 So let's go to Richard Wolff. We got a video of him. He's on David Paxman's show. We know David Pakman, right? Pretty well. It's actually on Kyle Kalinsky's show who's showing a segment from the Dave Pakman show. So they left us cooperating to get Richard Wolff in front of us, many people as possible. All right, so let's, oh, I need my headphones. Let's put this on. Let's listen to Richard. We probably won't get by more than a couple of seconds before I have to stop him because of all the falsehoods he is speaking. Here we go. Whoops, oh, I'm pressing the wrong button in the wrong place. Why in the world were we unprepared? We had companies that can produce masks and gloves and ventilators and all of that, but they didn't do it. And I know why. I'm an economist. What I study, it isn't profitable. No company wants to produce masks by the millions, store them in warehouses around the country where the population is concentrated, make sure that they are clean, make sure that they don't deteriorate, replace those that do, watch the whole thing. And then you never know when the next virus will be. Will you have to sit on all of this for two years, for six years, for 20 years? So it's not profitable. It's not a wrap. So no. So the first example is, well, we weren't prepared. We didn't have PPE, we didn't have masks, we didn't have all these things. All these things that he says should have been produced by the private sector because the private sector has the manufacturing, has all that, of course, he doesn't believe a private sector should even exist. But wait a minute. In the world in which we live, not my capitalist utopia and not his capitalist hell, in the world in which we live, who is responsible for those things? Whoops. Who has actually positioned itself to be responsible for these things? Who takes on the responsibilities of so-called public health and dealing in public health crises? Who has said, don't worry, we got this. We are responsible for providing all this stuff. It's not the private sector. The private sector's not taking on that responsibility. You're right, there's no profit in it. Not the way the market's structured today. So who has? Well, government has. Governors said, we, the central planners, the brilliant central planners, the ones that Richard Wolff would like to hand over the entire freaking economy too. Not just one sector, the entire thing too. No, no, we, the central planners, will take care of providing. We have strategic reserves. We have warehouses. We can take care of providing PPE. We don't want the private sector to do this. Indeed. We will dictate what hospitals invest in. We will dictate how many hospital beds are available. We will dictate how much PPE hospitals can buy because we don't want them to be wasteful because if they buy too much or they expand too large or if they have too many hospital beds, then what is going to happen? Cost of healthcare will go up and we, the government, will have to bear those costs and we, the government, will be blamed for it. So how can you blame? What dishonesty, what naked dishonesty is to blame? Private industry for the clear cut failure of government. Now, we could discuss what would happen in a free market. That is how these provisioning would happen in a free market. But the idea that once the government has taken over the entire space in which you function, i.e. provisioning for healthcare, particularly something like a pandemic, private industry should still provide it, should still, you know, have stores. I mean, that's absurd and Richard Wolff knows that. This is why he's so damn dishonest. So it's just, now what would happen in a free market? So who would have an incentive in a free market where, and the true capitalism where the government was not storing PPE and masks and all these other things? Who would actually provide this stuff? How would it come into being? Well, first, hospitals would be much better prepared because there is profit in being prepared because when, if you're prepared, more patients come to you during a crisis, you treat them better, you get paid, you're not providing a service for free. So hospitals, indeed, good hospitals like the Cleveland Clinic and other hospitals had plenty of reserved beds. They had emergency plans to take over motels, to take over other buildings that were vacant and turn them into emergency hospitals. Indeed, the private sector, the hospitals would truly behave like private enterprises where well, you know, had the capacity to deal with this virus very well. And if you add to that, if you add to that, the fact that once the demand was real, once it was clear that there was demand, what happens under capitalism? Well, if demand is high for face masks, let's say, and the supply is limited, what happens? Prices go up. If prices go up, what incentive does that create? It creates incentive to produce a lot more. And if you produce a lot more, then that's how you solve the problem of shortage of supply. And indeed, even under COVID, even though prices were controlled, even though they didn't have full pricing power, manufacturers converted lines from cosmetics to what do you call it, hand sanitizers. They converted lines from making dresses to making masks. They converted lines from making all kinds of other stuff to making surgical masks and what do you call it, N95 masks or whatever they call it. So the private sector responded brilliantly and provided almost instant supply in spite of the fact that the government did not allow and hospitals did not allow, and I mean the medical system did not allow, which is run by the government, from the pricing system to work appropriately. So we got shortages where we shouldn't have had shortages. But in capitalism, you don't get shortages. Prices adjust and supply adjusts in an emergency. Plus hospitals, insurance companies have huge incentives when the government is out of the way to store healthcare provisioning for times of emergency. Any businessman will tell you if you think long term, these are the kind of choices you make and these are the kind of investments you make and the businesses that don't make these kind of choices, they're the ones who go bankrupt, they're the ones who get sued during an emergency and they disappear. And the market reinforces the long term plan. It reinforces those who would actually plan for the future, provision for the future, have supplies ready. So Christian, thank you for the support. Appreciate that. So don't give me that. Don't take the fact, I mean it's so dishonest when the government is set up to do this. Tells the world it's going to do it. Has reserves that it's responsible for and they're not enough. They're badly allocated, they're