Richard Wolff on Economic Inequality

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  • čas přidán 25. 07. 2024
  • Economist Richard D. Wolff on the rising economic inequality from 1979 - 2012.

Komentáře • 177

  • @Rickwmc
    @Rickwmc Před 9 lety +104

    The upper class owns all of the property and pays none of the taxes. The middle class does all of the work and pays all of the taxes. The poor are there to scare the crap out of the middle class. - George Carlin (1999).

    • @johnnybizaro1
      @johnnybizaro1 Před 9 lety +14

      Yup the poor are an outlet for all the aggression in society.
      The rich steal everything and then blame the poor for this. In a way they are right. They did not try to stop them.

    • @rey-op7je
      @rey-op7je Před 5 lety +2

      False, the top 20% pays around 75% of all the taxes that the federal government collects.

    • @clarestucki5151
      @clarestucki5151 Před 5 lety +2

      You need to go to the IRS website and discover who actually pays U.S income taxes and who does not!

    • @rodneyparker5313
      @rodneyparker5313 Před 3 lety

      As much as I love Carlin, he got this one wrong. But remember it was just a joke.

    • @Max0r847
      @Max0r847 Před 3 lety

      @@rey-op7je And they own more than 75% of everything and take more than 75% of income :D

  • @Rickwmc
    @Rickwmc Před 9 lety +61

    Once at a job I argued with my office manager about just this type of inequality. And in cold blood he told me pointing to the entrance of the office: "There's the door. If you don't like the system, then get out." Two weeks later I quit and got out. Better to be a starving coyote than an exploited cow.

    • @johnnybizaro1
      @johnnybizaro1 Před 9 lety +18

      yes sir. I had a similar discussion at work. It was why did the CEO get millions and we get told to tighten our belts. I got labeled as a trouble maker.

    • @thunderpooch
      @thunderpooch Před 6 lety +16

      Truth tellers are always labeled as radicals.

    • @matthewmazur9579
      @matthewmazur9579 Před 4 lety

      @@johnnybizaro1 you are taxed as an employee and stay as an employee. You pay for a paid for house which you pay for 30 years. You pay for a 401K for 40 years. Meanwhile you are not getting any money back on a monthly basis. There is a reason why your are poor and will continue to be poor. You are investing in rocks not assets.

    • @markobosnjak810
      @markobosnjak810 Před 4 lety

      @@matthewmazur9579
      And what money should he invests if his wage is scarcely enough for the living basics? You have read a book from Kiyosaki or some other charlatan and now selling us your wisdom? Its impossible to start anything if you dont have time to think enough or do not have any money to invest in the first place. Most of the todays gigant capitalists already had have a bunch of money ( as the video says) and they had so much easier job to make those 6 figures in 10 figures now. Do not be ignorant and do not forget that also the poor people read books and think with their head.

    • @matthewmazur9579
      @matthewmazur9579 Před 4 lety

      @@markobosnjak810 do not assume, it makes more of an @ss out of you then it does for me. Have I read those books, yes. But there is a major difference between reading and applying. Which would you prefer? Handing your money over to someone who works 9-5 shaking a magic 8 ball gambling your funds and taking fees for managing it, or you taking personal control over your money and placing it in the proper market. You cannot live life alone, you need a team. Everyone these days are brainwashed by their own doubt, self worth, or think the don't deserve things if they don't accomplish it themselves. It's simple, you applied for a job, your paid for your time. Use that time to learn the infrastructure and when you leave, build a team in that market better. It's America, people vote with their dallor's $$$. And if you don't have a job but need one. Look for a problem, or do jobs everyone hates, they tend to pay more. $16 an hour as a plumber or $7.50 as a cashier.

  • @Rickwmc
    @Rickwmc Před 9 lety +36

    A great deal of the poverty in the United States for the past century has been caused by employers who pay slave wages. - Barbara Ehrenreich (Nickled & Dimed 1999)

    • @bradjbourgeois73
      @bradjbourgeois73 Před 8 lety +2

      +Spartaculus Jones Great book!

    • @coopsnz1
      @coopsnz1 Před 6 lety +1

      Bullshit its government growing 50 yrs .

    • @thunderpooch
      @thunderpooch Před 6 lety +4

      Not true. Government is relatively the same size over the last 50 years.
      You've been lied to.
      The only difference is the corporations and the rich now pay much less in taxes.

