Episodes
Friday Jan 20, 2023
Friday Jan 20, 2023
In today’s show Dr. Rasmus describes and discusses the major trends of the past four decades of the era of Neoliberal capitalism—in a recap of his January 14 presentation to the 28th annual Rosa Luxemburg conference held last week in Berlin. Rasmus explains how Neoliberal era global capitalism, which originated in the late 1970s as a solution to the crisis of the 1970s, has entered a crisis period in the wake of the 2007-15 global financial crash and great recession. The key trends discussed include: US and global capitalism never fully recovered from the 2007-15 crash; the Covid crisis exacerbated the economic problems and created fundamental structural changes in the global economy; traditional capitalist fiscal-monetary policy tools have become increasingly ineffective in stabilizing the capitalist economy; financialization of the global economy has intensified contradictions and accelerated income and wealth inequality while slowing real economic growth as well; technological change has accelerated changing economic relations at work that has reduced wage incomes for workers, accelerating precariate, gig, and AI job displacement; both traditional and secondary forms of labor exploitation have intensified; financial fragility of governments, households and corporations has risen; US imperialism has entered a more aggressive and violent stage; and domestic political divisions and instability has intensified in many countries, including USA and Europe in response to all the above. In short, Neoliberalism is failing and a new capitalist restructuring of the global economy has begun in early phases. (Check out Dr. Rasmus’ blog, https://jackrasmus.com later today for a posting of a text version of this discussion)