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tv   Going Underground  RT  April 8, 2019 2:30pm-3:01pm EDT

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in years to the day u.s. missiles killed three al jazeera journalists in iraq coming up on the show the price of everything in the value of nothing is the u.k. heads for a down turn one of the world's greatest economy is going on as a cause to accuse the city big multinational tech companies of buys this trump threatens further sanctions on cuba revolutionary cuban duns in the spirit of fidel and jay is portrayed in a new film about a ballet dancer called us a call start to win a pool levante an award winning director mean i dream. of the song of revolution from award winning singer songwriter nasty that's all coming up in today's going underground the first images bricks of chaos the u.k. releases g.d.p. estimates in forty eight hours but will politicians in the media be reading the figures upside down is g.d.p. really a measure of the success or failure of a society from a cause your culture has in the usa to corbett in britain the ideas of moxon socialism or reigniting explosive debate from congress to the house of commons about what is truly valuable when it comes to human happiness joining me now is
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world renowned economist professor mary on them as a college or university college london and founder of the u.c.l.a. institute for innovation and public purpose a new paperback is the value of everything making and taking in the global economy welcome to the show marianna why apart from say jeremy corbyn is there very little skepticism value in the first place in modern society which is the main issue on the front of the book so the word value has become a very fuzzy kind of flaky word that you know anyone can use you can call yourself a wealth creator lloyd blankfein the c.e.o. of goldman sachs one year after the crisis said that goldman sachs workers were the most productive in the world we as economists use to really debate and contest that word there's different theories of value and actually first we debated value and then that turned into a theory of price today we have basically an approach to the economy which is all about prices supply demand curves that determines price and that determines what we value so the logic actually got reversed think of it the chains shareholder value.
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shared value in goldman sachs calling goldman sachs workers the most valuable but what does that actually mean and so when we don't actually have a way to distinguish value creation from value extraction it becomes much easier just to throw the word around in fact the reason i wrote the book believe it or not is that in the two thousand and fifteen election when the labor party lost the analysis by labor members themselves by leaders in the labor party the next day was we lost because we didn't embrace the wealth creators the value creators and by that they meant business and i thought to myself how can it be that we've gotten to the point where even the labor party which is about work labor doesn't you know doesn't actually have a narrative a way to talk about values collectively created and they confuse the word wealth creation with business because in the book you talk about lloyd blankfein fully of goldman sachs saying that all your productiveness comes from organizations like goldman sachs it's like we're always told this is he of london's a little wall street you know it's creates value yeah but what do you know what's
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interesting is that up until the one nine hundred seventy s. the financial sector wasn't even included in g.d.p. it was actually seen as just a transfer of existing value from one place to another kind of like you wouldn't include social security payments it's just a transfer and before that in fact the way we would talk about finance was also in terms of rent so the classical economist talked about in terms of unearned income it literally just moving stuff around which of course isn't true of all the finance but anyway there is this kind of skepticism of what is finance actually doing and so in the one nine hundred seventy s. which is when the deregulation and some other changes the size of the financial sector started to become larger what you had was that the people who were doing the systems of the national accounts s.n.a. inside the united nations started to say i got this thing that's growing larger and larger in the economy isn't even being accounted for so instead of pausing and saying oh dear why is that what is this thing this blog actually doing they just came up with a justification. for including it so investment banking was included under the term
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risk taking that it was a service for risk taking remember that when you include things into the national accounts you have to kind of say what it is doing so in the u.s. as national income and product accounting so all of this is suddenly stuffed into the g.d.p. figures out without any kind of value judgement is it actually producing something or is it just moving things there when you maybe want your virtual t.v. channel or newspaper and it's talking about basically g.d.p. growth is all that we can hope for for human happiness you think there's some sort of massive well let me give you a little test. what happens if someone is cleaning your house a man let's not make this under a subject and then you marry that man. what happens to g.d.p. before it falls and if you pollute. we all in the river so all the strain the only shows or things that only the only things that we pay
