If you’re in the humanities, and this is you, send me an ask. There are jobs, you just have to know where to look. And no: I would not recommend getting a philosophy degree any time soon ;-). -dharmasimulation
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Often only a relatively small amount of money stands in the way of Kiva borrowers and their dreams. Whether it’s a Kenyan farmer who needs $500 in order to double her grain production, or a young Bolivian woman who lacks the $1,500 tuition for nursing school, Kiva lenders provide a hand up to these and countless other borrowers.
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Any repayments are yours to keep, but we hope you’ll make another loan… or, like Guiseppe, invite someone to Kiva, perhaps with a Kiva Card.
There are 16.4 million poor children in rich America, 7.4 million living in extreme poverty. A majority of public school students and more than three out of four Black and Hispanic children, who will be a majority of our child population by 2019, are unable to read or compute at grade level in the fourth or eighth grade and will be unprepared to succeed in our increasingly competitive global economy. Nearly eight million children are uninsured. More children were killed by guns in 2008-2009 than U.S. military personnel in both the Iraq and Afghanistan wars to date. A Black boy born in 2001 has a one in three chance of going to prison in his lifetime; a Latino boy a one in six chance of the same fate. Millions of children are living hopeless, poverty- and violence-stricken lives in the war zones of our cities; in the educational deserts of our rural areas; in the moral deserts of our corrosive culture that saturates them with violent, materialistic, and individualistic messages; and in the leadership deserts of our political and economic life where greed and self interest trump the common good over and over. Millions of our children are being left behind without the most basic human supports they need to survive and thrive when parents alone cannot provide for them at a time of deep economic downturn, joblessness, and low wage jobs that place a ceiling on economic mobility for millions as America’s dream dims. Unemployment, underemployment, and economic inequality are rife and will worsen if massive cascading federal, state, and local budget cuts aimed primarily at the poor and young succeed. Homeless shelters, child hunger, and child suffering have become normalized in the richest nation on earth. It’s time to reset our moral compass and redefine how we measure success.
Source: commondreams.org
source for quote
Neoliberalism or market fundamentalism as it is called in some quarters and its army of supporters cloak their interests in an appeal to ‘common sense,’ while doing everything possible to deny climate change, massive inequalities, a political system hijacked by big money and corporations, the militarization of everyday life and the corruption of civic culture by a consumerist and celebrity-driven advertising machine … They perform social magic by making the structures and power relations of racism, inequality, homelessness, poverty and environmental degradation disappear. And in doing so, they employ deception by seizing upon a stripped-down language of choice, freedom, enterprise and self-reliance - all of which works to personalize responsibility, collapse social problems into private troubles and reconfigure the claims for social and economic justice on the part of workers, poor minorities of color, women and young people as a species of individual complaint.
Why a flat tax doesn’t work
1) The bottom 50% doesn’t pay taxes because they have no money due to the great recession. Many are living at or below the poverty level. What would we tax?
2) People who make $250,000 a year or $50,000 CAN AFFORD to pay more taxes than someone making $15,000. That is an irrefutable fact. Every developed democracy in the country has a graduated tax system, that is another irrefutable fact.
3) This is about the COMMON GOOD and what is best FOR EVERYONE. If we allow the top 2% to keep more of their money, that does no good for anyone but the top 2%. Someone who makes $2 billion dollars a year is not going to build schools, roads, bridges, dams, etc. with their tax refund. It just isn’t going to happen. For a democratic society to function, you have to redistribute wealth.
4) Someone on Facebook mentioned that out of their $50,000 gross income, they ended up paying $2500 (after refund). Okay: so you’d like to be able to keep your $2500. I say to you, first, that that’s pretty greedy. You aren’t even willing to invest $2500 in schools, roads, bridges, etc.? And if not: are you willing to never use this infrastructure to make that fair? Are you willing to keep your $2500 in return for signing a waiver that you will never call the police, use the fire department or any of the other thousands of things you depend on? To generate your own electricity and homeschool your children? And also: you want to keep your $2500. Do you also want the billionaires to be able to keep their $25 million dollars in refunds? AND: if we do become a flat tax society, who, pray tell, will build said roads, bridges, schools, etc., or do we wish to retreat about 100 years when many of these things didn’t exist and we were all on our own?
#that is all
”Austerity policies have failed. They are holding back growth, and increasing inequality in the United States. Prosperity Economics calls on the federal government to step into the fray and start rebuilding the American dream by focusing on innovation-led growth grounded in job creation and public investment, security for workers and their families, and an accountable, effective democracy.” UNFORTUNATELY, the only way this is going to happen is to vote the Tea Party and obstructionist Republicans out of office in November.
Yale Professor Jacob Hacker’s new report lays out a policy platform to create prosperity for all – what policies do you think are most important for long-term growth?
Read the report here: http://bit.ly/NhQezT
I think this quote may be somewhat inaccurate, but this very similar quote is real: “Communism forgets that life is individual. Capitalism forgets that life is social, and the kingdom of brotherhood is found neither in the thesis of communism nor the antithesis of capitalism but in a higher synthesis. It is found in a higher synthesis that combines the truths of both.”
![Contrary to “Entitlement Society” Rhetoric, Over Nine-Tenths of Entitlement Benefits Go to Elderly, Disabled, or Working Households
Some conservative critics of federal social programs, including leading presidential candidates, are sounding an alarm that the United States is rapidly becoming an “entitlement society” in which social programs are undermining the work ethic and creating a large class of Americans who prefer to depend on government benefits rather than work. A new CBPP analysis of budget and Census data, however, shows that more than 90 percent of the benefit dollars that entitlement and other mandatory programs[1] spend go to assist people who are elderly, seriously disabled, or members of working households — not to able-bodied, working-age Americans who choose not to work. (See Figure 1.) This figure has changed little in the past few years.](http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m84zqmPn9u1qgegu7o1_400.jpg)
Some conservative critics of federal social programs, including leading presidential candidates, are sounding an alarm that the United States is rapidly becoming an “entitlement society” in which social programs are undermining the work ethic and creating a large class of Americans who prefer to depend on government benefits rather than work. A new CBPP analysis of budget and Census data, however, shows that more than 90 percent of the benefit dollars that entitlement and other mandatory programs[1] spend go to assist people who are elderly, seriously disabled, or members of working households — not to able-bodied, working-age Americans who choose not to work. (See Figure 1.) This figure has changed little in the past few years.
While NBC has been airing wall-to-wall coverage of Olympic Games in London, little attention has been paid to what has taken place behind the scenes and just outside Olympic Park. London police arrested 182 people Friday for taking part in the monthly Critical Mass bike ride during the Olympics’ opening ceremony. Meanwhile, public outcry is growing after thousands of fans were told the Games were sold out, but prime seats reserved largely for sports federations and corporate sponsors have remained empty. Although many locals cannot afford to attend the Games, this year’s Olympics is estimated to cost British taxpayers a staggering $17 billion. Residents have been subjected to sweeping censorship laws enacted by their government at the behest of the International Olympic Committee. Meanwhile, activists are outraged that the Olympics’ long list of sponsors include Dow Chemical and BP, companies with human rights records that critics say are at odds with the Olympic ideals of global peace and goodwill. We go to London to speak with scholar and former U.S. soccer team member Jules Boykoff, who has been in England since April researching a book on dissent and the Olympics. ‘The Olympics provide a real opportunity for activists,’ Boykoff says. ‘We often say [at protests] that the entire world is watching, the whole world is watching. And, in fact, at the Olympics, it almost is. This is a real opportunity for activists to put their ideas in front of people who might not otherwise be able to or willing to listen to them.’
