This RAND study finds that the median income in the U.S. would be $42,000 higher than it is today if the income gains over the last forty years hadn’t gone mostly to the top 10 percent. And a college-educated worker making $70,000 today would be earning roughly $120,000 if the income distribution was the same […]
Here are four segments this week from National Public Radio that struck me as particularly relevant to some of the topics we are discussing in my courses. Why More Men Don’t Get Into The Field Of Nursing Story illustrating the power of gender roles and gender as a social institution. New Book Looks At Why […]
Here is an episode from The Hidden Brain, of one of my favorite radio programs that uses social science and storytelling to explain the hidden patterns behind our behavior and beliefs (it’s also a podcast). In this segment the host explores the role unconscious racial bias might play in recent police shootings of unarmed black […]
Those of us in the bottom 90 percent rarely get to see, much less interact with, the 3 million members of the top 1 percent. This explains why it may be difficult for us to wrap our heads around what life is like for them, and how dramatically their everyday lives differ from our own. What […]
On Labor Day I took my daughter to the parade. It’s an event full of meaning but for her it was mainly about the candy. She was not disappointed. In a scene resembling feeding time at the barnyard candy was thrown like chicken feed from passing floats. Children scurried, pecked at the ground, pushed and […]
The following post was written in 2014 during a controversy on our campus involving the resignation of a recently-hired University president, Timothy Flanagan. In just seven months in the position Flanagan had engaged in a series of unprofessional and abusive behaviors. The Board of Trustees paid him $480,000 to leave quietly and provided virtually no […]
Here is a great little video that illustrates the extent of wealth inequality in the U.S.
Tax cuts for the rich, wars paid for with credit card, and bailouts for Wall Street have strained our budgets. Now they are coming for granny’s social security, medicare and food stamps! That’s a lot of marble rye! More to come…but now enjoy one of the great moments in television history…