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for get included just explain the pollution yeah so when we pollute g.d.p. nothing happens to it only once we pay someone to clean up the pollution does it change and in this case it would rise or the example of the cleaner was if someone is doing something in your house and then they keep doing it even if you're no longer paying them perhaps because you married them and they still do that the g.d.p. was is going down whereas other services in the house for example care you know really important care services which we know are very valuable in the kind of a more colloquial sense simply because they're not being paid for don't going to g.d.p. this by the way something that feminists economists have been arguing for a very long time environmental economists have been arguing the point about pollution for a very long time what i kind of brought to the table was this whole issue about also the financial sector which is you know is that actually creating value how would we kind of make that valuation given that actually how we measure value is simply through price it is for the really big as a feminist to go in as divorce is good as well yeah why not exactly but you know
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this is the big revolution and in the history we cannot make thought is that the logic used to be from value to price nowadays we have a theory of price which then determines what we value so take teachers what's really interesting with public school teachers public schools the teachers that work inside them because the service gets provided for free to citizens we don't actually include the value of a well structured you know education system all we include are the the costs so the salaries of the teachers go into g.d.p. not the value of the product that they're producing if you divide it by the demand side as you can cut in different ways but on the demand side so all the consumption spending all the government spending the investment spending and that exports this country mainly grow. consumption led growth and that consumption is fueled by private debt and the ratio of private to disposable income is actually back at record levels to what it was just before the financial or that is you talk about apple the one the most valuable companies in the world so again by
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a meeting government. or government investment in these sorts of figures we arrive at the idea of up will be a great. company with a lot of our nurse garage tinkerer as etc you say it's the government that well what i need in the case of the apple story in this kind of builds on my previous book called entrepreneurial state is that the state in again how we talk about an economy is just seen as fixing a problem economists say fixing market failures and if you think of the more colloquial use of you know you're talking about the state it's there to enable to facilitate to deal risk to set some sort of basic framework conditions and then get the hell out of the way but actually what the state has done in places like silicon valley and the few places in the world that have actually grown through innovation because there's different ways to grow the state actually acted as an investor an investor a first resort but when we just think of the state of spender administrator regulator we don't sort of capture this investment side and the true story behind apple is that everything that makes that phone smart to not stupid was funded by the public
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sector so internet touchscreen display g.p.s. siri the voice activated system all those were funded not only by public money but by particular organizations that darpa in the department of defense that also has had to be structured in a particular way in order to you know use the smart innovation driven investments but it's because we don't think of the state as creating value but just facilitating it and fixing market failures we also don't ask ourselves for countries that want to emulate for example the silicon valley model what does this mean for how we structure our public organizations to take risks to experiment to explore to be more mission oriented other guys are available. when the operative by the way is in trouble with the u.s. government but where did it become all and when does it become all pervasive that innovation goes from the private sector not from going to directly the opposite of what you're saying than the name adam smith being used so often as part
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of this idea that government is role that's just factually wrong by the way so even if you survey as completely misses because adam smith what he meant by the word free market was free from rent free from rent and rent seeking and to really free the economy of rent you also need ambitious policies that do sell but i would say so i start the book with quoting plato not adam smith and i say that plato said storytellers rule the world and the stories about where wealth creation comes from so only in companies like apple or in the financial sector a better capitalism cetera is i think a story that also then justifies this very skewed way in which we're distributing the rewards which are actually fruit of a much more collective system and so what i would argue is that the kind of battle against the state that began with margaret thatcher and ronald reagan had to be accompanied by a whole narrative a discourse a story using plato's words that kind of portrayed the state as being you know