badly distributed and then for a socialist economist to blame the private sector. Really. And by the way, when he says, I'm an economist, I know why this happened. Really? He's like a pseudo economist. If he was a real economist, how could he be a socialist? You can't be a socialist and actually be an economist. The two are mutually exclusive. National capitalist profit driven calculation to make. So the companies didn't and we didn't have the ventilators, the gloves, the masks and all the rest. And there's no shorthand way of saying it. Private capitalism and the public health don't work well together. The United States has four and a half. Why? Why doesn't public health and private capitalism work? It works brilliantly together. And need the hospitals or private hospitals. And if they were less regulated, they would have had more capacity. And need the masks that you did get and most people didn't die because of a lack of masks. Most people didn't die because of a lack of PPE. They died because politicians made lousy decisions like sending them back to nursing homes. That's why they died. It's because it was a virus that was new and the treatment was uncertain. That's why they died. They didn't die because lack of PPE. Put it this way, most people didn't. So on the contrary, we got tons of PPE. We got tons of respirators even. Once the government stepped out of the way, once government were allowed to actually produce and create and build, there's no shortage of PPE right now. There's no shortage of ventilators. So the whole thing is just ludicrous to associate this with capitalism as a problem. Capitalism would solve this problem. Indeed, where the vaccine's coming? Where the new treatment's coming? Where did this new treatment Trump just got? The antibody treatment coming. And there are hundreds of companies working on this all over the world, motive and profit motive. Now, sadly, a lot of the money to fund all this is coming in through government and distort the market dramatically. And it's going to favor some treatments over others, some vaccines over others. If the market had worked, we would have gotten better, faster treatments for this than otherwise. Yeah, I mean, the companies are working on this with slowing us down. With slowing us down is the FDA. I mean, how come Trump got the antibody treatment? And I can't. I get COVID, I want the antibody treatment. But no, you have to be special because the FDA is the gatekeeper. F% of the world's people. And we have 25% of the world's COVID cases. So 4.5% of the world people, 25% of the COVID cases, or even deaths, I don't know what the number is. Why? Because of the private sector failed? Or because our government failed dramatically? Did our doctors fail? Did our hospitals fail? Is it because of a shortage of PPE? No. It's 100% because our government failed. And because it's a, you know, deadly disease that for some reason was more deadly in the U.S. But most of the reason for it is because of government policies. And COVID deaths. We're a rich country. Because of capitalism, by the way. We're rich only. Because of whatever element of capitalism exists in our country and has existed for the last 200 years. A statistic that screams something fundamental is wrong. Yeah, something fundamental is wrong. The role of government in our marketplace is way too large. The role of government in our healthcare system is way too large. And there's a consequence. When governments do better, like they did in Taiwan, South Korea, even Germany, things go better. When governments do badly like they did in the U.K. and the United States and other places, things go badly. I mean, holding everybody else constant. Other issues as well. But yeah. I mean, COVID is an example of government failure. Not a failure of capitalism. Sorry, Pope. I mean, I don't know. Popes are supposed to be infallible. Look how fallible they really are. Unbelievable. In a society with our capability has such a record. In the European countries, it wasn't done. Unemployment in Italy during the- So no, you switched on employment now. But note that in European countries death rates in some countries are higher, some countries are lower, but generally death rates in the same ballpark. European companies have done as badly under COVID as we have in spite of the fact that they have in the U.K. they have a a national health service, NHS. And yet they did just as badly as our hybrid mostly government run health care system did in the United States. Thank you. Really appreciate that. Let's see what the question is. It looks like it's related. Great to listen to you as the health care is slowly nationalized. It's important to do shows and explain why everything bad in health care is a result of government regulations. For example, why hospitals don't publish prices for procedures, drug prices every year. I agree completely. And later in the show we're going to talk about insulin and drug pricing. Again, I talked about that a little while ago. We're going to talk about it again because I think it's people have people don't present it right. Even free market people don't present it right. And it really, really, really fits me. All right. Let's see where we say shifting to the economy. He's shifting to economic response. Again, this is all under the framework of capitalism failed. Higher COVID period was less than it was a year before that when there was no COVID. German unemployment went from 5% roughly in March to 6% roughly now. In short, in every major European country they did not do what the United States did. They didn't throw tens of millions of people out of work throwing them on unemployment. Adding to their losses of unemployment the unspeakable anxiety of wondering whether they'll ever have a job again. So no so we have more unemployment than Germany. Why does Germany have less unemployment? Why did Germany has unemployment not skyrocket? Because Germany basically put everybody for the period of COVID under government payroll. Everybody. And yet Germany spent less on stimulus as a percent of GDP than the United States did. I think other than Japan we have spent the most on bailing out everybody than any other country. Now it is true the Europe's welfare system Europe's unemployment system. Europe's system for redistributing wealth is far more efficient than the American system. How is any of this related capitalism? We distribute huge amounts of money. We bail out companies, we bail out businesses, we bail out individuals. In every respect we acted like socialists. Granted not very efficient socialists. But socialists nonetheless. So our unemployment is higher because we recognize the fact that people are not working. In Germany they don't