It should just be accepted that America can't go on this way and is in collapse now (this also applies to Europe, don't pretend that everything is hunky-dory over there). When I say now, I mean right now.
Collapse isn't Mad Max time; it's the gradual descent, the lack of a future, the betrayal of the public trust and social contract. Let's look at a few reasons why America is definitively already in major collapse:
- We load children with six-figure debt when they can't even qualify for a credit card much less understand what that kind of debt means. They are exploited for the profit of the wealthy and school administrators, then abandoned to a hostile job market they aren't ready for. Think about this long enough and your head may explode from the cruelty, cynicism, and absurdity of it.
- Teachers are woefully underpaid and undervalued. Children are generally disinvested in, and, to go with the above, actively exploited and abused. I've worked as a teacher. It is hell, and what they're doing to the kids breaks my heart.
- Homeownership? What's that? I'll dial up my realtor if I win the lotto or my wealthy distant uncle dies.
- Rent is an actual joke, just not a funny one.
- Pay. Most jobs don't pay enough to be worth going to. Antiwork is a testament to this every day. People are quitting en masse if it is at all possible for them to do so because of this. Might as well live in a van or on ramen noodles than work a full-time job you hate for no take-home pay after expenses.
- Adding to that, most people can't meet their expenses in the first place, not even close depending on where you live.
- To boot, climate change is obviously here, obviously terrifying, and a literal existential threat to humanity that hits the poor first and the hardest. We could be a world leader in combating climate change, but instead, we actively harm efforts to do so.
- In spite of this, we spend more on our military than most of the nations on Earth combined do. We do this to participate in illegal wars that murder civilians en masse. We do this to make Raytheon and Boeing richer. The actual epitome of evil.
- Speaking of evil, our "healthcare system" is not a healthcare system whatsoever, but a profit system, and it facilitates the de facto homicide of millions of Americans a year literally just for money. Literally just for money. These last two are, again, things which if you allow yourself to think about them long enough, you might go crazy.
- Our 'progressi
Chile is often referred to as the Switzerland of South America; it is one of the most prosperous nation in the region. Decades ago [1970] Chile had elected another leftist president, Salvador Allende. After a rise in inflation and other economic problems in the country, military officers demanded his resignation. On Sept. 11, 1973, the Chilean Air Force bombed the presidential palace, and the military junta seized power. The coup was led by Augusto Pinochet, who had been appointed commander in chief of the military by Allende, and was backed by the U.S. government as part of Operation Condor.
Augusto Pinochet coup against President Salvador Allende, was the start of nearly two decades of government repression in Chile. Thousands of people disappeared, tortured and killed. As for Allende, he did not leave the presidential palace alive. Some say, he was killed by the military, others say, he killed himself.
The present race was the most polarizing and acrimonious in recent history, presenting Chileans with starkly different visions on issues including the role of the state in the economy, the rights of historically marginalized groups and public safety.
Boric will be the nation’s youngest leader [a former student activist] and by far its most liberal since President Salvador Allende. Boric will assume office at the final stage of a years long initiative to draft a new Constitution, an effort that is likely to bring about profound legal and political changes on issues including gender equality, Indigenous rights and environmental protections.
Capitalizing on widespread discontent with the political factions [left and right] that have traded power in recent decades, Mr. Boric attracted voters by pledging to reduce inequality and promising to raise taxes on the rich to fund a substantial expansion of the social safety net, more generous pensions and a greener economy.
Mr. Boric referred to Kast and assailed several of his plans, which including expanding the prison system and empowering the security forces to more forcefully crack down on Indigenous challenges to land rights in the south of the country.
Kast, however, was quick to concede" "From today he is the elected President of Chile and deserves all our respect and constructive collaboration. Chile is always first."
Is Chile ready for change and will this be sustained this time around?
from here, several issues stand out.
First, he points to some sort of a political change that is needed
> Looking at the limits of taxing and spending, Piketty concludes that “educational equality and the welfare state are not enough” and that power relationships need to be transformed, beginning with greater worker representation in the governance and wealth sharing of corporations.
Second, changes to how we do globalization and trade
> Recognizing that globalization has been an instrument for the resurgence of laissez-faire and the extremes of inequality that result, Piketty proposes a very different globalization. “We need to turn our backs on the ideology of absolute free trade,” he writes, in favor of “a model of development based on explicit and verifiable principles of economic, fiscal and environmental justice.”
third, tax funded universal income
> As a more direct strategy of wealth redistribution, Piketty calls for a “universal capital endowment” for all citizens beginning at age 25, funded by taxes on wealth and inheritances.
I am interested what you think, and if you are more knowledgeable about the details of Piketty's arguments and proposals please do share
Look, we're all guilty of it. We look after ourselves and our own because we are bought up in a society that works that way and (generally) rewards those who operate this way and to be honest I hate it.
But we are this way because at the very top, people who have OBSCENE levels of wealth are able to control the narrative of our lives: think of how much money is spent openly - never mind behind closed doors - to lobby those in power to make decisions that will primarily benefit their profit margins, rather than society
(as an aside, you could argue that trickle down economics would be in play, but if this worked as it should then companies would 'trickle down' their profits to their employees more - be it through share giving or increases fairer salaries/bonus' etc etc)
But back to my main point, because of the power they have, we end up in a game of hopelessness almost: "what can i do that will make any difference, and what will the cost be to me". We are pitted against each other because it WILL cost us to make a stand, and that cost could be great.
