government vacancies 2016

even at the risk of other folks coming,and i'll stop to get them a chair, since i see at least a few that are available,let me make a couple of announcements. then alan has something to say very briefly. i do have to inform you that i have to leaveat 9:00, so - normally i go over and i sit around or stand around and talk with someof you - but tonight i can't do that. so i'm going to have to leave at 9:00 justso you know, i'm not leaving out of any upset. that's why i'm telling you in advance. now before we start, i want to make two specialannouncements. the first is that i want to thank people whohave very, very kindly and graciously agreed

to sponsor these monthly events, which isa polite way of saying helping us to pay the costs of having them videoed and sending themout and all the rest of the expenses that go with doing this every month. so i want to give these thanks, and i haveto apologize, because i should have begun this process last month. i didn't. so i want to make sure i compensate and explainto you that last month's monthly economic update, helping to cover the costs of thisthing, were provided by bill and cathy from maryland and i want to appreciate them andask you all to join with me in a little bit

of thank you...[applause] ...for their having done that last month. and, to show that i have learned my lesson,i also want to thank the sponsor of tonight's monthly update, who was kind enough to dothis also, and his name is will cooper of san diego, california. [applause]. it gives you some idea, i hope, of the factthat the 125 or 150 - whatever it is tonight, i’ve got to be careful, since there's alimit on the wall, there about things we have to be cautious about - so the 125 of you thatare here this evening.

you are matched by something - and it variesfrom month by month, but something between 70-100,000 people around the world see thismonthly talk now. it's become quite a thing. we get emails from all over the world, so we know,asking us questions and commentary on this so i do want to remind everybody who's watchingthat all the kind folks here - the 125 of you - have all graciously paid $10 to helpus defray these costs. and those of you that are watching on theinternet through youtube, etc., you, of course are not required to pay the $10 - since thereis no gate you have to pass through - but we are counting on you using the honor system- something that clearly is a very important

value here in our country, as you can see,to use the honor system to send in your $10 by going to the website and hitting the "donate"button and following the ways of doing that. so, seriously, do help out if you are benefittingfrom these monthly programs on the internet. okay, and then before i turn it to alan fora moment, i wanted to remind you all that there are three organizations that make these monthlyevents possible. i want to thank each of them in turn. first, is the judson memorial church. you are sitting in that church. they very kindly - and have for a long time- made this space available to us as part

of what they understand to be their mission in thecommunity as a church, as a christian church. the second is the left forum. the left forum is an annual collection ofactivists and academics, where they fit on this political spectrum, you get a hint ofthat from their name. that was a joke. [laughter]left forum - the left forum - i am going to announce, it could still change, but i believewe're pretty much set, the left forum this year will be from june 2nd to june 4th andwill take place at the john jay college of the city university of new york where it hasbeen for the last two or three years.

i will confirm that at next month's meeting. you may hear about it sooner, but that's pretty likely going to be where we are and when this occurs. okay? and the third organization is democracy atwork. and democracy at work is an organization thati work with closely, that literally produces these monthly events and that has now graduatedfrom being an organization that produces audio and video and written work - sends me aroundthe country all the time, has produced the radio program that i do on a weekly basis- but now has something new, which is because of the enormous response we're getting, whichis literally overwhelming us, we are now organizing

groups around the united states and, and indeed,abroad of people who want to begin to make change, based on the kinds of things we talkabout here. very heartening to us. we now have 13 of them in the united states,the latest one - i want to welcome them - in phoenix, arizona, which, given how they voted,is interesting, too. [applause]before i launch into this evening's discussion and beginning, of course, with the remarkableevents of the last 24 hours... well, i thought i was very clever when weprepared the announcement for tonight's meeting by carefully writing it so that it wouldn'tbe clear who was going to win, since we didn't

know at the time, that those announcementswent out. so now we do know, and since this is a programabout economics, i am not going to talk about all the other dimensions of what happenedand the vote and trump's victory. i'm going to talk about the economic dimension. that's not because i think the others arerelevant and have a role to play, but it's because the economic one is getting less attentionthan i think it ought to and i, for one, happen to believe it's a very important part of this story and likely to get lost if we don't demand that people pay some attention to it. okay.

what is the economics of what just happened? well, let's go from the superficial and thenget deeper. the estimates of what mrs. clinton spent - boththe money raised by the campaign and by associated groups - is somewhere between $800 millionand a billion dollars, possibly a bit more. the amount of money spent by trump is lessthan half of that. let that sink in. trump is a novice to political activity, really,doesn't know much about political operations. he's not married to a person who has beenthrough this once before and knows exactly how the game is played.

mrs. clinton had every conceivable advantage:knowing how the system works, working at it for all these years from a position of enormouspower, either as the president's wife or as senator here from new york. she had all the contacts, all the relationships,all the ious that she had built up by helping everybody else. trump didn't. she could present herself as reasonable andpresent him as a lunatic, and he couldn't play that game in reverse. so, with the most money, the most connections,the most experience and the most ious from

the political system, she was defeated. so the first thing i have to suggest to youis that the economics of running for office - all of which were in her favor - weren'tenough to overcome something else that was pushing against her. and i want to ask and answer with you whatthat something else might have been. and the preponderance of the media - the bigbusinesses in our country - were also on her side with many examples of newspapers andso on that normally endorse republicans choosing this time not to do that, but tosupport her. i'm not aware of a single example of the otherway.

so she had the money, she had the history,she had the experience, she had the connections and she had the media. and she was defeated. this is an extraordinary in american politics,just already at that level. the next - take it a little bit deeper. as best i can tell - and i'm looking at thesame materials that all of you are that are trying to figure out what happened - as bestas i can tell, mrs. clinton made a conscious decision, with her advisors, i presume, toassociate herself with barack obama, to associate herself with the prior regime of her husband,bill clinton, and therefore to embrace - not

walk away from - the notion that she wouldbe more of the same. oh, yes, a little different here and there. but even the differences kind of had to besqueezed out of her by bernie sanders' critiques from the left, and one would wonder whether shewould have even made those relatively modest moves, criticizing the tpp and so on, had it notbeen for the extraordinary success of bernie sanders' effort. so she was more of the same. and trump was a big, fat difference. i don't mean that quite the way it sounded,but i'm okay with it anyway.

he made a big difference. he was new; he was different. he wasn't the career politician. he'd never been in any office before. he wasn't hooked up. in fact, the republican party in which heran, had an awful lot of people who said very nasty things about him week after week andmonth after month. he was not well-connected, didn't have anyious. you get the picture.

