30 Minutes to learn about the EMPIRE s demise "Most People Have No Idea What's About To Happen" | Richard Wolff's Last...

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Jan 16, 2025

Richard D. Wolff is an American economist and professor emeritus at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. He is known for his critiques of economic inequality and his advocacy for worker cooperatives as a way to empower individuals and address systemic issues within the economy. Through his books, lectures, and public appearances, Wolff explores topics such as economic democracy and alternative economic models.
see Also Jean Chretien ‘Empires disappear’: Jean Chretien on the U.S. under Trump https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PqLPN4-vHzY

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before I start I have to ask you to understand that old adage that if you

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don't like the message please don't take your anger out on the messenger I am

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going to be describing to you as best I can what the situation is with the

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United States's economic system which has a name it's called capitalism and it

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is to give you a hint of where we're going it is a system in very deep doodoo

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it is in the greatest difficulty that I have ever seen in my life and you can tell from my white hair that I've been

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around a while I never expected to see what I am experiencing and I imagine for

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many of you it is the same unless you are committed to something my

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psychotherapist wife explains to me as the problem of denial not a river in

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Egypt but an inability to confront what it is that's going on because it's

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frightening it's a very human thing to do it's like a little child who puts his

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or her hands in front of her face when there's a scary dog in the neighborhood because she still imagines at age three

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that if you don't see it it isn't there and if you don't see what's going on around us then perhaps it isn't there

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and that is something which our political leaders and our cultural leaders and our economic leaders that's

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one thing they all have in in common with very few exceptions namely a

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commitment to denial so my presentation today is going to try to break through

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all the mechanisms of denial that surround us in order to tell you what I

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think is going on I'm not infallible I make mistakes like everybody else but

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this is the fruit of a lifetime of observing us capitalism which I was born

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in the United States and Young Ohio I've lived and worked here all my life I have never seen anything like the situation

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we are in now and to give you the framework and then jump in I think that

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the history of the world is a sequence with interruptions but a sequence of

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Empires the Greek the Roman the Persian the Egyptian the Chinese I mean I could

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go on and they all have something in common they are born usually out of the

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demise of another Empire they evolve and change over a period of time running from a few decades to a few

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centuries and then they die they pass away the most recent one perhaps the most and best studied was the British

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Empire which depending on how you want to count goes from around the 16th

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century to the end of the 19th more or less so three or four centuries depending on how you come and out of the

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disintegration of the British Empire literally punctuated by the war the

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independence war that swirled around Boston right where you are a part of that Empire broke away and in an

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important lesson the Empire denied that this was building even though it was

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building across the entirety of the 18th century denied it and then in 1776 the denial blew up in its face as

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the colonists here in this part of the British Empire by the way a relatively small relatively unimportant part of the

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Empire wanted its independence and a war was fought which to the surprise and

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shrin of the British Empire and George III sitting on his throne in England the

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British lost not to be forgetful let me remind you that in 1812 they tried again

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and they lost again and with that set in motion the

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disintegration of the British Empire which end Ed in World War I out of it

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emerged the American Empire American capitalism across the 19th century

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resolved certain key internal contradictions holding them back most notably the bizarre coexistence in this

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country of a capitalist Northeast and Midwest and a slave South that was

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resolved by the willful destruction of slavery by the capitalists remember the

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Civil War is the expropriation without compensation of

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the single most important wealth of the south in this country the slave the

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slave was emancipated and thereby the white Master impoverished the very Stark

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disregard for the sanctity of private property and capitalism having destroyed

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its competitor with enormous violence took off starting in 1870 the United

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States capitalism had a century of economic growth the most amazing thing

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is if you look at the statistics crude as they are especially in the early years the United States grew

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uninterruptedly for that Century roughly 1870s to the

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1970s every decade real wages of workers were high higher than the decade before

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even across the Great Depression profits grew even faster so you had this bizarre

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situation quite rare in the world of a capitalism that was able to give Rising

