Fund Contribution Quotes

Most politicians are corrupt as they do not represent the masses that voted for them, but rather they choose to return numerous favors to the corporations that funded their election campaigns.

When parties and elections are financed not by public funds but by private contributions, the political forum is so constrained by the wishes of the dominant interests that the basic measures needed to establish just constitutional rule are seldom properly presented.

Historically one of the main defects of constitutional government has been the failure to insure the fair value of political liberty. The necessary corrective steps have not been taken, indeed, they never seem to have been seriously entertained. Disparities in the distribution of property and wealth that far exceed what is compatible with political equality have generally been tolerated by the legal system. Public resources have not been devoted to maintaining the institutions required for the fair value of political liberty. Essentially the fault lies in the fact that the democratic political process is at best regulated rivalry; it does not even in theory have the desirable properties that price theory ascribes to truly competitive markets. Moreover, the effects of injustices in the political system are much more grave and long lasting than market imperfections. Political power rapidly accumulates and becomes unequal; and making use of the coercive apparatus of the state and its law, those who gain the advantage can often assure themselves of a favored position. Thus inequities in the economic and social system may soon undermine whatever political equality might have existed under fortunate historical conditions. Universal suffrage is an insufficient counterpoise; for when parties and elections are financed not by public funds but by private contributions, the political forum is so constrained by the wishes of the dominant interests that the basic measures needed to establish just constitutional rule are seldom properly presented. These questions, however, belong to political sociology. 116 I mention them here as a way of emphasizing that our discussion is part of the theory of justice and must not be mistaken for a theory of the political system. We are in the way of describing an ideal arrangement, comparison with which defines a standard for judging actual institutions, and indicates what must be maintained to justify departures from it.

I did not want to be an ingrate, but I had trouble seeing why writing support emails for a venture-funded startup should offer more economic stability and reward than creative work or civic contributions.

How to Survive Racism in an Organization that Claims to be Antiracist: 10. Ask why they want you. Get as much clarity as possible on what the organization has read about you, what they understand about you, what they assume are your gifts and strengths. What does the organization hope you will bring to the table? Do those answers align with your reasons for wanting to be at the table? 9. Define your terms. You and the organization may have different definitions of words like "justice", "diveristy", or "antiracism". Ask for definitions, examples, or success stories to give you a better idea of how the organization understands and embodies these words. Also ask about who is in charge and who is held accountable for these efforts. Then ask yourself if you can work within the structure. 8. Hold the organization to the highest vision they committed to for as long as you can. Be ready to move if the leaders aren't prepared to pursue their own stated vision. 7. Find your people. If you are going to push back against the system or push leadership forward, it's wise not to do so alone. Build or join an antiracist cohort within the organization. 6. Have mentors and counselors on standby. Don't just choose a really good friend or a parent when seeking advice. It's important to have on or two mentors who can give advice based on their personal knowledge of the organization and its leaders. You want someone who can help you navigate the particular politics of your organization. 5. Practice self-care. Remember that you are a whole person, not a mule to carry the racial sins of the organization. Fall in love, take your children to the park, don't miss doctors' visits, read for pleasure, dance with abandon, have lots of good sex, be gentle with yourself. 4. Find donors who will contribute to the cause. Who's willing to keep the class funded, the diversity positions going, the social justice center operating? It's important for the organization to know the members of your cohort aren't the only ones who care. Demonstrate that there are stakeholders, congregations members, and donors who want to see real change. 3. Know your rights. There are some racist things that are just mean, but others are against the law. Know the difference, and keep records of it all. 2. Speak. Of course, context matters. You must be strategic about when, how, to whom, and about which situations you decide to call out. But speak. Find your voice and use it. 1. Remember: You are a creative being who is capable of making change. But it is not your responsibility to transform an entire organization.

I believe in the division of labor. You send us to Congress; we pass laws under which you make money...and out of your profits, you further contribute to our campaign funds to send us back again to pass more laws to enable you to make more money.

