Yanis Varoufakis: Capitalism Does NOT Celebrate Competition; It Trends towards Monopoly

Yanis elucidates the problems of capitalism.

The Economics of a Dying Empire (w/ Richard Wolff) | The Chris Hedges Report

Apr 9, 2025 | Professor Richard Wolff dissects the erratic and unpredictable nature of the Trump administration's economic policy, and how it signals the decline of American Empire.

Trump’s Challenge to Free Market Capitalism

THE NEW YORK TIMES: Stakes in private companies. Handshake deals with chief executives. The president’s economic policy has drifted far from principles that long defined the Republican Party. Is it capitalism at all?

Fresh off clinching the Republican nomination for president in May 2012, Mitt Romney paid a surprise visit to the shuttered California headquarters of Solyndra, a solar panel manufacturer whose bankruptcy a year earlier had left taxpayers on the hook for hundreds of millions of dollars of federally guaranteed loans.

In Mr. Romney’s telling, the company’s failure was a textbook example of the perils of government meddling in the private sector. The free market is meant to reward companies for having the best ideas, the best technology, the best people, Mr. Romney said. Under President Barack Obama, however, companies were too often rewarded for knowing the right people.

“Free enterprise, to the president, means taking money from the taxpayer and giving it freely to his friends,” Mr. Romney said, before adding, “That is not the nature of how America works.”

Many economists at the time said Mr. Romney’s attack was unfair or exaggerated. Today, they use a different word to describe it: quaint.

Since returning to the White House last year, President Trump has gotten the government involved in the private sector in ways that Mr. Obama and other past presidents, of either major party, would never have considered.

The Trump administration has taken ownership stakes in corporations, intervened in business deals and negotiated a cut of the revenue of American companies’ overseas sales. Mr. Trump has unilaterally deployed tariffs and other policy levers to help industries he favors, like artificial intelligence and cryptocurrencies, and to punish those he dislikes, like wind power. He has wielded the powers of the federal bureaucracy to pressure executives, sometimes in ways that blur the lines between his policy objectives and his personal business interests. » | Ben Casselman | Sunday, February 22, 2026

Clara Mattei: Capitalism Is Not Natural - It’s Enforced

Feb 13, 2026 | Clara Mattei is an economist who wants us to rethink the idea that capitalism is simply the natural order of things.

Clara Mattei »

Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism? (w/ Yanis Varoufakis) | The Chris Hedges Report

Jan 29, 2025

The Secret History of Neoliberalism (w/ George Monbiot) | The Chris Hedges Report

Oct 9, 2024

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

Dr Richard Wolff: Global Capitalism: What Trump 2.0 Means

Jan 23, 2025

Dr Richard Wolff’s Perspective: Global Capitalism: The US Election and Trump 2.0 in Historical Perspective | November 2024

Nov 21, 2024

Why many Brits keep looking to the USA for economic leadership, why they keep drooling over all things American, is beyond any sane person’s comprehension. We were far better off as full members of the European Union than we will ever be clutching and clasping Trump’s apron strings! – © Mark Alexander

Richard Wolff: The Final Case Against Donald J. Trump

Oct 20, 2024 | Richard Wolff is Professor Emeritus of Economics at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and a visiting professor at The New School, where he works on economics in the Marxist tradition. This is Richard’s fifth appearance on Robinson’s Podcast. He and Robinson discussed some of the most profound criticisms of capitalism. They focused on the myths surrounding Marxism and Marx himself. They covered the Israel-Palestine conflict from a Marxist perspective.

Dr Richard Worlff is a Marxist economist. He has a brilliant mind. However, the mere fact that I am posting this discussion on my blog should IN NO WAY be construed as an endorsement of Marxism. It is not an endorsement; I do not endorse it. I do, however, find Dr Richard Wolff a fascinating character and a man who is extremely intelligent and insightful. Do I agree with his take on everything discussed in this video? Certainly not! But, as my regular visitors should know by now, I do not post videos on this blog simply because I agree with everything discussed in them. Were I to adopt that strategy, I should find it very difficult to post ANYTHING!

