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 'd. 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 nineties 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 to any quality 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 as highly negative consequences on the so it is. because the very fact of inequality has a corrosive harmful effect markers. you opened by talking about the american dream or the american dream is classman dillard it will infuriate you were kurds. 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. 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. were. 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 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 776 he read the famous wealth of nations. he says in england the principle 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 wealthier there are 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 says 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 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 horrid tradition goes back to the 1st major book on political systems aristotle's politics. he says of all of them the best is democracy and at any point

said exactly the flaws that medicine put into. if athens 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 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 democratising tendency 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 folk elation that were usually passive and the city 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 and. minority rights. we don't want.

women's rights. or. concerns of the. american as. nice a. safety net survive opposition to aggression i started i was criticized as the militant. serious about lawn on the provider of the vietnamese people for our own black people and people concerned for other people one day we must ask the question. of 1000000 poor people in america when you begin . to reason of course the amount the system of distribution of wealth. research. american society is are all civilized and say. that cause great fear. her.

had. anticipated the power of a should have but it didn't then to spit the power of the reaction to the civilizing effects of the 60s i did not anticipate the strength of the reaction to it. the backlash. a reflection of reality. in a world transformed. what will make you feel safe. isolation

full community. are you going the right way or are you being legs up with. what is true what is faith. in the world corrupted you need to descend. to join us in the depths. or a maybe in the shallows. brothers soon will i believe in the room light of. the room. my name is drawn more than i was for it is to die in prison by the expiration love my life. take a stick grab some media attention and it's a shooting in a 16 year olds to 16 birthday party found something the place is hell lot of

pressure channel closed the case. for he is. just wrong it's like unbelievable. me out so far they are all more than the sure don't want peace with the stench of all those shoes because i was standing right next to. me for eyes the sun you got to keep in mind one soon those 1617 years old so. these clues london's are losers plundering to fear them a look tonight full food. for more than just close to. god goldstone now the truth. join me every thursday on the alexandre. still and i was waiting to get off of the wall of the politics that's less i'm show business i'll see that.

eleanor. 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 course we put 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 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 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 a city 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 interesting 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 led 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. 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 to be a reserve bank. behind providing an. outing money. to the community by making. money for a manufacturer or on going. to an. arm and a money on a why people are always needing more and i haven't. that's a contribution to the economy. regulatory system was established banks were

regulated the commercial investment banks were separated cut back for risk in this 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 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. spent particularly striking in the united states but happening worldwide it means that an american workers in competition with 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 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 responding. compensation increases has been evident

for a few years but as i outlined in some detailed in testimony last month i believe their 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. is your media a reflection of reality. in

a world transformed. what will make you feel safe. isolation community. are you going the right way or are you being that. direct. what is true what is faith. in a world corrupted you need to descend. to join us in the depths. or a made in the shallowness. one of the things that i started to realize is that the noise in my head as it me i started to practice all of organizing my life around. what i wanted my life to be about even when it conflicted with my internal noids so you know why i wrote

a book but in my head i'm not smart enough people like me to write books. but what i help myself to was the action and i started to notice that i could co-exist with that while still living a life that went beyond. in the troubled 19 seventies a group of killers rampage through parts of northern ireland that was coordinated loyalists attacks particularly catholic population in belfast tens of thousands were forced to flee their homes a mob was straight up with these attacks was a p.r. you see the police actually took part in the attacks so instead of preventing them they were active participants in the burning of coal streets in belfast at the time

more than a 100 innocent civilians were murdered as the review can seniors and we found out more i was surprised about the extent and of the currency which the collusion was involved in some of those cases the killers would lead to be named goodwin and we're getting i think it went to the very very top i think it the cross the water where all the taste you thought was going on and give the go ahead. so what we've got to do is identify the threats that we have it's crazy confrontation let it be an arms race in this on off and spearing dramatic development only personally i'm going to resist i don't see how that strategy will be successful very clear to . killer thawing time to sit down and talk.

but whole existence to. put themselves on the line they get accepted or rejected. so when you want to be president or injury. or somehow want to be pressed. to go to the press this is what the 4th 3 in the morning can't be good that i'm interested always in the waters in the hottest. place should. i.

think. it's a short of completion russia's north ring 2 gas pipeline to europe faces yet another hurdle as the main contractor responds to tough new u.s. sanctions also to come to a u.s. court rules that it is ok for american spy agencies to collect data on this news but that would warrant if done by accident that is the lessons of n.s.a. whistleblower edward snowden who lifted the lid on u.s. mass surveillance seen trooping forgotten. you tell us who. you know that we're still. not the guy. some information on the man accused of stealing and burning a rainbow flag from a u.s. chair.