Current Events > Richard Wolff's Economic Update for the week

(+) Yeah! (+)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qbgFvqKppIU

enjoy.

Omnislasher posted...

enjoy.

what did i do for you to hate me so much
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Isnt Richard Wolff a Marxist? can safely disregard anything he says since hes a nutcase.
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FLUFFYGERM posted...

Isnt Richard Wolff a Marxist? can safely disregard anything he says since hes a nutcase.

oh wow you remembered last week's title! maybe i give you too little credit.

he tweeted this a couple days ago

Yet more evidence: most Americans economic situation is not recovery. Car loan defaults soar alongside growing sub-prime loans. Crunchtime coming, again.

completely disregarding that most working Americans are financing their cars and that the average car payment is $479 a month. people are overspending themselves and making stupid decisions yet will Wolff say anything about personal responsibility and being wise with money? or does he just shitpost about capitalism
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TC are you Richard Wolff? lmfao
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appreciate the flattery

you gonna address that bullshit Tweet about car loan defaults? is there ANY room for personal responsibility / wise decision making in your worldview or is it all "capitalism is bad!!!"

serious question
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FLUFFYGERM posted...

is there ANY room for personal responsibility / wise decision making in your worldview

yes

FLUFFYGERM posted...

or is it all "capitalism is bad!!!"

capitalism is bad

So you agree with me then that his statement about car defaults was unbelievably stupid and uninformed. Which means that he's not really that sophisticated of a thinker, given that he uses arguments like that to bash capitalism and defend his wacko Marxian economics.
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no

Explain why it's anyone else's fault that most working people are financing much more car than they need. No one forced people with $30,000 salaries to buy brand new $35,000 vehicles that they can barely pay for.
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FLUFFYGERM posted...

Explain

lol the fuck? demands i explain some shit, who you think you are?

Oh I see so you basically peddle your religion without the expectation that you'll be able to answer people's questions.

LMAO should've said this topic was supposed to be a safe space. Thought you shared Wolff because you wanted people to discuss it and question it.
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FLUFFYGERM posted...

Thought you shared Wolff because you wanted people to discuss it and question it.

so what'd you think of this week's update, FLUFFYGERM?

lol jk i couldn't care less about your thoughts even if you watched or listened to it; of course i was just pointing out that you haven't.

this topic isn't for you.

drivel just like everything else i've seen from Wolff

which i could've told you before watching any of it considering how dishonest Wolff is
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oh so i guess this topic is just dogwhistling to the other communists on CE

so you guys can virtue signal unabated by facts or evidence

right
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FLUFFYGERM posted...

drivel

thanks for the great discussion!

FLUFFYGERM posted...

dishonest Wolff is

he isn't dishonest

FLUFFYGERM posted...

unabated by facts or evidence

you have facts or evidence to challenge anything in the video?

He is definitely dishonest. But you already completely ignored his dishonest posturing from a few days ago regarding car loan defaults, so would you really look at facts or evidence that challenge his views at large? LMAO
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They are coming for your toothbrush proudclad
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about the only good point in the video was his point about harvard's complaints about the extremely small tax that is to be levied on their investment gains

and to his credit he didn't spend time trying to weasel in Marxism. if i didn't know he's a Marxist I'd almost believe he's a classical liberal who just wants regular Americans to have good lives. shame his tweets and writing change that.
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FLUFFYGERM posted...

dishonest posturing

i think everyone understands that there is onus on individuals to borrow responsibly just as there is on creditors to lend responsibly. so what

FLUFFYGERM posted...

just wants regular Americans to have good lives

it's transparently obvious that this is what he wants.

Omnislasher posted...

it's transparently obvious that this is what he wants.

and how could Marxism ever achieve that without tanking our economy and our standard of living across the board? you might be interested in this conversation I had recently with averagejoel:

https://www.gamefaqs.com/boards/400-current-events/76239702
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Omnislasher posted...

i think everyone understands that there is onus on individuals to borrow responsibly just as there is on creditors to lend responsibly. so what

right but he used the current car loan situation as evidence that there is no recovery for regular americans. even though they are doing that to themselves.
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https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/dec/15/extreme-poverty-america-un-special-monitor-report

ya your line is: "it's their own fault"

i'm guessing you restrict yourself to expressing this view primarily online?

i'd be careful

Omnislasher posted...