It’s not easy to feel good about yourself when you are constantly being told you’re rubbish and/or part of the problem. That’s often the situation for people working in the public sector, whether these be nurses, civil servants or teachers. The static metrics used to measure the contribution of the public sector, and the influence of Public Choice theory on making governments more ‘efficient’, has convinced many civil-sector workers they are second-best. It’s enough to depress any bureaucrat and induce him or her to get up, leave and join the private sector, where there is often more money to be made. So public actors are forced to emulate private ones, with their almost exclusive interest in projects with fast paybacks. After all, price determines value. You, the civil servant, won’t dare to propose that your agency could take charge, bring a helpful long-term perspective to a problem, consider all sides of an issue (not just profitability), spend the necessary funds (borrow if required) and – whisper it softly – add public value. You leave the big ideas to the private sector which you are told to simply ‘facilitate’ and enable. And when Apple or whichever private company makes billions of dollars for shareholders and many millions for top executives, you probably won’t think that these gains actually come largely from leveraging the work done by others – whether these be government agencies, not-for-profit institutions, or achievements fought for by civil society organizations including trade unions that have been critical for fighting for workers’ training programmes.

Success is finding purpose in what you do. Success is an expression of passion, the realization of a sustainable business. Success is contributing to the lives of others. And ultimately, I believe that success is generating enough income to fund your ideal lifestyle,

we tend to think that innovation comes from bureaucratic funding, through planning, or by putting people through a Harvard Business School class by one Highly Decorated Professor of Innovation and Entrepreneurship (who never innovated anything) or hiring a consultant (who never innovated anything). This is a fallacy—note for now the disproportionate contribution of uneducated technicians and entrepreneurs to various technological leaps, from the Industrial Revolution to the emergence of Silicon Valley, and you will see what I mean.

The funds are good at the moment," said the treasurer, with the bankbook in front of him. "The firms have been generous of late. Max Linder & Co. paid five hundred to be left alone. Walker Brothers sent in a hundred; but I took it on myself to return it and ask for five. If I do not hear by Wednesday, their winding gear may get out of order. We had to burn their breaker last year before they became reasonable. Then the West Section Coaling Company has paid its annual contribution. We have enough on hand to meet any obligations." "What

After the New Deal, economists began referring to America’s retirement-finance model as a “three-legged stool.” This sturdy tripod was composed of Social Security, private pensions, and combined investments and savings. In recent years, of course, two of those legs have been kicked out. Many Americans saw their assets destroyed by the Great Recession; even before the economic collapse, many had been saving less and less. And since the 1980s, employers have been replacing defined-benefit pensions that are funded by employers and guarantee a monthly sum in perpetuity with 401(k) plans, which often rely on employee contributions and can run dry before death. Marketed as instruments of financial liberation that would allow workers to make their own investment choices, 401(k)s were part of a larger cultural drift in America away from shared responsibilities toward a more precarious individualism. Translation: 401(k)s are vastly cheaper for companies than pension plans. “Over the last generation, we have witnessed a massive transfer of economic risk from broad structures of insurance, including those sponsored by the corporate sector as well as by government, onto the fragile balance sheets of American families,” Yale political scientist Jacob S. Hacker writes in his book The Great Risk Shift. The overarching message: “You are on your own.

Think of the following event: A collection of hieratic persons (from Harvard or some such place) lecture birds on how to fly. Imagine bald males in their sixties, dressed in black robes, officiating in a form of English that is full of jargon, with equations here and there for good measure. The bird flies. Wonderful confirmation! They rush to the department of ornithology to write books, articles, and reports stating that the bird has obeyed them, an impeccable causal inference. The Harvard Department of Ornithology is now indispensable for bird flying. It will get government research funds for its contribution.

Extorting money in the form of campaign contributions is not simply about getting reelected. Many politicians aggressively fund-raise even though they face little or no opposition for reelection. Politicians have discovered a creative way to transfer donations into subsidies designed to benefit their lifestyles

The three Coffeehouse Investor principles offer a sensible starting point for a young college graduate who is starting to contribute to a company-sponsored retirement account. All it takes is a commitment to save and an investment in one simple index fund to build wealth, ignore Wall Street, and get on with your life. Time is on your side.   On

