Socialism for the Rich, Harsh Capitalism for the Rest | Robert Reich | 2019

Apr 9, 2019 | Robert Reich explains how the wealthy and corporations receive billions in corporate welfare.

This video might be a little on the old side, but this is exactly what is going on in America today. – © Mark Alexander

Robert Reich: The Real Welfare in America I 10 Economic Myths Debunked

Jul 12, 2024 | The Wells Fargo exec overseeing their customer account scam got a $125 million exit package. Meanwhile, most Americans who lose their jobs get only limited unemployment benefits. When I say we have socialism for the rich, harsh capitalism for the rest, this is what I mean.

Economic Update: China: Capitalist, Socialist or What?

On this week's episode, Prof. Wolff talks about the Chinese economy. China is run by a Communist Party but describes itself as socialist, while the employer/employee structure of its enterprises is capitalist. We examine what this means for (a) its place in the world economy, (b) its place in the transition from capitalism to socialism/communism, and (c) its conflict with the US.

Heated Debate on Capitalism with America’s Most Prominent Marxist Economist – Richard Wolff

Economist Richard Wolff sits down with Patrick Bet-David to discuss socialism, capitalism and business.

Patrick Bet-David »

Global Capitalism: Rise of Socialism in the US Today | May 2019

Robert Reich: Socialism for the Rich, Capitalism for the Rest

Robert Reich explain how the wealthy and corporations receive billions in corporate welfare.

Billionaire JP Morgan Chief Attacks Socialism as 'a Disaster'

THE GUARDIAN: Jamie Dimon: socialism leads to ‘corruption and favouritism’ / America’s top banker, paid $31m last year, defends capitalism

The world’s most powerful banker has attacked socialism, saying it produces “stagnation, corruption and often worse”.

JP Morgan chief executive Jamie Dimon took aim at socialism in his annual letter to shareholders, and warned it would be “a disaster for our country”.

Dimon, who was paid $31m last year as the head of America’s largest bank and who is estimated by Forbes to be worth $1.3bn, took his swipe as a new wave of left politics has emerged in the US.

Democratic socialism has been embraced by a new generation of politicians, including New York congressman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and supporters of Bernie Sanders, a longtime socialist now making a second bid for the presidency.

Dimon’s attack also comes as many leftwing Democrats, including Sanders and senator Elizabeth Warren, have called for the breakup of big businesses and greater regulation of banking in particular.

In his letter, Dimon wrote: “When governments control companies, economic assets (companies, lenders and so on) over time are used to further political interests – leading to inefficient companies and markets, enormous favoritism and corruption.” » | Dominic Rushe in New York | Thursday, April 4, 2019

Trump Offers Socialism for the Rich, Capitalism for Everyone Else

THE GUARDIAN: To a conservative mind, socialism is getting something for nothing. Yet this is what the president promotes for the wealthy

“America will never be a socialist country,” Donald Trump declared in his State of the Union address. Someone should alert Trump that America is now a hotbed of socialism. But it is socialism for the rich. Everyone else is treated to harsh capitalism.

In the conservative mind, socialism means getting something for doing nothing. That pretty much describes the $21bn saved by the nation’s largest banks last year thanks to Trump’s tax cuts, some of which went into massive bonuses for bank executives. On the other hand, more than 4,000 lower-level bank employees got a big dose of harsh capitalism. They lost their jobs.

Banks that are too big to fail – courtesy of the 2008 bank bailout – enjoy a hidden subsidy of some $83bn a year, because creditors facing less risk accept lower interest on deposits and loans. Last year, Wall Street’s bonus pool was $31.4bn. Take away the hidden subsidy and the bonus pool disappears. » | Robert Reich | Monday, February 11, 2019

Venezuela Crisis: Where Families Buy Rotten Meat to Eat – BBC News

Millions of Venezuelans have left the country in the last two years, fleeing the oil-rich nation’s economic collapse.

Shortages of food and basic goods, years of recession, soaring inflation and regular power shortages have left the country almost on its knees.

The government says those against the socialist President Nicolas Maduro are waging an "economic war" – but many within and outside the country blame his policies, combined with corruption and mismanagement.

One of the most affected areas is the state of Zulia, long known as the centre of the country's oil industry. The BBC’s Vladimir Hernandez is one of the few international journalists who has been able to report from the state.

Produced by Herminia Fernandez, filmed by Omar Garcia. Edited by Kelvin Brown.

Is Socialism Having Its Moment in US Elections?

In other industrialized countries, movement towards a democratic form of socialism has been strong enough to win national elections. So why hasn’t socialism ever become a powerful force in American politics? There are lots of reasons, as well as younger generations who align with socialist ideals that may bring the necessary gusto. NewsHour Weekend Special Correspondent Jeff Greenfield reports.

