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History Professor Debunks The Biggest Capitalism Myths
What is late-stage capitalism? Historian of American capitalism Professor Eli Cook deep dives into Reddit to separate capitalism fact from fiction. Watch as Eli covers the ‘golden age’ of capitalism, the impact of wealth disparities and whether late-stage capitalism can be reversed? WIRED recommends: #Capitalism #History #Politics Still haven’t subscribed to WIRED on YouTube? ►►…
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Zoomers, It’s True: You Have It Worse Than Boomers
What is late-stage capitalism? Historian of American capitalism Professor Eli Cook deep dives into Reddit to separate capitalism fact from fiction. Watch as Eli covers the ‘golden age’ of capitalism, the impact of wealth disparities and whether late-stage capitalism can be reversed? #Capitalism #History #Politics Still haven’t subscribed to WIRED on YouTube? ►► Download the…
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Historian Answers Gilded Age Questions
Historian Carl Raymond joins WIRED to answer the internet’s burning questions about the Gilded Age. If John D. Rockefeller lived today, who would be the richest person: him or Elon Musk? When did the Gilded Age end? How long would it take for a Gilded Age woman to get ready? Answers to these questions and…
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@peterknutsen3070
November 6, 2026 at 4:01 pm
4:03 But weren’t the (white female) housewives also living the life, having loads of fun, huffing as much valium as they wanted to?
@somethingsomethingwoo
November 6, 2026 at 4:12 pm
Gotta be a historian now right to tell ya this. In the states. For now.
@Lifewitharielmarie
November 6, 2026 at 4:12 pm
Can all the boomers who are in comments being insufferable please please watch this!
@Austrolopithe
November 6, 2026 at 4:24 pm
…I feel as if this dude may not be entirely objective. He seems to have a very set political view on the topic. The issue with the word ‘capitalism’ is that’s so fuzzy and expansive – to the extent those that use it are almost always making a political point. He should have started the video with is and isn’t ‘capitalism’? (although admittedly he may not have had editorial control). Every country on earth is some level of ‘capitalist’ and nobody except the most extreme oppose an economic system where the free market and forces of supply and demand don’t regulate most economic activity (people may _say_ they do, but if you query around the edges of that – do you want the government making all TV or shampoo or cars? – most would say no). Equally nobody except the most extreme think the free market should determine _everything_ .
The word ends up leading to brain-dead political discussions where everyone thinks everyone else is taking a way more extreme political/economic position than they actually are.
@GraphiteGoddess
November 6, 2026 at 4:47 pm
7:15 because of slave labor in asian factories
@nicolascomesse7432
November 6, 2026 at 5:08 pm
How come EVERY SINGLE EXPERT in economy say that extreme capitalism is bad for humanity? Can you actually be economist and not believe in Keynes’ general theory that wealth should be spread amongst many people? I read somewhere that US citizens don’t see themselves as poor, but rather describe themselves as “not rich yet”.
@rkroll17
November 6, 2026 at 5:10 pm
Capitalism is great when it works and it’s properly regulated. When business interests take priority over individual interests we run into issues.
@Bob-B-.
November 6, 2026 at 5:28 pm
The greatest victory of Capital was teaching the plebeians that social contracts are communism except when they bail out billionaires.
@shadowraygun4000
November 6, 2026 at 5:41 pm
12:47 Does anyone remember the boomer columnists and politicians telling the younger generation to stop buying avocado toast? 😂
@mclartychannel
November 6, 2026 at 6:09 pm
To regular people, life-saving prescriptions that cost $2,000/month and private equity firms buying up houses that families can’t afford are signs of capitalism’s failure. To the billionaire/hundred-millionaire class, these things show that capitalism is working fine.
Marx’s analysis was spot on and is confirmed on a daily basis by the Wall Street Journal but his predictions about capitalism’s demise were off. The last hundred-plus years have given us successively more brutal phases of capitalism with occasional modest corrections like FDR’s New Deal.
We don’t know yet if today’s DSA Dems who won on Tuesday will be able to defeat the bipartisan establishment and dismantle the new Gilded Age.
@kennethbaker5223
November 6, 2026 at 7:40 pm
The Dems that just got elected are going to do what most politicians end up doing when they goad voters into going to the polls for them: nothing. “Corporate landlords” own 0.5% of single-family homes in this country.
