What is the role of money in our everyday lives?
Barbara Ehrenreich
(born August 26, 1941) is an American author and political activist who describes herself as "a myth buster by trade", and has been called "a veteran muckraker" by The New Yorker. During the 1980s and early 1990s she was a prominent figure in the Democratic Socialists of America. She is a widely read and award-winning columnist and essayist, and author of 21 books. Ehrenreich is perhaps best known for her 2001 book Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America. A memoir of Ehrenreich's three-month experiment surviving on minimum wage as a waitress, hotel maid, house cleaner, nursing-home aide, and Wal-Mart clerk, it was described byNewsweek magazine as "jarring" and "full of riveting grit", and by The New Yorker as an "exposé" putting "human flesh on the bones of such abstractions as 'living wage' and 'affordable housing'".
from Serving in Florida
www.laguardia.edu/nickeldimed/floridavig.htm
www.nytimes.com/books/first/e/ehrenreich-01nickel.html
serving-in-florida-1.doc | |
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Jonathan Swift
(30 November 1667 – 19 October 1745) was an Anglo-Irish satirist, essayist, political pamphleteer(first for the Whigs, then for the Tories), poet and cleric who became Dean of St Patrick's Cathedral, Dublin.
Swift is remembered for works such as Gulliver's Travels, A Modest Proposal, A Journal to Stella, Drapier's Letters,The Battle of the Books, An Argument Against Abolishing Christianity and A Tale of a Tub. He is regarded by theEncyclopædia Britannica as the foremost prose satirist in the English language, and is less well known for his poetry. He originally published all of his works under pseudonyms – such as Lemuel Gulliver, Isaac Bickerstaff,Drapier's Letters as MB Drapier – or anonymously. He is also known for being a master of two styles of satire, the Horatian and Juvenalian styles.
His deadpan, ironic writing style, particularly in A Modest Proposal, has led to such satire being subsequently termed "Swiftian".
Swift is remembered for works such as Gulliver's Travels, A Modest Proposal, A Journal to Stella, Drapier's Letters,The Battle of the Books, An Argument Against Abolishing Christianity and A Tale of a Tub. He is regarded by theEncyclopædia Britannica as the foremost prose satirist in the English language, and is less well known for his poetry. He originally published all of his works under pseudonyms – such as Lemuel Gulliver, Isaac Bickerstaff,Drapier's Letters as MB Drapier – or anonymously. He is also known for being a master of two styles of satire, the Horatian and Juvenalian styles.
His deadpan, ironic writing style, particularly in A Modest Proposal, has led to such satire being subsequently termed "Swiftian".
A Modest Proposal
A Modest Proposal for Preventing the Children of Poor People From Being a Burthen to Their Parents or Country, and for Making Them Beneficial to the Publick,[1] commonly referred to as A Modest Proposal, is aJuvenalian satirical essay written and published anonymously by Jonathan Swift in 1729. Swift suggests that the impoverished Irish might ease their economic troubles by selling their children as food for rich gentlemen and ladies. This satirical hyperbole mocks heartless attitudes towards the poor, as well as British policy toward the Irish in general.
In English writing, the phrase "a modest proposal" is now conventionally an allusion to this style of straight-faced satire.
In English writing, the phrase "a modest proposal" is now conventionally an allusion to this style of straight-faced satire.
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art-bin.com/art/omodest.html
andromeda.rutgers.edu/~jlynch/Texts/modest.html
John Ruskin
(8 February 1819 – 20 January 1900) was the leading English art critic of the Victorian era, also an art patron, draughtsman, watercolourist, a prominent social thinker and philanthropist. He wrote on subjects as varied as geology, architecture, myth, ornithology, literature, education, botany and political economy. His writing styles and literary forms were equally varied. Ruskin penned essays and treatises, poetry and lectures, travel guides and manuals, letters and even a fairy tale. The elaborate style that characterised his earliest writing on art was later superseded by a preference for plainer language designed to communicate his ideas more effectively. In all of his writing, he emphasised the connections between nature, art and society. He also made detailed sketches and paintings of rocks, plants, birds, landscapes, and architectural structures and ornamentation.
He was hugely influential in the latter half of the 19th century, and up to the First World War. After a period of relative decline, his reputation has steadily improved since the 1960s with the publication of numerous academic studies of his work. Today, his ideas and concerns are widely recognised as having anticipated interest in environmentalism, sustainability and craft.
