A friend of mine pointed me to the movie “Zeitgeist: Moving Forward.” I feel grateful that i watched it even though i broke down crying at the end – feeling some deep mourning for the state of our planet! We’re still so far away from changing this damn life-alienating system! As hopeful as Occupy is, it seems so small and powerless compared to the stuff we’re facing (as outlined in the first hour of the movie…). I fear it’ll result in just more accommodation like the movie pointed out toward the end in regards to the 1960s movements. And the … Continue reading »
Nov 232011
Aug 202011
A friend made me aware of the Seasteding Institute, an organization that aspires to use modified oil-rig platforms as labs for experimenting with new governmental forms. My alarms went off when he said that some of the backers of the Institute are libertarians; concerns that were amplified by reading: Mr Thiel and his colleagues say their ocean state would have no welfare, looser building codes, no minimum wage, and few restrictions on weapons. It sounded way too similar to the arguments that those rights many of us fought so hard for are just in the way of making money. Still, … Continue reading »
Aug 162011
When i was still working in corporate America, it was pretty clear to me that discussing how much i was being paid with my co-workers was a big taboo. And i understood why: If we don’t know each other’s pay, we don’t know if the pay we’re receiving is fair. A recent fact sheet from the Institute for Women’s Policy Research supports this contention: While there is no direct link between pay secrecy and pay inequality, some evidence suggests that pay transparency reduces the gender wage gap. The gender wage gap for all full-time workers, based on median annual earnings, … Continue reading »
The ranks of people cautioning about the detrimental effects of income and wealth inequality has increased again. This time the call for higher taxes on the rich comes from an unexpected source (at least I thought it was rather surprising…): William Bernstein, a top financial advise columnist. According to Too Much: Bernstein these days is offering up a new set of insights — on inequality. Our current rates of economic inequality, Bernstein observes in a new interview, are “killing us.” The United States, he notes, has “the highest rates of obesity, homicide, violent crime, and incarceration in the developed world, … Continue reading »
Oct 222010
As I develop and present my ideas, an existential fear seems to be almost always right below the surface. Sometimes above the surface, too. The voice “how will I earn money” keeps whispering. I have so many ideas but they seem to be tied up by this existential fear because I have no safety net to fall on. It does not exist in the US. And then I wonder what would happen if there were income security for all? Yes, free money from the government, like so many corporations already get. I suspect I am not the only one who … Continue reading »
Aug 162010
Listening to Picturing a Meltdown, an interview with two of the authors of a comic-style book explaining what led to our economic crisis, I realized that in addition to marriage as the foundation of society, there is another myth that claims to be oh, so important to our freedom: Home ownership. It has a lot of similarities and it is tied very strongly to marriage and the nuclear family. Just like marriage, home ownership is seen as a status symbol: I own a home, therefore I am an adult. It is the next step in our becoming adults, right after … Continue reading »
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