Economic Update

This week's Economic Update focuses on Trump's attacks on Harvard, Trump's "antisemitism" maneuver against educational institutions, and US universities becoming ever more " business-like." as well as looking into the economics of US dollar depreciation since Jan 20, 2025. Also featured is an interview with Mr Rob Robinson, to be awarded an honorary doctorate from the City University of New York...

This week on Economic Update, Professor Wolff delivers updates on the Kaiser Permanente mental health workers' strike unfolding in California and the function of tariffs as an economic weapon that also undermines the living standards of U.S. workers. In the second half of the show, Professor Wolff sits down with Kali Akuno, co-founder and co-director of Cooperation Jackson, to discuss Trump’s...

In this week's episode of Economic Update, Professor Wolff speaks on employers blocking, delaying, and opposing improvements on general social welfare, highlights how Trump ends "affirmative action" for veterans (including those disabled) and remarks on how tariffs worsen uncertainty with seriously negative consequences. In the second half of the show, Professors Maliha Safri and Stephen Healy,...

In this week's episode of Economic Update, Professor Wolff critiques the DOGE practice of firing federal civilian employees, analyzes the Trump tariff program, and shows how both are presented as ways to solve deep economic problems in the U.S. but are actually an assault on the working class. The second part of the show features an interview with David Van Deusen, the former head of the Vermont...

This week's edition of Economic Update explores the last 150 years of largely uncritical celebration of "the market," as if it were a perfect institution that must be protected from intrusion of other institutions such as the government, labor unions, and popular organizations. We compare an historical example and also the present to criticize today's peculiar mix of market idolatry and its...

In this week's episode of Economic Update, Professor Wolff discusses certain minimum wages by the Trump administration, the costs of Germany's rearmament, and how Trump's tariffs and deportations have hit central America with economic catastrophe. The second half features a detailed discussion of the historical blaming of foreigners for the internal problems of capitalism in the U.S.

In this week's episode of Economic Update, Professor Wolff discusses how Marx's class analysis presents a solution to today's inequality and the challenges to overcoming it we have faced throughout history. In short, since the early existence of human society, people lived in tribes, clans, and villages that exhibited equality of wealth, income, and political power among their members. As modern...

In this week’s episode of Economic Update, Professor Wolff discusses the economic causes and effects of the global demographic’s decline, the Trump administration's colonial plans for Greenland, and examples of resistance and fighting back as the Trump/Musk firing of federal workers gets underway. In the show's second half, Professor Wolff interviews the activist, organizer, and people's lawyer,...

This week on Economic Update, Professor Wolff delivers updates on the firing of government workers by Trump/Musk with an economic analysis showing it to be an attack on the U.S. working class followed by a discussion of Trump's foreign policy of turning against Europe as merely an adjustment to an "American Capitalism First" project that is as old as the U.S. The second half of the show features...

This week’s episode of Economic Update features updates on the economic risks and costs Europe faces from deporting or blocking immigrants as compared to Spain's prosperity through a pro-immigrant policy, the work of Michael Burawoy, a Marxist sociology professor at UC Berkeley, and how the inflation of meat prices is affected by a four-company oligopoly that controls 85% of the U.S. meat supply....