“The road we are on [as] a declining empire, becoming more and more unequal… you don’t need rocket science to understand that’s not sustainable. That situation is going to blow up, and it’s not going to be pretty.
TRUMP’S BILLIONAIRES WILL ACCELERATE AMERICAN DECLINE. DR. RICHARD WOLFF EXPLAINS HOW.
“The road we are on [as] a declining empire, becoming more and more unequal… you don’t need rocket science to understand that’s not sustainable. That situation is going to blow up, and it’s not going to be pretty.”
BY TAYA GRAHAM AND STEPHEN JANIS
JANUARY 28, 2025
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TOPSHOT – Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk gestures as he speaks during the inaugural parade inside Capitol One Arena, in Washington, DC, on January 20, 2025. Photo by ANGELA WEISS/AFP via Getty ImagesTOPSHOT – Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk gestures as he speaks during the inaugural parade inside Capitol One Arena, in Washington, DC, on January 20, 2025. Photo by ANGELA WEISS/AFP via Getty Images
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On the campaign trail and beyond, Donald Trump and MAGA right have repeatedly presented themselves as the true representatives of America’s beleaguered working class. And yet, like the Capitol rotunda on Inauguration Day, Trump’s administration is filled with billionaires, mega-millionaires, and corporate oligarchs whose staggering wealth is increasing year after year while working people struggle to get by. How are people, voters and nonvoters alike, supposed to square this seeming contradiction? In this special post-Inauguration interview, returning guest and legendary economist Dr. Richard Wolff explains how the naked oligarchy on display in Trump’s inauguration and in his administration is not a contradiction, but a clear sign of a society hastening its own collapse under the weight of historic, unsustainable levels of inequality.
Studio Production: David Hebden, Adam Coley, Cameron Granadino
Post-Production: Adam Coley, Cameron Granadino
Written by: Stephen Janis
TRANSCRIPT
Taya Graham: Hello, my name is Taya Graham, and welcome to our special postinaugural report, and it’s an extension of our reporting for our Inequality Watch show. And today we’ll break down what we like to call here at The Real News the Second Gilded Age, and that seems perfectly aligned with Trump’s ascent to power.
Now, the first one occurred nearly 100 years ago, and it didn’t end well. Now the chasm between the rich and poor is as extreme as it was in that era. Now, back then, wealthy industrialists like J.P. Morgan and Rockefeller ran the country while elected officials stood by. Now it’s tech bros like Tesla’s Elon Musk, Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, Sundar Pichai of Google. All of whom, mind you, had front row seats at President Trump’s inauguration. And we thought this was worth discussing in light of his inauguration, which seemed to us like peak Gilded Age.
In fact, there were so many billionaires in attendance and so many in his cabinet — I think it’s more than 10, right? — That we were wondering if it was some sort of fire code violation in the Capitol when there’s more than 50 billionaires in a room. What do you think?
Stephen Janis: Well, I think billionaires are accelerants. So yes, it’s possible that they were treated differently in terms of counting for fire code, yeah.
Taya Graham: I think you’re right. But you know what? In all seriousness, it’s pretty odd that an administration that purports to be the champion of the working class is pretty much run by union busting, employee downsizing, planet killing, and private equity hoarding vulture capitalists.
Now, the reason this seeming contradiction exists and what it means for us and how we can understand it will be the focus of our show today. We’re going to delve into the reasons why we’re witnessing this growing marriage between a boomer and a bevy of tech bros and what it means for all of us, because, as obvious as it might seem, there’s way more to this coalition of a few than meets the eye. Mechanisms that make this work that might surprise you, right, Stephen?
Stephen Janis: Yeah, yeah. No, I mean there’s mechanics to this. This is all purposeful. This is not some sort of surprise. We’ve been building towards this for years. So it’s a feature not a bug of this system, and we’re going to talk about that with Dr. Wolff.
Taya Graham: So Stephen, as we know, the upcoming Trump administration is stacked with billionaires, from Elon Musk to the former worldwide wrestling executive Linda McMahon. Media outlets estimate the cumulative net worth of this incumbent aristocracy is hovering around $460 billion.
Stephen Janis: Wow.
Taya Graham: And that’s why today we’re going to discuss what we like to call an economic imbalance and to see it for what it really is: a scam against humanity. To start, we’re actually going to borrow a phrase from President Trump’s speech, which we’ll listen to in just a moment. You’ll hear how he talks about how elites have extracted wealth and the American dream from the working class.
And that is a critical concept: extraction. Now, technically he said extracted, but we’re going to expand it a little bit. So let’s take a listen, and I think we might actually agree with this statement.
[CLIP BEGINS]
President Donald Trump: For many years, a radical and corrupt establishment has extracted power and wealth from our citizens while the pillars of our society lay broken and seemingly in complete disrepair. We now have a government that cannot manage even a simple crisis at home, while at the same time stumbling into a continuing catalog of catastrophic events abroad. It fails to protect our magnificent, law-abiding American citizens, but provides sanctuary and protection for dangerous criminals.