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profits to its capitalists and Rising wages to the mass of its workers with of

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course the exception of those workers with the bad luck to not have been born

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white very important that they sink in while why because if you do something

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like this if you have a century of economic growth under an economic system

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like capitalism It Isn't So surprising that you think of the United States as

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exceptional because in that regard it was if you're religious perhaps you think God likes Americans better than he

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or she likes other people if you're not religious you will attribute it to who

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knows what entrepreneurship my professor used to like to say whatever in the world that's

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supposed to be but it was exceptional and Americans whatever there other orientations took on the notion that we

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live in an exceptional place and they then really ran with that ball and began

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to imagine that this exceptionality was somehow

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inherent and so it would last forever it was upward and onward the American

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economy and it would carry our culture around the world to become the world's

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culture our political system would be the model our military would push away

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those backward people who wanted to resist it became and I use this word

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carefully crazy and of course when the signs began to emerge that this Empire

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the United States Empire after aund Year rise up was beginning to show the signs

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of decline of peing of breaking it's not

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surprising that the leaders of such a system with such a history would be deep

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into denying what had happened not seeing

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what was exploding around them over the last few days Americans have been

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confronted yet again with the level of violence committed every day somewhere in this

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country by the police against the Citizens and again there are people who

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want to blame it on this or that particular policeman or woman who will

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not see that this is a social phenomena it has been going on for a long time and

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it is getting worse this the same issue it's the same denial okay what exactly

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is being denied let's begin and I apologize I'm going to begin with economics but that is what I know best

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and that is what I have studied all my life and so if I'm going to be useful to you I want to share at first what I know

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best over the last 40 years roughly 1980 to now we have seen an all economists of

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all political persu equations understand this and see it we all use basically the

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same numbers and with a few exceptions of course always we come to the same conclusion over the last 40 years there

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has been a radical redistribution of wealth from the bottom

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and the middle to the top and the more top you get the top 10% have done really

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well the top 5% even better the top 1% even better than that and the top one

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tenth of 1% the best of all and you know them because in our society we agulate

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them I'm talking about Bill Gates or Elon Musk or Warren Buffett or Fillin

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the blank you know them our culture makes sure you know them they became

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much richer the top 10% became richer all across those 40 years this was

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partly because they're very important that you understand this it was partly

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because we changed the tax laws in this country we relieved taxes from

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corporations and the rich and we switched them onto the middle and bottom

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it was done by Republicans it was done by democrats it didn't matter who was in

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The White House or who was controlling the houses of the Congress the Democrats

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did it a little less quickly the Republicans were a bit more int tense speed varied content did not even more

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important than the changes in taxes was the phenoma of the relationship between

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capital and labor that is corporations and business on the one hand and the

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massive people employees on the other as I've told you real wages went up for a

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century 1870s 1970 why 1970 do I pick that now I can

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tell you because that's when real wages in America stopped Rising absolutely

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epic making change what is a real wage it's the amount of money you get

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adjusted for the prices you pay so for example if your wages go up 10% you

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might feel good but if all the prices you have to pay went up by 10% you're no better off with a 10% bigger money wage

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than you were without it because the prices have adjusted we all know bad in economics so we don't use money wages we

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use what's called real wages wages understood in terms of what it can

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afford you to buy Goods Services food clothing shelter entertainment education

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medical care whatever real wages Rose in other words the money wages workers had

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from 1870 to 1970 Rose more than the prices did so they really got more stuff

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that they could afford to buy in the 1970s that stopped and it has never

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resumed the American working class today earns in terms of what it can afford to

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buy the average American worker earns now what he or she did in

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1978 try to wrap your head around no more real wage increase for a country

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that had enjoyed steady real wage Rises for a this is a traumatic event how is it

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handled in the United States denial I won't embarrass you by asking how many

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of you know what I just said to be the case how many of you have dwelt in your

