Thomas Frank writes: The price of a year at college has increased by more than 1,200 percent over the last 30 years, far outpacing any other price the government tracks: food, housing, cars, gasoline, TVs, you name it. He links to this Bloomberg piece from 2012 to support this claim. As expected, the Bloomberg piece… Continue reading College Prices Have Not Increased By 1200 Percent
What Do Journalists Do?
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?
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