  • @Rickwmc
    @Rickwmc Před 9 lety +29

    The other day I saw an armored car leave the parking lot of a business building. The money in that armored car was going to the bank so that the CEO, board of directors and principal stockholders could declare all of it to be THEIRS. Then they pay themselves 90% of that cash. Only 5% goes for overhead and the other 5% goes for employees' wages. And you wonder why you're struggling?

  • @tebohotolo5538
    @tebohotolo5538 Před 3 měsíci +1

    This is highly informative, all trade union leadership has to be part of this work by Prof Richard Wolff

  • @trevorsanso32
    @trevorsanso32 Před 8 lety +25

    This dude is smart as fuck.

    • @thunderpooch
      @thunderpooch Před 6 lety +1

      Actually, what he says is fairly obvious.
      The trick is, the media doesn't even want you to entertain thinking about a better system.
      For you see, unaccountable capitalism is a religion. And corporate structures cannot be messed with.
      Oh but they can, they just don't want you to realize it.

    • @mikolowiskamikolowiska4993
      @mikolowiskamikolowiska4993 Před 2 lety

      Nah. You just slow

  • @brogs60
    @brogs60 Před 8 lety +50

    The Rich get richer while the Poor get poorer, classic Capitalism.

  • @hifpif7470
    @hifpif7470 Před 5 lety +4

    Interesting. I was not aware of this....

    • @DinoDudeDillon
      @DinoDudeDillon Před 3 lety

      ya don't hear much about it in the media, do you

  • @distortiontildeafness
    @distortiontildeafness Před 9 lety +9

    How do these stats compare to Canada's last 30 years?

  • @Rickwmc
    @Rickwmc Před 9 lety +9

    When your employer pays you slave wages while keeping the lion's share for himself, you get income inequality. When your employer outsources or automates your job you get runaway income inequality.

  • @m00py1
    @m00py1 Před 3 lety +2

    criminally underwatched

  • @VinsLeMans
    @VinsLeMans Před 3 lety +2

    Rick Wolff in his prime never scared of speaking to the truth where others live in denial and lie to the themselves and the masses of people

  • @johnnyhaselnuss9808
    @johnnyhaselnuss9808 Před 5 lety +24

    „If you secretly take just one freedom per generation, then you‘ll end up with no freedom and nobody will have noticed“
    Karl Marx

    • @rey-op7je
      @rey-op7je Před 5 lety +1

      Yeah, the Marxist ideology was the responsible for all the things the happened in soviet union, mao's china, north korea etc were around 100 million people died.

    • @johnnyhaselnuss9808
      @johnnyhaselnuss9808 Před 5 lety +7

      rey Nope, because Marxism is an analysis of Capitalism that points out how and why Capitalism slowly destroys itself and why the workers are exploited. Solutions for that problem almost certainly come up with socialist ideas, more or less. Socialism is the ideology that frees the working class in an economic way AND in a social way, and that is the point. Planned economy itself doesn‘t need to be Socialism. All the examples you stated are just example of dictatorships/authoritarian regimes that had planned economies. The soviet union was state-capitalist, not socialist.

    • @rey-op7je
      @rey-op7je Před 5 lety

      @@johnnyhaselnuss9808 You make me laugh. Soviet union was a state capitalist? haahhahaha. In soviet everything was own by the government, literally.
      Nobody has said that capitalism is perfect, but you have to provide a better alternative and until now it doesn't exist.
      A planned economy what does is concentrate power in the hands of few people and that is the reason why after, you have a dictatorship. Because, power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
      I came from a communist country with a planned state economy. And as almost all the people there we want to escape. Remember, people vote with their feet.

    • @johnnyhaselnuss9808
      @johnnyhaselnuss9808 Před 5 lety +4

      rey True, it was owned by the government, but as the soviet union wasn‘t democratic, the government wasn‘t made up by the people. This makes it non-socialist, because the means of production were owned by few political figureheads, rather than all the people represented by a democratically elected government as in socialism. The soviet union was a state capitalist system, because the whole economy was owned by the state, but that‘s not enough to make it socialist, it‘s the rule of elites that made the system terrible.
      Besides that, most self-called socialist states weren‘t socialist, because they weren‘t democracies. In simple words: you can‘t run a planned economy in favor of every citizen if not every citizen is allowed to elect the people who plan the economy.

    • @rey-op7je
      @rey-op7je Před 5 lety

      @@johnnyhaselnuss9808 That is not true. Who says that people didn't elected the officials on soviet union or China or Cuba? You elect someone from you neighborhood and those people elect someone for the next level until you elect the president. How exactly you will elect those officials? Please describe a concrete example.
      Also, the problem with a planned economy is that you and nobody knows what other people want, because in the process you will never satisfy the needs of small groups of individuals.

