Tag: economics
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Hard Work, Gumption and Bootstraps?
Commenter on Metafter: “Why are all newspaper comments turning into Free Republic? If you buy into the idea that anyone can make it in the US with HARD WORK and GUMPTION and BOOTSTRAPS, that turns poverty into a moral issue and the poor can be safely judged as inferior human beings because if they wanted […]
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Don't Let Them Eat Cake
“My family always received SNAP and TANF benefits…. and as long as mom didn’t trade too many of our bennies for cash, we could buy fast and easy garbage food with SNAP so that us kids could leave her alone and feed ourselves. I was never taught how to do anything remotely like “cook an […]
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Breathless Sports and War
“When you have to fill 24 hours of airtime, everything is breathlessly reported and only the strongest adjectives, war and sport analogies are allowed to survive.” Commenter on Metafilter regarding (coverage of the gold crash (and news in general)
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Being Poor Has a Stigma
“Yet some of the things you say about being rich remind me of how it is to be poor. While you can travel anywhere and experience nothing, I couldn’t travel anywhere and still experience nothing. When I was at home, I stared at the same blank 4 walls daily, and when I went into the […]
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Why the US Can't Default on Its Debt
“All Obama would have to do is hold a press conference and say “per our Constitution in Amendment 14, Section 4 we can not default on our debt – as such I am authorizing the Treasury to continue issuing bonds under the Necessary and Proper Clause to ensure a functional government.” Then as he leaves […]
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The Most Evil Lie
“The idea that work – that is, doing things that you otherwise wouldn’t do in exchange for money or resources – is intrinsically and morally good is possibly the greatest, most successful, most evil lie ever fashioned by our culture. It is so deeply and fundamentally embedded in the foundations of society that we can’t […]
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Local Business vs Megachain
“Because the local store is more likely to recycle its profits into the community, rather than shipping them off to a CEO on the other side of the country. Because while efficiency is good for stockholders, it is generally bad for employees. Local businesses tend to employ more people than a big box. A hardware store […]