[CLIP ENDS]
Taya Graham: Now, I think it’s interesting he would use the word “extracted”, and I wouldn’t disagree with the statement that wealth has been extracted from our citizens. It’s a pretty important word when we’re talking about the assorted billionaires that will be running his administration. But it’s also crucial for another reason — Stephen, maybe you can talk a little bit about it.
Stephen Janis: Well, I think we’ve moved into an extractive economy [where] there is no value given to the people who are supposedly building this economy, who are creating this wealth, no value exchange. The idea is we’re not going to give you something, anything meaningful, anything substantive. We’re not going to give you good healthcare. We’re not going to give you the ability to afford education. We are going to extract wealth from you.
And I think that’s the only way you can have this much wealth amassing at the top in an extractive economy. You can’t have it in a balanced economy. And I know there’s some people who say, well, capitalism, whatever. But that’s the system we live in, and that system has been corrupted to the point by this massive wealth into being extractive of us.
And it creates a psychology. It creates a psychology where people actually cheer the people who are oppressing them; we love you. And they build systems that put us in conflict. So it’s important to think about psychologically what that means. We are being extracted. We are not part of an economy. We are part of an extraction system that serves the people that were up on that dais or podium.
Taya Graham: I think that’s an excellent insight.
And I know our guest needs no introduction, but I’m pleased to give him one. Professor Richard Wolff is one of the most renowned and respected economists of our time, and he is celebrated for his ability to unravel the complexities of capitalism and inequality with clarity and depth. As the author of numerous groundbreaking books, including Democracy at Work and Capitalism’s Crisis Deepens, and he’s the host of his own YouTube channel, Professor Wolff has dedicated his career to exposing the structural forces behind our economic system. And his expertise in worker-centered economics and his passion for empowering workers makes him the perfect person to help us understand the political and economic shifts we are witnessing today.
Please join me in welcoming Professor Richard Wolff. Professor Wolff, we are so happy to have you join us again.
Dr. Richard Wolff: Thank you, and I will work hard to live up to your very generous introduction.
Taya Graham: Well, thank you. Well, Professor Wolff, last time you were here, you helped us break down this extractive economy and what consequences it does have for working people. So what did you see on Monday with Trump’s billionaire-stacked inauguration? What do you think people might be missing, and what kind of concrete impact do you think this could have on our lives?
Dr. Richard Wolff: Well, sometimes the most impressive reality about a situation like that is not what’s present, but what’s absent. As a philosopher once said, sometimes absence is the most powerful part of what is present. And that’s how it was for me watching the inauguration. Because for me as a professional economist, the most crucial aspects of the American economy today were carefully and studiously kept away. It was like an absence, which, at least for me, was screaming louder than Mr. Trump or anybody else.
So let me briefly explain, and for that a little history is in order. Many years ago, about 75, at the end of World War II, the United States emerged as the absolutely dominant economic power in the world, a position it had never held before; Before, the British Empire dominated the world. Indeed, what became the United States was a small colony in a corner of that global empire.
In 1945, by contrast, Britain was destroyed. So were Germany and France and Britain and Japan and Russia and China. They were all either destroyed by the war or destroyed before and as a consequence of the war, leaving the United States — And we all know that. The dollar became the world currency. America spread its military bases, 700 of them now all over the world, just to let everybody know who the policeman on the corner was or is. The American economy produced so many goods and services that we could and did help Europe rebuild, et cetera, et cetera. We were dominant. We set up the World Bank, we set up the International Monetary Fund. We literally organized, managed, and ran the world economy. And we made America grow very spectacularly in the ’50s, ’60s, ’70s, ’80s, even into the ’90s. Very impressive.
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But as anyone with the slightest knowledge of history would have known — And there were plenty who did — They said, this is an exceptional moment. You’re not going to have this situation of being the only one at the top. It comes out of the worst war the world has ever seen — And we don’t have that every day, thank God — And therefore it’s going to erode. It’s going to fade. Also, remember that every single empire that the world has ever seen: British, French, German, Dutch, Russian, Greek, Roman, it doesn’t matter, they all went up, and then they all went down. The American empire built up after World War II, went up. So it was only a question of when would it go down?
Here comes the first reality that was nowhere in sight on the inauguration. What are we as a nation going to do? How are we going to go through a declining empire? And lest anyone have a doubt, we are declining, the United States now, the dollar is less and less a global currency. A few years ago, central banks around the world kept 80% of their reserves in the dollar. It was considered as good as gold or maybe better. Now that number is about 40%. The dollar is still important, but nothing like it was.
