Macro N Cheese

“We need to understand the limits of capitalism. Capitalism has serious limits in the sense that it puts exchange value over use value. And this is by definition irrational according to logic of need, but very rational according to logic of profit...   But we also need to understand that we are the ones who have produced the system. That's where the empowering voice comes out, because it says...

“It's a wound. Palestine is a wound that doesn't go away because it's ignored.”   Where there is oppression, there is resistance. Even when it seems invisible to outsiders, it can always be found in the art and culture of the oppressed.  Malu Halasa and Jordan Elgrably, of the Markaz Review, talk to Steve about  Sumud: A New Palestinian Reader, an anthology of essays, poetry, f...

Running for office is a fool’s errand if you think you can win and radically change the system from within. But an election campaign can serve other purposes for political organizers. A campaign provides a platform, a megaphone... media attention. The process of campaigning puts you in touch with people in the community. As Steve puts it, an election allows you to “bu...

When there’s an attack on a high profile (read: white) target in the US, media attention is aimed at the perpetrators. If the act was politically motivated, that fact is either used to explain their psychopathy or dismissed altogether. The December shooting death of a UnitedHealthcare CEO has had a different reaction. As soon as the news broke, public sympathy was drawn to the shooter. The Am...

History doesn’t stand still, and every time we talk about BRICS on this podcast, there’s more to unpack. To understand the significance of BRICS, we must begin with (wait for it) monetary sovereignty.    Economist Yan Liang is an expert on China’s economy and MMT. She joins Steve to discuss the evolving role of the BRICS nations (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa) and the i...

What’s the point of understanding money if we don’t look at the power relations controlling its distribution?  Bill Mitchell, a key figure in the development of modern monetary theory, is back for his twelfth appearance on the podcast, beginning with Episode One, Putting the T in MMT .   As a key figure in the development of MMT, Bill articulates how this theory fundamentally c...

Can you imagine granting personhood to AI entities? Well, some of us couldn’t imagine granting personhood to corporations. And yet... look how that panned out. In this episode, Steve talks with Duke law professor James Boyle about his new book,  The Line: AI and the Future of Personhood.   James explains the development of his interest in the topic; it began with the idea of em...

Paul Gambles is back to help us unpack China's recent issuance of US dollar-denominated sovereign bonds in Saudi Arabia.  Paul begins by setting up the historical context. He takes us back to the end of the second World War and the Bretton Woods agreement, designed to bring a new world order, putting the US dollar as the global funding currency. China’s move signals a challenge to the pe...

Rohan Grey, who taught us to understand money as a creature of law, is back for his tenth appearance on Macro N Cheese.  Steve and Rohan dissect the humor and horror of the political landscape. They make a realistic assessment of the Biden administration and look at figures like Elon Musk and Ramaswamy as part of a new wave of governance setting out to undermine the fabric of f...

In a stunning reversal, the Democrat Party has announced plans to reconnect with its New Deal roots in hopes of regaining the trust of the working class. Haha just kidding! This week, Yeva Nersisyan joins Steve to cut through the cacophony of phony punditry trying to explain the 2024 election results. Spoiler alert: it’s economics. It’s always economics.  Yeva points to the stark re...

"Colonized people have the right to resist." Economist and friend of the podcast Fadhel Kaboub talks with Steve about the effects of global hegemony and the ongoing attempts to shift the balance of power. They look at BRICS, though it’s perhaps too soon to predict its ultimate outcome and influence. Fadhel argues that a true multipolar world cannot emerge without placing the Global South...

“A capitalist economy requires constant imperialist wars because it has to constantly suppress prices and wages and reorganize production in the global south around accumulation in the core. That is ultimately the system that we have to overcome.”   Jason Hickel, who won our hearts a while back by accepting MMT, talks with Steve about the burning issue of our time. (No, not the US electi...

Author and labor studies professor Eric Blanc talks about worker-led union organizing and why it is superior to the dominant model of staff-intensive unionism. “You just can't get the type of mass movement we need by relying on staff.   Even the best staff.”  Eric lays out some features of worker-to-worker organizing:  Workers are training other workers in the skills they...

