Equal opportunity is maximized. Equal results will never be a thing. When people choose to not work regardless of the reason then what else will happen than for them to have no money? Why should people who choose to work have to pay for those that choose to not work?
@@BobFrostV you are illlustrating exactly OP's point, given that the issue these days is largely "many dilligent people who choose to work multipleof the best jobs available for >40h/week still have no realistic hope of making their everyday bills"
I cracked up when home boy's argument for keeping our inferior social systems (compared to leftish leaning countries) was: "The U.K. sucked in the 70s."
UK did suck in the 70's. Margeret Thatcher turned things around with conservative policies. Capitalism is not the problem. Government is. When the bottom 1/5th of wage earners had their incomes rise the fastest out of all the income groups after the 2017 tax cuts. That was the first time that had happened since the George W Bush administration. Because both W. and Donald Trump used John F. Kennedy theories of using lower taxes, less immigration, and deregulation to tighten up the labor market. Which raises wages, allows mobility, allows for advancement, and gives people dignity. Compare that to the liberal policies of using high taxes, open immigration, and over regulation to put permanent slack into the labor market. Which lowers wages and drives up housing prices at the same time to the point tens of millions of people don't have any money left at the end of the month. AND IT'S THE LOWER WAGES AT THE BOTTOM THAT ALLOWS THE EXCESSES AT THE TOP. CAUSING THE WEALTH GAP. Bernie is for the billionaires. I know that's tough to hear for Bernie fans. You are being told the truth to free you from a prison you do not even know you are in.
Nice quote. So we're not anels: That means since cave man, groups united. They elected the Chief, The Witch Dr, and the man closest to the Great Spirit~ That founds a tribe with a Government don't it! :o) That was simple and that was the beginning of Governments all over the tribal world
@@LouPalumbo Goldwater said it, but it was said earlier ....by Paul Harvey‘s 1952 book Remember These Things. ( still a L O N G way from Thomas Jefferson ;)
Wow, not much substance went to explaining the issues in this discussion... Most of the time they are describing communism, which is state owned....Socialism is people owned.... Unions are socialism, Social Security pension is a social program......Work cooperatives , financial cooperates are socialism.... Chomsky said it best..... Stalin described his state as socialist to soften his tyranny, and America agreed that communism was socialism... Hence the propaganda painted by the same brush....It was not..Russia was communist state owned ..And became corrupt communism with a corrupt dictator....This is not socialism Society has been run by Neoliberalism for past 40 plus years with a world wide slave labour pool that drove all wages to slave wages...... Neoliberalism attacks Venezuela, and Latin America to steal their peoples resources.....Not much of this came out of the discussion
Communism and socialism are used interchangeably in Marxist definitions. Stalin was the natural evolution of Marxism-Leninism, which actually eschewed basic socialist principles. It set itself up as a socialist democracy on paper, but in practice the party was ONLY interested in holding state power at any cost. They became illegitimate the second they started dissolving workers councils, which were independent of the party and the state. For a very brief moment, the USSR was socialist with actual democracy in the workplace. Lenin's democratic centralism also dissolved a short time after they dissolved the workers councils. They also took away democracy in the armed forces. Such measures, they would claim, were necessary. Nearly every concession they won in the revolution was rolled back almost immediately. Lenin launched his New Economic Policy, the democracy both within and without the party eroded, and could not be reversed. Nationalizing your economy doesn't automatically translate to Communism, what matters is how that economy is run, who has the say so in production, and who benefits from it. Planned economies are in some ways better than regular capitalist ones, but i personally advocate for decentralized planned economy, with democratic worker control over the means of production and industry, as well as a political system of council communism which was used by the German socialists in 1918-19. Democratic centralism could work. Lenin went against his own idea when he granted those concessions to the old elites and foreign capitalist powers, but that doesn't mean it was a bad idea, he just was a bad practitioner.
Marx didn’t use Communism and Socialism interchangeably. I appreciate this dialogue specifically. We need to spend a great deal of time examining our use of all these abstractions (capitalism, socialism, communism, etc.) We also need to take a closer look the rhetoric of socialism as failed social experiments, as if the attempts have happened in a vacuum. All of these thoughts and examples are used way too haphazardly. We need to know what things mean, and we need to better understand history.
"Unions are socialism" Yet, all major unions countless corrupt union bosses & mob ties. They also did wonders for keeping manufacturing jobs in America" "Social Security is a social program" Which is insolvent & the government holding your money. "Work cooperatives , financial cooperates are socialism...." No, they are free market capitalism. "Socialism is people owned" No, that's capitalism.
@@racetoria3069 state owned is not necessarily people owned....Our Democracy with peoples representatives has been corrupted to an oligarchy, because of the dark money in political campaigns.....An example of this, is the Koch's want Venezuelan oil...So we have U.S. imperialism in Venezuela.....Another example is gun control...91 percent polling from people want it...... Yet corporatists gun manufacturers. keep the politicians in check......
@@elmo2800 imagine thinking Venezuela, USSR, China, and DPRK are socialist countries. Socialism focuses on the worker Venezuela: State Capitalism supported by oil USSR: abolished worker soviets in 1918 China: absorbed unions into the state creating "Federation of Trade Unions" effectively taking power from the workers and giving it to the state. This act created a new higher class backed by state violence DPRK: a combination of the USSR and China Key to socialism is the question "WHO is seizing the means of production?": 1) If the WORKERS are seizing or have seized and maintained control over the means of production and only then is it socialism. 2) If the STATE seizes the means of production it could be a many different systems. It could be state capitalism ex: USSR( as described by Lenin) and CCP China( after Deng Xiaping's reforms). It could be fascism ex: Fascist Germany, and Fascist Italy. Don't get tripped up on what a country calls itself. All these countries called themselves socialist, and democracies. If their existence is a strike against socialism it must also be a strike against democracy by that logic.
Exactly. They could stop meddling with the affairs of other countries, and lessen the military budget and reroute those expenses to education, health, housing programs, and even job creation.
The only person with a non-emotional argument here is Richard Wolff, the pro-capitalists only give personal experience as examples just like bianca does.
Wow so many inaccuracies right through this debate 1. China isn't a Socialist nation. Their rapid Economic growth comes from the deregulation of their economy and embracing free market principles. The same free market principles have lifted half a billion people out of poverty while Socialist policies ran that country into the ground. 2. Scandinavian countries aren't Socialist. Denmark and Sweden are more free market and unregulated than the US is at present. 3. The fact that Nordic countries aren't innovative is simply false. A lot of them rank higher than the United States in global innovation. 4. Scandinavian countries are highly privatized and everything works well there.
Both Tucker and Ben would’ve taught everyone a few things. While those two disagree on a few things, or have different perspectives/opinions; they’re both brilliant and correct
Fans of socialism are those that are afraid to work. Also, why do people say Denmark and Sweden, for example, are socialist countries? They’re not at all. They have socialist programs but their governments are not socialistic
Capitalism isn’t magic. It isn’t the answer to every question, but it’s a good start. It’s like making a home. If I was to ask, what makes a better home, brick or cloth? And when you answered brick, I started to say “So you think the seats should be made of brick!” and stuff like that, you would think I was insane. Capitalism is a good base to build an economy, but you need to pepper it with touches of socialism here and there to make it more human. Such as social programs funded by taxation. But it needs to remain light, or the system fails. You can’t take too much from the rich to give to the poor, or you lose the reason to invest the effort in not being the poor. Perfect capitalism is a stupid idea, much like an all brick home. Or put another way, perfect capitalism has a little bit of socialism mixed in for flavour.
@@mabrown666 Well put. The U.S. is not 100% capitalistic. Most agree that some people need help from others. But generally speaking, capitalism is the best system for doing that. In order to give, you must have something to give.
When the student asked about what if we had pure capitalism what would it look like he must not have read his history textbook. I swear do we really have to bring up the triangle shirtwaist fires, child labor, harmful work conditions, no overtime payment, no union rights, and the list can go further. Our laws and change in business culture has made capitalism what it is today because the government and society heavily regulated business but we didn't stop capitalism just tamed it.
Herman Cain should start booking himself into comedy clubs. Every sentence he utters makes me laugh uncontrollably. He's like an archaic windup doll. Hysterically funny standup routine!
Exactly. One is an economic system based on the freedom. The other is an economic system based on no freedom and an authoritarian one party system because you can never have socialism without it being under a one party no democracy system. Even socialists know that deep down inside that in order to have socialism you have to force it on everyone which means no democracy or competition from other ideas. That's why the natural extension of socialism is always in an anti-democratic state with a one party government system .... Communism. Socialism, if left unchecked by capitalism always leads to communism and no democracy. It's inevitable.
Like Mr. Wolf said and it's not verbatim- 'Socialism is the instrument to Democratize the Working-Class', thank you Mr. Wolf. That is what is needed to bring us back up to the status of 'Middle-Class'.
Danny Timmons You sure about that? Richest family in the country (Walton’s)has more wealth than half the country’s population. You’re living in a fantasy if you think our economy is doing well.
@@Krooksbane So your a socialist and you drink the Kool-Aid and watch CNN. The Walton's also employ half the country. Where is our economy doing bad? And yes I'm sure, socialism is a race to the bottom. We could be doing better if we weren't spending 200 billion a year on illegal aliens.
+BelleElle That girl is our worst nightmare. She is on a mission to rob you and me of the gifts that were bought for us with the blood of many and she just may get her wish if each and every one of us fails to engage immediately because of the sorry assumption that she is just 'a joke'. A wise man never underestimates his enemy.
@@Wisdomabovegold No, I'd say the guy next to her is FAR worse. Because he TEACHES this stuff to impressionable kids. You're always going to have a few nuts like the girl. Socialism is almost natural for people her age. But that guy knows better. He's an old-school Soviet-style socialist who is *TEACHING THESE THINGS TO OUR CHILDREN.*
Yea, it's a common misconception - because a couple decades ago, they TRIED socialism (or a least implemented a few socialist policies) and then realized they were Harmful. It really pisses me off when reporters say that, as major politicians in those countries have stated they are not socialist.
They have market economies but also far higher rates of unionization and a robust social safety net. The capitalist-socialist dichotomy is very misleading, every country has elements of both
Often when lefties say "I want america to be Sweden" i agree. I want no mibimum wage laws. I want a private pension system and rail network and i want 1.53% flat capital gains tax
"Every business is a home of nondemocracy. A terrible small group of people at the top the board of directors, the owner, make all the key decisions: what to produce, how to produce, where to produce and what to do with the work that everyone contributed to, and we shouldn't be surprised when the people at the top give themselves the lion's share." Are you ****ing kidding me! How do you think any business gets started? The people "at the top" got to the top because they WORKED THEIR a**es off to get there! I work at a small store with 30 total hires. If the manager's had to share all the business decisions with me so I could make a decision, we wouldn't have a business! If I don't like their business, then I quit and badmouth them with my free speech. THEN, they either reform or they go OUT OF BUSINESS! You can't run a business like a democracy! When everyone's a manager, nobody is.
sure you can. are you totally unaware of the worker co-op model? There are literally thousands of worker co-ops in the united states alone. If you look abroad there are even better examples. The 3rd largest corporation in Spain is a worker co-op, that employs hundreds of thousands of people.