Communism vs. Socialism: What's The Difference? | NowThis World

There's a lot of confusion surrounding the terms Communism and Socialism. The two are often used interchangeably, even by entire governments and political leaders, but they are not the same at all! So what’s the difference? Find out in this quick explainer!

Richard Wolff: The Angry Working Class and the Quest for a New Economic Order | Kontext TV

Marxist Economist Debates with Fox's Stuart Varney about Socialism

Economist and d@w founder Richard Wolff joined Fox Business on July 31st, 2017 to debate with Stuart Varney about socialism, capitalism, and taxes.

View from the Left: Dr Richard Wolff: Socialism for Dummies (2015)

Professor Richard D. Wolff explains in 50 minutes what socialism is NOT. Where does the American fear of Socialism, Communism and Marxism come from?


WIKI: Richard D. Wolff »

Richard D. Wolff »

'The Game Is Rigged': Richard Wolff (2015)

ACLU SoCal, L.A. Progressive and Occidental College hosted Richard Wolff for a discussion on economic rights and reform, on February 10, 2015 at Occidental College.

How Venezuela's Crisis Went from Bad to Worse

Riots, starvation, massive inflation, and police brutality. This is how Venezuela's economic crisis went from bad to worse.

Jeremy Corbyn: 'Our Water Industry Should Be in Public Ownership' – BBC News

France Elections, A Risk to the Euro?

DANIEL LACALLE: France is such a socialist country that, in the polls, the four candidates appear each with 20% vote intention. The voter has a “wide” variety of choice: the Socialist, the Social-Democrat, the Communist and the National Socialist.

However, what should amaze anyone is the fact that nearly 40% of the voters are choosing an anti-Euro option.

The rise of anti-Euro populism is not due to “austerity”. And populism is not defeated with more interventionism. France is the proof.

In France there has been no austerity, as the Natixis shows in “A big misunderstanding: The French think that there has been austerity”. Not only has public spending and the state intervention increased to 57% of GDP, with the government controlling major companies and nearly 70% of the economy, France has carried out for years a wrongly-called “expansive” Keynesian policy, despite two decades of stagnation. France is the example of a failure of central planning statism that some blame on the fact that there was not enough of it.

In the face of a misdiagnosis (“populism is due to the -ineexistent- budget cuts”), politicians propose the erroneous solution (“populism must be fought with more interventionism”), and what this does is legitimate the wrong message of magical solutions that lead the voter to prefer the most radical ideas.

Among those magical solutions, there are few things more ridiculous than the populist promise that everything will be great if France gets out of the euro and defaults.

In a delirious interview with Melenchon, the populist ultra-left candidate, he said that he counted on the “atomic bomb”. Stop paying the debt. A genius. “If we stop paying the debt, the economy does not suffer, only bankers suffer,” he said. On the other side of economic schizophrenia, at the far right, LePen’s party claimed that “70% of the French debt is issued before the monetary union, so it can be redenominated in French francs.” And they didn’t blink.

They forgot that their country runs a structural deficit and that it cannot finance that huge amount of expenses if it defaults.

They forgot that more than 40% of the French debt is in the pension plans, social security and savings of its citizens, which would sink their beloved welfare state.

They forgot that, in order to finance public expenditures of more than 1.2 trillion euros (57% of GDP), France needs a secondary market that supports the monetary policy of the Central Bank and a currency that is accepted globally as a reserve.

They forgot that, if France defaults on public debt, the risk premium of SMEs and families in their country soars and credit dries.

They forgot that their local financial system is three times the GDP of France and that, if a default sends it to bankruptcy, they can say farewell to citizens’ deposits.

Every populist always comes up with the brilliant idea of doing what has never worked and thinking that this time will be different. Melenchon and LePen, like the rest, look at Venezuela or Zimbabwe and think that it has not worked because they were not in charge.

They forget that such a destruction is not solved by printing French francs, because it ignores the history and the disaster that inflationary policies were for Europe, always with the same result. Sink the economy, blame the external enemy, inflationism, war and back again.

The fallacy that a country will solve structural problems devaluing the currency is more than dismantled by reality. As if the ECB had not carried a massively expansive monetary policy, within the euro, they believe that the problem is that it is not devalued enough. France has spent ten years with an expansive fiscal and monetary policy, as shown by Natixis, and they think the problem is that it was not enough. That it did not work because the populists were not in power.

Default and devaluation destroy the average citizen, businesses and families, wiping out savings and deposits, cost of imports soar and the ability to finance their beloved State, collapses.