Ruskin first came to widespread attention with the first volume of Modern Painters (1843), an extended essay in defence of the work of J. M. W. Turner in which he argued that the principal role of the artist is "truth to nature". From the 1850s he championed the Pre-Raphaelites who were influenced by his ideas. His work increasingly focused on social and political issues. Unto This Last (1860, 1862) marked the shift in emphasis. In 1869, Ruskin became the first Slade Professor of Fine Art at the University of Oxford, where he established the Ruskin School of Drawing. In 1871, he began his monthly "letters to the workmen and labourers of Great Britain", published under the title Fors Clavigera (1871–1884). In the course of this complex and deeply personal work, he developed the principles underlying his ideal society. As a result, he founded the Guild of St George, an organisation that endures today.
He was hugely influential in the latter half of the 19th century, and up to the First World War. After a period of relative decline, his reputation has steadily improved since the 1960s with the publication of numerous academic studies of his work. Today, his ideas and concerns are widely recognised as having anticipated interest in environmentalism, sustainability and craft.
Ruskin first came to widespread attention with the first volume of Modern Painters (1843), an extended essay in defence of the work of J. M. W. Turner in which he argued that the principal role of the artist is "truth to nature". From the 1850s he championed the Pre-Raphaelites who were influenced by his ideas. His work increasingly focused on social and political issues. Unto This Last (1860, 1862) marked the shift in emphasis. In 1869, Ruskin became the first Slade Professor of Fine Art at the University of Oxford, where he established the Ruskin School of Drawing. In 1871, he began his monthly "letters to the workmen and labourers of Great Britain", published under the title Fors Clavigera (1871–1884). In the course of this complex and deeply personal work, he developed the principles underlying his ideal society. As a result, he founded the Guild of St George, an organisation that endures today.
from The Roots of Honor
www.victorianweb.org/authors/ruskin/nguyen5.html
socserv2.socsci.mcmaster.ca/econ/ugcm/3ll3/ruskin/ruskin
Booker T. Washington
(April 5, 1856 – November 14, 1915) was an American educator, author, orator, and advisor to presidents of the United States. Between 1890 and 1915, Washington was the dominant leader in the African-American community.
Washington was from the last generation of black American leaders born into slavery and became the leading voice of the former slaves and their descendants. They were newly oppressed in the South by disenfranchisement and the Jim Crow discriminatory laws enacted in the post-Reconstruction Southern states in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
His base was the Tuskegee Institute, a historically black college in Alabama. As lynchings in the South reached a peak in 1895, Washington gave a speech, known as the "Atlanta compromise," which brought him national fame. He called for black progress through education and entrepreneurship, rather than trying to challenge directly the Jim Crow segregation and the disenfranchisement of black voters in the South. Washington mobilized a nationwide coalition of middle-class blacks, church leaders, and white philanthropists and politicians, with a long-term goal of building the community's economic strength and pride by a focus on self-help and schooling. But, secretly, he also supported court challenges to segregation and passed on funds raised for this purpose. Black militants in the North, led by W. E. B. Du Bois, at first supported the Atlanta compromise but after 1909, they set up the NAACP to work for political change. They tried with limited success to challenge Washington's political machine for leadership in the black community but also built wider networks among white allies in the North. Decades after Washington's death in 1915, the Civil Rights movement of the 1950s took a more active and militant approach, which was also based on new grassroots organizations based in the South, such as CORE, SNCC and SCLC.
Booker T. Washington mastered the nuances of the political arena in the late 19th century, which enabled him to manipulate the media, raise money, strategize, network, pressure, reward friends and distribute funds while punishing those who opposed his plans for uplifting blacks. His long-term goal was to end the disenfranchisement of the vast majority of African Americans, who still lived in the South.
