The latest edition of Jacobin came with a wonderful piece from Jennifer Pan about the public relations industry, journalism’s treatment of it, gendered labor, emotional labor, and so on. You should read the piece. It’s very good. At one point, Pan discusses the reaction journalists had to an article titled “11 Things the Media Does… Continue reading What Do Journalists Do?
Author: Matt Bruenig
How Higher Ed Contributes to Inequality?
At The Atlantic, Dana Goldstein interviewed Suzanne Mettler (of submerged state fame) on her new book about higher education. Here is one of the questions and its answer: You portray the four-year college degree as a transformative tool in battling inequality. What do you think of the counterargument that our national debate focuses too much… Continue reading How Higher Ed Contributes to Inequality?
The trouble with bad working conditions
From the New York Times: Often companies seek out our services when they’ve begun losing valued employees [because of the working conditions in their office], or a C.E.O. recognizes his own exhaustion, or a young, rising executive suddenly drops dead of a heart attack — a story we’ve been told more than a half dozen… Continue reading The trouble with bad working conditions
Locke and Hobhouse on coercion
L. T. Hobhouse and John Locke are two great British liberals separated by two centuries. But they both saw the coercion inherent in economic inequality. They both saw the way in which the person who has much can dominate and subordinate the person who has little. And they both found it reprehensible, something that must… Continue reading Locke and Hobhouse on coercion
Low child poverty: how does it work?
Here is an interesting project for enterprising data journalists who, as we know, are only about following the hard facts. Identify the countries with the lowest child poverty rates and see what’s going on with them. There is precedent for this kind of data journalism. Recall that time David Leonhardt endeavored to figure out whether… Continue reading Low child poverty: how does it work?