For a long time, I have had a kind of "mess" in my home office, primarily consisting of piles of books that I have not read, or perhaps, to be a little more accurate, books that I have not finished reading.
My "mess," partly pictured below, is a testimony to my unfulfilled good intentions. I am happy to report, though, that I have actually been making some progress. For instance, a blog posting soon to be published was based on a book that I found extremely interesting, The Darkest Year. That is a book that I began to read way back in August 2023, when I was in Minnesota, but which I more recently pulled out of that pictured pile, and just finished reading in early January.
Out of that pile has also come a now somewhat faded section of The New York Times, dated July 5, 2020. Archeologists would probably find this date quite helpful in getting some idea of how long it has taken for me to accumulate the piles shown. This special section from that long-ago edition of The Times is titled, "The Economy We Need," and I unearthed it in one of the strata near the "top," not the "bottom," of the pile displayed above.
The first page of that special section not only presents the image I have reproduced at the top of this blog posting; it also provides the following explanation of what is inside that special section of The Times:
How to save democracy from capitalism and save capitalism from itself
I undoubtedly set this section of The Times aside because I think that both of the objectives highlighted by The Times need to be pursued. The articles that comprise this section of the newspaper are listed and linked below, which does not mean that anyone reading this blog will, automatically, be able to read them, just by clicking on one of the links. I have no certain insight into how The Times manages its paywall, but non-subscribers may be shut out. Subscribers, certainly, should be able to see what The Times has to say, but even non-subscribers can probably get a pretty good idea of what is being suggested, just from reading the titles themselves:
- The Jobs We Need
- American Workers Deserve to Live With Dignity
- Are You Willing to Give Up Your Privilege?
- Employer-Based Health Care
- How Much Money Americans Actually Make
- When Bosses Shared Their Profits
- Banks Should Face History and Pay Reparations
- American Companies Are Sick
- The Black-White Wage Gap: Big as It Was in 1950
- Women: ‘How Can I Do This for One More Day?’
- The Future of Work Isn’t What People Think It Is
- America Needs Some Repairs
- Tax the Rich and Their Heirs
- Why Do the Rich Have So Much Power?
- Bring On the 28th Amendment
The overriding theme of these articles is clear. The Times is telling us that income inequality is causing most of the problems, coupled with continuing racial and gender discrimination. The solutions proposed include "taxing the rich," having the bosses "share their profits," and making sure that everyone with a job gets health care, paid for by the employers. As you can guess, "the rich" are not favorably inclined to implement these solutions, and The Times addresses that fact directly, in the article titled, "Why do the rich have so much power?"
Why the rich have so much power is a pretty important question, and I want to suggest an answer.
The rich have so much power because the rest of us don't use our own.
Image Credits:
(2) - Gary Patton, personal photo
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