Washington was from the last generation of black American leaders born into slavery and became the leading voice of the former slaves and their descendants. They were newly oppressed in the South by disenfranchisement and the Jim Crow discriminatory laws enacted in the post-Reconstruction Southern states in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
His base was the Tuskegee Institute, a historically black college in Alabama. As lynchings in the South reached a peak in 1895, Washington gave a speech, known as the "Atlanta compromise," which brought him national fame. He called for black progress through education and entrepreneurship, rather than trying to challenge directly the Jim Crow segregation and the disenfranchisement of black voters in the South. Washington mobilized a nationwide coalition of middle-class blacks, church leaders, and white philanthropists and politicians, with a long-term goal of building the community's economic strength and pride by a focus on self-help and schooling. But, secretly, he also supported court challenges to segregation and passed on funds raised for this purpose. Black militants in the North, led by W. E. B. Du Bois, at first supported the Atlanta compromise but after 1909, they set up the NAACP to work for political change. They tried with limited success to challenge Washington's political machine for leadership in the black community but also built wider networks among white allies in the North. Decades after Washington's death in 1915, the Civil Rights movement of the 1950s took a more active and militant approach, which was also based on new grassroots organizations based in the South, such as CORE, SNCC and SCLC.
Booker T. Washington mastered the nuances of the political arena in the late 19th century, which enabled him to manipulate the media, raise money, strategize, network, pressure, reward friends and distribute funds while punishing those who opposed his plans for uplifting blacks. His long-term goal was to end the disenfranchisement of the vast majority of African Americans, who still lived in the South.
The Atlanta Exposition Address
The Cotton States and International Exposition Speech was an address on the topic of race relations given by Booker T. Washington on September 18, 1895. The speech laid the foundation for the Atlanta compromise, an agreement between African-American leaders and Southern white leaders in which Southern blacks would work meekly and submit to white political rule, while Southern whites guaranteed that blacks would receive basic education and due process of law.
The speech, presented before a predominantly white audience at the Cotton States and International Exposition (the site of Piedmont Park) in Atlanta, Georgia, has been recognized as one of the most important and influential speeches in American history. The speech was preceded by the reading of a dedicatory ode written by Frank Lebby Stanton.
Washington began with a call to the blacks, who composed one third of the Southern population, to join the world of work. He declared that the South was where blacks were given their chance, as opposed to the North, especially in the worlds of commerce and industry. He told the white audience that rather than relying on the immigrant population arriving at the rate of a million people a year, they should hire some of the nation's eight million blacks. He praised blacks' loyalty, fidelity and love in service to the white population, but warned that they could be a great burden on society if oppression continued, stating that the progress of the South was inherently tied to the treatment of blacks and protection of their liberties.
He addressed the inequality between commercial legality and social acceptance, proclaiming that "The opportunity to earn a dollar in a factory just now is worth infinitely more than the opportunity to spend a dollar in an opera house." Washington also endorsed segregation by claiming that blacks and whites could exist as separate fingers of a hand.
The title "Atlanta Compromise" was given to the speech by W.E.B Dubois, who believed it was insufficiently committed to the pursuit of social and political equality for blacks.
The speech, presented before a predominantly white audience at the Cotton States and International Exposition (the site of Piedmont Park) in Atlanta, Georgia, has been recognized as one of the most important and influential speeches in American history. The speech was preceded by the reading of a dedicatory ode written by Frank Lebby Stanton.
Washington began with a call to the blacks, who composed one third of the Southern population, to join the world of work. He declared that the South was where blacks were given their chance, as opposed to the North, especially in the worlds of commerce and industry. He told the white audience that rather than relying on the immigrant population arriving at the rate of a million people a year, they should hire some of the nation's eight million blacks. He praised blacks' loyalty, fidelity and love in service to the white population, but warned that they could be a great burden on society if oppression continued, stating that the progress of the South was inherently tied to the treatment of blacks and protection of their liberties.
He addressed the inequality between commercial legality and social acceptance, proclaiming that "The opportunity to earn a dollar in a factory just now is worth infinitely more than the opportunity to spend a dollar in an opera house." Washington also endorsed segregation by claiming that blacks and whites could exist as separate fingers of a hand.
The title "Atlanta Compromise" was given to the speech by W.E.B Dubois, who believed it was insufficiently committed to the pursuit of social and political equality for blacks.
www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/articles/history-archaeology/atlanta-compromise-speech
scua.library.umass.edu/duboisopedia/doku.php?id=about:atlanta_exposition_speech_of_1895_or_the_atlanta_compromise
Lars Eighner
(born November 25, 1948) is the author of Travels with Lizbeth, a memoir of homelessness in the American Southwest during the late 1980s; the included essay "On Dumpster Diving," which is widely anthologized both at full length and in abridged form under the title "My Daily Dives in the Dumpster".
