Everyone’s talking about debt or about taxes. The most fundamental need of our economy is to generate jobs, and for jobs to be generated there must be demand for the products that people make. WEISSKOPF: Well, it is incredibly disturbing. JAY: So what do you make of the current debate? Professor Weisskopf is at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and for more than four decades has been an important intellectual force in advancing radical economics in the United States. He’s attending a conference at the PERI institute at the University of Massachusetts Amherst called Capitalism On Trial, and much of the conference is actually built around his work. Now joining us to talk about all of this is Professor Emeritus Thomas E. But perhaps the underlying assumptions are not quite so different. From the Obama administration we hear more or less the same thing, except a little less inequality, a little more taxation on the wealthy. They say, don’t tax the wealthy, because the wealthy are the job creators and they need their money to invest. As the national debate about jobs intensifies as we head closer to the 2012 presidential election, one whole spectrum of the mainstream debate comes from the Republican Party, which says we need more inequality in order to have more jobs. PAUL JAY, SENIOR EDITOR, TRNN: Welcome to The Real News Network. Tom Weisskopf: Washington does not talk about real demand and wages in the US