Video Infoblog: Richard Wolff: Something BIG is About to Happen in the U.S..."
let me put it this way a growing unwillingness to wait much longer I think what you're seeing the Turning of the American electorate away from Center left center right rejecting the Bush family and going for Trump rejecting now Mr Biden and looking for somebody the basic problem was for the United States a a classic capitalist problem namely profitability declining long-term things had looked so good in the aftermath of the end of World War II remember Britain France Germany Japan Canada China none of those po potential competitors if they really were such were in a position to compete with the United States they had all been devastated literally by the war or indirectly by the effects of the war the United States by contrast other than the Pearl Harbor Event had no bombs fall on it lost relatively many fewer people to the war and basically emerged from a Great Depression the 1930s by by virtue of putting half of our unemployed people into uniform and the other half of them putting producing the guns and bullets and so forth that the uniform folks needed for the war so when the war is over the world is our oyster every other Imperial country Britain France all the others lose their colonies if they haven't already lost them and the United States fills the vacuum to make a complex and long story short and it puts us in this in credible kind of position we can afford for example to give our workers 5% uh real income increases every year with wages the inflation is held back you're able to reproduce for the whole world you the Marshall Plan allows you to sell Goods to the Europeans to rebuild in their society and so on and on all of that by the 1970s and 80s that wave of of rebuilding and of taking over the world economy and making it the American Empire is done and so now you have a bit of a a crisis 1970s and they have to find Solutions and they do and that's what we are living with now the solution number one tremendous focus on technical change labor and whether you want to point to the computer or to robotics or to artificial intelligence or to atomic energy I mean there there's an endless array of technical changes that are very advantageous to Capital and much less so to labor number two you move out of the United States the Jet Engine and the internet provide you with the ability to be as directly on top of situation with a factory in China or Brazil or Nigeria as you used to be with one in New Jersey or Massachusetts or Pennsylvania and Americans discover quickly as do Europeans and Japanese that they can find well-qualified well educated welld disciplined labor forces at a tiny fraction of the wages and with the whole thing brokered by governments desperate for what they call Economic Development and willing to provide all the infrastructure all of the tax holidays That Could Be Imagined and so you have explosion which we Rec Christen globalization but it's really another phase of capitalism maximizing its offsetting the decline of that good time after World War II so now we have Global dispersion we have technological change and then the last of the three increased mobility of poor people leaving countries of low wages and coming to work in the metropolitan countries in huge numbers often taking the poorest jobs the lowest paid jobs allowing the native if you like working class a kind of a temporary holiday of not being at the bottom of the totem pole being above that having the immigrants replace them yes there are problems we see them more and more but the bottom line was a really good period of capitalism record profits booms in our stock markets but the accompanyment a growing gap between the top 10 to 15% who could participate in all of that through the stock markets but a mass of people whose jobs in manufacturing in the United States and in Western Europe disappeared and who did not find comparable jobs under comparable circumstances at least not in the United States and that is shaping and shaking our politics now because that can't go on neoliberal globalization has produced such a push back such a reaction that the American working class for the first time in a century seriously considers voting for Republicans out of an anger and a rage against the Democrats for not having not only having not improved their situation over the last 50 years but has H actually having been unable to protect what had been achieved under Franklin Roosevelt and in the early years into the 50s and 60s so it it is a watershed moment in American politics where everything uh is Shifting if I could use a metaphor the surprise that so many seem to have felt at the results of the election in France just completed should not have surprised people these kinds of shiftings are going on everywhere they are certainly going on in the United States and we are watching the emergence here it has to be an emergence because the left was destroyed here after World War II in a way that did not happen in Europe and so they are going to handle it differently but very similar basic tectonic shifts are underway here as well you know I do my supply and demand on the Blackboard and I'd show that by bringing China India uh into the world economy and I don't mean to pick pick just those two but they're the two big populations in the world you're bringing a massive increase in the supply of labor power with no comparable increase in the demand for it and that is going one way or another the way markets work that's going to show up in a decline not everywhere not equally but a decline in what labor can get out of the market in which it functions and it's going to Advantage capitalism because of this great new supply of labor now all kinds of things are being done about that but it is also a situation in which the vast majority of the people of the world understand that they are getting the short end of this stick when it comes to wealth and they are not accepting it and they are producing leaderships and movements and documents and demands that are pressing up against a a received division of labor that comes out of previous centuries and that is going to be contested and changed now and I would argue that the wisdom of the human race is it's better to understand it work with it try to come to a livable Arrangement around it rather than holding up your hands with the imaginary notion that you can stop this process that people will forever accept that uh you know 10% of the world consumes 50 to 60% of the output of the world this is not gonna this is over and the sooner we understand it the better our chance to work through it in a peaceful way because we live in a world of nuclear weapons and you know there is always the horror of imagining where that could lead people let me put it this way a unwillingness to wait much longer I think what you're seeing is the Turning of the American electorate away from Center left center right rejecting the Bush family and going for Trump rejecting now Mr Biden and looking for somebody yes we talk about age problems and cognitive ability but these are details the problem is and you could see it in Britain and you could see it in government is held accountable for a deteriorating situation and so there's less and less patience with it there's a growing desire to try something anything else but the existing run-of-the-mill middle of the road you know the they're just not going to go for it but they have known patience if the new the different I'm GNA borrow if you allow me from Britain if you have a a tousel haired prime minister who tells you that brexit will solve our problems yeah you're dubious you're skeptical but the people who are the reasonable ones who you've been relying on are no longer tolerable so you'll give them a chance it turns out it doesn't work okay now you're gonna give uh starmer a chance the French don't want Mr Marron he was the bright young man a few years ago his poll numbers are are worse than Biden's which is extraordinary but the French don't want that anymore they'll try extreme on the left and they'll try extreme on the right but it's not so much that they want the left or they want the right but they know that that Center has failed them and and if I were their advisor I would say it's really not the center's fault either you're part of a larger process what you have the right to say to all of them Center left and right do you have a plan for how to deal with the realities the problem in these societies is they don't know what the realities are and that's partly a problem of the media which are holding back from confronting people with the reality look we all know it's much easier to go up the hill with a rising Empire than to go down the hill with a declining one but since every Empire the human race has ever had has its up and it's down the United States was bound sooner or later to have it down having had it's up that's where we are and that has to be faced if that were put front in Center you would perhaps Force the left or the right or the center to actually attend to those issues and come up with a plan so far my fear is none of them have done it each of them in their different way are coming up with rehashed versions of what they've always said and here in the United States it reaches ridiculous levels we have a country of 330 million people one of the richest in the world we are faced with a population of undocumented immigrants numing numbering maybe 10 million maybe if you want to be exaggerated 15 million the economic conditions of 330 million Americans is not being determined by the 10 million or 15 million of among the poorest people on Earth that's crazy that's pure scapegoat ISM but when reasonable people get all excited about it which is what we have here in the United States you realize that something very important is being displaced from what it really is to this immigration issue and are 10 others I could point to as well and that's a sign of a society not yet willing to deal with the real problems it has which is at least part of the explanation why left right and Center have not yet come up with real plans that the mass of people could then