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mind on what it might do to a population used to a rising wage when it is no

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longer available there was no discussion at the time or since no debate in this

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country what do we do about all of this the closest you got were vague gestures

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in which somebody says gee the middle class seems to be fading away as if this

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were I don't know some sort of cosmic effect or maybe the result of sunspots

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or allergies or who knows what but an analysis either of why it happened or of

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what its consequences were no no no nothing serious well let me tell you

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what some of the results were number one by far the most important socially the

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women of the United States left the home where they had been sequestered for the

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earlier parts of American history and had to go out and do wage labor on mass

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the only ones who had been doing that beforehand were black and brown women they long been doing it cuz they had to

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and the poorest among the whites but now suddenly all women all the wives and

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mothers had to go out there was no other way to sustain the fantasy of growth of

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the American dream of what had been experienced in the previous Century the

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second most important effect Americans began to realize that the only way they

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could participate in further growth of consumption the way they had been led to

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believe was somehow inherent in the American Experience besides sending

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their wives out to work besides following a career as a worker in a

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factory you could now go back to work and be a greeter at Walmart's but beside

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that you could borrow money in the 1970s the banks of the United States

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decided that the consumer to whom they had never lent money before they would

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now lend money to in other words the credit card which until then had been

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American Express in the hands of rich people and businessmen would now become

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socialized everybody's wallet would be crammed full of plastic cards live off

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them and so the American working class from around the 1970 to the present

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accumulated debt we are a debt ridden Society in the way we never were before

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we became Pioneers not in covered wagons going west but in what we could cram

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plastic in our wallets all the growth of consumption in the last 40 years has

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been based on women's labor women's earnings and debt families have become

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much more complicated institutions to survive we have the highest divorce rate

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in the world we put our families under levels of pressure that would be

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impossible for anyone to sustain American women consume more psychotropic

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drugs than any other population on the planet why because they are druggies no

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because we put them under impossible pressures which blew up the family since

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the mother was what held the emotional life of so many families together and she was now as exhausted as the husband

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coming back from her hours of work the Empire's Foundation is beginning to

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crack well you keep assuming more debt which the American working class did it

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borrowed it had borrowed with government support for its house that's how mortgages developed for those of you who

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don't know mortgages were never given to workingclass people to buy a home until the Great Depression to get us out of

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the Great Depression the government took the step of guaranteeing the mortgages so the banks could lend without a risk

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otherwise they wouldn't have cuz they never did the American homeowner Society is a product of the government not of

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private Enterprise which was too greedy and too frightened to ever do it home

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loaning then the car had to be paid for with loans CU working class couldn't afford it then the credit card so you

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could buy everything and then in the last 20 years a new debt inness the

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college student so by now the family is dying floating in levels of debt it

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cannot support cu the underlying wage didn't go up just the debts and it doesn't take a PhD in economics although

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I have that for you to understand that if the underlying wage doesn't go up you can't keep accumulating debt because the

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time will come and it's called 2008 and that's why that song is so appropriate

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when the credit system exploded cracks in the Empire this system is so

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committed to inequality that not only did it grow over the last 40 years as

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wages stopped rising of course where would would workers income go they

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couldn't grow their wages were flat but they were becoming more productive all the time the last 40 years are the

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computer the robot artificial intelligence all of that workers productivity goes up workers wages are

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flat wages are what the employer gives you productivity is what you give the

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employer if what the employer gives you is flat and what you give the employer keeps Rising guess what you have

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inequality you're taking all your growing out put and giving it to one

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small class of people employers are 1 2 3% of our population if that they get it

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even across covid-19 pandemic inequality got worse and what did we do to the

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working class after we gave them 40 Years of losing everything their families falling apart their position in

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American society they're growing wealth a kind of affirmation that somehow

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you're doing better at all of that's taken away then we hit them with covid then we hit them with an inflation and

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now we're hitting them with Rising interest rates let me frighten you if I may if what I've said hasn't done that

