Financial growth isn't always most important
As the dentist removed my painfully infected tooth the other day, he told me about his latest experience in skiing downhill through the financiers’ maze.
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As the dentist removed my painfully infected tooth the other day, he told me about his latest experience in skiing downhill through the financiers’ maze.
The only way cowboy capitalists win is by breaking the rules. On an even playing field, abiding by the rules and regulations laid down by government, they can’t survive.
When I first joined the workforce in the late sixties, a popular expression was “don’t work so hard -- take time to smell the roses.” The implication was that we’re in this life to enjoy ourselves and the world around us, not just to work and “get ahead.” Balance was a watchword.
Americans like to punish people. Despite research in fields like sociology and psychology advising that its effects are mostly harmful, retribution, for real or imagined sins, is a tradition we embrace fondly.
Human beings aren't cut out for democracy, even though we’ve yearned for self-rule since the days of Plato and Aristotle. The characteristics with which we are endowed by nature work against us.
Humanity’s uniqueness is being used against us. We’re manipulated daily to believe and act in ways that can harm us.
Do you ever wonder why it seems no one’s trying to fix what’s wrong in our world?
In my last column I described the key elements that brought Detroit to the point of bankruptcy. In this article I will suggest what I think the future holds for the city and its people.
As Judge Steven W. Rhodes of the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Eastern District of Michigan ponders how best to make Detroit’s debt manageable and restore urgently needed city services, it is appropriate to look ahead to see what the future might hold for the city and its people.
In my last column, I suggested that business enterprise is not a suitable partner for government agencies delivering public services.
A hotly debated topic these days is whether we can change human behavior in time to avert climate catastrophe.
Ronald Reagan got a lot of things wrong. But one of his more outstanding errors was to suggest that “government is the problem.” As with many utterances from Republicans these days, he got it backwards: politicians in bed with corporate managers and wealthy billionaires make business the problem.
In my last column, I discussed how some corporations are managed solely to be attractive to shareholders. They don’t take into consideration the interests of a much broader range of stakeholders.
Why is it so difficult today to mobilize American citizens for political action? We face critical issues like education and health care, poverty and mass incarceration, the worsening economic divide and possible human extinction due to climate change. Why aren’t people scrambling to vote in every election, participating in demonstrations, telling our political representatives what we want done to make society better?
We humans are great toolmakers. We’ve got fire, wheels and pyramids; guns, germs and steel.We’ve built railroads, airlines and instant communication, chemical warfare and atomic bombs. We can make artificial hearts, lungs and limbs; we have harnessed the elements of air, water, coal and oil to make electricity to power looms and assembly lines. We’ve even put humans on the moon.
If you’re middle class or poor, the bankers and politicians want your money. First, the Republicans have declared war on the poor by slashing the food-stamp program that provides a bare minimum of daily nutrition. Second, the bankers want federal, state and local government pension plans to cut workers’ benefits, then give their retirement nest eggs to the banks to manage for huge profits.
Over the last three centuries, capitalism has poisoned the very well of prosperity it has taken such pains to create.
As I was driving to an appointment recently, I began to see the rows upon rows of telephone poles I was passing on city streets and country roads as crucifixes: symbols of the violence our society depends on for its daily energy and legitimization.
Other countries care about their societies and their unique culture, but we in the US don’t seem to care about ours. Why not?
Should the United States rule the world through economic and military might? Or should we lead by creating a new economic and social model where true equality and democracy exist alongside justice and environmental stability?