America, where teachers must beg for donations that a private foundation will match. Giving to a cause like this is kind. But we must ask what we have done to make this necessary.https://twitter.com/mshardisonsroom/status/1032437256768745472 …
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Do you know what it's called when the young and the vulnerable and the poor depend on the whims of rich people rather than our shared institutions? Feudalism.
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What I've spent the last three years trying to investigate and demonstrate in
@WinnersTakeAll is that "giving back," noble as it seems, is really just trickle-down-economics with a cherry on top.Show this thread -
I want to say one more thing, speaking very personally. Starting when I was little boy, my family would leave Ohio and fly to India every couple years to visit our relatives.
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We in America did things around the house for ourselves. But our relatives in India had servants. And those servants lived dependent on the whims of those with money.
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There was no meaningful Indian safety net to speak of, no common institutions in the society to buffer them from the ups and downs of fate, no labor laws that were actually enforced for house servants.
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And so when rains flooded their village, or their roof fell in, or their child took ill, or malaria came for them, what did the servants do? They sought a donation.
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And affluent Indians are happy to make those donations. It makes them feel good and helps the servants. Win-win. But those affluent Indians don't pay servants a living wage. Don't fight for a safety net that will cost them. Don't abide by labor laws limiting the workday.
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Donors choose, indeed. But when we look at a faraway country, it may be more clear to us that that isn't a fair society. The donation is an act of generosity that is allowed to substitute for justice.
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America is becoming such a place. A society in which the rich ensure that there are no common institutions capable of helping ordinary people, which saves the winners money and makes them feel important when donations must be sought.
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I remember writing about the founder of TaskRabbit. This was her vision of the economy of the future. https://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/02/us/02iht-currents02.html …pic.twitter.com/OplbiLnYvz
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We are heading toward a state in which a small few throw bucks and tips and donations at the many while capturing and draining our shared institutions. A Downton Abbey republic. If you want to go deeper, there is a book where this thread came from: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/539747/winners-take-all-by-anand-giridharadas/9780451493248/ …
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End of conversation
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Yes. A society of philanthropy, and not one based on the use of force to push a majoritarian (if that) concept of virtue. I don’t see why you think this is a bad thing.
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Look at the military spending outlays. It is ridiculous the vast sums of money being routed to defense contractors instead of building the country’s infrastructure including schools and education.
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It's not the very definition of Third World Country (I don't mean to use in derogatory way) where two different worlds with ultra contrast live side by side? Rich have their own hospitals, Rich live in compounds guarded by private security. Rich pave their own roads.pic.twitter.com/WAGsGWq2yh
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Do you remember a few years ago when MSNBC got all into bashing teachers with tenure and called it "Education Nation". I do. They never really talked about funding public schools fully...it was all about bashing teachers.
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We have a robust health insurance market with low out of pocket expenses if you are sympathetic enough to get people to watch you beg for your life at your GoFundMe page.
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It is precisely what many on the political right want. Government stripped to the bare minimum and then dollars can "reward" or "punish" behavior as the wealthy see fit.
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