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Episode 187 - The Boy Who Cried Wolff (w/ Prof. Richard Wolff) (Patreon)

Published:
2022-06-23 04:06:59
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2026-06
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Content

Subscribe to Bad Faith on Patreon to instantly unlock our full premium episode library: http://patreon.com/badfaithpodcast

This week, Marxist economist Richard Wolff returns to the podcast to answer all of your inflation questions, to weigh in on Krystal Ball's face off with Bill Maher, and to tie domestic politics to the labor activism in the UK and recent leftist victories around the world.

Subscribe to Bad Faith on YouTube for video of this episode. Find Bad Faith on Twitter (@badfaithpod) and Instagram (@badfaithpod).

Produced by Armand Aviram.

Theme by Nick Thorburn (@nickfromislands).

Comments

Anonymous

When the Fed was handing out money to the elites, it inflated asset prices (stocks) where elites spend their money. When the treasury sent money to the rest of the people it inflated consumer prices where the 99% spend their money. With so many people out of work, but now getting money as if they worked, how did Richard Wolff expect the economy to react? Wolff is being disingenuous at best in his claim that there is no explanation.

Sifl

In 2008 when oil prices spiked just before the great recession, everyone was trading SUVs for small fuel efficient sedans. My car died and I had to pay sticker for a Honda Civic. Since then, OPEC has kept energy prices low by flooding markets with oil in order to claw back market share from US frackers. People went right back to driving large SUVs and trucks. At the same time, US employers decided that about two dozen cities in the US would get most of the jobs. Those cities sprawled out and now commutes are longer than even, especially for lower wage workers who cannot afford to live close in. The oil and gas industry set the US up for this and is raking it in like never before. As such, any discussion about inflation that does not include a discussion about fuel efficiency and transitioning to renewables is not a serious discussion.

Jonathan Kadmon

I have my issues with Wolff...he's not an MMTer and has some pretty big blind spots and has made some pretty cringe statements in the past. He was actually pretty good here and said a lot of important things i agree strongly with, only made a few minor points i would quibble with, and a lot more that ought to be shouted from the rooftops. One of the reasons i can't stay mad at him for the things he's dead wrong about. A great episode, overall. The most important thing he emphasizes that his mainstream colleagues don't is not assuming economists always know what they're talking about.

Anonymous

There are monster supply chain issues. Good supply chains eat into profits so they have ZERO redundancies and hope for the best. Whoops. I have been waiting for a hybrid Maverick little pickup since October. I sure could use it's 44mpg right now.

Joey Trimboli

Good god, Bill Maher (or the version of himself he puts on during his show) is a stone cold moron

Anonymous

Good episode, Prof. Wolf is more optimistic than I am.

Anonymous

Once again, I wish the critique of the Poor Peoples Campaign was more informed. Whose fault is it that no media covered June 18? What can that movement do to create more “followup” (Prof Wolffs word) with the broad left including growing labor activism? These are great questions that should be dealt with in a dedicated episode or at least more bandwidth, not with 10 second dismissive broadsides like “it might as well not have happened” - to whose benefit are such comments?

Anonymous
>>86329260

How does supplier capacity compare to pre-pandemic levels. You can't look at demand without also looking at supply?

Anonymous

Does Wolff understand the dynamics of "just in time" supply chain? "Just in time" is far cheaper than having ware houses and a buffer stock. It is much more fragile than warehousing and buffer stocks, but when your competitors are saving money, you have to go along with the idea of "just in time" or you are out of business. Creating warehouses again and having buffer stocks cannot be restarted at the blink of an eye. When the supply chain is back to normal, your competitors will keep saving costs with "just in time". Knowing this, what companies are going to rebuild their warehouses and buffer stocks?

Isaac
>>86329260

Yes you can lol. If consumer spending is still lower than pre-pandemic levels, then it's disingenuous to blame consumer spending for inflation without also blaming the supply chain crisis from covid. But that's what conservative economists are doing, they're haranguing Biden for the covid relief without giving any context on supply-side issues

Anonymous
>>86329260

The point is consumer demand has risen above consumer supply. It was perfectly predictable that this would happen. I am not saying the 99% should not have received the money. I am saying the Biden administration should have had a plan to handle the predictable result

Lionel Boyd Johnson
>>86392536

It struck me a weird also. I think his point was that just in time is one option, there are others that could have been chosen for the economy at large. It was weird to act like the one manager had an option, because he probably would have been fired if he tried to keep more than a couple days worth of materials in stock, which surely Wolff understands, so I'm assuming he was using it to make a broader point that we could organize manufacturing and our economy in a different way.

Anonymous
>>86392536

You don't seem to understand "just in time" either. Yes, it is one option that many manufacturers realized lowered costs tremendously. If they didn't adopt it, they would become uncompetitive and would lose their business to competitors. I am not in the mood to give a graduate course in industrial engineering so you will understand. You are going to have to look it up yourself.

Anonymous

WHO is also captured by the CCP but it's besides the point, even if you inflate the numbers 1000% it'd still be a 1/5th of Americans. Still, while the CCP's authoritarianism may be more effective in saving lives I wouldn't trade that for our rapidly declining democracy (it's not much different materially but as the CCP refines it's control and power they consolidate a future that looks more and more totalitarian that would be near impossible to dislodge). I love Wolfe but his use of the CCP as an example of a better system does a disservice to his and the Left's broader argument for socialism. P.S. unfortunately I think Wolff wildly over optimistic. These pressures brought on by inflation and recession won't end in free public transit but a more aggressive police state. The great depression didn't help socialism, it helped fascism.

Lionel Boyd Johnson
>>86392536

Oh no, please professor, school me! Sounds like you didn't understand my point either despite being a big brained industrial engineer. Structuring our economy around profit and competition is a choice, and we could make other choices. In this instance that choice seems to be serving us poorly and is worth thinking about other options.

Anonymous
>>86392536

Can you explain to me why corporations chose "just in time" supply chains? If you can do that, can you explain what would be the incentive that would get them to change back to the old way? I am no industrial engineer, but I play one on the internet. You don't even play one.

Anonymous
>>86468246

The past 2 years China had the longest stretch of normal life. I was there through the event and life returned to normal in May of 2020. That’s until the recent events in Shanghai which were unlike anything we went through in the beginning. I’m not claiming to think it’s a good idea however I would like you to entertain the thought that, what if it wasn’t about Covid at all? Coincidentally there are several dozen bio labs being exposed and they certainly appear to be weaponized. Even if they actually are not, they do appear to be and China has the ability to see all of the same information and then some. What if they were conducting bio warfare drills to practice how they might respond to the use of a biological weapon? It’s an interesting thought exercise and from what I understand, as limited as it is, I think it could make a whole lot of sense. I disagree with your notion they are in control over the WHO. I think it could be argued they had been silent and defensive over knowing the US, through Fauci had been funding research that could be the source of things. They even went directly to Fauci’s guy in order to submit to international cries for an inspection. I’m not arguing strongly one way or another I am claiming that the world seemed very interesting is blaming China for things right up until the FOIA disclosed Fauci’s very large role in the matter and his attempts to attack doctors proposing things that might get Fauci in trouble. It’s difficult not to see much of that as racism. Even after everything we’ve learned I’ll hear of guests going on fox to blame China for 20 minutes without mentioning Fauci. Perhaps that’s not racist and it’s just them wanting a war but… yeah it all feels really racist to ignore one’s own involved while blaming the other party for everything. It could always be stupidity. I won’t count that out as quickly anymore.