When most of us think about bail, we focus on the financial burden it presents to the accused. This week’s guest is Jeffrey J. Clayton, Executive Director of the American Bail Coalition. He talks to Steve about the complicated anti-democratic trap that is our criminal justice system. Jeff explains that across the US there are plans in place to eliminate bail. (One would think that’s good news. One would be wrong.) In reality, these plans result in greater violations of civil liberties. Bail is b...
Apr 27, 2024•43 min•Ep. 274
**Check our website for upcoming events such as book clubs, RP Live webinars, and the Tuesday evening discussion group, Macro ‘n Chill. https://realprogressives.org/ This week’s episode is the audio track of a recent webinar with historian Esha Krishnaswamy. Esha is now living in Russia to research and write a people’s history of the Soviet Union. The discussion begins with the story of the First World War and the Bolshevik Revolution. The formation of the USSR as a proletarian state shook the c...
Apr 20, 2024•1 hr 20 min•Ep. 273
“Assange is being targeted by the US government because he doesn't conform to the dominant culture of the US prestige media. He's not going to be invited to the White House Correspondents' Dinner. He's not going to be given a Pulitzer. He's not going to be treated as one of them.” Steve’s guest is journalist Kevin Gosztola, author of Guilty of Journalism: The Political Case Against Julian Assange . Kevin has been advocating for freedom of the press since the George W. Bush administration and the...
Apr 13, 2024•55 min•Ep. 272
**RP Book Club is beginning a new series, Sunday April 7, 14, and 21, at 3pm ET/12pm PT. Register once for all three sessions. realprogressives.org/event/rp-book-club-the-communist-manifesto/2024-04-07 L. Randall Wray talks with Steve about the concept of value in the context of MMT. Randy discusses the labor theory of value and the liquidity premise theory, saying both approaches are critical to understanding how money works in a capitalist economy. Randy looks at the historical development of ...
Apr 06, 2024•54 min•Ep. 271
A hundred years ago, John Maynard Keynes predicted we would see a massive expansion of growth and productivity under capitalism. Bingo. He got that right. He said this amazing efficiency would result in a shorter work week with far more leisure time for everyone. Oops. Not so much. The structure of capital ownership will never permit it. Bill Mitchell’s blog post, Keynes Was Wrong Because He Failed to Consider Class Conflict , was the inspiration for this episode. Bill talks with Steve about man...
Mar 30, 2024•1 hr 11 min•Ep. 270
This episode of Macro N Cheese is dedicated to Steve’s mom, Joan Grumbine. Her kindness, love, and unwavering dedication to her family and community will be deeply missed. May she rest in peace. In his first solo episode, our host and jefe, Steve Grumbine, recounts the story of his political transformation from conservative republican to passionate MMT advocate, to self-identified socialist. He begins the episode talking about his recent experience dealing with the medical system as his mother’s...
Mar 23, 2024•1 hr 18 min•Ep. 269
** Be sure to check the Real Progressives website’s calendar for upcoming events. On Sunday, March 17th at noon ET/9am PT, we’re hosting a webinar, RP Live with Esha Krishnaswamy: Putin’s Russia . On Tuesday evenings, 8pm ET/5pm PT, come to Macro ‘n Chill, where we listen to the most recent episode of this podcast and discuss it with the community. https://realprogressives.org/rp-events-calendar/ “Inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon, in the sense that it is and can be produc...
Mar 16, 2024•55 min•Ep. 268
The American people see through mainstream claims of “the greatest economy ever.” They are confronted by evidence to the contrary every day. Steve and his guest, economist Yeva Nersisyan, take a deep dive into the current US economy, looking at the repercussions of the high costs of education, healthcare, and housing. They discuss different perspectives on the causes of inflation and talk about Isabella Weber’s work on “sellers’ inflation” and its relationship to monopoly power. They argue that ...
Mar 09, 2024•59 min•Ep. 267
** Reminder: You are invited to listen to and discuss this episode with friends from Real Progressives on Tuesday, March 5th. Find the Zoom link at https://realprogressives.org/rp-events-calendar/ “If the soul is left in darkness, sins will be committed. The guilty one is not he who commits the sin, but the one who causes the darkness.” — Victor Hugo Daniel Conceição talks with Steve about Argentina’s economic immiseration under newly elected president Javier Milei. Milei’s aggressive cuts to pu...
Mar 02, 2024•1 hr 5 min•Ep. 266
**To discuss this episode among friends, come to our listening party, Macro ‘n Chill, on Tuesday February 27th at 8pm ET/5pm PT. For the link go to our Events Calendar https://realprogressives.org/rp-events-calendar “But fortunately for us, human nature is precisely the capacity to be creative; to imagine a different way of living together and to bring that into being through our conscious and deliberate actions by working together, by fighting for a different world against the class power that ...
