Richard Wolff on Economic Inequality

[@Rickwmc]

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]

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]

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

[@clarestucki5151]

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

[@rodneyparker5313]

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

[@bencrawshaw1227]

No the working class does all the work. The middle class do work, but they tend to be better educated. There would be no point in calling them the working class otherwise.

[@Rickwmc]

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]

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]

Truth tellers are always labeled as radicals.

[@matthewmazur9579]

@@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]

@@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]

@@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.

[@brogs60]

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

[@tebohotolo5538]

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

[@Rickwmc]

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?

[@johnnybizaro1]

I was not wondering.

[@mikolowiskamikolowiska4993]

Go start Your Own business

[@trevorsanso32]

This dude is smart as fuck.

[@thunderpooch]

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]

Nah. You just slow

[@Rickwmc]

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]

+Spartaculus Jones Great book!

[@coopsnz1]

Bullshit its government growing 50 yrs .

[@thunderpooch]

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.

[@johnnyhaselnuss9808]

„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]

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]

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]

@@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]

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]

@@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.

[@m00py1]

criminally underwatched

[@hifpif7470]

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

[@DinoDudeDillon]

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

[@Rickwmc]

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.

[@johnnybizaro1]

explained so concisely.

[@matthewmazur9579]

Lol they own the business, you work for it. STFU and start your own.

[@VinsLeMans]

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

[@bencrawshaw1227]

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.

[@distortiontildeafness]

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

[@waltergoring8428]

Similar but not as extreme.

[@dialogue2139]

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

[@mania.archive]

please update this

[@fhhfhdfdhhdhhdfhdf138]

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]

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

[@ariestrucker7832]

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

[@waindayoungthain2147]

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.

[@skipmoyer3237]

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

[@anteeko]

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.

[@ColorMatching]

Irrelevant

[@jeromeschwartz3699]

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

[@dmur612]

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

[@vcletty3554]

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

[@unholypagan1342]

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

[@billt5644]

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.

[@danieljames3420]

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.

[@1Skeptik1]

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

[@ethanstump]

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

[@1Skeptik1]

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

[@freemason4979]

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

[@hadesflames]

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]

why inequality is bad?

[@johnlock572]

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

[@blakeburton4731]

Because rich people know how to control there money simple economic

[@thunderpooch]

*their Nobody takes you seriously.

[@2getheras177]

Anonymous DueToFascists either top 1% or a satisfied slave imo

[@johnlock572]

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]

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]

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

[@gannonapoliticalteen9694]

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

[@schen7913]

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]

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]

This is only bad if wealth is a zero sum game

[@hadesflames]

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.

[@schen7913]

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]

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

[@MaximC]

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]

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]

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

[@plaidloonie2427]

Thinking of yourself as a slave is the prob.

[@schen7913]

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]

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]

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]

@@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]

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

[@MaximC]

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

[@clarestucki5151]

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

[@alexsanderrain2980]

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]

Also the introducing of the computer, leaving millions jobless.

[@alexsanderrain2980]

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

[@Jamhael1]

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]

shut the fuck up fash

[@tnekkc]

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

[@lucasbrunning-halsall9984]

Please tell me you're kidding...

[@tnekkc]

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

[@Jamhael1]

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

[@ColorMatching]

Some people don't get smarter with age.

[@johnlock572]

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