On this episode of Scheer Intelligence, host Robert Scheer and Les Leopold discuss Leopold’s new book, “Wall Street's War on Workers: How Mass Layoffs and Greed Are Destroying the Working Class and What to Do About It” that describes how both political parties created the economic suffering that Trump feeds on. The critical question the book asks is: Did the nightmare of the world economy have to go this way? Or is it really a failure of capitalism? Or is it a failure of people manipulating capitalism?
The book’s two discoveries that help answer this question are mass layoffs and stock buybacks. Before Reagan’s and Clinton’s Wall Street deregulation, mass layoffs were rare and normally only took place during recessions. Les Leopold asks what happened, and provides an answer: “What happened was they allowed several things to take place; one was stock buybacks…to pay for those stocks buybacks, you layoff workers.”
The other change: mergers and acquisitions, and especially leveraged buyouts, which also leads to the mass layoff of workers. Leopold says this has changed the nature of politics. This shift has led to 20 million workers having gone through a mass layoff between 1996-2012. Ultimately, this discussion explores the effects of greed that rampant capitalism allows and feeds on — and the detriment of those who pay the price for it.