Economic Hardship Quotes

As for the Republicans -- how can one regard seriously a frightened, greedy, nostalgic huddle of tradesmen and lucky idlers who shut their eyes to history and science, steel their emotions against decent human sympathy, cling to sordid and provincial ideals exalting sheer acquisitiveness and condoning artificial hardship for the non-materially-shrewd, dwell smugly and sentimentally in a distorted dream-cosmos of outmoded phrases and principles and attitudes based on the bygone agricultural-handicraft world, and revel in (consciously or unconsciously) mendacious assumptions (such as the notion that real liberty is synonymous with the single detail of unrestricted economic license or that a rational planning of resource-distribution would contravene some vague and mystical 'American heritage'...) utterly contrary to fact and without the slightest foundation in human experience? Intellectually, the Republican idea deserves the tolerance and respect one gives to the dead.

In places where jobs disappear, society falls apart. The public sector and civic institutions are poorly equipped to do much about it. When a community truly disintegrates, knitting it back together becomes a herculean, perhaps impossible task. Virtue, trust, and cohesion—the stuff of civilization—are difficult to restore. If anything, it’s striking how public corruption seems to often arrive hand-in-hand with economic hardship.

The essence of economic inequality is borne out in a simple fact: there are 400 billionaires in the United States and 45 million people living in poverty. These are not parallel facts; they are intersecting facts. There are 400 American billionaires because there are 45 million people living in poverty. Profit comes at the expense of the living wage. Corporate executives, university presidents, and capitalists in general are living the good life--because so many others are living a life of hardship.

And as the recession continues and our prospects look bleaker and bleaker, I’m excited. I look to the past to see what our future will be like. And in times of economic hardship and harsh governments, of pointless wars and mass unemployment, there was pop art and there was punk, there was hip hop and grafitti, there was acid house and riot grrrl. There was art and music and books that could bring you to your knees with their utter perfection. Because, when everything else is gone, all we’re left with is our imaginations.

It was piecework, and she was apt to have a family to keep alive; and stern and ruthless economic laws had arranged it that she could only do this by working just as she did, with all her soul upon her work, and with never an instant for a glance at the well-dressed ladies and gentlemen who came to stare at her, as at some wild beast in a menagerie.

A secret Rand Corporation study for the Pentagon had concluded in 1966 that while the bombing had caused widespread hardship and even food shortages in the North, “there is, however, no evidence of critical or progressive deterioration or disruption of economic activity

The time for careers and passions was gone. Hunger pangs displaced ambition.

Toxic stress response can occur when a child experiences strong, frequent, and/or prolonged adversity—such as physical or emotional abuse, neglect, caregiver substance abuse or mental illness, exposure to violence, and/or the accumulated burdens of family economic hardship—without adequate adult support. This kind of prolonged activation of the stress-response systems can disrupt the development of brain architecture and other organ systems, and increase the risk for stress-related disease and cognitive impairment, well into the adult years.

In the end economics is about people ... And economic growth is about a better life for individuals - more choice, less fear, less toil and hardship. ... Yang Li tried factory work and decided that it wasn't for her. Now she says that 'I can close the salon whenever I want.' Economics is about Yang Li's choice.

Getting honest with ourselves does not make us unacceptable to God. It does not distance us from God, but draws us to Him—as nothing else can—and opens us anew to the flow of grace. While Jesus calls each of us to a more perfect life, we cannot achieve it on our own. To be alive is to be broken; to be broken is to stand in need of grace. It is only through grace that any of us could dare to hope that we could become more like Christ. The saved sinner with the tilted halo has been converted from mistrust to trust, has arrived at an inner poverty of spirit, and lives as best he or she can in rigorous honesty with self, others, and God. The question the gospel of grace puts to us is simply this: Who shall separate you from the love of Christ? What are you afraid of? Are you afraid that your weakness could separate you from the love of Christ? It can’t. Are you afraid that your inadequacies could separate you from the love of Christ? They can’t. Are you afraid that your inner poverty could separate you from the love of Christ? It can’t. Difficult marriage, loneliness, anxiety over the children’s future? They can’t. Negative self-image? It can’t. Economic hardship, racial hatred, street crime? They can’t. Rejection by loved ones or the suffering of loved ones? They can’t. Persecution by authorities, going to jail? They can’t. Nuclear war? It can’t. Mistakes, fears, uncertainties? They can’t. The gospel of grace calls out, Nothing can ever separate you from the love of God made visible in Christ Jesus our Lord. You must be convinced of this, trust it, and never forget to remember. Everything else will pass away, but the love of Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever. Faith will become vision, hope will become possession, but the love of Jesus Christ that is stronger than death endures forever. In the end, it is the one thing you can hang onto.

The essence of economic inequality is borne out in a simple fact: there are 400 billionaires in the United States and 45 million people living in poverty. These are not parallel facts; they are intersecting facts. There are 400 American billionaires because there are 45 million people living in poverty. Profit comes at the expense of the living wage. Corporate executives, university presidents, and capitalists in general are living the good life--because so many others are living a life of hardship.

For decades, Lebanon had lured not just revolutionaries but also poets, ideologues, artists, and all types of opposition figures and plotters. A weak state was both a blessing and a curse. In Beirut, there was no dictatorship to muzzle opinions—or your guns. The war had made the small Mediterranean country even more of a haven, a live training ground with a casino and restaurants that still served smoked salmon and caviar during cease-fires. There were breadlines and economic hardship, massacres and literary conferences. Every spy agency was in town: the CIA, the KGB, the Mossad.

Forty years ago, before I went away, you could get the same phlegmatic responses to economic hardship from the Suzi Petkovskis of this world. The same clamped, chain-smoking capacity for endurance, the same grim shrug, as if politics were some kind of massive, capricious weather system you couldn’t do anything about. I went back to watching the skyline.

Leaders who formulate positive ideas and implement effective change in their community can help others overcome difficult economic and social hardships.

