Category: Class

McArdle has this piece about how increasing the incomes and economic security of people won’t solve everything. You can read the whole thing if you want, but basically the idea here is that there are other harms in the world than not having an adequate level of income and economic security, including harms related to… Continue reading On money and meaning

Megan McCardle has been going on about how failure is good of late, owing to having written a book about it. The argument is pretty generic: failures come from risk-taking and deviations from the norm that are necessary for people to come up with new ideas and such. Accordingly, she recommends letting your kids fail,… Continue reading Screw Up In High School, If You Are Rich

In my prior post, I highlighted a passage from the 19th century British journal The Christian Socialist about the inadequacy of economic mobility and opportunity. Here is the exact same sentiment expressed in the B.o.B. song “Both of Us” featuring Taylor Swift: Cause if life is an up hill battle We all tryna climb with… Continue reading B.o.B. and Taylor Swift on the inadequacy of mobility and opportunity

The Christian Socialist was a British publication in the late 19th and early 20th century. I pulled out this fun bit: If the means of production were monopolised by one individual, everybody would admit that a man in such a position would have despotic power over the lives and thoughts of those who were destitute… Continue reading The Christian Socialist on the inadequacy of mobility and opportunity

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