I interviewed Paul Craig Roberts on March 27th. This is part one of a two part interview.
Here's the link to the audio recording Podcast.
Thanks to Don Caldarazzo for doing the transcript.
Rob Kall: And welcome to the Rob Kall Bottom Up Radio
Show, WNJC 1360 AM, reaching metro Philly and South New Jersey, out of
Washington Township, New Jersey, sponsored by Opednews.com . Just Google the words "Liberal news," and Opednews.com shows up at
the top of your Google search, or one or two [1 or 2] on your Bing.com search. But we're left of Liberal, really. And we're certainly not a Democratic or a
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by PCR
My guest tonight is Paul Craig Roberts.
He's a former editor at the Wall Street
Journal, he was policy director at the Treasury, and in recent years he
has been just kicking butt talking about the truth about the economy, about the
Constitution, about the rights in America, and the future of America. He's got a new book out: The Failure of
Laissez Faire Capitalism and Economic Dissolution of the West. Welcome to the show, Paul.
Paul Craig
Roberts: Hey, glad to be with you, Rob.
Rob Kall: I think this is the fourth of fifth time I've
had you on the show, which may make you one of the most, or the most,
frequently revisited guests. Your
website is Paulcraigroberts.org . I wanted to start off citing a little bit
from your new book. It just came out the
beginning of the year. You say in it,
"The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 and the rise of the high speed
internet have proved to be the economic and political undoing of the
West."
That's a big deal! I'd like you
to dissect each of those a little bit. I
thought that collapse of the Soviet Union
was a pretty good thing. Why are you
saying it's so bad for the US?
Paul Craig
Roberts: Well, you know, Rob, it led to
that Neoconservative nonsense about the end of History, which of course
unleashed the notion of American hegemony over the world, and the ideology
behind all of the wars and the aggression that the United States has been
conducting since the George W. Bush administration. But I'm speaking in the book economically;
and what happened economically because of the collapse of the Soviet Union and
the rise of the high speed internet is that it made it possible for Western
corporations (corporations in the United States, Europe) to arbitrage labor
across national borders.
In other words, when the Soviets collapsed, it had a big impact on thinking
in Communist China and Socialist India.
Their response to the failure of the Soviet Union was to open their
vast, underutilized labor to Western capital.
So the corporations found out that they could produce for their home
market offshore in India or China, dramatically drop the labor cost, and
thereby dramatically increase the profits flowing in capital gains to
shareholders and in performance bonuses to executives.
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