is it possible?

Distinct memory of being brought to tears at this show a couple of times. If I Could tends to do that. This show is special though as it is the encore performance with “Reverend” Jeff Mosier sitting in on banjo.

amodernmanifesto:

Study Guide for Capital - Harry Cleaver

A study guide for Karl Marx’s Capital vol 1 by Harry Cleaver.

It starts with chapter 2, as Chapter 1 is covered in Cleaver’s book “Reading Capital Politically”.

• Chapter 2: The Process of Exchange
• …

(via le-kif-kif)

think-progress:

1. In 2010 women who worked full time, year round, still only earned 77 percent of what men earned.

2. For working women between the ages of 25 to 29, the annual wage gap is $1,702. In the last five years before retirement, however, the annual wage gap jumps to $14,352.

3. More than 40 percent…

wonklife:

When we focus on the federal income tax, we miss all the taxes that low-income Americans do pay. The payroll tax, for instance. And state sales taxes. And lots of local taxes. Indeed, 

Citizens for Tax Justice, a left-leaning tax policy group, produces a study every year showing the total tax burden for different groups once federal, state and local taxes are taken into account. And when you include all the taxes people pay, then, as you can see in the graph atop this post, it turns out that most Americans do pay taxes, and they in fact pay about as much as the rich.

climateadaptation:

A vegetarian lays out the economic realities and environmental impacts of “sustainable” agriculture.

For all the strengths of these alternatives, however, they’re ultimately a poor substitute for industrial production. Although these smaller systems appear to be environmentally sustainable, considerable evidence suggests otherwise.

Grass-grazing cows emit considerably more methane than grain-fed cows. Pastured organic chickens have a 20 percent greater impact on global warming. It requires 2 to 20 acres to raise a cow on grass. If we raised all the cows in the United States on grass (all 100 million of them), cattle would require (using the figure of 10 acres per cow) almost half the country’s land (and this figure excludes space needed for pastured chicken and pigs). A tract of land just larger than France has been carved out of the Brazilian rain forest and turned over to grazing cattle. Nothing about this is sustainable.

NYTimes

The issue is scale - we can’t have 100 million small farms for each household, and industrial agriculture is the only reasonable, viable, and therefore sustainable answer to human food needs. (Pretty please, before you send me angry msgs, I kindly ask you to read FAO’s “Ethical Issues in Food” and UM’s “Ethical Issues in Farming“(PDF). At least skim them, and think in terms of “scale.” Arguments for ethical treatment of ag animals are great. But the case for ethical treatment is not strong enough to eliminate the need for industrial scale farming).

Is this the case for produce as well?

politicalprof:

Since Republicans are back in the “St. Ronald” mode, hoping that Mitt Romney can channel the Gipper’s path to victory, a quick thought:

in the Reagan tax reform of 1986, all income, whether earned in salary or earned from investments, was taxed the same: as income. Today, capital gains…

Hmm.

jakke:

Male chief financial officers at U.S. companies are paid an average of 16 percent more than their female counterparts of similar age at companies with comparable market values, according to a study.

The report by New York-based GMI Ratings, a corporate governance consulting firm, is based on an analysis of salaries of more than 1,900 CFOs at Russell 3000 Index (RAY) companies with a market value of $100 million to $25 billion in 2010. About 150 of the CFOs were women.

I know, it’s hard to feel sympathy for the very onest of percents - but damn, pretty disheartening to see this kind of discrepancy in exactly the kind of demanding high-skills position where you’d think that ability to raise the bottom line would trump all kinds of bigotry, you know?

Worth considering even though the data would be difficult to track down is a comparison of how each gender re-invests their earnings as a percentage.

(via le-kif-kif)