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Sunbeams

One of the first things we must get rid of is the idea that democracy is tantamount to capitalism.

Eleanor Roosevelt

Capitalism And The Wage System

The modern growth of monopolies in the shape of trusts, cartels, federations of employers and so on has greatly increased the power of the capitalist to levy toll on the community. This tendency will not cease of itself, but only through definite action on the part of those who do not profit by the capitalist regime.

Unfair Advantage

Stacy Mitchell On How Amazon Undermines Local Economies

To think of Amazon as a retailer is to miss the true nature of this company. Amazon wants to control the underlying infrastructure of commerce.

What Little She Had

It is one thing to be bad with money when you have it, and quite another to be bad with it when you don’t. My mother gave away what little she had, mostly because she had been taught that every poor person she met was the Lord in disguise, testing her love.

Sunbeams

This troubled planet is a place of the most violent contrasts. Those who receive the rewards are totally separate from those who shoulder the burdens. It is not a wise leadership.

Spock, Star Trek

An Embarrassment Of Riches

Les Leopold On Forty Years Of Runaway Inequality

Our economy does not work for all of us. It works for a small handful of elites who are extracting as much wealth from it as they can.

Sunbeams

There is no greater impotence in all the world like knowing you are right and that the wave of the world is wrong, yet the wave crashes upon you.

Norman Mailer

Preserve And Protect

We’re on our way to an REO — a “real-estate-owned” property, or foreclosed home — in Dryden, Washington, about an hour’s drive from Ellensburg, where we both live. My dad does maintenance on bank-owned houses. I finished graduate school this past June, and I’ve been his sidekick ever since.

Due To Vandalism

The copper is the easiest, isn’t it, vandal? You can clear the whole house with a hammer and a hacksaw. Start in the basement at the water heater. If the property has been properly winterized, the water will be shut off, and even if it hasn’t been, it takes hours for a basement to flood and days for someone to notice. (Just make sure the power is off, for real. In April they found a fried vandal in a cellar in Pontiac, Michigan, his body bobbing as high as the window well.)