Society Other Resources

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Core Readings (Please read at least one item in each topic.)

Wealth and Income Concentration

  • Norton & Ariely. (2011). "Building a Better America−One Wealth Quintile at a Time." Perspectives on Psychological Science. Link Read the abstract and look at the graphics. (5-10 min) Alternatively, watch this 6 min video

The authors report that Americans from across various age, background, and political spectra want greater equality, and imagine current inequality to be less than it is.

  • Rampell, Catherine. (2011). "The Haves and the Have-Nots." New York Times. Link (3pp., 3 min)

US and other countries compared by income distribution and absolute income. Single chart shows even US poor to be more affluent than most others. I think dollar comparisons may be misleading, as there are people with cars and tvs who've too little to eat. Take-home message: "It's easy to see that in such a world most of one's lifetime income will be determined at birth."

  • Gilson, Dave and Perot, Carolyn. (2011). "It's the Inequality, Stupid." Mother Jones. Link (5 min)

Pages of simple graphics describing growing concentration of wealth and income in US. What about the first graphic is misleading?

  • Kelly, Marjorie. (2001). Divine Right of Capital: Dethroning the Corporate Aristocracy. - Link- 6pp. (15 min)

Gideon Rosenblatt has summarized the book. Kelly begins with parallels to royalty, continues with discussion of world-view and paradigm shift, and proceeds to critique the current status and operations of corporations and to propose radical reforms. In the first six chapters Kelly treats history and present; in the final six she looks to the future. I predict that the ideas she sets forth here will become common currency over the next several decades. A few classes ago I asked you to read the first six chapter summaries. For this class please read the last six chapter summaries.

Financialization (5 min)

  • Bartlett, Bruce. (2013). "'Financialization' as a Cause of Economic Malaise." Link (4 pp., 5 min.)

Former high-level advisor to federal government cites financialization as cause of economic distress. Good charts on history of finance as fraction of economy and on declining share of national income going to labor.

Secular Stagnation?

  • The Data Team. (19 November 2014) The Economist. Link (5pp., 5min.)

Graphs and text describing falling real wages and bond yields, declining economic growth, and other indicators of economic stagnation in Japan, Europe, and North America.

Criminalization, Incarceration, Racism

  • Howard, Greg. (2016.) "NYTimes." "How the Police See Us and How They Train Us to See Them." Link(5pp., 5min.)

Howard describes now familiar pattern of police violence against poor, especially Afro-American people, and our failure to hold offending officers accountable

  • Madar, Chase. (2013). "Tomgram: Chase Madar, The Criminalization of Everyday Life." Link (8 pp., 10 min)

Madar provides a litany of examples of how we are restricting freedom by criminalizing all manner of behavior and discriminatorily enforcing harsh laws.

  • "Forcing Black Men Out of Society." NYTimes editorial board. Link (3pp., 4 min)

1.5 million men dead from homicide and incarcerated are absent from black communities with telling consequences. Millions more are undereducated and underemployed. Evidence for continuing, egregiously harmful racial bias is incontrovertible.

Militarization/Imperialism

  • Wikipedia. "Military Budget of the United States." Link (2 min)

Read all 4 color graphics (scroll to end of article) to learn what we spend.

  • Wikipedia. "United States Military Deployments." Link (2 min)

Read graphics to learn where we are.

  • Johnson, Richard. "United Bases of America." Link (5 min)

Global deployment of US military.

Globalization/Migration

  • "World at War: 2014 Trends at a Glance." pp. 2-3 UNHCR. Link 2 pp., 5 min.

Summary of UN report detailing status and trends for displaced people worldwide, now at an all-time high of tens of millions and growing rapidly.

  • Beck, Roy. (2013). "Immigration Numbers." Center for Immigration Truth. Link Video. 6-min.

Beck outlines the futility of mass immigration as a strategy for alleviating poverty beyond U.S. borders, and argues that we may contribute to poverty here and abroad by it.

  • Gerard, Leo. (2015). "Why the Trans-pacific Partnership is a Rotten Deal" Link 5 min

US Steelworkers President and Obama appointee to trade post criticizes proposed trade deal.

  • Fullerton, John. (2016). "What Bundy and His Merry Militiamen Can Learn from TransCanada." Capital Institute. Link (2 pp., 5 min.)

