Tag: justice

Justice: what’s the right thing to do?

sanjay perera

Is it just to tax the rich to help the poor? John Rawls says we should answer this question by asking what principles you would choose to govern the distribution of income and wealth if you did not know who you were, whether you grew up in privilege or in poverty. Continue reading Justice: what’s the right thing to do?

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Taking notes 29: Abundance and Apocalypse

sanjay perera

by Steven Miller Somewhere in the ‘90s, world production crossed the historic line into Economic Abundance. Humans now produce, through the global economy, so much wealth every year that it is no longer necessary for anyone to be impoverished. The UN has long held that the world produces enough food to end hunger forever; the problem is how it is distributed. This is essentially based on ability to pay. The reality of Economic Abundance is carefully censored and hidden, because it immediately raises the fact that people today have the capacity and the tools to — if they wished — … Continue reading Taking notes 29: Abundance and Apocalypse

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Capitalism’s dead zone: Chicago’s lessons on the violence of inequality

sanjay perera

by Henry A. Giroux I consider the survival of [fascism] within democracy to be potentially more menacing that the survival of fascist tendencies against democracy. — Theodor W. Adorno Americans are confronted daily with the violence of inequality. The rich have longer life spans, better health care, access to better educational opportunities, and an abundance of food. [1] Many live in palatial homes in gated communities and wield a disproportionate amount of control and power over the major social, cultural, and political apparatuses that shape everyday life.[2] Unlike most Americans, the extravagantly rich are protected from the massive degree of … Continue reading Capitalism’s dead zone: Chicago’s lessons on the violence of inequality

A critique of Capital (1): The problem with economics

sanjay perera

by Sanjay Perera
In the introductory lines of a textbook on economics are these words: “Are Marxists correct in arguing that only vast expenditure on arms saves the capitalist countries from a return of mass unemployment? Or have we now learned…how to avoid forever such devastating situations? Why, then, in the late 1970s, did unemployment in Britain, the United States and several other countries reach the highest levels ever attained since the Great Depression of the 1930s?” Continue reading A critique of Capital (1): The problem with economics

The vanishing point of democracy

sanjay perera

by Henry A. Giroux We live at a time in the United States when the notion of political enemies has become a euphemism for dismantling prohibitions against targeted assassinations, torture, abductions and indefinite detention. Under the elastic notion of permanent war and the use of Orwellian labels like terrorists, enemy combatants, enemies of the state or the all-encompassing “evil-doers,” the United States has tortured prisoners in Iraq and Guantanamo for more than a decade. It also kidnapped suspected terrorists, held them in CIA “black sites,” and subjected them to extraordinary rendition — “the practice [of] taking detainees to and from … Continue reading The vanishing point of democracy