This week on Economic Update, Professor Wolff discusses the flaws in the argument that profit is an appropriate, just return to the risk taken by a capitalist who invests. The critique focuses on (1) what it means that a capitalist can withhold means of production from production, and (2) how workers, their families, and communities also take risks in any productive enterprise yet get no profits, thereby invalidating the justification of profit as a reward for risk. In the second half, he shows that technical innovations such as AI do not cause unemployment; rather, the capitalist system does. An example is offered of how AI could be installed to advantage every enterprise's majority—its employees—rather than profit its employers (a minority in enterprises).

The d@w Team Economic Update with Richard D. Wolff is a DemocracyatWork.info Inc. production. We make it a point to provide the show free of ads and rely on viewer support to continue doing so. You can support our work by joining our Patreon community: https://www.patreon.com/democracyatwork Or you can go to our website: https://www.democracyatwork.info/donate Every donation counts and helps us provide a larger audience with the information they need to better understand the events around the world they can't get anywhere else. We want to thank our devoted community of supporters who help make this show and others we produce possible each week. We kindly ask you to also support the work we do by encouraging others to subscribe to our YouTube channel and website: www.democracyatwork.info

On this episode of Economic Update, Professor Wolff provides updates on job losses in February 2026 in the U.S. economy, how California unions are actively protecting immigrant workers from ICE, capitalist crashes and politics (1929 vs. today), and Europe's economic dead end. In the second half, Professor Wolff interviews journalist-critic (and Bernie Sanders' speechwriter) Richard RJ Eskow about AI.

The d@w Team Economic Update with Richard D. Wolff is a DemocracyatWork.info Inc. production. We make it a point to provide the show free of ads and rely on viewer support to continue doing so. You can support our work by joining our Patreon community: https://www.patreon.com/democracyatwork Or you can go to our website: https://www.democracyatwork.info/donate Every donation counts and helps us provide a larger audience with the information they need to better understand the events around the world they can't get anywhere else. We want to thank our devoted community of supporters who help make this show and others we produce possible each week. We kindly ask you to also support the work we do by encouraging others to subscribe to our YouTube channel and website: www.democracyatwork.info

This week on Economic Update, Professor Wolff explains how and why Trump's tariff policies add uncertainties to global trade that undermine the very benefits he promised tariffs would bring. He also explains why the United States has never truly been a democracy, but rather an authoritarian society whose current shift is from a polite authoritarianism to a blunt, unvarnished one. The core argument is that the workplace—whether a factory, office, or store—is organized in a fundamentally authoritarian way, and that this structure then extends to and infects the rest of society.

The d@w Team Economic Update with Richard D. Wolff is a DemocracyatWork.info Inc. production. We make it a point to provide the show free of ads and rely on viewer support to continue doing so. You can support our work by joining our Patreon community: https://www.patreon.com/democracyatwork Or you can go to our website: https://www.democracyatwork.info/donate Every donation counts and helps us provide a larger audience with the information they need to better understand the events around the world they can't get anywhere else. We want to thank our devoted community of supporters who help make this show and others we produce possible each week. We kindly ask you to also support the work we do by encouraging others to subscribe to our YouTube channel and website: www.democracyatwork.info