TO MY MIND, THOUGH, there is a third development that has altered our parenting experience above all others, and that is the wholesale transformation of the child’s role, both in the home and in society. Since the end of World War II, childhood has been completely redefined. Today, we work hard to shield children from life’s hardships. But throughout most of our country’s history, we did not. Rather, kids worked. In the earliest days of our nation, they cared for their siblings or spent time in the fields; as the country industrialized, they worked in mines and textile mills, in factories and canneries, in street trades. Over time, reformers managed to outlaw child labor practices. Yet change was slow. It wasn’t until our soldiers returned from World War II that childhood, as we now know it, began. The family economy was no longer built on a system of reciprocity, with parents sheltering and feeding their children, and children, in return, kicking something back into the family till. The relationship became asymmetrical. Children stopped working, and parents worked twice as hard. Children went from being our employees to our bosses. The way most historians describe this transformation is to say that the child went from “useful” to “protected.” But the sociologist Viviana Zelizer came up with a far more pungent phrase. She characterized the modern child as “economically worthless but emotionally priceless.” Today parents pour more capital—both emotional and literal—into their children than ever before, and they’re spending longer, more concentrated hours with their children than they did when the workday ended at five o’clock and the majority of women still stayed home. Yet parents don’t know what it is they’re supposed to do, precisely, in their new jobs. “Parenting” may have become its own activity (its own profession, so to speak), but its goals are far from clear.

The rank and file members of the guerrillas and their civilian sympathizers paid some of the heaviest prices during the war and a recurrent theme running through their testimonials is an uncertainty about whether the costs were worth the rewards. 41 They certainly celebrate their role in democratizing El Salvador, but they wonder what good is democracy in the midst of ongoing economic hardship and inequality.

It is the unco-ordinated activity of large-scale production that leads to those periodical crises and depressions which inflict such untold hardship upon the working masses of the people in industrialized countries. Small-scale production carried on by individuals who own the instruments with which they personally work is not subject to periodical slumps. Furthermore, the ownership of the means of small-scale, personal production has none of the disastrous political, economic and psychological consequences of large-scale production-loss of independence, enslavement to an employer, insecurity of the tenure of employment.

The writer doesn’t need economic freedom. All he needs is a pencil and some paper. I’ve never known anything good in writing to come from having accepted any free gift of money. The good writer never applies to a foundation. He’s too busy writing something. If he isn’t first rate he fools himself by saying he hasn’t got time or economic freedom. Good art can come out of thieves, bootleggers, or horse swipes. People really are afraid to find out just how much hardship and poverty they can stand. They are afraid to find out how tough they are.

Do you favor mandated free tuition?” I answered: “Most positively not.” The crowd unanimously and lustily booed me. “Do you realize,” I persisted, “that you are asking men and women who are, many of them poorer than you, and poorer than your parents; many of whom earn less money than you yourselves will be earning in the course of a few years, to make sacrifices in your behalf?” Boo! “If you don’t believe me,” I said, “go to your economics teachers and ask them.” Boo! “All right,” I said, “don’t go to your economics teachers, and don’t discover the economic realities—you’ll find it much easier on the conscience not to know who is sustaining the hardship for your free education.” Applause!—as a matter of fact. On

Ali and his cousin Ahmad were seeking jobs abroad to enable them to escape the economic hardship in Pakistan that had been caused by massive flooding. Ali borrowed $4,000 from family and friends to pay an agent for a tourist visa that would enable him to reach Cambodia, where he and Ahmad were met by a broker. They paid the broker a further $1,475 each for a work visa processing fee, before being taken to a large compound in Cambodia's capital, Phnom Penh. After their passports were taken and they were warned not to try to leave, they were forced to work alongside approximately 1,000 other people, each forced to scam five people daily with cryptocurrency investment schemes. They were watched over, fined and beaten if they failed to comply:

Ceauşescu and his cronies dominated 20 million Romanians for four decades because they ensured three vital conditions. First, they placed loyal communist apparatchiks in control of all networks of cooperation, such as the army, trade unions and even sports associations. Second, they prevented the creation of any rival organisations – whether political, economic or social – which might serve as a basis for anti-communist cooperation. Third, they relied on the support of sister communist parties in the Soviet Union and eastern Europe. Despite occasional tensions, these parties helped each other in times of need, or at least guaranteed that no outsider poked his nose into the socialist paradise. Under such conditions, despite all the hardship and suffering inflicted on them by the ruling elite, the 20 million Romanians were unable to organise any effective opposition.

The Negro's economic problem was compounded by the emergence and growth of automation. Since discrimination and lack of education confined him to unskilled and semi-skilled labor, the Negro was and remains the first to suffer in these days of great technological development. The Negro knew all too well that there was not in existence the kind of vigorous retraining program that could really help him to grapple with the magnitude of his problem.

Yet only the economic in the narrow sense will allow us to get beyond the economic. By redeploying the resources capitalism has so considerately stored up for us, socialism can allow the economic to take more of a backseat. It will not evaporate, but it will become less obtrusive. To enjoy a sufficiency of goods means not to have to think about money all the time. It frees us for less tedious pursuits. Far from being obsessed with economic matters, Marx saw them as a travesty of true human potential. He wanted society where the economic no longer monopolised so much time and energy. That our ancestors should have been so preoccupied with material matters is understandable. When you can produce only a slim economic surplus, or scarcely any surplus at all, you will perish without ceaseless hard labour. Capitalism, however, generates the sort of surplus that really could be used to increase leisure on a sizeable scale. The irony is that it creates this wealth in a way that demands constant accumulation and expansion, and thus constant labour. It also creates it in ways that generate poverty and hardship. It is a self-thwarting system. As a result, modern men and women, surrounded by an affluence unimaginable to hunter-gatherers, ancient slaves or feudal serfs, end up working as long and hard as these predecessors ever did. Marx's work is all about human enjoyment. The good life for him is not one of labour but of leisure.

