Is Sanders The President We Need In a Covid-19 World?
Listen to story:
Download: mp3 (Duration: 28:36 — 26.2MB)
FEATURING RICHARD WOLFF – In the face of the Coronavirus pandemic, the US’s extreme wealth inequality, lack of nationalized health care system, lack of a federal paid sick leave law, and other related issues have shown the nation’s severe vulnerability. In a New York Times Article Farhad Manjoo wrote, “Everyone’s a socialist in a pandemic. But the laugh catches in your throat, because the only joke here is the sick one American society plays on workers every day.”
In this dangerous new world, we just happen to be in the middle of a critical primary election where one of the two front runners is a self-described democratic socialist who has been touting Medicare-for-All as the central plank of his domestic policy. Is Bernie Sanders the President we need in a pandemic like this?
Richard Wolff, visiting professor at the New School University, New York and professor of economics emeritus at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, author of a number of books including ‘Democracy at Work: A Cure for Capitalism’, ‘Occupy the Economy: Challenging Capitalism’, ‘Imagine: Living in a Socialist USA’, and ‘Capitalism’s Crisis Deepens: Essays on the Global Economic Meltdown.’ His latest book is called Understanding Marxism.