Let me give you another example. These are big numbers everybody knows. The United States has a group of seven nations, of which it is one, called the G7, the Group of Seven: the United States, Canada, Japan, Britain, France, Germany, and Italy. That used to be the powerhouse core of the economy of the world. The United States as the big one in the middle, and then the other six as its allies. Well, let’s look at it today. If you add ’em all up, they together, all of them, the US and the other six, produce about 26%, 27% of the world’s output.
But there’s another group that has emerged. It’s called the BRICS, B-R-I-C-S, that stands for Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa. And the original five, they started about 15 years ago. Now they are 22 countries.
Now let me tell you very briefly about them. If you add up all the goods and services they produce in a year, the way I just did for the G7, the total portion of world output that they account for is about 35%. Let me remind you, the US and its allies account for 27% world output. BRICS, China and its allies, account for more, much more. They’re an alternative pole in the world economy. That is the more enormous reality about our economy than anything else.
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Stephen Janis: But that brings up a great question, Dr. Wolff, when I was listening to you, I was thinking about this, and yet our economy is not producing as much or not growing in the way you’re talking about the other economies, but we have more billionaires than any other economy. What does that say about the way our economy operates, that even when we’re declining, there is a smaller and smaller group of people becoming wealthier and wealthier and wealthier and wealthier? How are those two…? Those seem contradictory to me. How do we reconcile that?
Dr. Richard Wolff: Not at all, not at all, because it’s exactly what happened in every other economy, every other empire, and it’s easy to understand why. When an economy is going up, the people at the top can afford to be generous. They’re making a ton of money, they’re becoming wealthy. Sure, they can pay an extra 4%, 5% a year to their workers, keep ’em happy, avoid a strike, and there’s so much money in the growth period that you can afford it.
But when the economy goes down, what the people at the top have always done — And are doing now in America — Is those at the top, the CEOs, the people who we all know who they are, they use their wealth and power, shouldn’t surprise you, to hold on. And because they have wealth and power, they can do that, they can hold on. Which means the costs of the downturn, we, the rest of us, it’s offloaded onto us. So what you’re seeing is that the inequality in the United States gets worse.
And look at the irony — I’ll give you a statistic. Earlier this week, the most important research outfit in the world — Oxfam, located in Britain, keeps track of this — Gave their annual report, and it added up the experience of the roughly 3,000 billionaires that exist in the world today. And, as you rightly said, many of them are American, not all by a long shot, but many of them. And here’s the statistic it gave: across the year 2024, just ended, the collective wealth of the 300 billionaires rose by over $6 billion per day.
Taya Graham: Oh my God, that’s incredible.
Dr. Richard Wolff: OK, so look at what I’m telling you. Capitalism as a global system is making those already super wealthy even more super wealthy.
Stephen Janis: But what’s amazing, extraordinary is that you’re saying as our economy declines, as working class people’s lives get worse, their wealth gets more concentrated and higher. That really seems, to me, a horrible prescription for people.
Dr. Richard Wolff: Unfortunately, if we had better leaders, they would be talking to us about it. What are we going to do as a nation, the road we are on of a declining empire becoming more and more unequal? Look, you don’t need rocket science to understand that’s not sustainable. That situation is going to blow up, and it’s not going to be pretty, not even in a country that didn’t have everybody with a gun. We are in a very strange [place]. That’s what our leaders should be talking about. What do we do about it?
Instead — I have to say this, in all honesty. Instead, what I’m watching at the inauguration and in the days since is a kind of lunatic theater. It’s a theater in which the lead actor, Mr. Trump, pretends to be the world’s tough guy. I’m going to take back the Panama Canal. What? [Crosstalk]
Stephen Janis: You’re saying he’s not?
Dr. Richard Wolff: I’m going to snatch Greenland for a golf course. I’m going to make Canada the 51st state, and I’m going to stick it to the Mexican — My God. Every one of those issues, whether it’s drug traffic or anything else, the war on drugs is at least 65, 70 years old. Every president has announced he’s going to fight it, and every single president has lost that fight. We are [crosstalk] with drugs today every bit as much as when I was 10 years younger, 20 years younger, 30 years younger. I’m not fooled, and I don’t think anyone in America is.
The biggest change in drugs is that we, the Sackler family, which just made a settlement, produced enough opioids to kill 700,000 people over the last few years. We don’t even need Mexico. We’ve got a drug problem in which Mexico doesn’t figure.
And as the new president of Mexico said, and she’s quite right, the drug problem is a problem of supply and demand. Part of it is the supply that comes up, in part, through Mexico, but an enormous part of it is the demand. There is no drug trade unless America, as the single largest buyer of that crap, weren’t doing it. I mean, what are you doing? He’s trying to suggest to a frightened America that the problem is over there, the bad Panamanians, the bad Canadians. This is childish. [These are] gestures of desperation.