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job already there is an example in history of another working class over a

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small number of years being hit with economic blows on a scale of what's

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Happening Here the example is Germany and here's how it works in the second

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half of the 19th century as the British British Empire is declining the United States is not the only competitor

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looking to replace the British there is another one Germany World War I defeats

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Germany Britain with its allies defeat Germany throw them out of the

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competition wipe them out impose at the end a reparations they couldn't possibly

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pay the German working class which had been built up across the 19th century to

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believe it was creating a whole new globe in German it's called the that's

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like the German Empire and it had you know territories in Asia territories in Africa and so on all that was smashed

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when the unthinkable happened in 1914 to 1918 Germany was defeated the empire was

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taken away literally the British took the colonies in Africa away from the Germans and made them British colonies

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everything for them to destroyed it was a trauma for the German working class it

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ended in 1918 with defeat within four years late 22 early 1923 literally a

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century ago Germany then experienced the worst inflation in modern times anywhere

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in the West in a period of 9 months the German currency went from six deut Mark

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to the dollar to 4 trillion deut mark Mark to the dollar prices doubled over

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weeks at a time every hour of the day any savings accumulated by a German

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family and they were very frugal were wiped out six Generations saving money

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had enough money put away to buy a quar pound of butter they were done and 5

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years after that in 1929 the Great Depression hit Germany it was too much

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you cannot hit a work class even the German working class which was the best

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educated most productive and most Progressive working class anywhere in

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Europe no contest even that it was too much and in 1932 those German people

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overwhelmed by what they had been put through turned around and supported a

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little Austrian with a black mustache Adolf Hitler and you know the rest of

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the story where just living out here we go the same sad

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scenario denial not explaining to people the foundation of what they're assuming

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not talking honestly about its disappearance the cracks what it means

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when your Empire has that fun ride up begin to be replaced by the much less

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fun ride down we're in very deep trouble but the

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last half cent C we have benefited enormously by the fact that there's one international currency money it's the US

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dollar it's as good as gold because it it literally functions like gold that's

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over Ukraine simply speeds up the process China Russia now Saudi Arabia

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Iran Venezuela and many more countries are signing up for another International

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currency and it shouldn't come as a big surprise whose currency that is it's the

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currency of the People's Republic of China China shows all the signs of a

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rising Empire matching all the signs of a declining Empire here you may not like

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that information you may be upset by it that's your business but to pretend it

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isn't there let me give you just some numbers I'm an economist we do that one

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of the things we do as economists is we look at the size of an economy to gauge

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relative economic power and the number we use it's crude like all numbers but

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it gives you an idea it's called GDP it stands for gross domestic product it's a

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measure of the output of goods and services in one calendar year so it

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helps us if we look at it and we measure it and it's measured for every country on this Planet it gives us an idea of

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the relative size okay let's now do a comparison of three countries Russia

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China and the US to get a sense of their economic wealth their economic power

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their economic footprint if you like in the world to give you an idea of and if

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you didn't know this think about what that might mean so I'll start with Russia the GDP most recent year of

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Russia it's about 1 and A5 trillion the GDP of the United States last year

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was $21 trillion do you understand Russia has

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never been and is not now anything like a serious economic competitor of the

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United States it never was it never came close it may have had some nuclear

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weapons to worry about it may have had political influence but like an economic

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unit only people systematically denied the simple statistic I just gave you

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could believe that Russia has $1.5 trillion GDP the United States alone 21

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you know who has a bigger economic footprint than Russia Italy United

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States is allied with Britain France Germany Italy and many other countries against Russia if you put them all

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together it's like 30 maybe 35 trillion dollar against Russia with and a half

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what are you talking about a war this is a war between David and Goliath and

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you're not going to be happy with who is playing which role think about it now China what's the GDP of China ready

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$175 trillion that's a competitor not Russia

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China that's the Empire emerging not Russia

