PODCAST

Economic Update

Progressive Radio Network

Richard D. Wolff, a weekly TV and radio show and podcast

news & politics

All Episodes

29:00

Economic Update: Twin Failures Of Capitalism - The...

Economic Update ·

2025/05/10

This week's Economic Update focuses on Trump's attacks on Harvard, Trump's "antisemitism" maneuver against educational institutions, and US universities becoming ever more " business-like." as well as looking into the economics of US dollar depreciation since Jan 20, 2025. Also featured is an interview with Mr Rob Robinson, to be awarded an honorary doctorate from the City University of New York at its Commencement, June 10, 2025, recognizing his multiple contributions to fighting homelessness and

29:00

Economic Update: Resisting Trump's Restoration Project

Economic Update ·

2025/05/03

This week on Economic Update, Professor Wolff delivers updates on the Kaiser Permanente mental health workers' strike unfolding in California and the function of tariffs as an economic weapon that also undermines the living standards of U.S. workers. In the second half of the show, Professor Wolff sits down with Kali Akuno, co-founder and co-director of Cooperation Jackson, to discuss Trump’s controversial "restoration" agenda and the growing resistance against it.

29:00

Economic Update: Solidarity Cities as Alternatives to...

Economic Update ·

2025/04/26

In this week's episode of Economic Update, Professor Wolff speaks on employers blocking, delaying, and opposing improvements on general social welfare, highlights how Trump ends "affirmative action" for veterans (including those disabled) and remarks on how tariffs worsen uncertainty with seriously negative consequences. In the second half of the show, Professors Maliha Safri and Stephen Healy, co-authors of the new book Solidarity Cities: Confronting Racial Capitalism, Mapping Transformation are

29:00

Economic Update: Tariffs, the Working Class, and...

Economic Update ·

2025/04/19

In this week's episode of Economic Update, Professor Wolff critiques the DOGE practice of firing federal civilian employees, analyzes the Trump tariff program, and shows how both are presented as ways to solve deep economic problems in the U.S. but are actually an assault on the working class. The second part of the show features an interview with David Van Deusen, the former head of the Vermont state AFL-CIO and now an organizer of union-based resistance to the Trump program.--

29:00

Economic Update: Unlearning Market Idolatry

Economic Update ·

2025/04/12

This week's edition of Economic Update explores the last 150 years of largely uncritical celebration of "the market," as if it were a perfect institution that must be protected from intrusion of other institutions such as the government, labor unions, and popular organizations. We compare an historical example and also the present to criticize today's peculiar mix of market idolatry and its rejection in the US.

29:00

Economic Update: Mounting Economic Problems

Economic Update ·

2025/04/05

In this week's episode of Economic Update, Professor Wolff discusses certain minimum wages by the Trump administration, the costs of Germany's rearmament, and how Trump's tariffs and deportations have hit central America with economic catastrophe. The second half features a detailed discussion of the historical blaming of foreigners for the internal problems of capitalism in the U.S.

29:00

Economic Update: How Marx's Class Analysis Could...

Economic Update ·

2025/03/29

In this week's episode of Economic Update, Professor Wolff discusses how Marx's class analysis presents a solution to today's inequality and the challenges to overcoming it we have faced throughout history. In short, since the early existence of human society, people lived in tribes, clans, and villages that exhibited equality of wealth, income, and political power among their members. As modern history began to unfold, slavery, feudalism, and capitalism evolved as society as we know it took shape

29:00

Economic Update: Build and Fight: The Resistance Forms

Economic Update ·

2025/03/22

In this week’s episode of Economic Update, Professor Wolff discusses the economic causes and effects of the global demographic’s decline, the Trump administration's colonial plans for Greenland, and examples of resistance and fighting back as the Trump/Musk firing of federal workers gets underway. In the show's second half, Professor Wolff interviews the activist, organizer, and people's lawyer, who is organizing multiple fronts of resistance, David Cobb.

29:00

Economic Update: Federal Employees Fight Back

Economic Update ·

2025/03/15

This week on Economic Update, Professor Wolff delivers updates on the firing of government workers by Trump/Musk with an economic analysis showing it to be an attack on the U.S. working class followed by a discussion of Trump's foreign policy of turning against Europe as merely an adjustment to an "American Capitalism First" project that is as old as the U.S. The second half of the show features an interview with U.S. federal employee Colin Smalley, a sixteen-year member of the U.S. Army Corps of

29:00

Economic Update: The Nobel Prize in Economics Exposed

Economic Update ·

2025/03/08

This week’s episode of Economic Update features updates on the economic risks and costs Europe faces from deporting or blocking immigrants as compared to Spain's prosperity through a pro-immigrant policy, the work of Michael Burawoy, a Marxist sociology professor at UC Berkeley, and how the inflation of meat prices is affected by a four-company oligopoly that controls 85% of the U.S. meat supply. In the second half of this week’s show, Professor Wolff interviews economics professor Shahram Azhar of

29:00

Economic Update: US Policy Toward China: A Failing...

