How would you like to have 27 paid holidays every year along with six weeks’ paid vacation? What changes would you be willing to make in your life in order to enjoy such benefits? Social commentator and poet Katha Pollitt sets her insightful gaze to Europe in this essay that appeared in September 2010 in …
Continue reading Greener Grass, More Paid Holidays: Katha Pollitt, “It’s better over there”
Do you shop for the lowest prices on the items you buy? What do your shopping habits have to do with the statue of a former first lady in a New York City park? This May 2011 article from the blog Manhattan User’s Guide (MUG) focuses on a monument to Eleanor Roosevelt in Manhattan and …
Continue reading Shopping with Eleanor: Eleanor Roosevelt on WalMart
You’re a college student; this one will likely hit close to home. How do you feel about your future on the other side of graduation? Matthew C. Klein, a research associate with the Council on Foreign Relations, describes the harsh realities facing some recent graduates and makes possibly unsettling comparisons with similar populations in other …
Continue reading Rising up by Degrees: “Educated, Unemployed, and Frustrated” in the New York Times
We all know that the U.S. economy is hobbling along, and it’s also no surprise that some segments of the population are better off than others. Yet the tables and charts compiled by political journalists Dave Gilson and Carolyn Perot for Mother Jones demonstrate with painful clarity the disparities between the rich and the un-rich …
Continue reading Mother Jones Takes a Peek at the Economy: “It’s the Inequality, Stupid”
David Nasaw, professor of history at the City University of New York, specializes in the cultural history of wealth (among other themes). While our current U.S. body politic wrestles with tax cuts and public spending, Nasaw’s article is particularly relevant, since he asks some questions that we are not accustomed to hearing (and provokes us …
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