Former investment banker turned "regenerative capitalist" explains how we've surrendered sovereignty to promote trade.

  • Rawlence, Ben. "The Other Refugee Crisis." (9 October 2015.) NYTimes. Link 7 pp., 7 min.

Journalist describes growing number of refugees in "temporary" resettlement camps, one of which is now holds 800,000 people.

  • Kantor, Jodi, Einhorn, Catrin. "What Does It Mean to Help One Family?" (22 October 2016.) Link 10pp., 10 min.

Six Canadian women sponsor a Syrian refugee family and discover how complex is resettling them, and how dire are the straits of myriad relatives left behind.

Power Concentration and Dispersal

  • James, Brendan. (2014). "Princeton Study: U.S. No Longer An Actual Democracy" Link - Princeton researchers claim US no longer a democracy. Original research report here: Link - Multivariate analysis of US society refutes claims to democracy and supports claims of economic domination by narrow interests and wealthy elite. (2 min for summary; 15 min for original study)
  • Confessore, N. "Buying Power." (15 October 2015.) NYTimes. - More than half of Presidential campaign contributions in the 2016 election cycle have been make by 158 out of 120 million U.S. households. Link (5 pp., 5 min.)
  • Confessore, N. "A Wealthy Governor and His Friends Are Remaking Illinois" - We’re now observing effects of unlimited campaign funding at the state, as well as the national level. Link
  • Agence France-Presse. (2012). "Al-Qaeda blamed for Europe-wide forest fires." Link Forest fire terrorism, perhaps a prelude to other low-cost, low-tech, high damage terrorism. National security through military and industrial strength insufficient. (2 min)

Failure of Old Narrative

  • Reich, Robert. (2014). "The 'Paid-What-You're-Worth' Myth." Link Robert Reich writes about "the system": According to the Institute for Policy Studies, the $26.7 billion of bonuses Wall Street banks paid out last year would be enough to more than double the pay of every one of America’s 1,085,000 full-time minimum wage workers. The remainder of the $83 billion of hidden subsidy going to those same banks would almost be enough to double what the government now provides low-wage workers in the form of wage subsidies under the Earned Income Tax Credit. The “paid-what-your-worth” argument is fundamentally misleading because it ignores power, overlooks institutions, and disregards politics. As such, it lures the unsuspecting into thinking nothing whatever should be done to change what people are paid, because nothing can be done. (5 min)
  • Wonkblog, Washington Post. (2013). "Robert Rubin’s graph(s) of the year." Link Graphs showing 1/3 of people in poverty are high school grads; fewer than half of people have a great deal or quite a lot of confidence in the church, the presidency, the medical system, fewer than 1/3 in the Supreme Court, the public schools, the criminal justice system, banks, fewer than 1/4 in tv news, newspapers, big business, organized labor, HMOs, Congress (10%!). (5 min)

Mental Health: Denial, Addiction, Depression, Delusion, Fear

  • Luhrmann, Tanya. (2014). "Is The World More Depressed?" Link Stanford professor T.M.Luhrmann examines global data on the rise of depression and suicide, and speculates about cause. (5 min)
  • Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists - 5/18/2014, Addicted to oil, Dawn Stover. Stover writes that we in the US are addicted to oil. Cites the DSM-V. Link (5 min)
  • McClennen, Sophia. (2015). "Ted Cruz Isn't an Idiot, He's Delusional and that's Far More Dangerous"Link Journalist claims Ted Cruz is delusional, rather than dishonest or stupid. (4 min)
  • Brooks, David. (2014). "The Republic of Fear." Link NYTimes columnist David Brooks describes pervasiveness of everyday violence for large segment of humanity and questions whether economic growth and "market capitalism" can substantially limit it. (5 min)

Summary

  • Tverberg, Gail. (2013). "Rising Energy Costs Lead to Recession; Eventually Collapse" Link Tverberg integrates ecology and economics to predict collapse as inevitable result of energy impoverishment. (10 min)

