Capitalism A Love Story Essay

I am a lead pencil—the ordinary wooden pencil familiar to all boys and girls and adults who can read and write.*RP. Writing is both my vocation and my avocation; that's all I do. Chesterton observed, . Yet, not a single person on the face of this earth knows how to make me. Especially when it is realized that there are about one and one- half billion of my kind produced in the U. S. A. Not much meets the eye—there's some wood, lacquer, the printed labeling, graphite lead, a bit of metal, and an eraser.

These legions are among my antecedents. The cedar logs are cut into small, pencil- length slats less than one- fourth of an inch in thickness. These are kiln dried and then tinted for the same reason women put rouge on their faces. Sweepers in the mill among my ancestors?

Yes, and included are the men who poured the concrete for the dam of a Pacific Gas & Electric Company hydroplant which supplies the mill's power! The graphite is mined in Ceylon. Then wetting agents are added such as sulfonated tallow—animal fats chemically reacted with sulfuric acid.

To increase their strength and smoothness the leads are then treated with a hot mixture which includes candelilla wax from Mexico, paraffin wax, and hydrogenated natural fats. Who would think that the growers of castor beans and the refiners of castor oil are a part of it? That's a film formed by applying heat to carbon black mixed with resins. Think of all the persons who mine zinc and copper and those who have the skills to make shiny sheet brass from these products of nature. Those black rings on my ferrule are black nickel.

The complete story of why the center of my ferrule has no black nickel on it would take pages to explain. The pumice comes from Italy; and the pigment which gives . There isn't a single person in all these millions, including the president of the pencil company, who contributes more than a tiny, infinitesimal bit of know- how.

This is the mystery to which I earlier referred. Isn't it because we realize that we ourselves could not make one? Indeed, can we even describe a tree? We cannot, except in superficial terms. Such a feat is utterly unthinkable! Since only God can make a tree, I insist that only God could make me.

Capitalism Why Capitalism Creates Pointless Jobs It’s as if someone were out there making up pointless jobs just for the sake of keeping us all working.

Freedom is impossible without this faith. These assumptions are correct. Why, in this area where men have been left free to try, they deliver the human voice around the world in less than one second; they deliver an event visually and in motion to any person's home when it is happening; they deliver 1.

The United Airlines debacle isn't about customer service. It's about the morality of capitalism. The Myth Of Sisyphus And Other Essays Pdf. The incisive and often hilarious story of one of our most interesting cultural phenomena.

Complete text of Read's 1958 essay. English Essays About Friendship read more. Also includes an introduction by Milton Friedman and an afterword by Donald Boudreaux. Why Young Americans Are Giving Up on Capitalism. Should we really be surprised that young people are rejecting the economic status quo? By Sarah Kendzior Sarah.

Seattle to Baltimore in less than four hours; they deliver gas from Texas to one's range or furnace in New York at unbelievably low rates and without subsidy; they deliver each four pounds of oil from the Persian Gulf to our Eastern Seaboard—halfway around the world—for less money than the government charges for delivering a one- ounce letter across the street! Merely organize society to act in harmony with this lesson. Read (1. 89. 8- 1. FEE in 1. 94. 6 and served as its president until his death. Although a few of the manufacturing details and place names have changed over the past forty years, the principles are unchanged.

The United Airlines debacle isn't about customer service. It's about the morality of capitalism. Here is why United Airlines kicking off and countenancing the assault of a paying customer is a big deal: It helps to reveal how corporate America often puts rules before people and how capitalism often places profits before human dignity. Unfilled seats mean lost revenue. This means that some people will inevitably be bumped from flights. But in the airline’s economic calculus, this is deemed an acceptable trade- off.

• Humans think in stories rather than in facts, numbers, or tables, and the simpler the story, the better. The story that has ruled our world in the past few decades is.
• Hail the maintainers Capitalism excels at innovation but is failing at maintenance, and for most lives it is maintenance that matters more Andrew Russell & Lee Vinsel.
• Read about the faith of Hillary Clinton here.
• An interview with Michael Hudson on his latest book, Killing the Host, which focuses on the destruction wrought by financial capitalism.
• 5 thoughts on “ My Climate Change ” Frank Mancuso February 19, 2016 at 7:28 am. Seems to me that no matter how we feel about our planet or eloquently write about.
• Marcy points out how what is considered to be “news” has changed greatly over time, and that the requirement that news be objective is recent and.

