at all of this, like they are today, who didn't want to pay higher taxes,

  • much higher than corporations pay today, who didn't want to pay high personal income tax

  • rates, much higher than they are today. But they had to. Right, people don't remember

  • in 1943, President Roosevelt proposed a top income tax bracket of 100 percent.

  • BILL MOYERS:
Yeah.

  • RICHARD WOLFF:
His bill that he sent to the Congress, a proposal, was that anyone

  • who earns over $25,000, which would be roughly $350,000 a year now, in current dollars, would

  • have to give every nickel of it, beyond the $25,000, to the government, 100 percent. That's

  • maximum income. The President of the United States, with massive popular support. And

  • when the Republicans said, "No, we can't do that." They fought. And the compromise was

  • a 94 percent top rate.

  • RICHARD WOLFF:
Compared to the 39 percent, and .6 percent that we have today. I mean,

  • you can see there that that-- that was a lesson. That I believe the corporations and the rich

  • in America have learned. They saw that they were forced between two choices. A real revolutionary

  • possibility, or a compromise. They voted for the compromise. They gave the mass of people

  • real support, far better than anything they're getting now.

  • And they did that because politics was a real possibility to undo their economic system.

  • After the war, I think our history is the history of a destruction of the Communist

  • and Socialist parties first and foremost, and of the labor movement shortly thereafter.

  • So that we now have a crisis without the mechanism of pressure from below. And that may look

  • to those on top as an advantage because they don't have that problem.

  • They don't have a C.I.O. They don't have Socialists and Communists, the way they do in Europe.

  • But I think it's a Pyrrhic victory, because what you're teaching the mass of the American

  • people is that politics, debate, and struggle, is a dead end. And if you think people are

  • just going to sink into resignation, that's wishful thinking. They're going to find other

  • ways to protest against the system like this, because the pressures are building in that

  • direction. I think this is a capitalism that I would say has lost its sense of its social

  • conditions, its social limits. It's killing the mass support without which it cannot survive.

  • So it is creating tensions and hostilities that will take left wing, right wing, a variety

  • of forms. But it's producing its own undoing and doesn't imagine it because it focuses

  • so much on making more money in a normal way of business that it somehow occludes from

  • itself. It doesn't see the larger social conditions and what its behavior is doing to them.

  • BILL MOYERS:
For a moment, wasn't there kind of quirky or eccentric symbiosis between

  • the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street? That, 'cause in their own different ways, they were

  • reacting to the colossus that was coming apart all around them. And upending their lives.

  • RICHARD WOLFF:
Absolutely. I think in country after country going through this crisis, you're

  • seeing more or less the same thing. A upsurge of right wing agony and hostility and opposition

  • to what's happening in this capitalist system and a left wing one. But only difference from

  • country to country is the balance between the two.

  • And I think the Tea Party comes first because being a right wing party in this country's

  • much easier, much more socially acceptable to form, and there's the old roots of it,

  • anyway, in the John Birch societies and all the rest in American history. So we have a

  • Tea Party resurgence.

  • Then echoed a couple years later by the Occupy Wall Street, which is a left wing response

  • to all of this. And I don't think we've seen the end of either of these. I think these

  • were the first explosions of this process, the first reflections and signs of a society

  • coming apart because capitalism can't deliver the kind of society and results that people

  • want. And I think we're going to see more of it and there may be difficult forms of

  • it. But it is part of a system that has come, I think, closer and closer to its historical

  • if not end, then a severe crisis.

  • BILL MOYERS: But there is no agitation here. People seem

  • not to know what to do here.

  • RICHARD WOLFF:
I think Americans are a little bit like deer caught in the proverbial headlights.

  • They thought that they were in a society that kind of guaranteed that each generation lives

  • better than the one before.

  • That the American dream gets better and better and is available. They promised when they

  • got married to one another to provide the American dream to each other. And then they

  • promised their children to provide it to them, that the children would have a good education,

  • that children would have the opportunity. They can't quite believe that it's not there

  • anymore.