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a bit boring and inertial but what most people don't realize and so it's not enough just to tell that kind of basic story is that the tech itself the really high risk technology was also funded by the state must use the new hero of space but also solar electric vehicles he received five billion dollars from the u.s. government forestry companies space x. tests and solar city these are investments in particular companies and it's really i think quite foolish to think that the taxpayer only socializes the risks and then we privatized the rewards as we did by the way with the bailouts of the banking system it was on the whole that everybody has to bail out and there are seventy goes on but of course i mean just in the past few days the word marxist is come up repeatedly in parliament actually as a. of contempt and even b.b.c. journalism use the word mostly because again and again in this book what is it do you think the torah is so much of the most you have never read marx at best they read the communist manifesto and how how how does most help the marxist fascinating
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and if you mean the irony is if you read marx you end up really appreciating capitalism he describes it as a system driven by innovation constantly changing he has these wonderful metaphors for that change even in the comments manifesto but i'm really talking about capital is kind of magnum opus capital volume one two and three which i read as carefully as i did adam smith's wealth wealth of nations david ricardo's principles of political economy the three were the classical economists compared to today's neo classical economist david ricardo already in eight hundred twenty one was asking the question that everyone thinks they're so smart when they talk about it today the robots are taking our jobs he was already saying this mechanization which is fueling growth under the industrial revolution has huge problematic features it's displacing labor it's causing unemployment and a pressure for wages to go down but then what you have for two hundred years up until the one nine hundred eighty s. basically is that the profits that were being generated from this new machinery and
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industrial revolution were being reinvested in other parts of the economy so even though some jobs were being displaced there were then being found elsewhere literally creative destruction not just in technology but in jobs what then happened at the same time of the facts or reagan years you had this obsession with maximizing shareholder value in terms of how companies were governed and that was you know became i think a fundamental problem sickness in modern day capitalism which we're really seeing still today which is the lack of reinvestment of profits back into the economy the profits are being hoarded on record levels but also being used simply to boost share prices and stock options and executive pay through practices like share buybacks so three trillion dollars have been spent to share buybacks in the last ten years by the fortune five. companies and when you talk to companies that engage with this practice and that would include you know pfizer cisco exxon apple they say well there's no opportunities for investment and then you look around and you see massive opportunities we have you know climate change which the i.p.c.c.
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report tells us we have twelve years left twelve we have all sorts of challenges around health systems that really could be rebuilt and remember that if you do this ambitiously this also creates opportunities for profits themselves in modern economic thought that instead of looking at these objective conditions of production division of labor mechanization productivity they look at preferences so even wages are seen as the outcome of the preferences that workers have for leisure versus work and it's all focused on the individual the individual company maximizing profits the individual consumer maximizing utility the worker maximizing their choice of leisure versus work and that kind of takes the attention away from the structural conditions of the economy which are very problematic president as a coder thank you for the break a new film about revolutionary cuban ballet dancer called also a coster off as not to go to mainstream portrayals of the socialist nation we speak to the film's director that's right done you'll break scribe all levity plus shadow
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of. the red. revolution from that should all the people going to hell and want to go underground. as we continue to grow online with our online identities and personas you will continue to see this mixture of physical crime and internet crime and the two will be mailed to a point where they're almost indistinguishable you can't really distinguish what all. this good writer. ok so those were four marks with the under fifty so the everybody used cocaine crack cocaine you can smoke it this is worth fifteen very.
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tony. scott came to this is about a fifteen dollar bet and people smoke this one bigger second this way you can find these drugs thing any city any you know that you want long as you want to get it about the. make money. and that's what i do every day. welcome back united states economic war will undoubtedly continue on countries in latin america this week with further sanctions on venezuela and cuba being eyed by the trumpet ministration is it any wonder when measures like these are parroted by major nation mainstream media for the new film that follows the life of revolutionary cuban ballet dancer carlos acosta uses dance to dispel the mainstream media myths around cuba as well as highlight the effects of decades of u.s.
