Bill Moyers is incredible and David Simon equally so. It's so refreshing to hear some real talk. The media is too consolidated and controlled by too few to be relevant anymore or foster any meaningful discussion / public debate

This guy articulates the western world problems extremely well and not once comes across fanatical in his views, just very matter of fact. Very clever dude.

I've been uneasy about America's track for a long time. It's been just short of my grasp to try to explain why without offending one half or the other of the people. David Simon has something to say that is very hard to ignore.

This is the most important 26 minutes of current American reality I can imagine. Required viewing for the entire nation. Thank you.

David Simon is a national treasure. If I had the money and power I would give him the complete Super Bowl halftime show to talk to the people.

Two of the most important voices left in the United States.

"Once we start regarding [the government] as some alien force that we can't control, we're done. Democracy is done." The whole interview is quotable, but I think this one stands out as a perfect summary of the political situation we're in right now. In the US, and throughout the world.

I try and watch this interview once a year just so I stay grounded.

Incredible insight from a man who has seen so much more and has so much better of an understanding of the darkest parts of American society than most people ever would.

Very powerful, very accurate analysis by David Simon!

Prophetic and wise. Mr. Simon gets it. Maybe he should run for office. He'd get my vote, that's for sure.

David Simon, creator of The Wire and Treme, talks about capitalism and America this week on 'Moyers & Company.'

Amazing talk with David Simon. Can't wait for the next one.

He says it perfectly, great interview.

Great talk. Forwarded on to a number of friends.

Sick country...

When you think too much about society, you see the ugliness of the human animal.

11:21 "There is no shame anymore in America."

It trickles down when they pee !!!!

A big part of the problem is that our legislators believe, all the way down to their DNA, that they would never and could never be poor, that no calamity, no catastrophe, could ever befall them that would result in their poverty. They believe fundamentally that they have achieved their level of success solely on their own merits and that no force in the universe is capable of undoing that success. This is by no means an idea that is limited to the legislature, though. It's pervasive throughout our society. Just listen for those who advise the poor to just get an education, get a good job, be responsible, work hard, and stay focused and it'll all work out. Which, again, is BS. There are millions of people in America who work their asses off that never get anywhere. Serendipity, luck, opportunity, and a host of other fortuitous events that elevate some people are no where to be found for others--however blind to the fact the recipients may be, it does not eliminate their existence. Nobody in America is a success purely on his or her own efforts. Nobody. And if you think you are, you haven't been looking hard enough. Stable families, good schools, career advice and support, opportunities provided by relationships and acquaintances, good health care, good food--all contribute to every success in this country. And in the world.

a rising tide lifts all luxury yachts and swamps and sinks all us in the dingys :/

Great interview. David Simon knows exactly what he's talking about when he says "this is about the loss of the idea of society."

Great interview for anyone to watch.

We are all in this together, by ourselves.

TERM LIMITS ALREADY- for the U.S. Congress, and every state legislature; and TARIFFS!

I am watching this episode in October 2022 because despite being a youngish person of color, I miss Bill Moyers' style of reporting. It is not loud or flashy; it is also not timid or complacent.

good information

If someone else has thoughts on this idea let me know. Simon talks about how in the previous century the working class had enough money to buy things they "wanted" and not just what they needed versus today we're debating over "10 or 12 dollars an hour." Is part of that perhaps due to racial bias? In the first half of the century, seemingly any class with comfortable income was white. But now minorities are more integrated into each class, bringing with them to an extant the social stigmas of crime and drugs that has become more visible as the immediacy of media progresses. Thus, a popular narrative in the media is that the middle and lower classes are more "lazy, entitled and or destructive" and don't deserve these wages. Making politicians and business owners feel less social pressure to compensate workers. Note I think it's fucked up and agree with Simon on his thoughts. This is just an idea that might explain, at least partially, why the wages or the working class have gone down.

started watching the wire currently on season 5 , ended up here and ive learned so much than i did in high school about the goverment and economy from watching a tv show

Blame Milton Friedman for the breaking of the social contract!

To bad the American public is so ignorant to see this simple formula about discretionary money in working peoples pockets and what grows an economy not money in the riches pockets.