Lars Eighner was born Laurence Vail Eighner in Corpus Christi, Texas, the son of Alice Elizabeth Vail Eighner (later Harlow) and Lawrence Clifton Eighner, and the grandson of the Texas poets Alice Ewing Vail (The Big Thicket) and John Arthur Vail (John Vail Ballads). He grew up in Houston, Texas, and was graduated from Lamar High School in 1966. He studied creative writing under George Williams of Rice University at the Corpus Christi Fine Arts Colony, and attended the University of Texas at Austin, doing major work in ethnic studies. On July 5, 2015, Eighner was married to the man called Clint in his memoir, with whom he had lived for nearly 28 years.
Eighner began writing for publication in the early 1980s. By that time he was generally known as Lars, the result of having worked in a small office with two Larrys. Because in early writing attempts he had been confused with Black Mountain poet Larry Eigner, Eighner used 'Lars' for writing. His first book was a collection of short stories, Bayou Boy and Other Stories. In the late 1980s, he and his dog Lizbeth became homeless, and his experiences as a homeless person in Austin, Texas, Los Angeles, and places in between are the subject of Travels with Lizbeth. Eighner was elected to the Texas Institute of Letters in 1994.
Lars Eighner was born Laurence Vail Eighner in Corpus Christi, Texas, the son of Alice Elizabeth Vail Eighner (later Harlow) and Lawrence Clifton Eighner, and the grandson of the Texas poets Alice Ewing Vail (The Big Thicket) and John Arthur Vail (John Vail Ballads). He grew up in Houston, Texas, and was graduated from Lamar High School in 1966. He studied creative writing under George Williams of Rice University at the Corpus Christi Fine Arts Colony, and attended the University of Texas at Austin, doing major work in ethnic studies. On July 5, 2015, Eighner was married to the man called Clint in his memoir, with whom he had lived for nearly 28 years.
Eighner began writing for publication in the early 1980s. By that time he was generally known as Lars, the result of having worked in a small office with two Larrys. Because in early writing attempts he had been confused with Black Mountain poet Larry Eigner, Eighner used 'Lars' for writing. His first book was a collection of short stories, Bayou Boy and Other Stories. In the late 1980s, he and his dog Lizbeth became homeless, and his experiences as a homeless person in Austin, Texas, Los Angeles, and places in between are the subject of Travels with Lizbeth. Eighner was elected to the Texas Institute of Letters in 1994.
On Dumpster Diving
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Eric Schlosser
(born August 17, 1959) is an American journalist and author known for investigative journalism, such as in his books Fast Food Nation (2001) and Command and Control: Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident, and the Illusion of Safety (2013).
Schlosser was born in Manhattan, New York; he spent his childhood there and in Los Angeles, California. His parents are Judith (née Gassner) and Herbert Schlosser, a former Wall Street lawyer who turned to broadcasting later in his career, eventually becoming the President of NBC in 1974.
Schlosser studied American History at Princeton University and earned a graduate degree in British Imperial History from Oxford. He tried playwriting, and wrote two plays, Americans (1985) and We the People (2007).
Schlosser was born in Manhattan, New York; he spent his childhood there and in Los Angeles, California. His parents are Judith (née Gassner) and Herbert Schlosser, a former Wall Street lawyer who turned to broadcasting later in his career, eventually becoming the President of NBC in 1974.
Schlosser studied American History at Princeton University and earned a graduate degree in British Imperial History from Oxford. He tried playwriting, and wrote two plays, Americans (1985) and We the People (2007).
from In the Strawberry Fields
www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1995/11/in-the-strawberry-fields/305754/
www.soc.iastate.edu/sapp/soc235ch12.html
Stephen J. Dubner/ Steven D. Levitt
Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything is the debut non-fiction book byUniversity of Chicago economist Steven Levitt and New York Times journalist Stephen J. Dubner. It was published on April 12, 2005 by William Morrow. The book has been described as melding pop culture with economics.[1] By late 2009, the book had sold over 4 million copies worldwide.
