Big Business Is Good for America Even though the Occupy Wall Street protests seem incoherent at times, one main theme is clear: anger at big business. On this count, the occupiers are aligned not only with Hollywood portrayals (predating even the 1941 classic Citizen Kane) but also with mainstream Americans. A majority of respondents to a recent Gallup survey said that they believe big business has too much power. The sentiment held across party lines. But this backlash is based on three common misconceptions about major U.S. corporations. But none of this explains why Americans are equally displeased with major corporations. To continue reading, please log in. Don't have an account? Register Register now to get three articles each month. As a subscriber, you get unrestricted access to ForeignAffairs.com. Register for free to continue reading. Registered users get access to three free articles every month. Have an account?
The Globalization of Protest - Joseph E. Stiglitz NEW YORK – The protest movement that began in Tunisia in January, subsequently spreading to Egypt, and then to Spain, has now become global, with the protests engulfing Wall Street and cities across America. Globalization and modern technology now enables social movements to transcend borders as rapidly as ideas can. And social protest has found fertile ground everywhere: a sense that the “system” has failed, and the conviction that even in a democracy, the electoral process will not set things right – at least not without strong pressure from the street. In May, I went to the site of the Tunisian protests; in July, I talked to Spain’s indignados; from there, I went to meet the young Egyptian revolutionaries in Cairo’s Tahrir Square; and, a few weeks ago, I talked with Occupy Wall Street protesters in New York. This is not to deny that some of the 1% have contributed a great deal. Research in recent years has shown how important and ingrained notions of fairness are.
The bleak face of U.S. poverty - U.S. Economy “Bleak Portrait of Poverty Is Off the Mark, Experts Say,” blared the Friday headline in the New York Times. The traditional strategy for measuring poverty, we were told, did not include the benefits of federal programs like food stamps and tax credits that were helping to keep Americans above the poverty line. A new, “supplemental measure” from the U.S. Census that took such factors into account would reveal that many Americans thought to be living below the poverty line were actually above it — “as much as half of the reported rise in poverty since 2006 disappears,” declared the Times. I discussed the likely political implications of this rejiggering in my last post. But on Monday the census unveiled its report, and a first look at the numbers suggests that the Times’ preview was a bit off-base. We can slice the data in all kinds of different ways to account for the change. A new report from the Brookings Institution, “The Re-emergence of Concentrated Poverty,” delivers more bad news.
The 1% are the very best destroyers of wealth the world has ever seen | George Monbiot If wealth was the inevitable result of hard work and enterprise, every woman in Africa would be a millionaire. The claims that the ultra-rich 1% make for themselves – that they are possessed of unique intelligence or creativity or drive – are examples of the self-attribution fallacy. This means crediting yourself with outcomes for which you weren't responsible. The findings of the psychologist Daniel Kahneman, winner of a Nobel economics prize, are devastating to the beliefs that financial high-fliers entertain about themselves. Such results have been widely replicated. So much for the financial sector and its super-educated analysts. In a study published by the journal Psychology, Crime and Law, Belinda Board and Katarina Fritzon tested 39 senior managers and chief executives from leading British businesses. The psychopathic traits on which the bosses scored so highly, Board and Fritzon point out, closely resemble the characteristics that companies look for. This is now changing.
Finding Freedom in Handcuffs - Chris Hedges' Columns Finding Freedom in Handcuffs Posted on Nov 7, 2011 By Chris Hedges Truthdig columnist Chris Hedges, an activist, an author and a member of a reporting team that won a 2002 Pulitzer Prize, wrote this article after he was released from custody following his arrest last Thursday. Faces appeared to me moments before the New York City police arrested us Thursday in front of Goldman Sachs. I carry these faces. A glass tower filled with people carefully selected for the polish and self-assurance that come with having been formed in institutions of privilege, whose primary attributes are a lack of consciousness, a penchant for deception and an incapacity for empathy or remorse. We seemed to have lost, at least until the advent of the Occupy Wall Street movement, not only all personal responsibility but all capacity for personal judgment. Get truth delivered to your inbox every week. Previous item: Bloomberg vs. Next item: Away With Objectivity New and Improved Comments
Squeezed Dry: Why Americans Work So Hard but Feel So Poor - Derek Thompson - Business How is it possible that we're both working harder and finding it more difficult to make a living? Maybe the same thing is making work cheap and life expensive. It's the productivity paradox. Flickr/Marvin L Sped up, slimmed down, squeezed dry, or simply shut out, the American worker faces an unprecedented slump. Since the recovery began, corporate profits have captured nearly 90 percent of the growth in real income. There's a lot of online ink about the productivity paradox, memorably deemed our "Speed-up Crisis" in a provocative article by Monika Bauerlein and Clara Jeffery, coeditors of Mother Jones. HOW WE GOT HERE (or: HOW CONSUMERS FOUGHT WORKERS, AND WON) I want to try to tell this story without using the word corporation. Productivity means work divided by time. Mother Jones Productivity is not evil. This conflict between consumers and workers is an important piece of the productivity puzzle. Stuff got cheap. IF WORK IS CHEAP, WHY IS LIFE SO EXPENSIVE? Here's a theory.
Why Americans Won't Do Dirty Jobs Skinning, gutting, and cutting up catfish is not easy or pleasant work. No one knows this better than Randy Rhodes, president of Harvest Select, which has a processing plant in impoverished Uniontown, Ala. For years, Rhodes has had trouble finding Americans willing to grab a knife and stand 10 or more hours a day in a cold, wet room for minimum wage and skimpy benefits. Most of his employees are Guatemalan. Or they were, until Alabama enacted an immigration law in September that requires police to question people they suspect might be in the U.S. illegally and punish businesses that hire them. Rhodes arrived at work on Sept. 29, the day the law went into effect, to discover many of his employees missing. His ex-employees joined an exodus of thousands of immigrant field hands, hotel housekeepers, dishwashers, chicken plant employees, and construction workers who have fled Alabama for other states. There’s no shortage of people he could give those jobs to.
There's America—and Then There's Washington - Andrew Cohen - Politics Does the prosperity of the capital region color the perspectives of the journalists and lawmakers who live there? Rob Shenk/Flickr Over at Harper's, Thomas Frank has an interesting essay that touches, among other things, on the destructive disconnect that exists between Washington, D.C., and the rest of the nation. I've written about this growing gulf from a political perspective. Frank's piece, "The Bleakness Stakes," isn't yet freely available online. Washington's optimism isn't that hard to understand, really. Frank continues: While the familiar critique of Washington insularity gets some important facts wrong -- most federal employees are, for example, paid considerably less than people doing equivalent work in the private sector -- it gets the big story right. I don't know about the Potemkin Village analogy -- there are places of horrible poverty within the District of Columbia. Washington is home to some of the best journalists in the world.