And Buffet should know. He’s among the richest of the rich. This is an hour-long conversation with Charlie Rose.
After Irene, Jersey City, NJ
29 AugLiberty Marina, on the Hudson River:
Entrance to Liberty State Park (also on the Hudson):
Inside an abandoned building near Liberty State Park:
Communipaw, just South of Grand (my neighborhood):
Communipaw Avenue is on a foot path originally laid down by the Lenni Lenape, who lived here when Henry Hudson landed in 1609. He landed on the shore of what is now Liberty State Park.
The Economics of Happiness – Jeffrey D. Sachs – Project Syndicate
29 AugThird, happiness is achieved through a balanced approach to life by both individuals and societies. As individuals, we are unhappy if we are denied our basic material needs, but we are also unhappy if the pursuit of higher incomes replaces our focus on family, friends, community, compassion, and maintaining internal balance. As a society, it is one thing to organize economic policies to keep living standards on the rise, but quite another to subordinate all of society’s values to the pursuit of profit.
Yet politics in the US has increasingly allowed corporate profits to dominate all other aspirations: fairness, justice, trust, physical and mental health, and environmental sustainability. Corporate campaign contributions increasingly undermine the democratic process, with the blessing of the US Supreme Court.
via The Economics of Happiness – Jeffrey D. Sachs – Project Syndicate.
Work Sharing | Work-sharing could work for us – Los Angeles Times
29 AugWhere this is headed is to a shorter work week. And leaves more time for drumming and dancing, community gardens, and everyone teaching skills to kids and one another.
After surveying policies around the world, we found that there is one that clearly dominates in terms of impact and cost-effectiveness: work-sharing. The idea is simple. Currently, firms mostly respond to weak demand by laying off workers. Under a work-sharing program, firms are encouraged by government policy to spread a small amount of the pain across many workers.
In Germany, for example, which has used work-sharing aggressively in this downturn, a typical company might reduce the hours of 50 workers by 20% rather than laying off 10 workers. The government would then provide a tax credit to make up for most of the lost pay, with the employer kicking in some as well. In a typical arrangement, a worker might see his weekly hours go down by 20%, and his salary go down by about 4%.
via Work Sharing | Work-sharing could work for us – Los Angeles Times.
Why won’t America embrace the left? – Salon.com
28 AugAn interview with Michael Kazin, professor of history at Georgetown University, and author of, American Dreamers, which covers nearly 200 years of struggle for civil rights, sexual equality and radical rebellion.
Why has the left in Europe been so much more successful at making real change?
The left in Europe arises out of a more traditional class structure, and the left parties there were formed on the basis on those class divisions. Most European countries had feudal societies before they transformed into nation-states. When those societies became capitalist, they retained many of the old divisions both in terms of people’s consciousness and in terms of the new social structure. Peasants and lords became workers and employers. So, the parties there tended to fall along class lines much more than in the United States, and people growing up on either side of the class boundary fueled the movements on the left. Even though the differences between the labor or socialist parties and the centrist or right-wing parties have diminished over time, the vision of a socialist society is still alive in many European countries. In America, however, socialism and communism were never more than marginal beliefs.
via Why won’t America embrace the left? – History – Salon.com.
How Resilient is the Internet?
28 AugI live in Jersey City, NJ, not too far from the waterfront (Hudson River / New York harbor). I’ve been glued to the internet getting up dated information about Irene.
Now, one of the power generating stations in JC has been flooded. They’re closing down for emergency repairs. But I’ve still got power. But if my power goes out . . .
No internet for me.
It’s clear to me that the internet needs to be entirely off the main power grid. I don’t know what that means, technically. If I had a small solar generator & bettery back-up sufficient for my lap-top, that would get my machine off the grid. But, is there wifi in my area? I don’t know, but probably should. If so, is it independent of the main power grid? Don’t know.
But what I do know is that the whole thing, ends-to-ends, needs to be OFF THE GRID.
I’d like to think that the Defense Department has made their communications independent of the main power grid. If anyone has the means and the motive, they do. But we ALL need to be independent of that grid.
Does America Need Manufacturing? – NYTimes.com
27 AugIf America wants to stay competitive in the world of green energy technologies, it will have to invest in local facilities for manufacturing those technologies. They are not so easy to off-shore as software and services.
“Now I think we’re at a really different moment,” Berger says. “We’re seeing a wave of new technologies, in energy, biotechnology, batteries, where there has to be a closer integration between research, development, design, product definition and production.”
One challenge to moving in this direction may be that our banks, hedge funds and venture capitalists are geared toward investing in financial instruments and software companies. In such endeavors, even modest investments can yield extraordinarily quick and large returns. Financing brick-and-mortar factories, by contrast, is expensive and painstaking and offers far less potential for speedy returns. Berger maintains that for the economy to get “full value” from our laboratories’ ideas in energy or biotech — not just new company headquarters but industrial jobs too — we must aspire to a different business model than the one we have come to admire.
Obama Says He Just Found Out How Bad the Economy Was in 2008, Where Is the Ridicule? | Beat the Press
27 AugEither Obama was asleep at the wheel or he’s ‘misremembering’ what he and his team knew back then. In either case, it’s not pretty.
The Post should have included the comments of economists ridiculing the idea that President Obama has just now discovered how bad the downturn was. It might even be worth a separate article or two. If the statement is actually true (i.e. President Obama just realized how bad the downturn was) then it is deserving of far more attention than his comment about working class whites being bitter and clinging to gun and religion before the Pennsylvania primary.
Why Is That a Secret? Or: The Paranoid Presidency— NYTimes.com
27 AugJust WHAT are they hiding?
The Obama administration has misguidedly used the Espionage Act in five such cases of news media disclosures; previously there were no more than four in all of White House history. This comes as officials classified nearly 77 million documents last year — a one-year jump of 40 percent. The government claim that this was because of improved reporting is not reassuring.
A Cooperative Economy: The Time Is Now | Common Dreams
26 AugThis is a perfect time for a cooperative economy. Considering the disproportionate struggles faced by women and people of color during a recession, the cooperative economy presents an opportunity for all people, to leverage more power by making themselves the bosses, sharing ownership, and taking a collective approach to good management. Many people have already been let down by a top-down corporate or non-profit model in a recession-ridden society. Now is the time to rebuild the system, and build a society founded on justice, dignity, and respect for people and the planet.
Truth and Traditions 