Macro N Cheese

On the eve of the strike authorization vote by American Airlines flight attendants, Joe Burns spoke with Steve about the labor movement, unions, and class struggle. Joe, a labor lawyer and negotiator, has been a guest on Macro N Cheese twice before. His focus, then and now, is on the importance of class struggle unionism and the need for union leadership that is willing to engage in the broader fight, confronting power at its core.

Steve and Joe discuss the role of the corporate media in minimizing and obfuscating issues involving labor and class. They look at the ways in which both monetary and political policy are used to tame workers and reinforce the power of corporations.

Joe Burns is a veteran union negotiator and labor lawyer with over 25 years' experience negotiating labor agreements. He is currently the Director of Collective Bargaining for the Association of Flight Attendants, CWA. He graduated from the New York University School of Law. Prior to law school he worked in a public sector hospital and was president of his AFSCME Local. He is the author of Strike Back, Reviving the Strike, and Class Struggle Unionism.

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Activists and organizers know that effective communication depends on connecting with people’s real needs. But we’re often baffled when people don’t act in their own interests or don’t identify others’ interests as intersecting with their own.

To grapple with some of these questions, Steve turns to Stephanie Preston, Professor of Psychology at the University of Michigan and author of The Altruistic Urge: Why We’re Driven to Help Others. They delve into in-group versus out-group dynamics and the challenges of creating altruistic urges within different socioeconomic groups.

The conversation explores structural solutions to address societal issues, such as universal basic needs and improved access to healthcare. Stephanie argues that eradicating precarity and providing basic survival needs would shift the mindset towards seeing individuals as deserving of support and compassion.

Of course, there’s still the question of achieving these solutions. That’s where our activism comes in. For some of us, this episode may raise new questions. How do we level up to meet large scale problems? Does building empathy have a place in political organizing? Does altruism?

Stephanie D. Preston is a Professor of Psychology at the University of Michigan. She earned Master’s and PhD degrees in behavioral neuroscience at the University of California at Berkeley, followed by a postdoctoral fellowship in the Department of Neurology at the University of Iowa College of Medicine. She has been a faculty member at U-M since 2005. She uses an interdisciplinary approach to examine how the brain evolved to guide decisions through emotions, in a variety of domains, including to feel empathy, offer altruistic help, support the environment, and to consume and keep material goods. Her book, The Altruistic Urge: Why We Are Driven to Help Others (2022), is published by Columbia University Press.

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RP Book Club spent four weeks on The Case for a Job Guarantee, by Pavlina R. Tcherneva. Each week featured a different guest expert who led the discussion and answered questions. Listeners to this podcast will recognize their names, including Pavlina herself, Fadhel Kaboub, Ben Wilson, and Rohan Grey. We were also honored to have Bill Black and June Carbone join in.

For this episode, Macro N Cheese is releasing the audio recording of all four sessions. Since it is unusually long, the time codes for each segment are included below.

[00:03:09 - 01:55:41] Session One

Guest: Fadhel Kaboub

• Introduction
• Chapter 1, “A Public Option for Good Jobs”
• Chapter 2, “A Steep Price for a Broken Status Quo”

[01:55:41 - 03:17:41] Session Two

Guest: Pavlina Tcherneva

• Chapter 3, “The Job Guarantee, a New Social Contract and Macroeconomic Model”
• Chapter 4, “But How Will You Pay for It?”

[03:18:44 - 04:41:57] Session Three

Guest: Ben Wilson

• Chapter 5, “What, Where, and How: Jobs, Design, and Implementation”

[04:41:57 - 06:29:43] Session Four

Guest: Rohan Grey

• Chapter 6, “The Job Guarantee, the Green New Deal, and Beyond”

Use this link to order a copy of The Case for a Job Guarantee, by Pavlina R. Tcherneva

Dr. Fadhel Kaboub is Under-Secretary-General for Financing for Development of the Organisation of Educational Cooperation (OEC). He is an Associate Professor of Economics (on leave) at Denison University and President of the Global Institute for Sustainable Prosperity.

@FadhelKaboub on Twitter

Pavlina R. Tcherneva is an Associate Professor of Economics at Bard College, the Director of OSUN’s Economic Democracy Initiative, and a Research Scholar at the Levy Economics Institute, NY.  She specializes in modern money and public policy. Find her work at pavlina-tcherneva.net

@ptcherneva on Twitter

Benjamin C. Wilson is an Associate Professor of Economics at the State University of New York at Cortland and a research scholar at the Global Institute for Sustainable Prosperity.

@autogestion77 on Twitter

Rohan Grey is an Assistant Professor of Law at Willamette University in Salem, Oregon, and the founder and president of the Modern Money Network. MintTheCoin.org

@rohangrey on Twitter

Mat Forstater was on this podcast four years ago (episode 21!) recounting the history of MMT. He described his early days at Levy Institute and UMKC, his relationship with Warren Mosler and Pavlina Tcherneva, and how they established MMT as interdisciplinary, expanding into law and humanities. If you haven’t listened to that episode, we urge you to check it out.