There’s an old scene that comes to my mind to explain this. It’s in the cowboy movies we all saw when we were younger. It’s when the sheriff can’t prevent the bad guys from riding into town and robbing the bank. And there he looks. The useless sheriff didn’t stop it. So he says, with great bravado, round up the usual suspects. He wants to look like he’s tough because that’s better than looking like the failure he was.
Stephen Janis: That’s a really good point.
Dr. Richard Wolff: [Crosstalk] Trump has been the president before. Let me assure you, during his time as president, inequality in the United States, by all its measures, got worse. Now I don’t want to be unfair — They got worse under Biden too, and they got worse under Obama too, so he is not outstanding. But did he stop it? Not at all.
The tax cut that he gave in December of 2017, the first year of his office, was the worst blow to equality we could have had — Made the government bankrupt because it didn’t have all the revenue that corporations and the rich no longer had to pay. So the government had to borrow, growing the deficit. And who did it borrow from? The corporations and the rich. The money they didn’t have to pay in taxes, they turned around and lent to the government instead, which means we the people are on the hook to repay all that money plus interest because our leader, Mr. Trump, gave them that tax cut. Instead of being shamed, he goes around celebrating it. And we live in a country — And this scares me, this is what’s scares me —
Stephen Janis: It’s pretty weird. Taya, you had a question?
Dr. Richard Wolff: [Crosstalk] We live in a country of denial, and that is a very big danger we have to face
Taya Graham: Professor Wolff, I really appreciate that you brought up the historical context, talking about that, perhaps, we are in an age of decline. When you were last on the show, we were talking about how we might be living in a Second Gilded Age, but now what I’m hearing from you is that we are an empire in decline. Well, just like with the Gilded Age, that didn’t end well. What does it look like for America to be an empire in decline, like on the ground for us regular folks trying to hold onto our jobs? What does the decline of empire actually look like for us?
Dr. Richard Wolff: Well, I’m afraid it means that we are now governed by those people you saw up on the dais during the inauguration. The only dynamic center of the American capitalist system today is high tech, Silicon Valley. Those people now are the ones that are still making money. Everything else is either better done, or more cheaply done, or both, elsewhere. Indeed, the United States’s corporations have moved, ever since the 1970s, in huge numbers.
Look, half the cars produced in China now are produced by subsidiaries of American companies. The abandonment of America is something led by the corporations. Mr. Trump likes to point to the Chinese, but they didn’t do it. They couldn’t make the corporations go there. Those corporations went there because it was profitable.
Here’s my fear: The United States’s mass of working-class people are being prepared to function the way the poor of the rest of the world function. They are the backwater. They are the hinterland. They’re what you see when you leave the capital city and you go to where the mass of people are much, much poorer. Look at it. This government wants to attack social security and Medicare and Medicaid. It wants to take away the few remaining supports.
Look at us another way. When my fellow economists from around the world ask me, they ask me about the minimum wage. The federal minimum wage in this country is $7.25 per hour. It has been at that level since 2009. Every year since then, prices have gone up, some years only 1% or 2%, other years, 9% or 10%. That means for the last 16 years, 2009 to now, the poorest of the poor amongst us, people living on $7.25 an hour, have been savagely abused. Because every year with rising prices, that $7.25 buys you less. What kind of a society goes to people with $7.25 and does that to them? We are seeing levels of cruelty —
Stephen Janis: It’s interesting you bring up that policy, because one of the things that people that blame, liberals that blame, or we blame, is the idea of neoliberalism, where you have public-private partnerships, and that’s led to this bad policy. But I was wondering, are we now, because listening to you right now, what I’m thinking is, are we in the postneoliberal age? Should we just cast aside that boogeyman we use a lot of times to explain bad policies and think about this whole what we’re seeing now as something different?
Dr. Richard Wolff: Yes, it’s different. It is important that you understand over the last 40 years until 10 years ago, we lived in an age called neoliberalism, globalization. You might remember we were told over and over again that it’s good for the whole world that corporations close their shops in Cincinnati and move them to Shanghai, that we will all be better off to get these marvelous… For 30 years. And the corporations went; They had to, their competitors were going, and they would’ve been outcompeted if they didn’t go. China offered cheaper wages than Americans demanded. China offered the biggest growing market in the world because of their size. So every corporation sent its people over there.
I teach in business schools. We teach people if you want to have a successful business, go to where the wages are low and the market is growing. They listened to people like me and they went over there. That’s why this is the area that is growing. We are becoming what they were, and they are becoming what we were, and that’s very upsetting. But you don’t solve it by pretending that it isn’t there. We don’t have the empire anymore.
Let me remind folks, the war in Vietnam, which was a big turning point, was a war between the United States and the Communist Party of Vietnam. The United States lost the war. The people who have been running Vietnam since, to this moment, are the Communist Party who defeated the United States. I know this is upsetting, but you ought to face the reality. In Afghanistan, we went to war against the Taliban. That war is over. We lost. The Taliban now runs the country. In Iraq, we lost. In Ukraine, we are now losing. How many hints do you need? You are not the big cheese in the world anymore. The best rocket, the best missile in the Ukraine War to this moment is a Russian one.
