Pinned
Wolff Responds: "China and The U.S.: A Delicate Balance" Dated June 10, 2026
00:00
Richard D. Wolff
14K posts
Richard D. Wolff
@profwolff
Host of #EconomicUpdate, Prof. of Economics Emeritus @UMassAmherst, visiting Prof. @TheNewSchool, founder @democracyatwrk. #WeCanDoBetterThanCapitalism
- Corona virus as an excuse? Mutating viruses have always been with us. A rational economic system would have learned to plan and manage them. Capitalism failed to learn because profit was/is its #1 priority. Capitalism caused today’s disaster, not the latest virus.
- When many shortages were reported in the old USSR, communism - the system - got blamed. Now that we suffer many shortages, everything other than the system - capitalism - gets blamed. Dont be fooled.
- Who is the more important trading partner: China (red) or USA (blue)? How drastically the world economy has changed. No wonder US and EU miscalculated how sanctions would "weaken" Russia. Thanks to Henry Hakamaki for the graphic.
- Trump did not bring fascism; it brought him. Fascism is capitalism's harsh, savage response to the divisive social crises it imposes on society (depressions, extreme racial and economic inequalities, etc.). 1/2
- Worst week of unemployment claims in US history was in 1982 @ 695,000 jobless. For each of last 17 weeks, claims were over 1 million. Yet still no gov't hiring program. Total failure.
- Capitalism crashes in 2008. 10 years later, millions have jobs at lower pay, there are more people with fewer benefits, and still more with less job security. Celebrate this disaster as a recovery? The system is the problem.
- What crashed in 2008 was global capitalism, not socialism. What took 10 yrs of lost jobs, homes, savings to “recover” was capitalism, not socialism. The systemic inequality that helped cause the 2008 crash and got worse across the last decade belongs to capitalism, not socialism.
- Ignore word salad debates over this recession. Here's what matters: we live in a system, capitalism, that is deeply unstable, lurching from inflation to recession & back endlessly disturbing our lives, jobs, institutions. End taboo against facing that our system is our problem
- Russia is one of world's largest exporters of oil and gas. If US, European sanctions and/or Russia's responses drive up oil and gas prices, Russia's export revenues will rise and help pay the sanctions' costs. In contrast rising oil and gas prices will feed US inflation.
- Blaming the homeless is not only an example of "blaming the victim." It also lets the economic system off the hook for failing to (1) provide people with enough income to secure decent housing or (2) to make decent housing affordable or (3) both.
- Leaders who saw no moral issues with invading and occupying (for 20+ years) Afghanistan and Iraq are now "morally outraged" by Putin's invasion of Ukraine? That's hypocrisy, not morality.
- Proof that the US election system is "rigged" is the fact that a Trump could be the GOP candidate and a Biden the Democratic candidate. Offering them as the "best" possible leaders our society can produce insults us all.
- Capitalism never solves the problem of slums; it just relocates them. Capitalism never solves the problem of the poor; it just relocates them. Capitalism cannot solve such social problems because it is the problem. #HowCapitalismWorks