Mass Unemployment Is A Policy Choice

Published: May 26, 2020, 10 p.m.

On today's episode of Loud & Clear, Brian Becker and John Kiriakou are joined by Professor Richard Wolff, a professor of Economics Emeritus, University of Massachusetts, Amherst and founder of the organization Democracy at Work whose latest book is “Understanding Socialism.”

Today is Loud & Clear’s weekly series about the biggest economic news of the week with special guest -- Prof. Richard Wolff.

More than 60 activists, academics, writers, workers, and students from more than 20 countries have come together to form the Covid-19 Global Solidarity Coalition. The purpose of the group is to bring ordinary people together to seize the opportunity to overthrow global structures of inequity and violence and to build a better world. The coalition launched the manifesto this weekend. Dr. Peter Kuznick, a professor of history and director of the Nuclear Studies Institute at American University, and the co-author with Oliver Stone of the book and the hit Showtime television series “The Untold History of the United States,” joins the show.

President Trump has ramped up pressure on governors around the country to reopen their states and economies, going so far as to threaten the Democratic Governor of North Carolina with moving the Republican National Convention out of the state if he doesn’t allow mass gatherings without masks. With that said, though, the president also is forcing governors to take on the cost and responsibility for testing for the coronavirus. Critics see it as an attempt to deflect criticism for the administration’s coronavirus response failures and to push the costs of testing onto the states. Brian and John speak with Ted Rall, an award-winning editorial cartoonist and columnist, whose work is at www.rall.com.

Loud & Clear’s series, In the News, is where the hosts look at the most important ongoing developments of the week and put them into perspective, including the reopening of some states despite increases in coronavirus case numbers, state and local officials shielding meatpacking corporations from transparency in coronavirus case numbers, and the police killing of George Floyd who was suffocated until he died, saying “I can’t breathe,” in a repeat of Eric Garner’s police murder that sparked massive uprisings across the US. Sputnik news analyst Nicole Roussell joins the show.

Tuesday’s regular segment is called Women & Society with Dr. Hannah Dickinson. This weekly segment is about the major issues, challenges, and struggles facing women in all aspects of society. Hannah Dickinson, an associate professor at Hobart and William Smith Colleges and an organizer with the Geneva Women’s Assembly; Nathalie Hrizi, an educator, a political activist, and the editor of Breaking the Chains, a women’s magazine, which you can find at patreon.com/BreakChainsMag; and Loud & Clear producer Nicole Roussell join the show.