Said the Broadway star Billie Burke, “The Roaring Twenties were very pleasant if you did not stop to think.” Most people didn’t stop to think. And still don’t, as they look back. If they did, they would see not just the pervasiveness of hardship throughout the decade, but the horrible prelude it proved to be—for at its opposite end, there was a different kind of explosion on Wall Street. The stock market crashed, and much of the United States crashed along with it. The value of investments dropped like never before, never since; the term “Depression” described not just the ruination of financial accounts, but the attitude of an entire nation, so many people so painfully victimized by a lack of income and, with it, a lack of opportunity. The New Deal helped, but it took another Great War, after yet another decade, to jump-start economic growth again. Ten years, it might have been, from Prohibition to stock-market crash, but they held a century’s worth of turmoil and jubilation, irrationality and intrigue, optimism and injustice. It all began in 1920.

I fought for years to free myself of all my cultural, economic and political chains, to be free of owning or being owned. I refused. God, how hard it is to refuse sometimes. Especially during times of hardship, refusal requires willpower. And each refusal expands the boundaries of one's loneliness. You know how it goes," I said, running out of breath. "I did not belong to my town. I had no regular city or country address, no regular job, no steady lover, husband, child or family. I was infinitely independent and unfettered. I was hungry but free.

But overprotection is just one part of a larger trend that we call problems of progress. This term refers to bad consequences produced by otherwise good social changes. It’s great that our economic system produces an abundance of food at low prices, but the flip side is an epidemic of obesity. It’s great that we can connect and communicate with people instantly and for free, but this hyperconnection may be damaging the mental health of young people. It’s great that we have refrigerators, antidepressants, air conditioning, hot and cold running water, and the ability to escape from most of the physical hardships that were woven into the daily lives of our ancestors back to the dawn of our species. Comfort and physical safety are boons to humanity, but they bring some costs, too. We adapt to our new and improved circumstances and then lower the bar for what we count as intolerable levels of discomfort and risk. By the standards of our great-grandparents, nearly all of us are coddled. Each generation tends to see the one after it as weak, whiny, and lacking in resilience. Those older generations may have a point, even though these generational changes reflect real and positive progress. To repeat, we are not saying that the problems facing students, and young people more generally, are minor or “all in their heads.” We are saying that what people choose to do in their heads will determine how those real problems affect them. Our argument is ultimately pragmatic, not moralistic: Whatever your identity, background, or political ideology, you will be happier, healthier, stronger, and more likely to succeed in pursuing your own goals if you do the opposite of what Misoponos advised.

Paleolithic communities had probably been egalitarian because hunter-gathers could not support a privileged class that did not share the hardship and danger of the hunt. Because these small communities lived at near-subsistence level and produced no economic surplus, inequity of wealth was impossible. The tribe could survive only if everybody shared what food they had. Government by coercion was not feasible because all able-bodied males had exactly the same weapons and fighting skills. Anthropologists have noted that modern hunter-gatherer societies are classless, that their economy is "a sort of communism," and that people are honored for skills and qualities, such as generosity, kindness, and even-temperedness, that benefit the community as a whole. But in societies that produce more than they need, it is possible for a small group to exploit this surplus for its own enrichment, gain a monopoly of violence, dominate the rest of the population.

decades. Why are revolutions so rare? Why do the masses sometimes clap and cheer for centuries on end, doing everything the man on the balcony commands them, even though they could in theory charge forward at any moment and tear him to pieces? Ceaus¸escu and his cronies dominated 20 million Romanians for four decades because they ensured three vital conditions. First, they placed loyal communist apparatchiks in control of all networks of cooperation, such as the army, trade unions and even sports associations. Second, they prevented the creation of any rival organisations – whether political, economic or social – which might serve as a basis for anti-communist cooperation. Third, they relied on the support of sister communist parties in the Soviet Union and eastern Europe. Despite occasional tensions, these parties helped each other in times of need, or at least guaranteed that no outsider poked his nose into the socialist paradise. Under such conditions, despite all the hardship and suffering inflicted on them by the ruling elite, the 20 million Romanians were unable to organise any effective opposition.

Of course the no-government ethics will meet with at least as many objections as the no-capital economics. Our minds have been so nurtured in prejudices as to the providential functions of government that anarchist ideas must be received with distrust. Our whole education, from childhood to the grave, nurtures the belief in the necessity of a government and its beneficial effects. Systems of philosophy have been elaborated to support this view; history has been written from this standpoint; theories of law have been circulated and taught for the same purpose. All politics are based on the same principle, each politician saying to people he wants to support him: “Give me the governmental power; I will, I can, relieve you from the hardships of your present life.” All our education is permeated with the same teachings. We may open any book of sociology, history, law, or ethics: everywhere we find government, its organisation, its deeds, playing so prominent a part that we grow accustomed to suppose that the State and the political men are everything; that there is nothing behind the big statesmen. The same teachings are daily repeated in the Press. Whole columns are filled up with minutest records of parliamentary debates, of movements of political persons. And, while reading these columns, we too often forget that besides those few men whose importance has been so swollen up as to overshadow humanity, there is an immense body of men—mankind, in fact—growing and dying, living in happiness or sorrow, labouring and consuming, thinking and creating. And yet, if we revert from the printed matter to our real life, and cast a broad glance on society as it is, we are struck with the infinitesimal part played by government in our life. Millions of human beings live and die without having had anything to do with government. Every day millions of transactions are made without the slightest interference of government; and those who enter into agreements have not the slightest intention of breaking bargains. Nay, those agreements which are not protected by government (those of the exchange, or card debts) am perhaps better kept than any others. The simple habit of keeping one's word, the desire of not losing confidence, are quite sufficient in an overwhelming majority of cases to enforce the keeping of agreements. Of course it may be said that there is still the government which might enforce them if necessary. But without speaking of the numberless cases which could not even be brought before a court, everyone who has the slightest acquaintance with trade will undoubtedly confirm the assertion that, if there were not so strong a feeling of honour in keeping agreements, trade itself would become utterly impossible.