  • You know, for 30 years, as the wages in America stopped rising since the 1970s, Americans

  • reacted by doing two things. Because they couldn't give up the idea that they were going

  • to get the American dream. How do you buy the American dream, which becomes ever more

  • expensive, if your wages don't go up, per worker, per hour? Which they haven't since

  • the '70s.

  • The first thing you do is send more and more people out to work. The women went out in

  • vast numbers. Older people came out of retirement. Teenagers did more and more work. Here's a

  • statistic. The OECD, leading agency gathering data on the world's developed economy shows

  • that the average number of hours worked per year by an American worker is larger than

  • that of any other developed country on this planet.

  • We work ourselves like crazy. That's what you do if the wages per worker don't go up.

  • You send out more people from the family in order to be able to get that American dream.

  • But of course if you do that, everybody's physically exhausted.

  • The stresses in your family become more powerful. What's happened to American families is a

  • well-known result over the last 30 years. But the other interesting thing, to hold onto

  • the American dream that Americans did when their wages didn't go up anymore, was to borrow

  • money like it's going out of style. 
You cannot keep borrowing more and more

  • if your underlying wage is not going up. Because in the end, it's the wage that enables you

  • to pay off what you've borrowed. And it was only a matter of time, and 2007 happened to

  • be that time, when you couldn't do it anymore. You couldn't borrow anymore because you couldn't

  • pay it back.

  • And so you stopped your mortgage or you stopped your credit card payment or you couldn't make

  • your car payments. And this is a situation that explodes the expectations of a good life.

  • And I think Americans are stunned. And they haven't yet kind of gotten their heads and

  • their arms around the reality they face. And so what-- we see people in shock, if you like.

  • I mean, I'm stretching the metaphor, but--

  • BILL MOYERS:
That's all right.

  • RICHARD WOLFF:
The American dream that they thought they could access, that they were

  • told they could access, if they just worked hard or went to school or both of the-- it's

  • not there. A whole generation of young people is learning that in order to get the education,

  • without which the American dream is not possible, you have to borrow so much money that your

  • whole situation is put in a terrible vice.

  • Then you discover, at the end of your four years and you have your bachelor's degree,

  • that the job you had thought you were then entitled to and the income you thought would

  • go with it, they're not there. And yet you have the debt, the effects of this on our

  • society, not just for the young people confronting it daily, but for the parents who helped them,

  • who led them to expect something, that is producing a kind of stasis, immobility, shock.

  • But beware, if my psychiatrist wife is right, as she usually is, what happens after that

  • period of stasis, of shock, is a boiling over of anger, as you kind of confront what has

  • happened. And that you were deceived and betrayed in your expectations, your hopes. And then

  • the question is, where does that go?

  • BILL MOYERS:
I'm struck by the fact that you give a fairly dire-- not fairly, a dire

  • analysis of what's happened to us in the last several years. But at the end of both your

  • book and of your lecture, you don't wind up cynical or pessimistic. You--

  • RICHARD WOLFF:
Not at all.

  • BILL MOYERS:
You sound like you're saying, "Let's take to the barricades."

  • RICHARD WOLFF:
Yeah. I think there's a wonderful tradition here in the United States of people

  • feeling that they have a right, even if they don't exercise it a lot, to intervene, to

  • control. There is that democratic impulse. And I put a lot of stock in the hope that

  • if this is explained, if the conditions are presented, that the American people can and

  • will find ways to push for the kinds of changes that can get us out of this dilemma. Even

  • if the political leaders who've inherited this situation seem stymied and unable to

  • do so.

  • BILL MOYERS:
Richard, I want you to come back in a few weeks. Before you come back,

  • I want to alert our of readers of our website, have them submit some questions. You've opened

  • so much of it, I know they'll have some questions.

  • RICHARD WOLFF:
Well, I'll--

  • BILL MOYERS:
But I'll bring them here and we'll deal with this. 'Cause I know you have

  • some alternatives, that you've given a lot of thought to the critique, but you've also

  • given a lot of thought to the correcting of our system. And will you do that?

