Ask Prof Wolff

A Patron of Economic Update asks: "Can you imagine that journalist cooperatives could exist, function well, and possibly help us out of some of our current problems? (Maybe such have existed, or do exist, but I just am not aware of them?) We know that the present media system is ethically bankrupt, where corporate or government (or quasi-government) directed agencies distract, manipulate, and lie...

A Patron of Economic Update asks: "I am confused by the 7/12/22 article in the Washington Post: 'Republicans threaten Wall Street over climate positions' by Steven Mufson ( https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/07/12/republicans-threaten-wall-street-over-climate-positions/ ). Are Republicans really turning on their Wall Street backers? Are the big banks really concerned enough ab...

A Patron of Economic Update asks: "My question is about the wage-price freeze concept. If we are to assume that workers would have their wages frozen after decades of stagnated real wage growth and a collapse in purchasing power and we freeze prices how they currently are, then how would workers be able to pay for necessities when such a huge gap in wages and prices exist? Isn't the problem that w...

A Patron of Economic Update asks: "I recall having heard you say that Karl Marx never really talked much about the State because he wasn't all that interested in the State. People tell me their beef with Karl Marx is that he advocated for use of the State to enforce communism or socialism. When asked where in Marx's writings that he advocated for use of the State, they never cite to Das Kapital (b...

A Patron of Economic Update asks: "This is a question that I hope Dr. Wolff will discuss regarding US profit extraction from basic necessities for workers and families. How much does the extraction of profit from basics like health care, energy, housing, transportation, communication and food hurt the competitiveness of US workers by increasing the needed wages? Should those be a priority for chan...

A Patron of Economic Update asks: "Workers are organizing and Trade Unionism is on the rise in the UK and around the world. Can you offer an analysis of the present wave of class consciousness and what it means for the workers movement in the period of increasing inflation?"

A Patron of Economic Update asks: "What is the connection between capitalism and the ability for rulers to control women's bodies and the quantity of laborers born (what the business world refers to as 'human capital')?"

A Patron of Economic Update asks: "I would love to hear you talk about degrowth. It's something I've been reading a little about for a few years. I probably (don't remember, exactly) first heard about it from Jason Hickel."

A Patron of Economic Update asks: "How would inflation, cyclic depression and the other harmful capitalistic economic behavior be avoided in the cooperative model?"

A Patron of Economic Update asks: "If pay for workers increases, won't that increase consumption (unless its stolen back through inflation) and, in turn, America's carbon footprint? I'm concerned about sustainability."

A Patron of Economic Update asks: "Christopher Leonard, author of "The Lords of Easy Money" has a piece in the 6/11/22 NYT ( https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/11/opinion/fed-federal-reserve-inflation-democrats.html ) that addressed the issue of inflation's cause(s). He danced around your principal point, without actually saying it, namely that capitalism is in its death throes. I would be interested...

A Patron of Economic Update asks: "I have always been interested in the idea of what individualism would be like under socialism. Say, for example, some people don't enjoy working in groups and prefer to work independently through freelance as they then have the time and flexibility to work on their own terms and not have to negotiate and make agreements with a group of people. Will there be optio...

A Patron of Economic Update asks: "Dear Prof Wolff, can you please explain the similarities and differences between supply-side and demand-side economics?"

A Patron of Economic Update asks: "Prof. Wolff, do you believe the equality we seek can be brought about by the swift and sudden collapse of corporate fascism, a civil war, or by an evolution in the culture through constant promotion of Marxist/socialist thought? Would the latter be likely to produce the desired change within our lifetime?"

A Patron of Economic Update asks: "Prof Wolff, can you explain the relationship between debt and inflation? Would canceling $1.7 trillion in student debt cause inflation to increase, as is reported in the media, or would canceling it actually cause inflation to decrease?"

A Patron of Economic Update asks: "I have a question regarding Robots and AI. What happens to using the workplace instead of the state when there are no jobs for 80 percent of the people, no place to organize or combine? Without the state as the primary control of a situation, when there are no jobs for most people... where do we go?"

A Patron of Economic Update asks: "The strategy of d@w regarding changing society is, as far as I understand, to build a movement bottom up from cooperatives to network of cooperatives. I live in France and there was an important person, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, who favored that approach. He was in strong opposition to Marx's more aggressive approach and had some influence in the ideas of the parti...

A Patron of Economic Update asks: "The Australian people have just voted to remove the authoritarian conservative government, which recorded its worst election result in 70 years. The Greens (our main left-of-centre option in Aus) recorded it's highest vote in its 30-year history and will hold the balance of power in the Senate. With the combined third-party vote now roughly equal to either major...

A Patron of Economic Update asks: "I see so many young people that are highly qualified and educated and hard working yet they struggle to find work in their respective fields. Could there be a greater underlying economic or systemic issue behind all this and if so, what are some good solutions?" A Supporter of Democracy at Work asks: "In co-op format, the people who run the business naturally hav...

A Patron of Economic Update asks: "Dear Professor Wolff, can you speak about the advisability of cutting gas taxes in Indiana to alleviate the effects of inflation?"

A Supporter of Democracy at Work asks: "The concept of the productive worker being both employer and employee in all areas is brilliant and necessary to overcome the injustice of the potentially dangerous and egregious financial disparity between that of the upper earning and the lower earning citizens. However, not all such businesses will succeed. How is this scenario resolved?"

A Patron of Economic Update asks: " Can you talk about the economics of planned parenthood and abortion? ( http://pricetheory.uchicago.edu/levitt/Papers/DonohueLevittTheImpactOfLegalized2001.pdf )"

A Supporter of Democracy at Work asks: "Is there anything the Biden administration can do to decrease the rate of inflation significantly, even though it is worldwide? Is there any approach to price controls that could really work?"

A Patron of Economic Update asks: "How rigged is the stock market against working people? How does the stock market create more inequality?"

A Patron of Economic Update asks: "Do you think that it might be worthwhile disambiguating the differences (and general confusion) among assets, capital, and capitalism as defined by Thomas Picketty in 'Capitalism in the 21st Century' vs Marx?"