As a person, I like to have my thinking challenged. If I think something is particularly good, insightful, or interesting, then I usually post it. Even if the video is controversial. In fact, a little controversy can stimulate one’s thinking. Controversy is to thinking what spice is the food! I hope that you enjoy the discussion. – © Mark Alexander

The Rich Have You Brainwashed: Capitalism Is a Zero-sum Game, They Win, You Lose

Apr 25, 2024 | The elites - especially the rich - want you to believe that capitalism is not a zero sum game. This is the false hope that fuels the American dream. The fact is that social mobility is lower in the USA than it is in socialist industrialized countries such as Scandinavia, France, and Germany.

Most wealth in the West is not made - but is inherited (Piketty). Ironically, new fortunes are generated in quasi-capitalistic places like China, Russia, and Vietnam or India. Economy not zero-sum game (growth pie all around, for consumers and producers), but capitalism is.

Marx was right about this (and only this). Like Communism, Fascism, or Socialism, Capitalism is a method to allocate resources, means of production, and surplus. Capitalism uses the price signal in a free market (as opposed to central planning).

Proof that is zero-sum: taking from the rich to give to the poor (taxation as progressive distributive justice) and taking from the poor to give back to the rich (regressive inflation, taxation, and asset bubbles). But why, in an environment of growth is the game zero sum? Because of scarcity. The rich cannot reinvest all their income and so it is taken out of circulation to the poor (though it is still available to the businesses of the rich via the banking system). Another reason: depletion of natural resources. These shortages are camouflaged by fiat money, debt, and the symbolic economy. But these are Ponzi schemes and they crumble periodically in cycles of boom and bust.

Economic Update: US Capitalism at the Crossroads

Jan 29, 2024

Capitalism Is Over and ‘Social Democracy Is Finished’ | Yanis Varoufakis

Sep 30, 2023 | “We are voluntary servants.” | Capitalism is over and ‘social democracy is finished’, says Yanis Varoufakis, economist, author and former Greek finance minister. He tells Hugo Rifkind what’s taking its place.

Thomas Piketty on Capitalism, Corbyn and Why Zuckerberg Is Getting It Wrong - BBC Newsnight | 2015

Renowned economist Thomas Piketty sits down for a tête a tête on the world economy with Evan Davis

Democracy at Work: Curing Capitalism | Richard Wolff | Talks at Google (2017)

Richard D. Wolff is Professor of Economics Emeritus, University of Massachusetts, Amherst where he taught economics from 1973 to 2008. He is currently a Visiting Professor in the Graduate Program in International Affairs of the New School University in New York City. He wrote Democracy at Work: A Cure for Capitalism and founded www.democracyatwork.info, a non-profit advocacy organization of the same name that promotes democratic workplaces as a key path to a stronger, democratic economic system.

Professor Wolff discusses the economic dimensions of our lives, our jobs, our incomes, our debts, those of our children, and those looming down the road in his unique mixture of deep insight and dry humor. He presents current events and draws connections to the past to highlight the machinations of our global economy. He helps us to understand political and corporate policy, organization of labor, the distribution of goods and services, and challenges us to question some of the deepest foundations of our society.

Yanis Varoufakis: Capitalism Has Become 'Techno-feudalism' | UpFront

A recent Oxfam study found that since the start of the coronavirus pandemic, the world’s richest 10 billionaires have seen a wealth increase of half a trillion dollars – enough to pay for every person on the planet to get a vaccine.

In this UpFront special, Marc Lamont Hill discusses with economist and former Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis what is driving the staggering wealth inequalities and how governments are offering socialism for the rich, and austerity for the rest.

Prof. Richard D Wolff on the Four Reasons Capitalism Is Imploding

Professor Richard D. Wolff discusses the "four basic problems that the United States and its Capitalist system have had for a very long time" and how "none of them have been solved", and how "none of them have even been approached for the serious fundamental problems that they are". Watch to hear Professor Wolff break down these four all-encompassing issues we face in America today and have faced in our history.

Richard Wolff on How American Capitalism Is Just Socialism for the Rich

Professor Richard D. Wolff discusses how "recent news reports have exposed a certain scandal surrounding the Payroll Protection Program that the government allowed, now that Capitalism crashed here in the United States; at the same time that the failures to prepare for, or to contain the Coronavirus, have engulfed our country."

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.

Velshi: American Capitalism Exploits the Poor to Enrich the Wealthy | MSNBC

MSNBC’s Ali Velshi explains how America’s economic systems favor the rich, especially during recessions.»