Interest Readings

  • Cassidy, John. (2010). "What Good Is Wall Street?" The New Yorker. Link - Cassidy argues that much of what investment bankers do is socially worthless, yet they are claiming an ever larger share of national income and are individually receiving increasingly disproportionately large rewards. 24pp.
  • Stiglitz, Joseph E. (2011). "Of the 1%, By the 1%, for the 1%." Vanity Fair. Link - Stiglitz chronicles the increasing concentration of wealth and describes its unsustainable quality. (10 min)
  • Herszenhorn, David and Kotz, David. (2008). "Shocked Disbelief." Link Greenspan's 20/20 hindsight in the same vein as Robert McNamara's admission that US military intervention in Vietnam was "error" is evidence that the old narrative about individual self-interest and common good is failing. (5 min)
  • Catton, William. (1995). "The Problem of Denial and Ecological Overshoot."- Link - Catton explains mainstream economics as denial of ecological reality. (15 min)
  • Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.) (2014). "The Facts About the Koch Brothers."Link US Senator for Nevada Harry Reid reports on research describing the thoughts and actions of the Koch brothers, who use their wealth to shape law and policy to advantage the rich. (5 min)
  • Yen, Hope. (2013). "Rich-Poor Employment Gap Now Widest On Record" Link
  • Lowrey, Annie. (2013). "The Rich Get Richer Through the Recovery." Link Income concentration in the US is unprecedentedly high. The 1 percent has captured about 95 percent of the income gains since the recession ended.
  • Energyskeptic. "Homer-Dixon Key findings on resources and war / violence" Link Resources, war, government failure w/ case studies. Makes the connection between physical factor trends (resource scarcity) and cultural trend (violent struggle, war for resource).
  • Chomsky, Noam. (2013, August 17). "The U.S. Behaves Nothing Like a Democracy." Salon. Link Chomsky dissects US domestic and foreign policy with an eye to which elements are supported by a majority (few) and which are in furtherance of the interests of the elite. 10 pp. (10 min)
  • Wolfers, Justin; Leonhardt, David; Quealy, Kevin. (2015). "1.5 Million Missing Black Men." Link 1.5 million men dead from homicide and incarcerated are absent from black communities with telling consequences. (5 min)
  • Daly, Herman. (2004). "Offshoring in the Context of Globalization." The Social Contract. Link
  • Hazen, Don. (2013). "The Four Plagues: Getting a Handle on the Coming Apocalypse." Link Criminalization, financialization, militarization, privatization: four plagues. Hazen chronicles these trends and wonders how to reverse them. (20 min)
  • Weissman, Jordan. (2014). "Jobless in Seattle"Link - Scroll down for graph showing history of minimum wage in real (peaked in 1968) and nominal dollars. Weissman cites perils of higher minimum wage. I find ironic that we argue so vehemently about these and say nothing of the perils of the absence of a maximum wage. (5 min)
  • Irwin, Neil. (2013). "The typical American family makes less than it did in 1989." Link Median family income in 2012 same as 25 years ago. Lost generation of economic gains for US families.
  • "Wealth Inequality in America." (2012). Link video of actual wealth distribution in US, what people think it is, what we want. (6:23 min)
  • Nazario, Sonia. "The Refugees at Our Door." (10 October 2015.) NYTimes. - Nazario describes how U.S. residents tax dollars are being used to pay Mexican government employees to halt, sometimes by violent and oppressive means, the flow of Central American migrants northward. (13 pp., 10 min.)
  • Daly, Herman. (1991). "Growth, International Trade, and Destruction of Community." The Social Contract. Link Former World Bank economist and advocate of ecological economics explains a quarter century ago the impacts of unrestricted global trade, and in retrospect his predictions are accurate. (5 min)
  • Daly, Herman. (2003). "Globalization and Its Inconsistencies -- Does Free Trade Mean Free Migration?" The Social Contract. [1] Daly draws attention to the asymmetry between movement of capital and movement of labor across international borders and promises a "race to the bottom." (5 min)
  • Stanford News Service. "Generation X not so special: Malaise, cynicism on the rise for all age groups." Link Stanford sociologists assert that people of different generations, not just Gen Xers, are feeling malaise and cynicism more commonly. (5 min)
  • Rossi, Luca. (2014). "Global investor disillusionment rising, says Legg Mason survey." Link Investors worldwide disappointed with returns (as reality of ecological impoverishment penetrates economics and finance.) (5 min)