he had one thing going for him: he was somethingnew. something different. and his appeal, i would argue to you, to theamerican people, was exactly that. i am an outsider from the political game,and i bring you a big change. and i want you to have hope that the big changei bring will be to your benefit. and if you picked up the words "hope" and"change," they should remind you of something. that eight years ago, this game exactly wasplayed in reverse. then we had a sitting president, mr. bush,who was represented as part of an old family. he was the son; the father had been therebefore.

it's kind of close to the husband had beenthere before. the father, the bush family, governor of texas. oi, vey, it was more of the same. and obama came in and said, "vote for me,because i am different." he didn't have to explain that a lot. one look at him and you knew he was different- from anything this country had ever voted into high office like that before. because he was black. so he didn't have to make a big thing abouthis difference, that was clear.

he was different, and he was bringing hopeand change. and, you know, if you go back earlier, lotsof politicians running for president for the last 30 years have argued "i'm an outsider. i'm not really part of the beltway. i am change. i am different. i am new. i won't do to you what has been done to youfor the last 35 years." and let me now take it another level.

what is it that has happened to people over35 years, as they kept voting for somebody who was an outsider and who was differentand who would bring hope and change? the big word here is "change". this was kept going on. it was promised. and meanwhile, over the last 30-40 years,what do we know economically? the gap between rich and poor in this countrywidened, literally, every year. the level of wages went absolutely nowhere. no increase in wages.

the only way to increase your standard ofliving, was either to make more people in the household go out and work - which a lotof families did - or to borrow money like there's no tomorrow. and then to develop all the anxieties thatgoes with worrying whether you can repay all of these loans. which means the working class became furtherdistant from the rich and powerful, became more and more money-driven, more and moreanxious about their economic situation. every statistic shows pensions - down in terms ofwhat confidence you can have when you get old benefits - down.

job security - down. benefits of all kinds - down. public services cut back, particularly after2008, when the economic crash bankrupted cities and towns and they were cutting back on teachersand road maintenance and everything we now talk about as the "need to re-do our infrastructure". so, for 40 years, the american mass of workingpeople, feeling their conditions shrinking, being squeezed, deteriorating. for the young people, it's the explosion,over the last 30 years, of an enormous overhang of debt in order to get a college educationat the same time that reality teaches them

that a college education is less of a guarantee fora good job and a good income than it ever was. you're borrowing like crazy for somethingthat's deteriorating in value as you accumulate the debts to buy it. that's going to eat at you whether you'reconscious of it or not. and the families that are trying to help thosekids get through school, themselves going into debt... there's this wonderful statistic that, overthe last 20 years, student debt has risen faster than every other kind and had now surpassedcredit card debt. that is, the total amount of money borrowedfor students, is greater than the total amount

of money borrowed by the entire populationfor credit card usage. but the mystery dissolves once you discoverthat because the student debt is cheaper than the credit card debt, millions and millionsof american families arrange for their students to borrow the money - ostensibly for the school,but it's actually a substitute for the credit card debt - because it doesn't carry as highan interest rate. people are rational and figured that out. so you have 30 to 40 years of deterioration. of course, the american people are lookingfor something to change. what's going on in the fixed story is gettingworse and worse.

nor does it seem to matter whether there'sa republican in the presidency, or a democrat. the rate of change - in a bad direction - maychange, but the direction doesn't change. it's just the rate. and i'm going to come back to that in a minute. so, more and more, the mass of people turnto somebody who's different. the horrible legacies of racism in this countrywere - in a peculiar way - overcome when millions of white workers in 2008 crossed that divideand voted obama into office. many of those people - that's one of the resultsof checking the counties in the midwest in the united states - many of those people,who voted for obama in 2008, voted for trump

this time. that's not about racism. you know that, because of what those peopledid eight years ago. and they saw that obama was different andthey hoped. they hoped for change. but they didn't get it. obama didn't deliver hope and change. neither did any of the others who precededhim, and so there was a deepening sense in the american people - and why shouldn't therebe?

a sense of betrayal. one after another of these clowns - republican,democrat, white by-and-large, and now one black - promising that, as outsiders, as different, as new,as committed and then nothing fundamentally changes. i don't want to pick on obama, but he's thelast one of the last eight years so we have to tell the story. inequality is worse than it was eight yearsago in this country. the wars he promised to end? we're still fighting in five countries, ifnot more - even ones that we weren't at the time that he became president.

the tension with russia - for those of youwho pay attention - is scary. nato has an alert, troops are amassing in thatpart of the european theater, where countries in europe are scared - because if there'strouble, it'll be fought there, not here - et cetera, et cetera. so where's the change? the jobs situation isn't improving. for those of you who watch the statisticsand you read that unemployment is down, i've gone through this. i'll do it one more time.

there are two things to keep in mind: first,at least half of the improvement is not because people without work got jobs. it's because people without work stopped lookingfor jobs. and, when you stop looking, the governmentdoes not count you as unemployed. to be counted as an unemployed person in theunited states and the way the government does this - and it's always done that; it's nota new thing - is it asks you "are you working?". if you answer "yes, i'm working," you're employed. if you answer "no, i'm not working," you areasked a second question. "are you looking for work?"

if you answer "yes," you're counted as anunemployed person. if you answer "no," you're not consideredto be in the labor force. and you're not counted. which means that millions of people - andthis is what has happened in the last 10 years - if millions of people who have no job stoplooking for it, give up, unemployment goes down because they're no longer consideredthe unemployed. half of the "improvement" since the depthsof 2009 and -10 is that story. the other half is people who are getting ajob, but it's a part-time job and/or it's a job at much lower pay, much fewer benefits,etc., etc. than the job they once had.

therefore, the deterioration of their lifecontinues, because they've gone from a good, secure job to a crappy, insecure job. and they know it as deeply as if they wereunemployed; there's no escaping from it. okay, so now we have the latest one to come. mr. trump. how does he show he's different? well, he sure doesn't show it with his wealth. he's ostentatious, he's a billionaire - can'tdo it that way. his way of doing it - he can't show his skincolor - it's the caucasian variety.

as best i can tell. he's creative with color, as you can tell,so i don't know. i'm guessing. so how is he going to be different? and the answer is: he's got to be, in someobvious way, outrageous, crazy, wild, extreme. he's got to show you that there's some reasonfor you to believe that he's a change. that he's different. he does it first with the republicans, remember? all the people who had more money than himto begin with, and much more credentials - bush,

the governor of florida and some of the others- he savaged them. he called them nasty names. he violated all the rules of political protocol. he had clever one-liners that we all remember,that were put-downs, plays on their physical qualities, on their mental qualities, on whateverhe could imagine. and, of course, you know, whatever he attackedin them, he made sure we all understood was large and abundant in him. if you need that explained to you, i can'tdo that in public. you can guess.