Where are your free and compulsory schools? Does every one know how to read in the land of Dante and of Michael Angelo? Have you made public schools of your barracks? Have you not, like ourselves, an opulent war-budget and a paltry budget of education? Have not you also that passive obedience which is so easily converted into soldierly obedience? military establishment which pushes the regulations to the extreme of firing upon Garibaldi; that is to say, upon the living honor of Italy? Let us subject your social order to examination, let us take it where it stands and as it stands, let us view its flagrant offences, show me the woman and the child. It is by the amount of protection with which these two feeble creatures are surrounded that the degree of civilization is to be measured. Is prostitution less heartrending in Naples than in Paris? What is the amount of justice springs from your tribunals? Do you chance to be so fortunate as to be ignorant of the meaning of those gloomy words: public prosecution, legal infamy, prison, the scaffold, the executioner, the death penalty? Italians, with you as with us, Beccaria is dead and Farinace is alive. And then, let us scrutinize your state reasons. Have you a government which comprehends the identity of morality and politics? You have reached the point where you grant amnesty to heroes! Something very similar has been done in France. Stay, let us pass miseries in review, let each one contribute in his pile, you are as rich as we. Have you not, like ourselves, two condemnations, religious condemnation pronounced by the priest, and social condemnation decreed by the judge? Oh, great nation of Italy, thou resemblest the great nation of France! Alas! our brothers, you are, like ourselves, Misérables.

States should [...] vet agreements, cooperation schemes, and all forms of trade and dealing with Israel to screen for those directly contributing to the commission of the crimes of apartheid and persecution against Palestinians, mitigate the human rights impacts, and, where not possible, end the activities and funding found to facilitate these serious crimes.

At the time of the Frank Sheeran job interview by long-distance phone call, Jimmy Hoffa was coming off a period full of accomplishment and notoriety. In the mid- to late fifties Jimmy Hoffa had bulldogged and bluffed his way through the McClellan Committee hearings. He had become president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters. And he had survived several criminal indictments. More significantly for his future and that of his rank and file, in 1955 Jimmy Hoffa had created a pension fund whereby management made regular contributions toward the retirement of their Teamsters employees. Before the creation of the Central States Pension Fund, many truckers merely had their Social Security to fall back on when they retired.

Cixi’s lack of formal education was more than made up for by her intuitive intelligence, which she liked to use from her earliest years. In 1843, when she was seven, the empire had just finished its first war with the West, the Opium War, which had been started by Britain in reaction to Beijing clamping down on the illegal opium trade conducted by British merchants. China was defeated and had to pay a hefty indemnity. Desperate for funds, Emperor Daoguang (father of Cixi’s future husband) held back the traditional presents for his sons’ brides – gold necklaces with corals and pearls – and vetoed elaborate banquets for their weddings. New Year and birthday celebrations were scaled down, even cancelled, and minor royal concubines had to subsidise their reduced allowances by selling their embroidery on the market through eunuchs. The emperor himself even went on surprise raids of his concubines’ wardrobes, to check whether they were hiding extravagant clothes against his orders. As part of a determined drive to stamp out theft by officials, an investigation was conducted of the state coffer, which revealed that more “than nine million taels of silver had gone missing. Furious, the emperor ordered all the senior keepers and inspectors of the silver reserve for the previous forty-four years to pay fines to make up the loss – whether or not they were guilty. Cixi’s great-grandfather had served as one of the keepers and his share of the fine amounted to 43,200 taels – a colossal sum, next to which his official salary had been a pittance. As he had died a long time ago, his son, Cixi’s grandfather, was obliged to pay half the sum, even though he worked in the Ministry of Punishments and had nothing to do with the state coffer. After three years of futile struggle to raise money, he only managed to hand over 1,800 taels, and an edict signed by the emperor confined him to prison, only to be released if and when his son, Cixi’s father, delivered the balance. The life of the family was turned upside down. Cixi, then eleven years old, had to take in sewing jobs to earn extra money – which she would remember all her life and would later talk about to her ladies-in-waiting in the court. “As she was the eldest of two daughters and three sons, her father discussed the matter with her, and she rose to the occasion. Her ideas were carefully considered and practical: what possessions to sell, what valuables to pawn, whom to turn to for loans and how to approach them. Finally, the family raised 60 per cent of the sum, enough to get her grandfather out of prison. The young Cixi’s contribution to solving the crisis became a family legend, and her father paid her the ultimate compliment: ‘This daughter of mine is really more like a son!’ Treated like a son, Cixi was able to talk to her father about things that were normally closed areas for women. Inevitably their conversations touched on official business and state affairs, which helped form Cixi’s lifelong interest. Being consulted and having her views acted on, she acquired self-confidence and never accepted the com“common assumption that women’s brains were inferior to men’s. The crisis also helped shape her future method of rule. Having tasted the bitterness of arbitrary punishment, she would make an effort to be fair to her officials.

