they were able to prepare. in a way that american capitalism. what some would argue that it's not the job of private capital of more private enterprises to prepare for the pandemic. that i mean goal is making profit i know that you have. some concerns about profit making as a motive but some people would say this is a very natural human motivator humans are geared to increase their resources they want to increase their chances of survival it's just that the profit should not be defined in very narrow morny terry terms as it is defined in the united states should you really be calling for the and to capitalism rather than let's say redefining the notion of profit. well you could be defined the notion of profit and you could have the government come in and the private sector say we make profit and you the government do important things like prepare for

a vote by reserves that threaten bubbly tell but in american capitalism if you give this much power to the private sector they have always prevented the government from having the power and the resources to do these kinds of things and they do that for a simple reason that they are afraid of the government as a competitor that the government will come in and do things and lead to massive people do say well if the government is what prevents us from having a virus well then let's give more resources to the government to do these things so the private sector unlocks the power of the government to compensate for the limits of the private sector and i know it's easy to criticize the trumpet ministration for its response to that by denny and i think it's easy to criticize any government for its response and it by that i personally have been very critical of the russian government because i think the restrictions have been very very high and they are

rather than being laissez faire it's been on the opposite side of the spectrum and i think if there there is also act a cost there but given that it is a previously unknown virus and nor government was ready to deal with it is it really fair to put all the blame on the trumpet ministration no i am opposed to putting all the blame on the trumpet ministration i don't want to be misunderstood i am not interested in defending mr trump from anything but this is a much deeper problem than what mr trump has done it would be a tragedy if in the united states the criticism was all on this particular government we're not going to the deeper causes and the deeper reasons we had this problem you know we have a private sector it's not profitable to make tests and ventilators and. so we don't do it project and found the other practicable legally and it prevented the government from coming in to the alternative that has to be understood as

a basic law as limited in our system otherwise we will exchange mr transfer the next one will have the same problem all over again but yet the supporters of mr trump who would point to the fact that his administration did in both the defense production act that compels privately owned enterprises to produce then to later to provide rasbora respirators to medical workers and. you know that some could see that as as a culture argument to your assertion that in capitalist america profits trump everything because clearly they do not i mean there are many governors that are specifically keeping the economists from reopening and there are many questions about that they're doing that out of the concern for the health of the people or not but i think in these day and age it's quite clear that they cannot mix is not the only consideration for businesspeople and decision makers in the united states

. perhaps but let me give you just one statistic that is the overwhelming understanding i think americans are now at the united states has 5 percent of the world's population and it has 25 percent of the cases of corona and of the deaths from corona for a country that calls itself a global leader that calls itself very wealthy this is a failure on a staggering proportion but mr was a professor well i agree with you that it's a failure but my own theory is that it has nothing to do with preparation it has actually everything to do with the way your public health system a structured and with the way your food production operates because you know people know fans are eating crap and they're like the obesity rates in the united states

are through the roof and we know now that what's what is very dangerous is not called it per se but the complications to cover the rich usually come in the form of metabolic diseases and here in the united states has been a global leader for decades because the industry has been allowed to operate in a way that makes people addicted to the muck most poisonous of foods absolutely that's one of the reasons i argue that the causes here are deeper this should never have been allowed to happen if you look at the statistics the number of people who are black and brown and poor and white in this country the proportion of them getting sick and dying is much larger than in the population as a whole the worse your income the worst your job the worse your diet the less your medical care we don't have a national health service so we don't have easy access to medical care but all of that is driven and of this i will insist on my own private sector. in the medical

area in the food area you can basically produced anything with no limit to the amount of sugar and sacked without any nutrient and salad because this is the private enterprise approach about which americans have been proud of or really now they're beginning to be given to see the horrible cost of it all now speaking about trump he clearly despises socialism since he says it almost as a swear word and socialists also don't particularly like him but when we look at the critiques of. sort of the morning day comics that both counts put out i can see it quite a bit of an overlap you personally have been critical of the american and surprises shifting jobs overseas sorries he you've been a wary of too much automation so is he asked bardach cicle as it sounds don't you think that trump is actually much more our socialist if not in leather than in