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economic war in the socialist nation we met up with the film's writer paul laverty who also wrote identical blake with ken loach and the film's director issue in central london i started by asking paul what made him choose the project i'm a very good friend called under calderwood is a scottish producer should read carlos his autobiography no way home carlos acosta the ballad on ballad on sorry yes sunday it's a terrific read no he's a good dancer he's a great writer and it was hilarious the because just really sparky very very funny he grew up in a very pure and ivana he's dad was an absolute brute but he's also loved in a sort of strange sort of well we and we're going to watch for the age of nine himself he was a grandson to a slave so he's really tough on congress and didn't want congress to going to trouble he says regularly about school so the exact. billy elliot and there's carlos carlos they want to dance and he wanted to play for the office you know exactly so and that was the starting off point that was and then they were met carlos yeah and then we're meant to abandon to see him in there with his company
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the company that place that big rolling in the film and then i mean there were so many reasons to do the film very few do not do in the film because he's such an amazing character is is a. boy who starts from a beautiful neighborhood in atlanta and sap playing the first black romeo in that area so it's an incredible journey and then him and then we could tell these amazing story so we went for it because it's a warts and all picture of cuba as well which is in the news obviously dog trump saying we're going to destroy the country and it's usually marriage allows a covert as a war kind of economy that will be brought in by jury kober conscious of how you're going to depict the kuber of carlos acosta yeah well we just wanted to be truthful because them and we listen to the propaganda from trump and often the british government we forget that there's an economic embargo against the staining nation is going to have for sixty years which is totally against international law and is
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condemned every single year in the general assembly the united nations and they try to stereotype it but we actually go to cuba it's actually a very determined self-sufficient brilliant nation you know as it certainly felt the full with the united states is you know illegal and bargo but there's a great spot where there's great way toileting brilliant talent fantastic dancers some of the best ballet dancers best education systems in the world they don't talk without very much under them so carlos grow up i'm not i'm just wanted to believe it to be truthful to that and we look at that economic period you know as the special piece was a bit of a tough people trying to escape and rough so we don't try to. make it rosy who was just trying to be truthful because his life income was his life. obviously you know it's wrapped around what's happened in cuba over his last forty five years of his life just the smoke the buckler seem. to feel that was odd to put there and edit it into it because it's so startlingly political in what is otherwise
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a story of aspiration you know something it was hard to defend because. it had quite a few critical critical people on it but the thing is as paul says you cannot understand cuba without the united states so because we are are not only telling cutlasses life cover story we are talking about cuba the united states has been broken in the island for the last fifty or the years. the united states have interfere in the politics of so many other countries as smoothly which was these in this general area pacifist after his life. in intervene in so many other countries he became a pacifist and he wrote this book which was call what he said rocket and then to enter the i mean that was an amazing idea to say ok let's dance something the united states in the race and all over the world all the still valid things and we
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just go on that's them but there was an amazing character really well known up until very recently he was the most awarded military figure and that entire history unbelievable a marine general smedley butler but people don't know his name and it's because after when he retired he just said i have become a thug i have been i was washed an al capone i'll cop on only at three districts we invaded three continents and so this wonderful remarkable man his voice has been silenced and i'm so glad of that still an issue are very conscious of the fact that your work obviously the very film terbium you are always talking about huge geopolitical ideas and then focus from drumming so telling me is that. were you loaded by the script first i don't know how you. already know where you are still more. undercover we'll ask him and then he asked me and then we both came in as a team what i think that was what was fascinating our callouses life story is is about carlos is about that cuban dance here in this is about how how he managed to
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break through and be a super successful one of the best in his generation but also he's cuban and also his life goes parallel to the last forty years and that's something which where they're in the story i mean carlos his family which is very present in the film lived through the last forty years of their life in the island and that was fascinating because you're telling the story of an amazing dance about the story of this country in the last but it doesn't force it was there i mean carlos he's twenty twenty when he when he says hired by their by the english national ballet and then when he comes back to cuba he faces put on the sense that in the economy the soviet union has collapsed eight cuba has disappeared and they face these special period which was which was the worst time ever in the island so him so he faced that and he censored that he wanted back in cuba and everybody was leaving so we didn't force that into the story that that was actually what actually happened
