Here is one perspective on what the future has in store for us:
We have already returned to the levels of income inequality of the 1920s, and the concentration of wealth is heading toward the ratios of the 1890s. The social relations of the future, writes Piketty could resemble Jane Austen’s world, in which a tiny group of the wealthy employed vast armies of poorly paid servants.
This piece was first published online in Frontline on April 16, 2014.
Can it be true that capitalists prefer crisis over growth? On the face of it, the idea sounds silly. According to Economics 101, everyone loves growth, especially capitalists. Profit and growth go hand in hand. When capitalists profit, real investment rises and the economy thrives, and when the economy booms the profits of capitalists soar. Growth is the very lifeline of capitalists.
Or is it?
What motivates capitalists?
It is a sea change, the kind of transformation that the Austrian economist Joseph Schumpeter said was caused by “gales of creative destruction.” In his model, systems change when new ideas, products, and technologies bring about the destruction of the old.
Troy: [a “gay,” played by Dave Foley]: You know, I asked him [Adam, played by Brendan Fraser] about that. He said, good manners are just a way of showing other people we have respect for them. See, I didn’t know that, I thought it was just a way of acting all superior. Oh and you know what else he told me?
Eve: [played by Alicia Silverstone] What?
Troy: He thinks I’m a gentleman and you’re a lady.
Eve: (disgusted) Well, consider the source! I don’t even know what a lady is.
Act 1
Setting: Restaurant, where four middle-age friends, who have known each other since their university days in the early 1970’s, meet for lunch.
Professor: Should we share a bottle of wine?
Lawyer: Why not! There’s no time clock, clients or deadlines.
Social Worker: (smiles). We can afford it!
Doctor: No doubt … we’re drawing pensions, Social Security, and annuities. Medicare covers our medical bills. Mortgages are paid up.
Under the leadership of New York City’s progressive new mayor Bill de Blasio a settlement has been reached between a discrimination suited filed by the Vulcan Society (representing minority firefighters) and the city over the use of racially based civil service tests that favored white applicants.
There’s nothing worse than ignorant and opinionated.
You know the type: Most mainstream newspapers have at least one; they dominate radio talk shows and certain TV “news” networks.
Loud supporters of the existing economic system who deny inequality is a problem or even claim it doesn’t exist.
Business leaders/columnists/celebrities/media hacks and the “think tanks” they come from who also deny climate change is a problem or even claim it doesn’t exist.
I’ll flip the classroom on this post, putting down my response to another middling post from that middling thing called, Inside Higher Education, this on-line blog advertising sheet, DC-based (first problem) and one that is just a hotbed of behind-the-times (second knock against it) and failing to really know the on-the-ground (third, knock) reality of school, community, real faculty and, well, the non-dominant white male/female perspectives (4th knock), the ones bred and enabled on that east coast (another knock) where we have seen a galaxy of pain put upon us, the 80 percent, by
There are more than 300 million people in the USA. 492 of them are billionaires. That represents roughly 16 millionths of 1%. In decimal form that’s 0.0000016, or as a fraction, 16 over 1 million. This is not the 1% the Occupy Movement imprinted on (some of) the national consciousness. Even an innumerate person can understand that represents a teeny, tiny, microscopic portion of our supposedly democratic, equal opportunity, propaganda spouting world’s most deadly military killing machine in history.
The hardest thing about doing what I do is trying to write relatively calmly about things that quite literally make the blood boil. Sometimes after I’ve written a piece, such as this one, I feel the need for a long hot shower, because you have to spend so long immersed in the vile excrement of the 1% that you wonder if you can ever be clean again. I’m sure that many others know what I mean.