Its not just because of what I read in Bruce Knuteson's publications, but generally, i do feel helpless on what to do because SOCIETY favors those in extreme wealth
That is until i stumbled across a post back in Jan 2021 on the GameStop play, and since then we have a small group that is trying to hold people accountable for their greed. Will we all be better off financially after this play? YES! And we are all in it to benefit from it too. But i hope that in the end, we will be better than those against who we played this game of chess; after some of us come into great wealth i hope we can make a difference and change the world. I'm not just talking USA (im an not a USA ape) but the world. Because these issues persist across the world.
I still don't know what to do on several problems that are close to my heart (other than what I do already in giving of time and money) because I do still feel helpless and that no one really cares - at last not those in power who could make a difference. I'm not saying that it's not my responsibility to do something. All of us who have more than others should be and are responsible to take action (be it in giving to charities/organizations financially or in our time). But, the governments and those in the publics eye have the power to make real systemic changes (rather than just more patches on a leaky pipe), and this is why sometimes I still feel hopeless, or as the
... keep reading on reddit ➡
Written in the bones: Medieval skeletons tell story of social inequality in Cambridge
The working class had higher risk of injury than friars or sheltered hospital inmates.
JENNIFER OUELLETTE - 1/6/2022, 2:43 AM
The remains of an individual buried in an Augustinian friary, excavated in 2016 on the University of Cambridge's New Museums site.
Enlarge / The remains of an individual buried in an Augustinian friary, excavated in 2016 on the University of Cambridge's New Museums site.
There's rarely time to write about every cool science-y story that comes our way. So this year, we're once again running a special Twelve Days of Christmas series of posts, highlighting one science story that fell through the cracks in 2020, each day from December 25 through January 5. Our final post in the 2021 series: Skeletal remains excavated from medieval sites in Cambridge reveal occupational and social disparities in the population.
A working class woman who suffered from domestic violence. A friar who may have been the victim of a horse-and-cart hit-and-run. Those are just two examples of the remains of 314 people excavated from three very different medieval burial sites in Cambridge, England. The evidence of skeletal trauma on many of those remains sheds light on what medieval Cantabrigian lives were like, in terms of occupation, living conditions, and social status, according to a paper published last January in the American Journal of Physical Anthropology.
The research stems from the After the Plague project at Cambridge University's Department of Archaeology, which explores how historical conditions influence health and how health, in turn, shapes history. The project particularly focuses on the Black Death period (1347-1350 CE) in later medieval England, which wiped out between a third and a half of Europe's population.
"By comparing the skeletal trauma of remains buried in various locations within a town like Cambridge, we can gauge the hazards of daily life experienced by different spheres of medieval society," said lead author Jenna Dittmar, a paleopathologist at Cambridge. "We can see that ordinary working folk had a higher risk of injury compared to the friars and their benefactors or the more sheltered hospital inmates."
*By the 13th century, Cambridge was a thriving market town with an active river port and a rural agricultural component on the outskirts of town. Its famed university had only just been founded. "Although a small town
... keep reading on reddit ➡Has anyone taken this course/has any insight on how difficult it is?
Obviously I recognize some see SD as a stepping stone for DS. For those individuals, please ignore my question.
Considering social democracy as an end goal, can it truly help ameliorate the conditions of the working class?
I see the fundamental problem with capitalism to be the commodification of labour. All other capitalist atrocities follow from this single premise - the inability of full time workers to secure their basic needs, let alone the unemployed, underemployed, incapacitated or otherwise unable to find not only full time work, but full time work at a living wage. If labour were not a commodity (as it is not in, say, a cooperative), then all workers would be given a living wage and be employed.
But it seems to me that capitalist economies - even with strong regulation and high taxes - are incapable of achieving this.
For instance, we can either have full employment or a living wage. Forcing employers to pay a living wage means less labour is demanded (again, labour is a commodity, thus subject to supply and demand), thus some peoplr are out of work. Again, I’m not ignoring the fact that employers may have monopsony power and that a living wage may be achievers run practice, I mean there’s clearly some limit to high high the minimum wage can be before causing unemployment, and in principle this means that it may cause unemployment if the living wage were above this threshold. Capitalists don’t care what the cost of living is. Labour is a commodity, remember?
Taxes cause deadweight loss too, so there’s effectively a ceiling to how much we can tax. Meaning a basic income and welfare is so solution either. Just a bandaid, really.
I get that unions could force employers to both pay a living wage and not fire their employees by preventing dismissals. But this doesn’t change labour demanded. In addition, unions are predicated on the assumption that management will magically bargain. I get strikes represent worker power, but strikes are often bad for worker and society.
It seems to me that social democracy simply cannot solve the fundamental problem with capitalism, and instead relies on bandaids that amount to not addressing any of the goals social democracy sets out to achieve.
Hi! I’m looking for a Sociology textbook, it’s Race, Gender, Sexuality, and Social Class: Dimensions of Inequality and Identity. 3rd Edition by Ferguson, Susan J.
The ISBN is: 9781506365817
If anyone has a reliable PDF or online version, it’d be greatly appreciated!! Thank you so much :)
The classroom that I am in right now is Pre-Calculus and the topic that I need to teach is the Polar Coordinate system.
The thing that I am struggling with right now is that my college requires me to teach social inequality problems related to the topic that I am going to teach, and if I do not, then 10 points will be deducted for that assignment.
I was trying to figure it out, but honestly, I could not think of anything, and I am a little skeptical about becoming a teacher since I am not sure teaching social inequality while teaching math is a good idea.......
Anyway, if anyone has a good idea, would you like to share your opinion about how to relate the polar coordinate system with social inequality?
the social construction of difference and inequality 7th edition pdf download
Authors Tracy E. Ore
Year 2018
Publication Oxford University Press
ISBN 9780190647964
Edition 7
Language English
Format PDF
Price $15