by the way, there's an analogy to what trumpdid to the republicans. there was a person on the other side who wasalso different: sanders. comes out of nowhere. a tiny state - no disrespect to my viewersin vermont - a tiny state with two senators and one representative, last i looked. the only man in the senate who calls himself- i believe, the only one - who calls himself an independent. and certainly the only one who accepts thelabel “socialist" - a kind of instant political suicide in america from the last half century.

he steps forward and talks all the kinds ofthings that everybody understands. that's a change. he gets up and he says, "i will attack thebig banks. i will attack the big corporations. they're the problem. they don't like me, and they're right - theyshouldn't - because i'm going to get them..." wow. politicians - that's new, and that's different. the democratic party establishment believedthat he would get 2-3% of the vote.

same threat they felt that they faced with jill stein. tiny percentage, wouldn't make enough of adifference. they completely misunderstood the situation. before it was over, he came real close. if i have the numbers right, 13 million peoplein the primaries voted for bernie sanders. he defeated her in a number of contests...states. that should have been a sign: the people who can makethe case "i'm different" is almost all you have to do and suddenly politics changes. clinton was just barely able to suppress thechallenge to her as “more of the same”

from mr. sanders, who was different. but she didn't learn the lesson. she then had to discover that what trump didto the republicans, he could do to her, because he could see from the bernie sanders how vulnerableto this she was. she was more of the same to a population thathad no tolerance for that at all. a population that wants higher wages - notlower. more job security - not less. more benefits at work - not fewer. more free, public higher education - not moredebts, etc., etc.

not more war - less war. not more cuts in public services - more publicservices. overwhelming, in the country. so what happened? mr. trump was able to present himself as abetter bet for change than mrs. clinton - which wasn't difficult. she made it relatively easy. this wasn't an election about mr. trump'shorrific behavior about women, or about immigrants. it was about basic change - i'm going to makeit happen for you.

you've been left out, you've been left behind,you've been betrayed repeatedly by these republicans and democrats. i'm something different. i'm not scrounging around for money the waythe clintons do. i don't need it. i already have it. vote for me; i'm less corruptible than them,because i corrupted myself earlier, and have more money. [laughter]i don't need to do it now, at your expense.

i already took care of that, by generationsof tenants. if you know his history, his family's history,much of it here in new york. so here we have an election in which the americanpeople, in large numbers, vote for change. they're not voting for mr. trump's policies. nobody has any clear idea what they are, meincluded. we could get into long discourses about thepolicies we think he may endorse, but that was smart of him. don't get into that. don't get yourself confused with the detailsthat most people don't pay attention to anyway.

people who are betrayed over and over againin politics, you know what they do? they turn off. they don't pay attention to these races untilthe last two weeks, when they kind of begin to notice by the flood of information, "oh,yes; that's coming up. what am i going to do?" and then they makea judgment based on a general notion that comes out of their lives. and they voted for mr. trump. well, what can we say about it? a number of things.

first, the liberals - the clinton liberalsand, indeed, lots of liberals. they made the following mistake over the last30 years, which they never admit - i don't think they'll admit it now, either. they thought they could make themselves inpower forever by saying to the mass of people "vote for us, because we're not going to doit to you as badly as those republicans do.” vote for us; we're not as bad as them. they're going to really sock it to you; wewon't. we won't sock it to you that much. the deterioration you're suffering will slowdown.

we'll give you some offsets. we'll do a few things and make the down-turnsless painful. and that's all we have to do. we don't need to be left-wing democrats - thenew deal, what came out of the coalitions of the 1930s - we don't have to. got rid of those. that's the new center of the democratic partythat was represented by the clintons and all the people they gathered around them. we don't need that any more.

it's not necessary. the american people will choose between republicans- who are really going to stick it to the mass of working people - and we, who won'tstick it that badly, or at least that quickly. that's enough; we'll win. sometimes, it worked. typically, when it worked, the democrats - theliberals who got into office - quickly discovered that they neither could nor would, nor inmany cases even wanted to make any of the basic changes. they didn't think they had to.

the problem was, the mass of people becamemore and more disengaged from them because they didn't. they were convinced that the mass of peoplehad nowhere else to go. i mean, either democrat, which isn't so bad,or republican, which is worse. so, as long as you're a little bit betterthan the republicans, you'll win. you get all their votes. you don't. because what you're doing is you’re creatingin your own ranks a mass of people who, if they see a chance for something that mightreally change, will go there.

those are the people who voted for obama eightyears ago, and who voted for trump yesterday. they didn't think about it. they didn't think it was necessary. and they took the democratic party down anever-worsening dead-end. and obama didn't learn the lesson either. not that anybody else did. i don't want to pick on him, but he didn'tlearn it either. and what did the republicans figure out? they figured out "we've got a perfect game here.

we're going to appeal to all the 'social conservatives'." you know, the people for whom religion isa very important, fundamentalist type of, religion is very important, people for whomabortion is murder, and all of that. you all know that, you don't need me to tellyou about that. the republicans will go after them. it will make an alliance, which it did, betweenthose people and everybody in this society who can be convinced that the biggest dangerto you is the government. not your employer. not the company that provides you with the food and clothing that you wear, that is killing you.

not the companies, not the corporate culture,not the economy, the politicians. the government is the bad thing. and we republicans are going to squash thegovernment, reduce the government, limit the government, get the government off your back. and in this building of a coalition of theanti-government mentality and the social conservatives, the republicans always had an enormous assist. and the enormous assist comes - sad to say- from the academic intelligentsia of the united states, which lives in this world ofa good citizen and a bad government and will not give it up for anything.

that's why americans who lose their job whenan employer fires them immediately become angry at the senator, who didn't even knowit happened. who's got absolutely nothing to do with it. the people who are pushed out of their home,because they can't cover their mortgages, are angry at the mayor or the congress person. what?! what a wonderful thing for capitalism. you kick the people, and they're angry atsomebody else. you kick them again, they're more angry atsomebody else.

they get so angry, they vote them out andbring in the next one, who does the same thing. the republicans get that. attack the government. gather the social conservatives and the lastleg - that's all it is, three steps - pander to corporations and the rich. cut their taxes, give them every benefit,deregulate them. and when the conditions of the mass of peopleget worse, you blame the government. or the loss of christian values. that solves your problem and brings togetheryour coalition.