Freakonomics has been criticized for being a work of sociology and/or criminology, rather than economics. Israeli economist Ariel Rubinstein criticized the book for making use of dubious statistics and complained that "economists like Levitt ... have swaggered off into other fields", saying that the "connection to economics ... [is] none" and that the book is an example of "academic imperialism".[5] Arnold Kling has suggested the book is an example of "amateur sociology".[6]
Thomas Ferguson, author of Golden Rule: The Investment Theory of Party Competition was asked in 2009 to respond to the following statement in Freakonomics:
A winning candidate can cut his spending in half and lose only 1 percent of the vote. Meanwhile, a losing candidate who doubles his spending can expect to shift the vote in his favor by only that same 1 percent.
His response was:
Where on earth do such figures come from? You would need a fully specified regression equation to do this, that incorporated a lot of variables. Unless you hold constant everything else, including issues -- not easy even to imagine -- such claims are nonsense. Think of a couple of cases. Obviously, an incumbent Congressman or woman with a big margin could spend a bit less and probably do almost as well. By contrast, candidates in close elections surely cannot do this. The real issue is the dependence of money on taking conservative issue positions. Claims about existing candidates typically reflect censored data. That is, there's no one able to run that can run very far to the left.
Freakonomics has been criticized for being a work of sociology and/or criminology, rather than economics. Israeli economist Ariel Rubinstein criticized the book for making use of dubious statistics and complained that "economists like Levitt ... have swaggered off into other fields", saying that the "connection to economics ... [is] none" and that the book is an example of "academic imperialism".[5] Arnold Kling has suggested the book is an example of "amateur sociology".[6]
Thomas Ferguson, author of Golden Rule: The Investment Theory of Party Competition was asked in 2009 to respond to the following statement in Freakonomics:
A winning candidate can cut his spending in half and lose only 1 percent of the vote. Meanwhile, a losing candidate who doubles his spending can expect to shift the vote in his favor by only that same 1 percent.
His response was:
Where on earth do such figures come from? You would need a fully specified regression equation to do this, that incorporated a lot of variables. Unless you hold constant everything else, including issues -- not easy even to imagine -- such claims are nonsense. Think of a couple of cases. Obviously, an incumbent Congressman or woman with a big margin could spend a bit less and probably do almost as well. By contrast, candidates in close elections surely cannot do this. The real issue is the dependence of money on taking conservative issue positions. Claims about existing candidates typically reflect censored data. That is, there's no one able to run that can run very far to the left.
What The Bagel Man Saw
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www.nytimes.com/2004/06/06/magazine/what-the-bagel-man-saw.html?_r=0
Matthew B. Crawford
www.matthewbcrawford.com/
Matthew B. Crawford is an American writer and research fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture at the University of Virginia. He is a contributing editor at The New Atlantis, and is also a motorcycle mechanic.
In September 2001, Crawford accepted a position as executive director of the George C. Marshall Institute, but left the institute after 5 months, saying that "the trappings of scholarship were used to put a scientific cover on positions arrived at otherwise. These positions served various interests, ideological or material. For example, part of my job consisted of making arguments about global warming that just happened to coincide with the positions taken by the oil companies that funded the think tank."
He appeared in the 2014 documentary, Merchants of Doubt.
In September 2001, Crawford accepted a position as executive director of the George C. Marshall Institute, but left the institute after 5 months, saying that "the trappings of scholarship were used to put a scientific cover on positions arrived at otherwise. These positions served various interests, ideological or material. For example, part of my job consisted of making arguments about global warming that just happened to coincide with the positions taken by the oil companies that funded the think tank."
He appeared in the 2014 documentary, Merchants of Doubt.
The Case for Working with Your Hands
Fareed Zakaria
(born January 20, 1964) is an Indian American journalist and author. He is the host of CNN's Fareed Zakaria GPS and writes a weekly column for The Washington Post. He has been a columnist for Newsweek, editor of Newsweek International, and an editor-at-large of Time. He is the author of five books, three of them international bestsellers, and the co-editor of one.
After directing a research project on American foreign policy at Harvard, Zakaria became the managing editor of Foreign Affairs in 1992, at the age of 28. Under his guidance, the magazine was redesigned and moved from a quarterly to a bimonthly schedule. He served as an Adjunct Professor at Columbia University, where he taught a seminar on international relations. In October 2000, he was named editor of Newsweek International, and became a weekly columnist for Newsweek. In August 2010 it was announced that he was moving from Newsweek to Time, to serve as Editor-at-Large and columnist. He now writes a weekly column for the Washington Post and is a contributing editor for the Atlantic Media group, which includes the "Atlantic Monthly".
