Tune in Friday 12 - 4 pm for
A People’s Economics Bootcamp with:
• Richard Wolff - prominent Marxist economist
• Paddy Hirsch (Man vs. Markets)
• Anat Shenker-Osorio (Don't Buy It: The Trouble with Talking Nonsense about the Economy)
• The producers of the film 'Heist: Who Stole the American Dream'
Increase your basic economics knowledge, win arguments against conservatives and beat back the corporate Wall Street hedge fund profiteers with this afternoon of insightful and humorous guests on KBOO community radio.
Here's the schedule and descriptions:
12 to 1 pm - Richard Wolff
Beginning in 2005, Wolff (economics professor, U. of Massachusetts) began writing critical articles for the Monthly Review website in which he argued that the US political economy was in systemic danger of collapse and sought to highlight the problems and weaknesses of the economy that "mainstream celebrants of capitalism always missed or denied." As the crisis deepened, he turned to criticism of the solutions proposed by the Bush and Obama administrations and sought to advance socialist solutions to the crisis.
1 to 1:30 - Paddy Hirsch: author of the newly-released book Man vs. Markets: Economics Explained (Plain and Simple)
1:30 to 2:00 - Anat Shenker-Osorio: author of the new book Don't Buy It: The Trouble with Talking Nonsense about the Economy
Anat Shenker-Osorio has spent her career exploring the range of ways people understand complex political issues and she's seen one thing over and again: when were using the wrong metaphor, were sending the wrong message. In this book she focuses that argument on the wrong headed and destructive way we talk about the economy in the United States. Relying heavily on language such as “unhealthy,” “suffering,” “recovery bill,” we continually convey that the economy is something natural, like a body, the tides, or the weather. It is how it is — like the barometric pressure, unemployment can be expected to “rise” and “fall.” In fact, we've bought the idea that we must work without complaint and “Keep the Economy Happy!”
Shenker-Osorio shows that this wrong headed way of conceptualizing the economy has a real effect on the way people engage with money, and it has lead to a great deal of hardship. The solution therefore is that by consciously shifting the ways we talk about the economy we can radically alter how we react to and thus make rules and decisions. By speaking, accurately, of the economy as a man-made system requiring continuous man made control we undo the damaging notion that the market is its own best control. By speaking, forcefully, of the economy as part of the pursuit for security and prosperity we can impose regulation and control to achieve certain means. Economic reform is going to require transparency and understanding in our conversation. This book tells us how.
2:00 - 4:00 Heist: Who Stole the American Dream
HEIST is a feature documentary which investigates the roots of the current economic crisis, and the ongoing assault on working people in the United States. It tells the hidden story of the systemic, multifaceted corporate attack on the middle class that, starting in the 1970s, transformed America's well-regulated economy into a battlefield littered with foreclosed homes, runaway jobs, and broken dreams. The American economy has been eviscerated due to four decades of deregulation, the outsourcing of forty-million manufacturing jobs, and self-serving tax policies that have created a new class of robber barons. Today's news blames Americans' devastated 401(k)'s and collapsed home values on financial earthquakes within the last two years.
But HEIST traces these seismic shifts back to their roots in the early 1970s. It shows how large corporations - acting through lobbying organizations like the Business Roundtable and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce - began a political mobilization that would propel the largest transfer of wealth in history. The winners were the wealthiest 1% of our population. The losers were ordinary Americans, whose real income has barely increased since 1973.
KBOO will air portions of the film, and talk with the film's directors Donald Goldmacher, a longtime filmmaker, labor advocate, activist, and community psychiatrist with decades of experience observing, documenting and participating in social change and Frances Causey, a seasoned investigative journalist and documentary filmmaker, who has emerged as a citizen-activist, fusing her media skills with a commitment to contribute to the restoration of people-based democracy in the United States.
And be sure to call in to start or renew your membership at 503-232-8818 during this program and pick up a 'People's Economics Gift Pack' filled with goodies to build up your economics knowledge and power in order to win back the people's power from the Wall Street moguls who have taken our economy hostage!