A reader of my recent post, “Bernie Sanders got much right about our current situation….” commented: “Thank you Mark for validating what we know to be true with real data. Now what do we do about it?” My perspective on our situation has shifted because I have come to recognize that American life has been transformed over the past 50 years. The Trump era, following 2016, marks the culmination of a long campaign by the —>> read more –>>
Footnotes
- This quote is attributed to Indigenous Cherokee elder Stan Rushworth. The quote became popular on social media in various forms, most recently in September 2020.
- An underlying theme here is that anonymity is inimical of a healthy, egalitarian society.
- See the call to end anonymity in public life below
- Company stock buybacks were illegal price manipulation until the regulations were changed in 1982 under President Reagan.
- See the MIT Living Wage Calculator for example data on living wages for various family sizes and locations.
- Attention must be paid not to exceed the capacity of any sector of the economy because that would provoke inflation.
- See my "Video Post – It’s time to admit that US health system is 3rd rate, or worse" for more about the performance of our healhtcare system.
- See Smil, Vaclav. How the World Really Works: A Scientist’s Guide to Our Past, Present and Future. UK: Viking, an imprint of Penguin Books, 2022.
From a recent email from Bernie Sanders with this byline: “Yes. In the wealthiest country on earth let us Make America Healthy Again.”, I extracted these headline proposals. Medicare for All. Lower the cost of prescription drugs. Paid Family and Medical Leave. Reform the food industry. Raise the minimum wage to a living wage. Lower the work week to 32 hours with no loss of pay. Combat the epidemic of loneliness, isolation and mental illness. —>> read more –>>
Footnotes
- This quote is attributed to indigenous Cherokee elder, Stan Rushworth The quote became popularized on social media in various forms, most recently in Sep 2020.
- Attention must be paid not to exceed the capacity of any sector of the economy because that would provoke inflation.
- See Smil, Vaclav. How the World Really Works: A Scientist’s Guide to Our Past, Present and Future. UK: Viking, an imprint of Penguin Books, 2022.
With yet another school shooting yesterday 9.3.2024 in Georgia I found myself barely moved. The frequency of these events and the now ritualized sequelae have extinguished any other reaction. Here is a chart I came on today in The Conversation. It is shocking, even to me, that we have taken as the normal for the last twenty five years to have averaged 58 shootings per year!!
A recent NYTimes article from 10.23.2023, “New SAT Data Highlights the Deep Inequality at the Heart of American Education,” 10 alerted me to a report from the National Bureau of Economic Research, “Diversifying Society’s Leaders? The Determinants and Causal Effects of Admission to Highly Selective Private Colleges”11 The report begins with this note: Leadership positions in the United States are held disproportionately by graduates of a small number of highly selective private colleges. Less than —>> read more –>>
Footnotes
- Claire Cain Miller and Francesca Paris, “New SAT Data Highlights the Deep Inequality at the Heart of American Education,” The New York Times, October 23, 2023, sec. The Upshot, https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/10/23/upshot/sat-inequality.html.
- Raj Chetty, David Deming, and John Friedman, “Diversifying Society’s Leaders? The Determinants and Causal Effects of Admission to Highly Selective Private Colleges” (Cambridge, MA: National Bureau of Economic Research, July 2023), https://doi.org/10.3386/w31492.
Yesterday as I was taking a walk up and down Warren St. here in Hudson I realized that I had become actively angry about the state of the US and the world. I walked past hotels where a single room would set you back $400 for a night or you could go for the suite that is a mere $1300. This in a country where 32% of the people can’t pay an unexpected $400 bill.12 —>> read more –>>
Footnotes
- https://www.federalreserve.gov/publications/2022-economic-well-being-of-us-households-in-2021-dealing-with-unexpected-expenses.htm
- https://inequality.org/great-divide/updates-billionaire-pandemic/
- see the empirical study Martin Gilens, Affluence and Influence: Economic Inequality and Political Power in America (Princeton, N.J; New York: Princeton University Press ; Russell Sage Foundation, 2012).
- https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/figures/2021/BudgetaryCosts
- https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/figures/2021/WarDeathToll
- https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/26/nyregion/nyc-homeless-students.html
- https://www.justia.com/criminal/offenses/homicide/involuntary-manslaughter/
- https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/01/24/trumps-false-or-misleading-claims-total-30573-over-four-years/
- https://www.prisonpolicy.org/research/mental_health/
- https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/the-great-american-bubble-machine-195229/
- https://khn.org/news/article/hospices-private-equity-firms-end-of-life-care/ and https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/12/05/how-hospice-became-a-for-profit-hustle
If you are struggling to get your head around how racism works you will probably find it helpful to have a general framework as a guide. This one hour lecture from 2017 features an overview by Brown University Professor Tricia Rose of the structure of racism and how it works in the US (approx. 29 minutes). Then follows a case study by Samuel Rosen, senior researcher, How Structural Racism Works Project at Brown, of how —>> read more –>>
Tightrope provides a well-written description of the American crisis through personal stories and hard data. Unfortunately it falls flat in its call for action.
The decline of the US has become so marked over the last few decades that the stories and numbers no longer shock. From a country with an enormous middle class we have become a country with rich, super-rich and big corporations at the top while the vast majority, more than 80%, are either homeless, very poor, poor, or a paycheck or two from poor. If you want an introduction to the state of our society, —>> read more –>>
The recent controversies surrounding Joe Biden’s anti- school busing collaborations with racist politicians from the south has for the moment aroused new comment on segregated America. The New York Times published an excellent review of the history of school desegregation by Nikole Hannah-Jones, “It Was Never About Busing: Court-ordered desegregation worked. But white racism made it hard to accept.” As the article notes the yellow school bus has been in use for almost a hundred years. —>> read more –>>
Roosevelt’s 1944 State of the Union called for a second bill of rights, an economic bill of rights, that resonates loudly today.
Adjunct teachers are paid so poorly that many qualify for food stamps. Meanwhile students across the country are underwriting ever higher tuition through debt.
We all have had, some now enduring, experiences in the educational system. Excepting the academic super stars for whom the educational system was designed, most have at best mixed feelings about it. Here is a TED Talk given in 2006 by Ken Robinson: “Ken Robinson says schools kill creativity” It is a compelling critique and most humorous. You will not get through these nineteen minutes without a lot of laughs.
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