Author: Matt Bruenig

In his 1888 State of the Union, Cleveland wrote this: Our cities are the abiding places of wealth and luxury; our manufactories yield fortunes never dreamed of by the fathers of the Republic; our business men are madly striving in the race for riches, and immense aggregations of capital outrun the imagination in the magnitude… Continue reading Grover Cleveland on the economy in 1888

I was struck by this passage from “Poverty Amid Plenty”, a report produced by a 1969 presidential commission: To go to school costs money — books, notebooks, pencils, gym shoes, and ice cream with the other kids. Without these the child begins to be an outcast. To go to church costs money — some Sunday… Continue reading Poverty isolates

Yesterday, I argued that poor kids do not get traditional media jobs because growing up poor puts them so far behind their non-poor peers that they get out-competed for the scarce media jobs. I think the following graph, which tracks likelihood of college attendance at age 19 by parental income, is very telling on this… Continue reading Social and cultural capital probably keep poor kids out of media jobs too

Jennifer Pan has a piece Jacobin about the labor of social media. I enjoyed the bits about the extent to which social media jobs are essentially gendered emotional labor jobs in which predominately women interface with the public for a given company while the power structure that runs the company remains male-dominated. I take exception… Continue reading Why poor kids do not get media jobs