Noam Chomsky has offered wisdom to the world in many capacities, as a linguist, philosopher, political theorist and more. But how does Chomsky wrap his head around today's political landscape and rhetoric? His friend, the beloved stage and screen actor Wallace Shawn comes to LIVE to mine his intellectual hero's mind.
This event is timed with the publication of Requiem for the American Dream: The 10 Principles of Concentration of Wealth & Power—Chomsky's latest book, and also his first devoted entirely to the subject of income inequality. Find an excerpt of the book below:
“During the Great Depression, things were much worse than they are today, but there was an expectation that things were going to get better. There was a real sense of hopefulness. There isn’t today. . . . Inequality is really unprecedented. In terms of total inequality, it’s like the worst periods in American history. But if you refine it more closely, the inequality comes from the extreme wealth in a tiny sector of the population, a fraction of 1 percent. . . . Not only is it extremely unjust in itself, inequality has highly negative consequences on the society as a whole because the very fact of inequality has a corrosive, harmful effect on democracy.”