Category: Social Issues
The analysis published under this category are as follows.
Wednesday, June 23, 2010
Detroit is Dying, Impact of Globalization, Social Decay and Urban Destruction / Politics / Social Issues
By: Global_Research
A YouTube video titled "Dying Detroit" takes you on a tour of "neighborhoods literally falling apart"—through streets that look like "a hurricane has recently swept through, destroying nearly everything on its path." Thousands of houses have been abandoned—in many areas 50-60% of the houses are in foreclosure. Some blocks have only a few homes left standing. A thousand people a month are leaving what has been called " America ’s fastest dying city."
Wednesday, June 23, 2010
Americans Worried Sick About Their Economic Future Are Barely Hanging on / Politics / Social Issues
By: Gary_North
The recession that began in December 2007 produced a change in Americans' perception of their economic future. They moved from the tradition of hope to one of just barely hanging on. I have never seen this before. Only someone born around 1910 can recall anything like it, assuming that he recalls anything at all.
Friday, June 18, 2010
The Western Way of Life is Collapsing / Politics / Social Issues
By: John_Kozy
The Age of Enlightenment was born sometime around the beginning of the eighteenth century. A mere three-quarters of a century later, industrialization ushered in the Age of Endarkenment, and human life has grown more and more perilous ever since. The Golden Age of capitalism cannot be recreated merely by applying the right mixture of spending, subsidies, re-regulation, and international agreements. Because the economic advantages of industrialization rely on overproduction and profit, balanced trade is impossible if the advantage is to be preserved; it entails no economic profit. Industrialism is a Hegelian synthesis which embodies the forces for its own destruction. The greatest threat to the Western Way of Life is the Western Way of Life itself.
Thursday, June 17, 2010
Humiliation and Shame, Part of Being Health Insured in America / Politics / Social Issues
By: Submissions
Donna Smith writes: Oh, the things we did not fix in the healthcare bill are shocking. Just as seniors falling into the Medicare drug benefit donut hole begin to get the $250 checks meant to calm their fears about our new healthcare legislation, the rest of us would do well to remember the abuses of the for-profit healthcare system that will continue and even accelerate in the coming years.
Tuesday, June 01, 2010
High School Reunion Brings Me Face To Face With The Economic Catastrophe / Politics / Social Issues
By: Danny_Schechter
It was hard to resist an invite to my high school reunion because it came from guys who worked with me on the student newspaper at DeWitt Clinton High School in the Bronx, New York; my gateway to a career in journalism.
Working on the Clinton News, yes, a half century ago, inspired my perhaps naïve hope that here was a field that promotes the values of democracy I espoused even back then. I am still at it, but as an insider turned outsider where the media trend is no longer my friend.
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Tuesday, May 25, 2010
The New Chaos / Politics / Social Issues
By: Michael_T_Bucci
In last week's edition of Asia Times, Chan Akya correctly induces that the "new world" is one "where the definition of order is a state of continued chaos." He is speaking as an expert generalist about economics and the markets, but so too is this chaos found within every aspect of human society at this time and, I maintain, increasingly for some time to come.
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Monday, May 24, 2010
Fix the Economic Recession By Undermining Public Sector Workers Rights / Politics / Social Issues
By: Shamus_Cooke
In the state of Oregon, the most widely distributed paper, the Oregonian, announced on its front page that the state should expect “Ten Years of Pain.” The perpetrator: the budget crisis — $2.5 billion in the coming two-year budget cycle, with $2 billion projected deficits until 2019. Sadly, these depressing numbers assume that the economy will recover, a belief lacking any credible evidence.
Friday, May 21, 2010
World Systems Breaking Down, The Time of Testing is Here / Politics / Social Issues
By: Richard_C_Cook
While skeptics mockingly point out that the “end of the world” has been prophesized over and over again for centuries with nothing happening—the latest being Y2K, they say, and another likely bust coming up when the calendar hits 2012—it’s obvious that mankind faces an increasingly unsustainable future.
Thursday, May 20, 2010
Where’s the Land of Opportunity These Days? / Politics / Social Issues
By: Doug_Horning
By Doug Hornig, Casey Research :
Recent decades have witnessed an amazing shrinkage of the American manufacturing sector, from #1 in the world to virtual non-existence. Companies, taking advantage of cheaper labor costs abroad, have either outsourced some portion of the workforce or relocated their entire operations offshore. Remember the “great sucking sound” that Ross Perot claimed he could hear? Read full article... Read full article...
Wednesday, May 05, 2010
Who Judges the Judges: Reporters Without Borders seems to have a geopolitical agenda / Politics / Social Issues
By: F_William_Engdahl
An organization calling itself Reporters Without Borders (RWB; French: Reporters sans frontières, or RSF) has just named Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, China’s President Hu Jintao, Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Kazakhstan’s Nursultan Nazarbayev and Belarus President Aleksandr Lukashenko to their list of Forty Worst Predators of Press Freedom for 2010. Most significant about their list of ‘bad guys’ is the geopolitical relation of those leaders and those countries to the current ‘enemies list’ of the US State Department. That is no accident, as becomes clear when we look more closely at who funds RWB.