The host should not talk for 3 minutes after the audience had asked a question. Just let the panel answer the question. This host just took up to much time. The panel did not get the chance to answer Donnas question, because of the host talking and changing it.
The US Government is almost 27 trillion in debt. The Federal Reserve Note has lost 98% of it's purchasing power since 1913, but they want more power for the state.
"The C in capitalism stands for competence, the S in socialism stands for state control" Is this really the level of debate middle class America is having?
that caught my attention too. i was like, "what do you mean, the 'real question' is". he just asked you a "real question", you just can't answer it so like the black guy said, "you shifting your argument". weak minded. she think unions are good!! holy smokes......has she worked much?!?!?!
Painful indeed, through unions the workers want to have some control over the company, the production and anything else they think is UNFAIR, well I ask, what workers? because if there is no investment from the wealthy there is no factory and no jobs so NO workers. If I have had the idea, turned that idea into a product and brought that to the market created jobs then those workers WILL do things my way or look for work somewhere else.
@@MikeHarrison3266 Harsh, fair and true. If I've taken the initial brunt, costing, investing my resources into the 'product', it should be up-to me if I want to give away a larger proportion of finances or stake in the company to another for the most part OR what's anyone's incentive. There's a balance to be achieved yes, but common, don't change the question to something you prefer to answer because you can't answer the original question, this isn't nursery, love. You're playing with lives not penny sweets
"Stock market is at an all time high..." Stop. You're killing me! hahaha! That's what you guys said in 2007! hahaha! Seriously! You've got to start booking this show into Comedy Clubs!
Herman: You are shifting the subject, which is exactly how you keep getting back to these arguments about socialism, you are going at it on emotion, you keep talking about people who don't have food, we can find these situations everywhere. not all heroes wear capes
Herman Cain-Man Super power: Working against human beings getting the ability to eat and live decent lives ... You would be hard-pressed finding people unable to eat in Social Democracies.
@Dave Ktver I think the price inflation is due to the fleeting hope that perhaps old, torn jeans were made in the USA and not in China. We're nostalgic for the good old days and we'll pay a premium for it.
Wolff doesnt understand division of labour, if workplaces were a democracy then the workers who know nothing about how to run a business would have just as much say as the people who do, that would be disastrous
We really don't know what we are comparing when we speak of capitalism vs socialism. Lets define capitalism: Bear in mind is that capitalism is not a system of government. It is not even a system. Capitalism is the process by which the wealth in a nation is generated. You gather up some capital, start a business, then profit from the customers. You could say every nation is capitalist, except for communist countries where the mere idea of wealth was nonexistent. The government provided everything and each individual has a role. The American system of government is Democracy. A nation ruled by elected leaders.
Buddy trying to act like some of the tech in iPhones wasn't developed through government funding, and that Apple itself never received any government grants. True capitalism....
I think everyone should have to work retail in the us around christmas and in an iphone child sweat shop for a month like jury duty. Socialism would roll in real quick after that.
Professor Wolff the people at the top of corporations do not choose what they produce. The customer drives their decision. If they don't meet the customer needs they will fail. The free market decides what will sell. The workers get paid to produce what the decision makers believe the customer wants .
Because they actually worked for their wealth. The socialist's on the panel just want to take what they have not earned. I will make it simple for all you socialism lovers. It's not your money. Period.
this 'debate' is a joke. Basically six vs one (because the female socialist wasn't a very effective speaker) six people talking over the one person on this stage that actually knows anything about socialism.
Since that would not affect any structural change, I fail to see how it's a true socialist move. If anything, thinking it's acts of charity that are going to fix a broken economy is entirely capitalist.
do the students have any experience in the working world? Has their brain fully matured? The answer is no. They have opinions like the Mainstream new media
These student should make Jeff Bezos pay for the scholarships of the less fortunate. Profit means paying the worker one price for doing something and selling it back to someone else(possibly back to the worker even) for a much higher price. Profit is the fancy term for 'theft in broad daylight'. The top 1% should get a 90% taxation rate on their revenue from property which does not even come from any labour. That would be more than enough to pay for the scholarships of the less fortunate. Americans have been sold a lie that Capitalism benefits them. "We did not fight a war to end slavery to enslave ourselves to Capital!" - Abraham Lincoln, 1867.
No, she did not, she clarified it (though she could have done a better job): Socialism is not about taxes or welfare programs - it is about giving power and ownership to the workers/people - and the battle to end employment/workplace exploitation/modern serfdom. It is not about paying for anything - he didn't even list what specific liberal or social democratic program he was talking about (liberalism is a pro-capitalist right wing ideology), he just made an absurd and false assumption. Her response directly addressed what they want to do, and how they want to achieve it. If you want to know how to pay for liberal and social democratic proposals, all the numbers have already been covered. You can see a summary of many of the options done by David Pakman here: ua-cam.com/video/Rd-MP6pXzuc/v-deo.html But again, this has nothing to do with socialism. If you want to look at actual socialist proposals look at UK, where Labour is proposing to dilute 10% of the shares to the workers - again, doesn't cost anything. There are of course socialist proposals to actually start/take-over industries, but these are investments with returns and end up making money.
@@Kraisedion "it is about giving power and ownership to the workers/people - and the battle to end employment/workplace exploitation/modern serfdom." Therein lies the crux of the argument. In "giving power and ownership" you must first take it from someone who has earned or built it by force. Who is exploiting anyone? I work for a wage, just as others work for a wage. I have a skill to offer, and I am compensated. Socialism is a complete failure, it will always be a complete failure. It has to rely on outside income to keep it afloat, but only for a while until you run out of other people's money, then it will end up like Venezuela, Russia, North Korea. What I always find so amusing is that every time a socialist state fails, and they all do, they blame it on something or someone else.
@@TheGuy030770 But "they" have not earned it. That is the issue. We are ensuring that we have an economic system where those who actually have produced the value, get the benefits of the value they create. Due to private property rights capitalist own the value their workers produce, and earn profits based on their surplus labor value. You as an employee may double your output, and double the value you produce for the company, but you will not have a right to a cent more. This is because you are in employment, you have sold/leased yourself to your owner for the hours of which you work, and you signed away all rights to the value which you produce. Instead of trading/selling the product of your labor you are trading/selling yourself, and your compensation is,as you say, their workers a wage (or salary), instead of actual ownership/compensation for the labor you perform. When you perform better, your owner gets more money in your pocket - not you. This is what we refer to as exploitation - the taking of workers surplus labor value - and this function is basic to all of capitalism. This exploitation, i.e. running businesses for the private profit of individual owners, is the defining mark of the economic system we are living in. We want to end employment and by extension private property, just as slavery and serfdom was ended. This does not need to be any more forceful than the current system, which allows capitalists to legally own our labor, is. We are simply talking about changing the nature of property rights so that you can no longer employ people. (Many also argue that we should not directly ban employment, but incentivize co-ops and expand collective ownership, and through this give people the option to choose - Richard Wolff is one of them) This means that you, as someone who wants to expand your personally owned company need to bring is partners or associates instead of employees. This is a "small" change - but it means that no one has the legal right to exploit anyone else. Contracts may still be unfair, but at least exploitation is not directly grounded and enforced by private property laws. (I think this is enough for this reply, but multiple large and small Co-operatives, as well as methods for collective value creation, such as the 1 trillion USD oil fund Norway has through collectively owning the extraction of oil, are major successes. There has also never been a country that transitioned to a socialist system by the definition that companies are owned and controlled by the workers, the consumers or the public as a whole - that includes the USSR, which was a misguided and doomed to fail attempt to reach this stage through state ownership and control).
I think Titus got close on this. First of all, capitalist systems are fundamentally about bringing in different and new ideas. The best ideas are those that end up sticking around. We must always be willing to hear a different idea, even if only to reject it. Secondly, I would welcome any conversation in this arena. I would respond to every one of people using these terms “restructualizing businesses” or “redistributing profit”. It all sounds very good, and many others support them for it. But then ask the question, “how do you do that?” How do you walk up to a BUSINESS OWNER and tell them how they have to run THEIR business? Use the the word that make people less comfortable. How would you FORCE someone to to business? Faced with questions like this, socialist supporters can dance around the issue as much as they want. In the end they have to admit that their ways involve stripping someone of their rights and/or property. Please, please let people keep talking about this. Ignorance is not solved by shutting down discussion. It is eradicated by opening the eyes of those who don’t yet know they are blind.
@@jeffreyallen3123 yeah but the idea is that it's absurd to even talk about this crap because it's an open and shut case that socialism is so bad everywhere. It's so disgusting that we see right before our eyes how socialism is played out and how really miserable everyone is in socialism and yet here in the United States where the situation actually is pretty awesome right now and we're actually discussing socialism might be better . I mean . . . uhhhhh , this is so crazy
Mike Karoules I totally agree that it is insane. But it is only insane to people like us who are looking at the info. We look at the info BECAUSE WE TALKED ABOUT IT. Most people who support a socialist ideology have not really looked at the damage it causes. It is irritating. But I would much rather give the same lesson over and over rather than risk the ignorance running too rampant, which would run the risk of the USA actually being voted into a socialist country. I’m just saying, the fight is just, so always be willing to have it.
I have worked in business and in government. The best system is where government is small and accountable and where business is prosperous and accountable.
one of the main reasons that children go hungry is that women (and the fathers) are having too many children BEFORE they are ready to take care of them....
So if they don’t appreciate what capital list and kind hearted people try to do for them now? What makes you think that they will appreciate it if it’s just handed to them? Some people just have no concept of reality kills me
@@Jstoney127 Exactly! And what's incredible is when you look at the history, the peasants also defended that system, even though now we know they were getting screwed. Same thing today. Broke working class people worshiping the billionaires, defending a CEO giving himself a 40million bonus while laying off 3,000 people...A real case btw
@@NavianWilliamson I hope the West does integrate socialism, just to see the faces of all of the leftist idiots when the penny drops. The world definitely needs to reform and introduce new policies but i don't think adopting centuries past ideas is the way forward.
@@williambryon6671 that means we have capitalism but we also have social programs as well such as the Postal Service Social Security Medicare police departments fire departments. This means our economy is mixed between social programs that are provided by the general population through taxes and the private sector which provides Goods such as t-shirts and cheeseburgers
I am in a union. I'm a journeyman in the UA plumbers and pipefitters union. At our meetings we don't talk about what she us talking about. We talk about ways that we can provide more value to our signatory contractors. We discuss how WE can handle our funds and invest them in the free market how we see fit and we benefit. We are not an enemy of the companies that hire us. We are an asset, we are an ally, when a contractor hires union labor for a large commercial job they make more money not less. We are interested in making those who employ us very rich and we are coming with them.
“How are you socialists going to pay for it?” “We should not be talking about paying for our massively expensive aims, we SHOULD be talking about the people we aim to help.” “Don’t change the subject!” “Reeeeeeeeeeee!!!” Socialist groupies: “clap clap clap clap!!!”
On a planet with a vast abundance of resources and money there is never any problem with "paying for it" as you put it. The problem is never a lack of resources or money. The problem is a very small number of people owning, controlling and hoarding most of the world's resources. If medium sized and big corporations were willing to pay a decent living wage to their employees then a vast number of people would no longer have financial problems. And if the rich were to pay a proper tax rate and the government were to use that money honestly and responsibly then poverty could be almost entirely eliminated. The problem with humanity isn't the lack of resources and money. It is the lack of willingness to simply share. There is more than enough for everyone.
