during the great depression which i'm old enough to remember there was and most of my family were unemployed working class there wasn't it was bed you know much worse objectively than today but there was an expectation that things were going to get better. there was a real sense of hopefulness there isn't today. inequality is really unprecedented i'm sure that total inequality it's like the worst periods in american history ready. but if you're a find it more closely inequality comes from the extreme wealth in a tiny sector of the population fraction of one percent.

there were periods like the gilded age in the twenty's and the early ninety's and so on when a situation developed by the similar to this. now this period 6 trillion because if you look at their wealth distribution the inequality mostly comes from super wealth . literally the cup 110th of a percent are just super wealthy. not only is it extremely unjust in itself. inequality has highly negative consequences on the so is all. because the very fact of inequality has a corrosive harmful effect markers. you opened by talking about the american dream part of the american dream is

questioning dillard it will infuriate you or kurt. a ridge it was possible for a worker to get a decent job. in a corps of children to school. to a collapse. imagine yourself in an outside position looking for mars. what do you see.

in the united states where there are professed to like democracy. in a democracy public opinion is going to have some influence on policy. and then the government carries out actions determined by the population and that's what democracy means. it's important to understand that privileged and powerful sectors have never liked democracy and for very good reasons. democracy puts power into the hands of the general population and takes it away from them. as kind of the principle of concentration of wealth and power.

concentration of wealth yields concentration of power particularly so as the cost of elections skyrockets which kind of forces the political parties into the pockets of major corporations. and this political power. translates into legislation that increases the concentration of wealth so fiscal policy like tax policy a deregulation. rules of corporate governance a whole variety of measures political measures designed to increase the concentration of wealth and power which in turn to yield more political power to do the same thing. and that's what we've been seeing.

so we have this kind of vicious cycle in progress. you know actually it is so traditional that it was described by adam smith in 776 he read the famous wealth of nations. he says in england the principal architects of policy are the people on the society in his day merchants and manufacturers. and they make sure that their own interests are very well cared for however grievous the impact on the people of england there are others. now it's not a merger of manufacturers it's financial institutions and multinational corporations the people who adam smith called the masters of mankind and they're following the vile maxim over for selves and nothing for anyone else.

they're just going to pursue policies that benefit them and harm everyone else. and in the absence of a general popular reaction that's pretty much what you'd expect. be right through american history there's been an ongoing clash between. pressure for more freedom and democracy coming from below and the efforts that elite control and domination coming from above. because back to the founding of the country. james madison the main framer who was as much of a believer in democracy is anybody in the world that they nevertheless felt that

the united states system should be designed and indeed was his initiative was designed so that power should be in the hands of the wealthy. because the wealthy are their more responsible set of men and therefore the structure of the formal constitutional system placed most power in the hands of the senate or the senate was not elected in those days it was selected from the wealthy men as madison put it had sympathy for property owners in their right. to read the debates at the constitutional convention. madison the major concern of the society has to be to protect the minority of the opulent against the majority. and hear argument suppose everyone had to vote freely as they will the majority of the poor get together and they would organize to take away the property of the rich

and he said that would obviously be unjust so he can't have that so therefore the constitutional system has to be set up to prevent democracy. which is of some interest that this debate has a hurried tradition goes back to the 1st major book on political systems aristotle's politics. is. of all of them the best is democracy and it only points out exactly the flaws that manderson pointed out. if absent were a democracy for free men the poor would get together and take away the property the rich. well the same dilemma they had opposite solutions aristotle proposed what we would nowadays call a welfare state and try to reduce inequality. so

the same problem if said solutions one is reduce inequality will have this problem and the other is reduced democracy. if you look at the history of the united states it's a constant struggle between these 2 tendencies democratizing tendency that's mostly coming from the population pressure from below and you get these constant battle going on periods or aggression periods of progress in 1906 for example were a period of significant democratization. searchers i think elation were usually passive campus it became organized

active story pressing their demand. and they became more and more involved in decision making and activism and so on. it just changed consciousness and always. minority rights. we don't want. women's rights. in terms of the. american has. been. seeking to provide opposition to oppression i was criticized as. dissent