Economic Update ·

2025/03/01

In this week’s episode of Economic Update, Professor Wolff discusses unionizing Whole Foods workers VS. Amazon and Trump and the contradictions, dangers, and global retaliation of the new administration's tariff program. The show's second half features an interview with political scientist Dr. Wilmer J. Leon III on the China-U.S. competition: its costs, the stakes, and why the U.S. is losing.

29:00

Economic Update: Capitalism, Lost Empathy, and Rising...

Economic Update ·

2025/02/22

Professor Wolff discusses Trump's attempts at taking Panama as more evidence of rising colonialism and imperial ambitions, the recent organizing and strike of 10,000 Colorado grocery workers, and finally corporations and investment funds abandoning DEI. Finally, we have an interview with psychotherapist Tess Fraad-Wolff on capitalism's causal links to declining empathy and rising addictions.

29:00

Economic Update: The View From Prison

Economic Update ·

2025/02/15

In this week's episode of Economic Update, Professor Richard Wolff delivers updates on the North Carolina union election at an Amazon warehouse, the deportation of immigrants, and the U.S. construction industry, a lesson in how capitalism installs new technology like A.I. and how it could be far better done. In the second half of this week's episode, Professor Wolff interviews Serena Martin, a formerly incarcerated social activist and executive director of New Hour for Women and Children.

29:00

Economic Update: New Economics Institute with Clara...

Economic Update ·

2025/02/08

In this week's episode of Economic Update, Professor Richard Wolff delves into the heroic efforts of California firefighters and their extraordinary work in battling the recent wildfires in Los Angeles. We also explore the progressive transformations occurring within U.S. labor unions and shed light on the escalating housing affordability crisis across the United States.Additionally, we interview Professor Clara Mattei, Director of the newly established Center for Heterodox Economics in Oklahoma

29:00

Economic Update: Trump's Anti-Immigrant Campaign

Economic Update ·

2025/02/01

In this week's episode of Economic Update, Professor Wolff explores the economic consequences of the United States threatening Mexico and Canada. We also highlight how worker co-ops are joining forces with unions to strengthen both movements and examine the economics of the illegal drug trade. Additionally, we discuss the significance of Indonesia joining BRICS.

29:00

Economic Update: Persistent Homelessness:...

Economic Update ·

2025/01/25

On this week's episode of Economic Update, Professor Wolff discusses updates on deep political corruption: the Illinois example, final statistics on the 2024 presidential election results did NOT give Trump any mandate, the Canadian government forcing 55,000 striking postal workers back to work despite massive worker opposition. Finally, we have an interview with housing advocate and activist, Rob Robinson (formerly un-housed) reporting on the global housing advocates' conferences in Spain and

29:00

Economic Update: Marxism and Economics: A Global View

Economic Update ·

2025/01/18

In this week's episode of Economic Update, Professor Wolff discusses the strengths and weaknesses of Senator Elizabeth Warren's new bill "The Accountable Capitalism Act", Elon Musk's recent comments on homeless people, Mitch McConnell's criticisms of Trump for isolationism, and the over 9,000 Michigan nurses voting to join the Teamsters Union. Finally, Professor Wolff interviews Bucknell University Economics Professor and Co-Host of The Dialectic at Work Professor Shahram Azhar on the appeal of

29:00

Economic Update: The Year 2024 in Review

Economic Update ·

2025/01/11

n this week's episode of Economic Update, Professor Wolff discusses the "catalog" of 2024's economic problem areas: (1) Slow growth relative to China/BRICS; (2) the war in Ukraine; (3) the crises in Gaza and the greater Middle East; (4) Biden & Trump tariffs policy; (5) scapegoating immigrants; (6) corporations disinterest in climate change and DEI initiatives; (7) rising U.S. labor militancy and public support,' (8) rise of violence; (9) social security benefit increases' failure keep up with

29:00

Economic Update: Capitalism Vs. Democracy

Economic Update ·

2025/01/04

On this week's show, Prof. Wolff presents an analysis of how and why capitalism is an undemocratic economic system. The first half is devoted to the micro-level, namely to the organization of the enterprise (factory, office or store). Its undemocratic character is exposed using examples and empirical evidence. The second half has a macro-level focus that shows how capitalism's generation of growing income and wealth inequality impels the employer class (a small numerical minority) to use their money

29:00

Economic Update: How US Capitalism Uses Nationalism

Economic Update ·

2024/12/28

From 1945 to 1990 we were told a great struggle pitted capitalism against socialism/communism (chiefly the USSR and China). Yet still today, US leaders demonize Russia and China despite the end of communism in the USSR and a huge growth of capitalist enterprises in China. The explanation lies in US capitalism's long history of using nationalism (i.e. foreign dangers) to justify tax-payer funded government actions to protect, subsidize, and support major capitalists' dominant position in the US

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