Sanders & Socialism: Debate Between Nobel Laureate Paul Krugman & Socialist Economist Richard Wolf

this is democracy now democraticnow.org the war and peace report I'm Amy Goodman as we continue to watch Senator Bernie Sanders' runaway victory in Nevada that cemented his position as the favorite for the Democratic presidential nomination as Sanders seeks the Democratic nomination it seems more and more It is likely that the Democratic Party establishment and much of the mainstream media are openly expressing concern about a self-described democratic

socialist

leading the presidential ticket. His opponents, including former Vice President Joe Biden and former South Bend Mayor Pete Budaj, are also attacking the senator. Sanders believes in an inflexible ideological revolution that leaves out the majority of Democrats not to mention the majority of Americans a

socialist

Bhutto Kratt I am a Democrat it was Joe Biden and before that judge Pete Buddha they spoke on Saturday night after he will dictate the results of the Nevada caucuses Last week, during the primary

debate

in Las Vegas, Bernie Sanders addressed misconceptions about

socialism

and correctly pointed out that people have a much higher quality of life in many ways than we do .

What are we talking about? We are in many ways living in a socialist society right now. The problem is that dr. Martin Luther King reminded us that we have

socialism

for the very rich, rugged individualism, and subsidizing workers, so Bernie Sanders hosted a

debate

about Bernie Sanders and democratic socialism with us

economist

s in our New York studio Nobel Prize winners are op. New York Times columnist Paul Krugman has just published his latest book called Arguing with Zombies Political Economy and the Fight for a Better Future One of his recent columns is titled Bernie Sanders is Not a Socialist Also with us in the studio is Richard Wolff Professor Emeritus of economics at the University of Massachusetts Amherst visiting professor at the new school here in New York he is the founder of democracy at work and hosts a weekly national radio and television program called economic update among his books the last one is called understanding Socialism, We welcome you both to Democracy Now.

Well, what do you think of what's happening right now? Paul Krugman with Bernie Sanders so far the clear favorite but moving towards South Carolina and why that incumbent Bernie Sanders is not a socialist like you were. getting on well, I mean, it's Bernie says he loves Denmark. I love Denmark. I think Denmark is an example of how decent a society can be. The Danes do not believe that they are socialists, they think that their social democrats do not use the word socialist and that is not socialism as we have always understood it, it is not government ownership of the means of production, it is not taking over the dominant heights of the economy, it is a really strong social safety net and a strong union. movement that I support in the discussion with zombies.

I have a whole chapter called ich socialism that's about the Republican habit of playing three cards Monte, you say you're for universal healthcare, they say, as a socialist, you say you're for universal healthcare. childcare, they say, think about how many people Stalin killed, you know, this is crazy, so why use the word right? As I describe myself, I think it's a little self-indulgent to call yourself a socialist and you know, give Republicans some unnecessary ammunition I think we're probably in favor of the same thing I'm in favor of the same kind of policies on universal health care universal child care all these things why accept the republican effort to make this sound like something Stalin would do well? calling himself a democratic socialist is a development that is too fine why I use the word let me cut to a clip from the Democratic presidential debate in Las Vegas last week.

We hear from Bernie Sanders first than from Mike Bloomberg on income and wealth inequality. Make sure the people who work for you know what mr. Bloomberg, weren't you the one who made all that money? Maybe his workers played some role in that too. When so many people go to work every day and don't feel good about their jobs, they feel like cogs in a machine. I want workers to be able to. sit on corporate boards too so they can have a say in what happens, proposing absolutely no. I can't think of ways that would make it easier for Donald Trump to get re-elected and listen to this conversation that other countries tried that was called communism and it just didn't work, so there was Michael Bloomberg, the former mayor of New York City, going after Bernie Sanders.

Richard Wolffe, you described yourself as a socialist

economist

, respond to what Paul Krugman says and what Bloomberg says here, surely there is no public or private agency that defines what a socialist is if you follow the socialist movement for the last hundred and fifty years you will find that it has been contested ground from day one there were different interpretations and different meanings Bernie Sanders is perfectly in line One of the traditions of what socialism is is that the government has an important role in compensating for some of the horrible qualities of capitalism, but we also know that the kind of control the government tries to operate is very difficult to achieve with us once.

We had a new deal in this country, we lost most of it because we didn't go beyond a government intervention to change society. What Bernie Sanders represents is the awareness that it is time to have a conversation that we should have been having for 75 years about our capitalism. system and if we can do better, this is now a changed environment where what was taboo in this country is no longer taboo and Bernie has already managed to break a taboo in this country to talk about socialism, its strengths and weaknesses, its different interpretations and comparing them to capitalism instead of running away because nasty conservatives call us different things, that's not a deep reason and for the young people of this country it doesn't carry much weight anyway, so I applaud the openness that Bernie achieves that we can talk about socialism.