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/dec/15/extreme-poverty-america-un-special-monitor-report

ya your line is: "it's their own fault"

i'm guessing you restrict yourself to expressing this view primarily online?

i'd be careful

It's more nuanced than that. Is there any subset of the poor population that mismanages its own money and education and future, to the extent of keeping themselves poor? Or is all of that poverty a result of capitalism?

Is any subset of the population that is chronically sick also smoking or obese? Or is it all because of capitalism?

I don't think you've demonstrated a willingness to engage in that nuance.
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TC got fuckin REKT
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Marxists whenever asked to defend Marxism:

Omnislasher posted...

lol the f***? demands i explain some s***, who you think you are?

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I-LPvbzwllY

Oh look, at least he isn't against automation / technological progress eliminating drudgery and repetitive work. That's refreshing. Maybe I'll get a few of his books and give him another chance. Most leftists I've communicated with were completely ignorant on why automation is a good thing.

He's pretty ignorant on the reality of what would happen, though. He gives an example of 100 workers making shoes. Along comes a technological revolution that enables 50 workers to produce the same amount that it used to take 100 workers to produce.

He argues that automation could benefit all 100 workers. Instead of firing 50, all 100 could keep working but they'd just work half the time. So they'd have the same standard of living at half the time investment, meaning more time for leisure.

That's all well and good, but then he gives the capitalist alternative where the capitalist would fire 50 workers and pocket the profit all to himself. That's a very simplistic and uninformed view of what the capitalist would do. He's wrong. Technical breakthroughs do not in the long run result in the capitalist pocketing the difference. They result in new competition entering the market and using the technical breakthroughs to sell the good or service at a lower cost. So ultimately the capitalist response benefits all consumers rather than just a handful of workers.

This is why goods/services we take for granted now used to cost much more 50-100-200 years ago.

Here's GM's perspective on how autonomous driving can increase the profit of ridesharing while also reducing the cost to the end user.

https://www.freep.com/story/money/cars/general-motors/2017/11/30/gm-driverless-cars-can-affordable-and-profitable/910608001/

If anything, it would be unethical for those 100 workers to work half the day and pocket the benefit of the breakthrough all for themselves, when instead the breakthrough can be disseminated into the industry as a whole and benefit all consumers.

This is just one example of how he completely misses the mark when it comes to his understanding of capitalism.
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who do you think would deny that there are people who make themselves sick or mismanage their finances? does this really qualify as nuance?

"some people borrow when they shouldn't so the current economic system is obviously fine" makes no more sense than saying "predatory lending exists so the current economic system is obviously broken"

Omnislasher posted...

who do you think would deny that there are people who make themselves sick or mismanage their finances? does this really qualify as nuance?

"some people borrow when they shouldn't so the current economic system is obviously fine" makes no more sense than saying "predatory lending exists so the current economic system is obviously broken"

It does qualify as nuance. Because instead of saying things like "40 million Americans are poor" and then arguing that there's something wrong with the system, you can ask more specific and more targeted questions. Like:

1) Is the standard of living for all Americans higher now than it was in 1920?

2) Of the poor, how many make enough money to improve their situation if they wanted to improve it? In other words, of the 107 million working Americans who borrowed money to pay an average of $479 a month for expensive brand new cars, how many of them are struggling financially and could've bought a used car and invested the rest?

The reality of things is a lot less anti capitalist when you ask questions like these, because the data shows that a lot of people are being utterly irresponsible.

That's not to say that some people aren't stuck because of reasons outside of their control. We should help those people.
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The amount of effort Proudclad is putting in here is pretty pathetic
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Bio1590 posted...

The amount of effort Proudclad is putting in here is pretty pathetic

Perhaps your brain operates at such a slow pace that seeing posts larger than a couple of sentences seems like a lot of effort, but you really shouldn't be so vocal about that kind of stuff. You have no way of actually measuring effort.
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Oh boy! The Barnes and Noble I frequent has his book "Democracy At Work: A Cure For Capitalism" in stock. I often like to spend my Sunday afternoons at Barnes and Noble with a few cups of coffee (and a Red Bull for good measure) leafing through interesting books. That's actually how I picked up "A World of Three Zeros: The New Economics of Zero Poverty, Zero Unemployment, and Zero Net Carbon Emissions" by Muhammad Yunus a week or two ago. You might enjoy that book, TC.