they thought they had that made. that was a recipe that worked for them overand over. it worked for bush. it works for rubio, who got re-elected. it works for ted cruz. they're specialists in all of this. trump made them look ridiculous. it didn't work. he was too much of a change; they were toocaught up in this old republican game that

people feel betrayed by. yes, conservatives feel betrayed, too. that's why they abandoned mr. cruz and hispreacher father. they abandoned mr. rubio - i don't have theadequate words to describe his virtues, and then again, it would be a short conversation. but, in the case of mr. trump, here he is:“i’m different. i'm not like these people.” for a population that's betrayed and bitter,that's gone through 30 years of decline, with nothing coming down the pike to indicate onewhit of improvement, any change is acceptable.

and mr. trump wasn't scary for most of them. because they don't find any of this relevant,mostly, to their lives. well, is it all bleak? some of your faces suggest that you think so. let me tell you why i don't think so, okay? mr. trump will be no more able to change thebasic conditions of the capitalism that afflicts the american people than any of his predecessors were. not one bit. nothing in his history, nothing in his programsthat indicate.

could he develop it? sure. i can't predict the future any better thananybody else can. but why anyone in their right mind shouldimagine that this man, by virtue of his election, is going to raise wages, where they've beenfalling, improve job security, where it has been declining, get the students out of theirdebts and stop. nothing. there's no reason to expect any of it, whichmeans that mr. trump is setting himself up for exactly the same betrayal that peoplefeel about obama and about all the people

before obama. he's in line to do the same thing. there are wise-cracking democrats in washington- the few that have a sense of humor - who are telling the clintons, "it's good thatyou lost, because the economic down-turn that's coming" - and i'll talk to you more aboutthat - "is now going to be his problem. it would have been your problem." and, the truth of it is, these democrats knowthe clintons haven't the better clue what to do than does mr. trump. so the irony is, here is also an opportunity,for what?

well, the best - the candidate who comes outbest at the end of all this carnage, all the nasty things clinton said about trump, allthe nasty things trump said about clinton - you know who looks whiter-than-white, ifi can abuse the metaphor? bernie sanders. there's nothing that's clinging to him thatlooks or smells like what clings to the others. [laughter]he looks wonderful. he comes out clean. that's a very important thing, because thatlesson is slowly percolating through the culture and it carries implications that are goingto be played out in the months and years ahead.

here's the second opportunity: it's possiblefor us - and here i mean the broad left, and i don't usually talk like that because thebroad left for most of my... there's no symbolism involved here...none, none, purely electronic event. he's not president yet. we have a chance as a left, now that we aremuch larger and know ourselves to be larger, now that we have shown that 13 million americans will vote for somebody who says, "yeah, i'm a socialist". granted, he's the most moderate socialistone can imagine, although there are now europeans trying to out-moderate him. and succeeding.

the french come to mind right away, but we'llcome back to that. there is now, i think, an opportunity to say,if the left can get its act together, that the problem here is a capitalism that has been no good for the majority of people for 40 years. that's our problem. changing our leaders has made no major differencein that basic story. so changing them again - from an obama toa trump, or from a trump to whoever the next one is - that's not a solution. we don't have to make that case. that's not very hard to make.

people already get that. that'll be easy. well, then, what do we do? we've got to change the economic system, soit isn't driven by huge, wealthy corporations that have the incentive and the resourcesto keep moving in the direction that has produced the deterioration for the last 40 years. and it's a very easy deterioration to describe. it's automation and it's relocation. those two words.

replacing workers with machines, above allthe computer, and now the computerized robot. that's one. and moving production to cheap-wage countriesaround the world is number two. there goes the jobs, there goes the abilityfor the working class to get a decent standard of living, there goes the decline that iseverywhere visible. and, if it hasn't hit you personally yet,it will. there it is. and that's not going to be changed until youreorganize the decision-making apparatus. the decision to move a plant from here to there.

the decision to destroy these jobs and replacethem with robots, and tell the people whose jobs have been replaced, "you're on your own. get lost. go work, become a greeter at walmart, if you'relucky, or flip hamburgers. that's it; you're done." this society has no obligation towards you,no place for you, no understanding of what the impacts on your family, friends, neighbors- none of it. we're free to screw you every which-a-way,as we have been doing. an alternative to that, an economic systembuilt in a different way giving the power

of making these decisions to the mass of people,and not the private capitalists - that's our only way out of this. if we do it, we build the basis for what? we build the basis for a new political party. because such a movement to change the economyhas to have a political expression. it has to have an agency that goes aroundand explains to everybody else what it's doing and why it's doing it. because the support will be there, if we do it. this will be a political party, whose goalis to reduce the footprint of capitalism in

our economy and to raise the footprint ofan alternative system, which you can call worker co-ops - which i do - or worker self-directed enterprises or a different way of organizing production, so that people, together, democraticallydecide what to produce, how to produce, where to produce, and what to do with the profits. that solves our problems. and you need a political party that will advocatefor that kind of change. and, by doing that, we’ll show that therepublicans and democrats are advocates for the continuation of capitalism. they just differ on exactly how to do it.

the republicans more aggressive, and stickit to the working class. the democrats, not as bad. but two parties that are two wings of thesame economic commitment means you don't have any real choice, unless another party comesalong, which is another argument for its emergence. we are strong enough to do that now. occupy showed us a beginning. bernie showed us an enormous step forward. i'm very impressed, in recent weeks, thatthe black lives matter movement is taking more and more interest in these economic questionsand taking positions.

so there's another - another leg. signs. and all of this admits the deterioration ofcapitalism, which is what i'm going to turn to for the rest of my talk. but we have an opportunity here. it is not just a defeat. the biggest defeat suffered here is by theestablishments of the two major parties, who really have taken it on the chin. it's their own fault.

i'm not asking any of you to have any sympathywith them at all. they don't deserve it. they eagerly pushed every critical impulseout - eagerly. for them, the left has been irrelevant, marginal,dismissible, contemptible. that's how they react. nor do i think this trump defeat of them willteach them much. i think they're beyond it. they've been doing this for too long. they're too deep into this rut.

they're going to continue doing it. and, as i begin to read the interpretationsof trump's victory, you can already see how they're interpreting it as being "we're notgoing to give it up." for example, the interpretation: this is allabout racism, or this is all about immigration. or this is all about grabbing women's genitals. horrible as all those parts of this game were, they're not what this game is, fundamentally, about. and it's a mistake to go in that direction,because it loses us the sense of where we can go to change this. all right.