@@brianlittrell797 There are lots of resources but entitled people who want a share of resources without working deserve to be hungry on the streets. Don't take from the working and give to the people that don't feel like working.
@@BobFrostV That's a very unenlightened attitude to take and the opposite of the consciousness of love. Every person deserves to have the basics of life provided to them free and unconditionally. I consider the basics of life to be food, shelter, clothing, high quality education and healthcare. It doesn't cost much to provide those 5 things to everyone. That's because there is a vast abundance of resources on the planet. Most people are happy to work if they are going to be paid a decent salary. Most people are not paid a decent salary and have to work very hard. In fact what usually happens is that the less they are paid, the harder they have to work. They work hard their entire lives and are still poor. If everyone were willing to share the resources of the planet then we would have no poor people and everyone would be rich. Instead what is happening is that you have a very small number of people who own, control and are hoarding most of the wealth in the world. That is why you have so many poor people who also work hard. The fact that you think that it is ok for people to be hungry and on the streets indicates that you have a closed heart. You lack love and compassion. That's very sad. Nobody deserves to be hungry or homeless, even those few persons who don't want to work.
@@brianlittrell797 The problem is not that there is not an abundance of resources, its a problem of how to get those resources to where they are needed in the most efficient way. That is the bottleneck we are talking about, when technology gets to the point of instant transporters al la Star Trek, then socialism will have a point about their being an abundance of resources, but until then you are not dealing with the actual problem. Also, the rich can never pay enough for it to be a proper tax rate, what ever that is supposed to mean. And the government also can't use money honestly and efficiently, just the fact that a bureaucracy is needed makes it inefficient & dishonest and that is IF they are not corrupt. Taxes can never be honest when they are dishonestly taken in the first place. You may want to look up what the basics entail. Life, liberty & the pursuit of happiness (being happy is not guaranteed) are the only rights, and that life starts at conception. Your rights stop when they attempt to overturn other peoples rights. Food, shelter, clothing, education & healthcare are all privileges, and charity would be abundant if welfare was not forced on people.
They say that people are poor and people are struggling, but nobody ever asks how many people were poor before capitalism or in socialist countries? Have a bit of perspective. Before capitalism, 99% of everyone was poor and struggling. The number of people poor in struggling is lower than it has ever been.
true subsistence farming was what people were too busy doing, totally off grid and not by choice..Government like criminals will leave you alone if you have nothing of value. A craftsman could make a good living and still can, but craftsmen are a dying breed..
Don't pull numbers out of your arse. If you compare to for example socialist east Germany, the majority of people in the USA would think about it as paradise compared to what they have. There was no homelessness, no hunger, no drug problems, nobody had to work hard, everyone had high quality health care, equal women rights were a reality.
@@llothar68 I think you have your timeline mixed up, if you're comparing east Germany since east Germany was around post-capitalism anyway. When do you think capitalism was adopted? Look at the per capita income and GDP numbers for the last 10,000 years. It's flat until the mid 1700's, wonder what happened during that time period... And speaking of east Germany, why did they build a wall to keep people from fleeing?
@@ryaugn You mean industrialization. Before we had feudalism. Nobody talks about capitalism before industrialisation. Why did they build the wall? To keep the CIA out after the 1953 regime change attempt. It was constructed 1961 at begin of the serious phase of the cold war. It was not to keep the workforce in at that time.
@@llothar68 Perhaps we are having trouble defining our terms here. Capitalism as in the private ownership of property, the private ownership of one's own production, and the ability to freely contract with others. This existed pre-industrialization by about 100 years. One allowed the conditions for the other. There's never been comparable wealth creation or industrialization without capitalism. And your point about the wall is refuted by the fact that individuals were never allowed to leave. People risked punishment to sneak out, and they celebrated in the streets the day the wall came down. We have it on video.
Very skewed toward the 1% & they totally don't understand Macroeconomics! Alan Nassar has written a book, "OVER RIPE ECONOMY", a historical account of Capitalism in the USA, it is not static, it evolves, depending on what we do w/ it & we have gone from Productive Capitalism, which pulled us out of the Great Depression & thru WW2 to today, which is called Financialized Capitalism,, & it has created another Gilded Age & the Crash that followed it! #LearnMMT! #EndAusterity
It seems like the argument should be how the balance between capitalism and socialism should be. They keep saying socialism is evil, it's destructive but even the pro socialism side is not advocating for communism. I think both sides believe there is a role for government that the private sector cannot handle or handle well. Instead, maybe each side can argue what they think should be capitalistic and what portions should be socialistic. Ask Stuart Varney whether he thinks police, fire, education, public roads, social security should all be privatized. Ask Richard Wolff if he wants government to take control of Amazon, Facebook, and corporations. See how far each side is willling to go. Herman Cain's repeitition of Socialism is evil, socialism is evil contributes nothing to the discussion.
The debate is at such a low low level. What you would expect from FOX. Cain is so stupid he thinks his story about himself is an adequate response to serious serious problems associated with capitalism. The only way the capitalist dudes can respond to questions about the inadequacy of capitalism is to become hysterical like a teenage a school girl.
This professor is one sick puppy. Totally deranged and angry, making personal insults every time he gets a question.. Also what's up with the eyes of some of the people in the background? Did they just bring people in off the streets?
What's up with your unsubstantive and unwarranted tribal observations? I saw no insults thrown here, aside from the insult to my intelligence (yes yes I have none hahah) that comes every time I hear Varney or Cain speak.
@@travisrowe7697 We are all watching with a biased mind. We have all grown up in a capitalist system where the mention of any socialist idea (good or bad) is immediately shot down with the communism card. If it's so bad then why is it so difficult to discuss youd think.
PlanetEarthFTW A limited Republic based upon rule of law instead of rule of people. The 51% can violate the rights of the 49% in a pure democracy. The founders didn’t want a democracy as they feared mob rule.
How do we pay for it? How do we pay for the forever wars? How do we pay for regime change? The purse is never empty when it comes to the Military industrial complex.
I always find it funny when lefties rightfully point out that it's wrong to overfill the military / defense pot because of all the negativity / unintended consequences of war, and yet they think that if they divert the same funds to poor people, that the same government that supports forever wars will totally use the funds to help the poor. Truth is, they'll divert most of the money to themselves via insane taxes on the middle class, and put the rest into useless programs that simply give handouts, instead of actually teaching the impoverished to start making, saving, and investing their money. if you honestly think big brother is benevolent with any money, you've been duped. It's all about stealing.
@@big_doinks3038 if you honestly think people are poor because they don't know how to make money you're an idiot. You can work a full time job and be poor.
@@big_doinks3038 um, im not sure if you're aware but a big platform of democratic socialism is free or drastically reduced cost of higher education. People WANT to improve themselves, they WANT to become more productive, talented, intelligent individuals. The problem is that those individuals are incurring a lifetime of debt to enter a market that pays them a fraction of what their education and work has earned them. I wonder if you have student loan payments and had to debate whether or not you'd see a doctor, pay your electric/rent or buy groceries for the month.
Big_Doinks our government is efficient in only one manner... carrying that big stick like Truman said. Every other facet is sheer inefficiency. The NSA and CIA avert catastrophes that no one here can even imagine, myself definitely included and I am glad to have them. As for free crap for lazy slacker leftists... go to work and stop complaining.
@@Ciph3rzer0 Yea and you can win the lotto and be poor in 2 months, people who dont know how to manage their financese are always going to be poor, I have coworkers who have household incomes more then twice mine and still live paycheck to paychek, while i get to put away about 1k a month
They never really argued the correct issues. 1. Socialism is inefficient. Because of the high taxation, price controls, and central planning socialist industries never produce ENOUGH to meet the needs of its consumers, in other words SHORTAGES. 2. Socialist labor policies are inefficient. The amount of labor is determined by govt not the amount needed for the manufacturing process, resulting in too many employees and wasting labor. Since all of the employees are paid the same, and cannot be fired, many employees will not work efficiently let alone work at all, creating even more wasted labor. If you want an example, US industries, run by capitalists focused on efficiency per cost, out produced every other nation for war materials during WW2.
7:58 classic socialist, the question can never just be answered without bringing up another question they can answer. Doesn’t that just portray how useless and unsimple socialism is, you can answer a simple question, it’s genuinely irritating
For the past 40 years China remained a socialist for core industries but allow individuals to adapt to market economy, which was capitalism with a different name - private units. Chinese government encouraged the private units to compete with state owned "units" and even forced private company to merge with state owned units during downturn of the market/industry, and let them reborn back to separate private and state owned units when demand picked up. It is a highly dynamic, ( both private and state owned units in obsolete industries would be allow to fail and out of business), adaptive and evolving system which the leaders call "Socialism with a Chinese Charistic". Does it work for China? Yes so far so good, and only time would tell what would happen next.
I dont' want to think how a company might be structured in a "socialist" company. Are you going to consult the entire workforce to figure out where to build your new building? Are you going to ask the janitor who you should hire to run your finances? heeeeeeeeeelllllz no.
Marxian economics (Economic Theory) and Marxism (Social Theory) are two very different things, though of course closely connected, often conflated and both originating with Karl Marx. There is also Marxist Philosophy, Marxist Critical Theory, etc. Marxian Economics is a critique of the contradictions within capitalism, and predictive economic models and projections based on this. (It among other things was used to discover and explain the Boom and Bust cycle) Marxism is a field within Sociology analyzing class relations and developments with a basis in "Historical Materialism", they also create sociological theories and predictive models, but they are interested in socio-economic developments on a macro-level.
So let me get this right. I take the risk and build a business from the ground up. I work late, risk my capital, risk everything I have. I make good decisions on what to build, how much to build, where to build, and when to build. I hire employees as my demand for production increases. Now I'm supposed to let my employees, whose only risk was to work for me, tell me how to run my company?
You ignore the employees risk, they are reliant on your decisions to run a successful company. When you fail rather than that failure directly hitting you, you will cut pay, cut benefits, and cut workers from the payroll. So the entire time you're making decisions to underpay your employees, in the event they get laid off they can't afford not to work because of the poor pay, because of you deciding I get 99% of the wealth, I'll pay my employees what's left. I get bonuses while my employees get min wage. You take on all the risk as you say but often the employee ends up without a house, car, food on the table long before the employer does, all because the employer didn't properly manage their risks as you say. When your business fails you still get to keep your house, car and food on your table, when the employees boss fails, he loses health insurance coverage, he doesn't have a lot of money to deal with the transition period to switch from this job to another one. Many employers also require non compete clauses, which means they cannot just go down the street and take a better offer from a competing company.
Well.. after making bad decisions and the company they work for fails, they will all end up homeless and they'll all vote for the smart person to lead and he'll get his above average pay. Back to normal. Oh wait!? The problem is that the entitled people that don't feel like putting in effort THINK they are the smartest person in the room. They think they deserve the high pay their bosses are getting.
Why would one department be making all the decisions? They would however likely know far more about the welding side of the business than any/most shareholders would. I think there has been some kind of misunderstanding here. The only distinction between a major worker owned co-operative corporation/company and a capitalist corporation/company is that the workers vote in the board of directors instead of the share-holders. The CEO, CFO, CPO, CTO, etc. are then hired on the very same basis of skill and talent. However - the people on top are actually democratically accountably, as opposed to being accountable to shareholders.