they are serious about law. and the vietnamese people black people and what people can turn for other people 1. 1000000 poor people in america and when you begin. to reason a. system of distribution of wealth the research. civilizing effect. in that quest create fear. anticipated the power of a should have but it didn't anticipate the power of the reaction to the civilizing

effects of the sixty's i did not anticipate the strength of the reaction to it. the backlash. if compared to centuries of chinese history 2 years is nothing unless perhaps it's 2 years of donald trump with yet another round of terrorists being added to the us . no trade war this last week china strategy of waiting out the enemy likely to work with the current american president. today there are good and bad the bad news in me and then. the good. war in syria. and the us military were engaged in covert actions really

throughout the world. where they were assassinating populist leaders they were backing up the right way military funding an army. there is no. war because there's always a small town called for a really good. for profit. business is a stick from a water bottle phone in the stomach of a fish the brand is part of the coca-cola company which sells millions of bottles of soda every day the idea was that let's tell consumers there are the bad was there the litter bugs are throwing us away industry should be blamed for all this waste the company has long promised to reuse the plastic. that's. a special kind of funding.

on the. fun now the mountains of waste only grow higher. the world is driven by dreamers shaped by one person. madame. thinks. we dare to ask. there has been an enormous concentrated coordinated business offensive beginning in

the seventy's to try to beat back the egalitarian efforts that went right through the nixon years and you see it in many respects and over on the right you see it in things like the famous pell memorandum. sent to the chamber of commerce major business lobby but later supreme court justice powell warning them that business is losing control over the society. and something has to be done to counter these forces corsi puts it in terms of the defense defending ourselves against outside powers. if you look at it it's a call for business to use its control over resources to carry out a major offensive to beat back this democratizing wave.

over on the liberal side something exactly similar to the 1st. major report of the a trilateral commission is concerned with this. called the crisis of democracy. trilateral commission is liberal internationalists there flavors indicated by the fact that they pretty much staff the corridor ministration. they were also told that democratizing tendencies of the sixty's and so we have to react to it. they were concerned that there was an excess of to not pursue developing. previously passive and obedient parts of the population or sometimes called the special interests who were beginning to organize and try to enter the political arena and they said that

imposes too much pressure on the state can't deal with all these pressures so therefore they have to return to a city become the politicized. and they were particularly concerned with what was happening to young people the young people getting to free and independent. in the way they put it there's a failure on the part of the schools the universities churches the institutions responsible for the indoctrination of the young there for it is not mine. if you look at their study there's one interest they never mention private business and that makes sense they're not special interest they're the national interest kind of by definition so they're ok they're allowed to you know have be as good by campaign staff the executive make decisions that's fine but it's the rest the

special interests the general population who have to be subdued. when that's the specter it's the kind of ideological level of the backlash but the major backlash which was in peril of this was just redesigning the economy. since the 1970 is there's been a concerted effort on the part of the masters of mankind the owners of the society to shift the economy in 2 crucial respects one to increase the role of financial institutions banks investment firms and so on insurance

companies. but a 2007 break before the latest crash they had literally 40 percent of corporate profits. far beyond anything in the past. back in the 1950 s. and as for many years before the united states economy was based largely on production. in the united states as the great manufacturing center of the world. financial institutions used to be a relatively small part of the economy and their task was to distribute unused assets like a bank savings to productive activity buying our way to. money.

on the back of the reserve bank. to be hiding providing any. money. to the community by making. money for a manufacturer or ongoing high coming. to an. arm and a money on a why people are always needing more and i haven't been. that's a contribution to the economy. regulatory system was established banks were regulated the commercial investment banks were separated cut back for risk investment practices that could harm private people. there had been remember no financial crashes during the period of regulation by the 1970 s. that changed.

you started getting that huge increase in the flows of speculative capital just astronomically increased an enormous changes in the financial sector from traditional banks to risky investments. complex financial instruments money manipulations and so on increasingly the business of the country isn't production at least not here. the primary business here is business. you can even see it in the choice of directors so the director of a major american corporation back in the fifty's and sixty's was very likely to be an engineer as somebody who graduated from a place like mit maybe industrial management more recently the directorship in the top managerial positions or people who came out of business schools learned financial trickery of various kinds and so on. by the 1970 s.