They are different interpretations and why we should explore them much more than we have been able to under the taboo of the last 75 years. Oh shit, I actually agree that a lot of young people have reacted, which means we have a 60-year-old campaign. to equate any attempt to improve the lives of Americans with socialism and a good number of young people have said well, in that case I am a socialist, the problem is that you are not going to win this election without a good number of older people as well and simply It seems to me that it is again self-indulgent to follow this path.

I wish you didn't. I mean, if Sanders is the nominee, Democrats will have to support him and people like me will end up writing a lot of things saying, "Don't be afraid, he uses the word socialist, but he doesn't really mean what Republicans think he wants you to think." what it means, but you know who needed this, this extra thing, so I." I'm not sure this is the case. I'm not sure I understand what the point is. I mean, it seems to me that we have to argue that I want social justice. I want a strong government safety net.

I want empowerment of workers. say all those things without having to, you know, give ammunition to the people who want you to look like Stalin, so I mean it. I'm going to spend, I hope, I hope Sanders is probably the nominee and I hope to spend a lot of next year saying look, he's actually talking about Denmark, not that much, but I shouldn't have to do that Richard, I'm proud to be a part of it. of the socialist tradition and I understand the difficulty Paul is having now defending Accenture The ISM that is being rejected by a large number of people, the surprising reality is that the majority of young people at least 35 years old and younger no longer think that socialism is a bad word and they are immune to that and young people are the future of this country that older people know and younger people ask them to question older people why this taboo why we can't talk about socialism why not we can embrace socialism and its honorability, my God, if we have seen anything in recent years we have seen the center either in Europe or in this country disappearing center left center right to the extremes of the right and now an extreme of the left I don't find that scary I understand people who are centrists do, but I appreciate that we can have an honest debate in this country and there are many things in the socialist tradition that are worth preserving there are lessons of what we should do as well as There are lessons of what we shouldn't do that This is also true for capitalism, so we are opening things up and I think when it comes to electability we have as much to argue that this is the way forward as anyone on the other side.

I don't think people who send me hate mail and I'm the king of hate mail I think I'm right centrist I'm for universal healthcare I'm for deficit spending on infrastructure I'm for universal child care if that It's centrism so you know, let's do it By that standard, Denmark is a centrist right. I want it before addressing topics like Medicare. I want to turn to MSNBC and what's been happening over the weekend, sort of a crisis on MSNBC around the issue of Bernie Sanders clearly seeming to be in the lead. -The runner and boss among those melting appears to be MSNBC host Chris Matthews, who this weekend compared Senator Sanders Nevada's victory to Nazi Germany's takeover of France about France's fall in the summer of 1940 and the general now calls Churchill and says that it is The insurance thing is a hot topic, since you have the largest army in Europe, how could it end?

He said it's over, so I had that suppressed impression feeling. I may not be as wild as Carville, but he is very smart and I think he is right. This is so that Bernie Sanders' communications director, Mike Aska, responded to Matthews' comment on Twitter by saying: I never thought part of my job would be to plead with a national news network: stop comparing the campaign of a Jewish presidential candidate whose family was wiped out by the Nazis with the Third Reich, but here we are, several people are now calling for Chris Matthews to resign, yes, I mean, far be it from me to defend Chris Matthews, who I believe has been a major malign influence part of our political discourse.

I think I was actually calling Sanders a Nazi, I was just thinking this is what it looks like when you've lost, but it was stupid, it was stupid and it was insensitive and it was characteristic, I mean, if that's what Senator ISM sounds like this notion that calling for universal health care or, if so, is some kind of extreme position and no, I mean, this is this, it's telling you something about where Matthews' head is at, it's that and it's not a good thing and It's unfortunate. I don't think he's unique. The fact of the matter is that there are many, I mean Lloyd Blankfein, saying, "Oh, you know, I might have to vote for Trump if Sanders is nominated, explain the meaning of who long live, I'm going to play the saxophonist and that's it." You know, for God's sake, yes, Trump could." Sanders could raise his taxes, which is not an important consideration.

American democracy is at stake, so there are a lot of people out there who I'm not sure how many there are, there are a lot of influential people who are horrified by the prospect of a strongly progressive candidate and that should be condemned, you know, I just wish it wasn't Richard Weller called himself a socialist. Well I think politics is changing and centrists are having to discover that they are centrists because politics has moved to the left that's what Bernie has accomplished that's what the young people around him have accomplished can be a common word and uncomfortable for people who used to consider themselves left-wing to discover that they are not, that there is a movement to their left, but we are very proud that that has returned as a kind of sanity and balance in our political discourse, so I'm not surprised that people like Matthew overreact because they are being outmaneuvered by the left and weren't prepared for it.

