Readings, discussion questions, and outlines from general meeting discussions
Here’s a clip from a horror movie featuring a few terrifying monsters called “weeping angels”. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find a single clip, so I had to post these three: And watch this last one until 2:15 If you didn’t bother with the videos, the weeping angels are monsters that turn to […]
Readings: https://medium.com/@ddayen/my-speech-to-the-california-democratic-party-convention-concentrated-corporate-power-and-the-age-d997cddded64 https://www.thenation.com/article/special-investigation-the-dirty-secret-behind-warren-buffetts-billions/ A blockquote from the medium reading: More and more economic benefits have flowed into fewer and fewer hands, and I’m not just talking about personal inequality of income and wealth, [but rather] a rot of a few dominant established players in sector after sector. Four banks control about 60 percent of […]
Reading: https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/business/2013/06/08/countries-most-vacation-days/2400193/ This topic is about non-monetary things capitalism takes away from us. Two questions for group; 10-15 minutes to discuss: What would you do if you had a month off? Two months? Three months? What was your favorite vacation? Have you ever had a time where you had a significant amount of time off […]
Readings: Vox: Everything we think about the political correctness debate is wrong Current Affairs: Transcript of Davidson College speech The Intercept: In Europe, Hate Speech Laws are Often Used to Suppress and Punish Left-Wing Viewpoints Today, we are looking at some aspects of free speech. There is a common perception that in the US, support […]
Readings DSA-LA Mutual Aid platform: http://www.dsa-la.org/mutual_aid_resource_committee_platform Funding America’s Nonprofits: The Nonprofit Industrial Complex: https://academiccommons.columbia.edu/catalog/ac:156455 Charity, Mutual Aid, and Class Struggle: https://propertyistheft.wordpress.com/2010/08/15/charity-mutual–aid–and-class-struggle/ Today’s topic is mutual aid. Some important points: Mutual aid is not charity. Charity is paternalistic and carries a stigma. Mutual aid involves people working together. Mutual aid provides desperately needed relief. If we care about people’s suffering, why not be involved […]
Readings: Huffington Post / The Ones We Lost: Student Loan Debt Suicides People’s Policy Project / New Fed Data: The Rise of Student Debt (1989-2016) Demos / Why Education Does Not Fix Poverty Before anything else, we need to remember that a lot of people never go to college, that you don’t need to go […]
Why you should read this book: McAlevey covers a fascinating history of the CIO under George Meany. Meany was notoriously anti-communist, yet he relied heavily on American communists when organizing workplaces. He did so because they were successful; when Meany hired communist organizers, the unionization drive always succeeded. But whenever he hired non-communist organizers, the […]
Reading: Current Affairs, Do Economists Actually Know What Money Is? Economics is separated from other social sciences by its use of models. Whereas other social sciences try to gather evidence from the past and present to understand what might occur in the future, economics creates mathematical models to try to show what is likely to […]
The Economics for socialists series looks at the intellectual basis of the economics field. Reading: Harvard Business Review, There is No Invisible Hand Economics is separated from other social sciences by its use of models. Whereas other social sciences try to gather evidence from the past and present to understand what might occur in the […]
At the January 28 general meeting, we discussed issues of intellectual property and the arts. Articles: The Comics Journal, Who owns the Man of Steel? Priceonomics, How Mickey Mouse Evades the Public Domain Summary: Under capitalism, people can own capital, or things that can be used to make money. Often, the role of intellectual […]