@@Kraisedion Anyways, the whole problem here is suggesting that the government should step in and take away from the current owners and give to those that don't own. I've started my own company and do all work myself. When all my bases covered completely I'll hire staff who I'll train myself. It should be reasonable for obvious reasons when I do not want anyone but me in control of the decision making. It would be out of the question for the government to step in and let my employees make decisions that I choose to be solely responsible for. The employees didn't have to risk 3 years of strenuous savings and also give up on making any money at all for 6 months while living expenses destroyed the little savings left. They didn't have to sell ALL of their stocks from years of saving and retirement planning just to pay living expenses during the start-up. They didn't put in the efforts to find equipment used at auctions for great prices and go through the difficulty of renting a place to stage the equipment. They didn't transport and repair the used equipment while on a shoe string budget. They didn't bid the first work and have to coerce the customer that requires umbrella insurance that you're a start up and will have insurance in time for the work. They weren't there when materials had to be purchased and picked up from a distant supplier to save a little extra money. They weren't there to take responsibility for chasing down the first customers to get payments which were late and very needed because bills were going to sink the company and everything was on the verge of being lost. These people that want the rewards without putting in the thinking, risk, and effort themselves deserve a punch in the face. The redistribution of other's success to those that are envious is on par with the most disgusting of crimes.
@@BobFrostV What you are saying here is partially fair, but only partially. It is absolutely true that, if you succeed, you should be compensated for all your hard labor and risk. You are actually a worker, you are actively producing value you should be rewarded for. However, the fact that you are working incredibly hard should not give you the right to leech off the labor of others later. The workers you bring in will also start producing value, at one point you may hire a CEO which doubles or triples your revenue, you may have workers who come up with great innovative ideas that brings the business forward - and most important of all, the workers will be actively producing value, just as you are now - though at decreased risk. And, as a final important note, the fact that you started something possibly incredible should not allow you to lease the time of other humans and control them without them having a single say. Quite a few countries already have co-determination, i.e. workers on the board of directors - Germany has 50% worker representation for instance. You can not actually expand without bringing in more workers - you need them - otherwise you could merely keep your business and live off your labor alone. You choose to involve them. This is not forced. You want to get additional income from workers producing additional value for you, i.e. what we call exploitation. And no matter how hard you labored, I just have to disagree that this should be your right. Imagine for a second that you had to bring in investors to expand instead of workers - you would naturally give them a share in the company, and a say, they'd expect it and so would you. And this ties in with redistributing success - because what you, in the future wish to do, is to redistribute the success of your workers and give it to yourself. In a Socialist system (co-operative economy) you could instead of entering these people as employees, or as, in co-operatives, partners, and instead bring them in as associates so that you still own the core of the business, and earn an additional revenue based on the value you provide for your associates. This is not too different from what you wish to do, but without you legally owning the labor or success of your fellow workers.
I do not understand why the defenders of Capitalism do not talk about incentives more. At a base human level - people respond to incentives. Capitalism gives incentive to run business well. Socialism gives business to gov where the incentive is to do nothing and coast in their cushy position and run the business into the ground. Why work hard when it will never get you ahead? Why work at all if the gov will take care of you? Core human nature is why socialism (in whatever form) will never work.
Why not make employees stock holders that way they have skin in the game as weel as the owners who put up the capital to start the business ( even if it was from a loan which they have to pay back)
Yet those people who are workers don't worry about any of the investment to start the company and lose no money if it goes to hell. So they share in all the benefits and none of the risk.
Mr Wolf knows what he is talking about. Remember economics student. Economic 101 in textbook is just a basic, fundamental for u to learn how economies works in theories. If u look at the reality, no ctry which follows the economic concepts has worked. There are other factors beside economics that affects the ctry performance. Even if economics in textbook is so different from reality, students still have to learn them because who control the world order? If u have economics concept that differentiate from theirs, can u still get your degree?
My questions to these kids Do you like your computer and your phone!? Capitalism Why is there so much income inequality in china and why are there so many poor chinese people? Socialism
Chinese economic is growing faster than 🇺🇸 even in this time of COVID-19 their economic growth will be 6 % all this because China government + western countries helping moving their production to China . Pepsi cola is selling more Pepsi in China than in the 🇺🇸,GM selling more 🚙 there than in 🇺🇸 and the list goes on. The Chinese economy even with his income equality is the only economy can challenge the 🇺🇸 economy with our income inequality getting bigger every day. If I am not mistaken the city of Zhongguancun in China has more millionaires than New York City. We are a capitalist economy but if we don’t change it to improve ourselves we’re going to be behind.
"So how you gonna pay for it" What she should have said: By ending the 6 Trillion dollar wars in the middle east that have yet to solve anything and have only grown the so called "War on Terror".
I have a business that I’ve built for 20 years. I have everything invested in. If this lady’s policies were enacted and the power and money was given to the workers I would simply close the business. What is my incentive to work all the extra hours, stay up at night worrying when it gets slow and all the other things that brings these huge amounts of stress upon me. Why the hell would I as a business owner do that if there is no reward. I wouldn’t, I would become a worker. Thats the problem with this woman and this horrible professors thinking. It’s the same with innovation, why the hell would people spend there money and time coming up with new technologies, medications etc... trying to obtain wealth if people like these 2 morons would just come in and take it. These are the most basic fundamental questions. Hopefully in this town-hall at some point someone hits hard on these points.
Two big questions that should be answered in this debate: 1. How exactly do we, individually and as a society of individuals, want to exist while we do exist? 2. How exactly do we, individually and as a society of individuals, want to help take care of the young, old, ill and needy, if even at all?
In the United States, we are individuals. We live and take care of the young and the old by way of our personal choices not some dictator you want to appoint.
Steve Mann so if unions killed Detroit, how come nyc is doing so well? Obviously, it couldn’t be the CEO’s took the cheap way out for “survival ability “. Yet they were able to scrape together 8 figure bonus packages for themselves. Phew, I was so worried about them
@@lyleknight9012 tourism? Losing the amazon contract wasn't good for people looking for work. Time will tell he NYC remains profitable. Venezuela was the Fourth richest country in the world and now people are so poor they have started eating the zoo animals and if they complain they get run over by tanks. Just because your rich doesn't mean you won't be poor tomorrow.
And that's why the workers should have co-determination and right to first refusal (or just direct ownership). If the workers have the power, this can't occur.
I love how rich and out of touch individuals explain how the poor are not really poor
Equal opportunity is maximized. Equal results will never be a thing. When people choose to not work regardless of the reason then what else will happen than for them to have no money? Why should people who choose to work have to pay for those that choose to not work?
@@BobFrostV Exactly, but me, a social democrat, advocates for more pay to those essential to society. (Like teachers, construction workers etc.)
@@BobFrostV you are illlustrating exactly OP's point, given that the issue these days is largely "many dilligent people who choose to work multipleof the best jobs available for >40h/week still have no realistic hope of making their everyday bills"
The Rich are smart enough to know they have to pretend and deny reality to keep their low tax rates
This audience doesn't deserve Richard Wolff. He's dropping gems here.
They don't deserve him, because most listening to Fox News are not dimwits.
@@Oneironaut9 Everyone on Fox News are dimwits.
I don't know how Professor Wolff didn't scream dealing with these people 😂
same
Because Wolff is greedy and needs to be called back onto FOX.
First questioner: “Do you think we can do Mad Max?”
That was to happen in the year 2021. Google it.
9:45 Fox pundit : "You insulted me, that's twice! :o" Richard : "there's more coming". The badassery of this man is understated.
Yeah, I totally caught that 😂
I cracked up when home boy's argument for keeping our inferior social systems (compared to leftish leaning countries) was: "The U.K. sucked in the 70s."
UK did suck in the 70's. Margeret Thatcher turned things around with conservative policies. Capitalism is not the problem. Government is.
When the bottom 1/5th of wage earners had their incomes rise the fastest out of all the income groups after the 2017 tax cuts. That was the first time that had happened since the George W Bush administration.
Because both W. and Donald Trump used John F. Kennedy theories of using lower taxes, less immigration, and deregulation to tighten up the labor market. Which raises wages, allows mobility, allows for advancement, and gives people dignity.
Compare that to the liberal policies of using high taxes, open immigration, and over regulation to put permanent slack into the labor market. Which lowers wages and drives up housing prices at the same time to the point tens of millions of people don't have any money left at the end of the month.
AND IT'S THE LOWER WAGES AT THE BOTTOM THAT ALLOWS THE EXCESSES AT THE TOP. CAUSING THE WEALTH GAP.
Bernie is for the billionaires. I know that's tough to hear for Bernie fans. You are being told the truth to free you from a prison you do not even know you are in.
Varney gave up after getting his views challenged for a few minutes. What a coward.
Phantom Blot What’s the point when others are such rigid ideologues that they refuse to listen ?
"If men were angels, no government would be necessary" James Madison The Federalist # 51
"A government big enough to give you everything you want, is a government big enough to take away everything that you have."
-Thomas Jefferson
@@LouPalumbo
🤗🤗🤗🤗
Nice quote. So we're not anels: That means since cave man, groups united. They elected the Chief, The Witch Dr, and the man closest to the Great Spirit~ That founds a tribe with a Government don't it! :o) That was simple and that was the beginning of Governments all over the tribal world
@@enidesylvestre3168 he is wrong! Look things up for yourself or you will prove your a ignoramus to everyone!
@@LouPalumbo Goldwater said it, but it was said earlier ....by Paul Harvey‘s 1952 book Remember These Things. ( still a L O N G way from Thomas Jefferson ;)
Wow, not much substance went to explaining the issues in this discussion... Most of the time they are describing communism, which is state owned....Socialism is people owned.... Unions are socialism, Social Security pension is a social program......Work cooperatives , financial cooperates are socialism....
Chomsky said it best..... Stalin described his state as socialist to soften his tyranny, and America agreed that communism was socialism... Hence the propaganda painted by the same brush....It was not..Russia was communist state owned ..And became corrupt communism with a corrupt dictator....This is not socialism
Society has been run by Neoliberalism for past 40 plus years with a world wide slave labour pool that drove all wages to slave wages......
Neoliberalism attacks Venezuela, and Latin America to steal their peoples resources.....Not much of this came out of the discussion
Communism and socialism are used interchangeably in Marxist definitions. Stalin was the natural evolution of Marxism-Leninism, which actually eschewed basic socialist principles. It set itself up as a socialist democracy on paper, but in practice the party was ONLY interested in holding state power at any cost. They became illegitimate the second they started dissolving workers councils, which were independent of the party and the state. For a very brief moment, the USSR was socialist with actual democracy in the workplace. Lenin's democratic centralism also dissolved a short time after they dissolved the workers councils. They also took away democracy in the armed forces. Such measures, they would claim, were necessary. Nearly every concession they won in the revolution was rolled back almost immediately. Lenin launched his New Economic Policy, the democracy both within and without the party eroded, and could not be reversed.