After listening to David Simon I feel like I gained several IQ points

We have exactly the same disaster here in UK. A ruling entitled Conservative party waffling on about free market economics,tough on crime and drugs;meanwhile we are seeing unprecedented Foodbank proliferation and children going hungry,locked into poverty and deprivation. The shocking thing is that despite all the shameful behaviour of the Tory party:they continue to get elected and the shitshow goes on ad nauseum and their benefactors get richer still while the rest have to choose between eating and heating their homes!!!😡

There is no 'We the People', except on paper.

I miss Bill Moyers so much. His show was thoughtful and cut to the root of things. It’s hard to find shows like that on TV now.

Thank you Mr Moyers + David Simon. Purple state, Kathlean Perlin Keesler *Santa Cruz Ca 95062

This episode is what 8 years old now. Honestly what has changed especially with income disparity and the industrial prison complex

Listening to David Simon will raise your IQ 10 points!

Great video. :-)

You judge a society by its hospitals and it’s prision.

The main problem with America is the military industrial complex.

He still walked the fence in this interview. Hes scared like everyone else

Anyone know where the second part of this is?

Pure journalism-what every working patriot has known and lived for decades laid out so eloquently..

Hope is the opiate of the masses.

Amen ! ! !

"Congress is yes "inert." But that's too passive. It's much worse.

Thank you from the infinite plain of existence on the extra continents beyond the south pole.

Such a brilliant man.

Wow. It took me 9 years to find this treasure

This doesn't even scratch any surface .

These fools tell you own nothing and be happy yet they wanna own you and your souls .

Real talk at its best...

8:20 Dear gosh, I love this man.

David : It's over , it's hopeless. Interviewer : But is it?, find out next week.

Nothing is untouched by politics: the air we breath, a child's education, the cost of our food; everything is dependent on our collective political imagination realized through self governance, when we retreat from the political we retreat from our humanity, surrender our dignity, and worst of all we cease to be free.

Question: Is it possible that the core economic engines of American capitalism currently - medicine, tech, biotech, financial engineering, software design, AI, et al, require workers who must have exceptional intelligence, work ethic, performance standards, and soft skills in combination that only exist in a relatively small group of people? Is that why income inequality is rising? Is the American workforce just not even close to being prepared for these requirements?

"Where's the shame?" Where's the shame, indeed. Keep going, David. Never seen The Wire. Have put it on my Lovefilm. This guy is great. It sounds like a desperate situation in the US. The white upper middle class must be so far removed. It seems there's a type of amorality built into the capitalist system. Factories are relocated; jobs and industries are outsourced, and consequently communities suffer. The profit motive is so problematic. I keep thinking of Robocop (Verhoven's original), which is all about capitalism. That film's America is looking more and more plausible.

Anyone else here in 2020? Watching the chickens come home to roost.

I love this guy, he gets it, the greedy rich has destroyed America

Well it's 7/5/20 and it's gotten worse

Sounds like yanggang 👍

Bring back the new deal, tax the filthy rich!

Thank u😝

There are two reasons that jump out at me regarding why OccupyWallstreet didn't have a second act. One is the idea that they felt they had to camp out every night and never leave as though they were copying the Arab Spring. They could have left each night and showed up again the next day. I know the sheer logistics would have probably precluded that. Still it wouldn't have given the bankers or the cops anything to complain about. Public sleeping is verboten. The second reason is that the drummers do not realize how annoying they are. They see a gathering like that as a chance to drum They refused to stop drumming when speakers would take the podium. And they actually whined that they're rights were being violated by organizers who wanted them to stop. There was a third reason too. The banks gave the cops a bunch of money and the next day they were out there trapping demonstrators and smashing heads.

That intro will kill any forward thinking from the curious right.

Long live freedom and freedom

It doesn't reflect public will. Studies show that donaters are what influence Congressional laws, regardless of what we the people want

I was more fully aware of this in 1992.....I just saw it on my own for years then i went to a presidential rally and during a break most everybody there felt like they were in Heaven listening to God!! God was telling us how filthy/evil the Governments were, States and Federal!!! People have fought them ever since and nobody has won against them.....but I think finally somebody is fixing to!!!

very prescient still today

Presidents run on “domestic platforms” but they make their career on their “military and international arena” because that lever actually works.