I'm gonna go read some Richard Wolff and report back later. Maybe that book is more sophisticated and developed than his talking is. I'd love to spend some time talking with him in person, tbqh. Ask him the really hard questions, because I'm genuinely interested in how he'd respond.
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FLUFFYGERM posted...

Oh boy! The Barnes and Noble I frequent has his book "Democracy At Work: A Cure For Capitalism" in stock. I often like to spend my Sunday afternoons at Barnes and Noble with a few cups of coffee (and a Red Bull for good measure) leafing through interesting books. That's actually how I picked up "A World of Three Zeros: The New Economics of Zero Poverty, Zero Unemployment, and Zero Net Carbon Emissions" by Muhammad Yunus a week or two ago. You might enjoy that book, TC.

I'm gonna go read some Richard Wolff and report back later. Maybe that book is more sophisticated and developed than his talking is. I'd love to spend some time talking with him in person, tbqh. Ask him the really hard questions, because I'm genuinely interested in how he'd respond.

Im familiar with Wolff. He's a goon who goes to unions' "aid" when their boss decides to close up shop, says he's gonna have the employees take all the employers stuff and run the business themselves in a co-op. And if the business owner has a problem with it, he threatens to slander them across the state.
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Sephiroth1288 posted...

Im familiar with Wolff. He's a goon who goes to unions' "aid" when their boss decides to close up shop, says he's gonna have the employees take all the employers stuff and run the business themselves in a co-op.

isn't it great? i know you prefer to see destitute towns all over the country, but for most people, it's great.

Sephiroth1288 posted...

he threatens to slander them across the state.

evidence or proof of this?

TC what are your thoughts on posts #30 and #32?
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i think they're garbage

Omnislasher posted...

isn't it great? i know you prefer to see destitute towns all over the country, but for most people, it's great.

Right, imagine how many people's lives have been made better thanks to thugs setting up workers co-ops

The list only includes Richard Wolff and his buddies when they take a huge cut from the workers they "help" and then allow to drown as soon as the business goes under, but still!
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Sephiroth1288 posted...

Richard Wolff and his buddies when they take a huge cut from the workers

evidence or proof of this?

Omnislasher posted...

i think they're garbage

for what reasons
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Sephiroth1288 posted...


does this guy ever talk a lot of shit without backing it up!

Omnislasher posted...

Sephiroth1288 posted...

Richard Wolff and his buddies when they take a huge cut from the workers

evidence or proof of this?

Proof that he makes money on his primary occupation? Did you ask me that?

Answer me this: how many successful co-ops has he helped start?
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Sephiroth1288 posted...

Proof that he makes money on his primary occupation? Did you ask me that?

uh, no?

he threatens to slander them across the state.

Richard Wolff and his buddies when they take a huge cut from the workers they "help"

asked about these. genuinely curious, assuming you actually know something about this and aren't literally making things up.

Omnislasher posted...

Sephiroth1288 posted...

does this guy ever talk a lot of shit without backing it up!

you are definitely an expert on that tbqh
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Omnislasher posted...

Sephiroth1288 posted...

Proof that he makes money on his primary occupation? Did you ask me that?

uh, no?

he threatens to slander them across the state.

Richard Wolff and his buddies when they take a huge cut from the workers they "help"

asked about these. genuinely curious, assuming you actually know something about this and aren't literally making things up.

My source on that info is Richard Wolff

Maybe you've heard of him

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NjwGzYbvyIc
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thanks for that, i guess. i'll listen to the whole thing for relevant info.

finished. the section he's drawing on is from about 50-57m roughly for anyone else who might care

heard all of this before.

absolutely nothing about slandering anyone. nothing.

presumably your 'huge cut' that 'Richard Wolff and his buddies take' refers to his mention that Democracy at Work gets law firms involved in negotiations between workers and employers. that's the closest thing.

nice irony in slandering someone by falsely claiming they slander, i guess

Omnislasher posted...

absolutely nothing about slandering anyone. nothing.

Didn't even get as far as when he "negotiates" with businesses who send their facilities overseas, huh?
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