Nationalizing your economy doesn't automatically translate to Communism, what matters is how that economy is run, who has the say so in production, and who benefits from it. Planned economies are in some ways better than regular capitalist ones, but i personally advocate for decentralized planned economy, with democratic worker control over the means of production and industry, as well as a political system of council communism which was used by the German socialists in 1918-19. Democratic centralism could work. Lenin went against his own idea when he granted those concessions to the old elites and foreign capitalist powers, but that doesn't mean it was a bad idea, he just was a bad practitioner.
Marx didn’t use Communism and Socialism interchangeably. I appreciate this dialogue specifically. We need to spend a great deal of time examining our use of all these abstractions (capitalism, socialism, communism, etc.) We also need to take a closer look the rhetoric of socialism as failed social experiments, as if the attempts have happened in a vacuum. All of these thoughts and examples are used way too haphazardly. We need to know what things mean, and we need to better understand history.
"Unions are socialism"
Yet, all major unions countless corrupt union bosses & mob ties. They also did wonders for keeping manufacturing jobs in America"
"Social Security is a social program"
Which is insolvent & the government holding your money.
"Work cooperatives , financial cooperates are socialism...."
No, they are free market capitalism.
"Socialism is people owned"
No, that's capitalism.
State owned = people owned vice versa.. Jeeeez.
@@racetoria3069 state owned is not necessarily people owned....Our Democracy with peoples representatives has been corrupted to an oligarchy, because of the dark money in political campaigns.....An example of this, is the Koch's want Venezuelan oil...So we have U.S. imperialism in Venezuela.....Another example is gun control...91 percent polling from people want it...... Yet corporatists gun manufacturers. keep the politicians in check......
Capitalist:"Eventually you run out of money, hehe gommunism destroyed"
**Looks at corporate debt**
*Looks at Venezuela, USSR, Mao's China, DPRK, Cuba*
Capitalism looks pretty good, Scandinavian countries are Capitalist as well
@@elmo2800 imagine thinking Venezuela, USSR, China, and DPRK are socialist countries.
Socialism focuses on the worker
Venezuela: State Capitalism supported by oil
USSR: abolished worker soviets in 1918
China: absorbed unions into the state creating "Federation of Trade Unions" effectively taking power from the workers and giving it to the state. This act created a new higher class backed by state violence
DPRK: a combination of the USSR and China
Key to socialism is the question "WHO is seizing the means of production?":
1) If the WORKERS are seizing or have seized and maintained control over the means of production and only then is it socialism.
2) If the STATE seizes the means of production it could be a many different systems. It could be state capitalism ex: USSR( as described by Lenin) and CCP China( after Deng Xiaping's reforms). It could be fascism ex: Fascist Germany, and Fascist Italy.
Don't get tripped up on what a country calls itself. All these countries called themselves socialist, and democracies. If their existence is a strike against socialism it must also be a strike against democracy by that logic.
Them: "It's on your generation to pay for that"
Me: laughs in 21 trillion dollars in debt
That his generation spent 😂
@@michaelmfwayne exactly lol
"how are you gonna pay for it?" *wildly gestures to near-trillion dollars wasted on military budget that grows every year*
Exactly. They could stop meddling with the affairs of other countries, and lessen the military budget and reroute those expenses to education, health, housing programs, and even job creation.
Everytime Bianca speaks, she never gives facts - everything's feelings.
Franklin Parker, emotions are strong as hell sir.
vernon knapp Don’t confuse her with the facts, they just get in the way. She’s clueless...
@@ericsimonson8540 Understood sir!
The only person with a non-emotional argument here is Richard Wolff, the pro-capitalists only give personal experience as examples just like bianca does.
Yep, shes a smooth operator.
Wow so many inaccuracies right through this debate
1. China isn't a Socialist nation. Their rapid Economic growth comes from the deregulation of their economy and embracing free market principles. The same free market principles have lifted half a billion people out of poverty while Socialist policies ran that country into the ground.
2. Scandinavian countries aren't Socialist. Denmark and Sweden are more free market and unregulated than the US is at present.
3. The fact that Nordic countries aren't innovative is simply false. A lot of them rank higher than the United States in global innovation.
4. Scandinavian countries are highly privatized and everything works well there.
Tucker Carlson should've been on the panel
He is in fact very anti-socialist.
Ben Shapiro would have destroyed all of them.
Both Tucker and Ben would’ve taught everyone a few things. While those two disagree on a few things, or have different perspectives/opinions; they’re both brilliant and correct
Fans of socialism are those that are afraid to work.
Also, why do people say Denmark and Sweden, for example, are socialist countries? They’re not at all. They have socialist programs but their governments are not socialistic
@@Mike-cw5rb social democracy is still hell for middle class
Capitalist: there’s flaws in the system, we accept that.
Socialist: socialism is perfect!
Yup, that's what they say... :/
@Antaris Alduin why do you guys debate in comment sections literately the worst place to debate smh
Greg, nothing is perfect. Nothing will ever be perfect because everyone n everything is flawed in some way, shape or form.
Its a trick to lose focus.
Capitalism isn’t magic. It isn’t the answer to every question, but it’s a good start.
It’s like making a home. If I was to ask, what makes a better home, brick or cloth? And when you answered brick, I started to say “So you think the seats should be made of brick!” and stuff like that, you would think I was insane.
Capitalism is a good base to build an economy, but you need to pepper it with touches of socialism here and there to make it more human. Such as social programs funded by taxation. But it needs to remain light, or the system fails. You can’t take too much from the rich to give to the poor, or you lose the reason to invest the effort in not being the poor.
Perfect capitalism is a stupid idea, much like an all brick home.
Or put another way, perfect capitalism has a little bit of socialism mixed in for flavour.
In the USA all we need do is try hard and things work out for all of us.
@@mabrown666 Well put. The U.S. is not 100% capitalistic. Most agree that some people need help from others. But generally speaking, capitalism is the best system for doing that. In order to give, you must have something to give.
When the student asked about what if we had pure capitalism what would it look like he must not have read his history textbook. I swear do we really have to bring up the
triangle shirtwaist fires, child labor, harmful work conditions, no overtime payment, no union rights, and the list can go further. Our laws and change in business culture
has made capitalism what it is today because the government and society heavily regulated business but we didn't stop capitalism just tamed it.
Herman Cain should start booking himself into comedy clubs. Every sentence he utters makes me laugh uncontrollably. He's like an archaic windup doll. Hysterically funny standup routine!
IM STILL TRYING TO FIGUE OUT WHY IS THIS EVEN A DEBATE ? YOU EARNING YOUR OWN WAY VS THE GOV STEALING FROM YOU?
tripodurra exactly!!!!! Like how far gone can you be?! Frankly it’s a battle between the worker bees and the lazy!
it is not so black and white, look into the grey area you will see your answer..
@@belleelleworships1614They want to be equal but they don't want to work for it.
Exactly. One is an economic system based on the freedom. The other is an economic system based on no freedom and an authoritarian one party system because you can never have socialism without it being under a one party no democracy system. Even socialists know that deep down inside that in order to have socialism you have to force it on everyone which means no democracy or competition from other ideas. That's why the natural extension of socialism is always in an anti-democratic state with a one party government system .... Communism. Socialism, if left unchecked by capitalism always leads to communism and no democracy. It's inevitable.
@@ne1cup Sorry Hondo I work hard for a living to see some lazy bastard benefit from my sweat
Like Mr. Wolf said and it's not verbatim- 'Socialism is the instrument to Democratize the Working-Class', thank you Mr. Wolf. That is what is needed to bring us back up to the status of 'Middle-Class'.
It will never happen, you will get what they want you to have and that is all. There is homelessness in China, so the end of the socialist mantra
Socialism is a race to the bottom. The middle class is alive and well and getting stronger everyday, under President Trump.
Danny Timmons You sure about that? Richest family in the country (Walton’s)has more wealth than half the country’s population.
You’re living in a fantasy if you think our economy is doing well.
@@Krooksbane So your a socialist and you drink the Kool-Aid and watch CNN. The Walton's also employ half the country. Where is our economy doing bad?
And yes I'm sure, socialism is a race to the bottom. We could be doing better if we weren't spending 200 billion a year on illegal aliens.
That girl they have on the panel is a joke!
+BelleElle
That girl is our worst nightmare. She is on a mission to rob you and me of the gifts that were bought for us with the blood of many and she just may get her wish if each and every one of us fails to engage immediately because of the sorry assumption that she is just 'a joke'. A wise man never underestimates his enemy.
Titus Robertson I’m telling you! So she didn’t realize that the s would be a more business setting? Such an embarrassment.
Yep...ignorance is bliss.
A new form of capitalism: linkyou.blog/capitalism-2-0/
@@Wisdomabovegold No, I'd say the guy next to her is FAR worse. Because he TEACHES this stuff to impressionable kids. You're always going to have a few nuts like the girl. Socialism is almost natural for people her age. But that guy knows better. He's an old-school Soviet-style socialist who is *TEACHING THESE THINGS TO OUR CHILDREN.*
Caine shouts and interrupts "you're going based on emotion!!" good lord, the irony
Norway and denmark are not sosialist countrys. They are capitalist.
Yea, it's a common misconception - because a couple decades ago, they TRIED socialism (or a least implemented a few socialist policies) and then realized they were Harmful. It really pisses me off when reporters say that, as major politicians in those countries have stated they are not socialist.
They have market economies but also far higher rates of unionization and a robust social safety net. The capitalist-socialist dichotomy is very misleading, every country has elements of both
@@petercastagno4104 Now that's interesting. I thought we had more Unions than anywhere on earth lol.
Often when lefties say "I want america to be Sweden" i agree. I want no mibimum wage laws. I want a private pension system and rail network and i want 1.53% flat capital gains tax
Richard Wolff is the best!!
"Every business is a home of nondemocracy. A terrible small group of people at the top the board of directors, the owner, make all the key decisions: what to produce, how to produce, where to produce and what to do with the work that everyone contributed to, and we shouldn't be surprised when the people at the top give themselves the lion's share."
Are you ****ing kidding me! How do you think any business gets started? The people "at the top" got to the top because they WORKED THEIR a**es off to get there! I work at a small store with 30 total hires. If the manager's had to share all the business decisions with me so I could make a decision, we wouldn't have a business! If I don't like their business, then I quit and badmouth them with my free speech. THEN, they either reform or they go OUT OF BUSINESS!
You can't run a business like a democracy! When everyone's a manager, nobody is.
sure you can. are you totally unaware of the worker co-op model? There are literally thousands of worker co-ops in the united states alone. If you look abroad there are even better examples. The 3rd largest corporation in Spain is a worker co-op, that employs hundreds of thousands of people.
The host should not talk for 3 minutes after the audience had asked a question. Just let the panel answer the question. This host just took up to much time. The panel did not get the chance to answer Donnas question, because of the host talking and changing it.
Get Peter Schiff and Ron Paul on the stage
You are a stupid Ayn Rand liberturdian kind of poor person hahaha
Phippsey3
Hell yeah! They might talk some sense into these idiots.
@@albertgreen8347 you are an idiot and you are poor. Boom 1
Then add Jordan Peterson to end the discussion.
Ron would wipe the floor with any socialist as he has done many times ago...
When he says "none of these systems are perfect because human beings aren't perfect." 👌
we need a mixture of both it's not a one way or the other.
An 80 /20. Split is the best way to look at it. 80 percent being capitalism so not to stifle production, innovation, and growth
The US Government is almost 27 trillion in debt. The Federal Reserve Note has lost 98% of it's purchasing power since 1913, but they want more power for the state.