This week, Mat talks to Steve about the role of taxation in the economy and its relation to government spending. It’s not enough to understand how taxes create a demand for the nation’s currency and give it value. Mat always reminds us to consider the total impact of any policy — from using taxation to encourage or discourage behavior, to its ripple effects and unintended consequences.

They touch on the importance of decoupling taxation from federal programs and the need to design tax policies that consider the indirect effects on society. They also talk about the potential deflationary impact of programs like Medicare for All, and whether a job guarantee can address unemployment and provide quality jobs.

Dr. Mathew Forstater is a professor in Economics at the University of Missouri/Kansas City and the Research Director of the Global Institute for Sustainable Prosperity. having received a Ph.D. at The New School for Social Research. His research focuses on the History of Economic Thought, Economic Methodology, Political Economy, Public Policy, Economics of Discrimination, Environmental Economics, African and African American Economic History. 

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The title of this week’s episode is taken from an article to be published in September’s Monthly Review. The author, Jason Hickel, talks to Steve about the topic in his third visit to the podcast.

Before we look at the double objective of ecosocialism we must analyze the double crisis we’re facing – ecological and social. Both are caused by the same underlying issue: the capitalist mode of production.

Capitalism creates an almost perfect circuit that begins and ends with commodification and enclosure. Well, actually, it ends with massive profits... and that double crisis we mentioned. With essential goods and services outside our control, we have no bargaining power when it comes to the cost of living. We are helpless in the face of artificial scarcity and price-gouging. Faced with the high price of necessities we are forced to work longer and harder in order to simply survive. And of course, the more we need to work, the less control we have over our wages. The capitalist class makes out at both ends.

There are at least two undeniable problems with this system. It wreaks havoc on the environment and is inconsistent with democracy, if you care about that sort of thing.

Even those of us who live in the US, Europe, or other countries with nominally democratic electoral systems have no illusions about their undemocratic nature.

After identifying the quagmire, Jason and Steve talk about a solution. Jason lays out the necessary policies that ecosocialism should provide: universal public services, a public works program, and the job guarantee. Jason even suggests the possibility of post-capitalist firms and post-capitalist markets, and describes how they might operate in such a system.

We can’t have a Jason Hickel episode without a discussion of degrowth and whether that concept applies to the exploitation of the Global South. Nor is there a means of achieving our goals without domestic and international class solidarity.

Dr. Jason Hickel is an economic anthropologist, author, and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. He is Professor at the Institute for Environmental Science and Technology at the Autonomous University of Barcelona, Visiting Senior Fellow at the International Inequalities Institute at the London School of Economics, and Chair Professor of Global Justice and the Environment at the University of Oslo. Health.

Jason's research focuses on global political economy, inequality, and ecological economics, which are the subjects of his two most recent books: The Divide: A Brief Guide to Global Inequality and its Solutions (Penguin, 2017), and Less is More: How Degrowth Will Save the World (Penguin, 2020), which was listed by the Financial Times and New Scientist as a book of the year.

@jasonhickel on Twitter

It will come as no surprise to our listeners that countries of the Global South are mired in a foreign debt crisis and that default is directly tied to the lack of monetary sovereignty.

Our friend Ndongo Samba Sylla, a Senegalese development economist, talks to Steve about the situation, how it came to be, and how it can be overcome.

Countries of the Global South usually are tied to debt in a foreign currency for a number of reasons, including balance of payment constraints and the capture of export income by transnational corporations. Some debt was carried over from colonial rule. Ndongo emphasizes that these countries are often trapped in an extractive economic model. Their resources are exploited by foreign companies, leading to a cycle of debt and dependence.

Debt cancellation, while absolutely necessary, is not enough to address the structural issues that perpetuate the crisis. Ndongo mentions ecological debt — the extraction and exploitation of natural resources from the Global South by the Global North. He highlights the need for a fundamental change in the domestic economic model of accumulation to eliminate the role of debt as an instrument of domination.

Ndongo also traces the history of structural adjustments after attempts at reform in the 1970s, beginning with the proposal for a New International Economic Order (NIEO) that challenged the imperialist system. The austerity we witness today arose from the reaction to that agenda.

Ndongo Samba Sylla is a Senegalese development economist. He has previously worked as a technical advisor at the Presidency of the Republic of Senegal, and is Programme Manager at the West Africa office of the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation. He is the co-author of Africa’s Last Colonial Currency: The CFA Franc Story and author of The Fair Trade Scandal.

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This week we’re bringing you all three sessions of the Real Progressives Book Club on L. Randall Wray’s Making Money Work for Us.

RP Book Club is run by our volunteers with guest experts leading the discussion and taking questions from attendees.  

This is much longer than our usual episodes of Macro N Cheese, so we’ve included the time codes for each session. 

[1:43] — Session One 

Guest economist Eric Tymoigne  

• Chapter 1, What is Money? 
• Chapter 2, Where Does Money Come From? 

