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POPSSocial welfare programs do not keep a country from prosperity
The Nordic states have also worked to keep social expenditures compatible with an open, competitive, market-based economic system. Tax rates on capital are relatively low. Labor market policies pay low-skilled and otherwise difficult-to-employ individuals to work in the service sector, in key quality-of-life areas such as child care, health, and support for the elderly and disabled. The results for the households at the bottom of the income distribution are astoundingly good, especially in contrast to...American social policy. The U.S. spends less than almost all rich countries on social services for the poor and disabled, and it gets what it pays for: the highest poverty rate among the rich countries and an exploding prison population. Actually, by shunning public spending on health, the U.S. gets much less than it pays for, because its dependence on private health care has led to a ramshackle system that yields mediocre results at very high costs.
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POPSThe Company Store Deregulation. "I owe my soul to the company store" is a reference to the truck system and to debt bondage. Under this system workers were not paid cash; rather they were paid with unexchangeable credit vouchers for goods at the company store (usually referred to as scrip). This made it impossible for workers to store up cash savings. Workers also usually lived in company-owned dormitories or apartment buildings, the rent for which was automatically deducted from their pay.
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POPSBureaucrats Try to Quash Blues Prodigy's Talents Well, the law prohibits it, and the Legislature enacted the laws to protect the health, safety and welfare of all children. "T-Man" Latz has a reason to sing the blues http://www.comcast.net/articles/music/20080812/Blues.Kid/
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POPSWelcome To The Real World "Government is instituted for the common good; for the protection, safety, prosperity, and happiness of the people; and not for profit, honor, or private interest of any one man, family, or class of men; therefore, the people alone have an incontestable, unalienable, and indefeasible right to institute government; and to reform, alter, or totally change the same, when their protection, safety, prosperity, and happiness require it." -John Adams, Thoughts on Government, 1776
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POPSArtecnica - design with conscience Our challenge is to develop a competitive product that will encourage the survival of indigenous craft. Fulfilling this mission requires a smart designer, a savvy and visionary project producer, and a willing and ambitious artisan. Our objective is to avoid the mechanization of the artisan, which devalues his work and undermines the project from both a design and an economic standpoint.
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POPSIn the Shadow of the Dragon
our self-restraint, our concern for the innocent and less fortunate, our dreams of a more decent future. While the military calls nuclear weapons a deterrent, they are only useful to threaten or to incinerate many thousands of people. The Bush effort to make smaller, 'more useable' weapons could turn conventional conflict into nuclear conflict. Many top leaders from the State Department and our military have agreed that our security and efforts to stop proliferation would be improved by negotiating the elimination of nuclear weapons. But, the dragon has been so engorged under President Bush and his congressional lemmings that it will be an arduous task for the administrations that follow to shrink it down and drive it down into its cave. To do that will require the support of a popular movement and international pressure to offset the influence and lobbying of this lethal industry. The peace movement must learn to tell the truth about every threatening aspect of the nuclear busin
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POPSWar Funding Bill Jettisons Immigrant Labor Work Permits The bill before the Senate would add more than $28 billion to Bush's budget request for this year and next, with almost $50 billion more after those two years for a big expansion of veterans benefits under the GI Bill from 2010-2018. Reid faces enormous procedural headaches in getting the war funding bill - and its various add-ons - passed this week. Democrats have divided the war funding bill into two components: non-war add-ons and Iraq funding-policy restrictions. Reid has signaled he wants the non-war extras to get a vote before the war funding itself, but it's a high-wire strategy. The new GI Bill and Democratic priorities like extending unemployment benefits are among the big-ticket add-ons, both of which have drawn veto threats. There's also $50 million to track down child predators, $400 million to help rural schools and $350 million to fight Western wildfires, just for starters.
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POPSFemale absenteeism is not just about child care Flett acknowledges that women carry most of the responsibilities at home, whether caring for ill children or aging parents. But he believes women can be their own worst enemies in the workplace because they feel the need to give managers too much information. “Women will often make excuses for why they’re not coming to work, which opens them up to the alpha males that keep them out of the corner office.” But, he maintains, just being a woman, mom or not, can work against you: “It’s a stereotype inoculated in our bone marrow. You are less reliable because you’re a girl and not driven by testosterone.”
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POPSMaking History: Man Prepares To Give Birth This is completely fascinating to me. Of course, it reminds me of the old Billy Crystal movie, "The Rabbit Test", where Crystal plays a man who becomes pregnant. I haven't seen that movie in years. But, ever since I saw it, I have watched to see if science would ever advance the real idea of men giving birth. Technically, the man in this clip is transgendered, meaning he was born with female reproductive organs, but looks like a man and lives as a male. The discrimination and the bigotry that he has faced through the healthcare system and from his own family is sad and despicable. I will continue to follow this story with some fascination. Mostly because it smacks in the face of everything we have come to know and expect when it comes to the idea of creating a family.
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POPSThe Last Days of Cheap Chinese More: China's Generation Y, the children born after the one-child policy came into effect, are increasingly aware of their rights to a legal wage, health insurance, and a certain number of days off every month. Their demands for better treatment will continue to drive up the cost of manufacturing in China. Already, southern China's Guangdong province, known as "the workshop of the world," is short 2 million workers, the equivalent of 14 percent of America's entire manufacturing workforce The problem for American retailers and consumers hooked on $3 T-shirts and $30 DVD players is that there is no other China waiting in the wings to make cheap goods reliably for American shoppers So importers are looking back to countries they once rejected in favor of China—Indonesia, Mexico, and Malaysia. And they are looking ahead to countries not yet integrated into the global consumer-goods supply chain, such as Brazil and Kenya
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POPSTransgendered Oregon man is pregnant (he says) Thomas Beatie, who has undergone sex-change surgery and is legally male and legally married, has conceived a child via a home insemination from a sperm donor. He plans to carry the child to term. Others, however, are skeptical of his claims.
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POPSGillard's war on poverty A move in the right direction. Even corporate bodies are concerned about the way they have destroyed motivation in the slave class.
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POPSBush: Put Santa on Terrorist List gotta laugh.... Just want to say Happy Holidays to my fellow clippers, whichever holidays you chose to celebrate. I missed you all for several days when I was unable to clip.
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POPSIs There Slavery In Your Chocolate? This clip is for abailart. This is another even worse example of the bottom line being the driving force behind inhumane treatment of the workers who produce the things we buy every day. This story broke back in 2001, and I'm glad to read that there has been some progress in addressing this atrocity. But as can be seen by this quote from the article there is still money talking in these decisions. "the U.S. chocolate industry and its allies mounted an intense lobbying effort to fight off legislation that would require "slave free" labels for their products." Unfortunately, Money Talks! Legislators have their hands tied by lobbyists and special interest groups. Sad!
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