Amanda Wallace
BUAD 488
Economist Richard Wolff on Capitalism Run Wild
This video showed me the theories of economist Richard D. Wolff. Wolff is an American Marxist
economist, well known for his work on Marxian economics, economic methodology, and class analysis.
His view of the widening gap of inequality between the poor and the rich is that we must stop it
completely. Bill Moyers, an American journalist and political commentator conducts the interview with
Wolff in which Wolff makes some interesting points.
First, examples of the problem were introduced. Huge million dollar companies like Comcast
have joined with other million dollar companies to create less taxes between the two. This means less
money is in circulation, and therefore less money is going to the poor. The merge seems like a great
business decision but does not take into consideration the amount of people that lost their job in the
process. With a merge, human capital at both Comcast and NBC are then minimized to ensure that money
is saved. Another example was the Post Office declaring that they will be ending Saturday service. This is
an inconsiderate decision because of all the people that need to get their mail on Saturday. With this
decision also brings less people that need to work on for the Post Office and very little consideration for
the people that rely on getting important documents on time. As a business decision this seems very
sensible but ethically this is extreme.
Through all the previous examples we see very little affect to the 1% of Americans that are