Taya Graham: Professor Wolff, I have to ask you, because you brought up something really interesting about jobs. Basically, manufacturers sending jobs and goods to where it’s cheaper. If Chinese workers can produce a good for cheaper, then they’re going to produce their goods in China. But now President Trump is coming in at least saying that he has a focus on nationalism and protectionism. That might pit the US worker against global economic corporations. So I’m just wondering, how is this going to affect worker solidarity? How is this going to affect businesses? Some of our most important union movements were international solidarity movements. What do you see happening here?
Dr. Richard Wolff: Well, I think you’re absolutely right. We are shifting to a nationalism. That’s because we have to protect our industries because they can’t compete with others. All will blame the Chinese, and they’re all cheating. That’s very boring and very old. It is what every country that loses in the competition says.
But the fact of the matter is, to give you one example, 15 years ago, every automobile company in the world went to work to try to develop the best, cheapest electric car because that’s the wave of the future. And we now have an unqualified winner. One country and one company produced the best, cheapest electric car. It’s called the BYD corporation. And if you’ve never heard of it, it’s because it’s Chinese.
And you know what Mr. Biden, our president, did? He took the tariff — And remember, a tariff is a tax levied by the United States government on United States people, paid to Washington — The tariff of Mr. Biden on the BYD electric car was 27%; Mr. Biden raised it to 100% percent. That means if BYD produces a $20,000 electric car and you in America want to buy it for your company as an input or for yourself as your personal vehicle, you would have to give 20 grand to China to get the car, and then another 100% percent, $20,000, to Uncle Sam as a tax, costing you $40,000, which is why you don’t see BYD cars on the roads in the United States. But if you went to Europe, as I recently did, you’ll see them all over the road.
Here’s the irony: The United States thinks it’s isolating the bad guys around the world. What the rest of the world now thinks? Their job is to isolate a rogue capitalism in the United States. We are putting tariffs on everybody. We’re slapping everyone — Take back the Panama Canal, make Canada the 51st… You know what that looks like? Exactly. We all know what it looks like. Will Americans find it heady to think of themselves as powerful? Not as they understand. That’s not an expression of power. That’s a desperate theater because they can’t face the loss of power that is our reality, and which we could handle if we were honest enough to admit it.
Stephen Janis: Well, it’s interesting you bring that up because now that the Trump administration is saying they’re withdrawing from the Paris Accords and they’re not going to be really competing to build green energy, green products, alternatives, are we just conceding the future to these countries like China? Are we saying, you know what? We’re out of this. If you want a gas guzzler, come to the US, but if you want a nice, cheap electric car, go somewhere else. Are we conceding the future to these people?
Dr. Richard Wolff: Whether we understand it or not, we are making a future in which everybody who wants a green version of whatever there is will be buying not American goods, because they’re not made that way. We are so strong and tough, we won’t do it, and we’re screwing ourselves. We’re shooting ourselves in the foot. Every company in the world that competes with an American company and that buys cars and trucks as part of its business will be buying the Chinese car because it’s the best deal any capitalist around the world can get for a car, whereas the American can’t get it because of the crazy tariff. That means, sure, we’ll have a few more jobs for autoworkers, but everybody else’s job is becoming more uncertain because their employer can’t get the competitively lower priced goods around the world that the American… It’s awful to watch.
[Crosstalk] The American people by telling them, we’re going to protect you. You’re not. You can’t. We live in an interdependent world which the United States helped to create, and now it wants to withdraw, to which the answer that history will give: way too little way too late.
Stephen Janis: Wow, Taya —
Taya Graham: Professor Wolff, I have to ask you this because you made me think about something that’s actually quite personal, which is AI, and I saw that there was a $500 billion promise to create AI infrastructure for OpenAI and other companies. And it is mind boggling to me, especially because it’s not tied to any kind of regulation. And I would say there are a lot of reasons to be concerned about AI, whether you’re concerned about deepfakes being used to spread misinformation, or you’re worried about a friend becoming attached to an AI person instead of a real partner, or if you’re just worried about all the jobs that will disappear because of the chatbots because so many customer service jobs are being wiped out. And it’s even harming our industry as journalists. I know people who are graphic designers and writers that are in big trouble now. Or you could be worried that an AI bot is going to deny your healthcare just like UnitedHealthcare did.
So this seems like instead of our government protecting us, they’re throwing fuel on the fire. Professor Wolff, what are your thoughts on AI and its impact on our jobs, especially in light of this $500 billion promise?