"The C in capitalism stands for competence, the S in socialism stands for state control"
Is this really the level of debate middle class America is having?
He said COMPETITION, not competence...
@@sh0k0nes haha sorry. Thanks for pointing out my ironic mistake, had a good laugh. xD
@@Janovich No problem
Thank you professor Richard Wolff
So how are you gonna pay for? "Well, I think the real question is"...... oh my this is painful
that caught my attention too. i was like, "what do you mean, the 'real question' is". he just asked you a "real question", you just can't answer it so like the black guy said, "you shifting your argument". weak minded. she think unions are good!! holy smokes......has she worked much?!?!?!
Answer: shut up racist
@@nadrud That's about right
Painful indeed, through unions the workers want to have some control over the company, the production and anything else they think is UNFAIR, well I ask, what workers? because if there is no investment from the wealthy there is no factory and no jobs so NO workers. If I have had the idea, turned that idea into a product and brought that to the market created jobs then those workers WILL do things my way or look for work somewhere else.
@@MikeHarrison3266 Harsh, fair and true.
If I've taken the initial brunt, costing, investing my resources into the 'product', it should be up-to me if I want to give away a larger proportion of finances or stake in the company to another for the most part OR what's anyone's incentive. There's a balance to be achieved yes, but common, don't change the question to something you prefer to answer because you can't answer the original question, this isn't nursery, love. You're playing with lives not penny sweets
"Stock market is at an all time high..." Stop. You're killing me! hahaha! That's what you guys said in 2007! hahaha! Seriously! You've got to start booking this show into Comedy Clubs!
Best comment ever
Full year later, Covid crushed everything but the market is at an all time high ! ⬆️
Capitalism for the Poor, Socialism for the Rich
😂😂😂..Slavery?
Wrong ! Socialism for bums and unproductive
Other way around.
@@coopsnz1 How much did Amazon pay in taxes last year?
that was really a mature thing to say to the world wasn't it???????? Duh
Herman: You are shifting the subject, which is exactly how you keep getting back to these arguments about socialism, you are going at it on emotion, you keep talking about people who don't have food, we can find these situations everywhere.
not all heroes wear capes
Herman Cain-Man
Super power: Working against human beings getting the ability to eat and live decent lives ...
You would be hard-pressed finding people unable to eat in Social Democracies.
9:48 “there’s more coming”😩😂😂
What about the rest of us that don't have torn pants?
@Dave Ktver I think the price inflation is due to the fleeting hope that perhaps old, torn jeans were made in the USA and not in China. We're nostalgic for the good old days and we'll pay a premium for it.
Herman Cain
She's not even mature enough to wear a decent outfit
wow being classist so cool😁👍
Wolff doesnt understand division of labour, if workplaces were a democracy then the workers who know nothing about how to run a business would have just as much say as the people who do, that would be disastrous
We really don't know what we are comparing when we speak of capitalism vs socialism.
Lets define capitalism: Bear in mind is that capitalism is not a system of government.
It is not even a system. Capitalism is the process by which the wealth in a nation is generated.
You gather up some capital, start a business, then profit from the customers. You could say
every nation is capitalist, except for communist countries where the mere idea of wealth
was nonexistent. The government provided everything and each individual has a role.
The American system of government is Democracy. A nation ruled by elected leaders.
Buddy trying to act like some of the tech in iPhones wasn't developed through government funding, and that Apple itself never received any government grants. True capitalism....
I think everyone should have to work retail in the us around christmas and in an iphone child sweat shop for a month like jury duty. Socialism would roll in real quick after that.
Moderator: how are you going to pay for the socialist ideas you purpose.
Socialist: What about the children, people are poor, what about that???
As soon as he asked her that my first though was...gotcha lol...then she trailed off with no answer what so ever😂
We give Trillions to the Military!!!! That's the biggest Welfare.. We should have Medicare for all and Free College...
LOL
ace q How bout no. Pay your own way through college soy boy.
No society in history has been lifted from socialism
Professor Wolff the people at the top of corporations do not choose what they produce. The customer drives their decision. If they don't meet the customer needs they will fail. The free market decides what will sell. The workers get paid to produce what the decision makers believe the customer wants .
Herman Cain accused Bianca of being emotional yet he and the British geezer in part 1 were the most emotional in this town hall
Because they actually worked for their wealth. The socialist's on the panel just want to take what they have not earned. I will make it simple for all you socialism lovers. It's not your money. Period.
@@watchman56ableget real.
We need a government of action, to fight for working families. ☭
Keep doing these, we need people educated
This was useless
this 'debate' is a joke. Basically six vs one (because the female socialist wasn't a very effective speaker) six people talking over the one person on this stage that actually knows anything about socialism.
Exactly, it should have just been Wolffe talking the whole time answering questions.
Watching this, no wonder Fox News viewers don't want to live a better life.
BlueMoon you mean Democrats don’t want you live a better life you like everything handed to you.
Have these students, give up there scholarships to the lest fortunate. True socialist move
Marsh Hawk personal responsibility has be renamed oppression or marginalization.
They aren't willing to give up their scholarships, but you can bet your bottom dollar they will give up any student loans real fast!
Since that would not affect any structural change, I fail to see how it's a true socialist move.
If anything, thinking it's acts of charity that are going to fix a broken economy is entirely capitalist.
do the students have any experience in the working world? Has their brain fully matured? The answer is no. They have opinions like the Mainstream new media
These student should make Jeff Bezos pay for the scholarships of the less fortunate. Profit means paying the worker one price for doing something and selling it back to someone else(possibly back to the worker even) for a much higher price. Profit is the fancy term for 'theft in broad daylight'. The top 1% should get a 90% taxation rate on their revenue from property which does not even come from any labour. That would be more than enough to pay for the scholarships of the less fortunate.
Americans have been sold a lie that Capitalism benefits them.
"We did not fight a war to end slavery to enslave ourselves to Capital!" - Abraham Lincoln, 1867.
She dodged that question. LOL
John De Luna, you expected something different?
vernon knapp Math, OMG
No, she did not, she clarified it (though she could have done a better job):
Socialism is not about taxes or welfare programs - it is about giving power and ownership to the workers/people - and the battle to end employment/workplace exploitation/modern serfdom. It is not about paying for anything - he didn't even list what specific liberal or social democratic program he was talking about (liberalism is a pro-capitalist right wing ideology), he just made an absurd and false assumption.
Her response directly addressed what they want to do, and how they want to achieve it.
If you want to know how to pay for liberal and social democratic proposals, all the numbers have already been covered. You can see a summary of many of the options done by David Pakman here: ua-cam.com/video/Rd-MP6pXzuc/v-deo.html
But again, this has nothing to do with socialism. If you want to look at actual socialist proposals look at UK, where Labour is proposing to dilute 10% of the shares to the workers - again, doesn't cost anything. There are of course socialist proposals to actually start/take-over industries, but these are investments with returns and end up making money.
@@Kraisedion "it is about giving power and ownership to the workers/people - and the battle to end employment/workplace exploitation/modern serfdom." Therein lies the crux of the argument. In "giving power and ownership" you must first take it from someone who has earned or built it by force.
Who is exploiting anyone? I work for a wage, just as others work for a wage. I have a skill to offer, and I am compensated.
Socialism is a complete failure, it will always be a complete failure. It has to rely on outside income to keep it afloat, but only for a while until you run out of other people's money, then it will end up like Venezuela, Russia, North Korea.
What I always find so amusing is that every time a socialist state fails, and they all do, they blame it on something or someone else.
@@TheGuy030770 But "they" have not earned it. That is the issue. We are ensuring that we have an economic system where those who actually have produced the value, get the benefits of the value they create.
Due to private property rights capitalist own the value their workers produce, and earn profits based on their surplus labor value.
You as an employee may double your output, and double the value you produce for the company, but you will not have a right to a cent more.
This is because you are in employment, you have sold/leased yourself to your owner for the hours of which you work, and you signed away all rights to the value which you produce.
Instead of trading/selling the product of your labor you are trading/selling yourself, and your compensation is,as you say, their workers a wage (or salary), instead of actual ownership/compensation for the labor you perform.
When you perform better, your owner gets more money in your pocket - not you.
This is what we refer to as exploitation - the taking of workers surplus labor value - and this function is basic to all of capitalism. This exploitation, i.e. running businesses for the private profit of individual owners, is the defining mark of the economic system we are living in.
We want to end employment and by extension private property, just as slavery and serfdom was ended.
This does not need to be any more forceful than the current system, which allows capitalists to legally own our labor, is. We are simply talking about changing the nature of property rights so that you can no longer employ people.
(Many also argue that we should not directly ban employment, but incentivize co-ops and expand collective ownership, and through this give people the option to choose - Richard Wolff is one of them)
This means that you, as someone who wants to expand your personally owned company need to bring is partners or associates instead of employees.
This is a "small" change - but it means that no one has the legal right to exploit anyone else. Contracts may still be unfair, but at least exploitation is not directly grounded and enforced by private property laws.
(I think this is enough for this reply, but multiple large and small Co-operatives, as well as methods for collective value creation, such as the 1 trillion USD oil fund Norway has through collectively owning the extraction of oil, are major successes. There has also never been a country that transitioned to a socialist system by the definition that companies are owned and controlled by the workers, the consumers or the public as a whole - that includes the USSR, which was a misguided and doomed to fail attempt to reach this stage through state ownership and control).
that dude actually made sense at the end.
Why would Fox have a town hall on this? It lends merit to this even being a debatable issue.
Michael Desmond ratings.
we KNOW if does not work , but we must let them have a voice and ask the questions, I am interested to hear what these naive people are thinking..
I think Titus got close on this. First of all, capitalist systems are fundamentally about bringing in different and new ideas. The best ideas are those that end up sticking around. We must always be willing to hear a different idea, even if only to reject it.
Secondly, I would welcome any conversation in this arena. I would respond to every one of people using these terms “restructualizing businesses” or “redistributing profit”. It all sounds very good, and many others support them for it. But then ask the question, “how do you do that?” How do you walk up to a BUSINESS OWNER and tell them how they have to run THEIR business? Use the the word that make people less comfortable. How would you FORCE someone to to business? Faced with questions like this, socialist supporters can dance around the issue as much as they want. In the end they have to admit that their ways involve stripping someone of their rights and/or property.
Please, please let people keep talking about this. Ignorance is not solved by shutting down discussion. It is eradicated by opening the eyes of those who don’t yet know they are blind.
@@jeffreyallen3123 yeah but the idea is that it's absurd to even talk about this crap because it's an open and shut case that socialism is so bad everywhere. It's so disgusting that we see right before our eyes how socialism is played out and how really miserable everyone is in socialism and yet here in the United States where the situation actually is pretty awesome right now and we're actually discussing socialism might be better . I mean . . . uhhhhh , this is so crazy
Mike Karoules I totally agree that it is insane. But it is only insane to people like us who are looking at the info. We look at the info BECAUSE WE TALKED ABOUT IT. Most people who support a socialist ideology have not really looked at the damage it causes. It is irritating. But I would much rather give the same lesson over and over rather than risk the ignorance running too rampant, which would run the risk of the USA actually being voted into a socialist country. I’m just saying, the fight is just, so always be willing to have it.
