#OWS, The Other 98%, US Uncut & Rebuild the Dream: A Look at the Shoes That Didn't Drop Times Square, Occupy Wall Street rally, Saturday, October 15, 2011. Photo by Micah L. Sifry Here's a question to ponder: Did Occupy Wall Street succeed simply because it was non-hierarchical in method, had smart framing in tune with public anger about the economy and Wall Street, and made really effective use of social media? If that was all it took to ignite a self-organizing movement for economic justice, then why didn't a very similar effort, called "The Other 98%," take off last year? Why didn't the US Uncut movement, a spin-off of an ongoing street protest movement in England, take off here this past winter? The question of where Occupy Wall Street came from, in actual organizational terms, can be definitively answered by consulting a number of excellent write-ups that have appeared in recent days. It's fun to go back and look at what these groups were doing over the last year and a half, since so much of it appears, on the surface, to be just like Occupy Wall Street. Too negative?
We’re More Unequal Than You Think by Andrew Hacker The Spirit Level: Why Greater Equality Makes Societies Stronger by Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett Bloomsbury, 331 pp., $28.00; $18.00 (paper) The Darwin Economy: Liberty, Competition, and the Common Good by Robert H. Princeton University Press, 240 pp., $26.95 The Age of Austerity: How Scarcity Will Remake American Politics by Thomas Byrne Edsall Doubleday, 272 pp., $24.95 Why Some Politicians Are More Dangerous Than Others by James Gilligan Polity, 229 pp., $19.95 Imagine a giant vacuum cleaner looming over America’s economy, drawing dollars from its bottom to its upper tiers. All four of the books under review reject Hamilton and Madison’s premises. The Spirit Level is a prodigious empirical effort directed to a moral purpose. As income gaps grow, they write, it’s not only the poor who suffer. The authors don’t go so far as to say that people with above-average incomes would end up better off were they to take home less money, and if greater numbers of their poor compatriots had more.
Interview: Economist Who Co-discovered "the 99%" On The Occupy Wall Street Movement That Followed His Research | Business News Q: What do you make of the Occupy Wall Street protesters' claims that they "are the 99 percent." Do you feel they are connecting – deliberately or not – with the bottom 99 percent that you have studied and written about? A: As you mentioned above, one of the most striking developments of the U.S. economy is how the top 1 percent has pulled away from the bottom 99 percent. How is it possible that in a democracy the bottom 99 percent gets only half of economic growth? Q: Why do you think the Occupy Wall Street protests are happening now? A: The 2008 economic crisis was largely the consequence of deregulated finance running amok. the bottom 99 percent had not been that great. Q: What are the key causes for the substantial income gaps in the United States today? This implies that institutions, government policies and regulations, and social norms play a central role in shaping income gaps. Q: You're Center for Equitable Growth at UC Berkeley. Q: Do you support the protests?
Civilians Killed and Wounded | Costs of War Civilians Killed and Wounded The ongoing conflicts in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan have taken a tremendous toll on the people of those countries. At the very least, 162,000 civilians have been determined to have died violent deaths as a result of the war as of March 2014. The actual number of deaths, direct and indirect, as a result of the wars are many times higher than this figure. The decade long war in Afghanistan has continued to take lives with each passing year. As of October 2013, at least 18,000 civilians are estimated to have died violent deaths as a result of the war. People have been killed in their homes at night and in markets and on roadways during the day. And death can happen some time — weeks or months — after a battle. And the effects of war death and injury linger. Civilians also die when war damages infrastructure. It is almost always difficult to record and count the dead and wounded in war.
David J. Dunn, PhD: "It's the Democracy, Stupid!": The "Vague" Goals of the Other 99% Some conservative punditry has claimed to be flummoxed by the "vague" goals of the "Occupy" protests happening across the country. I will grant that there is some truth to this complaint. In their early days, "patchwork" protests often lack a clear and unified voice. Still, no one with a basic understanding of history or an ounce of empathy should be surprised or confused by the outrage of "The Other 99%." Perhaps an example will make things clearer. I do it this way because in many ways life is "rigged." People are not protesting because the economy is bad. "The Other 99%" are backed into a corner, and that is a dangerous place to be. Most of us are familiar with the cycles of "boom" and "bust," but the economic sociologist, Karl Polanyi, noticed another kind of "double movement" at work in market-driven societies like ours. It seems to work. They answer back with, "We die." Libertarians usually leave that part out of their brochures. Some might object that I am denying "free will."
