Fox’s Stuart Varney attempted to make Socialist Economist Professor Richard Wolff a caricature but instead came across as a silly talking head unable to defend a failing economic system that has decimated the middle class.
Richard Wolff schools Stuart Varney
Professor Richard Wolff was amiable and methodical as he took out Stuart Varney with a smile and a systematic dissection of his critiques.
Varney started by lamenting the return of socialism. Professor Wolff blamed its return on the effects of capitalism.
“Nothing guarantees the future of socialism so much as capitalism,” Professor Wolff said. “Because socialism is capitalism’s self-criticism. You know every economic system has had the people who love it and the people who don’t. And they’d have a debate. And we would have had that over the last thirty years if there weren’t a taboo, the Cold War and all of that. So we are just getting back to kind of where we should have been. Let’s have a debate, strength, and weaknesses of capitalism, strength, and weaknesses of socialism.”
Varney asked Wolff if a proletarian revolution was around the corner. Wolff made it clear that no one really knows when some revolution would occur. The professor said that the question for both capitalism and socialism are up for grabs. He pointed out that every system thus far has been born, changed, and died over time.
“Why do you think that socialism is so good for America now?” Varney asked. “Why?”
Wolff pointed out that the level of inequality created by capitalism has not been seen since the days of the pharaohs. Moreover, he said there were two collapses and Americans are yet to have recovered from them.
“I think you are seeing a return to socialism not so much because, people like socialism,” Wolff said. “I don’t think it is there yet. It is people who don’t like what they’ve got and what they see and what they see for their kids.
Varney ultimately perceived the inevitable.
“I think we are on the European road,” Varney said dejectedly. “We in America are moving down that collectivist road. How long do you think before we become like a Denmark, or France, or something like that?”
Professor Wolff said he did not know. Varney then asked the professor if he really wanted the type of democratic socialism in Scandinavian countries or Europe. The professor gave the moral answer. In effect, he wanted a fair distribution of wealth.
The conversation then went to Jeff Bezos billions. The professor gave Varney a schooling. In effect, people like Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos did not earn their money from their work. They earned it from the design of the current economic system that allows the hoarding of wealth. Worse, taxes on income from wealth appreciation, capital gains, is unfairly taxed at a lower rate than the persons who work for a living.”
The professor did not quite say what has to be done with the underserved accumulated wealth of the types like Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, and others. It is the responsibility of government to recover all that was attained unfairly, unjustly, or from the excesses of the working person’s excess labor.
Professor Richard Wolff is consistent and has always been consistently correct. Check out these two speeches (here & here)