let me turn now to some of the more usualevents that i want to make you aware of. because you seem to like this, so i do thisbecause i get good responses from audiences when i do. things that happened since the last monthwe were here, that are about economics and, i think, you should know about. the first one has to do with two countries:iceland and france. iceland is an interesting country for manyreasons other than the fact that it's cold. it has the lowest gap between men's and women'swages of any country. that is, women get roughly 14% less pay forthe same work as men do.

the comparable number here in the united statesis 20% - much worse. the icelandic women, who have fought hardover the years to get this, are still not satisfied; 14%, they argue, is exactly 14%too much. they added it up to measure it, and they said,"we work a number of weeks a year, but because we get paid less than men; if we got the same that men got, we wouldn't have to work those weeks." so we're kind of working for free. so the icelandic women created a holiday - which is celebrated in iceland - it's the 24th of october. that's since last we met, so that's why icouldn't tell you about it before. and, on the 24th of october, they walk outof the job.

they figure out what part of each day they'reworking for free and they leave at that hour. so, on this last 24th of october, thousandsand thousands of women walked out of the job at 2:38 in the afternoon. [laughter]on the 24th - as a protest and a demand for their politicians to do something about overcomingthis gap. and, of course, the word about this got around. everywhere. that's why all of you are looking at me asif you've never heard of this before. which you probably didn't, and which probablygives you another deep insight into the quality

of the media that you have at your disposal. that you don't know anything about this. however, the word did reach france. and in france, which has a larger gap - notmuch larger than the icelandic; they're pretty good the french, 15% is their number - buton the 7th of november - that's earlier this week, a huge number of women walked out oftheir jobs at 4:34 in the afternoon to show that they're not going to get left behindby the women of iceland. and they demand equal pay for equal work. it's important, because it's movement.

it's movement of masses of people who wantto change economic injustice. and that's something we need badly in theworld today. and so, hat off to the women of iceland andfrance. and who knows? given all the people who're going to see whati just said, who knows? maybe some of you will be inspired to readup about this and copy it here in the united states, where the discrepancy is much largerand needs the attention. and, if i were you, i wouldn't count on presidenttrump to be in the forefront of efforts to solve this problem.

next item. i don't mean to belabor the poor volkswagencorporation, vw, but they are such a delicious target, if you know anything about their history. "volkswagen" in german means "people's car". why is it called the people's car? because it is a project that was begun, ifmy memory is correct, under the auspices of one adolf hitler in order to make automobilesavailable to the average german citizen. because, when hitler comes to power, in 1933,they weren't. so that's not an auspicious beginning, allthings considered, but it really gets delicious

over the last year and a half, when it turnsout - and i'm sure this you do know, because it did get a lot of publicity here in theunited states - volkswagen was caught by a small shop here in the united states - somethingto be proud of about american mechanical - no i mean that - mechanical ingenuity, we didcatch them. they had put a device into their diesel cars- they're a big producer of diesel automobiles - they had put a device in there that basicallyfools the inspection mechanism. if you ever had your exhaust checked to seewhat kind of stuff you're pumping into the air, they put a little instrument into yourexhaust pipe that measures how much of the bad stuff is coming out.

and they put a device in there that wouldreduce the amount coming out when the inspection was done, but not when you were regularlydriving it on the highway. that's a crime. in other words, they reported numbers thatthey knew to be false and phony. and the reason for that was very simple. by not putting the device in that would havecontrolled it, they, therefore, were able to get a quicker acceleration of their carand a zippier drive than other diesel producers that had put the device in. so they could claim we've solved the dieselproblem.

we've got a diesel, and you get the rightpollution control, but you still have a zippy car, whereas all those other people have thepollution control, no zip. if i understand correctly, people who buycars are deeply committed to zip. and so, this is important. but it was for volkswagen and they have nowadmitted it. this is not something that's any more - i don't have to say "alleged," or anything like that. this is admitted by them. but they've gotten into more and more trouble. this last 10 days, it turns out, that theircurrent chairman of the board, hans dieter

poetsch - you can't get a more german namethan that, hans dieter poetsch - turns out to be under suspicion by the government ingermany. and let me tell you: if you're the head ofgeneral motors, one of their biggest companies, for the government to be inspecting you, youmust be very, very, guilty. because you have 800 ways of preventing thatfrom happening. so we will see how well he does, but thisis not a good sign. the two families - two german families who,together, control 52% of vw's voting stock... this may come as a shock to some of you, becauseif you own shares of vw - which you can - they have the following quality.

you can't vote those shares. in other words, whatever those shares giveyou, they don't give you a vote in deciding what the company does. 52% of the voting shares - and companies cando that, and many companies do. they issue one class of shares where you geta vote on who's on the board of directors, etc., and another class of shares where youdon't get a vote. and the way the families control the company,is they allow lots and lots of non-voting shares to be sold to the public. of course, you pay money for them, money which they get, but they're the only ones who can vote.

the porsche family - that should come as afamiliar name. for those of you who don't know, porsche ownsvw. that's like many of those beers that you buy,that they're all owned by the same company, but it keeps lots of different names so thatyou can be proudly committed to a "craft beer" that's made in the same budweiser factorythat all the other ones are. i don't mean to pick on budweiser, but itis enjoyable to do. and the other family is the - i don't knowhow they pronounce this - p'yech. or piã«ch family. porsche and piã«ch, the two families control52%.

they have announced complete confidence inchairman hans dieter poetsch. that's another sign that he's got a shortlife ahead of him. when the two major families express all confidence,they're already working with their lawyers to bring you into a home for elderly people...soon. and the other thing that afflicted volkswagenwas the discovery - here in the united states, in california - that what had not been knownbefore is now the case. they put these devices in the audi automobiles,as well. and, again, for those of you who do not know,audi - which is a brand of car - is owned by volkswagen, which is owned by porsche...

modern capitalism in all of its wonders. why do i tell you this? because that shows you that a top corporation,which really is no different from similar corporations anywhere else in the world, heregot caught. it got caught producing emphysema and everyother lung disease in the world by emitting horrific pollution in millions of its automobiles. by the way, the largest number of automobilesthat are deficient in this way, that pump too much pollution, are in germany. their deep commitment to the vaterland didn't extend to not making money off their german compatriots.

