Global Capitalism: Biden’s Economic Plans and Likely Results ~~ Richard Wolff with introduction by dmorista

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y9lWJB1jPVQ

~~ posted for dmorista with introduction by dmorista ~~

Introduction by dmorista

In this talk, from May of 2021, Richard Wolff discusses some of the socioeconomic policies that President Joe Biden has already implemented or is/was trying to implement. Wolff notes that both political parties loyally serve the interests of capital, but that they view how to do that somewhat differently. The Republicans tend to pursue policies that reduce the share of the economic output that working people get through wages and benefits, while the Democrats think it is better to provide a somewhat greater share of national wealth and income to working people through mild reformist policies.

He compares Biden's policy goals to: 1). the social policies of Donald Trump; and 2). the social policies of Franklin D. Roosevelt. As Wolff noted Trump represents the most extreme right-wing of the Republican Party and wanted to eliminate all public spending on the social welfare of the bottom half of the country's socioeconomic hierarchy. Trump wanted to eliminate Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, Foodstamps, rental assisstance and so on. Structural impediments stopped him from achieving his larger goals, though he did manage to push through yet another massive tax cut for the rich, rivaling those passed during the Bush the Younger and Obama administrations. And this particular tax cut was given to the well-off at a time when they had benefitted from 20 years a transfer of wealth; moving up from the majority of the population into the hands of the rich. Biden's policies are certainly more humane, but the bar set by Trump was extremely low. Biden proposed to change the tax cut for corporate profits, that the Trump regime cut from 35% to 21%, back to 28% but he immediately cut that to 25% in the face of stiff Republican resistance.

Comparing Biden's proposals to the policies of Franklin Roosevelt shows just how weak and meager they really are. Wolff notes that both Biden and Roosevelt were elected as Centrists, Roosevelt actually ran on a platform of “balancing the Federal Budget” in his 1932 campaign. Only after entering office did Roosevelt realize just how serious the socioeconomic situation was. In addition, Roosevelt worked under sisnificant political pressure from the U.S. working class, as channeled through the major working class organizations of the day; the 2 Socialist Parties, the Communist Party, the unions such as the Congress of Industrial Organizatins (CIO), the United Mine Workers (UMW) and the still forming United Auto Workers (UAW). Any impulses Biden might have to try to push though and reforms on the scale of the New Deal, or even The Great Society, are limited by the much lower degree of organization and mobilization of the Left in current day American Society.

Later in the talk Wolff discusses the economic decline of U.S. Capitalism and how that has been manifested. The U.S. remains a major power, but its position of near supremacy that it occupied in the decades after WW 2 has come to an end. The U.S. ruling class has found that their influence in the world has become seriously diminished. They have not yet come to grips with all the ramifications of this and how it constrains their scope of action, both domestically and in world affairs.