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This month’s Vanity Fair features an article by economics Nobel Laureate, Joseph Stiglitz entitled “Of the 1%, By the 1%, For the 1%.” It opens with statistics stating that over the past twenty-five years the portion of the nation’s income earned by the top 1% of Americans changed from 12% to almost 25%. Their . . . → Read More: Of the 100%, By the 100-99%, For the 1%  The goal of every business is to maximize profits. Nothing wrong with that. But of course, there are a lot of wrong ways of accomplishing this goal. For example, decreasing expenses by illegally dumping pollutants or exploiting workers is wrong. A way of increasing profits that’s just fine is by charging well beyond your . . . → Read More: T-Mobile’s on the Menu, and AT&T Wants to Eat Our Lunch What do you think about population? Is it a subject you’d rather not discuss? Personally, I think the world is overpopulated. This isn’t true. It’s only my opinion. I just don’t think it’s a great idea to see how many of us we can pack on the planet. To me, it’s about quality of . . . → Read More: The Truth About Overpopulation Saw this bumper sticker in Alhambra, California today: It kind of triggered me. Of course, being me, I thought it was about population, and I thought it was sort of a heavy-handed, poor/welfare-bashing, lower-middle-class view that everything would be fine if it weren’t for lazy, free-loading welfare queens. But when I stopped the . . . → Read More: Can’t Feed ‘Em? I saw this bumper sticker in Tehachapi, California yesterday:
I really like it because I think it points to a source of the emotional intensity many Americans feel about their guns. It also implicitly acknowledges that even after almost two-hundred-and-thirty-five years of freedom, we still can see ourselves as . . . → Read More: Guns Even though I don’t sport them on my own car, I’ve always liked public-issue bumper stickers. Bumper stickers represent a very interesting level of commitment. A person is announcing their position it to everyone they know plus random passers-by, but they’re doing it from the safety of their car. They can be a little . . . → Read More: Bumper Stickers Graeme Wood in April’s Atlantic writes that the rich might not be so different as we suspect. In “The Fortunate Ones” he describes results of a study at Boston College’s Center on Wealth and Philanthropy focusing the experiences of the 115,000 families in the United States with fortunes of $25 million or more. Maybe . . . → Read More: Being Rich The documentary,Why We Fight, opens with President Eisenhower’s famous farewell warning about the military industrial complex, describing how the military and manufacturers of arms form a powerful constituency influencing foreign policy toward arms proliferation and war. Fifty years almost to the day after Eisenhower’s farewell, Fortune (2/28/2011) magazine has published Mina Kimes’ “America’s Hottest . . . → Read More: The Bomb Biz “A Few Bad Apples” points out our tendency when things go wrong to ask, “Who’s to blame?” rather than, “What’s to blame?” This tendency causes us to punish, but leave systems that enable or encourage misbehavior unreformed. But what if we don’t even ask, “Who’s to blame?” “How Wall Street’s Crooks Evaded Jail” in . . . → Read More: Who’s to Blame? It’s opening day for the New Culture Initiative Digest. Though I like blogs, I never liked the word. I’ll probably change the name a few times in the coming weeks. It’s an auspicious day to add this piece to the site. Yesterday we celebrated the NCI’s 32nd anniversary. Yup, it started in 1979. My . . . → Read More: Thirty Two |
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