A customer’s inconvenience is subordinate to profits. You can already see the inherent problem. How To Write A Community Service Essay Scholarships there. The man had purchased a ticket from United, so, as a consumer, he was justified in expecting that he would be able to use it.

That is the essence of capitalism: a fair exchange of money for goods or services. But the airline decided they had “overbooked” when some airline employees needed last- minute seats on the flight, so they asked passengers (who had already paid) if they would be willing to relinquish their seats. They offered increasing levels of money to make it more palatable. Several took the offer. Not surprisingly, one person did not want to leave. He paid for his seat and was anxious to reach his destination.

The airline had also entered into a contract with him. And the argument that the airline had the right to eject him is, to me, fallacious. It was not any sort of emergency. No matter what the fine print said, the man had a right to expect to fly that day. Likewise, the argument that overbooking reduces the price of tickets, and therefore actually helps the consumer, is also something a dodge, because the goal of the corporation is not to reduce the price of tickets but to maximize profits for shareholders. One reduces ticket prices to increase volume, which raises revenue. Airlines are not charities.

When the man was unwilling to give up what he had paid for, he was forcibly removed from his seat by security officers, who ended up bloodying him and dragging him along the floor of the plane. When we watch the video of the event something in us says, “That’s not right.” Pay attention to that feeling. It is our conscience speaking.

That is what prompted the widespread outrage online—not simply the fact that people who have been bumped from flights share in the man’s frustration but the immorality of a system that leads to a degradation of human dignity. If corporate rules and the laws of capitalism lead to this, then they are unjust rules and laws. The ends show that the means are not justified. Someone in authority—pilots, stewards, ground crew—might have realized that this was an assault on a person’s dignity.

But no one stopped it. Not because they are bad people: They too probably looked on in horror.

But because they have been conditioned to follow the rules. Those rules said: First, we may sometimes overbook because we want to maximize our profits. Second, we can eject someone because we have overbooked, or if we decide that we want those seats back, no matter what a person can reasonably expect, and no matter how much of an inconvenience this is. And third, and most tragically, human dignity will not get in the way of the rules. A toxic cocktail of capitalism and corporate culture led to a man being dragged along the floor.

That is why bland “nothing to see here” defenses of the ills of corporate America and of the dictates of capitalism bother this capitalist and former corporate employee so much. They fail to see the victims of the system. Most people in the developing world could not afford a ticket on that flight. But it is very much a “world problem” because the victims of a system that places profits before all else are everywhere. The same economic calculus that says profits are the most important metric in decision- making leads to victims being dragged along the floor of an airplane and eking out an existence on the floor of a hovel in the slums of Nairobi. To recognize that profits are not the sole measure of a good decision in the corporate world. To realize that human beings are more important than money, no matter how much a free- market economist might object.

And to respect human dignity.

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Why Young Americans Are Giving Up on Capitalism. Imagine that you’re twenty years old. You were born in 1. You were five years old on 9/1. For as long as you can remember, the United States has been at war. When you are twelve, in 2.

After years of bluster and bravado from President George W. Bush — who encouraged consumerism as a response to terror — it seems your country was weaker than you thought. In America, the bottom falls out fast.

The adults who take care of you struggle to take care of themselves. Perhaps your parent loses a job. Perhaps your family loses its home. In 2. 00. 9, politicians claim the recession is over, but your hardship is not. Wages are stagnant or falling.

The costs of health care, child care, and tuition continue to rise exponentially. Full- time jobs turn into contract positions while benefits are slashed.

Middle- class jobs are replaced with low- paying service work. The expectations of American life your parents had when you were born — that a “long boom” will bring about unparalleled prosperity — crumble away. Baby boomers tell you there is a way out: a college education has always been the key to a good job. But that doesn’t seem to happen anymore. The college graduates you know are drowning in student debt, working for minimum wage, or toiling in unpaid internships.

Prestigious jobs are increasingly clustered in cities where rent has tripled or quadrupled in a decade’s time. You cannot afford to move, and you cannot afford to stay. Outside these cities, newly abandoned malls join long abandoned factories. You inhabit a landscape of ruin. There is nothing left for you.