Dr. Richard Wolff: Well, let me break that into two parts. First off, $500 billion, that’s just Mr. Trump bloviating. It has no meaning. And he got attacked by his buddy Elon Musk within minutes of issuing that because there’s no money to do it. It’s just I’m going to do $500 billion. Where are you going to get the $500 billion? Musk really raked him over the coals. How these guys are great buddies after this is going to be a mystery to watch — Unless neither of them listens to what the other one says, which I doubt. So this is all very early, vague speculation.
But now let’s turn to your bigger question: What about AI? My reaction to that is the same as what about computers? What about robots? What about all the big technical advances? They were always vehicles that could be used in different ways. Don’t listen when someone tells you AI or electricity or robots must be this way.
And I’m going to explain it with a simple example because it gets the idea across. Suppose there was a machine, AI, robot, doesn’t matter, that made workers twice as productive as they used to be. So instead of 10 widgets an hour, they could now make 20 widgets an hour. That typical AIG is supposed to allow one person to work the machine and get the output.
OK, here’s what happens in capitalism: The capitalist says, oh, great, he buys the machine, fires half his workers because he doesn’t need them anymore because the other half are twice as productive. What does he do with the money that he saves from the half that he fired? He keeps it; more profit for himself. He’s overjoyed. And that’s how he uses the technical breakthrough.
OK, now let me give you an alternative. Suppose there were an enterprise that looked at the new AI or whatever it is and says, wow, it’s twice as productive. Here’s what we’re going to do: We’re going to buy that equipment or that machine. We’re not going to fire anybody. We’re going to reduce the workday from eight hours to four hours. Why? Because now with the new machine, the AI in four hours can do us twice the work that it used to. We don’t need people to work four hours. We can be the same firm. Instead of firing the people, you lowered the workday.
Now let me ask you something. If you live in a democracy where the majority rule, we know which way the majority would want to go: Give me half my workday off as leisure because I can be more doubly productive. We don’t do what’s democratic, we do what’s profitable for the tiny minority of people who own the business, so they fire half the workers. That’s why we are afraid. It’s not AI that’s the problem, it’s capitalism that uses each technological advance in order to do what they say they’re going to do: maximize profit.
I have taught in business schools. That’s what businessmen and women think their job is, to maximize profit, but that helps the people who earn profit. It doesn’t help the people who live on wages, but they’re the majority. A democratic workplace would make the decisions that are best for the majority. We don’t live in such a system. Capitalism is the enemy of democracy, and it always was.
Taya Graham: Professor Wolff, that is so incredibly powerful what you just said, that we don’t actually need to be afraid of AI, that we need to be afraid of how capitalists might use it [crosstalk] to line their own pockets. I really appreciate your insights.
I almost feel bad that I’m going to ask you such an unserious question now in light of these important issues we’re discussing, but it’s being debated quite hotly across a lot of social media platforms, and that is, did Elon Musk give a Nazi salute? So just allow me to run a clip for you, and then I would like to hear your thoughts, and I’m also going to share with you a few of the social media posts and things people had to say.
[CLIP BEGINS]
Elon Musk: And I just want to say thank you for making it happen. Thank you [gestures]. My heart goes out to you.
[CLIP ENDS]
Taya Graham: So let me just share with you a few of the social media posts that were also made in light of that. Now, @JonathanPieNews posted, “Now, I know what you’re all thinking, but who hasn’t accidentally done a Sieg Heil on their first day in government?” Now interestingly, the Anti-Defamation League wrote that “[…] @elonmusk made an awkward gesture in a moment of enthusiasm, not a Nazi salute, but again, we appreciate that people are on edge.” And what was amazing is Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez responded to the ADL with, “Just to be clear, you are defending a Heil Hitler salute that was performed and repeated for emphasis and clarity.”
Stephen Janis: It’s interesting too, Taya, that the epitome of capitalists there would be associated with a fascist symbology. It’s interesting the way — And I don’t know if Dr. Wolff feels anything about this — But does corporatism lead to fascism when corporatism has too much power and the profit motive becomes too embedded in the political system? Does it become fascist in some sense?
Taya Graham: And what did you think of his gesture?
Dr. Richard Wolff: Well, let me deal with Elon Musk first.
Stephen Janis: OK.
Dr. Richard Wolff: The gesture could mean a variety of things. I’m not inside Elon Musk’s mind. I don’t know what he intended or didn’t, if it were there all by itself. It’s open to interpretation. But Elon Musk has also gone out of his way to make himself aligned with the most right-wing forces in the world. He is now a major supporter of the right-wing party in Germany, a party which is widely considered in Germany to be the inheritor of the Nazi Party of Adolf Hitler. If he were concerned not to have his gestures misunderstood, why in the world would he choose to endorse a political party? Which makes, by the way, everybody else in Germany who doesn’t like this right-wing party, all of the other parties, all of the other parties have made a declaration they will not work with this right-wing party because of its… He’s chosen to go along with that.
