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Creating Hunger: The World Food Crisis

The question is not “How can we get them to feed themselves?” How paternalistic! People will feed themselves unless they are prevented from doing so. The fact is that the poor of this world are engaged in feeding us and trying to feed themselves.

The Republicans’ Nasty Little Screed

The Republican platform, in and of itself, is simply a nasty little screed, conceived in a moment of disappointment by the forces of Reagan. The monster off-spring of the reactionary right, it is loved only by its parents.

American Pie

So it is that every fourth year we are treated to a seemingly new series of causes and slogans that are destined to end up being a further boost to special interests and privileged classes to which none of us belong.

Icarus

What Cost Competition?

Economic theory is sometimes cloaked by a mysterious aura, because it represents an abstraction from physical reality. Yet, there is great potential for the application of economics to provide stable material welfare for all humanity.

From The Honey Pot

Creating an atmosphere of love and beauty often offsets the apparent meagerness of a meal. Wildflowers are free — dandelions, clover, all those pretty little flowers popping out in vacant lots or around public buildings in spring and summer — and as a centerpiece they remind us of the richness of the earth.

Remember Money?

Red dust swirls about the ditch at midday, flying in the face of a blindingly hazy sky. Muddy rivers of perspiration stream across faces and backs.

Sunbeams

Money has become incorporeal, far transcending tangible possessions, a vibrant all-persuasive element, almost independent of the possessor, an atmosphere to which there is no longer any contrast. Now it is a question of finding the new poverty for this new “wealth,” all that having withdrawn far into the invisible; . . . real poverty must be born again anew inside the soul and will perhaps not be Franciscan at all.

Rainer Maria Rilke

The Depression Years: Costly Memories

Being of the “old school,” the subject of money affects me in a different way: memories of depression years, five cent apples sold on the corners, bread lines, cold winters without coal, hot summers without a fan, sweat shops and no money for trolley fare to go to the beach and cool off.