Every now and then, people revolt. When you are fifteen, Occupy Wall Street captivates the nation’s attention, drawing attention to corporate greed and lost opportunity. Within a year, the movement fades, and its members do things like set up “boutique activist consultancies.” When you are seventeen, the Fight for 1. Online Essay Scoring on this page. No one seems to grasp the urgency of the crisis. Even President Barack Obama, a liberal Democrat — the type of politician who’s supposed to understand poverty — declares that the economy has recovered. You wonder when the economic recovery will reach your family.

You have been wondering for eight years. In 2. 01. 6, pundits declare your hardship an aberration: unemployment is a low 4. At first you think it’s a mistake, until you realize the government counts everyone working part- time or gig jobs or making salaries below the poverty line as “employed.” That is what employment looks like in America.

It is not personal fulfillment or a path to a future. It is futility — and it is forever. Survival is the new American Dream. Is it any wonder over half of 1. America say they do not support capitalism? According to an April 2.

Harvard University poll, support for capitalism is at a historic low. Americans in this age cohort reject it, while 4. The Harvard poll echoes a 2. Pew survey, in which 4. While older generations had a slightly more positive take on capitalism — topping out at 5. Does this mean that the youth of America are getting ready to hand over private property to the state and round up the kulaks?

As many of those who reported on the Harvard survey noted, the terms “socialism” and “capitalism” were never defined. After meeting with survey takers, John Della Volpe, the director of the Harvard poll, told the Washington Post that respondents did not reject capitalism inherently as a concept. Americans under 2. Great Recession economy. Things older generations took for granted — promotions, wages that grow over time, a 4. As a consequence, these basic tenets of American work life, won by labor movements in the early half of the twentieth century, are now deemed “radical.” In this context, Bernie Sanders, whose policies echo those of New Deal Democrats, can be deemed a “socialist” leading a “revolution”.

His platform seems revolutionary only because American work life has become so corrupt, and the pursuit of basic stability so insurmountable, that modest ambitions — a salary that covers your bills, the ability to own a home or go to college without enormous debt — are now fantasies or luxuries. Policies like a $1. Sanders, but by striking fast food workers years before — are not radical, but a pragmatic corrective to decades of wage depreciation. The minimum wage, which peaked in 1. Expectations of American life are formed on the premise that self- sufficiency is possible, but nearly half of Americans do not have $4. The gap between the rhetoric of “economic recovery” and “low unemployment” and the reality of how most Americans live is what makes Sanders seem unconventional: he describes widespread economic hardship many leaders rationalize or deny. Voters are not only rejecting the status quo, but how the status quo is depicted by media and politicians — the illusion that the economy is strong, and that suffering is the exception, not the rule.

We live in an era where heated rhetorical battles are fought over terms that have lost clear meaning. In an attempt to placate an angry populace, all three major candidates — Sanders, Donald Trump, and Hillary Clinton — have at various times positioned themselves as “anti- establishment”: a dubious description of two career politicians and a billionaire tycoon. Geoffrey Chaucer Essays there. Thanks to Trump, the word “fascist” has reentered the American political vocabulary, with some playing down Trump’s brutal and unlawful policies on the grounds that they do not precisely emulate foreign fascist leaders of the past.

Meanwhile, Trump castigates Clinton for not using the term “radical Islam.” This sparring over labels illustrates the depths of our ideological confusion. It is in this rhetorical morass that the debate over whether young Americans support “socialism” or “capitalism” takes place. Omitted from most coverage of the Harvard poll was the fact that youth were asked not only about socialism and capitalism but four other categories. None of the terms were defined. Respondents could choose more than one.

The real answers are found in questions about policies. Online Essay Writing Program here. When asked whether they support the idea that “Basic necessities, such as food and shelter, are a right that the government should provide to those unable to afford them,” 4. Does this indicate support for socialism?

It indicates that respondents grew up in an America where a large number of their countrymen have struggled to afford food and shelter — and they want the suffering to stop. You do not need a survey to ascertain the plight of American youth. You can look at their bank accounts, at the jobs they have, at the jobs their parents have lost, at the debt they hold, at the opportunities they covet but are denied. You do not need jargon or ideology to form a case against the status quo. Essay On Tv Violence Persuasive Speech read more. The clearest indictment of the status quo is the status quo itself. In the photo, demonstrators demand an increase in the minimum wage to $1. Chicago on April 1.

Photo credit: SCOTT OLSON/Getty Images. Essays On African Americans. Correction, June 2. The minimum wage would have reached $2.