One thing that I can never get over is the arbitrary value that people put on a human life in this country. For example, when it's the death of a police officer on the job it's considered a big deal. But the death of a roofer on the job is barely even acknowledged.
When a couple people die from a terrorist attack it is headline news. But when tens of thousands of people die from lack of health insurance you get total silence.
Everyone has got it wrong!
Forget race, forget age, forget even vaccine status. Just forget all of the culture war BS that the media has been feeding you for 18 months.
If you really want to know the leading cause of death by COVID, just look in your wallet. If it's empty, then you are 'high-risk'. Simple as that. No, I'm not exaggerating.
Yan Lianke's (2010) novel The Four Books is about a re-education camp in China during the Great Leap Forward.
I think it could give you all something to think about.
You may have noticed that the cheerleaders for capitalism ran a victory lap recently.
With all the hullabaloo over the coming Presidential election, I have held off posting this essay while we seem mostly engaged in current events. In addition, this essay posed a struggle for me because economics is certainly not an area in which I have expertise like gjohnsit and others here, so the research was a little more tedious than usual. Hopefully readers here can help fill in the gaps where necessary and expand upon the information presented in this essay.
Earlier this week, the Urban Institute released a report on an exploratory study meant to gauge the impact of hunger and food insecurity on children. The study is available on their website and is titled Impossible Choices: Teens and Food Insecurity in America.
The headline news today was that poverty was down and median wages were finally rising last year.
However, the Urban Institute released a much less reported study today that paints a different picture.