In a passage of the third volume of Capital7, Marx very aptly describes the material side of social life, and especially its economic side, that of production and consumption, as an extension of human metabolism, i.e. of man’s exchange of matter with nature. He clearly states that our freedom must always be limited by the necessities of this metabolism. All that can be achieved in the direction of making us more free, he says, is ‘to conduct this metabolism rationally, … with a minimum expenditure of energy and under conditions most dignified and adequate to human nature. Yet it will still remain the kingdom of necessity. Only outside and beyond it can that development of human faculties begin which constitutes an end in itself—the true kingdom of freedom. But this can flourish only on the ground occupied by the kingdom of necessity, which remains its basis …’ Immediately before this, Marx says: ‘The kingdom of freedom actually begins only where drudgery, enforced by hardship and by external purposes, ends; it thus lies, quite naturally, beyond the sphere of proper material production.’ And he ends the whole passage by drawing a practical conclusion which clearly shows that it was his sole aim to open the way into that non-materialist kingdom of freedom for all men alike: ‘The shortening of the labour day is the fundamental pre-requisite.’ In my opinion this passage leaves no doubt regarding what I have called the dualism of Marx’s practical view of life. With Hegel he thinks that freedom is the aim of historical development. With Hegel he identifies the realm of freedom with that of man’s mental life. But he recognizes that we are not purely spiritual beings; that we are not fully free, nor capable of ever achieving full freedom, unable as we shall always be to emancipate ourselves entirely from the necessities of our metabolism, and thus from productive toil. All we can achieve is to improve upon the exhausting and undignified conditions of labour, to make them more worthy of man, to equalize them, and to reduce drudgery to such an extent that all of us can be free for some part of our lives. This, I believe, is the central idea of Marx’s ‘view of life’; central also in so far as it seems to me to be the most influential of his doctrines.

Many, including my late grandfather, fled the mother country because of economic hardship from the Opium Wars. England coerced China into accepting the black tar in payment for tea and cracked China open like a ginkgo nut. Old injuries still itch.

Why did they do it? They did it because the Democrats promised them economic benefits. These benefits meant a great deal to blacks then living through the hardships of segregation and the Great Depression. Democrats offered blacks some of the same security that blacks had during slavery—in which the basic needs of blacks were met on the plantation—and blacks, during a desperate time, went for it.

We, all of us, have been affected by war, hurricanes, drought, economic hardship. The result is a disease—an epidemic—called ‘hopelessness.’ It’s carried on the air around here, and I am fighting it.” My

Castro’s revolution, with all of its supposedly good intentions, put a stop to the growth of Havana. Of course it put an end to the Mafia controlling the casinos and entertainment, but for them it was a minor setback. They just packed their bags and went to Las Vegas where they expanded and developed “The Strip!” Batista and his followers fled Cuba for the Dominican Republic, Europe and South Florida. Many Cubans lost everything they had but others fled taking their wealth with them. The upheaval in 1959 marked the beginning of austerity for this former freewheeling city. The communistic de-privatization of all businesses, along with the embargo imposed by the United States, created a serious decline in Havana’s economy. The constant pressure to nationalize, as well as the severe crackdown by the régime to keep people in line, curtailed growth and placed an enormous hardship on the Cuban people. Since the Castro Revolution, the people of Havana have been severely affected, because of the absence of commerce with its former trading partner, the United States, located only 90 miles to the north. In all Havana has taken a severe toll economically, with its dilapidated houses, and the pre-1959 cars on the streets of the city being a testimony to the bygone era. It is only now that with the hope of normalization between the governments of Cuba and the United States that perhaps the people will benefit. For the greatest part, the Port of Havana has also been bypassed, chiefly due to the restrictions placed on them by the United States. However, the Cuban government is now attempting a comeback by attracting tourism from Canada, Mexico, the Bahamas, Latin America, Asia and Europe. The city of Havana has renovated the Sierra Maestra Cruise Port, but only very few cruise companies consider Havana a port of call. Slowly, German and British ships started to arrive, including the Fred Olsen Cruises and Carnival Cruise Line. Technically Real Estate Brokers and Automobile Dealers are illegal in Cuba, although real-estate offices and car dealerships are blatantly open for business. The buying and selling of real estate and cars, which was forbidden for many years, can now be done because of some changes brought about by Raúl Castro, but only by full-time residents of Cuba. However, gray market sales are thriving through the use of friends and family as proxies.

Tsitsi and the rest of the nation who now found themselves degreed and broke, her parents and the parents of the nation with degreed children and still broke, had thought-convinced themselves-that the poverty of their lives could be eliminated by 'professionalisation'.

Instead he was grabbing at whatever was available in this system that no longer held the old predictable relationship between effort and result as true

Unfortunately, it would seem that economic power, despite temporary hardships, is the only responsible course open to the free world.

But the downward revision of expectations for the future may be still more important than diminished prosperity in the present. And if what you mean by “capitalism” is not just the operation of market forces but the religion of free trade as a just and even perfect social system, you have to expect, at the very least, that a major reformation is coming. The predictions of economic hardship, remember, are enormous—$551 trillion in damages at just 3.7 degrees of warming, 23 percent of potential global income lost, under business-as-usual conditions, by 2100. That is an impact much more severe than the Great Depression; it would be ten times as deep as the more recent Great Recession, which still so rattles us. And it would not be temporary. It is hard to imagine any system surviving that kind of decline intact, no matter how “big.

What Americans who support “socialism” actually want is what the rest of the world calls social democracy: a market economy, but with extreme hardship limited by a strong social safety net and extreme inequality limited by progressive taxation. They want us to look like Denmark or Norway, not Venezuela.

The public is willing to follow sensible, evidence-based directions. But experts can only ask people to sacrifice so much before resistance starts to form, given the potential social and economic hardship. If the CDC expects Americans to follow its guidance, it will have to be more transparent and get the public invested in how these decisions are made.