He has been published on a variety of subjects for the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, The New Yorker,The New Republic and, for a brief period, as a wine columnist for the web magazine Slate.
Zakaria is the author of From Wealth to Power: The Unusual Origins of America's World Role (Princeton, 1998), The Future of Freedom (Norton, 2003), The Post-American World (2008), and In Defense of a Liberal Education (Norton, 2015); he has also co-edited The American Encounter: The United States and the Making of the Modern World (Basic Books) with James F. Hoge, Jr. His last two books have both been New York Times bestsellers, and have been translated into over 25 languages. In 2011, an updated and expanded edition of The Post-American World ("Release 2.0") was published.
Zakaria was a news analyst with ABC's This Week with George Stephanopoulos (2002–2007) where he was a member of the Sunday morning roundtable. He hosted the weekly TV news show, Foreign Exchange with Fareed Zakaria on PBS (2005–08). His weekly show, Fareed Zakaria GPS (Global Public Square) premiered on CNN in June 2008. It airs twice weekly in the United States and four times weekly on CNN International, reaching over 200 million homes. It recently celebrated its 8th anniversary on June 5th, 2016 as announced on the weekly foreign affairs show on CNN.
In 2013 he became one of the producers for the HBO series Vice, for which he serves as a consultant.
Zakaria self-identifies as a "centrist", though he has been described variously as a political liberal, a conservative, a moderate, or a radical centrist. George Stephanopoulos said of him in 2003, "He's so well versed in politics, and he can't be pigeonholed. I can't be sure whenever I turn to him where he's going to be coming from or what he's going to say." Zakaria wrote in February 2008 that "Conservatism grew powerful in the 1970s and 1980s because it proposed solutions appropriate to the problems of the age", adding that "a new world requires new thinking". He supported Barack Obama during the 2008 Democratic primary campaign and also for president. In January 2009 Forbes referred to Zakaria as one of the 25 most influential liberals in the American media. Zakaria has stated that he tries not to be devoted to any type of ideology, saying "I feel that's part of my job... which is not to pick sides but to explain what I think is happening on the ground. I can't say, 'This is my team and I'm going to root for them no matter what they do.'"
Zakaria "may have more intellectual range and insights than any other public thinker in the West," wrote David Shribman in the Boston Globe. In 2003, former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger told New York Magazine that Zakaria “has a first-class mind and likes to say things that run against conventional wisdom.” However, in 2011, the editors of The New Republic included him in a list of "over-rated thinkers" and commented "There's something suspicious about a thinker always so perfectly in tune with the moment."
After directing a research project on American foreign policy at Harvard, Zakaria became the managing editor of Foreign Affairs in 1992, at the age of 28. Under his guidance, the magazine was redesigned and moved from a quarterly to a bimonthly schedule. He served as an Adjunct Professor at Columbia University, where he taught a seminar on international relations. In October 2000, he was named editor of Newsweek International, and became a weekly columnist for Newsweek. In August 2010 it was announced that he was moving from Newsweek to Time, to serve as Editor-at-Large and columnist. He now writes a weekly column for the Washington Post and is a contributing editor for the Atlantic Media group, which includes the "Atlantic Monthly".
He has been published on a variety of subjects for the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, The New Yorker,The New Republic and, for a brief period, as a wine columnist for the web magazine Slate.
Zakaria is the author of From Wealth to Power: The Unusual Origins of America's World Role (Princeton, 1998), The Future of Freedom (Norton, 2003), The Post-American World (2008), and In Defense of a Liberal Education (Norton, 2015); he has also co-edited The American Encounter: The United States and the Making of the Modern World (Basic Books) with James F. Hoge, Jr. His last two books have both been New York Times bestsellers, and have been translated into over 25 languages. In 2011, an updated and expanded edition of The Post-American World ("Release 2.0") was published.
Zakaria was a news analyst with ABC's This Week with George Stephanopoulos (2002–2007) where he was a member of the Sunday morning roundtable. He hosted the weekly TV news show, Foreign Exchange with Fareed Zakaria on PBS (2005–08). His weekly show, Fareed Zakaria GPS (Global Public Square) premiered on CNN in June 2008. It airs twice weekly in the United States and four times weekly on CNN International, reaching over 200 million homes. It recently celebrated its 8th anniversary on June 5th, 2016 as announced on the weekly foreign affairs show on CNN.
