The Expansion of Markets
Michael Sandel | Soren Iverson | Factoids | Unions Fighting Against Their Own Unionized Workers
Quote of the Moment
The most fateful change that unfolded during the past three decades was not an increase in greed. It was the expansion of markets, and of market values, into spheres of life where they don’t belong.
| Michael Sandel, What Money Can’t Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets (2012)
Brat Summer Offer!
Soren Iverson
This ratio feels deeply troubling.
Factoids
Change or tear it down?
69% of Americans polled agreed the political and economic system of the US needs major changes (55%) or needs to be torn down entirely (14%).
| May 2024 NYTimes/Sienna poll
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America’s burning.
Acres burned by wildfire in the United States have increased by about 50 percent over the past 20 years as climate change extends the duration of fire season. [...] The grid needs to double, triple or even quadruple its capacity to deliver electricity by about 2050 to meet growing demand for new data centers, factories and electric vehicles. Making it bigger without improving it would only compound the fire risk.
| Michael Webber but utility companies are still not 'undergrounding' powerlines.
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Immigrants are innovators.
Immigrants in America, though only 14% of the population, are responsible for a colossal 36% of innovation.
| The Economist, citing an unnamed Harvard study.
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STEM gap.
A majority of undergraduates in China major in math, science, engineering or agriculture, according to the Education Ministry. And three-quarters of China’s doctoral students do so. By comparison, only a fifth of American undergraduates and half of doctoral students are in these categories, although American data defines these majors a little more narrowly.
A gap that we should work to change.
…
Sports.
The average [American] child today spends less than three years playing a sport, quitting by age 11.
Turns out many sports are expensive, especially travel teams.
…
British inequality.
The Britain of 2024 is by some measures the most unequal society in Europe. Real wages have not increased since 2008 and the lowest-income British households are 20% poorer than the lowest-income families in France. But those bleak realities are the result of long-term political choices, not asylum seekers huddled terrified in hotels.
…
Beach umbrellas
Beach umbrellas send some 1,000 people to the hospital each year.
Unions Fighting Against Their Own Unionized Workers
That’s one of the most Kafkaesque titles I’ve posted.
Our natural inclination is to believe that a union — like the country’s largest teachers union, the National Education Association — would not adopt hard-nosed anti-union policies against its own unionized workers. But that’s what has recently happened.
The largest labor union in the United States is not the Teamsters, the United Auto Workers or the Steelworkers — it’s the National Education Association (NEA), which represents 3 million educators, retired educators and soon-to-be-educators across the country. Led by President Becky Pringle, the union is used to squaring off against powerful school administrators and government officials to defend its members’ interests. However, this past week, the union’s leadership shocked observers across the labor movement by taking drastic action against its own staffers.
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