Tag: Poverty
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Veblen: The Theory of the Leisure Class
If you’re looking for a non-Marxist critique of Capitalism and modern society in general, then you need to read Thorstein Veblen’s The Theory of the Leisure Class. Published in 1899, the book is an economic treatise and detailed social critique of conspicuous consumption, as a function of social-class consumerism, which proposes that the social strata…
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Medium Income and Poverty in the United States
There is a basic belief in America that if you work hard, you can support yourself and your family. I have always argued that this is a myth for a great many of us. There is a simple proof: Median Household Income — the income of every resident of that house that is over the…
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The Great Gatsby Curve
The Great Gatsby Curve illustrates the connection between concentration of wealth in one generation and the ability of those in the next generation to move up the economic ladder compared to their parents. The curve was introduced in a 2012 speech by chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers Alan Krueger, an economist and a…
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United Way Study: 44% of Americans Cannot Make Ends Meet
Hi, In October 16, 2005, Citigroup came out with a brochure for investors called “Plutonomy: Buying Luxury, Explaining Global Imbalances”. The brochure was an honest assessment of the world where it explained that there is no such animal as “the U.S. consumer” or “the UK consumer”, or indeed the “Russian consumer”… There are rich consumers,…
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MLK – Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community?
Hi, Required reading: MLK’s 1967 book titled “Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community“ In my opinion, this is King’s greatest work. King wrote his final book in 1967 in complete isolation. He rented a house in Jamaica with no telephone or access to the outside world. Here are some notes on the…
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Aristotle on Oligarchy vs Democracy
Aristotle’s Politics, ~350 BCE, Book 3: Oligarchy is when men of property have the government in their hands; democracy, the opposite, when the indigent, and not the men of property, are the rulers The argument seems to show that, whether in oligarchies or in democracies, the number of the governing body, whether the greater number,…
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Moving toward two societies, one black, one white — separate and unequal
At the height of the Detroit rebellion, on July 28, 1967, President Johnson appointed a National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders to answer three basic questions about the riots: What happened? Why did it happen? What can be done to prevent it from happening again and again? Mounting civil unrest since 1965 had spawned riots…
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Pope Francis: Don’t Believe the Hype!
The hype surrounding the new Pope has to stop. There’s nothing progressive about Pope Francis. Whatever the TV or your friends are repeating is false or completely out of context. Let me walk you through some of the most talked-about points: Homosexuality We all heard the now famous line from the Pope when asked about…
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Will the Real Adam Smith Please Stand Up!
Excerpted from Class Warfare, 1995, pp. 31-36 DAVID BARSAMIAN: One of the heroes of the current right-wing revival… is Adam Smith. You’ve done some pretty impressive research on Smith that has excavated… a lot of information that’s not coming out. You’ve often quoted him describing the “vile maxim of the masters of mankind: all for…