In 2013 he became one of the producers for the HBO series Vice, for which he serves as a consultant.
Zakaria self-identifies as a "centrist", though he has been described variously as a political liberal, a conservative, a moderate, or a radical centrist. George Stephanopoulos said of him in 2003, "He's so well versed in politics, and he can't be pigeonholed. I can't be sure whenever I turn to him where he's going to be coming from or what he's going to say." Zakaria wrote in February 2008 that "Conservatism grew powerful in the 1970s and 1980s because it proposed solutions appropriate to the problems of the age", adding that "a new world requires new thinking". He supported Barack Obama during the 2008 Democratic primary campaign and also for president. In January 2009 Forbes referred to Zakaria as one of the 25 most influential liberals in the American media. Zakaria has stated that he tries not to be devoted to any type of ideology, saying "I feel that's part of my job... which is not to pick sides but to explain what I think is happening on the ground. I can't say, 'This is my team and I'm going to root for them no matter what they do.'"
Zakaria "may have more intellectual range and insights than any other public thinker in the West," wrote David Shribman in the Boston Globe. In 2003, former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger told New York Magazine that Zakaria “has a first-class mind and likes to say things that run against conventional wisdom.” However, in 2011, the editors of The New Republic included him in a list of "over-rated thinkers" and commented "There's something suspicious about a thinker always so perfectly in tune with the moment."
How to Restore the American Dream
content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2026916,00.html
Marge Piercy
(born March 31, 1936) is an American poet, novelist, and social activist. Piercy is the author of Woman on the Edge of Time; He, She and It, which won the 1993 Arthur C. Clarke Award; and Gone to Soldiers, a New York Times Best-Seller and sweeping historical novel set during World War II.
Piercy was born in Detroit, Michigan, to Bert (Bunnin) Piercy and Robert Piercy. Upon graduation from Mackenzie High School, Marge became the first in her family to attend college, studying at the University of Michigan. Winning a Hopwood Award for Poetry and Fiction (1957) enabled her to finish college and spend some time in France. She earned a M.A. from Northwestern University. Her first book of poems, Breaking Camp, was published in 1968.
An indifferent student in her early years, Piercy developed a love of books when she came down with rheumatic fever in her mid-childhood and could do little but read. "It taught me that there's a different world there, that there were all these horizons that were quite different from what I could see".
Piercy was a significant feminist voice in the New Left and Students for a Democratic Society.
Piercy was born in Detroit, Michigan, to Bert (Bunnin) Piercy and Robert Piercy. Upon graduation from Mackenzie High School, Marge became the first in her family to attend college, studying at the University of Michigan. Winning a Hopwood Award for Poetry and Fiction (1957) enabled her to finish college and spend some time in France. She earned a M.A. from Northwestern University. Her first book of poems, Breaking Camp, was published in 1968.
An indifferent student in her early years, Piercy developed a love of books when she came down with rheumatic fever in her mid-childhood and could do little but read. "It taught me that there's a different world there, that there were all these horizons that were quite different from what I could see".
Piercy was a significant feminist voice in the New Left and Students for a Democratic Society.
To Be of Use
Jeff Parker
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The Great GAPsby Society
Tom Tomorrow
Tom Tomorrow is the pen name of editorial cartoonist Dan Perkins. His weekly comic strip This Modern World, which comments on current events, appears regularly in over 90 newspapers across the United States and Canada as of 2006,[1] as well as on CREDO Action[2] and Daily Kos, where he is its comics curator.[3] His work has appeared in The New York Times, The New Yorker, Spin, Mother Jones, Esquire, The Economist, and The American Prospect.
This Modern World debuted in 1990 in SF Weekly. While it often ridicules those in power, the strip also focuses on the average American's support for contemporary leaders and their policies, as well as the popular media's role in shaping public perception.
In addition to any politicians and celebrities depicted, the strip has several recurring characters:
This Modern World debuted in 1990 in SF Weekly. While it often ridicules those in power, the strip also focuses on the average American's support for contemporary leaders and their policies, as well as the popular media's role in shaping public perception.