I remember in 2016 talking to a senior Democratic Party official assuring me that Bernie Sanders would never get more than 1 or 2 percent of the vote anywhere and they didn't know and they didn't understand and it's a bit like old Bob Dylan. song, you know, wake up, things are happening that you didn't foresee and they are changing the terrain that you are on, but I want to make it clear that many of us welcome this. I mean, Chris Matthews has been crying, he said recently. I remember the Cold War. I have an attitude towards Fidel Castro, he added.

I think if Castro and the Reds had won the Cold War, there would have been executions in Central Park and I might have been one of the executed and some other people would have been there. cheering, suggesting as he talked about Bernie Sanders that Bernie Sanders would be responsible forhis execution in Central Park, yes, to me, this is all I hear in all of this, is an anguished fear that politics is moving to the left, these are individuals who committed long ago in their lives to not to go to the left, even if they had sympathies there, to remain in the middle because it was the safest thing for their future, for the country and for their careers, and that is no longer the case. are outraged and provoke these kinds of comments as we continue our debate about Bernie Sanders and democratic socialism with Paul Krugman, Nobel Prize-winning economist, New York Times opinion columnist who has published a new book called Arguing with Zombies, and Richard Wolfe, Emeritus Professor. of economics University of Massachusetts Amherst visiting professor at the new school his book is called Understanding Socialism so Paul Krugman wanted to go where you are one ofThe headline of his columns that he just wrote Bernie Sanders is not the Trump of the left, did he have reason?

I'm more concerned about the electability of someone who says he's a socialist even though he's not, and if he wins, he'll waste capital politics on unwinnable fights like abolishing private health insurance his stance on Medicare for All if he could do it if he could wait for the magic wand or if I used the time machine because somehow a bet goes back to 1947 when we almost got single payer health care what would I do right now if it's not the only way to do it one thing you learn if you study the systems of healthcare is that all other advanced countries have universal healthcare, they do it in different ways, some of them have government provisions, some of them have regulated private healthcare some of them have a single payer system the single payer system Single is not the only solution, but that's okay, the problem is that there are 160 million people in the United States who have private health insurance. replace what you have with something completely different, trust us, it will be better, it will probably be true for most of them, that would be better, but that is a big political push.

You're asking people to take a huge leap of faith while we can. in fact, getting to universal coverage through a public option through something like Medicare for America, something that allows people to buy Medicare and subsidize it without having to waste that time, and there are so many who don't have the best. The health care system is not the only priority. If I say the biggest gap in America is that we're not doing enough to help kids, I'd like to see another couple percentages of GDP spent on helping kids at a variety of levels. ways and I think the campaign for Medicare for all will end that possibility, something interesting when you look at the polls in New Hampshire and Nevada about what worries people most in both places is the same number one is health care number one two is climate change number three, I think it's inequality and number four, his foreign policy and especially in Nevada, Richard Wolffe.

The interesting thing is that there was a very powerful union, the culinary union, where they offered excellent health insurance to their workers, and yet their workers were overwhelmingly rank and file. The file took issue with leadership and said that even if we receive excellent health care, we have family members who are not loved ones who are not loved ones and ultimately we want Medicare for all, so please explain this discrepancy. Paul Crabman says it's not realistic, well, I guess. Once again, politics in the United States has changed. I don't think the mass of Americans want to hear the details about what they could get and how careful we need to be and what steps we need to take.

They wanted a change. They wanted it from Obama, who promised hope and change. They even wanted Mr. Trump, who promised change, that we did not get the changes that they promised neither one nor the other, that is why people now want something that will solve their problem, he will not respect the old centrist, let's be careful, let's do this, let's not push too hard. So how can we get to Medicare for All immediately or more quickly than Paul Krugman suggests, ladies? Yes, Paul, which is a surprise, we are probably both, but the point is that there are many models of countries that have a variety of ways responded to basic human demand I want to be careful I want to know that when I am born and until I die, if something happens to me in the form of illness or injury, they will take care of me like I want a public park and I want public schools I want public health care and they don't want the details and vacillation that they want and any of those would be a perfectly good foundation.