I have worked in business and in government. The best system is where government is small and accountable and where business is prosperous and accountable.
one of the main reasons that children go hungry is that women (and the fathers) are having too many children BEFORE they are ready to take care of them....
Well then maybe Republicans shouldn't suppress abortion rights.
@@SilentHobo ... That makes no sense... these women are having children and abortion is legal... They want to have the children...
So if they don’t appreciate what capital list and kind hearted people try to do for them now? What makes you think that they will appreciate it if it’s just handed to them? Some people just have no concept of reality kills me
I bet the Lords and Nobles of old Europe said the same thing about Feudalism and the peasantry.
@@Jstoney127 Exactly! And what's incredible is when you look at the history, the peasants also defended that system, even though now we know they were getting screwed. Same thing today. Broke working class people worshiping the billionaires, defending a CEO giving himself a 40million bonus while laying off 3,000 people...A real case btw
Richard Wolff is teaching your children. Scary thought.
He doesn't teach children lol
Companies do share their profits, its called "youre income". They are even nice enough to continue to provide this "income" when their is no profits.
The Wolff of Wokestreet
William Bryon “Woke” is just a synonym for Socialism.
@@NavianWilliamson I hope the West does integrate socialism, just to see the faces of all of the leftist idiots when the penny drops. The world definitely needs to reform and introduce new policies but i don't think adopting centuries past ideas is the way forward.
@@williambryon6671 you realize we already have a mixed economy right?
@@harrythompson9315 Huh???
@@williambryon6671 that means we have capitalism but we also have social programs as well such as the Postal Service Social Security Medicare police departments fire departments. This means our economy is mixed between social programs that are provided by the general population through taxes and the private sector which provides Goods such as t-shirts and cheeseburgers
no body has the right to take my money and distribute it to others. I work hard for it. YOU go and work.
A blend of state capitalism and socialism is the right way to go.
I am in a union. I'm a journeyman in the UA plumbers and pipefitters union. At our meetings we don't talk about what she us talking about. We talk about ways that we can provide more value to our signatory contractors. We discuss how WE can handle our funds and invest them in the free market how we see fit and we benefit. We are not an enemy of the companies that hire us. We are an asset, we are an ally, when a contractor hires union labor for a large commercial job they make more money not less. We are interested in making those who employ us very rich and we are coming with them.
“How are you socialists going to pay for it?”
“We should not be talking about paying for our massively expensive aims, we SHOULD be talking about the people we aim to help.”
“Don’t change the subject!”
“Reeeeeeeeeeee!!!”
Socialist groupies: “clap clap clap clap!!!”
On a planet with a vast abundance of resources and money there is never any problem with "paying for it" as you put it. The problem is never a lack of resources or money. The problem is a very small number of people owning, controlling and hoarding most of the world's resources.
If medium sized and big corporations were willing to pay a decent living wage to their employees then a vast number of people would no longer have financial problems. And if the rich were to pay a proper tax rate and the government were to use that money honestly and responsibly then poverty could be almost entirely eliminated. The problem with humanity isn't the lack of resources and money. It is the lack of willingness to simply share. There is more than enough for everyone.
McCall Jones III stop crying
@@brianlittrell797 There are lots of resources but entitled people who want a share of resources without working deserve to be hungry on the streets. Don't take from the working and give to the people that don't feel like working.
@@BobFrostV That's a very unenlightened attitude to take and the opposite of the consciousness of love. Every person deserves to have the basics of life provided to them free and unconditionally. I consider the basics of life to be food, shelter, clothing, high quality education and healthcare. It doesn't cost much to provide those 5 things to everyone. That's because there is a vast abundance of resources on the planet.
Most people are happy to work if they are going to be paid a decent salary. Most people are not paid a decent salary and have to work very hard. In fact what usually happens is that the less they are paid, the harder they have to work. They work hard their entire lives and are still poor.
If everyone were willing to share the resources of the planet then we would have no poor people and everyone would be rich. Instead what is happening is that you have a very small number of people who own, control and are hoarding most of the wealth in the world. That is why you have so many poor people who also work hard.
The fact that you think that it is ok for people to be hungry and on the streets indicates that you have a closed heart. You lack love and compassion. That's very sad. Nobody deserves to be hungry or homeless, even those few persons who don't want to work.
@@brianlittrell797 The problem is not that there is not an abundance of resources, its a problem of how to get those resources to where they are needed in the most efficient way. That is the bottleneck we are talking about, when technology gets to the point of instant transporters al la Star Trek, then socialism will have a point about their being an abundance of resources, but until then you are not dealing with the actual problem.
Also, the rich can never pay enough for it to be a proper tax rate, what ever that is supposed to mean. And the government also can't use money honestly and efficiently, just the fact that a bureaucracy is needed makes it inefficient & dishonest and that is IF they are not corrupt. Taxes can never be honest when they are dishonestly taken in the first place.
You may want to look up what the basics entail. Life, liberty & the pursuit of happiness (being happy is not guaranteed) are the only rights, and that life starts at conception. Your rights stop when they attempt to overturn other peoples rights. Food, shelter, clothing, education & healthcare are all privileges, and charity would be abundant if welfare was not forced on people.
They say that people are poor and people are struggling, but nobody ever asks how many people were poor before capitalism or in socialist countries?
Have a bit of perspective. Before capitalism, 99% of everyone was poor and struggling. The number of people poor in struggling is lower than it has ever been.
true subsistence farming was what people were too busy doing, totally off grid and not by choice..Government like criminals will leave you alone if you have nothing of value. A craftsman could make a good living and still can, but craftsmen are a dying breed..
Don't pull numbers out of your arse. If you compare to for example socialist east Germany, the majority of people in the USA would think about it as paradise compared to what they have. There was no homelessness, no hunger, no drug problems, nobody had to work hard, everyone had high quality health care, equal women rights were a reality.
@@llothar68 I think you have your timeline mixed up, if you're comparing east Germany since east Germany was around post-capitalism anyway. When do you think capitalism was adopted? Look at the per capita income and GDP numbers for the last 10,000 years. It's flat until the mid 1700's, wonder what happened during that time period...
And speaking of east Germany, why did they build a wall to keep people from fleeing?
@@ryaugn You mean industrialization. Before we had feudalism. Nobody talks about capitalism before industrialisation.
Why did they build the wall? To keep the CIA out after the 1953 regime change attempt. It was constructed 1961 at begin of the serious phase of the cold war. It was not to keep the workforce in at that time.
@@llothar68 Perhaps we are having trouble defining our terms here. Capitalism as in the private ownership of property, the private ownership of one's own production, and the ability to freely contract with others. This existed pre-industrialization by about 100 years. One allowed the conditions for the other. There's never been comparable wealth creation or industrialization without capitalism.
And your point about the wall is refuted by the fact that individuals were never allowed to leave. People risked punishment to sneak out, and they celebrated in the streets the day the wall came down. We have it on video.
Very skewed toward the 1% & they totally don't understand Macroeconomics! Alan Nassar has written a book, "OVER RIPE ECONOMY", a historical account of Capitalism in the USA, it is not static, it evolves, depending on what we do w/ it & we have gone from Productive Capitalism, which pulled us out of the Great Depression & thru WW2 to today, which is called Financialized Capitalism,, & it has created another Gilded Age & the Crash that followed it! #LearnMMT! #EndAusterity
It seems like the argument should be how the balance between capitalism and socialism should be. They keep saying socialism is evil, it's destructive but even the pro socialism side is not advocating for communism. I think both sides believe there is a role for government that the private sector cannot handle or handle well. Instead, maybe each side can argue what they think should be capitalistic and what portions should be socialistic. Ask Stuart Varney whether he thinks police, fire, education, public roads, social security should all be privatized. Ask Richard Wolff if he wants government to take control of Amazon, Facebook, and corporations. See how far each side is willling to go. Herman Cain's repeitition of Socialism is evil, socialism is evil contributes nothing to the discussion.
Please do more of these! I love watching this kind of stuff!
It is VERY scary to think that radical professors like Mr Wollf have been filling our kids' heads with such BS.
Nothing but insults from people who have no arguments.
The debate is at such a low low level. What you would expect from FOX.
Cain is so stupid he thinks his story about himself is an adequate response to serious serious problems associated with capitalism.
The only way the capitalist dudes can respond to questions about the inadequacy of capitalism is to become hysterical like a teenage a school girl.
This professor is one sick puppy. Totally deranged and angry, making personal insults every time he gets a question.. Also what's up with the eyes of some of the people in the background? Did they just bring people in off the streets?
What's up with your unsubstantive and unwarranted tribal observations? I saw no insults thrown here, aside from the insult to my intelligence (yes yes I have none hahah) that comes every time I hear Varney or Cain speak.
PlanetEarthFTW you aren’t watching with an unbiased mind then. The professor is rude, insulting and either ill informed or flat out lying.
@@travisrowe7697 We are all watching with a biased mind. We have all grown up in a capitalist system where the mention of any socialist idea (good or bad) is immediately shot down with the communism card. If it's so bad then why is it so difficult to discuss youd think.
I'm still waiting for someone to point out that democracy is a form of tyranny and NOT a paragon of virtue.
You just did ! lol
It certainly can be, but not always. Do you have a better option?
PlanetEarthFTW A limited Republic based upon rule of law instead of rule of people. The 51% can violate the rights of the 49% in a pure democracy. The founders didn’t want a democracy as they feared mob rule.
We aren't a democracy anyway.
We're a REPUBLIC.
@@sydIRISH that's my point...
How do we pay for it?
How do we pay for the forever wars? How do we pay for regime change? The purse is never empty when it comes to the Military industrial complex.
I always find it funny when lefties rightfully point out that it's wrong to overfill the military / defense pot because of all the negativity / unintended consequences of war, and yet they think that if they divert the same funds to poor people, that the same government that supports forever wars will totally use the funds to help the poor.
Truth is, they'll divert most of the money to themselves via insane taxes on the middle class, and put the rest into useless programs that simply give handouts, instead of actually teaching the impoverished to start making, saving, and investing their money.
if you honestly think big brother is benevolent with any money, you've been duped. It's all about stealing.
@@big_doinks3038 if you honestly think people are poor because they don't know how to make money you're an idiot. You can work a full time job and be poor.
@@big_doinks3038 um, im not sure if you're aware but a big platform of democratic socialism is free or drastically reduced cost of higher education. People WANT to improve themselves, they WANT to become more productive, talented, intelligent individuals. The problem is that those individuals are incurring a lifetime of debt to enter a market that pays them a fraction of what their education and work has earned them. I wonder if you have student loan payments and had to debate whether or not you'd see a doctor, pay your electric/rent or buy groceries for the month.
Big_Doinks our government is efficient in only one manner... carrying that big stick like Truman said. Every other facet is sheer inefficiency. The NSA and CIA avert catastrophes that no one here can even imagine, myself definitely included and I am glad to have them. As for free crap for lazy slacker leftists... go to work and stop complaining.
@@Ciph3rzer0 Yea and you can win the lotto and be poor in 2 months, people who dont know how to manage their financese are always going to be poor, I have coworkers who have household incomes more then twice mine and still live paycheck to paychek, while i get to put away about 1k a month
lol the moderator is so biased
Wolff is nuts
He is the smartest of all of them.