  • @mania.archive
    @mania.archive Před 3 lety

    please update this

  • @dialogue2139
    @dialogue2139 Před 5 lety

    Ok. 4:52 sounds EXACTLY like the Eddy Wally "wow"

  • @bencrawshaw1227
    @bencrawshaw1227 Před 3 lety

    Yeah he's on the right track England had become percentage based tax by around about the 16th century, maybe earlier as opposed to the Roman system which was fractional.

  • @waindayoungthain2147
    @waindayoungthain2147 Před 4 lety

    Please advise me how’s? 🙏🏻 why do USA reduce taxes on the way of by the big owner ? In ways of living with everyday life means 😲 , no taxes reduced by the Government’s.

  • @fhhfhdfdhhdhhdfhdf138
    @fhhfhdfdhhdhhdfhdf138 Před 5 lety +2

    5:43 as it says in the good book "to them that have shall be given, and from them who have not even from them something will be taken"

  • @GeraldParrish
    @GeraldParrish Před 7 lety +2

    I love Richard Wolff, but can we get him to button his shirt a bit higher?

    • @ariestrucker7832
      @ariestrucker7832 Před 6 lety +6

      Gerald Parrish
      Does he turn you on? Are u distracted?

    • @Max0r847
      @Max0r847 Před 3 lety

      HHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

  • @skipmoyer3237
    @skipmoyer3237 Před 8 lety +4

    I wonder how many the top 5% inherited a significant sum.

  • @anteeko
    @anteeko Před 3 lety +1

    Always the same mistake of assuming the 20% poorer and the 20% are always the same peoples.. it is dynamic, nearly all peoples hit the 1% one time in their live if they sell an house for example. Income vary a lot in life.

  • @danieljames3420
    @danieljames3420 Před 5 lety

    Does anyone know how the streaming process works on YT? Why do some videos buffer non-stop while others don't? Does it depend on the account it's from somehow? Like, I'm out of data, so every video will "buffer" for a few seconds normally, but regardless of length (just listened to a 2+ hr podcast), it will typically play through without continued buffering. However, literally every time I play a Wolff video, it buffers incessantly. Like, maybe there's a legit reason for this, but it fucking feels conspiratorial.

  • @unholypagan1342
    @unholypagan1342 Před 2 měsíci

    of course the top 50 percent gained and the bottom half lost thats just capitalism, the question that should be asked is why didn’t the bottom half rise up? forget about losing everything you only have your chains to lose

  • @jeromeschwartz3699
    @jeromeschwartz3699 Před 5 lety +2

    To sum up, take from the poor and give to the rich.

    • @dmur612
      @dmur612 Před 5 lety +1

      Jerome Schwartz
      Then why have the “poor” gotten wealthier in EVERY COUNTRY IN THE WORLD that has liberalized private, free enterprise???

    • @vcletty3554
      @vcletty3554 Před 4 lety +1

      @@dmur612 that was hilarious -- tell that to the street people in Haiti, the Philippines, etc.

  • @billt5644
    @billt5644 Před 6 lety +2

    Profit Sharing is one way to address this inequality.
    The problem with Capitalism is that in most cases it is very difficult to calculate how much Dollar Value a Worker adds. How much does an Administrative Assistant add to the bottom line? On the other hand you can calculate the Dollar Value a Shoemaker adds to the creation of a pair of shoes.

  • @freemason4979
    @freemason4979 Před 4 lety

    Ok. we've heard all this. Now go Check Thomas Sowell

    • @hadesflames
      @hadesflames Před 3 lety +3

      Glad to hear you've heard it all. Now if only we could somehow get you to understand it all instead of wiping your ass with it before going back to licking your master's boots.

  • @anteeko
    @anteeko Před 3 lety

    why inequality is bad?

    • @johnlock572
      @johnlock572 Před 3 lety +1

      Well, it's kinda like asking why is war or exploitation or a lack of freedom bad. There's no true answer in any objective sense and human beings has through out our history existed under all of these conditions and our answers varies depending on our relationship to these experiences. Is war good if you're the one waging them rather the victim of it? Is the lack of freedom desirable when you're the one who's taking it from others or from whom it is taken from, etc... Same goes for the question of inequality

  • @1Skeptik1
    @1Skeptik1 Před 3 lety +1

    Income inequality? Investigate Wolff's net worth and get back to me. Chuckle

    • @ethanstump
      @ethanstump Před 3 lety +4

      How about you go sell that red herring at the farmers market?