spirit than let's say globalists yeah i think what mr trump figured out is that the republican party was in difficulty the democrats were dominant most in the post-war period and one of the reasons was the ability of the democratic party to appeal to the working class by being critical of automation or moving jobs abroad so he had the clever idea not great wisdom but a clever idea it would be unusual for a republican candidate to say such things so he said but he took all verbiage the number of jobs in manufacturing is lower now than when he was president and for me he is attack on socialism it reminds me mostly of hitler you know hitler is far he was called a national socialist r.d. he used the word socialist to appeal to the working class he was the enemy of

socialism and mr trump. i mean i'm not sure he understands what the word means he uses words socialism and fascism in a casual kind of way that is usually a schoolboy's a substitute for understanding what it is a prayer professor will you don't have to like or even agree with one another to travel in one direction because trump is very loud about. bringing that merican jobs back and the typical critic from the globalist is that it's going to make the the process of good so much more expensive but on the other hand it could take care of excessive consumption it could also decrease the the use of fossil fuels because it will have to you know shift all those goods around people tend not to litter where they eat if you know what i mean so you know they they can be businesses would be more prone to take better care of the environment are those all the points that socialists have been concerned about for years and tromp

deliberately are not is also reinforcing them yeah but unfortunately only reinforces it as political theater he doesn't do anything i agree with you i think if you had actually counted the costs to the american people of moving jobs out of the country many of them would never have been moved it's privately profitable but it is socially costly but the private enterprise system doesn't require the capitalist who makes the decision to count to social cost or to pay for them so they don't so they move and all the social costs of abandoned factories are left on her name and if you travel in the middle of the united states you will see a bash wasteland which is added why this drunk got elected but the solution to that is structural change and mr trump has no plan floor and has accomplished none of

that correct me if i'm wrong but in 2050. in the year before triumph was elected the middle class store being the majority in the united states for the 1st time in the american history a real disposable incomes have been stagnant for decades i know many people dislike or hate trump some of them on a static reasons more than substantive but don't you think that even if there were interim there would have to be some kind of candidate who with call for you know reinforcing this axis between capitalism and local communities because i think what the globalists are run away completely is this time between the production and the place where the products are being produced and consume yes actually create the great crisis of the united states which i don't think is limited to the pandemic or even to this terrible crash capitalism in the united states abandon the united states the leading capitalists in this country are now global capitalists they have

cut back links that leaves the vast middle class without jobs without a future it's a disaster here covered over with endless theater but the reality is a disaster and if mr trump weren't there you would see other people emerging trying to make a political career by talking to their if i could tell you this i will tell you the follow there is a struggle going on in the united states between a left wing response to the collapse of the middle class that's represented by a new wave of socialist by bernie sanders by alexander cortez and all of that and there is a right wing alternative where he says just and you see that in trouble well i think there is somebody in the middle are by the name joe biden but let's talk about * him after a short break we'll be back in just a few moments. the

sudden false and illegal takeover of a government by a small group. rather than revolutionaries or soldiers could that small group be cool. when you have a tiny group of people who have all the power you have to have some means to make sure the rest of us don't get together and take it back or lend lease or sacrifice some places that capitalism exploited and destroyed for profit and left behind misery poverty environmental devastation and so you see things like voter suppression building more prisons you seem gerrymandering all sorts of undemocratic practices were well into that world focused

world. of the. lead. a dark industry comes to life in los angeles every night. dozens of women sells abilities on the streets many of them under-age. los angeles police reveal

a taste of the daily challenge if you're going to exploit our child here in los angeles that we're going to come after you see officers going undercover as 6 workers and customers to fight a 6 trade. we go to work. straight home.