The next Fourth Turning is due to begin shortly after the new millennium, midway through the Oh-Oh decade. Around the year 2005, a sudden spark will catalyze a Crisis mood. Remnants of the old social order will disintegrate. Political and economic trust will implode. Real hardship will beset the land, with severe distress that could involve questions of class, race, nation, and empire. Yet this time of trouble will bring seeds of social rebirth. Americans will share a regret about recent mistakes—and a resolute new consensus about what to do.

I think adolescents will always crave both standing out and asserting themselves while also needing to fit in somewhere. A subculture can function as a substitute family for teens who are getting ready to move away from their birth families, but years away from starting new ones of their own. That might explain why the “hipster” movement that began in the aughts and continues today extends into people in their twenties and thirties, as cultural factors like economic hardship continue to prolong youth and delay parenthood.

Europe’s lingering economic malaise is not just a slow recovery. Mainstream forecasts predict that hundreds of millions of Europeans will miss out on the opportunities that past generations took for granted. The crisis-burden falls hardest on Europe’s youth whose lifetime earning-profiles have already suffered. Money, however, is not the main issue. This is no longer just an economic crisis. The economic hardship has fuelled populism and political extremism. In a setting that is more unstable than any time since the 1930s, nationalistic, anti-European rhetoric is becoming mainstream. Political parties argue for breaking up the Eurozone and the EU. It is not inconceivable that far-right or far-left populist parties could soon hold or share power in several EU nations. Many influential observers recognise the bind in which Europe finds itself. A broad gamut of useful solutions have been suggested. Yet existing rules, institutions and political bargains prevent effective action. Policymakers seem to have painted themselves into a corner.

The economic hardship of my family and of many others, a century ago, was caused by a monopoly, the American Tobacco Company, which had eliminated all competitors and thus was able to reduce as it pleased the prices it paid to farmers. The American Tobacco Company was the work of James B. Duke of Durham, North Carolina, and New York City, who, disregarding any other consideration, followed a capitalist logic to absolute control of his industry and, incidentally, of the economic fate of thousands of families such as my own.

What should a city accomplish after it meets our basic needs of food, shelter, and security? • The city should strive to maximize joy and minimize hardship. • It should lead us toward health rather than sickness. • It should offer us real freedom to live, move, and build our lives as we wish. • It should build resilience against economic or environmental shocks. • It should be fair in the way it apportions space, services, mobility, joys, hardships, and costs. • Most of all, it should enable us to build and strengthen the bonds between friends, families, and strangers that give life meaning,

Keynes believed that “a point may soon be reached, much sooner perhaps than we are all of us aware of, when these [economic] needs are satisfied in the sense that we prefer to devote our further energies to non-economic purposes.”8 He looked expectantly to a future in which machines would produce an abundance of nearly free goods and services, liberating the human race from toil and hardships and freeing the human mind from a preoccupation with strictly pecuniary interests to focus more on the “arts for life” and the quest for transcendence.

about to harness that power and make our wildest dreams become our reality. There will be a learning curve and I know that it may be scary for you, but I promise to be there every day for you and continue to train you with love, compassion, and acceptance. I’m going to be the best damn boss in the world. Step 4: Accept Your Mind’s Gift It took years of programing for your mind to believe limiting beliefs. As a kid, you probably picked up the majority of them from your parents, friends, or at school. You were given a lot of misinformation about your true nature that caused you to take on limiting beliefs that have been passed down from generation to generation. These beliefs weren’t passed down out of malice. They were passed down as a form of protection based on fear and lack. For an example, while growing up you probably heard over and over again: “Money doesn’t grow on trees.” If currently you’re experiencing anything other than abundance, you probably heard that phrase or something similar over and over again until you adopted it as your own limiting belief. That belief was meant to protect you from experiencing economic hardship. Your parents told you this in hopes that you would be frugal and not waste money so that you wouldn’t experience the hardship that they did. However, that limiting belief that was passed down to protect you is causing you to feel bad and making it damn near impossible for you to attract financial security into your life. What if you were taught that money flows easily and freely? You would most likely have that belief and never experience financial insecurity in your life. Look at rich families that come from “old money.” They stay rich forever, not only because they pass down their money, but because they see that money always comes and that it’s easy to make money if you try. That belief shapes their thoughts and feelings around money and therefore, it manifests their wealthy reality. This last step is about turning your lemons into a refreshing cup of lemonade. Any time you catch your mind feeding you a negative thought, let it raise a red flag and be an opportunity to have a conversation with your mind. Believe me. Your mind will continue to feed you worst-case scenario thoughts and visions. You can go from financially insecure to secure in an instant, but it takes time to dismantle years of fear-based programming and reprogram your beliefs. You will have to sit down with your mind and train it every day. You don’t have to dedicate chunks of time every day and practice as if you were trying to become an Olympic athlete. It’s a lot easier and effortless on your part. Your mind will tell you exactly when it needs some more training by having a limiting belief that causes a bad feeling. Those worst-case scenario thoughts and visions aren’t your mind trying to sabotage you. It’s your mind taking a seat in your classroom and asking for more training.

Forbearance or Deferment: Which Way to Go? Repaying student loan is a long journey as The Student Loan Help Center CEO, Bruce Mesnekoff said, at times you might face some potholes on the road, making your ride a bit difficult but there are some ways you can opt for help. Student loan forbearance and deferment are such two options which help you when you are facing money crunch and need some time to repay your student loans. Both of the options are specific to every individual depending on your financial state. Forbearance or deferment can be considered if you want to postpone your repayment for some duration or want to decrease the amount. Both of these are discussed in detail in this article. Forbearance Forbearance is used when you are facing monetary issues for a short period of time i.e. when you know you will come out of the money problems soon. Forbearance is provided for maximum period of one year at one time.Now there are two kinds of forbearance, mandatory and discretionary. When forbearance is must it’s called mandatory and this happens when: Your student loan repayment is 20% or more of your grossly monthly income. You are eligible for public loan forgiveness You are enrolled in dental internship or medical internship You are serving in a national service position Forbearance may or may not be provided by servicer if you are facing financial crunch or illness. One word of caution here would be to at least pay your interest every month because during forbearance you accruemonthly interest and if you don’t pay it as it gets added to principal. As a result you have to a pay huge amount at the end of the loan and also after forbearance is over to become current. Deferment Deferment also works onsimilar lines as forbearance. Though there is one advantage that subsidized direct loan, Perkins loans, federal Stafford loans do notaccrue interest during deferment, only non-subsidized loans accrue interest. You can defer loan repayment for the entire duration if you are in school or on military duty. If you are unemployed or facing any financial hardship the deferment period is of three years. You can qualify for deferment under following circumstances: If you are in school If you are on active military duty If you are qualifying for Perkins loan cancellation If you are unemployed If you are receiving federal or state assistance. Using deferment or forbearance is good option to keep your account “current” and save it from becoming delinquent or going in default. It saves your credit rating. If provided the opportunity to choose out of the two, always try and go for deferment if you can qualify for it as it’s more economical than forbearance. Contact The Student Loan Help Center to know more about Consolidation of your Student Loans.

