anniversary of david graber's passing and in the  spirit of his rejection of academic arrogance  

and our urgent need to get out of the  crisis we are in we set up the art project  

fight club welcome to the first one of the series  today we're talking about what is that the next  

one will be about the nature of money david was  probably the most famous anthropologist of our  

times and the best-selling offer even still he had  a food in his computer called nightmare in which  

he dumped all bills bureaucratic papers invoices  and papers of his academic achievements he regards  

the idea of isolated individual as a myth  what interested david much more was a dialogue  

he believed that it is only in dialogue in the  class of opinions where answers are formed and how  

human consciousness is born we humans according to  david are the product of our social relationship  

that's why it was so important for him  to be involved in a situation in which  

people think and act collectively and david  grabber foundation will follow the same path  

so we have several projects lined up from  collective education of his archive to publishing  

the anthology of the fight club starting from the  first debate between david greber and peter thiel  

as fight club official cheerleader i urge our  fighters to be emotional provocative and bold  

because the questions that we'll discuss concern  us all if enough of us will change the way we  

think about what deb mean then the social design  of our society will change i'll change along with  

this so this is just that as david described  what a revolution is a change of common sense  

and the collective imagination and david argued  that the main achievement of the paris commune  

despite a defeat had been the transformation  of the common sense about how we live together  

so most of what we consider ordinary in our  cities public transportation street lights  

public schools the eight hours work days and even  the not yet achieved equal pay for women and men  

originated in the paris commune and it  was then considered to be a social madness  

so the same can be said said about occupy those  10 anniversary we celebrate it now just as we  

celebrate david's life occupy didn't take over any  territory he didn't have leaders and government  

but it did change the public discourse it's become  important to talk about equality poverty and that  

so after after occupy we'll look at the world  differently speaking on death the position of  

our fighters today are radically different  we want to i want to express my immense  

gratitude to thomas piketty who replied to  my email although we didn't know each other  

and agreed to participate in this debate i also  want to thank michael hudson who came up with them  

many of the ideas that david graber built upon  in his book 5000 years of death and i really hope  

that this debate can radically change the way we  think about the world and what else could be more  

exciting so i passed to liam who uh thank  you for agree to moderate his discussion  

well it's my great pleasure and it's wonderful  to welcome everyone from all over the world uh we  

share some commonalities in our human experience  and one of them is that we tend to come into the  

world most of us sort of under-capitalized for the  experience so in a sense most of us are united in  

debt and that's why it's especially exciting to  have two such brilliant thinkers help us unpack  

this difficult subject from the suitcase where we  like to push it way into the back of the closet  

today i'm very delighted to welcome my friend  michael hudson he is a distinguished professor  

of economics at the university of missouri kansas  city he's also a researcher at the levy institute  

at bard he's a former wall street analyst and  a frequent commenter on economic matters and  

historical matters he's written extensively about  debt and as you just heard from nika his work was  

a great inspiration for david graber he can  also tell you more about the ancient sumerians  

than you ever dreamed of knowing so hopefully  we get to hear a little bit about that today  

uh welcome professor hudson and welcome also to  tomati he is the um professor at the e-h-e-s-s  

and the paris school of economics and he's also  the co-director of the world inequality lab  

uh you know him for going viral with his books  telling us why most of us don't have any money  

of course there was his smash hit capitalism in  the 21st century and more recently which you must  

get if you haven't read it capitalism and ideology  uh welcome to you professor pikati and we'll start  

out having each of you tell us uh your thoughts  about debt your position on the topic and you'll  

have about five minutes each and uh i think we'll  start with you professor hudson i thought we're  

going to let tom go first otherwise it's going  to be fine all the things i agree with that he  

wrote and let him say what nobody wrote that's  fine with me thomas would you like to go first  

uh yeah whatever is it's fine i mean so okay  let me say a few words first let me you know  

thank you for organizing this and and you know  i was very you know when i received nika's email  

you know i felt you know where you know  i felt very emotional because you know i  

remember very well the discussion we had with  david grubber back in 2013 in paris which was  

right after my book capital in the 21st century  was first published in french it was not yet  

available in english so david has not read it but  i had read this book and on that um the first ten  

thousand years and and um and and this was you  know this was for me this was really a very um  

you know powerful reading and this made me think  a lot maybe this was not so visible in capital  

in the 21st century because i had written it  actually before i i could read david's book but  

but you know to me this was this was really  a major and this is a major contribution  

so what about that let me simply say that you know  there will be in the future there will be again  

other debt constellation massive debt consolation  so you know there are long cycles about that which  

which of course david uh talks about when we go  back to ancient history or to sumerian times and  

as michael has has been has been working on and  so you have this long-run cycle but you also have  

you know a short more short-run history of of that  consolation a more medium-run history if you want  

and i think it's very important to to remember in  particular that you know after uh you know there  

are two modern episodes which i find particularly  striking in terms of getting that back to zero  

or at least you know concerning a big part of  that the french revolution of course is a very  

important example so you know this was a time  when the basically the political system did not  

manage to make pay those who should have paid  for the public spending which was the nobility  

so there was a fight flight toward that because  people who should have paid the tax managed on  

how to escape and the solution was the french  revolutions and the fiscal privileges of the  

aristocracy the conservation of that through  partisan inflation partly through taxation  

and that's sort of one modern episode the other  modern episode which i want to to refer to is of  

