Bill Moyers with Richard Wolff on Inequality, Wage Slavery, and Economic Justice

Video (45 min) and transcript.

Naked Capitalism
Bill Moyers with Richard Wolff on Inequality, Wage Slavery, and Economic Justice

Richard Wolff | Professor of Economics Emeritus at the University of Massachusetts

Eric Dolan — Economist: Deficits nothing but a politically useful hammer to beat up Obama

Economist: Deficits nothing but a politically useful hammer to beat up Obama (via Raw Story )

University of Massachusetts economist Richard Wolff on Tuesday explained that obsession over the federal deficit was based in politics, not economics. Wolff said on the David Pakman Show that the government could not improve a struggling economy by cutting its spending. As the single biggest consumer…

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Dylan Matthews — Inside the offbeat economics department that debunked Reinhart-Rogoff

It’s easy to overestimate the differences between UMass and more mainstream departments. The empirical microeconomics Dube does is not too different from what David Card, David Autor, Raj Chetty, and other macroeconomists in more mainstream departments do. Pollin helped the Department of Energy implement the green portions of the stimulus, which was designed initially by mainstreamers like Larry Summers. And even the “left Keynesians” of Amherst don’t go as far as some of their peers at, say, the University of Missouri – Kansas City in dismissing the possibility of high deficits leading to inflation later on.

“It’s almost a talmudic claim that since no country with its own currency can go bankrupt, no deficit can be bad,” Epstein says. “They’ve made important contributions, and a lot of them are my friends, but we try to look at things more critically and not assume there are absolutes.”

But the department’s radical openness to alternate perspectives still sets it apart. “Learn from Marx, learn from Keynes, learn from Hayek,” Pollin says. “One of the biggest influences on me personally was Milton Friedman. He was very engaged with real world questions, and he made no bones about his ideological predilections.”

The Washington Post — Wonkblog

Inside the offbeat economics department that debunked Reinhart-Rogoff
Dylan Matthews

Richard D Wolff — When Democracy Is Trumped by the Excesses of Capitalism

In his new book, "Democracy at Work: A Cure for Capitalism," Richard Wolff makes the compelling argument that modern capitalism has undermined democracy, replacing it with a plutocracy. All the props of a democracy remain intact - elections, legislatures, media - but they predominantly function at the service of the oligarchy.

Truthout readers can get "Democracy at Work: A Cure for Capitalism" free with a minimum contribution by clicking here.

The following excerpt is entitled "Private Capitalism and Democracy":

Truthout
When Democracy Is Trumped by the Excesses of Capitalism
Richard D Wolff, Haymarket Books | Book Excerpt

Richard D. Wolff is Professor of Economics Emeritus, University of Massachusetts, Amherst where he taught economics from 1973 to 2008. He is currently a Visiting Professor in the Graduate Program in International Affairs of the New School University, New York City. He also teaches classes regularly at the Brecht Forum in Manhattan. Earlier he taught economics at Yale University (1967-1969) and at the City College of the City University of New York (1969-1973). In 1994, he was a Visiting Professor of Economics at the University of Paris (France), (Sorbonne).