welcome back to all the parts with richard wolffe professor emeritus of economics at the university of massachusetts. a professor walford just before the break you are sharing your dislike of. and for all his faults mr trump is still a representative of the mastic borzoi is the to use the marxist language the borgias the reach is more grounded more constrained down a global capitalists championed by people like joe's of by the now mr biden now tries to position himself as a bull a leftist and a progressive almost like this is the 2nd coming of franklin d. roosevelt do you think he's sincere and do you think the american people will buy it. no and no it's not sincere and they will not buy it joe biden is the old. sinise conservative as stablish men of the democratic party and

he's not just of the democratic party but of that part of the democratic party that deliberately decided in the seventy's and eighty's that the new deal was dead that that's a legacy of franklin roosevelt was dead and that the democratic party had to move shapley to the right they even call themselves centrists and words like that because they wanted to show that they are fundamentally pro-capitalist and pro-business and so you now have really you have of a right wing republican party and a centrist republican party that calls itself the democratic party and everyone knows that joseph biden comes from that is entire political career is in that position and the occasional noises he makes now about progressive is as is a limb effort not to lose the votes of the millions of people who supported bernie

sent that professor wolf how many on our viewers rather had surrounded it i think it's pretty out of them that mr biden is is a corporate candidate i mean his son rake in millions for just carrying the family's name he's supported by pretty much every big sack company that are taxed and regulated at a much much much lower rate than their smaller competitors. who get to position himself as a social justice candidate when his entire political record has been about privileged access. well i think he is his only chance which he understands is he's not his band is strong and his hope is that he will be elected because of a vest hostility. building up against wrong why does he believe that he's not as bad as strong because even putting aside his family legacy you know we know that the democrats by and large have in-doors globalization in this current form if

increased inequality is enormous lamin like i don't need to cite the statistics here but i think the average gap between the supervisors pay in an average worker's pay in the united states has been raised conference of times over the last 20 or 30 years this is bill legacy of the democratic party and he had many people who are crying out against inequality and of supporting this kind of policies yes partly that's a structural question we had 2 parties in the united states we really have set up a system in which it is virtually impossible for us 3rd party to get going so many many people are trapped in the notion well you can only have 2 parties mr trump is captured one of them so we will go with mr biden because it's better than the alternative and maybe this is the answer you're looking for it's too difficult it's too hard it's too costly to try to do something you can't really do it so even if

you're a socialist you don't talk about a socialist party or a 3rd party the way you would in europe but you have to then go all on the lesser evil and mr biden isn't all ballistic will do nothing to alter the basic capitalism of the country and everybody knows that they hope it won't be as bad on secondary questions like abortion or like immigration or like the kinds of issues that are symbolic most played all over important obviously to immigrants obviously their families women and so on and they will then make the coalition that has always been the democratic party and they will settle for something you know not is bad is trump. the tragedy will be how many of those people by giving up on this 3rd party will in fact and who we can what will eventually happen my

prediction as an american i've lived here all my life you're going to see the republican party fall apart between the conservative business interests on the one hand and the religious fundamentalists on the other and you going to see the democratic party fall or choose between the corporate and the socialist young people that are coming up and then you're going to see an opening of american politics that is going to make all these discussions start all over again in a new now having been born in the latter days of the soviet union i am very familiar with this type of hypocrisy you know claiming the common * good than for saying private interests i'm very familiar with this type of care is when you cannot understand who stands for what but i see in the united states of 2020 still not the soviet union of the 980 s. or is it how close do you think your are to let's say a revolution and would you like to see one. i took 10 years of my life with

a colleague to write a book to explain to myself and to the american people what happened in the soviet union so i don't know a little bit about the comparison i would say that you are right to think about a parallel the soviet union didn't fall apart because some country invaded it it didn't fall apart because of military or defense isn't even the importance of afghanis in weakening it i get that this country is now imploding also a form will be different we're not the same countries but you are seeing a country that has spent more money than the rest of the world combined and military and it is falling on characters as a society it has a tremendous military and it tends not contain its own contradictions and that's why you have politicians telling these fantastic stories more wild with each week

with each month and the underlying reality is making it harder and harder for the mass of people to live professor. more for the russians and the americans they're worth revolution carries very different connotations for us or something threatening it's about chaos it's about violence it's about you know inhibiting your country's development for decades to come flowing your back # to raising the previous achievements i think for the americans. at least for now it's still more it's associated with something romantic and progressive having seen what he saw play out and then merican streets calls to define the police the knocking down of morning humans the. fool call sale denouncing nation of american history. i you more or less optimistic about where this social movement let's not call it revolution can lead. yes i think you're right i think the united states revolution

