They Say / I Blog

Greener Grass, More Paid Holidays: Katha Pollitt, "It's better over there"

How would you like to have 27 paid holidays every year along with six weeks’ paid vacation? What changes would you be willing to make in your life in order to enjoy such benefits? Social commentator and poet Katha Pollitt sets her insightful gaze to Europe in this essay that appeared in September 2010 in The Nation, a non-partisan weekly magazine of social and political criticism.

Read it here: Pollitt, "It's Better Over There"

Shopping with Eleanor: Eleanor Roosevelt on WalMart

Do you shop for the lowest prices on the items you buy? What do your shopping habits have to do with the statue of a former first lady in a New York City park? This May 2011 article from the blog Manhattan User’s Guide (MUG) focuses on a monument to Eleanor Roosevelt in Manhattan and projects the voice of Mrs. Roosevelt into a current local debate—whether Walmart should open stores in New York City.

Read it here: MUG "On pins and needles" 5.17.2011

 

Rising up by Degrees: "Educated, Unemployed, and Frustrated" in the New York Times

You’re a college student; this one will likely hit close to home. How do you feel about your future on the other side of graduation? Matthew C. Klein, a research associate with the Council on Foreign Relations, describes the harsh realities facing some recent graduates and makes possibly unsettling comparisons with similar populations in other countries. This essay was published as an op-ed piece in the New York Times on March 20, 2011.

Read it here: Klein, "Educated, Unemployed, and Frustrated" 

 

Mother Jones Takes a Peek at the Economy: "It's the Inequality, Stupid"

We all know that the U.S. economy is hobbling along, and it’s also no surprise that some segments of the population are better off than others. Yet the tables and charts compiled by political journalists Dave Gilson and Carolyn Perot for Mother Jones demonstrate with painful clarity the disparities between the rich and the un-rich in the present-day U.S.A.

Read it here: Mother Jones "It's the Inequality, Stupid"

David Nasaw – “Giving Season”

David Nasaw, professor of history at the City University of New York, specializes in the cultural history of wealth (among other themes). While our current U.S. body politic wrestles with tax cuts and public spending, Nasaw’s article is particularly relevant, since he asks some questions that we are not accustomed to hearing (and provokes us to wonder why not). This article was published in the December 6, 2010 edition of The Nation, a non-partisan weekly magazine of social and political criticism founded in 1865.

Read it here: Nasaw, "Giving Season"