How to Take on the Tech Barons
Sunday, November 8th, 2020
The pandemic has laid bare both the promise of technology — softening the blow of months at home — and its rougher edges, which include the consolidation of power and ever-greater personal data collection… to confront, among other things, the exposed gaps in the nation’s broadband network; the urgent need for broad online privacy protections; the rollout of 5G; growing consumer resentment of technologists; and the pitfalls of nascent technologies like self-driving cars, artificial intelligence and facial recognition.
Tags: economy, globalization, ideology, jurisdiction, privatization, rights
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Orwell’s Warning on Speaking Freely
Sunday, July 12th, 2020
… speaking freely is in danger… from liberal elites who, when tested, lack the courage of their liberal convictions; from so-called progressives whose core convictions were never liberal to begin with; from administrative types at nonprofits and corporations who, with only vague convictions of their own, don’t want to be on the wrong side of a P.R. headache.
Tags: ideology, participation, rights
Posted in Education Debates | No Comments »
Pull Yourself Up by Bootstraps? Go Ahead, Try It
Sunday, March 1st, 2020
… this bootstraps narrative drives out good policy in three ways. First, it suggests that historically Americans rose purely through rugged individualism… Second, the bootstraps narrative often suggests that benefits programs are counterproductive because they foster “dependency.” … Third, the bootstraps narrative implies that… because some people can run a four-minute mile, everyone can… American children need fewer wagging fingers or homilies about bootstraps, and more helping hands.
Tags: ideology, participation, poverty, standard of living, youth
Posted in Equality Debates | No Comments »
This Is How Scandinavia Got Great
Saturday, February 15th, 2020
The idea was to create in the mind of the student a sense of wider circles of belonging — from family to town to nation — and an eagerness to assume shared responsibility for the whole. The Nordic educators also worked hard to develop the student’s internal awareness… If you have a thin educational system that does not help students see the webs of significance between people… you’re going to wind up with a society in which people can’t see through each other’s lenses.
Tags: ideology, participation, rights, standard of living, tax
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The Legacy of Destructive Austerity
Sunday, January 5th, 2020
There are multiple explanations for the populist rage that has put democracy at risk across the Western world, but the side effects of austerity rank high on the list… If ordinary working families no longer believe that traditional elites know what they’re doing or care about people like them, well, what happened during the austerity years suggests that they’re right.
Tags: economy, featured, globalization, ideology
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In the long arc of human history, 2019 has been the best year ever
Thursday, January 2nd, 2020
NYTimes.com – Opinion December 31, 2019. Nicholas Kristof Nicholas Kristof: I fear that the news media focuses so relentlessly on bad news that we leave the public believing that every trend is going in the wrong direction If you’re depressed by the state of the world, let me toss out an idea: In the […]
Tags: featured, globalization, Health, ideology, poverty, standard of living
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The Happy, Healthy Capitalists of Switzerland
Sunday, November 10th, 2019
Capitalist to its core, Switzerland imposes lighter taxes on individuals, consumers and corporations than the Scandinavian countries do. In 2018 its top income tax rate was the lowest in Western Europe at 36 percent… A pragmatic country can have a business-friendly environment alongside social equality, if it gets the balance right.
Tags: economy, ideology, standard of living, tax
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We Need a New Capitalism
Sunday, November 10th, 2019
First, business leaders need to embrace a broader vision of their responsibilities… This requires that they focus not only on their shareholders, but also on all of their stakeholders — their employees, customers, communities and the planet… suggesting that companies must choose between doing well and doing good is a false choice. Successful businesses can and must do both… Research shows that companies that embrace a broader mission… outperform their peers, grow faster, and deliver higher profits.
Tags: economy, featured, globalization, ideology, participation, standard of living
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Should We Soak the Rich? You Bet!
Sunday, October 20th, 2019
As a society, instead of playing Robin Hood to smooth out the inequities, we’ve played the Sheriff of Nottingham. Lawrence Summers, the economist and former Treasury secretary, has calculated that if we had the same income distribution today as we had in 1979, the bottom 80 percent would have about an extra $1 trillion each year and the top 1 percent would have about $1 trillion less.
Tags: budget, economy, ideology, participation, standard of living, tax
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Blame Economists for the Mess We’re In
Sunday, September 1st, 2019
Markets are constructed by people, for purposes chosen by people — and people can change the rules. It’s time to discard the judgment of economists that society should turn a blind eye to inequality. Reducing inequality should be a primary goal of public policy.
Tags: economy, featured, globalization, ideology, privatization, standard of living, tax
Posted in History | No Comments »
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