February 3 - Do We Now Have a Plutonomy?; "Hoffman and the Terrible Heroin Deaths in the Shadows"; The War on Drugs on the Heroin Front

Full Program

Part 1

We begin with the new study from the Institute of New Economic Thinking that is a front page story in Monday’s New York Times “The Middle Class is Steadily Eroding: Just Ask the Business World”. Robert Johnson, the Executive Director of the Institute for New Economic Thinking, who was formerly Chief Economist of the US Senate Banking Committee and Budget Committee, joins us to discuss stark evidence that our economy is becoming a plutonomy with the top 5 percent of earners accounting for almost 40% of personal consumption spending in 2012, up from 27% in 1992.

Part 2

Then we examine the drug overdose death of actor Philip Seymour Hoffman, apparently from heroin laced with Fentanyl. Jeff Deeney, a social worker and a writer based in Philadelphia joins us. He has an article at The Atlantic “Hoffman and the Terrible Heroin Deaths in the Shadows” and we will discuss the growing epidemic of overdose deaths from batches of Fentanyl-tainted heroin across the mid-Atlantic and the increased infection rates among injecting drug users of drug-resistant bacterial infections.

Part 3