  • Denning, Steve. (2014). "Why Financialization has Run Amok." 'Forbes'. Link Steve Demming on why financialization has run amok. (5 min)
  • Straus, Tamara. (2010). "A Sobering Assessment of Microfinances Impact." Link Micro-finance may do more harm than good. (2 min)
  • Wikipedia. "Financialization." Link Top chart shows history of finance as fraction of economy. Further down article gives total value of derivatives traded now 100x GDP. (2 min)
  • Rank, Mark. (2013, November 2). "Poverty in America is Mainstream." The New York Times. Link - Rank presents data on poverty that which are basis for concluding that many more people in the U.S. experience poverty at soome point during their lives. (4pp., 4 min)
  • Lowrey, Annie. (2013). "The Rich Get Richer Through the Recovery." Link Income concentration in the US is unprecedentedly high. The 1% have captured about 95% of the income gains since the recession ended. Scroll to graph. (2 min)
  • Bump, Phillip. (12 May 2015) "The Top 25 Hedge Fund Managers Earn More Than All Kindergarten Teachers Combined." The Washington Post. Link - 25 hedge fund managers, 158,000 teachers; nice graphics. (3pp. 3min)
  • Sen. Bernie Sanders Vermont Progressive Part, VT. (2014). "Immoral Income Inequality." Link US Senator Bernie Sanders decries global and US wealth concentration and offers latest statistics (2013) from Forbes, US Dept of Labor. Three billionaire Republican donors reaped increases in wealth in one year equal to the incomes of nearly half a million school teachers. (1 p., 2 min)
  • Confessore, Nicholas. (2013). "Tax Filings Hint at Extent of Koch Brothers’ Reach." Link Billionaire brothers use tax loopholes to fund right-wing causes and hide source of gifts. (4 pp., 4 min.)
  • Beachy, Ben & Wallach, Lori. (2013). "Obama's Covert Trade Deals." Link Advocates of trade regulation decry secrecy and favoritism in upcoming TPP. (3 min)
  • Vox. "Why Does the US Have 800 Military Bases Around the World?" Link 4 minute video
  • Photobucket. "Iran Wants War: Look How Close They Put Their Country to our Military Bases." Link Image of Iran encircled by US military bases. (1 min)
  • "Gary Webb." Wikipedia. Link - Webb uncovered CIA complicity in Nicaraguan Contra drug smuggling of cocaine which fueled the crack epidemic in LA and other major cities. For daring to challenge the hegemonic world-view he was suppressed, fired, and blacklisted.
  • "Short History of Property, Labor, Wealth, Profit, and Taxation." Turning the Tide. - Author does especially good job of presenting the history of income taxation in the US. link
  • Urban Institute. (2012). "Nonprofit Sector is Growing Faster than Rest of the Economy." LinkCharitable sector fastest growing in economy. We know that "the market" is inadequate to address issues we consider important. We're resurrecting gift. (5 min)
  • Volunteering and Civic Life in America. (2013). "Volunteering and Civic Life in America 2013 National, Regional, State, and City Information." Link Stats on increase in volunteering. (5 min)
  • Coleman, Flynn. (2013). "Yoga, Meditation, and Mindfuless: "Trends" That Could Change Everything." Link Mindfulness trend in myriad aspects of society, including business and medicine, may portend and reflect important change. (5 min)
  • Dropp, Kyle; Kertzer, Joshua; Zeitzoff, Thomas. (2014). "The less Americans know about Ukraine’s location, the more they want U.S. to intervene." Link- The less able Americans are to locate Ukraine on a map, the more likely they are to advocate military intervention there. (5 min)
  • Styles, Ruth. (2014). "The models in masks: Shocking images show women forced to don medical garb for fashion event in smog-hit city of Nanjing." Link Images of addiction. Evidencing little appreciation for a rapidly worsening predicament, people continue to imagine advantage in dressing expensively when air pollution has become bad enough for government officials to insist that we wear surgical masks to filter out particulate. (Incidentally, I've yet to see evidence that these are effective.) Check out these "fashions" and models. (5 min)
  • Madar, Chase. (2013, December 8). "The Overpolicing of America." TomDispatch.com. Link - Madar provides a litany of examples of how we are restricting freedom by criminalizing all manner of behavior and discriminatorily enforcing harsh laws. (15 min)
  • Lowrey, Annie. "Study Finds Greater Income Inequality in Thriving Cities." NYTimes. Link - Rich are richer in boom towns where technology and finance are large parts of economy. Poor are as poor or poorer as elsewhere.
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