He’s also wealthy because of what his parents got out of Apartheid South Africa. You’d think a kid with that in his background — I’m not blaming him for whatever his parents did — But a kid with that in his background might want to go out of his way not to do anything that might suggest that that commitment to Apartheid, which made his family rich, didn’t live on in him. No, this man is taking many opportunities to show that he is. He’s erased tweets — I won’t repeat them — But that also point in that direction.
Given all of that, I would have to join Ocasio-Cortez in wondering what in the world agitated the Anti-Defamation League, which is supposed to be on guard against symbols like this, from bending over for Mr. Elon Musk. Isn’t it enough to see our president do that? Do we all have to mimic this sort of behavior? That would be my first response.
Stephen Janis: Are we headed towards something? As inequality keeps rising, is it inevitable to be a collapse? Is there any way to fix it politically before we get to that point? Or are we in no way able to avoid the consequences of this historic inequality in the Second Gilded Age we talked about?
Dr. Richard Wolff: I don’t predict the future. I don’t believe in it. I can’t do it. I don’t think anyone else can. So “inevitability” is a word that I don’t think, it’s not in my vocabulary.
Stephen Janis: Got it.
Dr. Richard Wolff: I don’t know. I believe it’s always possible to make interventions, to change things, and in any case, that’s what we have to try to do, otherwise we’re not really full citizens and full human beings.
But I want to make it clear: I believe the United States is heading headlong into a dead end economically, and therefore also politically and ideologically. We as a nation were remarkable in the 19th and 20th centuries. We provided roughly from 1820 to roughly 1970 rising real wages for the American working class every decade for 150 years. That made us special. No other working class in any other capitalist country got that story. That’s why millions of people came to the United States from Europe, for example, during the 19th and earlier 20th centuries, because they expected a better deal here than they could get in Europe, and they got it.
Alright, that made us think we were very special. The religious amongst us thought that God somehow smiled more on America than he or she or whatever you think it is smiled elsewhere. But the reality is it had to do with a particular position in the world at that time that we occupied.
I don’t want to take us away. We made an effort, took advantage of that situation, and we did pretty well for a while. That is now over and it’s not coming back. And the question of the world right now is will there be a new empire to replace the American the way the American replaced the British? And will that new empire be Chinese? Is that one option? You bet.
Let me remind in closing, the United States and its G7 allies together comprise somewhere around, let’s be generous, 12% to 15% of the world’s people. The BRICS today, with their 22 countries, comprise roughly 60% of the world’s people. The future is with them, not with us. We can work a deal, we can work an accommodation, we can make it work for both sides, but we have to be willing to do that. Instead, our leaders are full of bravado, and ugly bullying, and we’re going to shut you down and close you off and bomb you into the — Wow. That’s not an auspicious sign for a loser.
And I know that’s hard for Americans, but that’s the reality. But we can make it work. I believe so, and we can make it a good time for the American people, if not for the billionaires. But we have to face the situation we are in and how to make the best of it. We are not doing that, and we’re losing precious years while we go through these desperate gestures of self delusional make-believe.
Stephen Janis: Well, thank you Dr. Wolff.
Taya Graham: Professor Wolff, thank you so much. Those are some hard truths that I think we all need to accept and understand so that we can chart a path forward that will actually benefit the majority of us.
Stephen Janis: Well, it’s interesting because the picture he paints, it makes Trump seem even more inevitable because if you’re in decline and wealth inequality is increasing, you’re only going to have one emotion that comes out of that, which is anger and resentment. If you don’t, as he points out, acknowledge it and say, look, this is a new reality. We’re not the same as we were 50 years ago. We have to acknowledge it before we can get through it. So what you have —
Dr. Richard Wolff: What Mr. Trump is doing is cashing in unjustified fear and anger, but carefully doing his job, focusing it away from the billionaires, away from the capitalist inequality, and making us learn to hate the Chinese, and maybe now the Panamanians, and the Canadians, and the Mexicans. It’s disgusting, but you understand the logic of why it’s unfolding that way.
Taya Graham: Professor Wolff, thank you so much for making that so clear for us. We hate to let you go, but maybe when you leave, you’ll just give us the promise that you will join us again soon.
Dr. Richard Wolff: I’d be glad to. I believe in these kinds of conversations. I think that The Real News Network is doing a great job producing them and disseminating them. That’s what the country needs. If Americans get a chance to understand the situation, something other than the drumbeat of the mass media, then we have a chance. So I’m as much in your debt as you ever are in mine.
Taya Graham: Thank you so much, Professor. That was very kind.
Dr. Richard Wolff: Good to talk to you.
Stephen Janis: Good to talk to you too.
Taya Graham: You as well.
So, Stephen, I have some thoughts. Do you have anything you want to say before I get started?
Stephen Janis: Well, again, I think it was interesting that everything he said, the psychology of it, is so natural. As a country loses its position of dominance, it turns in on itself, and there’s nothing more turning — And then meanwhile, there’s a few people, fat cats who are profiting off that decline. And that’s why we have this extractive economy, not an economy that improves people and their material existence, but actually puts them in a horrifying psychological position of being extracted from. So what he said made a lot of sense and really explains a hell of a lot.