count the people as not working because the government is basically paying companies to pay their employees. So nobody got fired. But they're all under government dole. So imagine if we took everybody who's on welfare in the United States right now everybody who's getting an employment insurance right now and counted them as employed because they're employed by the government, they're getting a check. I mean again the dishonesty of how these people use numbers and this will be a theme is just disgusting horrible. The job they lost would be there when they went back looking for it. Which we all know millions of them won't we already know that and so they're all wondering is the roulette wheel going to come down and point on me to add anxiety to the worries about the illness to the worries about Let's not have anxiety. We've got a pandemic raging around the world. Let's not worry about anxiety. Let's just print up what is needed to reduce everybody's anxiety so that they become all of them wards of the state because that would reduce the anxiety. We know that people who live off the welfare state have no anxiety. They live happily ever after. So let's make them all wards of the state. Anxiety will come down and the fact that in the future there's no economic growth the fact that in the future taxes will go up dramatically on them, on their children, on the grandchildren the fact that we are digging ourselves a whole of debt that who knows the only way to pay it back is by eliminating economic growth in the future Yeah, let's sacrifice the future. Talk about you mentioned earlier the fact that capitalists don't plan long term who does? Politicians Yeah, politicians plan long term. They're so good at it. So good at it. So let's pin up lots of money today not worry about the future because we're planning long term. Right. An analogy, your children who can't go to school your distance Why can't they go to school? That's a government decided they can't go to school. I should have gone to school. In Europe the reaction was so much better. The Europe Why is there so much? Why is there just as much death in Europe as there's, whoops, I skipped and why is it the GDP in the United States actually dropped less than in Europe? Not by a lot, but less Europe from economic perspective put aside unemployment GDP dropped a lot more than in the United States, but of course he won't mention that because Europe is much closer to his socialist heaven than we are even though we're quite close to would be there when they went back looking for it and so they're all wondering is the roulette wheel going to come down and point on me and let me tell you why in Europe the reaction was so much better. Much better, huh? The European leaders, whether they're right-wing, left-wing or in the middle, they know the following Labour Union Socialist parties, Communist parties they're much stronger in Europe than they are in the United States and that's been true for a long time everyone there knows if you had dared throw tens of millions of working people out of their jobs out of the security of their jobs they wouldn't have gone home to watch TV Well, but this is why Labour Union is illegal in the United States last I looked anybody could join a Labour Union there's no restriction on having Labour Unions there's no legal barriers to having Labour Unions if Labour wants it the reason we don't have Labour Unions in the United States is that Labour figured out that they're better off without them Labour figured out that they're better off without them that's why Labour Unions would be declining steadily dramatically over the last 50 years because we do better without them and you will note as a consequence of that the US economy is bigger richer he started out by saying how rich we are richer than any European country I've mentioned the fact that European countries if they were states would be number 40 or number 40 something in relative wealth so yeah they have unions so they have to coddle their so-called workers and the consequence of that is slow economic growth they drive smaller cars they have less savings they're not as rich as we are their middle class is poorer than our middle class and we don't have capitalism at which we did they would have gone into the streets and they would have shut down those economies way more totally than any pandemic could and everyone there knew it so here was the deal in fact there's Labour Unions in Europe really strike and they really strike because they're afraid they're afraid of what happened in the United States they have many many more legal protections in Europe than Labour Unions in the US have but they're also afraid of pissing off the populace Israel used to have the most powerful economic force in Israel used to be the Labour Union it used to be the largest employer in the country it used to be a socialist paradise where the workers owned the means of production it used to strike all the time and it got to the point where the politics because of that voters voted in politicians who actually broke up the union and destroyed it or weakened it dramatically in terms of its power and Labour Unions in Europe are afraid of that terrified of exactly that the government will help you in your business but you cannot fire anyone that's right so that was that was Richard Wolff just the ludicrous nature of the whole thing Jennifer asked if Pakman agrees with him I think he agrees with a lot of it he doesn't agree completely but Pakman is definitely on the left he's not a socialist he's not quite as left as Richard Wolff would be but Kalinsky from whose show I actually ran this is more of a leftist in that sense so the left blames everything wrong on capitalism every problem is blamed on capitalism and they have to invent stuff they have to make stuff up first of all they have to the fact that we don't live on capitalism they have to attribute failures of government to failures of markets and then they make up their stats what we need today what I call the new intellectual would be any man or woman who is willing to think meaning any man or woman who knows that man's life must be guided by reason by the intellect not by feelings, wishes, wins or mystic revelations a man or woman who values his life and who does not want to give in to today's cult of the stare cynicism and impotence and does not intend to give up the world to the dark ages and to the role of the collectivist brought all right before we go on reminder please like the show we've got 163 live listeners right now 30 likes that should be at least 100 I figure at least 100 of you actually like the show maybe they're like 60 of the Matthews out 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