@Mrnovanova
November 6, 2026 at 6:24 pm
I guess late stage capitalism is a term for any dystopian outcome of capitalism.
@joeAnon796
November 6, 2026 at 6:27 pm
Epic reference to The Wire. Some how made my least favorite season relevant to the conversation. Much respect Professor!
@TOyaniran
November 6, 2026 at 6:37 pm
“Economics professor goes down an electrical engineering rabbit hole” would have been an equally useless video concept.
@juanmacias5922
November 6, 2026 at 6:48 pm
REGULATIONS. 💜
@alexdwyer4011
November 6, 2026 at 6:55 pm
why bleep one of two “shit”s?
@cynder2694
November 6, 2026 at 7:00 pm
An environment with large inequality is just a very poor experience. Rich people seem to feel this too, that’s why they end up hiding in gated communities.
@gijs4824
November 6, 2026 at 7:00 pm
Billionairs are evil and a threat to democracy and humanty
@rogermiller2159
November 6, 2026 at 7:22 pm
2:27 communication back then left a lot of unknown things. Hard to compare
@rickytaun
November 6, 2026 at 7:27 pm
Thanks Wired. I hope some people understand one of these days.
@ChrisGaun
November 6, 2026 at 7:33 pm
Remember when Wired was about technology
@darkwoodmovies
November 6, 2026 at 7:37 pm
Automation + bad policy did this. We can strive towards a fair and just society where all the boring stuff is automated away, but this requires a competent government to step TF up.
@Mrmonkeydog74
November 6, 2026 at 7:39 pm
Capitalism, at least in America, is like a cancer in society. A tumor that grows unchecked until the entire organism is dead
@Themonarkable
November 6, 2026 at 7:47 pm
It’s so refreshing to see a scholar of capitalism be so incredibly and fairly critical of a system that is just not working.
@OrbitalRose_01
November 6, 2026 at 8:06 pm
The geiger counter sound effect while scrolling reddit is a nice touch
@Landlessnothomeless
November 6, 2026 at 8:14 pm
*I need, want and love socialism so I can be a capitalist..*
*…street style!*
@Manic_M.E
November 7, 2026 at 12:48 pm
Not the surprising for Homer! Most nuclear workers are paid well. What’s surprising is his incompetence lol
@joolsca
November 7, 2026 at 12:55 pm
american ugliness & greed has been the most destructive force in the world
@Kysmikey
November 7, 2026 at 12:56 pm
How to fight late stage capitalism: socialism
@_drian
November 7, 2026 at 12:58 pm
“New Deal”…”New Deal”…”New Deal”…”We need to discipline the capitalists” — we only got The New Deal because Roosevelt DIDN’T discipline the capitalists that failed in a 1933 coup attempt against him to set up their fascist dictatorship (before they were successful in doing so in Germany). If FDR *actually* disciplined the capitalists, instead of shielding them, we wouldn’t be where we are today.
@so_painfully_unmagic
November 7, 2026 at 1:07 pm
4:19 C’mon, dude… Do you feel like being real instead of PR-sanitizing everything you say? It *_IS_* over.
@SynsofMusic
November 7, 2026 at 1:10 pm
The government also passed the G.I. Bill (Servicemen’s Readjustment Act of 1944) for all the returning service members of WW 2.
It provided money for education, housing loans, healthcare. But the reason the government could spend money on these social programs is that business (corporate) and individual taxes were high.
Decades of lowering taxes, government increased spending on military (not service members), subsidies going to corporations and not social programs have contributed to the state of the average worker as well as what was discussed in the video.
People complain that other countries have better systems for workers and healthcare. Those countries have high taxes. What the US had.
@AA-hg5fk
November 7, 2026 at 1:18 pm
Good video but I’m quite alarmed that a professional historian would say that after World War 2 America dominated the world.
Not true, after WW2 the US spent over 40 years in a metaphorical arm wrestle with the world’s other great superpower, the USSR. Trying to contain and counter the USSR had a massive influence all aspects of American life during the cold war, that’s why you spent all those years trapped in Vietnam, for example.
@505Hockey
November 7, 2026 at 1:56 pm
In some places, capitalism serves the people’s needs while, in America, people are expected to serve capitalism.
@Mojo_joe_joe
November 7, 2026 at 2:05 pm
2:19 I’m pretty sure this time period had extremely high corporate tax rates 70+% on profits, strong unions,and little national debt. No?