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China and why easy to explain over the last 25 or 30 years annual growth of GDP

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how fast is the economy growing here in the United States 2% maybe slightly more

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2.3% somewhere in there let's be generous 2 to 3% us average annual

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growth China average annual growth 6 to %. end of conversation that's why China

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went from being one of the poorest countries in the world to being the competitor of the United States one of

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the richest you know what it's like it's a story a little like the colony in

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North America being a place for Furs and then becoming the new Empire so that the

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roles between Great Britain and its Colony were reversed now Britain is our

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Colony as any honest appraisal of the relationship between these two countries would immediately acknowledge in Britain

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one of the most common jokes you can hear is that when the United States tells Britain to jump the response of

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Britain is how high it's a question China has overtaken the United States in

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dozens of fields particularly the highest Tech ones young people around

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you are using Tik Tock that's Chinese as a social media what's going on the

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United States doesn't know what to do having not learned the lessons having

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not understood what denial means for a long time they denied because to see the

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rise of China is to take a step in the direction that might make you confront

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what's happening to you and that's a taboo finally the United States figures it out and what does it do as if it

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learned nothing from its history it tries Warfare it tries to slow down to

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stop maybe even to reverse history just like Britain did Mr Trump declared a

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trade war against China you remember it's not that many years ago he applied

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sanctions he applied tariffs he did everything he could to stop to reverse

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it none of it worked it was one big fat failure now we are in a war we the US

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and its allies with the most important Ally China had Russia that's what's

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going on in Ukraine it has got nothing whatever to do with that sad country

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suffering this war talk about being in the wrong place at the wrong time that's

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the truth of Ukraine all the rest is propagandistic Foolery on both sides

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this is about weakening the Ally of China which Russia is when the war

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started Mr Biden predicted the Russ couldn't last a few weeks with this

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Armada of countries and weapons and wealth and new name it he referred to

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what they were doing as the mother of all sanctions which it was greatest sanction program ever apply Russia

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wouldn't last the ruble would be valueless within weeks all of that 100%

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wrong the Russian economy bubbling along pretty well took a dip right after came

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back most of the way you know why because the sanctions mainly sto buying

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oil and gas which is Russia's Lifeline that's what Russia is an exporter of oil and gas I'm exaggerating but it's the

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basic story and Europe said we wouldn't buy it anymore and that would have crippled Russia except Russia found

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other buyers it's not a complicated story China bought more India bought

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tons more Saudi Arabia is reorganizing its economy Pakistan is making important

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agreements with the Chinese and the Russians On The World Isn't guess what

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controlled by the United States it's over it's all around you the United

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Nations took a vote on Ukraine the majority of countries did not agree with

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the United States they either voted on the side of Russia or they abstained they refused to participate it's over

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but you live in an environment which needs to deny it the divisions in our society become worse with each passing

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day because they're grounded in a reality that isn't changing inequality

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as I'm speaking to you is continuing to get worse corporations are working as

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hard as they ever did to pay no taxes the mass of people are suffering on a

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scale that is unspeakable the inflation we're still at prices are going up

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roughly twice as fast as Wages that's a destruction of the working class prices

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are going up twice the rate of wages this is impossible you can't do this

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without explosions now the explosions are happening in our country so they

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explode how by taking it out on one another crime

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bitterness resentment a politics of scapegoating I mean how else explain

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Preposterous Notions that become serious this is a country United States of

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32530 million people the biggest estimate I've ever seen of undocumented

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immigrants in our country says 10 million okay there's no way 10 million

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of the poorest people there are immigrants from Central America are the

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cause of the difficulties of a capitalist economy of 330 million people

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that's silly that's on a level you know that an elementary school kindergarten

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kid wouldn't come up with something as off the chart as that you're desperate I

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understand that you've been suffering you have you have a right to be angry and upset no question you do you have

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been screwed in this system having been led to believe by those 100 years that

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the opposite was waiting in store for you instead you're being being slapped and whacked and deprived with no end in

