Category: Social Issues
The analysis published under this category are as follows.
Tuesday, September 10, 2013
Descartes and Western Civilization Individualism / Politics / Social Issues
By: BATR
The philosophical condemnation of the supremacy in individual liberty verses the reigning doctrine of collective dominance, is a primary cause for the destruction of Western Civilization principles. Rene Descartes preferred to do his radical doubt thinking in solitude. In today’s society, thinking is about as foreign as rational behavior. In order to understand the timeless values and precepts that fostered the underpinnings of our Western thought and heritage, the significance of Descartes needs a close examination.
Friday, September 06, 2013
An Obituary for the American Middle Class / Politics / Social Issues
By: Profit_Confidential
Michael Lombardi writes:
It’s the elephant in the room no one wants to talk about…
The middle class in the U.S. economy is on the verge of collapse. Yes, I said collapse. That social class that once helped the U.S. economy grow and prosper is coming apart. Will the U.S. economy ever be the same without it or is this the new norm?
Monday, August 26, 2013
Why Wages Don't, Won't, and Can't Keep Up With Productivity / Politics / Social Issues
By: Mike_Shedlock
By now, everyone is well aware that real wages have not kept up worker productivity. But why is that?
The Fed, government bureaucrats, and economists are puzzled by the phenomenon as well as what to do about it.
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Friday, August 23, 2013
Obama Destroys the Middle-Class / Politics / Social Issues
By: Mike_Whitney
According to a survey conducted by Gallup on August 15, 2013, Obama’s Economic Approval rating has slipped to 35%. A full two-thirds of the American people are now dissatisfied with Obama’s performance vis a vis the economy. The survey mirrors the results of an earlier poll (Aug 12) which found that a mere “Twenty-two percent of Americans say they are satisfied with the direction of the country… Three-quarters of Americans are now dissatisfied with the nation’s course.” (Gallup)
Wednesday, August 07, 2013
Peak Culture And De-Evolution / Politics / Social Issues
By: Andrew_McKillop
PEAK EVOLUTION
Nadeem Walayat's thought-provoking article with this title, underlines that even using a criterium as basic as cranial volume and therefore brain weight humans may have lost about 150 cc of brain capacity, about 10% of the current homo sapiens sapiens average, in the last 10 000 years. To be sure, intracranial folding, which is a supreme human trait with negative tradeoffs on visual and aural acuity may well have compensated that, concerning our basic 'mechanical aptitude' to think.
Monday, August 05, 2013
Groupthink in Service of Government / Politics / Social Issues
By: BATR
If the human race survives into the future, the history of the current age will be entitled – A Love Affair with Authority. As the 21st century unfolds, the existential struggle between group worship of government and an inherent autonomy revolt against a popular culture of state obedience seems to forecast doom for civilization. By any measurable standard of success, the prospects of rescuing a society based upon human dignity and natural law is vanishing in a technocratic system of coerced compliance and punitive punishment. The limits of individual behavior are severely restricted to the requirements of the State and the willful confines of self-induced conformity.
Tuesday, July 30, 2013
"World Citizen" Dies Missing The Point About Government / Politics / Social Issues
By: Jeff_Berwick
Garry Davis, called "World Citizen #1" and founder of WorldService.org and provider of the "World Passport", died a few days ago. Newser reports that the former American citizen died after decades as a stateless "citizen of the world." Davis was 91 when he died and had spent 65 years stateless since renouncing his nationality along with all others since 1948.
Monday, July 29, 2013
Elite Fear Themes – Security And Prosperity / Politics / Social Issues
By: Andrew_McKillop
THE MORAL EQUIVALENT OF NUCLEAR WAR
“Frankly, we may get to the point where the only way of saving the world will be for industrial civilization to collapse”. Maurice F. Strong, Opening address, 1992 UN Earth Summit.
This was Strong's pitch for sustainable development. Despite the hard knocks and the general lack of interest the UN soldiers on, and on, spending millions on always-failed conferences trying to ram this meme down our throats, because it is elite cult-think. The Earth Summit of 2012 cranked the same elite prayer wheel.
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Friday, July 19, 2013
The Debt Slaves Are Waking Up - Real Reason for Brazil, Turkey, Occupy Protests / News_Letter / Social Issues
By: NewsLetter
The Market Oracle NewsletterJune 25th , 2013 Issue # 13 Vol. 7
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Thursday, July 18, 2013
Egyptians Need What Americans Need - More Economic Freedom / Politics / Social Issues
By: LewRockwell
Walter E. Williams writes: What Egyptian citizens must recognize is that political liberty thrives best where there’s a large measure of economic liberty. The Egyptian people are not the problem; it’s the environment they’re forced to live in. Why is it that Egyptians do well in the U.S. but not Egypt? We could make the same observation about Nigerians, Cambodians, Jamaicans and many other people who leave their homeland and immigrate to the U.S. For example, Indians in India suffer great poverty. But that’s not true of Indians who immigrate to the U.S. They manage to start more Silicon Valley companies than any other immigrant group, and they do the same in Massachusetts, Texas, Florida, New York and New Jersey.
