The Jobs We Need

By The Editorial Board 

June 24, 2020

Link:  https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/24/opinion/income-wealth-inequality-america.html?searchResultPosition=1

Over the past four decades, American workers have suffered a devastating loss of economic power, manifest in their wages, benefits and working conditions. The annual economic output of the United States has almost tripled, but, with the help of policymakers from both political parties, the wealthy hoarded the fruits. In the nation’s slaughterhouses, the average worker in 1982 made $24 an hour in inflation-adjusted dollars, or $50,000 a year. Today the average meatpacker processes significantly more meat — and makes less than $14 an hour.

How the World Missed Covid-19's Silent Spread

Symptomless transmission makes the coronavirus far harder to fight. But health officials dismissed the risk for months, pushing misleading and contradictory claims in the face of mounting evidence. 

By Matt Apuzzo, Selam Gebrekidan and David D. Kirkpatrick

June 27, 2020

The Worst Worst Case

Link:

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/07/coronavirus-banks-collapse/612247/?utm_source=pocket-newtab

After months of living with the coronavirus pandemic, American citizens are well aware of the toll it has taken on the economy: broken supply chains, record unemployment, failing small businesses. All of these factors are serious and could mire the United States in a deep, prolonged recession. But there’s another threat to the economy, too. It lurks on the balance sheets of the big banks, and it could be cataclysmic. Imagine if, in addition to all the uncertainty surrounding the pandemic, you woke up one morning to find that the financial sector had collapsed.

You may think that such a crisis is unlikely, with memories of the 2008 crash still so fresh. But banks learned few lessons from that calamity, and new laws intended to keep them from taking on too much risk have failed to do so. As a result, we could be on the precipice of another crash, one different from 2008 less in kind than in degree. This one could be worse.

Interesting Youtube Clips

Human Zoos: America's Forgotten History of Scientific Racism

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nY6Zrol5QEk

 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

FULL DOCUMENTARY: Mississippi's War: Slavery and Secession | MPB

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U3CFD2RRF80

 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

Enslavement to Emancipation

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eFwG7jAeyrU

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Valuetainment

Dr. Richard Wolff has received his undergraduate, graduate, and PHD from three most famous American universities. His field of study and the subject he teaches is economics, which may not seem to be out of ordinary at first. However, considering his studies in Marxist economy and communism in which he believes also, a taboo subject in any educational system in the United States, especially in economics department where only capitalist economy should be discussed, makes him very different, and one could imagine what a hard professional life he has been going through. Having great interest in his thoughts and vision, I follow his weekly discussion, along with his speeches and interviews. Yesterday, I saw an interview of him on the youtube, and when the interviewer claimed to be originally from Iran, I became more interested to watch it.

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wj-zFgxCUnY

What if There Were No George Floyd Video?

By: Nicholas Kristof
6/6/2020
Link: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/06/opinion/sunday/george-floyd-structural-racism.html?searchResultPosition=2

Imagine that no one had shot video of George Floyd being killed by the police in Minneapolis. There would have been a bland statement that he had died resisting arrest, and none of us would have heard of him.

Instead, the horror of that video has ignited protests around the world. Racism in that video is as visceral as a lynching.

Count Your Blessings!

On my daily walk, this morning on noticed a sign in front of a house that said: “count your blessings”. What came to my mind in an instance was that I would count our years of humanity, up to half millennia ago and since we, as Homo-sapiens, started walking upright on earth and learned not only to think about ourselves but also about the public at large. According to Wikipedia “Humans (Homo sapiens) are the only extant members of the subtribe Hominina. Together with chimpanzees, gorillas, and orangutans, they are part of the family Hominidae (the great apes, or hominids). Humans are terrestrial animals, characterized by their erect posture and bipedal locomotion; high manual dexterity and heavy tool use compared to other animals; open-ended and complex language use compared to other animal communications; larger, more complex brains than other animals; and highly advanced and organized societies.”  We learned to be selfless after we invented ways and means to conquer hunger and provide shelter for ourselves. That is when we realized that earth was our home at large, and we must protect our home for our own survival.