400,000 diesels here in the united statespolluting the air for years. we don't know how many people died of lungdisease or of associated ailments because of what those cars are. until they got caught, it was a holiday. he's in trouble, mr. poetsch, because he didn'ttell the investors in the company when he knew that they were going to be in troublewith foreign governments. it's an obligation of corporations to lettheir investors know of information that can affect the value of your investment. you're counting on the corporate leader toinform you - since you're the "owner" by buying

shares and he's your servant. and here the servant is screwing the owner. it's supposed to go the other way. it doesn't work. this is a system that's breaking down. all the rules of who says what to whom? no, no. this is as the french call "sauve qui peux"- everyone's on their own here. grab it before it disappears or before the person next to you, who you thought was your friend,

grabs it first. next item over the last month for you to deal with. i want to give a shout of recognition andapproval to the faculty at the university of manitoba, in canada. because, about 10 days ago, the faculty - 1,200people - the students at the university of manitoba - about 29,000, it's a big place- they went on strike demanding that the classes not be cut down, that the services providedto students not be reduced, that the use of temporary faculty - who don't have the samequalifications, who are working six jobs, all of that stuff - be stopped.

1,200 faculty on strike at the universityof manitoba. enormous student support. the university went on the radio, the officialsof the university, on radio and television and proudly announced that one-third of thefaculty had crossed the picket line. that is, gone back to work under the - youknow, violating the strike. well, i've been a faculty all my life. it would be the greatest thing we could imagine,those of us who try to form unions, if two-thirds of the faculty that we ever took out on strike stayed out, one-third going back is an immense victory of the union, of the workers.

because the university can't run with two-thirdsof the faculty not there. the union, by the way, disputes that - saysit's not even an accurate count. but whatever the numbers are - there's no way for me to know that - but if the worst that the administration can say is they got one-thirdto go back and two-thirds are not, you can't run a university on two-thirds of your facultynot working. and the students' support for them is enormous. these are people who, in their little way,in their little job, in this little university, in that corner of canada, are fighting backagainst what's going on. in canada - as it is going on here - the pttthat we're going to see stuff happen?

the canadians just signed the equivalent ofthe ptt with europe. the americans haven't signed it. the canadians - mr. trudeau, the great whitehope - has already shown you what it is you can expect from those kinds of politicians. but the university of manitoba is remarkable. here's another example of a system in deeptrouble. if i had time, i'd give you many. the 20 largest container shipping companiesin the world... you know, nowadays the clothing you're wearingand the appliances you use, all come from

thousands of miles away, they mostly comeon ships that cross the ocean. it's the modern commitment of capitalism to ecology. by having things produced 10,000 miles away,you need lots of fuel to bring them and you can pump all of the bad air, and all of thespent fuel into the ocean where the fish can eat it and kill us when we eat them. capitalism, to make money, moved productionover there. what was their concern about ecology? well, the technical term would be: nothing. but i don't want to take away from any ofyou that are carefully collecting plastic

in a different bag from glass, and that differentfrom your garbage, because you want to do something about... while you're doing that - and it's noble andgood - the companies that run this economy are polluting like it's going out of style. i just want to remind you of that. anyway, when they pollute, they use shippingcompanies. and the 20 largest companies, two of whomhave declared bankruptcy in the last six months: hanjin, that some of you know, the chinesecompany, and; maersk, the big danish or norwegian - but the 20 biggest companies announced,10 days ago, that not a single one of them

will make any profit in 2016. it's the worst year they've ever seen. you know what that means, friends? that means that world trade is collapsing. there's not enough trade to fill the ships. they're losing money. they can't make any profit - the top 20, that'sit - that's most of the shipping. that is not a good sign. that is a bad sign.

that's not good times coming economically,that's bad. real bad. next: south korea. south korea is a remarkable economy. it's grown very fast over the last 30 years. it's almost as impressive as the growth ofthe people's republic of china. but it is not led, of course, by a communistparty. it is led, instead, by a handful of enormouscorporations. they're called chaebol - i don't know howyou pronounce it - c-h-a-e-b-o-l.

think of it as an enormous conglomerate. if there was a merger of gm, ge, dupont, appleand google, that would be it. typically connected by family - their folks marry one another and their cousins and so on. so the country has been run by these hugecorporations and a government that basically organizes the economy for them. they are very hostile to labor unions. tremendous arrests and persecution of peoplewho try to form unions. this society is currently dissolving. there have been massive demonstrations inthe streets.

i'm sure you've all seen them. no. why? because it turns out that the leader of thegovernment has been taking - her, it's a woman - has been taking advice from what is nowcalled in korean circles "the rasputin of south korea". that's a reference to a monk, who was theadvisor to the final royal family in russia before it all came to an end. including mr. rasputin - came to an end, alongwith the royal family there.

she has been taking advice from this - i don'tknow what words to use - this very deeply religious crazy person and the governmentis falling apart and the mass of people are beginning to rise. the target is the crazy decisions this womanleader has made, but it's actually the expression of the anger. because south korea - even more than china- had an economic growth based on exports. exports that you know under the name you know,say samsung. that's a korean company. it's one of those chaebols, okay?

everything is based on exports. the people of south korea don't get paid realwell, work very, very hard in a big, industrial country that produces for export. well, if you keep in mind that the 20 largestshipping companies are not making any money, you will know they can't export because nobodyis buying. samsung has an extra problem, because theydeveloped a special kind of telephone that you can not only use to make calls, but blowsup on you when you do. so, but when you leave things in the handsof these huge, monster corporations, you know that efficiency, then your safety are theiruppermost concerns.

when you hear that, think samsung, vw, wecan continue. these are not exceptions, folks, these arethe norm. south korea is, therefore, blowing up. and when you hear, the next time, about the horrorsof north korea and kim il whatever-his-name-is, what you're hearing is things that are a problemin that country - it has it's problems - but you're mostly hearing about an attempt todeflect away from what is the real problem, which is a major asian ally is imploding. and no one here knows quite what to do. if i had more time, i would tell you how thegovernment of the philippines has decided

that the united states is not the ally itthought it was, and is heading towards china and russia as fast as it can go and makingmr. putin smile, as he no doubt did after yesterday's election. let me turn then, to the topics that we havetime left for. where is the capitalist system going? well, let me be as blunt with you here asi know how. the history of capitalism - for 300 years,wherever it has come - has been a history that deserves the word "instability" stampedon its forehead. the system is fundamentally unstable.

what does that mean? every four to seven years, every four to sevenyears on average, the system tanks. suddenly, large numbers of people are thrownout of work. large numbers of businesses go bankrupt. large numbers of businesses cut back productionfrom what it had been. sudden. bang! sometimes it doesn't last very long, and itdoesn't affect too many people. "short and shallow," we say.