Taya Graham: And it’s an extraction and distraction economy, which is fueled by those social media billionaires.
Stephen Janis: It’s so true. You need both distraction and extraction at the same time.
Taya Graham: So as we reflect on these sweeping promises and executive orders that President Trump has unleashed in his first days back in office, it’s clear we are facing a profound moment in American governance, and one that demands careful scrutiny, honesty, and compassion. From the deployment of ICE agents to Chicago to the aggressive push for more drilling, these policies seem to serve a really narrow set of interests, consolidating power, deepening inequality, and widening the chasm between the billionaire class and the rest of us. And let’s be clear: these moves are not just policy decisions. They are calculated steps towards entrenching a system of oligarchy where the very wealthy few dictate the terms of our lives.
When you see Tesla’s Elon Musk, or Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg, or Google’s Sundar Pichai, or Apple CEO Tim Cook, or Amazon’s Jeff Bezos literally sitting at the right hand of our president, does that not concern you? Don’t you think they will leverage their money and power for more money and power? The appointment of individuals like Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswami, and even Linda McMahon, and other billionaires to positions of power only underscore this reality. These are people who epitomize wealth hoarding and corporate influence, now wielding even more control over public policy. Musk, appointed to oversee government efficiency, has made his billions breaking unions and hollowing out the very safety nets that working families depend on. Oh, and I think Vivek Ramawwami, I think King Musk sent him packing.
But Tuesday, Jan. 21, we saw the anniversary of Citizens United. It’s an infamous case that gave corporations a say, literally a First Amendment protection to use their money as a form of speech. How are regular folks supposed to compete against the power of billions in lobbying dollars? Money talks, and billions can talk over us.
What we’re witnessing isn’t even an oligarchy; that might be more pleasant. What we’re about to experience is more frightening: a government that is run like a company store, where we have no other options and are forced to buy what they’re selling.
And just let me expand on that a little bit. So there was a time before unions were able to push back against rapacious capitalism when people lived in what were called company towns. Miners in particular were subject to these feudal arrangements. Employees lived in company-owned homes on company-owned land. They bought food and essentials from company-owned stores, and then they went and worked in the mine. The point is that every aspect of their lives was monetized and turned into profit. And if they lost their jobs, they lost everything.
Well, I think we’re headed towards something similar in outcome, but different in how it’s implemented. And that is how this extractive capitalism works: to extract from us constantly and mine our lives for personal profit.
It’s drilled down into facets of our personal existence that were once unthinkable. Zuckerberg and Musk literally make money every time we post something about ourselves. A picture of our birthday or an anniversary fuels the attention economy for their profit. The platform Musk now uses to impose his political will was, in large part, fueled by our industry, journalism, as we posted our stories and worked just to get a few crumbs of attention from his vast digital audience. And even worse, our worth was measured and is still measured by how many followers we have. In other words, our value as journalists is tied to how much we can enrich a tech bro, and that is not a great idea for journalistic integrity or even for a steady paycheck.
And if you want to get some of that scrip to spend at the company store, maybe you should pick up Trump’s meme coin. It’ll probably be part of the official reserve currency soon [both laugh].
But in relation to the company store analogy with our healthcare system, your healthcare insurance is often tied to your employer. If you are sick, you have no idea how much it will cost. You have no idea [if] your insurance will even cover it, and you could even lose the job that provides the needed health insurance. And if your debts are overwhelming, you try to purchase a digital lottery ticket of a GoFundMe page so that you can hope to pay off the debts that have been incurred by the private equity firms that have turned US medical care into a nightmare.
But I’m going to change my tune a little bit. I’m going to ask us to do something that might be the only option left: resist, resist it all. Tell them to take their overpriced medical bills and stuff ’em. Tell ’em to take their overpriced cars and park them permanently. Tell them to take their rents jacked up by algorithms and pay it themselves. And let’s stop creating content for and arguing amongst ourselves so that Zuckerberg can take Judo classes or buy another yacht. Let us all say enough is enough. Let’s resist making a few rich people richer and richer. Let’s resist the Second Gilded Age and end it now.
Stephen, thank you for being patient with me [Janis laughs]. I had to get that off my chest.
Stephen Janis: I totally understand. when you listen to some of this stuff that Dr. Wolff says, it affects you because you want to feel empowered on some level. And so I appreciate that.
Taya Graham: Well, I want people to know that we can resist. And I want to thank everyone for watching, for being here, for listening, and for caring. Until next time we see you, stay informed, stay passionate about your politics, and stay compassionate to your fellow Americans. Remember, united we stand, divided we fall. Let’s try to find some unity, because we’re going to need it. Thanks for joining us.