When people wonder how does a society collapse? Where did it all go wrong? Here’s your answer.

Still relevant....

Sounds just like Bernie Sanders. Love it.

Less regulation, both drug laws and business reg.

What I wouldn't give to see Omar, Snoop, Weebey and Chris vs. the Koch Brothers, Art Pope, Karl Rove and Chris Christie.

Don't worry Mr. Simon - 2020 is the second act :)

Is it possible that both O'Malley (the capitalist reformer) and Simon (the counter-cultural revolutionary) are right? But which of the two is "more right"? O'Malley certainly presents a hopeful face to a capitalist nation that is in need of "reform" based on, but not necessarily subscribing to, the "revolutionary"critique of David Simon. In the first place, Simon is 1) automatically discredited (or, if you prefer, "compromised" or "tainted") by his own celebrity in a "media culture" that bequeaths power and wealth to those players who, whether through talent or luck, gain notoriety within a system that rewards the latest sensationalist critique. The success of "The Wire," as measured by the all-important ratings game, offers more proof of the success of a free enterprise economy while affirming the rightness of the democratic experiment of the sponsoring fathers. The television series that pretends to be a critique "outside" the the system its purports to scrutinize is instead another "commodity" within a capitalistic system. In the second place, the inescapable, paradoxical truth missed by the crusaders for radical change is that the most disenfranchised in a system favoring the wealthy few are the most loathe to replace the system. Why is that? The short answer is that the examples of the exceptional few (e.g., NBA players with salaries starting at a mil, hip-hop "artists" like Dr. Dre receiving billions from Apple, a black American President, Donald Trump) serve as persistent reminders--or perhaps deep-seated beliefs encoded in the American DNA--that "exceptional" is within reach of all of us, even the lowest serf in the lowest class of the economic pecking order. In other words, the "American Dream" is the lottery ticket we imagine we all possess by virtue of being Americans, and every one of us imagines that ticket will someday pay off, providing deliverance from our oppression (if almighty Jesus doesn't get there first). In such a context, O'Malley's political optimism as a reformer is the more pragmatic if not the more realistic; Simon's revolutionary rhetoric and call for systemic change, on the other hand, is the more sensational, the more sophomoric, the more cynical and ess productive of the two approaches. And why should any American wish a revolutionary change after viewing socialism or communism or the European welfare state? In the most recent Democratic Presidential debate Bernie Sanders tried to shame Americans with such a strategy, contrasting the USA with Denmark. Immediately, he was checkmated by Hillary Clinton. But as has been demonstrated time and time again, comparisons with other countries that are designed to show the U.S.A as anything less than #1 are--a priori and pro forma--doomed to failure. Even long before Hillary, Shakespeare's Hamlet knew that "something is rotten in the state of Denmark." Practically every major rock n' roll star has achieved fame and fortune by embracing a countercultural music that, beginning in the 1960s, proceeded to ring American cash registers by appealing to a suddenly dominant consumer culture led by youth--the first influx of baby boomers newly empowered to experience the entitlements due the victors of America's ever-more-distant but never-forgotten "good war." Of course, O'Malley is himself a rock 'n roller but not a very good one--at least as a musician. It's as a politician that he has learned how and when to pull his punches, reforming the system by working with, and not against, it.

The quality of the new human-being can be recognised at Boeing - greed is good! 😉 Alternative: sack government and put in administrators!!

Easy come easy go empire

Maybe most of us are irrelevant to the society at large and I include myself, I like to think not, but God.........look at the changes in the economy! Look at who's in power and why and how they got there. I see how many jobs have been closed down and outsourced to other nations where the price tag is like peanuts and it makes me sad and mad. People just want a solid job and work. The poor and lower class only want the jobs that used to be here and benefits that go with them. Instead, we get ENRON types who hijack pensions, sell them, and lose them in the market, and people lose big time. Everything is an investment in the unreal. The stock market? That is the unreal. It could crash anytime like it did in 1929-30. America no longer invest in America and only a few benefit anymore. We're mostly all working class or lower class just trying to make a living and now that living has to be made working two or three jobs and both mom and dad have to work.