You know, I've always been interested in how people look at other countries to say which ones would be models. when we have the model here at home we have Medicare, one of the most popular programs in this country, oh yes, we have socialized medicine for everyone over 65 and although it is interesting if you look at it, we also have private insurance that we have not abolished. private supplemental insurance for seniors in the United States, so in some ways it's a bit of a compromised system. The actually existing Medicare we have for older Americans is not as radical as the Medicare that Bernie Sanders proposes for all, but look, yes, America contains We have multitudes, we have purely socialized medicine, the Veterans Health Administration is a real provision government health care and it works, we've regulated the private markets and Obamacare, maybe it upset Obama a lot, but given the limitations he was under, he got 20 million. people who didn't have it before, I personally know people whose lives were saved by obamacare, so let's not dismiss it as nothing and we have single payer, but you know, it says that in a way of telling you that there are many ways to achieve it and we should observe that all other countries do it for everyone.

The problem is that we have a safety net that has huge holes. Interestingly, this Yale study was just published in the Lancet medical journal and it said Medicare for All would save the US four hundred and fifty billion dollars and prevent almost seventy thousand deaths a year, we have Bernie Sanders recently saying that he wants people in the movement say: I'm willing to fight for someone I don't know, yeah, I mean, I could match Paul's argument and his little model of someone whose life was saved by introducing him to people whose life was lost or at least to his relatives because they did not have the coverage that Mr.

Obama couldn't get it done, and for someone who kept saying that he could do more if he had a groundswell of support, we must remember that when that groundswell developed, the so-called Occupy Wall Street, Mr. Obama bulldozed it in Zuccotti Park and everywhere else, undermining the same current he had previously used as an excuse not to do more, but my answer is whether it's health care or a decent college education for Americans that isn't loads them. With tens of thousands of dollars of debt, the demand is now there and that is what is driving mr. Bernie Sanders supports, they don't want a mediocre dispute, this change, they want these problems, which Paul is right, have existed in this country for many years, they want it to finally be resolved and they want a politician that they can believe could actually do it instead to do it. to those in the middle who have been saying it and promising it and delaying the difficulties and basically haven't done it one of your columns Paul Krugman you talk about the headline is zombies eating brains of Bloomberg and Buddha judges yes, explain well, that was for the most part my book argues with zombies and one of the zombies is this obsession with government debt and the belief that, you know, we should be very afraid of government debt and we can't do anything because the deficits are barely enough and so It's how we talk about slavery. now at the top at the same time that mainstream economics, if you like centrist economics, God has concluded, hey, these concerns about debt were greatly exaggerated, you know, the president, the American Economic Association, gave this speech presidential saying that death is not even close to the problem, people.

I think it is and it is not a limitation and of course the Republicans have committed one of the greatest acts of political hypocrisy in history. You know deficits were an existential threat while Obama was in office, they don't matter as soon as Trump is in office. so I don't really want to see, I mean, if we had a democratic centrist who bought into this scaremongering about the deficit, that would be a really bad thing that would block any kind of initiative and as we start to wrap up, there's a mayor there's a debate presidential on Tuesday night in South Carolina two of the seven candidates are billionaire Richard Wolff his thoughts well to me it's always a shock to watch this inequality get worse and worse I'm one of the people who even though I wasn't alive then , who celebrated that during the 1930s we compressed inequality in this country through an unusual president whose politics bear striking resemblance to those of Mr.

Bernie Sanders these days and we actually did something to decrease inequality and as soon as the war ended, we resumed it, undid the New Deal and inequality started reaching crazy levels. Now it is an abomination that a person, for example, Jeffrey Bezos. He has more than one hundred billion dollars to decide what to do with all those resources that are not democratic, that is, they exclude the mass of people from the knee who could satisfy if that money were used in another way and he can hardly consume it. itself, it is an extraordinary measure. criticism of capitalism that allows this kind of concentrated wealth that, of course, protects itself by trying to control the politics of our country so that they don't have the power in Congress to undo inequality in the first place, so, For me, I claim against that.

Right on Bernie Sanders, I mean, I don't think billionaires are inherently evil, but something is wrong when two guys who don't really have any kind of national political base are in this debate just for their money, something peculiar is, of course. That Steyr may well make Bernie Sanders the nominee by taking support away from Biden, but no, this is, I mean, seconds. Bloomberg isn't evil, but he shouldn't be in this race. We want to leave it there for now, but of course we will. Keep covering it all during this 2020 election year. We'll be doing a five-hour special on Super Tuesday night from 7:00 p.m.

Eastern Standard Time until midnight. I want to thank Paul Krugman, Nobel Prize-winning economist and New York Times opinion columnist. He is the author of numerous books, the latest being about zombies and many thanks to Richard Wolff, author of the new book. socialism that does it for our broadcast I'm Amy Goodman thank you very much