Episodes
Wednesday Nov 27, 2013
Alternative Visions - What's Wrong With Economists - 11/27/13
Wednesday Nov 27, 2013
Wednesday Nov 27, 2013
Dr. Jack Rasmus takes the two dominant wings of academic economics—what he calls the ‘Hybrid Keynesians’ and the ‘Retro Classicalists’—to explain why their predictions have been consistently wrong about the US and global economies since 2008. Why the 10,000 professional economists failed (with a handful of exceptions) to predict the 2008-09 crash, why most inaccurately predicted a quick, V-shaped, recovery that hasn’t happened, and why they are again failing to see the drift toward yet another global crisis. Rasmus explains why the ‘Hybrid Keynesians’ aren’t really Keynesian, and why the Retro Classicalists cannot explain the 21st century global economy in terms of 19th century classical economics. Both fail to understand the nature and role of debt, credit, income, and financial speculation in the 21st century, while continuing to adhere to simplistic notions of money, money supply, interest rates as solutions to a slow economic recovery, and short term government subsidy spending as a long term solution to investment, jobs, and real income growth. Both Retros and Hybrids labor with an outmoded conceptual apparatus and models that are increasing irrelevant to the real world. With incorrect analyses, they propose incorrect solutions—or no solutions at all.
Wednesday Nov 20, 2013
Alternative Visions - Union Labor’s Strategic Dead-End - 11/20/13
Wednesday Nov 20, 2013
Wednesday Nov 20, 2013
Jack Rasmus invites guests, Steve Early and Arun Gupta, to discuss ‘What Strategy for Union Labor in America’. Dr. Rasmus notes how union membership is now in freefall despite tens of millions of workers wanting to have a union today, how collective bargaining is in retreat now on the benefits as well as wages front, and how Labor’s political and industrial strategies of the past two decades have both produced little positive result. Dr. Rasmus and guests discuss how US Labor’s political strategy of ever closer ties to the Democratic Party has resulted in virtually no gains for workers the past 6 years despite billions of dollars of union contributions to the party. And how Labor’s industrial-bargaining strategy, focused on maintaining health and pension benefits in lieu of wage increases, is now being ripped apart as well by legislated health care and pension changes. With political-industrial strategies of the last two decades now in disarray, what are the alternatives for forging new strategies for organized labor in America? Jack and guests discuss what it means to say labor should embark on a path of more ‘independent political action’ and/or initiate new forms of industrial and bargaining, while reducing its reliance on the Democratic party and its primary focus on maintenance of benefits bargaining.
Wednesday Nov 13, 2013
Alternative Visions - The Unraveling of Obamacare: A Progressive Critique - 11/13/13
Wednesday Nov 13, 2013
Wednesday Nov 13, 2013
Dr. Jack Rasmus and guest, Dr. Margaret Flowers, provide a progressive critique of Obamacare and its growing problems of implementation and coverage. Dr. Rasmus explains how, and why, Obamacare will continue to unravel in 2014-15 and potentially implode, in whole or part, by 2016. Rasmus explains in detail how Obamacare has delayed and exempted businesses from participation in the program; why business penalties for failure to participate are in sufficient; why subsidies for individuals to participate are inadequate and won’t work; why enrollment will continue to seriously lag projections by wide margins in 2014; why the Act is the death-knell for union negotiation health plans; how businesses and health insurance corporations area increasingly ‘gameing’ the system. Rasmus explains how the Act is really a scheme for ‘moving the money around’, from those who now have coverage to those who don’t—where the money is moved first through the health insurance companies that skim off excess profits in the process—and how Obamacare should be understood as the extension of prior attempts to privatize health care via George W. Bush’s Health Savings Accounts (HSAs) in the past decade and Bill Clinton’s ‘Managed Health Care’ before that.
Rasmus and Margaret Flowers explain how ‘Medicare for All’ is the only real alternative that will work, showing how its initial enrollment process, benefit coverage, and costs have been, and continue to be, far superior to the Obamacare-Bushcare-Clintoncare market privatization approaches. Rasmus forewarns that as Obamacare continues to unravel the real fight will begin over ‘Medicare for All’ vs. total privatization of health care via ‘Vouchers for Some’ that conservatives are now preparing in the wings once again.
Wednesday Nov 06, 2013
Alternative Visions - The Great Corporate Tax Shift - 11/06/13
Wednesday Nov 06, 2013
Wednesday Nov 06, 2013
Jack Rasmus discusses the ‘Great American Tax Shift’, shows how the Corporate Tax has been steadily declining for decades as a percent of federal revenues, percent of national income, and percent of corporate profits; why the Corporate Tax ‘effective rate’ is now 12%, not the official 35%; why corporations today pay state taxes of barely 2%, instead of official 5-10% rates, and only 2% on foreign earnings instead of 15-28%—for a total global real tax payment of 16%--not the 45%-50% corporate apologists claim. Jack explains how all this results in Corporate America now sitting on more than $10 trillion in cash and how that translates into income inequality trends and a global economy that is unable to fully recover from recession. Various myths about corporate taxes are also refuted (i.e. tax cuts create jobs, US corps have highest taxes in the world, corporations pay double taxes, etc.). And new corporate tax cut measures pending now in Congress in the Tax Code overhaul bill are explained.