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and it's the same thing with today carlos mature man who has decided to be part of the press and of his island by creating his company there and that's part of the film as well so he's not in your ear of no he was always connected to cuba he was holding back to cuba he was he never forgot his roots so all these things were what make this story so attractive so relevant detail and so full of of well it's a great story and it wasn't forced to actually talk about all these things in cuba of course is what happened and what was very nice was actually like some of your question actually was bring in the film back to heaven or you know there was a five thousand four hundred people in the car my son. to see the opening of the film of the festival and there was thousands of say again that issue again and what was remarkable was just defection how far carlos because he has not forgotten his resume to come out will superstar on the wall the dance piece never forgotten his roots and he wants to go back to cuba and he wants to contribute and build things
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there again and i think that's why he's held in such affection just on there's a scene where you really is in a place we're here actually looking at mainstream media coverage all over cuba why pick that particular clip of where he's looking at it we're just talking about all the people trying to flee well it was but again it goes back to his point when he went back in israel in his early twenty's there it coincided with the collapse of the soviet union there was still the embargo beneath states there was great poverty in the country and people were trying to flee you know free and if in you know escape and rafts and we just fell with the ball that was part of the reality and something that deeply touched them as a cuban see in the pain of these people always was a very important point to train bring in what about this blurring of fiction and reality when ken loach was a large show you talked about your script for your break that script was mentioned allows a commons with politicians you're saying this is fiction it's not real what is this blurring of fiction in reality in the hugely well it's
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a very good question and because his father was actually born he was a grandson of a slave. that whole experience really marked him he went to work the age of nine he was brutalized themself and beaten up by a very rough it annoys own father be given a very very rough background and there colors that have all these stories about slavery you know and cuba yeah magine them it was part of his reality too and i think as we have making sense of his father so it didn't go to the actual plantation they decided to dance that's because he was absolutely convinced that those are the experiences that made his father such a tough contradictory character so. although it's not literal i would argue it is very very truthful play going to make films together again because obviously i understand you both met on carlos well the setting of a spanish civil war movie which obviously was the start of always going to take what. we've done three so far hopefully we'll do more years ago in the.
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film directed by the wonderful ken loach called landon through them so he got me into a lot of trouble because he introduced me to theater so and you ever made the three films together may when the if she for patients continues she may do another one with us i don't know one bed on a hill i do. i never think of advance it never take every day i have very high demand saw i have to join a queue as you as you just said yeah i was land of freedom not close as a regular rug. i know the films already won awards or you've won or it's they going to take it to one guy don't run as wally or and both of them are all in brazil and all the countries in that numbers fear that may not be so rosy about the victories of jay give or fidel castro i would love to bring it there and perhaps of they had a society where everybody who was over seventy has good talent you know have
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a chance to go to school and fulfill the talent i would look i would love to see that but when you see mr dawson out of just now and in and one of the biggest countries in brazil celebrating an army which just convicted of so much torture and murder and i think it probably do them good to see some beauty some dance some of my generation and the famous and the subtlety of the human spirit thing i would be brilliant and i would cause for them as well as well on nicaragua with daniel ortega. thank you both if. you cut the good this is the republican seat. you're leaving call us acosta story is in u.k. cinemas this friday that's it for the show will be played out by singer songwriter nat he with his song revolution c. on wednesday to talk last civilizations and colonialist talking all the g.
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with bestselling author graham hancock has nothing with revolution. been thinking about what you said. i've been thinking about your plan. to get down by the lake side. so you minds and. all those things you said i. want to say this.
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we talk a lot about me. back in london. they saw couldn't saw so their faces go. they say your go in the town. but i don't see. not firing your eyes. when i say go bow and. standing before me is the shadow of my. dream the revolution. i dreamed the revolution.
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us veterans who come back from war often tell the same stories. were going after the people who were killing civilians they were not interested in the wellbeing of their own soldiers either there already is several generations of them so i just got this memo from the circular defense offices we're going to attack and destroy the government in seven countries in five years americans pay for the wars with their money others with their lives if we were willing to go into harm's way and
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willing to risk being killed for a war surely we can risk some discomfort for an easy for. the us ramps up the pressure on iran designating its elite military force the revolutionary guards as a terrorist organization. the moves welcomed by israel's prime minister who's facing a tough election race on tuesday some see it as donald trump's latest gift to bet even that of the u.s. leaders recognized jerusalem and the golan heights as sovereign israeli territory. and also this hour italy's comet of interior minister forms an alliance of right wing nationalist parties saying he aims to shake up the e.u. up to next month's elections.

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