  • RICHARD WOLFF:
I would love to, because one of the things that has happened to me

  • in the last two years is as we've developed the criticism and people see the process of

  • how we got here, the most insistent questions is, "What do we do? Where do we go? If regulation

  • isn't the solution and if punishing this one-- if it is a systemic process, how can we conceive

  • and talk about an alternative system?"

  • BILL MOYERS:
Richard Wolff, I've really enjoyed this conversation. The DVD is "Capitalism

  • Hits the Fan." And the book is "Democracy at Work: A Cure for Capitalism." Thank you

  • for being with me.

  • RICHARD WOLFF:
Thank you, Bill, for the opportunity.

  • BILL MOYERS: You heard Richard Wolff say there are very

  • good reasons to be angry at capitalism’s takeover of democracy, but, he went on to

  • say, don’t write off the democratic impulse that is at the heart of the American promise.

  • It can break out anytime, anywhere.

  • Here’s an example. The day after President Obama’s State of the Union, restaurant employees

  • marched on Capitol Hill in support of a fair deal for workers who live by customer tips.

  • PROTESTERS: What we want, is justice in our industry!

  • BILL MOYERS: Although those tips are often meager or non-existent,

  • for the past 22 years, these workers have been stuck at a federal minimum wage of $2.13

  • an hour.

  • PROTESTERS: Hey Hey, Ho Ho, $2.13 has got to go!

  • BILL MOYERS : At the head of the march, Saru Jayaraman.

  • PROTESTERS: Roc United!

  • BILL MOYERS : The organization she co-founded, Restaurant

  • Opportunities Centers United, is fighting to improve wages and working conditions for

  • the people who cook and serve the food we eat at restaurants and then clean up when

  • were done.

  • SARU JAYARAMAN: Because restaurant workers they serve us and

  • they should be able to put food on their own tables

  • Bill Moyers: Outside the Capitol, she and the protesters

  • are joined by Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut

  • REP. ROSA DeLAURO: Storm that Hill, make the difference.

  • BILL MOYERS: Inside, the activists are greeted by Congresswoman

  • Donna Edwards of Maryland, who, with DeLauro, has introduced legislation raising the minimum

  • wage for tipped workers.

  • REP. DONNA EDWARDS: I know that when I waited tables, I didn’t

  • just do it because I needed some extra change. I did it because I had to pay my rent. I did

  • it because I had to make sure that I had food in my refrigerator. I did it because I needed

  • transportation to get back and forth to school. It was a job.

  • BILL MOYERS: Saru Jayaraman’s new bookBehind the

  • Kitchen Dooris an insider’s expose of what it’s really like to work at the lowest

  • rungs of the restaurant industry.

  • SARU JAYARAMAN: There are actually now over 10 million restaurant

  • workers in the United States. So seven of the ten lowest paying jobs in America are

  • restaurant jobs, and the two absolute lowest paying jobs in America are restaurant: dishwashers

  • and fast food preps and cooks are the two absolute lowest paying jobs in America. These

  • workers earn poverty wages because the minimum wage for tipped workers at the federal level

  • has been frozen for 22 years at $2.13 an hour, and it’s the reason that food servers use

  • food stamps at double the rate of the rest of the U.S. workforce, and have a poverty

  • rate of three times the rest of the U.S. workforce.

  • We got to this place because of the power of the National Restaurant Association; we

  • call it the other NRA. Theyve been named the tenth most powerful lobbying group in

  • Congress and back in 1996 when Herman Cain was the head of the National Restaurant Association,

  • he struck a deal with Congress saying that, “We will not oppose the overall minimum

  • wage continuing to rise as long as the minimum wage for tipped workers stays frozen forever,”

  • and so it has for the last 22 years

  • Now sure, some of them earn tips on top of those wages, but there are plenty of workers,

  • particularly imagine your average server in an IHOP in Texas earning $2.13 an hour, graveyard

  • shift, no tips. The company’s supposed to make up the difference between $2.13 and $7.25

  • but time and time again that doesn’t happen.

  • They live on tips, and when slow night happens and you don’t earn anything or very little

  • in tips you often can’t pay the rent. And I guarantee you in every restaurant in America

  • there’s at least one person who’s on the verge of homelessness or being evicted or

  • going through some kind of instability.