Economic Cost Summary | Costs of War Economic Costs Summary: $3.1 Trillion and Counting There are at least three ways to think about the economic costs of these wars: what has been spent already, what could or must be spent in the future, and the comparative economic effects of spending money on war instead of something else. Spending to Date: How much have the wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan since 9/11 cost? The Costs of War economics research team used the most up-to-date publicly available figures at the time of their writing to calculate the spending on the wars from 2001 through fiscal year 2013. What was the Department of Defense allocated? War related spending is also found in the foreign assistance budget, known on Capitol Hill as "International Assistance" spending. How has the U.S. paid for the wars so far? The U.S. also increased spending on homeland security by more than $455 billion beyond the levels already in place. Obligations for Future Spending: The costs of war don't end when the fighting stops.
We Are The 98% I feel little more than contempt for those who have ridiculed the "We Are The 99%" slogan of the occupy protesters. Some of these apologists for the status quo are more despicable than others. Those who have a reservation in Dante's inner circles of Hell tell us that only 13% of the 1% work on Wall Street (in finance). They thus feel entitled to conclude that the protests are misplaced and misinformed. Others who may live out eternity in Dante's upper circles say that the wealthiest Americans lost a lot of income after the meltdown, so the income equality problem is not as bad it was in 2007. I'll quote from Ms. Unsurprisingly, Occupy Wall Street have pushed income inequality to the center of the national conversation. I have no argument with any of this. But as it happens, I was back at the University of Chicago this weekend for my tenth business school reunion. And here is where Ms. On the very day Ms. The larger question is "how much does it matter"? And so on.
What Did the Iraq War Cost? More Than You Think. By its very definition, war spending—indeed, any government spending—improves GDP, as anyone who has ever taken an economics 101 course knows. Spending on World War II is credited with helping the U.S. decisively climb out of its depression slump. Likewise, the Iraq War helped the economy in some ways. But to many experts, the costs will far outweigh and outlast the benefits. As U.S. operations in Iraq end, tallying up the costs and benefits of a nine-year ordeal is a daunting task. Estimates on Iraq War spending vary. But the long-term costs will well exceed this total, and the budgetary consequences are far-reaching. On the positive side, the Iraq War did bolster the economy in some ways. [Debate Club: Was the Iraq War Worth It?] "It reduced unemployment compared to what it otherwise would have been" both with military and contractor jobs, says Stan Collender, a senior partner at Qorvis Communications who has also worked on both the House and Senate Budget Committees.
Grand Strategy Annex - Meritocracy or birth lottery? The true cost of the Iraq war: $3 trillion and beyond Writing in these pages in early 2008, we put the total cost to the United States of the Iraq war at $3 trillion. This price tag dwarfed previous estimates, including the Bush administration's 2003 projections of a $50 billion to $60 billion war. But today, as the United States ends combat in Iraq, it appears that our $3 trillion estimate (which accounted for both government expenses and the war's broader impact on the U.S. economy) was, if anything, too low. For example, the cost of diagnosing, treating and compensating disabled veterans has proved higher than we expected. Moreover, two years on, it has become clear to us that our estimate did not capture what may have been the conflict's most sobering expenses: those in the category of "might have beens," or what economists call opportunity costs. The answer to all four of these questions is probably no. Afghanistan The Iraq invasion diverted our attention from the Afghan war, now entering its 10th year. Oil Federal debt Joseph E.
How the 99 Percent Really Lost Out - in Far Greater Ways Than the Occupy Protesters Imagine "Property is theft," French anarchist Pierre-Joseph Proudhon famously declared in 1840 - a judgment clearly shared by many of those involved in the occupations in the name of the 99 percent around the country, and especially when applied to Wall Street bankers and traders. Elizabeth Warren also angrily points out that there "is nobody in this country who got rich on his own. Nobody." But this is the least of it: Proudhon may have exaggerated when, for instance, we think of a small farmer working his own land with his own hands. Knowledge? Take a simple example: In our own time, over many decades, the development of the steel plow and the tractor increased one man's capacity to farm, from a small plot (with a mule and wooden plow) to many hundred acres. But taxpayer-financed government programs (including, of course, all of public education!) Recent estimates indicate, for instance, that national output per capita has increased more than twentyfold over the 200-plus years since 1800.
kid's tv IN HORRIFIED FACES of children cowering in a bomb shelter in Mostar or Vitez or Ilidza during one of the regular attacks carried out on these towns, the destruction and insensitivity of war seems irrational to Moslems, Croats or Serbians. Despite this heart-piercing picture of horror, however, it is likely that some of the same people who are staring at the horrified faces of their children will soon be entering the battlefield, voluntarily or involuntarily, to contribute to the horror. Sometimes the pressure of this realisation has been so great for not only the recruits, but also for their parents and partners that some have committed suicide. Most accounts of the war have attempted to portray the military competition with the civilians on the sidelines. Almost every child in Bosnia and Hercegovina carries with him or her a history of numerous problems and attempted solutions. protection The recognition that children should be protected from the effects of war is not new.