    • @1Skeptik1
      @1Skeptik1 Před 3 lety

      @@ethanstump I don't want to know that. LOL

  • @blakeburton4731
    @blakeburton4731 Před 6 lety

    Because rich people know how to control there money simple economic

    • @thunderpooch
      @thunderpooch Před 6 lety +5

      *their
      Nobody takes you seriously.

    • @2getheras177
      @2getheras177 Před 5 lety

      Anonymous DueToFascists either top 1% or a satisfied slave imo

    • @johnlock572
      @johnlock572 Před 3 lety

      Yeah but that's people 300 years ago like saying the slaves master are rich because they know how to control their slaves. A hollow rationalization that neither justify slavery nor save that system from those who rises against it

  • @bonitaramsingh
    @bonitaramsingh Před 5 lety

    Marx's utopian folly:: Pareto (Power Law curve) distribution is the de facto 4th law of thermodynamics. Complex socioeconomic systems are inherently non linear and all progression (of being in the universe), from chaotic disorder to increasingly orderly state, manifests along a power law distribution. That means order (Yin) and disorder (Yan) are not equal in area. There is much more disorder than order - there is more mediocrity than competence, more sloth than rausch, more pessimism than hope.
    The oigin of a socialist's utopian folly lies in that it instills futile hope among naturally self-intersted men- that the power law curve can be bent into a straight line parallel to X axis! Bolsheviks and Maoists attempted that. They still wanna bend and break a cardinal law of nature! But Man's subjective will has no primacy over causalities-laws of the nature. Eventuality, confiscations only resulted in some commisars being more equal than others.
    Now, creative and deligent men create new valuable things which becomes 'new money' in the economy. There is scarcity of money simply because the ability to create new money among men is scarce. That variying ability is due to the laws of nature; not solely due to the oppression by other men. And any printed currency is for representing the produced value (Ricardo, Friedman).
    But the armchair socialist Prof. Richard Wolff doesn't wanna know this. He wishes govt to appropriate and redistribute Jeff Bezos money to create artificial equality. Surprisingly, Wolff doesn't want the redistribution of Usian Bolt's gold medals among masses to the address the prevailing issue of athletic-ability inequality.
    Nonethless, equitable is better than equality. Egalitarianism ('by arranging outcomes') by mooching would be injustice to the producers of value. Equality and justice don't go together. Bury your resentment and envy.
    However installing a fair justice system to provide equal "opportunity" for economic mobility of men is essential in a modern society.

    • @hadesflames
      @hadesflames Před 3 lety +3

      Amazing! You've managed to show your complete ignorance expertly sir! My applause.

    • @gannonapoliticalteen9694
      @gannonapoliticalteen9694 Před 3 lety +1

      bezos didnt earn that money. the capitalist mode of production gave it to him.

    • @schen7913
      @schen7913 Před 3 lety

      Dang. You're a classic example of an idiot. No matter how much money the wealthy make, you think it's justified. If the bottom 50 percent were starving, you'd blame them for not having enough drive -- you'd assume it was their fault.

    • @schen7913
      @schen7913 Před 3 lety

      You can only ask so much for a poor person to sacrifice to improve their life. If I told someone they had to live without a hand for five years if they wanted to become middle-class, then sure that might be reasonable. If I told them they had to live without both arms and and a leg for 10 years to be middle class, I start sounding like I can't see out side my pro-capitalism ideology.

  • @bobkane115
    @bobkane115 Před 4 lety

    This is only bad if wealth is a zero sum game

    • @hadesflames
      @hadesflames Před 3 lety

      You know there's a reason right wingers and capitalists love idiots and even say so outloud and unironically. Shit Trump himself said he loves the uneducated. One of the few true things to leave that scumbag's mouth. It's amazing how much idiots help to destroy their fellow worker at their own expense to help people who neither know nor care about them.

    • @Max0r847
      @Max0r847 Před 3 lety

      FIRE economy makes it a zero sum game. Rent-seeking is known as "free lunch" in economics. Capital accumulation leads to greater accumulation through dispossession of land, resources, money, and power

    • @schen7913
      @schen7913 Před 3 lety

      False. It's only bad if the vast majority of citizen's are losing purchasing power. Because when you're richer than God, improving your life 100x does way less for you then when a poor person loses 5%.

  • @plaidloonie2427
    @plaidloonie2427 Před 6 lety

    Great info. But why are you telling people they can't make it. Thats when I turn OFF.