course uh after world war ii uh you know after  you know in 1945 1950 most rich economies had  

public debt which were enormous you know even even  bigger than than today and they made the choices  

you know the political choice through you know  very conflictual social movement political fights  

in the end the choice was made collectively not  to replace his debt so this happens in various  

ways you know inflation in some cases but  but some countries like germany in particular  

which is viewed today as as very conservative in  terms of economic doctrine and ideology and which  

in many ways is very conservative we'll  see after the election in a few days but  

you know it's still going to be quite conservative  probably in any case but in fact after world war  

ii developed applied the solution to to  get rid of the debt of the past through  

a monetary reform and through progressive taxation  of very high wealth holders in order to in effect  

compensate the lower wealth holders for the uh for  the monetary reform and the the loss of links that  

was implied by military reform so that in the  end i mean this is not job this was certainly  

not a perfect system but as compared to all other  ways of getting rid of past that you know this was  

certainly one of the one of the most equitable  or at least or the least unequitable way to  

to address the problem and you know i think we  will have we will have other episodes like this  

in the future so nobody knows the form it will  take you know the kind of political mobilization  

you know occupier was was was an important episode  there will be other you know there are other you  

know social movement tax revolt you know if you  think of the yellow vest movement in france a  

couple of years ago which was a major tax level  to get rid of a very what i think was a very uh  

an equal project to raise the carbon tax basically  on the poorest group in society and and there will  

be you know to address uh climate uh challenges  but also you know all sorts of social and  

developmental uh challenges uh we will we you know  societies will have to to to to find ways of of  

getting rid of their debt right now we have this  illusion that you know we can just take it on the  

central bank offer and and forget about it but you  know i think it will be more conflictual and more  

less peaceful than this because it's  always a matter in the end of redefining  

a power relation between different social groups  so it cannot be completely peaceful it involves a  

conflicting social interest it involves different  groups of people with different agenda and you  

know in many ways we have we are in a situation  which is not i think completely different from  

the one at the time of the french revolution which  is at the you know those who those who should pay  

have somehow managed to design a legal system  and a political system so that they can escape  

taxation and and at the same time middle class and  lower class people are you know fed up of paying  

the bill for them and so and so the solution is  more and more debt but you know at some point  

there will have to be something else will have to  happen and i think it will be roughly the same it  

will have to be roughly the same solution as it  was you know 200 years ago which is the end of  

fiscal privileges of a small group in the  population that has that has managed to  

escape taxation for for for too long so  that's okay that's a sort of initial uh  

initial perspective and and that but you know  of course i'm very interested to hear michael  

and continue the discussion thank you michael  it's uh floor is yours okay well i certainly  

appreciated uh the the book that you published  on the uh accumulation of uh wealth and how it's  

concentrated in the hands of the uh one percent  i think everybody knew intuitively that this was  

the case but uh economists being who they are  they don't really accept something until it's  

all there in statistics and uh you you did uh  just a wonderful job in tying together uh all of  

these statistics and uh showing how the degree to  which wealth is uh the one percent of concentrated  

wealth in every country and you also made i think  the most important point where you said what's  

caused this and you came up with the broad answer  that i agree with you said that financial returns  

exceed the overall rate of growth and if financial  returns exceed the overall rate of growth of  

course you're going to have the rich getting uh  richer uh and richer uh and i think the reason  

uh where we uh uh have a different approach is how  do you explain all of this well uh when your book  

came out a number of writers said well this is uh  uh the marks of the uh uh 20th century and uh uh  

you showed that there was an abrupt turning point  uh in 1980 and uh everything had been changed  

there and i think the one percent looked at your  statistics as a success story they said yep we're  

really uh doing better than everybody else and as  uh the head of goldman sachs said that's because  

we're so uh productive uh but i think the reason  your book was praised so much uh in the west is  

you didn't come up with a threatening political  solution uh and uh when they said this was the  

mark book is the marks for modern time that meant  don't read marx read this book and i suspect that  

after you put all of this enormous good work  into the uh statistics that you did on wealth  

and income i think the publisher probably said  well what are what are your solutions well you  

just came up with uh the solution that you uh said  in the book and that's to tax income and wealth  

uh this is not a threatening solution because  there's no way that you're going to tax wealth  

as long as you have offshore banking centers to  conceal wealth as long as you have what the oil  

industry put in place a hundred years ago the  flags of convenience pretending to make their  

uh income abroad the fact is uh the one percent  don't really make much income they're ideal if  

you're a billionaire you want to do what uh half  of american corporations do you don't make a penny  

of taxable income uh that that's uh the whole  problem so i want to go into what uh your  

book was not about uh i'm not criticizing  you for not writing a different book but  

it's what i write about and that is why what  is it that has created this uh uh disparity  

and why is it widened so much since 1980. well  the most obvious reason is uh interest rates  

reached a peak of 20 in uh 1980 and they've gone  down ever since well in the late 1970s uh my old  

boss's boss at chase manhattan paul volcker  said let's raise interest rates to very high  

because the 99 are getting too much income their  wages are going up let's uh raise interest to slow  

the economy and that will prevent wages from going  up and he did and that was a large uh reason why  

carter lost the the election to ronald reagan  interest rates then went down from 20 to almost 0  

today the result was the largest bond market boom  in history bonds went way up in price the economy  

was flooded with bank credit and most of this  credit uh apart from going into the bond market