Feb 24, 2024•55 min•Ep. 265
** If you haven’t yet come to our Tuesday night listening party, this is the week to do so. Join the Real Progressives community as we dive in and discuss this episode. The registration link is posted on our Events Calendar prior to each Tuesday’s session — it’s usually up by Saturday. Look for Macro ‘n Chill. https://realprogressives.org/rp-events-calendar/ This week Steve talks with our friend, economist Fadhel Kaboub. Followers of this podcast will recognize some of the themes we regularly fo...
Feb 17, 2024•57 min•Ep. 264
“We've been trying to get people to stop saying ‘mainstream media.’ I’ve got to do it now too, for the same reason that you just described: because there's nothing mainstream about 90 percent of the media being controlled by 6 private, for-profit corporations or 5 other big tech companies. There's nothing mainstream, or Main Street, about the ideas and the views that they platform. It's corporate media or establishment legacy press, and then there's independent media which means very little.” — ...
Feb 10, 2024•58 min•Ep. 263
“...the question of how to pay for it is a very complicated question but has much less to do with money than it does to do with social structure and industrial structure. And the quicker we can get away from centering the taxpayer as the goose that holds the golden egg money and more towards the questions of labor and industrial structure that are really going to affect how we provide healthcare, I think we're going to be in a better place.” — Rohan Grey In 2022, Real Progressives helped our coa...
Feb 03, 2024•1 hr 20 min•Ep. 262
**Transcripts and “extras” are available for each episode of Macro N Cheese on our website: https://realprogressives.org/macro-n-cheese-podcast/ This podcast’s followers know we cover a range of topics from political theory to international events, but at some point, we always circle back to Modern Monetary Theory. This interview with Warren Mosler was originally recorded for “Let’s Get Ready to Grumble,” Steve’s show on Status Coup. As with any Mosler episode, this one is appropriate for both M...
Jan 27, 2024•56 min•Ep. 261
When we hear the term “blockchain,” we immediately think of libertarians and capitalists. Crypto bros. They have been dominating that space but they don’t hold a monopoly on it, and our guest, Joshua Dávila, AKA The Blockchain Socialist, refuses to cede the ground. In this episode he and Steve discuss the need for bridging the gap between technical knowledge and social understanding because blockchain technology can be a valuable organizing tool for socialists. Joshua suggests creating collectiv...
Jan 20, 2024•48 min•Ep. 260
One of the many exciting things about a federal job guarantee is its transformative potential in reshaping society's understanding of work and value. It can provide a dignified job for people in every possible situation with every ability and disability. Of course that’s not all we love about the FJG. In this episode, Tyler Emerson and Steve also discuss the job guarantee’s preventative possibilities in tackling social and environmental crises. Tyler is one of the younger generation of MMT schol...
Jan 13, 2024•54 min•Ep. 259
Before the 1980s, mass layoffs were often tied to economic recessions. Today, they are shrewd corporate strategy. Modern mass layoffs are connected to leveraged buyouts or stock buybacks. Steve’s guest, Les Leopold, explains how the process works and how it came to be through the maneuverings of Wall Street and the two political parties. Les is the author of Wall Street’s War on Workers . He and Steve talk about the very real impact on people’s lives, from the coal miners of Mingo County, West V...
Jan 06, 2024•53 min•Ep. 258
In his third appearance on Macro N Cheese, Dan Kovalik talks with Steve about his upcoming book, The Case for Palestine: Why It Matters and Why You Should Care . As with many of our guests, the episode is more of a conversation – a passionate one – than an interview. “First of all ... this conflict did not begin on October 7th, though we're led to believe it did. This conflict – well, it depends on when you want to say it started – but certainly a good starting place is 1948 in the Nakba, when 7...
Dec 30, 2023•46 min•Ep. 257
“We cannot talk about colonialism, green or otherwise, about dismantling it, about decolonization, about environmental and climate justice in the Arab region, and turn a blind eye to the ongoing genocide, the ethnic cleansing, the mass displacement, the mass slaughter and the repression of Palestinians perpetrated by the racist apartheid settler colonial state of Israel with the active support and abetting by imperialist powers — from the United States to the European Union, to France, to German...
Dec 23, 2023•1 hr 30 min•Ep. 256
According to Wikipedia, “Enshittification, also known as platform decay, is the pattern of decreasing quality of online platforms that act as two-sided markets. Enshittification can be seen as a form of rent-seeking. Examples of alleged enshittification have included Amazon, Bandcamp, Facebook, Google Search, Quora, Reddit, and Twitter.” Wikipedia also tells us the term was coined by today’s guest Cory Doctorow. Steve and Cory discuss his new fiction book, The Lost Cause, which explores truth an...