@@llothar68I guess you wanna get paid sitting on the couch.
@@wix2288 I do. And i like it.
@@llothar68ok
Greg finally asked a GOOD question!
They never really argued the correct issues.
1. Socialism is inefficient. Because of the high taxation, price controls, and central planning socialist industries never produce ENOUGH to meet the needs of its consumers, in other words SHORTAGES.
2. Socialist labor policies are inefficient. The amount of labor is determined by govt not the amount needed for the manufacturing process, resulting in too many employees and wasting labor. Since all of the employees are paid the same, and cannot be fired, many employees will not work efficiently let alone work at all, creating even more wasted labor.
If you want an example, US industries, run by capitalists focused on efficiency per cost, out produced every other nation for war materials during WW2.
Please back Professor Richard Wolff. He's a very interesting guest
7:58 classic socialist, the question can never just be answered without bringing up another question they can answer.
Doesn’t that just portray how useless and unsimple socialism is, you can answer a simple question, it’s genuinely irritating
For the past 40 years China remained a socialist for core industries but allow individuals to adapt to market economy, which was capitalism with a different name - private units. Chinese government encouraged the private units to compete with state owned "units" and even forced private company to merge with state owned units during downturn of the market/industry, and let them reborn back to separate private and state owned units when demand picked up. It is a highly dynamic, ( both private and state owned units in obsolete industries would be allow to fail and out of business), adaptive and evolving system which the leaders call "Socialism with a Chinese Charistic". Does it work for China? Yes so far so good, and only time would tell what would happen next.
They make the key decisions because they have the critical information and they are personally vested.
I dont' want to think how a company might be structured in a "socialist" company. Are you going to consult the entire workforce to figure out where to build your new building? Are you going to ask the janitor who you should hire to run your finances? heeeeeeeeeelllllz no.
Poor people don't create jobs. Without jobs we're all poor. Rinse and Repeat.
10:40 winning answer
Medicare for all no student loan I'm all in my friend
From now on I'm proudly a socialist person
That's why it's against the law to monopolize products and services. Duh.
The Zero Sum game can be easily debunked with endless examples.
9:49 - "There's more coming" -Richard Wolff to Herman Cain !!! LOL
"Marxian Economist"
That's a rather weird way to spell "Marxist".
Marxian economics (Economic Theory) and Marxism (Social Theory) are two very different things, though of course closely connected, often conflated and both originating with Karl Marx. There is also Marxist Philosophy, Marxist Critical Theory, etc.
Marxian Economics is a critique of the contradictions within capitalism, and predictive economic models and projections based on this. (It among other things was used to discover and explain the Boom and Bust cycle)
Marxism is a field within Sociology analyzing class relations and developments with a basis in "Historical Materialism", they also create sociological theories and predictive models, but they are interested in socio-economic developments on a macro-level.
So let me get this right. I take the risk and build a business from the ground up. I work late, risk my capital, risk everything I have. I make good decisions on what to build, how much to build, where to build, and when to build. I hire employees as my demand for production increases. Now I'm supposed to let my employees, whose only risk was to work for me, tell me how to run my company?
You ignore the employees risk, they are reliant on your decisions to run a successful company. When you fail rather than that failure directly hitting you, you will cut pay, cut benefits, and cut workers from the payroll. So the entire time you're making decisions to underpay your employees, in the event they get laid off they can't afford not to work because of the poor pay, because of you deciding I get 99% of the wealth, I'll pay my employees what's left. I get bonuses while my employees get min wage. You take on all the risk as you say but often the employee ends up without a house, car, food on the table long before the employer does, all because the employer didn't properly manage their risks as you say. When your business fails you still get to keep your house, car and food on your table, when the employees boss fails, he loses health insurance coverage, he doesn't have a lot of money to deal with the transition period to switch from this job to another one.
Many employers also require non compete clauses, which means they cannot just go down the street and take a better offer from a competing company.
Yes, let's give the welding department the responsibility of making all of the business decisions for a multi million dollar company.
Well.. after making bad decisions and the company they work for fails, they will all end up homeless and they'll all vote for the smart person to lead and he'll get his above average pay. Back to normal. Oh wait!?
The problem is that the entitled people that don't feel like putting in effort THINK they are the smartest person in the room. They think they deserve the high pay their bosses are getting.
Why would one department be making all the decisions? They would however likely know far more about the welding side of the business than any/most shareholders would.
I think there has been some kind of misunderstanding here.
The only distinction between a major worker owned co-operative corporation/company and a capitalist corporation/company is that the workers vote in the board of directors instead of the share-holders. The CEO, CFO, CPO, CTO, etc. are then hired on the very same basis of skill and talent. However - the people on top are actually democratically accountably, as opposed to being accountable to shareholders.
@@Kraisedion Anyways, the whole problem here is suggesting that the government should step in and take away from the current owners and give to those that don't own. I've started my own company and do all work myself. When all my bases covered completely I'll hire staff who I'll train myself. It should be reasonable for obvious reasons when I do not want anyone but me in control of the decision making. It would be out of the question for the government to step in and let my employees make decisions that I choose to be solely responsible for. The employees didn't have to risk 3 years of strenuous savings and also give up on making any money at all for 6 months while living expenses destroyed the little savings left. They didn't have to sell ALL of their stocks from years of saving and retirement planning just to pay living expenses during the start-up. They didn't put in the efforts to find equipment used at auctions for great prices and go through the difficulty of renting a place to stage the equipment. They didn't transport and repair the used equipment while on a shoe string budget. They didn't bid the first work and have to coerce the customer that requires umbrella insurance that you're a start up and will have insurance in time for the work. They weren't there when materials had to be purchased and picked up from a distant supplier to save a little extra money. They weren't there to take responsibility for chasing down the first customers to get payments which were late and very needed because bills were going to sink the company and everything was on the verge of being lost. These people that want the rewards without putting in the thinking, risk, and effort themselves deserve a punch in the face. The redistribution of other's success to those that are envious is on par with the most disgusting of crimes.
@@BobFrostV What you are saying here is partially fair, but only partially. It is absolutely true that, if you succeed, you should be compensated for all your hard labor and risk. You are actually a worker, you are actively producing value you should be rewarded for.
However, the fact that you are working incredibly hard should not give you the right to leech off the labor of others later.
The workers you bring in will also start producing value, at one point you may hire a CEO which doubles or triples your revenue, you may have workers who come up with great innovative ideas that brings the business forward - and most important of all, the workers will be actively producing value, just as you are now - though at decreased risk.
And, as a final important note, the fact that you started something possibly incredible should not allow you to lease the time of other humans and control them without them having a single say. Quite a few countries already have co-determination, i.e. workers on the board of directors - Germany has 50% worker representation for instance.
You can not actually expand without bringing in more workers - you need them - otherwise you could merely keep your business and live off your labor alone. You choose to involve them. This is not forced. You want to get additional income from workers producing additional value for you, i.e. what we call exploitation. And no matter how hard you labored, I just have to disagree that this should be your right.
Imagine for a second that you had to bring in investors to expand instead of workers - you would naturally give them a share in the company, and a say, they'd expect it and so would you.
And this ties in with redistributing success - because what you, in the future wish to do, is to redistribute the success of your workers and give it to yourself.
In a Socialist system (co-operative economy) you could instead of entering these people as employees, or as, in co-operatives, partners, and instead bring them in as associates so that you still own the core of the business, and earn an additional revenue based on the value you provide for your associates. This is not too different from what you wish to do, but without you legally owning the labor or success of your fellow workers.
I do not understand why the defenders of Capitalism do not talk about incentives more. At a base human level - people respond to incentives. Capitalism gives incentive to run business well. Socialism gives business to gov where the incentive is to do nothing and coast in their cushy position and run the business into the ground. Why work hard when it will never get you ahead? Why work at all if the gov will take care of you? Core human nature is why socialism (in whatever form) will never work.
Worry about how to pay for everything but war
I didn't hear the subject come up.
War pays for itself. We sell weapons and with the funds, we build more weapons.
Why not make employees stock holders that way they have skin in the game as weel as the owners who put up the capital to start the business ( even if it was from a loan which they have to pay back)
Yet those people who are workers don't worry about any of the investment to start the company and lose no money if it goes to hell. So they share in all the benefits and none of the risk.
Mr Wolf knows what he is talking about. Remember economics student. Economic 101 in textbook is just a basic, fundamental for u to learn how economies works in theories. If u look at the reality, no ctry which follows the economic concepts has worked. There are other factors beside economics that affects the ctry performance. Even if economics in textbook is so different from reality, students still have to learn them because who control the world order? If u have economics concept that differentiate from theirs, can u still get your degree?
Socialism: Great system; wrong species. E. O. Wilson.
My questions to these kids
Do you like your computer and your phone!? Capitalism
Why is there so much income inequality in china and why are there so many poor chinese people? Socialism
Chinese economic is growing faster than 🇺🇸 even in this time of COVID-19 their economic growth will be 6 % all this because China government + western countries helping moving their production to China . Pepsi cola is selling more Pepsi in China than in the 🇺🇸,GM selling more 🚙 there than in 🇺🇸 and the list goes on. The Chinese economy even with his income equality is the only economy can challenge the 🇺🇸 economy with our income inequality getting bigger every day. If I am not mistaken the city of Zhongguancun in China has more millionaires than New York City. We are a capitalist economy but if we don’t change it to improve ourselves we’re going to be behind.
"So how you gonna pay for it" What she should have said: By ending the 6 Trillion dollar wars in the middle east that have yet to solve anything and have only grown the so called "War on Terror".
On disability, taxes helps me!
I have a business that I’ve built for 20 years. I have everything invested in. If this lady’s policies were enacted and the power and money was given to the workers I would simply close the business. What is my incentive to work all the extra hours, stay up at night worrying when it gets slow and all the other things that brings these huge amounts of stress upon me. Why the hell would I as a business owner do that if there is no reward. I wouldn’t, I would become a worker. Thats the problem with this woman and this horrible professors thinking. It’s the same with innovation, why the hell would people spend there money and time coming up with new technologies, medications etc... trying to obtain wealth if people like these 2 morons would just come in and take it. These are the most basic fundamental questions. Hopefully in this town-hall at some point someone hits hard on these points.
Two big questions that should be answered in this debate:
1. How exactly do we, individually and as a society of individuals, want to exist while we do exist?
2. How exactly do we, individually and as a society of individuals, want to help take care of the young, old, ill and needy, if even at all?
In the United States, we are individuals. We live and take care of the young and the old by way of our personal choices not some dictator you want to appoint.
Ask Detroit what happens when Unions become too powerful it costs too much. Jobs move abroad and factory's close and the City goes bust.
Steve Mann so if unions killed Detroit, how come nyc is doing so well? Obviously, it couldn’t be the CEO’s took the cheap way out for “survival ability “. Yet they were able to scrape together 8 figure bonus packages for themselves. Phew, I was so worried about them
@@lyleknight9012 tourism? Losing the amazon contract wasn't good for people looking for work. Time will tell he NYC remains profitable. Venezuela was the Fourth richest country in the world and now people are so poor they have started eating the zoo animals and if they complain they get run over by tanks. Just because your rich doesn't mean you won't be poor tomorrow.
And that's why the workers should have co-determination and right to first refusal (or just direct ownership). If the workers have the power, this can't occur.