to the very very top i think it was. the water where politicians. on the go ahead.

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. but history 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 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 top 110th of a percent are just super wealthy. not only is it extremely unjust in itself. inequality has highly negative consequences on the so it is all. because the very fact of inequality has a corrosive harmful effect markers. you open by talking about the american dream or the american dream is classman diluting it will encourage you were card. get rich it was possible for a worker to get a decent job. at

a core of children who are school. collapse. imagine yourself in an outside position looking for mars. what do you see. in the united states when there are professed to like democracy.

in a democracy public opinion is going to have some influence on poesy. 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. to not proceed 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 deregulation. rules of corporate governance a whole variety of measures political measures designed to increase the concentration of wealth and power which in turn the 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 1776 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 greed is the impact on the people of england or others. now it's not a merger of manufacturers it's financial institutions and multinational corporations the people who adam smith told the masters of mankind and they're following the vile maxim over our 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. 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 the 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 here argument suppose everyone had to vote freely and say well 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 you 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 horror tradition goes back to the 1st major book on political systems aristotle's politics. is. of all of them the best is democracy and at any point said exactly the flaws that medicine put it. 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 up as it solutions aristotle proposed what we would nowadays call a welfare state to try to reduce inequality. so the same problem that solutions one is reduce inequality will have this problem and

the other is reduced monikers. if you look at the history of the united states it's a constant struggle between these 2 tendencies democratizing tendencies that's mostly coming from the population pressure from below and you get these constant battle going on periods or gratian periods of progress in 1906 for example were a period of significant democratization. sectors of the fucking lation that were usually passive apis it became organized active story pressing their demand.

and they became more and more involved in decision making and activism and so on. they just changed consciousness in ways. 'd minority rights. really don't want. women's rights. in terms of the. american. position to creation. criticize us. they are serious about law. and the vietnamese people black people and people concerned for other people.

in poor people in america when you make. a reasonable. system of distribution of wealth. civilizing said. that caused great fear. anticipated the. earth should have but it didn't anticipate the power of the reaction to the civilizing effects of the sixty's did not anticipate the strength of the reaction to it. the backlash.

in the troubled 19 seventies a group of killers rampage through parts of northern ireland that was coordinated loyalist attacks a population of tens of thousands are forced to flee their homes to put these attacks was a p.r. you see the police actually took part in the attacks so instead of preventing it they were active participants in the burning of full streets in belfast take more than a 100 innocent civilians with blood as the review can seniors and we found out more i was surprised about the extent to which the solution was involved in some of those cases the killers would lead to be named. i think it went

to the very very top i think it is. the water where politicians you know on the go ahead. all of us will hopes it has been absolutely. but say it's about a view that appears even in deaf and blind babies even if you never heard of seen loved you will love tickles by a parents. and then we learn how to use this in a more complex way i'm one of the things that we learn is to have to join in with love to contagiously to love somebody even if you don't know why they're laughing. desists 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. in their classes chris. when you don't know that that's not going to take funding to tell that there was a living and i knew that that is the end of a funny thing that found out the mountains of waste only grow higher. 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 and 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 course we put it in terms of the defense defending ourselves against outside powers. but 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 are 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 proceed 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 passivity and become the politicised. and they were particularly concerned with what was happening to young people young people

get into 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 flub is said 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. this 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 highly providing an. outing 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 have a mean. that's a contribution to the economy. regulatory system was established banks were regulated the commercial investment banks were separated cut back or 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. the sort of getting the huge increase in the flows of speculative capital just astronomical increase 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 a 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 sort of 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 an 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 workers aren't free to move labor can't move but capital can well again going back to the classics like adam smith as he pointed out the 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 when he testified to congress 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 union and. 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 i'm sure are part of what led to the vicious cycle of concentration of wealth concentration of power.

please. lists lists lists. lists. and very well might continue watching on since last. in the troubled 19 seventies a group of killers rampage 3 parts of northern ireland that was coordinated loyalists attacks particularly the population of belfast tens of thousands were forced to flee their homes and what was striking to put these attacks was that the

are you see the police actually took part in the attacks so instead of preventing it they were active participants in the burning of full streets in belfast at the take more than a 100 innocent civilians when the as the review can seniors and we found out more i was surprised about the extent and of the currents which the solution was involved in some of those places they killers would later be named into then and we get i think it went to the very very top i think it is. the water where all the taste and you. give the go ahead. i had a spare child's parents. and i had the little girl that died in the fire sent there

collins. has a 5 year old son. or looking for a kenny reaching. 54 years old and 21 years on death row. for a crime i didn't commit. to that it was innocent doesn't read to loose that nobody took this. trial was pretty much a farce. they are ahead and building for that well. nobody. nothing not at all. i think they're. for germany themselves or something. i knew she was in there and i knew exactly what i was doing. people like.

that sometimes there's no explanation. one person is killed and 5 are injured in a shooting near the federal security service building and sent from all sky witnesses have described the attack. at 5 or 10 minutes past 6 the gunfire began and it was not just a few shots that came in bursts we saw officers taking cover behind the cars in the last minutes attempt to disrupt russian gas transit to europe u.s. senate says who formed a swiss company that crippling sanctions will put it out of business if it doesn't stop work on the almost completed north stream pipeline and scotland only moves to seek another independence referendum on.