Lessons from the economic history of France:

Between 1790 and 1793, 3,500 million notes were issued in France, the so-called Assignats, which soon lost 95% of the value artificially decided by politicians. Of course, food prices soared with the loss of value of the currency. Finance Minister Claviere blamed the shopkeepers and the “merchants” and promised to force the machines and print more money.

Prices continued to rise inexorably. Money was worth less and less, and therefore, goods and services cost more and more.

And what did the French government do to make up for the mistake? Print more money, raise taxes and confiscate properties, destroying real investment and trade in the face of lack of legal certainty. The Jacobins introduced the “Law of Maximums” prohibiting price increases. Like Kirchner, Maduro … At the same time, they punished with jail and the guillotine anyone who rejected payment with paper money. This just got the shops closed, because owners just did not want those colored papers that were no longer worth anything.

Of course, now it is different. At that time, the state was not in debt more than 100% of its GDP, with more than 40% of that debt in the hands of families, with a structural deficit and a public expenditure of almost 60% of GDP.

But it is what populists want to repeat, with the argument that “this time is different”.

All populist inflationists always talk about the United States and the dollar to justify their monetary mirage and forget to be a global reserve currency, have a functioning secondary market and an attractive and dynamic market-based economy. The US dollar is not the global reserve currency because it is decided by a committee. It is so because the world trusts its economy.

I remember an episode of Game of Thrones in which a character said “he would not mind burning down the kingdom as long as he is appointed the king of the ashes”. That’s the populist strategy. To destroy the economy and proclaim themselves as the only savior, as the solution to their own sabotage. Poor France. | Dr. Daniel Lacalle | First published on Wednesday, April 19, 2017 | © Daniel Lacalle | All Rights Reserved

Daniel Lacalle is a PhD in Economics, fund manager and author of Escape from the Central Bank Trap (BEP), Life In The Financial Markets, and The Energy World Is Flat (Wiley).

This article has been published with the express permission of the author; and I would like to express my sincere thanks to him for giving me permission to re-publish it. It is an excellent article.

Daniel Lacalle PhD is a prolific author. You can check out his books on Amazon here

France: A Disintegrating Country That Could Ruin Us All

MAIL ONLINE: The queue for cabs outside the Gare du Nord is stretching round the block. Newcomers are told that it may take more than an hour to reach the front of the line.

For many, though, a taxi is the only way of reaching their destination here in Paris.

Among today’s assortment of strikes across France is one which has brought a large part of the Metro network to a halt.

In recent days, everyone from the dentists to the bailiffs have been on strike here, while President Francois Hollande’s socialist utopia teeters on the brink of economic collapse.

This month, it was confirmed that France’s public debt has topped two trillion euros for the first time and will soon reach 100 per cent of GDP (the official EU limit is 60 per cent).

Put another way, the last time it was this bad, France was occupied by the Nazis. Read on and comment » | Robert Hardman for the Daily Mail | Saturday, October 18, 2014

As Socialist Dream Crumbles, Venezuelans Find Nicolas Maduro 'A Bad Copy' Of Chavez

Nicolás Maduro Moros, President of Venezuela

THE SUNDAY TELEGRAPH: Amid food shortages, rampant inflation and widespread electricity blackouts, many Venezuelans are wondering if Chavez chose the right heir to his revolution

The army has been sent into toilet paper factories, fights for basic foodstuffs have resulted in several deaths and new, multi-million dollar oil tankers are sitting idle in dock. And, despite sitting on the world’s largest oil reserves, Venezuela’s socialist government can’t quite manage to keep the lights on.

Now many in Venezuela are wondering how much longer President Nicolas Maduro, the anointed successor of the country’s firebrand Leftist leader Hugo Chavez, can keep hold of the reins of its crumbling socialist revolution.

Last week Mr Maduro was forced to turn to a well-worn answer for his country’s woes, blaming a US plot to “sabotage the electrical system and the Venezuelan economy” and kicking out Washington’s envoy to the South American country. “Out of Venezuela!” he railed on state television, adding in English: “Yankees go home!”

It was a move copied straight from the playbook of Chavez, the vocal anti-imperialist who passed away in February, and one which killed off any hopes of rapprochement with the US following years of thorny relations.

If that wasn’t enough, Mr Maduro then accused the US Drug Enforcement Agency of orchestrating the presence of 1.3 tons of cocaine seized last month from an Air France plane flying out of Caracas. With the government long accused by Washington of complicity in the drug trade - counter-narcotics officials say some 50 per cent of cocaine in Britain is now trafficked through Venezuela - the bust was likely a US plot using mafias to brand the country a “narco-state”, he said. » | Alasdair Baverstock in Caracas and Hannah Strange | Sunday, October 06, 2013