Friday Nite Videos | July 14, 2017
Portside
Economist Yanis Varoufakis, the former Minister of Finance of Greece, says corporations are cannibalizing politics. Hear his dream for a world "that is simultaneously libertarian, Marxist and Keynesian."
The first and last rule of capitalism is this: Make More Capital. And it's killing us. But we can build better systems. There are plenty of options. We can change the rules.
During modern times, corporations threaten the jobs of pro-union workers in over half of all union elections—and follow through on the threat one-third of the time. In between, bosses have resorted to spies and frame-ups, physical violence, court injunctions, private armies of strikebreakers, racist appeals and immigrant exploitation.
A bill recently introduced in the state legislature by the Illinois AFL-CIO could address some of the problems around reprisals. The Wrongful Discharge from Employment Act, supported by Raise the Floor Alliance and NESRI, would force employers to provide fired workers with a clear and legitimate reason for the discharge, essentially proving that it was not done in retaliation.
Piketty's radical and largely on-target critique of contemporary capitalism, the reviewer says, was mostly greeted with hostility by the economics establishment, when not simply ignored, stonewalling Capital in the Twenty-First Century, so it would not have the impact on economics research agendas that it merits, particularly in explaining inequality — in effect a dead zone in mainstream economic analysis. The reviewer thinks much can be gleaned from Piketty's work.
Spread the word