Category: Economy

********* Freedom for the Wolves

Neoliberal orthodoxy holds that economic freedom is the basis of every other kind. That orthodoxy, a Nobel economist says, is not only false; it is devouring itself.

As Isaiah Berlin would have it: Freedom for the wolves; death for the sheep.

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/04/neoliberalism-freedom-markets-hayek/678124/?utm_source=email&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=social

**** NYTimes: Trump Won’t Let America Go. Can Democrats Pry It Away? ^

Trump Won’t Let America Go. Can Democrats Pry It Away? nyti.ms/3y3wfUw

 

The framers of the Constitution gave rural Americans an electoral advantage in national politics. They did this for a reason. Urbanization and industrialization  enrich urban Americans at the expense of rural Americans.  Government must enact policies to mitigate this problem if we have any hope of restoring national unity and a functioning democracy.

Democrats should give less focus to culture wars and more focus to policies that improve the lives of rural Americans.

Rural Americans have been economically depressed relative to urban Americans for a very long time and they know it. They may not know what policies will help the problem but they do know that they are mad.

Republicans stay in power by exploiting this anger and resentment In rural America. They need it to stay in power.

Democrats and the nation need policies that encourage investment in rural America.

Sent from my U.S.Cellular© Smartphone

*** Opinion Today: Your house doesn’t know your racial identity, right?

Keywords: home ownership race identity whiteness wealth value declines

Your neighbors and potential neighbors do.

By Jenée Desmond-Harris

Senior Staff Editor, Opinion

 

You know those conversations you have before you get married, when you try to get on the same page about your values and your hopes in terms of kids and money and work and household labor? I remember my husband saying he wasn’t sure about homeownership, because he didn’t think it was a smart way for Black people to build wealth. I was sort of skeptical; I mean, money is money, and your house doesn’t know your racial identity, right?

Yannick Lowery

 

Of course it doesn’t. But your neighbors and potential neighbors do. And as Dorothy Brown explained in an Op-Ed this weekend, their attitudes can inform whether you make or lose money when you sell. In the essay, which is adapted from her forthcoming book, “The Whiteness of Wealth: How The Tax System Impoverishes Black Americans — And How We Can Fix It,” she writes:

Black Americans are often unable to build wealth from homeownership in the same way their white peers are, in large part because home prices are generally set by the people who make up the majority of buyers: white Americans. White families typically prefer to live in predominantly white neighborhoods with very few or no Black neighbors. Homes in these neighborhoods tend to have the highest market values because most prospective purchasers — who happen to be white — find them most desirable.

 

That’s depressing. And it gets worse. Brown writes that “research has shown that once more than 10 percent of your neighbors are Black, the value of your home declines.” This is the truth behind our household joke that the real estate agent showing the house next door to ours must have a bad workday when their clients see us in our driveway.

Brown’s piece goes on to explain how the tax code pairs with this harsh, racist reality to perpetuate the racial wealth gap. She makes the case that changes to our tax system can make things fairer, and she’s cautiously optimistic that we might see those changes under the Biden administration.

 

Most of what you’ll read in her piece is not uplifting, but it’s important to understand. And yes, I’ve told my husband he was right.

Continue reading the main story

 

 

 

*** Weaponized Lies: How to Think Critically in the Post-Truth Era | Daniel Levitin | Talks at Google

Weaponized Lies: How to Think Critically in the Post-Truth Era | Daniel Levitin | Talks at Google

https://youtu.be/3hK7Gd8UgmI

“Last time I was here, I said that I thought that regular Google search–I had just been told in the lunch that I had before I came here last time that Google was very proud of the fact that when they first started out– well, when you first started out, when Google was in a dorm room effectively– and you searched Google in the early days, you had to scroll down quite a ways

before you would find the thing you were really looking for.

And Google has been working tirelessly of course,
to make the thing you’re really looking for the first hit on the list, so that you’re not wasting time.

And there’s been a lot of discussion about how, because Google knows your IP address, whether you’re signed in or not, and it knows your search history, it tends to tailor the results for you.

So if I were to search for something about climate change, I might get a very different result than you get, searching about climate change, depending on the kinds of things we’ve clicked on in the past. I might never get any of your results, and you might never get any of mine.

 And so I wonder what you all think I’d be curious to know your feelings about how or whether this has contributed to
this echo chamber phenomenon that we’ve been accused of living in, this bubble phenomenon that we’re only hearing views that support our own views.

And we’re not being exposed to what the great promise of the internet was. The great democratizing force was that for once and for all we could have a free marketplace of ideas. You could encounter any idea that was out there and judge it for yourself.”