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The Talks at Google podcast - where great minds meet.

Talks at Google brings the world’s most influential thinkers, creators, makers, and doers all to one place. Every episode is taken from a video that can be seen at YouTube.com/TalksAtGoogle.

Jul 22, 2022

Professor Richard D. Wolff visits Google to discuss the economic dimensions of our modern lives, our jobs, our incomes, and our debts in his unique mixture of deep insight and dry humor. He presents insights into current events and draws connections to the past to highlight the machinations of our global economy. He tries to help us to understand political and corporate policy, the organization of labor, the distribution of goods and services, and challenges us to question some of the deepest foundations of modern society.

Professor Wolff argues that modern capitalism has spawned a deepening economic crisis alongside a captive political establishment. He argues that whether it is secure, well-paid, and meaningful jobs or a sustainable relationship with the natural environment that we depend on, our society is not delivering the results people need and deserve. He believes that this state of affairs is due to the lack of genuine democracy in our economy as well as in our politics. His proposed solution requires the creation of a genuine economic democracy, starting with workers managing their own workplaces, as the basis for a genuine political democracy.

In this Talk, Professor Wolff lays out a hopeful and concrete vision of how to make that possible, addressing the many people who have concluded that economic inequality and politics as usual must be changed.

Originally published in June of 2017.

Visit YouTube.com/TalksatGoogle to watch the video.