Millennials are constantly in the news in America, but some people are unsure what the term comprises. I thought a brief briefing was in order: The millennial generation is defined by the Pew Research Center as those born between 1981 and 1996. In 2018 this group became Americs’s largest voting-age group, supplanting the baby boomers. …
I received an email asking me to sign a petition to demand that Senator McConnell allow a vote on reopening the government. This is part of what the writer wrote: “Stop blocking the will of the people! The U.S. House has passed a bill to reopen the government, so the Senate should be allowed to …
The widening of the racial wealth divide has coincided with the extreme concentration of U.S. wealth. The wealthiest 0.1 percent of households have grown richer while millions of families face poverty and deep-seated economic insecurity. The median American family saw their wealth drop 3 percent between 1983 and 2016, while the richest 0.1 percent have …
Continue reading ‘American inequality – this house may not stand for long’ »
You can tax the wealthiest more without ruining the economy. This assessment comes from the International Monetary Fund and shatters the neoliberal shibboleth that increasing taxes on the top 1% would hurt growth. The IMF’s experts found that between 1985 and 1995, redistribution through the tax system offset 60% of the increase in inequality caused …
Britain on Tuesday: May lost by over 400 votes! The rolling, roiling disaster gets worse by the day. Lack of forethought, bullying, and downright ignorance rule the day! Epicurus would advise me to calm down, to be philosophical, to assume all will eventually settle down and rationality will be restored. It is possible that he …
Continue reading ‘Brexit: my most instant, heartfelt posting ever’ »
The average Briton checks a mobile phone every 12 minutes and is online for 24 hours a week, according to Ofcom. A fifth of British adults feels stressed if they cannot access the internet, while only 12% of adults never use it. A quarter of adults spend more than 40 hours a week on the …
The Guardian Weekly of 4 January 2019 carried an article by Vivienne Ming about Artificial Intelligence. In theory, she says, poverty, mental health, climate change, inequality – almost everything – could be addressed by AI. The problem, she says, is not the concept of AI, but the people behind it. She points out that AI …
Continue reading ‘Artificial intelligence – in the right hands?’ »
The other evening at a dinner party I sat next to a charming and enthusiastic employee of the FDA. She waxed lyrical about its dedication, expertise and good management. A few days later, on January 6th there appeared a scathing article about the FDA. It did not criticize the drug authorization program, but it did …
The recent huge corporate tax cut was supposed to encourage companies to invest and to hire more workers. Investments made by Standard & Poor’s 500 largest companies has been $475 billion in the first three quarters of the year,19% up. R & D has risen by 34% during the same period. But the above figures …
When it comes to taking opioids, the United States has the dubious honour of leading the world. For every one million Americans, almost 50,000 doses of opioids are taken every day. That’s four times the rate in the UK. Take too many and you have a problem, and America certainly has a problem. The number …
Nine out of the ten most racially segregated American cities are in the north of the country (New York Review of Books 27 Sept 2018)
Some people love a good committee, And revel in its nitty-gritty: Arcane debates on last year’s failings, The contents of circulars and mailings; The annual dinner, drink and eats; Optimization of receipts. Chairpersons, regardless of their gender Like to set their own agenda. This, their most important role, Gives them what they want – control. …
An Oklahoma branch of Walmart once asked its employees to donate Thanksgiving food to hungry colleagues. “Hang on,” said incredulous staff, “these people can’t feed their families because you pay pitiful wages, yet it’s up to us to bail them out?” In the UK this Christmas there are Tory MPs doing Christmas photo ops with …
“Now, as I turn 85, with my life closer it its end than its beginning, I wish to help give people dignity in dying. Just as I have argued firmly for compassion and fairness in life, I believe that terminally ill people should be treated with the same compassion and fairness when it comes to …
The Greek word that usually gets translated as “happiness” is eudaimonia, and like most translations from ancient languages, this can be misleading. The main trouble is that happiness (especially in modern America) is often conceived of as a subjective state of mind, as when one says one is happy when one is enjoying a cool …
