1
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
I am a capitalist,

2
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
and after a 30-year career in capitalism

3
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
spanning three dozen companies

4
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
generating tens of billions
of dollars in market value,

5
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
I'm not just in the top one percent,
I'm in the top 0.1 percent of all earners.

6
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
Today, I have come to share
the secrets of our success,

7
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
because rich capitalists like me
have never been richer.

8
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
So the question is, how do we do it?

9
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
How do we manage to grab

10
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
an ever-increasing share
of the economic pie every year?

11
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
Is it that rich people are smarter
than we were 30 years ago?

12
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
Is it that we're working harder
than we once did?

13
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
Are we taller, better looking?

14
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
Sadly, no.

15
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
It all comes down to just one thing:

16
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
economics.

17
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
Because, here's the dirty secret.

18
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
There was a time in which
the economics profession

19
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
worked in the public interest for everyone

20
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
but in the neoliberal era,

21
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
today,

22
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
they work only for big corporations

23
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
and billionaires,

24
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
and that is creating
a little bit of a problem.

25
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
We could choose to enact economic policies

26
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
that raise taxes on the rich,

27
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
regulate powerful corporations,
or raise wages for workers.

28
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
We have done it before.

29
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
But neoliberal economists would warn

30
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
that all of these policies
would be a terrible mistake,

31
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
because raising taxes
always kills economic growth,

32
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
and and any form of government regulation

33
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
is inefficient,

34
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
and raising wages always kills jobs.

35
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
Well, as a consequence of that thinking,

36
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
over the last 30 years, in the USA alone,

37
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
the top one percent has grown
21 trillion dollars richer

38
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
while the bottom 50 percent
have grown 900 billion dollars poorer,

39
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
a pattern of widening inequality
that has largely repeated itself

40
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
across the world.

41
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
And yet, as middle class families
struggle to get by

42
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
on wages that have not budged
in about 40 years,

43
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
neoliberal economists continue to warn
that the only reasonable response

44
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
to the painful dislocations
of austerity and globalization

45
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
is even more austerity and globalization.

46
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
So, what is a society to do?

47
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
Well, it's super-clear to me
what we need to do.

48
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
We need a new economics.