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Elizabeth Warren: The Coming Collapse of the Middle Class
The following lecture features Elizabeth Warren speaking about the current crisis in (and looming collapse of) the American middle class. This presentation is almost 58 minutes, but I highly recommend it for anyone interested in long term social and economic trends and the future of the middle class. Warren is a Harvard law professor who […]
David Harvey: Getting to the Heart of the Matter
For all of the discussion about the causes of the latest economic meltdown, it’s mystified me why inequality has been largely ignored. The blame is almost always laid at the feet of proximate factors like negative savings rates, ponzi-like housing bubbles, exotic debt instruments, deregulation and a neo-liberal faith in the corrective nature of unbridled […]
America’s Housing Crisis – A Moral Dilemma?
The following video from 60 Minutes is a sobering look at America’s continuing housing crisis. It’s also an interesting discussion of a central contradiction in capitalism. On one hand, business people and corporate entities often make bloody-minded decisions that leave individuals jobless and homeless. As “rational actors” pursuing “the bottom line”, these capitalists are rarely […]
Comic Sans: The Write Type?
Apparently some people don’t like the Comic Sans font: “Comic Sans walks into a bar, and the bartender says, “We don’t serve your type.” But seriously, here’s a response in defense of our favourite faux handwriting font: http://motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2010/06/quote-day-comic-sans-fights-back ………………. Here’s another somewhat backhanded endorsement of Comic Sans. Honest. Posted by Colin Welch at 8:59 PM […]
Chinese Labour Costs are Going Up
A number of recent newspaper articles (for example, here and here) have been published regarding the climbing costs of labour in China. For some, this is a worrisome trend that foreshadows lower profits and higher consumer prices, and a shift in manufacturing to even lower cost (!) countries. Others note that this is a typical […]
Health Care Costs: Relative to GDP or Gov’t Spending?
One of the best reasons to read The Tyee is Will McMartin. He is a rare journalist with the ability and desire to wade through the BC government’s own stats in order to separate the wheat from the chaff. In his latest article on health care spending, McMartin exposes the myth that health care spending […]
Sheldon Wolin
Let us return to Sheldon Wolin. In this entry, I want to briefly discuss the third chapter of Wolin’s Politics and Vision*. His key point is that political philosophy takes a sharp turn after the classic Greek city-states succumb to the Macedonian Empire. This philosophical shift continues and intensifies as the Roman Republic turns into […]
Reading Wolin, Part 3: Not-So-Political Philosophy in the Age of Empire
Let us return to Sheldon Wolin. In this entry, I want to briefly discuss the third chapter of Wolin’s Politics and Vision*. His key point is that political philosophy takes a sharp turn after the classic Greek city-states succumb to the Macedonian Empire. This philosophical shift continues and intensifies as the Roman Republic turns into […]
Measuring the Internet
I remember back to the good old days of Alta Vista when they could actually count the number of pages on the ‘Net. Like McDonald’s hamburgers, the number of websites and pages now appears too large to measure. Nevertheless, here’s a really fascinating site that attempts to quantify the Internet in terms of type and […]
Bumper sticker politics
And you thought I was above juvenile humour? Posted by Colin Welch at 11:08 AM Edited on: Friday, July 23, 2010 1:30 PM Categories: American Politics, Education, Humour, Language, Modern Culture