Richard Wolff Socialist analysis of economic crash- exaggerated or accurate?

[Nak Khid]

 

Edited June 28, 2020 by Nak Khid

[Leo Gura]

Always take people talking about collapse of society with caution. Every year for thousands of years people talk about collapse, and yet society somehow keeps growing.

[kagaria]

what about shunyamurti? 

[Nak Khid]

3 minutes ago, Husseinisdoingfine said:

He's not saying here's going to be a collapse but a crash, and the market does crash often.

I changed the word to crash since I checked for the word collapse and he didn't say it 

but he is not just talking about a market crash. He is talking about a collapse 

Here he is in his own post 2018 entitled 

The coming collapse of the American economic system

https://www.rdwolff.com/coming_collapse_of_the_american_economic_system

 

[Leo Gura]

On 6/28/2020 at 2:46 PM, kagaria said:

what about shunyamurti? 

I disagree with him on that. I don't buy into apocalyptic teachings.

Of course I could be wrong. We could all die tomorrow. But I'm not gonna live my life that way or tailor my teachings that way. I'm a long-term optimist. Of course shit will happen in the short-term.

You also have to consider how important the timing is. Maybe Shunya is correct in some ultimate sense, but that doesn't mean it will happen in our lifetimes. What really matters is the next 50 years. If it ain't happening within that timeframe, don't worry about it. That's not your generation's responsibility.

On 6/28/2020 at 3:01 PM, Nak Khid said:

I changed the word to crash since I checked for the word collapse and he didn't say it 

but he is not just talking about a market crash. He is talking about a collapse 

Here he is in his own post 2018 entitled 

The coming collapse of the American economic system

https://www.rdwolff.com/coming_collapse_of_the_american_economic_system

Since he's a socialist, fundamentally be believes capitalism is unsustainable and will eat itself at some point.

And while that might be true, again, the crucial question is when? Maybe in 100 years. Or maybe never if socialist policies are gradually implemented over the next 50 years (which seems most likely to me).

Of course crashes and recessions will happen.

[Leo Gura]

2 minutes ago, Husseinisdoingfine said:

will a new conscious capitalism emerge, or will it be some sort of market socialism?

What's the difference? It's all going to blend together seamlessly over time to create a more optimal society. Society is constantly optimizing itself no matter who is in charge.

[Leo Gura]

19 minutes ago, Husseinisdoingfine said:

So it's going to be neither capitalism n'or socialism

It has always been a combination of both. There are no pure free market societies in the world.

[remember]

it’s about your attention span and theory building, optimism will make you inattentive to change. pessimists usually are better prepared. and what is pessimism anyways - if optimism is: everything will stay as it is?

society is not only optimizing itself - that’s a false assumption and one directional thinking.

Edited June 29, 2020 by remember

[LfcCharlie4]

@Leo Gura This is such a Yellow perspective, thank you for showing what that looks like, in a world full of ideologies. 

Unfortunately, many don't like to hear their tier 1 viewpoint isn't 100% right. 

[Forestluv]

17 hours ago, Husseinisdoingfine said:

So it's going to be neither capitalism n'or socialism

Consider how capitalism and socialism can be integrated. In fact, it already is. Cars are capitalism and the roads are socialism. Moving forward, there are many ways we can integrate positive aspects of capitalism and socialism. For example, capitalism can offer healthy competition. This can provide energy of motivation to reach potential. This can be integrated with socialism. For example, the capitalistic competition and reward is toward social good. 

For example, car manufacturing has capitalistic and competitive components - yet there is also a toxic component of the fossil fuel industry, lobbyists and political corruption that directs the capitalism and competition toward obscene profits for billionaires and the destruction of the environment. How could some capitalism and socialism be Imagined here? What if we redivide this the energy of capitalism and competition toward social wellness goals? What if we had a competition to develop the cleanest-running cars? Each year, there is a competition of teams of developers toward a SuperBowl competition event each year. Society invests money into this competition and the most successful developers get the greatest rewards, yet the financial rewards are distributed fairly. No one gets to suck out 200 billion in profits, causing the whole system to collapse. 

This hybrid system combines good features of capitalism and good features of socialism. Imagine how efficient and rapid progress would be.

[Hank Galaxy Brain]

I'm not an economist, but it seems accurate to me. These are unprecedented times. The national debt shot up $3 trillion in the past 6 months. That's a huge increase. We have only $26 trillion over the life of the country; it took us around 2 years to get the preceding $3 trillion. The fed has just been printing money like crazy; it really seems like they're shitting their pants. And with good reason.

The Dow dropped from around 29k to around 18k from February to March. A 33% decrease. It suddenly rebounded due to the fed's 1 trillion in one-day loans made available every day to big banks. But I think that's a bubble, a band-aid solution at best.

And we've seen what happens when a country just start printing money like crazy to deal with its problems. Weimar Germany is an example.

My gut tells me we're headed for a depression. And with a leader with strong authoritarian tendencies running for reelection in the middle of a pandemic. No one knows what voting is going to look like; he's already de-legitimizing the election and promoting massive voter suppression (campaigning against mail-in ballots which will likely be the only safe way to vote and saying there's no way there won't be massive voter fraud (a claim that's been proven false)).

