Sublime
An inspiration engine for ideas
All of this amounts to just a more fancy way of demonstrating Roosevelt’s point: Concentrated private power can serve as a threat to the Constitutional design, and the enforcement of the antitrust law can provide a final check on private power. This, by itself, provides an independent rationale for enforcement of the antitrust laws.
Tim Wu • The Curse of Bigness: Antitrust in the New Gilded Age
In 2013, there were over a hundred thousand private foundations in the United States with assets of over $800 billion. These peculiarly American organizations, run with little transparency or accountability to either voters or consumers yet publicly subsidized by tax breaks, have grown into 800-billion-pound Goliaths in the public policy realm.
... See moreJane Mayer • Dark Money
Zoning Out - First Things
George Stigler, a thirty-five-year-old economist at the University of Minnesota. Inflation had diluted the 40-cent minimum wage, and people were calling for an increase to 60 or even 75 cents an hour, which translates to $9.51 and $11.88 in June 2022 dollars. “Economists have not been very outspoken on this type of legislation,” Stigler wrote. “It
... See moreMatthew Desmond • Poverty, by America
In their eyes, reform was entirely enlightened policy, and in advocating it, they repeatedly invoked the rhetoric of "freedom," "modernity," and "liberty."
Harvey R. Neptune • Caliban and the Yankees: Trinidad and the United States Occupation
Les États n'autoriseront jamais les acteurs du secteur privé à émettre leurs propres monnaies et à empiéter ainsi sur le principal moyen pour l'État de se financer. Donc les États voudront toujours monopoliser la production de monnaie et seront toujours très tentés de se lancer dans l'accroissement de l'offre monétaire. Mais avec l'invention du
... See moreMarie Oneissi • l'Étalon-Bitcoin
after generations of redistributive progressive income and inheritance taxes, the economic elite was losing its lead. Income in America during the mid-1970s was as equally distributed as at any time in the country’s history.
Jane Mayer • Dark Money
But for Black people and for Latinos, who tend to live in cities and who together comprise the majority of the imprisoned, the logic of the situation is clear. Their imprisoned bodies are converted into someone else’s right to elect people who build more prisons.