Writing Worth Reading
Writing Worth Reading
"Being wealthy and feeling rich are often inversely correlated. In a room full of rich men, only one doesn’t feel poor by comparison. This lesson is often overlooked in the ongoing debate over income inequality"
Individually the poor are not too tempting to thieves. Collectively, they provide a juicy target. "The trick is to rob them in ways that are systematic, impersonal, and almost impossible to trace to individual perpetrators"
In Canada, rich and poor sit side by side waiting for treatment in the local public clinic. A good thing. "The health care system constitutes a point of forced solidarity." What's the US equivalent? The courtroom, perhaps?
Spain is in crisis. One the young are ill-prepared for. Why? "There was a narrative that no adult challenged and which we therefore took for granted: That every generation has a better life than the previous one." Time for a rethink
Shocking report from London. Priced out of housing market, some are forced to rent garden sheds. One family pay to live in a walk-in freezer. Landlords happy to cash in. What does this say about free markets, capitalism, society?
Interview with economist James Galbraith. "There are common global patterns in economic inequality across different countries that appear to be very strongly related to major events affecting the world economy as a whole"
Reflections on global economy, Occupy movement. "Much of what has gone on can only be described by the words moral deprivation. Something wrong had happened to the moral compass of so many people working in the financial sector"
Celebrated author joins arms with Warren Buffett in expletive-laden demand to be taxed more. "The channels making upward mobility possible are being increasingly clogged. Those who have received much must be obligated to pay"
"When you look at history and when you look at empirical evidence it is clear that the key to prosperity is in institutions, not in culture nor in geography." And that bad institutions were put in place not by mistake, but by design
"No one kind of money can possibly work for the sheer diversity of life. We have to escape the old idea that money is one, indivisible, totemic, semi-divine, golden truth issued from on high and handed down to a grateful populace"
"My wife and I have been living in France for the past nine months in a city near the Mediterranean coast. But it’s not quite what you think." Welcome to Montpellier, where the worst side of French society is on display
"Sure. Lovely. Let's reward success. But Romney seems to think that success is self-defining. Anyone who has done well deserves what he or she has got. Let’s add up just a few of the ways in which this is not necessarily true"
A personal journey to the heart of one of South Africa's most dangerous neighbourhoods
"The central human right in late-capitalist society is a right to remain at a safe distance from others"
