Richard Wolff (Wikipedia, His Web Site) talks about the US economy at Bill Moyers' program. He tried to explain the current problems the US economy faces in a language even a four-year-old could understand.

Direct link: http://player.vimeo.com/video/60234702 (Total run-time: 44 minutes)

Highlights:

- A good start for minimum wage is 16-17 dollars an hour

- School of Business vs. Department of Economy. The former teaches how to be a businessman; the latter teaches the philosophy of economy. Business has taken over the Economy.

- Change the system, not the bank executives.

- Capitalism is not delivering.

- Risk of revoluition in the decades of 1930 and 1940 was eliminated when President Roosevelt made the rich and capitalists understand that the other alternative was to face a social revolution. That was politics. Politics was utilized to address the economic crisis, because social groups and fractions were part of the politics.

We don't see that today, because the risk of a social revolution as it happened in European countries and could happen in the US then does not seem to exist now.

Note: By this risk, he means the threat of pressure from the bottom of the society does not exist.

Why? Because the leftist groups and communist parties of 1930s and 1940s were destroyed immediately, and today the labor unions are being weakened and destroyed. All of that implies there is no pressure from non-rich group in the political processs. So there is nothing to stop the present economic desparity between the rich and the the rest of the nation.

- But, if the rich think there is no threat of a revolution, they are fooling themselves. If this is not stopped, a revolution will happen. People cannot take it forever.

In this session Richard Wolff tried to explain the problems. In the next session at Bill Moyers' program, he will offer his solutions.