and sometimes, it is very serious. it's long and deep. the one in the 1930s - very long, very deep. the one since 2008 - quite long, very deep. others? shallow and short. but if you assume that the future of capitalismis more or less likely to be the 300 years of capitalism, during which every, conceivableeffort was made to stop this instability, to prevent it, to overcome it, to shortenit, and you can see the success of it by noticing

we're in one now. so the 300 years of effort to stop it failed. by the way, just again, between the end ofthe great depression, 1941, and the beginning of the one we're in now, 2008, the national bureau of economic research - which is the government agency that monitors these things- counts 11 economic down-turns. between 1941 and 2008. that's where you get the four-to-seven-yearaverage. okay: when was the last bottom of the cycle? 2009.

do some arithmetic. four to seven...2009...we're overdue for one,aren't we? which is why, on wall street, if you follow the financial press, the assumption is - in the next six to 18 months - we're going to have a down-turn. well, woo. we're not out of the 2008 disaster. we've got a level of people with debts theycan not afford to miss a payment on. if we get suddenly millions of people thrownout of work with another down-turn, the kind that would come if the shipping companiesof the world have no demand to meet by renting

out their ships to carry stuff, if the massof people are not in a mood to spend money, if they can't borrow more, because they'realready loaded up to here with debt, then we're looking at a situation in the near futurewhen we are going to have an economic down-turn in an already-fragile economic situation. that's not good, folks. and that doesn't suggest anything is goingto happen in this society to undo the inequality that keeps getting worse, to undo the instability,which is about to explode on us again. there's nothing happening to slow down automation. in fact, the use of robots is accelerating in a whole line of productions here in the

united states and elsewhere. and ditto the movement of production out ofthe united states continues. so we're not seeing any sign of a change,or anything that could be happening that would produce a reversal of what has agitated politics in this country so extremely as we now see it. mr. trump is going to have his work cut outfor him. big time. handling these problems, trying to deliveron the real demand of the people who voted for him - which is for some real change intheir situation - how's he going to do that, given the commitments he's made, given whohe is, given who he’s going to bring in

to power? true, he may deflect everybody's attentionby saying outrageous things about mexicans - or half the population. maybe he will. maybe he'll figure out that deflecting peopleaway from the basic issues that upset them, which is, after all, what the election didfor a year, is his best hope. to keep the hype going. to keep the circus and the theater going sothat people don’t… but it didn't work for any of his predecessors- to keep doing what they were doing in the

hope that whatever got them into office, ifthey just keep doing it, it would keep them in the office. if you noticed anything about the last fivepresidents, by the end of the time of their term, americans hated them. could't wait to get them out. obama's a little unusual - didn't have that- people haven’t turned against him. but bush, you remember? the end of bush's term? at the end of clinton's term, at the end?

they're all - ooh, your nose! - americans had enough, because of that betrayal. but, if mr. trump thinks he can just ridealong like all the others, he will be committing the same mistake that allowed him to get intooffice. he will not have learned from that at all. and if we add to that an economic down-turnthat is going to plunge a generation of students with already too much debt, with already too-limitedjob situations, with an even worse one as they emerge out of college, we might beginto see things that make occupy wall street look like a picnic in comparison.

with a level of accumulated anger. because we haven't begun to see - we've onlyseen the mildest forms of upset. occupy wall street was very peaceful; it was very low-key. bernie sanders' campaign, basically the same. and given what the black lives matter responded to, the slaughter of a people by the police, their response has been pretty low-key. that's not likely to continue. at least, in the past, that's not the way these things usually go. so let me scare you with one thing.

[laughter]there are, of course, people who are excited about mr. trump's gain, who are the david dukes of this world, the people who have a different political agenda, an old ideological agendaof the sort that you all know and don't need me to tell you about. no one knows how much reliance trump willput on them, what positions in government he will allow them to have, nor what theywill do if they get such positions. but, knowing who they are and what they willnow feel emboldened to do, my guess is they will be provocative. and my guess is a lot of people, like thosein this room, will react.

that could spin out of control. that’s - that's a whole other game. then you have the polarization of the twosides and mr. trump can play the game as if he is bringing them together, when in fact,he's repressing one in favor of the other. that's an old game, too. if i were watching - which i will be - that'swhat i will be watching for. and that's what i'll be talking to you aboutin the months ahead, whether we begin to see signs of that, where they are and how they are going. but i don't want to end today without leaving you with two more insights about what's going on.

there is also, because of the difficultiescorporations are having, difficulties, and i want to explain the difficulties. in the end, a capitalist system like any othersystem, needs all the different parts of it to play their assigned role. capitalism doesn't work if the mass of workersdon't go to work. to do the work. if you didn't go, the game is over. you've got to go and work. and then you've got to go to the mall andbuy the fruits of your work.

you've got to play both sides of that game,otherwise it doesn't work. but capitalism is a system that is internallymessed up. or, to use marx's term, it's contradictory. every capitalist is always trying to saveon labor costs. to get a cheaper worker to try to replacea more expensive worker. to get a machine to replace any worker. to get a worker to accept lower wages thanhe or she did before. they're always trying to save on labor costsbecause it gives them more profits. and then they're always surprised when theydiscover that the success they've had in cutting

down their labor costs - which means they'regiving away less money to the workers - means, there you go, the workers don't have the moneyto buy the stuff. what they gain by squeezing their workers, they lose because they've just squeezed their customers. capitalism can't get out of this dilemma,because it's the nature of capitalism. to get out of that dilemma is to give up thecapitalism, which - this should come as not a major surprise - the capitalists don't wantto do. so they're forever caught in this dilemma. they have no way out. oh, they can postpone the dilemma.

you know how they do that? you all know how they do that. how can they keep you buying, even thoughthey're not raising your wages? how can they get you to buy more and more,even though they're not paying you to do it? the answer is: the plastic in your wallet. debt. you can borrow, because that allows you tospend, and we don't have to pay you. this is wonderful. of course, you should have 12 credit cardsin your wallet.

of course, you should borrow for college. of course, you should borrow for your car,your house. borrow, borrow, borrow! because it's the capitalist's dream. it gets the customers and don't have to payyou anything. in fact, he takes the extra profits - madefrom not paying you, saving on labor - he takes the extra profits, ready? because if you get this, you'll understandcapitalism, and you'll become its enemy. he takes the extra profits from not payingthe workers and lends it to them, so that

they can buy on credit, what he's sellingthem. you get it? he squeezes you as a worker and then lends you, so he can squeeze you as a borrower, too. the only thing worse than that reality isthe number of american citizens who are grateful for the opportunity. you are complicit in your own screwing. which is not a compliment. so corporations are having trouble. americans can't buy.