**Milestone 300! We dedicate this, the 300th weekly episode, to our loyal listeners, and we wish to recognize the valiant work of our underpaid podcast crew – correction: our unpaid podcast crew – who have put in thousands of hours editing audio, correcting transcripts, writing show notes, creating artwork, and posting promos on social media. To have the next 300 episodes delivered to your inbox a...

**Our Substack brings every new episode of this podcast as well timely alerts about our book clubs and webinars and reminders for Tuesday night’s gatherings of Macro ‘n Chill. All this and more, straight to your inbox. Subscribe now: realprogressives.substack.com   Recently, Steve appeared with host Sean St. Heart on Coup Save America, a weekly podcast committed to breaking through political...

If NIMBY is the classist rejection of affordable housing ("Not in my back yard”), then YIMBY is sold as the progressive counter to it: “Yes, in my back yard; because I believe affordable housing should be widely available, even in my own neighborhood.” But of course, housing development has nothing to do with the needs of the poor or the working class. It has nothing to do with the public purpose....

The titans of capital aren’t just the obscenely wealthy. They are the directors of transnational finance companies; they manage the money of the obscenely wealthy. Steve’s guest, political sociologist Peter Phillips, is the author of Titans of Capital: How Concentrated Wealth Threatens Humanity. The titans, he says, have doubled their AUM (assets under management) in the past 5 years. “There's onl...

Steve’s guests are Charles Derber and Yale Magrass, authors of Who Owns Democracy: The Real Deep State and the Struggle Over Class and Caste in America. The concept of the deep state has been employed by different political ideologies, most recently the right under Trump. But its existence is real, and its service to the ruling class can be traced back to the founding of the US. Among other ideas,...

When people reject the concept of degrowth are they suggesting society continue to allow capital to ravage the earth? Are they saying the countries of the global North should continue exploiting and extracting from the global South? Are they pushing for more growth? Steve’s guest, Erin Remblance is an Australian researcher and activist who was spurred into action six years ago when the IPCC releas...

**Find a transcript of each week’s episode on our Substack, where we also offer links to resources discussed in the interview. Subscribe now at https://realprogressives.substack.com/   Daniel Conceição is back to discuss the social damage of rentier capitalism and the potential to address it through the insights of Modern Monetary Theory.  Rentier capitalism derives profit from ownership...

**Join us Tuesday evenings for Macro ‘n Chill, an informal gathering where we listen to and discuss this podcast. Register here for our September 10th session https://events.teams.microsoft.com/event/29d4cc27-0123-4885-aaa8-6ff95947498d@7d53fbd0-6b43-4143-9400-6b0b36a25e55   Steve’s guest is Nolan Higdon, an author and expert in media literacy. They discuss surveillance in education, whi...

Macro N Cheese brings you another twist. A couple of months ago, Steve appeared as a guest on 1Dime Radio in a two-part series that we’re now presenting as a single episode.  Tony has been on our podcast several times, now Steve is on his turf. The result is a productive meeting of the minds. He and Steve both view the world through a Marxist lens, and they both...

Let us never become immune to shock and outrage over the US government’s failure to guarantee its citizens a safe clean water supply. We must be outraged by the power that private players hold over us all with the blessings and collusion of officials whose titles suggest they should protect us. Investigative journalist Jordan Chariton has been reporting on the Flint water crisis for nearly a decad...

The 2024 fictional film “Civil War” shows an America that has been fractured into armed factions. It’s not the dystopian fantasy that interests us here, however, it’s the collapse of the currency! In the movie, the US dollar has lost its value, like the fate of Confederate money after the (real) US Civil War. With his imagination piqued by the film, Steve asked Brett Scott, author and monetary the...

“I was still a true believer, but doubts were starting to creep in at a certain point when you saw a large segment of our coalition cheering the brutal death of Rachel Corrie under a Caterpillar D9 bulldozer. And then, you know, a month later, cheering for the death of Tom Hurndall who was killed protecting a Palestinian child from Israeli snipers and was shot in the head by an expert marksman loo...