When you are constantly subjected to situations that engage your stress response and don’t allow your body to recover, toxic stress occurs. Chronic neglect, economic hardship, unemployment,

History helps explain why the financial crisis was so much more beneficial to right-wing populists than to their left-wing counterparts. ‘Jail the bankers!’ no doubt has its appeal as a slogan, but blaming economic hardships and disappointments on immigrants and foreigners would seem to be a more politically potent strategy. Likewise, while ‘Regulate Wall Street More Tightly Again!’ resonates with some voters, ‘Make America Great Again’ resonates with more. There have been many financial crises in the Western world since the first era of globalization in the late nineteenth century. In most cases, right-wing populists have been the political beneficiaries.33

INTERVIEWER: You mentioned economic freedom. Does the writer need it? Faulkner: No. The writer doesn’t need economic freedom. All he needs is a pencil and some paper. I’ve never known anything good in writing to come from having accepted any free gift of money. The good writer never applies to a foundation. He’s too busy writing something. If he isn’t first rate he fools himself by saying he hasn’t got time or economic freedom. Good art can come out of thieves, bootleggers, or horse swipes. People really are afraid to find out just how much hardship and poverty they can stand. They are afraid to find out how tough they are. Nothing can destroy the good writer. The only thing that can alter the good writer is death. Good ones don’t have time to bother with success or getting rich. Success is feminine and like a woman;if you cringe before her, she will override you. So the way to treat her is to show her the back of your hand. Then maybe she will do the crawling.

Sarah Hill and her colleagues found that when women are primed by cues of economic hardship, they actually ramp up their spending on beauty-enhancement products—a phenomenon called “the lipstick effect” (Hill, Rodeheffer, Griskevicius, Durante, & White, 2012). These beauty-enhancement products presumably are used by women to attract men with resources.

The construction of the Canadian Pacific Railway was the defining event of its era, around which most other events orbited—a catalyst for the powerful global forces that were pushing the land toward something new. Its story is a sweeping tale, with technological, political, economic, geographical and social components. It involves the dreams of politicians in Ottawa, Toronto and Montreal; the financing genius and manipulative shenanigans of railway promoters to devise a business plan that would justify the expense; the feats of engineers to push a railway through the rock and bog around Lake Superior and through the rugged mountains of British Columbia; the adventures and hardships of explorers and surveyors; the occasional resistance of Indigenous peoples; and the terrific and horrific work of the labourers who poured their lives into it.

25:25,35,39. when your brother will be low. Meaning: when your fellow Israelite will be so poor that he has difficulty holding onto his land. It has long been noted that the three times that this phrase occurs in this chapter reflect three stages of increasing hardship. In the first, the person has to sell his land. In the second, he has both lost his land and is without money. And in the third, he himself is sold (or sells himself) into servitude. And at each stage, the man's fellow Israelite is commanded to help him. If he has to sell his land, one must redeem it for him and then give it back to him in the jubilee year. If he is without money, one must lend him money without any charge or interest. And if he is sold, one must not treat him as a slave. Here the units of laws convey the specific requirements while the arrangement conveys the basic principle, namely, that as one's brother's need increases, so does one's responsibility to help him. Further, one must thus help one's fellow as a matter of law. This chapter never speaks of charity, nor does it appeal to one's feelings of compassion or generosity. An unfortunate Israelite need not feel degraded to be poor nor ashamed to be pitied. Economic suffering is rather treated as a reality of life, which one is required by law to remedy. The poor man thus can know that his brother is helping him because the system requires brothers to help one another and that, if the shoe were on the other foot, he would do the same for his brother. This is not to say that the text denies or discourages feelings of compassion, but only that the fulfillment of the law is not made dependent upon the presence or absence of such feelings.

Out of New York came a governor from the moneyed class, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and he drove Murray to fits—being from that hated family. (FDR’s cousin, Teddy, had forced Murray to remove a white supremacist plank from the Oklahoma constitution before he would allow it to join the union.) At first, Franklin Roosevelt was dismissed as a man without heft, a dilettante running on one of the nation’s great names. Then he took up the cause of the “forgotten man”—the broken farmer on the plains, the apple vendor in the city, the factory hand now hitting the rails. And though he spoke with an accent that sounded funny to anyone outside the mid-Atlantic states, and he seemed a bit jaunty with that cigarette holder, Roosevelt roused people with a blend of hope and outrage. He knew hardship and the kind of emotional panic that comes when your world collapses. He had been felled by double pneumonia in 1918, which nearly killed him, and polio in 1921, which left him partially paralyzed. He had been told time and again in the prime of his young adulthood that he had no future, that he would not walk again, that he might not live much longer. “If you spent two years in bed trying to wiggle your toe, after that anything would seem easy,” he said. Hoover believed the cure for the Depression was to prime the pump at the producer end, helping factories and business owners get up and running again. Goods would roll off the lines, prosperity would follow. Roosevelt said it made no sense to gin up the machines of production if people could not afford to buy what came out the factory door. “These unhappy times call for the building of plans that rest upon the forgotten, the unorganized, the indispensable units of economic powers,” FDR said on April 7, 1932, in a radio speech that defined the central theme of his campaign. He called for faith “in the forgotten man at the bottom of the economic pyramid.” That forgotten man was likely to be a person with prairie dirt under the fingernails. “How much do the shallow thinkers realize that approximately one half of our population, fifty or sixty million people, earn their living by farming or in small towns where existence immediately depends on farms?