europeans can't buy - not the way they did. they've run out of debt. they can't borrow any more, either. their wages are going nowhere, and they cannot afford any more debt. that's why we collapsed in 2008. they couldn't afford the debt then. so what's happening, the corporations aregetting scared. how are they going to make money if they can'tsell any more? the solution, they found - more and more inthe last few years - is to make more money

by saving on costs. all costs. and the way they do that is called "mergersand acquisitions" - m&a, in the lingo. they buy each other. then, instead of two landscaped headquartersof the company, they only need one. instead of two layers of middle and uppermanagement, they only need one. they can lay all kinds of people off, theycan save all kinds of costs, they can make four airline companies do 80% of the airlinetraffic in this country. the last one was a few years ago.

american airlines, usair. first proposed by the two airlines, opposedby the obama administration. within three months after the obama administrationannounced it was against it, the obama administration announced a reversal of its position and itwas now for it, which is why we have it. the fact that the mayor of chicago, rahm emanuel,lobbied heavily for that reversal and was rewarded - you can't make this stuff up - bybig contributions from the heads of the airline companies to his re-election campaign in chicago,has, of course, has nothing to do with it. mergers everywhere, which of course means,that a society already dominated by large corporationsis becoming dominated by smaller and larger

corporations and fewer of them. you're living in that society. it isn't working real well. that's why they can and will make the kindsof decisions that the biggest monopolists in the automobile industry, basically, vw,indulged itself. it thought it could get away with it, because it probably has gotten away with who-knows-what for years. but if you think you're safe in an economicsystem in a capitalism working like this, uh-uh. it's falling apart.

i keep trying to get it across. it's not under control. nobody has it under control. there's not some solution around the corner. mr. trump doesn't have a magic wand any more than mrs. clinton or mr. obama did or could have had. it's a system spinning out of control, andmore and more people are getting dimly, slowly - because it's scary - the notion that theirreal options and choices in this life are whether to go down with it. finally: what's the option?

what's the option? again, there is an option. i learned today of a group of cab driversin austin, texas. 360 of them, who just formed a cooperativetaxi business. they were successful in driving uber and lyftout of austin. they were there; they're gone. and, in their place, is this worker cooperativethat has set up in austin, texas to run that business. and that business is attracting worker co-opsquite a bit.

our little organization, democracy at work,is working with one in grand rapids, michigan - which is, likewise, trying to set up thiskind of business. why do i talk to you so much about worker co-op businesses? because it's an alternative to capitalism. it's a way out. it's something to do; it's a direction totake to get out of this mess which is deteriorating and presenting us with the trumps of thisworld. you know that trump is not unique. the establishment in england thought thateverybody would vote to stay in europe.

they didn't. it's the exact same story. if i understand correctly, the liberal, socialist president of france currently has an approval rating of 4%. which is an achievement. i don't believe any leader has ever achievedthis before. [laughter]and, wow! wow! he's a socialist in the sense that he wentalong with everything. he didn't think there would be anger and upsetagainst going along, saying at least he's

not as bad as the conservatives in france. and he isn't. just like the democrats here aren't as badas the republicans. they aren't. but we're not at that any more. that won't work. that won't cut it any more. it's done. and mr. hollande is discovering that, to hissorrow.

the syriza government in greece is on theedge of discovering the same thing. the portuguese government - which, i believei have told you, is an alliance of the communist, socialist and green parties - that's the governmentof portugal. i'm sure you all knew that, right? that the government of portugal is a coalitionof those three parties. because the press in this country would wantyou to know that the people of portugal made that decision in their last election. yes. yes, they did.

they're all worried. they don't know where to go. let me be so bold. here is where you go: you develop a workerco-op sector. you say this is a way for you to have a job,where the job and the security and the income are the number one priority, not profit. you're not driven by profit first and everythingelse later, uh-uh. profit is second...or third...or fourth. first is the quality and the quantity of therelationships and the security and the income

of your workplace. that's a worker co-op. that's what it's always been designed to be. build that sector of an economy. let the people in this society begin to see what that's like and they'll vote with their feet. that's where they'll go and shop. just like they now - some of you shop forfair-traded coffee. wouldn't you shop for something that said"made in a worker co-op in a democratically-run enterprise" rather than a top-down one thatuses child labor in indonesia, etc., etc.?

come on. a democratic enterprise? what an interesting slogan, in a country thattakes democracy seriously - or says it does. to democratize the enterprise. make democracy there. get rid of the autocrats at the top. you know, you could throw the desks into theriver and call it a tea party - why not? let me close with reminding you of what hasbeen done in a country very like our own: great britain.

for those of you that i've told this before,bear with me. britain has two parties, like the united states. they're not called republican and democrat,they're called conservative and labour. labour party. the second party's the labour party, sortof like our democratic party and the conservatives are like our republicans. the labour party has a bernie sanders of itsown. the man's name is jeremy corbyn. c-o-r-b-y-n.

i believe that's how it's spelled, c-o-r-b-y-n. he has been elected now twice in a year, becausethe center of their party, like the center of the democratic party, was very upset withtheir bernie sanders and so they tried to get rid of him. so they had a second election in a year. he did better in the second election thanhe did in the first, so they couldn't get rid of him. he's the head of the labour party. why am i telling you this?

because the labour party in england has aprogram commitment. this is what it will do if it wins the election,which is scheduled for ne- 2017 or maybe -18, i don't know; either next year or the yearafter. here's the commitment: it will become law,if the labour party wins, that any enterprise in england - any enterprise - that eithercontemplates closing or moving out of the country or becoming a public company in thesense of issuing shares, a public offering - any company that plans to do any of thosethings will be required by law to give their own workers the "right of first refusal" to buy the company. that the company can not close, can not move,and can not sell itself to any other company

- that's another thing, can't do that - withoutfirst giving the workers the right to take the place over and run it as a worker co-op. only if the workers refuse, will the companybe free to explore those other options. plank number two: the government pledges toprovide the money to enable the workers to buy the company. in order to create, in england, a worker co-opsector of the economy. and, for those of you who don't know, sucha sector of a capitalist economy already exists. spain has it through the mondragon experiment,and emilia romagna, that district of the state inside of italy also has that.

so we already have examples of it. we have the examples, we know how to do it, we know where it's been done, we have the exper... we can do this. there’s only the political will in thiscountry to advance such a program and to go to the people and say "this is a way out ofa 40-year deterioration that is punctuated by the lunacy of these election campaigns." i have to leave; i can't stay. thank you very much, and i hope i see youagain in december.

Fahmy Herbals @ 04.23