
Economy and Psychology Podcast and Blog SeriesJoin Dr.s Harriet Fraad (psychotherapist) and Richard Wolff (economist), in a series of ongoing podcasts and blog posts, as they explore the interdependency between the economy and psychology. How is our emotional well-being impacted by our economic system, our ways of producing and distributing the goods and services that sustain us? Likewise, how do psychological realities - our feelings, hopes, fears, and dreams - influence the economic dimensions of our lives? How do the changes and instabilities of our economy and psychology find political expression and alter our society? These questions animate this discussion series.Click here to learn more
Articles
Lessons from the Housing Disaster
Rising Income Inequality in the US: Divisive, Depressing, and Dangerous
The gap between annual incomes of the top 10 per cent of US citizens and what the other 90 per cent gets has been widening sharply for the last 30 years. The nation's economic development has been increasingly divisive. Professor Emmanuel Saez of the University of California at Berkeley, a leading expert, summarizes the facts on his website, from which the graph below is gratefully taken. This graph shows how the top 10 per cent of income earners in the US took home, after the 1970s, an ever more outsized share of the total national income.
Oregon Counters Massachusetts
The stunning win of a Republican novice in the Massachusetts Senate race to replace Ted Kennedy is well known. It is being interpreted as a sign of Obama's fading popularity and also as a sign that the US electorate wants more right-of-center policy. To show the flaw in thinking that right-wing answers to the economic crisis are the only popular option, consider the results of the January 26, 2010 referendum in Oregon. That referendum's 1.2 million voters decisively passed Measures 66 and 67 by margins of over 53 to 46.
Labor Movement?
The 2010 Statistical Abstract of the United States (and especially Tables 574 to 650), published by the US Census Bureau, provides many statistics that can update understanding of today's working class and possibilities of its movement. The Abstract counts 154 million people as members of the US labor force in 2008. Of these, 129 million were wage and salary earners (the rest were self-employed), and roughly 15-20 million held managerial or supervisory positions.
Chronology of Capitalism
The so-called Crisis in Greece
Taking Over the Enterprise
We are overdue for a new strategy. Labor and the Left are at low points in long declines. One cause has been adherence to a failed strategy. We need to acknowledge that reality and answer two linked questions. First, what part of getting into this situation was our own doing? Second, what changes in labor’s and the Left’s strategy could revive the two groups and rebuild their coalition into a powerful political force? To answer the first question: labor’s and the Left’s strategic attitude toward capitalism undermined both partners and their coalition.
Transitions between Economic Systems
One hour interview: the Crisis, Public Education, and their Social Impacts
Richard Wolff speaks with Jeff Farias on his radio show broadcasted by Roots Up Radio. As this book shows, we must now ask basic questions about capitalism as a system that has now convulsed the world economy into two great depressions in 75 years (and countless lesser crises, recession, and cycles in between). The book’s essays engage the long-overdue public discussion about basic structural changes and systemic alternatives needed not only to fix today’s broken economy but to prevent future crises.









