Alternative Visions - The Condition of the Working Class in America in Trump Year One - 02/02/2018

In the first half of the show, Dr. Rasmus reviews key economic developments of the past week: the emerging major correction of bubbles in stock and bond markets; the reversal of forces that drove up Bitcoin and crypto currency prices to bubble levels in 2017 (that are now driving down Bitcoin et.al. prices); the end of the Janet Yellen regime at the Federal Reserve central bank; and a review of Trump’s ‘high theater’ first State of the Union speech.  Rasmus then focuses on the main theme of the show: the condition of the American Working Class today, in ‘year one’ of the Trump regime’s ‘Neoliberalism 2.0’ offensive. Rasmus debunks the official view that real wages have been rising for the core working class of more than 100 million non-supervisory workers in the US, and follows with a clarification of the jobs picture presented in select, official government data. Why the Trump tax cuts will reduce jobs, not grow them, as multinational corporations have strong incentives to shift more production offshore and why rising central bank interest rates will exacerbate already slowing auto and home sales. Rasmus concludes with a discussion with ominous tech trends now coming that will devastate jobs even more in the coming near and medium term: the ‘Uber Effect’ (transport & hospitality), the ‘Amazon Effect’ (retail, groceries, healthcare), and the ‘Artificial Intelligence Effect’ (self-driving cars and 1 million trucking jobs). Next Week: Why Unions in America are Collapsing and What Could be Done (plus updates on the stock and bond markets).