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Thursday, April 29, 2010
The Human Revolution - It WILL Occur! / Politics / Social Issues
By: Michael_T_Bucci
"Austerity" (poverty) for the people; profit for the few. This is the anthem of free-marketers, speculators and governments held hostage by them. The "Greek fire" is a monetary ruse used by centralized financiers to further their encircling despotism using capital as an instrument of power; ipso facto requiring the subjugation of workers (the many) to lives of imminent hopelessness and desperation, and governments to subservient powerlessness. It is a grand but deadly game that isn't about money, per se. It is about power.
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Friday, April 02, 2010
Get an MBA and Mow Grass for a Living / Politics / Social Issues
By: LewRockwell
Laura Bassett writes: When Frank Harris completed his MBA degree in May of 2005, he never expected to end up mowing grass for a living. But after losing his $103,000-a-year upper management job at Lowe's, just as the job market was crashing in December 2008, he didn't see many other options.
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Friday, April 02, 2010
Political Lessons From History, Absolutist Thought in Italy / Politics / Social Issues
By: Murray_N_Rothbard
By the 12th century, the Italian city-states had evolved a new form of government, new at least since ancient Greece. Instead of the usual hereditary monarch as feudal overlord, basing his rule on a network of feudal dominion over land areas, the Italian city-states became republics. The commercial oligarchs who constituted the ruling elite of the city-state would elect as ruler a salaried bureaucratic official or podesta, whose term of office was short, and who therefore ruled at the pleasure of the oligarchy. This city-republican form of government began at Pisa in 1085, and had swept northern Italy by the end of the 12th century.
Tuesday, March 30, 2010
Western Civilization and the Economic Crisis, The Impoverishment of the Middle Class / Politics / Social Issues
By: Andrew_G_Marshall
The western nations of the world have built their great wealth and societies on the exploitation and plundering of the people and resources of the rest of the world. The wealth, freedom, and structures of our societies have been built on the starvation, robbery, deprivation and murder of millions upon millions of the world’s people, both historically and presently.
Friday, March 26, 2010
The Higher Education Bubble Must Burst, The Mentality of Entitlement in Academia / Politics / Social Issues
By: Daniel_Coleman
Brian Leiter is incensed.
Mr. Leiter — famous primarily for his website containing comparative rankings of philosophy programs, as well as his blog, which covers job-related news in academic philosophy — has recently learned that King's College, London (KCL) is facing budget problems and must cut back on staff. In order to assess the extent of layoffs, the school will require every faculty member to interview for their current position. Leiter has kept his readers updated on the situation through his blog, and linked to The Times Higher Education's coverage of the event — which, in an article titled "'Draconian' measure: King's to cut 205 jobs," emphasizes how the cutbacks will affect the humanities and focuses on the reaction this has set off among academics:
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Thursday, March 25, 2010
Social Inequality in America, Widening Income Disparities / Politics / Social Issues
By: Vi_Ransel
"When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint. When I ask why the poor have no food, they call me a communist." - Brazilian archbishop Dom Helder Camara
"The difference between social service and social justice" is that social service "works to alleviate hardship" while social justice "aims to eradicate the root causes of that hardship." - Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Saturday, March 20, 2010
Brain Drain From U.S. to China / Politics / Social Issues
By: Mike_Shedlock
In response to High Tech Research Moves From U.S. To China, I received this Email from Mark N. ...
Sunday, March 14, 2010
Life is Great ... But Only If You Are Already Mega-Wealthy / Politics / Social Issues
By: Washingtons_Blog
As I pointed out in November: A report by University of California, Berkeley economics professor Emmanuel Saez concludes that income inequality in the United States is at an all-time high, surpassing even levels seen during the Great Depression.
Saturday, March 13, 2010
World’s Billionaires Grew 50 Percent Richer in 2009 / Politics / Social Issues
By: Global_Research
Andre Damon writes: 2009 will be remembered by millions of ordinary people as the year they lost their job, their house, or the prospect of an education. For the rich, however, it was a bonanza.
The world’s billionaires saw their wealth grow by 50 percent last year, and their ranks swell to 1,011, from 793, according to the latest Forbes list of billionaires.
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Monday, March 08, 2010
Unemployment / Politics / Social Issues
By: Howard_Katz
Well, the train is pulling out of the station. Gold has said goodbye to the $1,000 level and is off for northern climes. It is not your last chance to get on board, but it is your last chance to get on board at these low, low prices. The hard analysis of the past few months has been identifying the intermediate bottom, but now that that is in it is time to step back and once again focus on the big picture. Friday’s Wall Street Journal has an excellent article on unemployment and the “minimum wage” law, and this is a very good time to discuss this most important subject.