Dec 16, 2023•1 hr 4 min•Ep. 255
Fadhel Kaboub is back for his lucky 13th episode. He talks with Steve about the concept of climate reparations and its significance in tackling the climate crisis. True reparations go beyond financial compensation; they must include transferring technology, repairing our ecosystem, and restructuring the global financial and trade systems. The global North must not shirk its historic responsibility and disproportionate impact of climate change on the Global South. Fadhel and Steve discuss the nee...
Dec 09, 2023•1 hr 9 min•Ep. 254
The consequences of income inequality extend far beyond economic disparities. Stephen Bezruchka focuses on its effect on health. Stephen is on the faculty of the School of Public Health at University of Washington and is author of Inequality Kills Us All . Much of this interview looks at these issues in the US. Stephen directly ties inequality to mortality rates, disease, and early childhood development. It’s interesting to hear a physician who doesn’t blame our individual choices and habits; he...
Dec 02, 2023•1 hr 4 min•Ep. 253
Charles Derber, author of " Dying for Capitalism ", talks with Steve about the intersectionality between capitalism, environmental destruction, and militarism. He argues that the capitalist system, particularly in its neoliberal form, is inherently connected to the threats of environmental catastrophe and war. He emphasizes the historical context of these connections, tracing the shift from water-powered capitalism to coal and then oil as a means to maintain control and avoid public opposition. ...
Nov 25, 2023•59 min•Ep. 252
David Fields talks to Steve about “Economists for Palestine,” the statement released by the Union for Radical Political Economics (URPE). They emphasize economists’ responsibility to take a stand against the genocide being perpetrated against the Palestinians. They look at the connection between Zionism and the global capitalist system, debunking misinformation while highlighting the difference between antisemitism and anti-Zionism. We at Macro N Cheese urge our listeners to circulate the statem...
Nov 18, 2023•55 min•Ep. 251
This week’s episode is the second half of Steve’s interview with Hamza Hamouchene about his book, Dismantling Green Colonialism: Energy and Climate Justice in the Arab Region . Steve and Hamza agree on the importance of reckoning with the realities of the current capitalist imperialist system, which has proven to be a failure in addressing the most crucial needs of people and planet. Hamza argues that alternative visions for a better world already exist – he himself is an eco-socialist – but the...
Nov 11, 2023•45 min•Ep. 250
When we talk about the climate crisis, common wisdom says we’re all in it together. That implies that everyone is responsible, and everyone needs to do something about it. Our guest, Dr. Hamza Hamouchene, attacks this notion unequivocally: “The historical responsibility, of course, in the climate crisis lies within the industrialized capitalist West.” Most of the impacts are felt by communities in the global South, in countries that have been impoverished since colonial times. As developing nati...
Nov 04, 2023•52 min•Ep. 249
This week’s episode is another webinar from our RP Live series: Inside a Failed State, with Michael Hudson. Michael prefers a Q&A format. Attendee questions revolved around US political economy, domestic and global. He discusses topics such as healthcare, de-dollarization, and the impact of economic policies on the working class. He emphasizes the need for a change in economic philosophy and highlights the government's ability to create money for social programs. A common Hudson theme is the...
Oct 28, 2023•1 hr 33 min•Ep. 248
As a society we are conditioned to believe we can f*ck with nature, with the living world, but the economy is immutable. We dare not try to change it. As MMTers we say: hahahahaha... *sob* These two assumptions explain why we’re hurtling towards ecological catastrophe and why austerity has become a way of life. Steve’s guests this week are Colleen Schneider and Christopher Olk. They are co-authors, with Jason Hickel, of the paper, How to Pay for Saving the World: Modern Monetary Theory for a Deg...
Oct 21, 2023•48 min•Ep. 247
Carlos García Hernández is the author of Fiat Socialism: Achieving the Goals of Socialism through Modern Monetary Theory . He lays out the five goals of fiat socialism: Full employment Full and prudent use of material resources The guarantee of the five essentials to every citizen: food, housing, clothing, health services, and education Social security at all major exposed points in the social structure (eg, old age, sickness, accident, temporary unemployment, and childbearing) Labor standards, ...
Oct 14, 2023•1 hr•Ep. 246
This week’s episode welcomes back Fadhel Kaboub, a valued friend of this podcast. He and Steve discuss the concept of just transition and the problems with carbon markets as a solution to climate change. They stress the injustice of historic polluters buying carbon credits to continue polluting while displacing vulnerable communities in developing countries. It is yet another capitalist solution. The current global financial architecture, established during colonial times, is neither designed to...
Oct 07, 2023•1 hr 2 min•Ep. 245
