10:00 AM Pacific Time: Fridays
Economics Professor Richard D. Wolff and guests discuss the current state of the economy, locally and globally. The program explores government policies, alternative ways to organize, and markets.
This week on Economic Update, Professor Richard Wolff examines a major labor strike unfolding in California, where 2,400 Kaiser Permanente mental health workers are fighting for better conditions. Next, he breaks down how tariffs function as an economic weapon, undermining the living standards of U.S. workers. Finally, Professor Wolff sits down with Kali Akuno, co-founder … Continued
In this week’s episode, Professor Richard 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 … Continued
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 … Continued
This week on Economic Update, Professor Wolff explores the last 150 years of largely uncritical celebrations of “the market” as if it were a perfect institution that must be protected from the intrusion of other institutions such as the government, labor unions, and popular organizations. We compare a historical example and the present to criticize … Continued
In this week’s episode of Economic Update, Professor Richard 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 … Continued
In this week’s episode, Professor Richard 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 … Continued
In this weeks episode, Professor Wolff discusses the economic causes and effects of the global demographics 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 … Continued
This week, 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 … Continued
This week’s special hour-long 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 … Continued
In this week’s special hour-long episode of Economic Update, Professor Wolff first discusses unionizing Whole Foods workers versus Amazon and then covers Trump and the contradictions, dangers, and global retaliation of the new administration’s tariff program. This is followed by an interview with political scientist Dr. Wilmer J. Leon III on the China-U.S. competition: its … Continued