is not a negative at all people are scared they're afraid of what that might mean they understand it's turmoil but you have to remember the united states was born out of a revolution against the british that revolution is celebrated and i think most americans think that revolutions are a way great out of this strait jacket of a system that is no longer acceptable here's where we are in america now capitalism isn't acceptable to the mass of people that that is already the case half of those people know that the other half don't know it they feel bad they're angry but they haven't yet figured out that this has to do with this system but we are getting closer to a revolution all the time and these more leisurely moments that the monuments are not those are steps in that recognition but they know i think the in this case

revealing our search for it clearly demonstrates when the. you know tolerance to injustice reaches its final point any you don't have any ways to act on it what it produces is rage and for all the parallels that they may be moving between the soviet union and the united states one thing that we didn't have # in the soviet union is free access to guns the united states now has more guns than people over 400000000 guns throughout the entire population isn't that scary aren't you concerned that it may end up in a very very. ugly way yes i am worried about it but here's another side of it we haven't had an a more armed population for decades but the real danger the real threat to most people is from the police not from the other people who have guns. and what you're

seeing is not a movement against guns you're seeing a movement against the whole lease and by the way this is not to blame the police they have put in an impossible situation they are being asked to contain a system in a society that is broken and needs fundamental change and the police tend not do what they're asked to do and so they overreact and then the people overreact but that's what happens when systems fall apart which is why i think that's what's happening now it is very popular these days to blame systemic racism on capital is man i don't want to downplay the role of slave on our ship in the build up of the american economic system but i also think it's avodah and when you look at the at the american data that poverty as a the grows becomes more and more racially neutral do you think it's wise to take this accurately

a racial approach to social justice because i think you yourself have acknowledged that you know people who are colloquially referred to as white trash housing experiencing pretty difficult and challenging lives yes you're absolutely right i regret they racial transformation and by the way most of us in america are committed and convinced that this is part of a governmental policy to segregate the different parts of the revolutionary potential so many they do not work together that the women's movement is all about women that the racial justice movement is all about african-americans and that they do not connect to the labor movement they do not connect to socialism so one of the big jobs of the left is to overcome that divisiveness number one number 2 what is teaching americans the point you make that is. the racial question is the opioid

crisis because what we had drug problems in the african-american community for decades we've now had them on the equal or even greater scale in the white community that is teaching 2 lessons that drug problems have nothing to do with race number one and have everything to do with a broken economic system imposing itself not only on the minority blacks who are required to absorb there's just some scale yours but now the national white people who are falling out of the middle class and realize the what is system is prepared to do that the trick will be chained you develop a left bahrainis different clutch together and focus a people on the economic revolution that has to happen while professor wolf we have to leave it there thank you very much for sharing your insights my pleasure thank you for inviting me and thank you for watching as well to see you again next week

on worlds apart. of. the sudden false and illegal takeover of a government by a small group. rather than revolutionaries or soldiers could that small group be cooperation when you have a tiny turf of people who have all the power you have to have some means to make sure the rest of us don't get together and talk about. police or sacrificed. some

places that capitalism exploited and destroyed for profit and left behind misery poverty environmental devastation and so you see things like voter suppression building more prisons you seem gerrymandering all sorts of undemocratic practices. in that world for well there's. no question that the. industry comes to life in los angeles every night. dozens of women cells on the streets many of them under a huge. police reveal a taste of their daily challenge if you're going to exploit for a trial here in los angeles they were going to come out you would see officers going undercover as 6 workers and customers to fight the trade.

carnage on american streets as black lives matter protesters and authorities face off in the hardest hit cities this weekend were in portland and. the other stories that shape of the week the u.k.'s opposition labor party pushes for artie's broadcast license to be revoked after a report on alleged russian influence. a 2nd wave imminent several new countries see a spike in corona virus cases just weeks after reopening their doors to tourists. oh my. gosh.