In addition to any politicians and celebrities depicted, the strip has several recurring characters:
- A sunglasses-wearing penguin named "Sparky" and his Boston terrier friend, "Blinky"
- "Biff," a generic conservative often used by Sparky as a foil
- "Conservative Jones," a boy detective whose deductive reasoning satirizes the logic of conservative news analysts and politicians
- The tentacle-waving aliens of planet Glox
- The "Small Cute Dog," who was accidentally elected president on "parallel earth," and whose subsequent actions mirrored those of President George W. Bush.
- The "Invisible Hand of the Free Market Man", a superhero figure whose head is shaped like human hand.
This Modern World: A "Handy" Guide to the Housing Market
CONVERSATION: Materialism in American Culture
1. Henry David Thoreau, from Economy
xroads.virginia.edu/~hyper/walden/hdt01.html
walden_web.pdf | |
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2. John Kenneth Galbraith, from The Dependence Effect
The Affluent Society is a 1958 (4th edition revised 1984) book by Harvard economist John Kenneth Galbraith. The book sought to clearly outline the manner in which the post-World War II United States was becoming wealthy in the private sector but remained poor in the public sector, lacking social and physical infrastructure, and perpetuating income disparities. The book sparked much public discussion at the time, and it is widely remembered for Galbraith's popularizing of the term "conventional wisdom."
Many of the same ideas were later expanded and refined in Galbraith's 1967 book, The New Industrial State.
Former U.S. Secretary of Labor Robert Reich called it his favorite on the subject of economics. The Modern Library placed the book at no. 46 on its list of the top 100 English-language non-fiction books of the 20th century.
Galbraith writes:
"On the importance of production as a test of performance, there is no difference between Republicans and Democrats, right and left, white and minimally prosperous black, Catholic and Protestant. It is common ground for the Chairman of Americans for Democratic Action, the President of the United States Chamber of Commerce and the President of the National Association of Manufactures.”[3]
“Whether the problem be that of a burgeoning population and of space in which to live with peace and grace, or whether it be the depletion of the materials which nature has stocked in the earth’s crust and which have been drawn upon more heavily in this century than in all previous time together, or whether it be that of occupying minds no longer committed to the stockpiling of consumer goods, the basic demand on America will be on its resources of intelligence and education.”
Many of the same ideas were later expanded and refined in Galbraith's 1967 book, The New Industrial State.
Former U.S. Secretary of Labor Robert Reich called it his favorite on the subject of economics. The Modern Library placed the book at no. 46 on its list of the top 100 English-language non-fiction books of the 20th century.
Galbraith writes:
"On the importance of production as a test of performance, there is no difference between Republicans and Democrats, right and left, white and minimally prosperous black, Catholic and Protestant. It is common ground for the Chairman of Americans for Democratic Action, the President of the United States Chamber of Commerce and the President of the National Association of Manufactures.”[3]
- American demand for goods and services is not organic. That is, the demands are not internally created by a consumer. These such demands - food, clothes, and shelter - have been met for the vast majority of Americans. The new demands are created by advertisers and the "machinery for consumer-demand creation" that benefit from increased consumer spending. This exuberance in private production and consumption pushes out public spending and investment.[3] He called this the dependence effect, a process by which "wants are increasingly created by the process by which they are satisfied".[3]
- Galbraith believes America must transition from a private production economy to a public investment economy. He advocates three large proposals: the elimination of poverty, government investment in public schools, and the growth of the "New Class." Galbraith outlines the two types of poverty to better understand the causes and potential remedies. Case poverty is related to a specific individual and insular poverty is an island where nearly everyone is poor. To fund social programs, Galbraith believes in the expanded use of consumption taxes. The "New Class" consists of schoolteachers, professors, surgeons, and electrical engineers.
“Whether the problem be that of a burgeoning population and of space in which to live with peace and grace, or whether it be the depletion of the materials which nature has stocked in the earth’s crust and which have been drawn upon more heavily in this century than in all previous time together, or whether it be that of occupying minds no longer committed to the stockpiling of consumer goods, the basic demand on America will be on its resources of intelligence and education.”
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mises.org/library/galbraith-was-right-about-advertising
3. Phyllis Rose, Shopping and Other Spiritual Adventures in America Today
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4. Wendell Berry, Waste
www.swaraj.org/shikshantar/nowact_wendellwaste.htm
5. Juliet Schor, The New Consumerism
new.bostonreview.net/BR24.3/schor.html
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