    • @MaximC
      @MaximC Před 5 lety +1

      Darryl Hughes,
      It's a probability thing, of course you can be 1 out of 1000000 that will get out of the poor class... Yeah...

    • @johnlock572
      @johnlock572 Před 3 lety +1

      I wonder if you were a slave, you'd be that kind of slave that'd be turned off when the abolitionists tells you that you won't likely be able to become a master

    • @plaidloonie2427
      @plaidloonie2427 Před 3 lety

      Begging for food, to Steak anytime! Everyone can make it.

    • @plaidloonie2427
      @plaidloonie2427 Před 3 lety

      Thinking of yourself as a slave is the prob.

    • @schen7913
      @schen7913 Před 3 lety

      He's telling you that in the current system, the amount of hard work and sacrifice you have to do to make it is above your tolerance levels. Would you turn off if you knew you'd have to do the equivalent of 100 Year 1970 men's hard work to make it? What about 10,000? What if you knew that in 1970, you just had to do 1 Year 1970 man's amount of hard work to make it? In the 1800s you just had to move West and work hard to make it. The American Dream is dead because not everyone will get the opportunity to make their hard work count.

  • @clarestucki5151
    @clarestucki5151 Před 5 lety +1

    People are born with massive inequality. Inequality of talent, inequality of skill0, inequality of ambition. Why the hell would you expect that to produce equality of income??

    • @MaximC
      @MaximC Před 5 lety +2

      Clare Stucki,
      You could use that as an argument only when we all will be economically equal. Until then, it's not an argument.

    • @clarestucki5151
      @clarestucki5151 Před 5 lety

      @@MaximC I suspect you missed my whole point. As long as we're so unequal in the things that pertain to economic life, we'll never BE economically equal, right???

    • @clarestucki5151
      @clarestucki5151 Před 5 lety

      @Mastah Chief How about you try exploiting them yourself, (assuming you actually have any of course.)

    • @MaximC
      @MaximC Před 5 lety +1

      Clare Stucki,
      What the heck is "things that pertain to economic life"?

    • @clarestucki5151
      @clarestucki5151 Před 5 lety

      @@MaximC Basically, how productive you are, which manifests itself in how much you earn.

  • @alexsanderrain2980
    @alexsanderrain2980 Před 8 lety

    The 70s were also the times when mass third world immigration started happening. Before, it was mainly European immigration. Afterwards, it was mainly latino and african and east asian. Part of this inequality is because of demographic change. Before, when it was majority European-Americans, things went well. As more and more people who have divergent thoughts, ideologies and identities become more populous, the country changes too.
    This is also the time when MTV and Holywood started putting out anti-white and anti-european propaganda to demoralize white americans.
    I think that we need to look at all the issues and understand that while capitalism has its fault, another fault-line is the demographic one.

    • @trevorsanso32
      @trevorsanso32 Před 8 lety +1

      Also the introducing of the computer, leaving millions jobless.

    • @alexsanderrain2980
      @alexsanderrain2980 Před 8 lety

      Trevor Sanso I am not discounting the technological element to this equation. I am just also including the demograhic one.

    • @Jamhael1
      @Jamhael1 Před 5 lety +3

      Well, what you expect? The so called "white" nations screwed the Latino, Asian and black nations by political subversion, economic exploitation and open warfare. That places became something worse than any hell made by the white god. And so, despaired "colored" people wishing a better life for themselves and their families had to leave for Europe and America.
      So, don't blame colored Folk for economic problems, blame the souless white CEO's owners of the Military-Industrial Complex, your racist bastard!

    • @gannonapoliticalteen9694
      @gannonapoliticalteen9694 Před 3 lety

      shut the fuck up fash

  • @tnekkc
    @tnekkc Před 7 lety

    We need more income inequality. That is the engine that makes people strive.

    • @lucasbrunning-halsall9984
      @lucasbrunning-halsall9984 Před 7 lety +11

      Please tell me you're kidding...

    • @tnekkc
      @tnekkc Před 7 lety

      Income equality causes starvation in N korea, Cuba, and Venezuela. On the bright side, no one is overweight.

    • @Jamhael1
      @Jamhael1 Před 5 lety +1

      Yeah, sure! Let's permit billionaires bribe politicians to keep the rest of the people on the verge of despair.

    • @ColorMatching
      @ColorMatching Před 3 lety +1

      Some people don't get smarter with age.

    • @johnlock572
      @johnlock572 Před 3 lety

      I pray your children didn't starve to death striving while you're munching on your 3 course meal across the table