  • It’s an incredible irony that the people that who put food on our tables use food stamps

  • at twice the rate of the rest of the U.S. workforce. Meaning that the people who put

  • food on our tables can’t afford to put food on their own family’s tables, and they don’t

  • use food stamps because they want to, they use food stamps because their wages are so

  • low and they face higher levels of what’s called food insecurity than other workers.

  • So they can’t afford to eat!

  • The other key issue that we find that workers face is the lack of paid sick days and healthcare

  • benefits; two-thirds of all workers report cooking, preparing, and serving food when

  • theyre ill, with the flu or other sicknesses. And with a wage as little as $2.13, so reliant

  • on tips for their wages, these workers simply cannot afford to take a day off when sick,

  • let alone risk losing their jobs.

  • Ninety percent of foodborne illnesses in the United States, can be traced back to sick

  • restaurant workers. So, you know, it’s common sense, it’s a public health issue, it’s

  • good for the workers, the families, and the small businesses, because our research has

  • shown that when small business actually pays better, provides these benefits, weve found

  • they have less turnover, higher productivity, higher profitability.

  • The majority of workers are adults; many are parents and single parents, single mothers,

  • using the restaurant job as their main source of income, and by the way taking great pride

  • in restaurant work. Really loving being a restaurant worker, hospitality is something

  • people take great pride in and so we need to make this industry professional, the way

  • that other careers are professional. This is not a job that you move on to something

  • else, this is a career for many, many people who stay in this industry for their lifetimes.

  • So people need the opportunity to move up the ladder, to move to better jobs, to be

  • treated like professionals, given a paid sick day, given a wage that they can sustain their

  • families on.

  • We partner with more than a hundred small business owners around the country who are

  • doing the right thing, providing good, decent wages, better working conditions, paid sick

  • days, benefits, opportunities for advancement. These employers don’t charge exorbitant

  • amounts to their customers, their prices are very comparable to everybody else but theyve

  • worked it into their business plan and we have them organized into a restaurant industry

  • roundtable and offer assistance, advice, both from them and from us about how any restaurant

  • owner could do better, could provide better wages and not have exorbitant prices. So I

  • think that’s the first thing I would say to a small business owner is, “Look, there

  • are tons of people who are already doing it. Were here to help you, theyre here to

  • help you try this new way of doing business.”

  • PROTESTERS: Were workers united, we can’t be defeated.

  • Were workers united, we can’t be defeated

  • BILL MOYERS: Acting on that democratic impulse, Saru Jayaraman

  • and the protesting workers march from Capitol Hill to the Capital Grille steakhouse, owned

  • by one of the biggest restaurant chains in America

  • SARU JAYARAMAN: Eighty-six thousand customers of yours have

  • signed a petition calling on you to pay a minimum of at least five dollars an hour to

  • your workerscause $2.13 is just not enough to live on. So here you go.

  • CAPITAL GRILLE MANAGER: Thank you.

  • SARU JAYARAMAN: Thank you.

  • BILL MOYERS: A final thought: Watching those workers, it

  • occurs to me that a capitalist system that no longer meets most people’s needs simply

  • cannot last. It may survive for a time by fraud, farce or force, but once the capacity

  • or the will for self-correction has been lost, so, too, is lost its reason to be, except

  • to enrich the few at the expense of the many. Sooner or later the oppressive thumb of the

  • One Percent has to be lifted -- either voluntarily removed, or severed by public anger and popular

  • will. For the moment, those restaurant workers still believe in democracy -- still believe

  • they can undo politically what predatory capitalism has done to them economically; still believe

  • their cry for justice will be heard. And if it isn’t, what then are their choices? What

  • would you do?

  • Tell us at our website, Billmoyers.com. Youll also find more about Saru Jayaraman and her

  • call to take action for fair pay and better conditions for restaurant workers. And, send

  • us your questions for Richard Wolff.

  • That’s all at Billmoyers.com. I’ll see you there, and I’ll see you here, next time.

BILL MOYERS: This week on Moyers & Company

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