The Humbling of a Pretty Girl: When model and fashion writer Lauren Scruggs walked into a plane propeller the paramedics didn’t think she’d survive. "With the lacerations on her head and the skull fracture, we thought there would be significant brain damage", said one. At Zero at the Bone, Chally writes about the disturbing level of media interest in Scrugg’s ordeal. "We’re taught to admire, and to envy the pretty people", she writes. "We also know that such a hierarchy is unfair. And there’s a heavy pleasure in watching the pretty people be laid low."
When Bad Sex Work Drives out the Good: Many sex workers are victims of human trafficking, writes Marina Adshade. And a new study provides "very good evidence that legalization of prostitution increases human trafficking". Blue Milk also addresses the issue of sex work, provoking an extended conversation in the comments thread.
Obama’s Wonderfully Wrongheaded Speech: The Overdressed Anarchist hasn’t been won over by Obama’s Osawatomie speech. "If the President were serious about sending a message about equality, his Administration would be knocking on Wall Street’s door, SWAT teams in the rear", he writes.
Why the occupiers love Lincoln : When Obama attacked the Wall Street plutocracy he took cover behind Theodore Roosevelt. When Roosevelt attacked the plutocracy he took cover behind Abraham Lincoln. "Want to know what the Occupy Movement is all about? " asks Bejamin Gorman, "Abraham Lincoln knew 150 years ago." Read Lincoln’s First Annual Message from 1861 and you’ll understand why.
Robert Audi and the Separation of Church and State: According to liberal democrats, states must govern on the basis of principles all citizens accept. Religious principles are notoriously controversial so liberal democrats often argue that governments should avoid relying on religious reasons when making policy. Hence the commitment to the separation of church and state and the requirement that citizens bracket off their religious commitments when they take part in public life. But is idea that politics and religion should be kept separate noncontroversial? At New Books in Philosophy Robert Talisse interviews Robert Audi about his new book: Democratic Authority and the Separation of Church and State.
News isn’t the problem, it’s the advertising markets that are broken: By denying newspapers access to the old sources of advertising revenue the internet has thrown the news business into turmoil. So why is everyone so focused on how news is produced and distributed? According to Joshua Gans,"what we are seeing may not necessarily have anything to do with how news is produced per se but instead the mechanics of the supposedly unseemly advertising side of the equation."
Bank Tellers and ATMs: President Obama keeps saying that ATM are putting bank tellers out of work. Matthew Yglesias isn’t convinced.
of course ATM put bank tellers out of work like robots puts process workers out of work in car factories.
lower costs in making cars meant more people involved in selling and servicing cars.
Similarly these lower costs in banks meant jobs elsewhere in the bank. Also ATMS cannot cross-sell bank products so after a considerable lag and sense was finally knocked into bank management you got more bank branches being opened so people ( no longer bank tellers but customer service officers/consultants!) were cross-selling bank products a lot indeed a lot of salary packages were linked into how successful they were.
Shorter KBK: Of course ATMs reduced employment but for the reasons Yglesias gives they actually created employment. All clear now?
I shudder to imagine Abe Lincoln’s reaction to the actual OWS. I strongly strongly suspect he would think they were the most pampered spoilt and indulgent indigents he’d ever heard of (apart perhaps from the actual indigents and criminal opportunists). As for their breach of property rights, I don’t readily see him supporting that.
For example, sure he might speak in agrarian conservative tradition of the supremacy of labor to capital, but consider this:
And further, it is assumed that whoever is once a hired laborer is fixed in that condition for life.
…
I’m not sure he envisaged that penniless guy receiving a lot from the government on his way up. He didn’t himself, iirc.
You ain’t reading properly.
I am saying the job of bank teller now is completely different to the job of bank teller previously.e there is no comparison.Yes since the GFC banks have discovered the wonders of retail deposits but that is only very very recent
“Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration.”
So no bailout for the banks, great. But isn’t that libertarian nutbaggery? Or are lefties just there usual confused selves?
Anyway as Patrick suggests, it is a pretty limited definition of capital that old abe is applying:
“while in the Northern a large majority are neither hirers nor hired. Men, with their families–wives, sons, and daughters–work for themselves on their farms, in their houses, and in their shops, taking the whole product to themselves, and asking no favors of capital on the one hand nor of hired laborers or slaves on the other.”
Sounds like he’d be voting for Tony Abbott.
More brilliant insight:
“I am saying the job of bank teller now is completely different to the job of bank teller previously”
Mind boggled.