You could always donate more to charity Dave.

Agreed .. And for those that blame China for loss of jobs etc ..the gdp of both countries over the last 2 decades are about the same 10 Tril for China and 11 for the US ... but the 1% share of wealth in the US was equal to the bottom 80% whereas China lifted 800mil out of poverty ... the pie just got sliced very differently... say what you want about China but they did it right and their becoming #1 is not that far away .... I also read another stat that if just all the wealth that could be generated from disputed maritime borders alone went to the worlds population ... every person on earth could have 1 million dollars ... 🙏and that’s just the disputed waters 😎

life is cheap

lol brought to you by carnegie

Damage control.

David Simon should read Eric Hoffer. He's wrong about capitalism, and libertarianism...but I still respect him and his work.

I see what I call "The Latin Americanization" of the USA. Simply speaking basically its a mix of Guatemala, Argentina and Venezuela/Brazil. 1) Argentina IN that there is an out of control debt, in which eventually the bubble will burst causing devaluation, inflation and leading the govt to expropriate people's savings to save itself. (B) The 1% in order to preserve themselves will become Guatemala in that the corporate-fascist state in where the ties between business, the government and the military where so blurred and intertwined that anyone who tried to organize labor, or demand human rights will be deemed a threat under the label of terrorism and exterminated . Lastly Venezuela/Brazil where the rich will live behind 60 ft concrete walls and private security guards while outside is pure chaos , favelas, kidnappings, shootings and armed drug gangs. If history is any indicator , this is where we are heading

I just want what's mine. What I earned and deserve to hold. But how do you fight to do so when all the laws are written by those with every motive to deny you opportunities to get justice? It may be enough for most American tax payers to despise people rich and greedy enough to elect legislator who continually craft tax codes in their favor, and/or politicians from BOTH parties who have literally enabled over 30 years of over immigration which has deliberately suppressed wages to far below inflation rates by flooding labor markets, paved over dwindling acres of CO2 consuming green space, accelerated species extinction and driven up the cost and down the quality and quantity of every basic human necessity. But I also despise politicians-and TV journalists-who advocate and endorse tax codes which discriminate and penalize kidless by choice people and extorting from them thousands in property and income taxes every tax year. Now name me just one politician who could and would undo all of this injustice, unfairness, hazardous and ecological idiocy-and I mean ALL of it. You’ll never find him or her in either Tweedle Dum or Tweedle Dee party-both are so steeped in the corrupting Big Money that only highlights the empty shell referred to by the corporate owned media as American Democracy. How then to create a viable Third Party?

And today is Monday January 18 -2021 Ending Trump era .... So relevant 6 years later

Most of the blue collar and low tech jobs which have moved abroad are not coming back. Lets forget about them. Instead, America should promote creation of higher paying jobs.

whatever.. it is all a fuked up place any ways.

Everybody sitting at the kitchen table morning now we can solve racism just give people a living wage was $15 an hour $500 a week I work on the assembly line making 30$factory workers low skill work if you're in business pay a living wage I work off your computer from home

And how can people complain about Trump. His élection was entirely prédictable.

Robin Hood was right.

It's called trickle down economics. When you give alot of money to the rich, some will trickle down. Does it work? Well, congress and the senate seems to think so.

talk about karma!

Carnegie foundation,forde foundation...philantrophy,your having a laugh?

Quite amorphous. I agree with many of Simon's observations, but who knows the solutions? No one. There's a lot of euphonious rhetoric here, and it's entertaining. But at the root, maybe we're just seeing the deterioration of an empire due to the rising power of base human nature. I hear folks say we don't deserve democracy because we've been asleep as citizens. Capitalism is amoral. Maybe humans are basically demonstrating simian behavior. Maybe there is no shining city on the hill. Our recent leaders, Clintons, the Bushes, Obama, Trump, Biden and the Congress are the moneyed aristocracy, and we have tolerated it.

This is where Trumpism comes from.