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sight I teach at the University I'm surrounded all the time with people in 18 19 into their 20s they are not happy

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this generation they don't see good jobs they don't see good Futures they don't see any of it they were led by their

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parents and this culture to expect what they now know they're not going to get

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and they want some answers too the most recent G poll indicates that a majority

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of Americans ped randomly 35 years of age and younger when asked would you

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rather live in a capitalist or a socialist economy the majority say

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socialist you know after half a century of ideological pressure against

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everything social that I grew up in I'm a product of that this is amazing that

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the point of view could be twisted like this and when you talk to students as I do about this all the time I quickly

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learn the polling is correct but it's not that they like socialism they have a clue what it is those votes that polling

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is because they are angry at Capital they know that that system is not for them socialism I mean let's try that but

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it's not that they like socialism it's that they don't like capitalism but that has to be faced I'm not making these

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numbers up you can't come away from what I've just said with an imagination that

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all is well in this Empire but I'm not done now we're blaming Russia what

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Russia invaded I've been a victim of war in my own family my own life I'm against war war is no way to solve problems the

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Russians shouldn't could have done something else should have done something else I get that but like with every war you have to ask why did it

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come to this Russians have suffered from War as much as any other country in the

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last century they're not going to go into a War easily and quickly they're not like the United States upon which no

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war has been fought in the last century both world wars killed more Russians

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than anybody else they know so why you have to ask why we don't so let me end

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with military since the end of World War II the United States has invaded small

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countries repeatedly violating Norms rules based inter AAL order it invaded

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Korea it invaded Vietnam it invaded Iraq it invaded Afghanistan it lost all of

35:07

them the wars were lost Korea Vietnam they all were lost the Communist Party

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of Vietnam took over that country the Taliban took over Afghan I could go on

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they lost they didn't win they lost and if you look at the line between the

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Russians and the ukrainians it has moved Westward there is there is no question

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of who's winning and who's losing only in the minds of people committed to

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denal are these things going on I'm not asking you to endorse either side in

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this war I'm not asking you to endorse China or the Chinese system I'm just

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asking you and I do this with all my public speaking I'm asking you look at

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the reality you have in front of you don't be afraid the danger lies in

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denial not in facing it and if we face it there is a lesson to be learned from

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the British Empire after two attempts to militarily force the United States back

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into the British Empire after those two efforts had failed the British Empire

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stopped trying and decided instead to try to work out a relationship with the

36:25

United States which it did not the greatest job but did a pretty good job

36:30

the biggest waffle came in the US Civil War when the British seriously considered siding with the South they

36:38

didn't but they came close after that though once they could see who won there

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they went with the winner a very courageous move once the war was over but maybe we have to learn that we have

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to live with the People's Republic of China it has virtues we could learn from

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them just as they could learn from the United States and that to be a better plan than what they're doing now the

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American 7eventh Fleet is in the China Sea there is no Chinese Fleet on our

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border we are there we are threatening them we always have this is a country

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that is now our economic competitor its Global political reach is

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extraordinary and it has four times the number of people we do and now that

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they're close mostely allied with India you're talking about the two largest

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countries by population on this planet you better come to terms with them

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because the prospect of defeating that in a war that's a war everybody loses so

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you don't have that option unless you're crazy we have to stop the denial and

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face what is going on otherwise we are going to get ourselves

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into one mess after another and who's going to do it the corporations that are

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profiting from this system unlikely the rich who have become richer for 40 years

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are they likely to question the system that has rewarded them that way unlikely

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you know who's going to do it if anybody does it's the mass of the people the employees of this culture or if you

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allow me the old language the working class because it's their ass that's on

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the line they're the soldiers and they're the taxpayers who keep the system going and that's probably why

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denial has won over honest confrontation with our reality Marx once said that the

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capitalist class will in the end destroy itself the question for all of us and

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all of you is will we let that system take us down with it