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Thursday, July 18, 2013
Why Governments Can Do No Good / Politics / Social Issues
By: Jeff_Berwick
Government cannot do any desirable thing better than the market. It's physically impossible for them to do so, like chewing on your own jawbone. By its very nature, government is designed to disregard actual wants. It pretends to listen while it simply imposes. It steals money to fund whatever “services” it claims to be providing. That theft makes the situation a monopoly based on the violence inherent in the threat of force (kidnapping, caging and possible murder) behind the collection of taxes.
Monday, July 08, 2013
How McDonald’s and JPMorgan Chase Help Keep America Poor / Companies / Social Issues
By: Money_Morning
Greg Madison writes: Natalie Gunshannon, a McDonald's worker from Pennsylvania, has just won the right to... draw a paycheck. Work-for-pay is a fairly straightforward system that the Western World has been using for the past six or seven centuries, give or take.
Ms. Gunshannon was an hourly employee at a McDonald's franchise in Shavertown, Pennsylvania. Her degree is in massage therapy, but jobs in that field are scarce. A single mother, she took whatever work was available, which brought her to McDonalds, where she worked the line for $7.44 an hour, 30 to 70 hours per week.
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Sunday, July 07, 2013
Policy Assault On Democracy And Economic Psywar / Politics / Social Issues
By: Andrew_McKillop
DEFINING PSYWAR
Egypt's Gamal Abdul Nasser is claimed to have said this about American strategy towards Egypt:
The genius of you Americans is that you never make clear-cut stupid moves, only complicated stupid moves which make the rest of us wonder at the possibility that we might be missing something.
~Abdul Nasser
Tuesday, June 25, 2013
... / Politics / Social Issues
By: Nadeem_Walayat
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Monday, June 24, 2013
Why People Tolerate a Total State / Politics / Social Issues
By: Jeff_Berwick
Wendy McElroy writes: “Why do so many people not realize America has become a total state?”
Anyone who points out the politically obvious and is accused of panic-mongering has considered this question. The NSA's massive spying, the TSA frisking their children, the IRS targeting people politically, the longest war in American history, the militarization of law enforcement, the indefinite detention of prisoners at Gitmo...nothing, nothing seems to budge some people from the belief that the US is the freest, grandest nation on earth. It is an article of faith as deeply held as any belief in God.
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Wednesday, June 19, 2013
Why And How The Young Are Screwed / Politics / Social Issues
By: Raul_I_Meijer
Last week I read a few lines in a Dutch newspaper article about pensions that immediately took me back to something I wrote in early May about youth unemployment - especially in southern Europe, where it's often 50% or more -. There is a common thread that links pensions to employment to stimulus measures: the younger generations invariably get the short end of the stick. Until they don't, of course, for they have one thing going for them. Age. Before they can play that ace, however, their parents seem intent on milking them for all they got. And I can’t help finding that curious, because it’s not at all what parents say they want for their children.
Tuesday, June 18, 2013
Who Profits from Corporate Profits / Politics / Social Issues
By: Jesse
Why keep the median wage low, despite rising profits and productivity?
Whom does an increasingly debt-based economy serve?
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Friday, June 14, 2013
What the Serfs Should Know / Politics / Social Issues
By: LewRockwell
Karen Kwiatkowski writes: I’m eternally grateful that curious and justice-minded Edward Snowden grew to adulthood without becoming jaded, wedded to power and position, or prescribed into numbness by ubiquitous authority.
His less than stellar performance within the public schooling machine was an early cause for celebration. Despite his nonconformity in state schools – or perhaps because of it, Snowden was and is very interested in serving his country and fellow man.
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Tuesday, June 11, 2013
U.S. Politicians and Central Bankers Crushing the Middle Class / Politics / Social Issues
By: John_Browne
Like a carefully memorized religious incantation, politicians and central bankers continually stress how their stimulus policies are designed to promote the interests and prosperity of the middle class. Cynical observers may note that this brave political stance may have something to do with gaining the support of the vast majority of voters who identify themselves as "middle class." However, the cumulative effect of their economic programs has achieved the opposite. The middle class is being crushed under increased taxes, negative real interest rates, debased currencies and increasingly intrusive regulations.
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Sunday, June 09, 2013
Transcend Conditioned Consciousness None But Ourselves Can Free Our Minds / Politics / Social Issues
By: David_DeGraw
Seventeen years ago, I read a book called The Evolving Self. Though I didn’t realize it at the time, it profoundly affected the direction of my life. Here’s the section of the book that became a splinter in my mind and resonated the most with me:
Read full article... Read full article...“In order to gain control of consciousness, we must learn how to moderate the biases built into the machinery of the brain. We allow a whole series of illusions to stand between ourselves and reality…. These distortions are comforting, yet they need to be seen through for the self to be truly liberated… to come ever closer to getting a glimpse of the universal order, and of our part in it.”