@philipb2134
November 7, 2026 at 2:17 pm
A German acquaintance noted that political parties in his country were sharply different, but the Republicans and Democrats… much less so. I offered him this (imperfect) clarification: the Democrats want to make sure that capitalism is safe for democracy, and the Republicans want to make sure that democracy is safe for capitalism.
@rd-um4sp
November 7, 2026 at 2:22 pm
Capitalists are the number one enemies of capitalism
@Domitianvs
November 7, 2026 at 2:39 pm
I was not expecting a Frank Sobotka nod here, but I’m all here for it!
@augusto1126
November 7, 2026 at 2:53 pm
Ironically late stage capitalism is in fact the first stages of capitalism since unions didn’t exist and workers didn’t had rights
@MrFrogman811
November 7, 2026 at 2:56 pm
I wish Wired had hired an actual economist who understands these things in instead of some ideological historian who does not. There is so much wrong here. The rich just sit on money and therefore damage economy? Really? There can be temporary short falls of demand, sure, but we don’t live in a perpetual paradox of the thrift world. Ever heard of capital investment leading to greater productivity? That money in the bank gets invested and makes us richer in the long run. The stuff about housing. Sure, housing is an issue, but that is largely due to insufficiently free markets; regulation has artificially restricted supply. The research on the great gatsby curve is complicated, but to use it to establish a simple causal relationship between inequality and lack of mobility is highly misleading. Whatever you think of relative wealth, despite the complaints about “neoliberalism,” the *typical* American is better off now than the *typical* American was when the boomers were young, not just the rich. That’s the data. I was hoping this was going to be brought up in critiquing the false golden age idea, but alas no. Emotion+narrative trump careful economic analysis apparently.
@kiefdemon1979
November 7, 2026 at 3:07 pm
People are paying up to $60 for raw water? Isnt water always raw?
@jpablohidalgo
November 7, 2026 at 3:27 pm
Overly optimistic at the end I would say.
@peterbyrne7348
November 7, 2026 at 3:39 pm
It’s important to remember that strong private sector unions raised wages for all workers whether they were unionized or not.
@kenbrady119
November 7, 2026 at 3:46 pm
We have discovered what at least one symptom of late-stage capitalism looks like. It looks like Donald J. Trump. It’s not pretty.
@GrumpyHeathen
November 7, 2026 at 4:03 pm
If we don’t fix this now and start transferring money back to the middle class, capitalism *will* absolutely lose its status as the dominant and most legitimate economic system. Socialism and communism will become increasingly more attractive simply because people will see it as an alternative to something that’s clearly not working for them, and then we’ll all be screwed. Wealth taxes, corporate regulation and a massive increase in union membership are tools we already have and need to start using quickly and on a large scale. Like it or not, we’ve reached the endpoint of Reganomics and our alternatives are massive change, or massive upheaval and (probably) social revolution and/or violence. I hope everyone at the top is smart enough to choose the first one before it’s too late.
@ngrader
November 7, 2026 at 4:09 pm
2:10 Almost everyone [in America, that was white, and was christian or jewish] … Like all things, depends on your perspective. I believe all the people being exploited in Central and South America felt differently. And the ones being exploited in America, too.
@VesperWild-r9w
November 7, 2026 at 4:28 pm
The greatest victory of Capital was teaching the plebeians that social contracts are communism except when they bail out billionaires History is, ultimately, the study of change. When I was a high school history teacher, I always started with that…”if you learn nothing else, realize that things weren’t always the way they are now, and that means the way things are now is not the way they have to be forever. You can change things.”
@anthonywoods8151
November 7, 2026 at 4:55 pm
This is impressive.
@robmsmithdumbhandle
November 7, 2026 at 5:00 pm
What’s so bad about capitalism dying? Going socialism? Finland is an entire socialist country and they have the highest contentment rate in the world. But, then, growing poor but educated, I’ve hated Capitalism for a long time.
@Fuzz23630
November 7, 2026 at 5:43 pm
14:01 “The first step towards changing things is believing in that change.”
@Ed-ty1kr
November 7, 2026 at 5:52 pm
Yeah whatever, let’s just call a spade a spade and go with kleptocracy. Not unlike the Soviet republics might I add for all you communist fearmongers.