First: in the field of politics there is a most insistent demand for new leaders, a demand which indicates nothing less than an emergency. Second: the banking business is undergoing a reform. Third: industry calls for new leaders. The future leader in industry, to endure, must regard himself as a quasi-public official whose duty it is to manage his trust in such a way that it will work hardship on no individual or group of individuals. Fourth: the religious leader of the future will be forced to give more attention to the temporal needs of his followers, in the solution of their economic and personal problems of the present, and less attention to the dead past and the yet unborn future.

In the context of the Cold War, the outlook of a power vacuum in the centre of Europe presented a serious danger that Soviet communism could fill it. A subjugated, humiliated Germany living a regime of economic hardship could provide a breeding ground conducive to anti-Western feelings and facilitate the penetration of communism. For the United States, now undisputed leader in the Western Hemisphere, the Cold War Soviet threat decidedly tipped the balance in favour of allowing room for a German recovery.

Sri Lanka has come to a crossroads. In the wake of disastrous economic mismanagement by the government, the country is running short on fuel. Low-income communities are bearing the brunt of current hardships, including massive price hikes on essential goods. In response to these conditions,

Can economic hardship, such as the loss of a job, be a blessing in disguise? Perhaps yes, if the result is the awakening of an entrepreneurial spirit and the creation of a new business.

The conclusion of this book is that antisemitism moved many thousands of "ordinary" Germans— and would have moved millions more, had they been appropriately positioned—to slaughter Jews. Not economic hardship, not the coercive means of a totalitarian state, not social psychological pressure, not invariable psychological propensities, but ideas about Jews that were pervasive in Germany, and had been for decades, induced ordinary Germans to kill unarmed, defenseless Jewish men, women, and children by the thousands, systematically and without pity.

An all-too-affluent society, not used to hardships and physical and intellectual effort, is often quickly corrupted, and its reflexes, dulled. It no longer knows how to value what it obtains too easily. It tends to create a narcissistic, materialistic, and lazy culture, which generates a less competitive young generation preoccupied solely with immediate enjoyment.

If there is a single, overarching lesson in the Trump victory, perhaps it is this: Never, ever underestimate the power of hate. Never underestimate the power of direct appeals to power over “the other”—the migrant, the Muslim, black people, women. Especially during times of economic hardship. Because when large numbers of white men find themselves frightened and insecure, and those men were raised in a social system built on elevating their humanity over all these others’, a lot of them get mad.

Historians with virtual unanimity agree that the harshness toward Germany of the Paris peace treaty helped create the economic hardship, nationalistic reaction, and political chaos that fostered the rise of Adolf Hitler.

There is something infinitely worse than being forced to work. It is being forced not to work. In the main, that depression was more of a blessing than it was a curse, if analyzed in the light of the changes it brought.” Is Hill being harsh here, or is he looking beyond the immediate cause and effect of economic disaster to the underlying spiritual result that comes from a true crisis? Can our present economic travails be more of a blessing than a curse? Can economic hardship, such as the loss of a job, be a blessing in disguise? Perhaps yes, if the result is the awakening of an entrepreneurial spirit and the creation of a new business.

No one can know what would have happened. One can only know what did happen. Influenza did visit the peace conference. Influenza did strike Wilson. Influenza did weaken him physically, and—precisely at the most crucial point of negotiations—influenza did at the least drain from him stamina and the ability to concentrate. That much is certain. And it is almost certain that influenza affected his mind in other, deeper ways. Historians with virtual unanimity agree that the harshness toward Germany of the Paris peace treaty helped create the economic hardship, nationalistic reaction, and political chaos that fostered the rise of Adolf Hitler. It

To identify “status anxiety” as the source of mass protest movements—and also as the reason to dismiss them as irrational—sounded ever so scientific, but it turned out to be completely arbitrary, a label the critic (or historian) could affix to almost any group he chose in order to disparage it. To apply the term to the Populists, Hofstadter basically had to ignore the movement’s voluminous and extremely rational concern with practical economic matters. Remember, the Pops came up during a time of terrible farm prices and a severe business depression. They faced these developments squarely and with comparatively little scapegoating, kind of an impressive achievement for the nineteenth century when you think about it. Dismissing their discontent as “status anxiety” comes close to denying the reality of economic hardship altogether.

They have overcome their own limitations—whether physical challenges, economic hardship, past failures, or simply their own limiting beliefs—to achieve astounding success.

This shift away from class and towards gender identity, race, and sexuality troubles traditional economic leftists, who fear that the left is being taken away from the working class and hijacked by the bourgeoisie within the academy. More worryingly still, it could drive working-class voters into the arms of the populist right.42 If the group it has traditionally supported—the working class—believe that the political left has abandoned them, the left may lose many of the voters it requires to attain political power. As it divests itself of universalism, this resentment is likely to grow. New York University historian Linda Gordon has summarized working-class resentment of intersectionality: Some criticism is ill-informed but understandable nevertheless. A poor white man associates intersectionality with being told that he has white privilege: “So when that feminist told me I had ‘white privilege,’ I told her that my white skin didn’t do shit.” He explains: “Have you ever spent a frigid northern-Illinois winter without heat or running water? I have. At 12 years old were you making ramen noodles in a coffee maker with water you fetched from a public bathroom? I was.”43 As intersectionality developed and became dominant in both mainstream political activism and scholarship, it became increasingly common to hear that “straight, white, cisgendered men” were the problem. For example, Suzanna Danuta Walters, editor-in-chief of the prestigious feminist journal Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, penned a 2018 op-ed for the Washington Post that asks, with startling frankness, “Why can’t we hate men?”44 This is unlikely to endear intersectionalists to heterosexual white men—especially if they have experienced poverty, homelessness, or other major hardships. OF

Help people soar and they’ll build their own economic prosperity, thank you. The paternalism of an economic system that first creates economic hardship for millions, then pretends to know how to assuage it, is delusional. Our current economic model is a holdover from an aristocratic perspective that views people as servants to a system; but our economy should be a system that is a servant to the people.