The other side is assembling an army of lawyers to ensure fair elections. We can look in other countries and see that contested elections often lead to armed conflicts and to authoritarian groups seizing control. Most recently in Bolivia.

All signs point to at least a depression, a near certain contested election, quite probable massive civil unrest, protesting, chaos, etc., and a very real chance of a president deploying the military on his citizens (he's already tried to).

Maybe things will get better over the long term, but short term I'm preparing for the worst.

 

 

[Nak Khid]

It depends on if a depression would lead to socialism beyond temporary stimulus measures 

[Apparition of Jack]

The way I look at socialism vs capitalism is less of a question about economics (otherwise you could call the USSR a capitalist country and the US a socialist one) and more of a question about mindset / cultural attitudes.

A self-described socialist, if you sat them down and talked about the need for markets, the efficiency of private innovation, the complexities of running a big business, etc. they'd probably eventually come around and say you have a point. Likewise, if you told a self-described capitalist about the need for collective programs, public housing, strong worker's rights, etc. they'd eventually come around and say you'd have a point too. In terms of pure economics, the two systems are quite malleable.

However, that socialist and that capitalist would still feel like they're a socialist or capitalist, but won't be able to explain why. And again I think it's because these things are cultural attitudes, not economic ones. A socialist person will tend to favour co-operation, community efforts, putting their needs aside for the "greater good", ending arbitrary hierarchies, and so on. A capitalist person will tend to favour competition, individual efforts, putting their desires first, maximising their own power, and so on. The thing is really, you can do both of these things no matter what political system you're under. An ambition entrepeneur in a capitalist country will turn into an ambitious party member in a socialist country, and a worker's manager in a socialist country will turn into a worker's activist in capitalist country.

So while it's true that economically, all countries have always had a mix of socialism and capitalism, I think there has to be a very real mindset shift from individualist, capitalist-ic mindset to a more communalist, socialist-ic mindset, if we're going solve the problems of racism, climate change, inequality, etc. People will naturally have to be more community and co-operation-oriented rather than individual and competition-oriented, regardless of what name you give the system they're living under.

This is of course the shift from Orange to Green, which will require a lot of visionary ideas in terms of politics, economics, art, music, culture, relationships, spirituality, etc. in order to fully manifest. The average human of 100 years from now will be a naturally more co-operative and community-oriented than the average human today. At least, I hope so.

Edited July 3, 2020 by Apparition of Jack

[Tanz]

19 hours ago, Hank Galaxy Brain said:

I'm not an economist, but it seems accurate to me. These are unprecedented times. The national debt shot up $3 trillion in the past 6 months. That's a huge increase. We have only $26 trillion over the life of the country; it took us around 2 years to get the preceding $3 trillion. The fed has just been printing money like crazy; it really seems like they're shitting their pants. And with good reason.

The Dow dropped from around 29k to around 18k from February to March. A 33% decrease. It suddenly rebounded due to the fed's 1 trillion in one-day loans made available every day to big banks. But I think that's a bubble, a band-aid solution at best.

And we've seen what happens when a country just start printing money like crazy to deal with its problems. Weimar Germany is an example.

My gut tells me we're headed for a depression. And with a leader with strong authoritarian tendencies running for reelection in the middle of a pandemic. No one knows what voting is going to look like; he's already de-legitimizing the election and promoting massive voter suppression (campaigning against mail-in ballots which will likely be the only safe way to vote and saying there's no way there won't be massive voter fraud (a claim that's been proven false)).

The other side is assembling an army of lawyers to ensure fair elections. We can look in other countries and see that contested elections often lead to armed conflicts and to authoritarian groups seizing control. Most recently in Bolivia.

All signs point to at least a depression, a near certain contested election, quite probable massive civil unrest, protesting, chaos, etc., and a very real chance of a president deploying the military on his citizens (he's already tried to).

Maybe things will get better over the long term, but short term I'm preparing for the worst.

 

 

You have a fair analysis and common sense logic should create a 5-10 year bear market. However America is in charge of everything and can make up whatever rules it wants. Most Americans are not woke enough to see they are being fooled and the citizens of the country less needed by the machine.

[TrustTheProcess]

@Husseinisdoingfine

I think anyone who adheres to labels like "socialists" is ideological... that said, he has excellent stage green economic analysis imo. 

[Opo]

@Husseinisdoingfine I think he has huge orange shadow that is blinding him. 

[Opo]

@Husseinisdoingfine i havent seen a lot of him so i could be wrong. From what i have seen Leos analysis of jp applies to him. All he does is criticize capitalism and carries that bitterness with him. 

Edited July 4, 2020 by Opo

[Nak Khid]

48 minutes ago, Husseinisdoingfine said:

I'm wondering, is Richard Wolff a good commentator or is he too ideological?

I think he's just fine.

compare to Yanis Varoufakis

[7thLetter]

Accurate. Here are two Youtube channels I highly recommend anyone check out that talk about the future of the US economy.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCXuldJPtmI0x0DVQFsB9cSg

https://www.youtube.com/user/TheSchiffReport/videos

 

[7thLetter]

On 6/28/2020 at 2:41 PM, Leo Gura said:

Always take people talking about collapse of society with caution. Every year for thousands of years people talk about collapse, and yet society somehow keeps growing.

They’re talking about the collapse of the economy.