say general electric can make more profit playing games with money than you could buy producing in the united states. you have to remember that general electric is substantially a financial institution today it makes half its profits just by moving money around in a complicated ways and it's very unclear that they're doing anything that's value to the economy. so that's one phenomena let's go financial ization of the economy. going along with that is the oil sure into production. the trade system was reconstructed with a very explicit design of putting working people in competition with one another

all over the world. and what it's led to is a reduction in the share of income on the part of working people. it's been particularly striking in the united states but happening worldwide it means that in american workers in competition with a super exploited worker in china. meanwhile highly paid professionals are protected they're not placed in competition with the rest of the world far from it and of course a capitalist free to move a workers are free to move labor can't move but capital can well again going back to the classics like adam smith as he pointed out free circulation of labor is the foundation of any free trade system but workers are pretty much stuck the wealthy in the privileged are protected so you get obvious consequences and they're

recognized in fact praised. policy is designed to increase in security. alan greenspan and when he testified to conquers he explained his success in running the economy as based on what he called greater worker insecurity. a typical restraint. compensation increases has been evident for a few years but as i outlined in some detail in testimony last month i believe that job insecurity has played the dominant role workers and secured are going to be under control. they're not going to ask for say decent wages were a decent working conditions or the opportunity to free association meaning unions. now for the masters of mankind that's fine they may show their profits but for the population it's devastating. for these 2 processes financial ization

and offshoring are part of what led to the vicious cycle of concentration of wealth concentration of power. pain years and cross started 10 years i think it's time to shake things up maybe change the branding maybe the format here is what i've been thinking about next season related episodes filmed on an island expert fight about for a trophy what do you think ok a more affordable option 25 experts. and one red rose another suggestion. jeopardy parity no political cookout where we will literally wrote

the elite. late night show it's a rare form of these days and its chief all you need is an old microphone in a printed banner. to leave me with one of my girls i can do this candle after politics gone wild like music. ok crosstalk is not about hype it's about meaning 10 years of talk and still going strong. peter if you want to change something why don't we get rid of the bow tie no that is too much. well you know that they were kind of adopted because we were called pirates for so long. i mean they're in this small ball it's next to the hard pool of ships and it's scary. but sometimes. the little self

to be told fish already 90 percent of the dot and it won't recover. concert fifteen's collapse 75 tons trying to do it several times a day with a big fleet so no you get an idea on why. we have to understand we could not stay you still would just. be with them this will be used for you because you are. i'm doing this because i want the future world to future generations to have out and enjoy the ocean we have. thousands of american men and women choose to serve in the country's military and the decision lotos sheltered lives every song came to

a complete. the day that i was raped be instructed you know told to shut up or they'd kill me and i see how it destroyed my life many screamed at me and he made me come in and you graham my arm and he write me with his birthing curia if you take into account that women don't report because of the extreme retaliation and it's probably somewhere near about half a 1000000 women have now been sexually assaulted in the us military rape is a very very traumatizing tat happen but i've never seen trauma like i've seen from women who are veterans who have suffered military sexual trauma reporting rape is more likely to get the victims. honest to be offended behind and almost 10 year career which shows very invested in and i gave that up to report a sex offender who was not even going to justice or put on the registry this is simply an issue of tower and violence male sexual predators for the large part of target whoever is there to prey upon whether that's men or women.

the barbarians the vandals of wall street are now actively plundering your bank account with a negative interest in astronomy comic policy there's no economics behind it that would chew to any school of economics that has ever existed as dr michael hudson said since the bronze age it's just out right for harry as an.

act. of god not. millions of serbian made weapons reportedly end up in the hands of terrorists in yemen in syria i was there when they were forced by the us and its allies cause according to leaks documents obtained by a whole garion journalists i don't envy pride and i 35 do you think you have big plans they're using. it for the world they are thank you. foreign owned businesses and looted in the south african city of johannesburg in a wave of anti immigrant hate crime make up one sounding name to add on to its old mold when they break the issue of the dead bolt that was there it was there and to stand by your plates to be in south africa your employer your schools.