Richard Wolff squashes Bill O'Reilly's economics FAIL

[alp227]

TRANSCRIPT:

AMY GOODMAN: Professor Wolff, before we end, I want to turn back to the crisis in Cyprus and relate it to what’s happening here. Bill O’Reilly of Fox News warned his audience last week that Cyprus and other European countries are facing economic hardships because they’re so-called "nanny states."

BILL O’REILLY: Greece, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Ireland, now Cyprus, all broke. And other European nations are close. Why? Because they’re nanny states, and there are not enough workers to support all the entitlements these progressive paradises are handing out.

AMY GOODMAN: That’s Bill O’Reilly of Fox News. Richard?

RICHARD WOLFF: You know, he gets away with saying things which no undergraduate in the United States with a responsible economic professor could ever get away with. If you want to refer to things as nanny states, then the place you go in Europe is not the southern tier—Portugal, Spain and Italy; the place you go are Germany and Scandinavia, because they provide more social services to their people than anybody else. And guess what: Not only are they not in trouble economically, they are the winners of the current situation. The unemployment rate in Germany is now below 5 percent. Ours is pushing between 7 and 8 percent. So, please, get your facts right, Mr. O’Reilly. The nanny state, you call it, the program of countries like Germany and Scandinavia, who tax their people heavily, by all means, but who provide them with social services that would be the envy of the United States—a national health program that takes care of you, whether you’re employed or not, and gives you proper healthcare. In France, for example, the law says when you go to work, you get five weeks’ paid vacation. That’s not an option; that’s the law. You get support when you’re a new parent for your child care and so forth. They provide services. And they are successful in Germany and Scandinavia, much more than we are in the United States and much more than those countries in the south.

So they’re not broken, the south, because they’re nanny states, since the nanny states, par excellence, are doing better than everyone. The actual truth of Mr. O’Reilly is the opposite of what he says. The more you do nanny state, the better off you are during a crisis and to minimize the cost of the crisis. That’s what the European economic situation actually teaches. He’s just making it up as he goes along to conform to an ideological position that is harder and harder for folks like him to sustain, so he has to reach further and further into fantasy.

[joelz]

1. excellent clip

I still don't understand why folks watch American tv news its made up shit and lies

[ErikJ]

2. Wow.

Wonder why Wolff is never invited on Fox?

[Shrike47]

3. That was clear, blunt and overwhelming!

[socialindependocrat]

4. Don't you love to hear from someone who knows what they're talking about!

I wish they would get these guys and women to go in and lecture to Congress
before they spew off their mouths and confuse everybody.

Our congress is a bunch of idiot millionaires (at least half)

[DhhD]

5. While O Really reaches in to Fantacy with one hand, how many Sheep People is he pulling down

in to agreeing with Austerity, with his other hand?

Thanks for exposing him. And for exposing FOX as a supporter of Downfall.

[JDPriestly]

6. Richard Wolff is right.

Balance is the key.

Educating and training your workforce is important.

Protecting workers' rights makes all the difference.

Scandinavia and Germany plus France and Austria are the countries in which people fare the best, have the fairest opportunities and the most social protection. In addition, the governments in those countries invest in infrastructure.

Germany is developing solar energy in spite of its rainy, cold climate.

We need to look to Germany, Austria, Scandinavia and France for ideas about how to do as well as they do. They looked to us after WWII --- and then we changed and now we are moving backwards.

Let's take a good look at their successful economies and copy them.

[OnyxCollie]

7. K&R. nt