The paternalism of an economic system that first creates economic hardship for millions, then pretends to know how to assuage it, is delusional.

The peak of the climate episode we know as the Little Ice Age coincides with massive changes in European societies. To some extent at least, improved agricultural techniques, stronger and more international markets, and an increasingly globalized system of economic domination (of growth based on exploitation) allowed Europeans to develop more successful responses to climate change and to the hardships it inflicted. These responses were answered in their turn by transformations in every aspect of culture and society.

In their new homeland, these immigrants work hard and endure prejudice and economic hardships, but they do not give up. As the years go by they become the core of a new working or middle class. Not all their dreams may come true, but the hope for a better life is passed on to their children. This is why when one of them or their descendants becomes a winner, when one of them crosses the frontiers of poverty or failure, they all win in some way.

Since bigotry traditionally flourishes in times of economic instability and unsettling social change, it’s not surprising that the Great Depression and its accompanying turmoil provided another fertile seedbed for intolerance toward Jews. “Economic hardship was taking its toll,” noted the Anti-Defamation League’s Arnold Forster. “People needed a scapegoat for their Depression miseries.

In much the same way, the rise of the religious right and, with it, culture wars over “family values” and other highly polarizing issues (for example, immigration) have served to insulate American politics from the sharp rise in economic inequality since the late 1970s. Right-wing media outlets and think tanks have spun tales that led voters with stagnating incomes to attribute their hardship to minorities—African Americans, immigrants, women on welfare—that the government has supposedly favored

We were privileged young people being groomed to steward society; seeing injustice in our surroundings with our own eyes was important. But as well intended as those outings were, I worry that they did more harm than good. How is that so? No one ever talked to us about the social and economic injustice that led to such hardships in the hood in the first place. None of us had any education on job discrimination, housing discrimination, the cycle of poverty, or the mental health crisis. No one told us that in the preceding years, Ronald Reagan had cut funding for low-income housing, jobs programs, and mental health institutions, all resulting in a massive rise in homelessness that he once had the temerity to say was by “choice.”18

Our economic model, in a big sense — our whole economic system — protects itself by making people dependent upon it. By making sure that any change, any departure from that system, is going to be hard. And it’s going to lead to hardship, both individually and on a large scale as well. We can’t change our economic system without it falling apart, without things crashing really hard.

During this period, he undertook an extensive survey of economic and living conditions of Harijans in the Puttur Taluk. He and his volunteers visited scores of villages and noted down the conditions of extreme hardship and degradation in which Harijans lived. Their dire need was, he noticed, good drinking water. Sadly, even when Karanth and his group attempted to dig separate wells for them, those poor Harijans as they had come to accept their lot through centuries, hardly showed any interest in such ameliorating work. This survey and the close contact with the Harijans paved the way for Karanth’s first major and influential Realistic novel Chomami Dudi (‘Choma’s Drum') in 1936; later, it was made into a film also.

We have all heard the sceptics who warn that serious action to fight climate change and energy scarcity will lead us into decades of hardship and sacrifice. When it comes to cities, they are absolutely wrong. In fact, sustainability and the good life can be by-products of the very same interventions. Alex Boston, the Golder planner who advises dozens of cities on climate and energy, doesn’t even ask civic leaders about their greenhouse gas reduction aspirations when they first start talking. ‘We ask, “What are your core community priorities?”’ says Boston. ‘People don’t talk about climate change. They say they want economic development, livability, mobility, housing affordability, taxes, all stuff that relates to happiness.’ These are just the concerns that have caused us to delay action on climate change. But Boston insists that by focusing on the relationship between energy, efficiency and the things that make life better, cities can succeed where scary data, scientists, logic and conscience have failed. The happy city plan is an energy plan. It is a climate plan. It is a belt-tightening plan for cash-strapped cities. It is also an economic plan, a jobs plan and a corrective for weak systems. It is a plan for resilience. THE GREEN SURPRISE Consider the by-product of the happy city project in Bogotá. Enrique Peñalosa told me that he did not feel the urgency of the global environmental crisis when he was elected mayor. His urban transformation was not motivated by a concern for spotted owls or melting glaciers or soon-to-be-flooded residents of villages on some distant coral atoll. Still, a funny thing happened near the end of his term. After making Bogotá easier, cleaner, more beautiful and more fair, the mayor and his city started winning accolades from environmental organizations. In 2000 Peñalosa and Eric Britton were called to Sweden to accept the Stockholm Challenge Award for the Environment, for pulling 850,000 vehicles off the street during the world’s biggest car-free day. Then the TransMilenio bus system was lauded for producing massive reductions in Bogotá’s carbon dioxide emissions.fn1, 3 It was the first transport system to be accredited under the UN’s Clean Development Mechanism – meaning that Bogotá could actually sell carbon credits to polluters in rich countries. For its public space transformations under mayors Peñalosa, Antanas Mockus and their successor, Luis Garzón, the city won the Golden Lion prize from the prestigious Venice Architecture Biennale. For its bicycle routes, its new parks, its Ciclovía, its upside-down roads and that hugely popular car-free day, Bogotá was held up as a shining example of green urbanism. Not one of its programmes was directed at the crisis of climate change, but the city offered tangible proof of the connection between urban design, experience and the carbon energy system. It suggested that the green city, the low-carbon city and the happy city might be exactly the same destination.

They were equally victims of economic hardship and, still worse, of economic hopelessness, a hopelessness that they suffered more easily by identifying it with their country’s.