[1:14:35] — Session Two 

Guest economist Yeva Nersisyan  

• Chapter 3, Can We Have Too Much Money?  
• Chapter 4, Balances Balance  
• Chapter 5, Life is Full of Trade-Offs 

[2:43:33] — Session Three 

Guest economist Randy Wray 

• Chapter 6, The MMT Alternative Framework for Policy  
• Chapter 7, MMT and Policy 

Use this link to order the book: Making Money Work for Us: How MMT Can Save America by L. Randall Wray

Eric Tymoigne is an Associate Professor of Economics at Lewis & Clark College in Portland, Oregon; and Research Associate at the Levy Economics Institute of Bard College. @tymoignee on Twitter. 

Yeva Nersisyan is an Associate Professor of economics at Franklin and Marshall College and a Research Scholar at the Levy Economics Institute. 

L. Randall Wray is a Professor of Economics at Bard College and Senior Scholar at the Levy Economics Institute. 



Our guest this week is 1Dime, a content creator on YouTube and the podcast, 1Dime Radio, and a graduate student in political science. The interview is another stop on Steve’s journey to find the intersection of Modern Monetary Theory and Marxism. 1Dime is one of the few socialists – or democratic socialists – who accept MMT.

Our audience understands that capitalism is antithetical to democracy. 1Dime suggests that the US is unique in that it is very liberal in what it allows its citizens to do in the private sphere, or civil society, without allowing for real political power, which he defines as the ability of a social class to actualize its interests.

Steve and 1Dime compare the political history of the US with parliamentary democracies, discussing what that means for the working class. Agreeing that elections have limited value for American socialists, they look to alternatives. Tony brings up the idea of dual power: establishing power within the state while engaging in revolutionary actions outside it, building media institutions as well as organizations that can reach out to labor.

Tony runs the YouTube channel "1Dime" and the podcast 1Dime Radio. On his main channel, 1Dime does video essays and mini-documentaries that involve the political economy, history, geopolitics, leftist theory, and various socio-political topics. 1Dime is known most for his videos involving MMT and Marxian thought, such as "The Problem With Taxing The Rich" and "Why Billionaires Prefer Democrats." His most recent video series was on the History of Post-Soviet Russia and the Putin regime. Each video serves as both an educational analysis of a different topic and a unique artistic experiment.

Check out his YouTube channel, 1Dime and his podcast, 1Dime Radio, on Apple, Spotify, and most podcast platforms.

@1DimeOfficial on Twitter

Is the US a failed state? Well, with a paralyzed economy, debt deflation, and a ruling elite waging class warfare on labor, what else should we call it?

Economist Michael Hudson often writes and talks about the US role as a global force bending the rest of the world to its will. Or trying to. This week he and Steve bring the focus home, looking at the state of affairs in the US; breaking down the causes and devastating effects of the massive transfer of income and wealth from the working class to the 1% — specifically the finance, insurance, and real estate (FIRE) sectors.

Michael slices through false promises of re-industrialization after half a century of brutal policies by both Democrat and Republican administrations.

It’s well known that the people want public spending on healthcare, student loan forgiveness, and other social programs. The episode looks at the complementary roles of both parties in opposition.

Should either party feign to support a policy and pass legislation benefiting the people, the Supreme Court is there to stop it in its tracks, citing the original intent of the Constitution.

There are certain themes Michael Hudson visits again and again, strengthening connections and adding nuance to a comprehensive class analysis and global political economy. If you’re lucky, he’ll pepper it with a few snarky observations as well.

Michael Hudson is President of The Institute for the Study of Long-Term Economic Trends (ISLET), a Wall Street Financial Analyst, Distinguished Research Professor of Economics at the University of Missouri, Kansas City. Support him at patreon.com/michaelhudson

Find his work at michael-hudson.com

In this episode, David Correia and Tyler Wall, co-authors of Police: A Field Guide, lead a webinar about policing in the US.

The common narrative about the police is intentionally misleading. Without a class analysis and an understanding of history, it will remain a problem with no solution. Policing isn’t a side-show to capitalist political economy. It’s part of the main stage. Far from engaging in enforcing the law and fighting crime, the police are a coercive force, with origins as slave patrols, colonial militia, and strike-breakers.

Addressing possibilities of reform or abolition, the point is made that attempts at reform only serve to further maintain the legitimacy of the police. Reform does not address the monopoly on violence — a violence that is non-negotiable and non-reciprocal. Reform feeds into the myth that we hold the police accountable. Abolition, on the other hand, does not mean absence; it looks at possibilities for a different kind of world. Can this be done within the capitalist system?

David Correia is a professor of American studies at the University of New Mexico. He writes about violence, law, and race under capitalism.

Tyler Wall is an associate professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. His areas of interest include critical police studies; state violence and racial capitalism; law & society, race and class.

Correia and Wall are co-authors of Police: A Field Guide (Verso)