Buchanan took pride in what he called his academic entrepreneurship. Contributions from corporations such as General Electric and several oil companies and right-wing individuals flowed in, as anti–New Deal foundations provided funds to lure promising graduate students.53 Before long, the cofounders of the center were able to seize an opportunity to prove their enterprise’s value to the Byrd Organization on the issue that mattered most to its stalwarts in these years: the future of the public schools.

The world currently has two reasonably disturbing and disturbingly reasonable examples as to what this unraveling might look like: Zimbabwe and Venezuela. In both cases mismanagement par excellence destroyed the ability of both countries to produce their for-export goods—foodstuffs in the case of Zimbabwe, oil and oil products in the case of Venezuela—resulting in funds shortages so extreme, the ability of the countries to import largely collapsed. In Zimbabwe, the end result was more than a decade of negative economic growth, generating outcomes far worse than those of the Great Depression, with the bulk of the population reduced to subsistence farming. Venezuela wasn’t so . . . fortunate. It imported more than two-thirds of its foodstuffs before its economic collapse. Venezuelan oil production dropped so much, the country even lacks sufficient fuel to sow crops, contributing to the worst famine in the history of the Western Hemisphere. I don’t use these examples lightly. The word you are looking for to describe this outcome isn’t “deglobalize” or even “deindustrialize,” but instead “decivilize.

For example, say you have a child whose peers’ parents routinely bake homemade cookies for class fund-raisers. Cookies with little icing smiley faces and a separate batch of gluten-free ones for the pussies. Well, maybe you have neither the TIME nor the ENERGY to bake homemade cookies. And maybe you do have twenty dollars but you’re worried about what the other parents will think if you contribute store-bought Oreos to the bake sale. You see where I’m going with this, right? You need to (a) stop worrying about what other people think and (b) budget your fucks accordingly. No time and no energy? Oreos it is!

Many in the ruling generation have themselves become entrapped in economically unsustainable governmental schemes in which they are beneficiaries of and reliant on public programs, such as unfunded entitlements, to which they have contributed significantly into supposed “trust funds” and around which they have organized their retirement years. They also find self-deluding solace in the politically expedient and deceitful representations by the ruling class, which dismisses evidence of its own diversion and depletion of trust funds and its overall maladministration as the invention of doomsayers and scaremongers.

As data analytics, superfast computers, digital technology, and other breakthroughs enabled by science play a bigger and bigger role in informing medical decision-making, science has carved out a new and powerful role as the steadfast partner of the business of medicine—which is also enjoying a new day in the sun. It may surprise some people to learn that the business of medicine is not a twenty-first-century invention. Health care has always been a business, as far back as the days when Hippocrates and his peers practiced medicine. Whether it was three goats, a gold coin, or a bank note, some type of payment was typically exchanged for medical services, and institutions of government or learning funded research. However, since the 1970s, business has been the major force directing the practice of medicine. Together, the business and science of medicine are the new kids on the block—the bright, shiny new things. Ideally, as I’ve suggested, the art, science, and business of medicine would work together in a harmonious partnership, each upholding the other and contributing all it has to offer to the whole. And sometimes (as we’ll find in later chapters) this partnership works well. When it does, the results are magnificent for patients and doctors, not to mention for scientists and investors.

Turns out, I learned a lot from not being able to go to France. Turns out, those days standing on the concrete floor wearing a hairnet, a paper mask and gown, goggles, and plastic gloves, and- with a pair of tweezers- placing two pipe cleaners into a sterile box that came to me down a slow conveyor belt for eight excruciating hours a day taught me something important I couldn't have learned any other way. That job and the fifteen others I had before I graduated college were my own personal "educational opportunities." They changed my life for the better, though it took me a while to understand their worth. They gave me faith in my own abilities. They offered me a unique view of worlds that were both exotic and familiar to me. They kept things in perspective. They pissed me off. They opened my mind to realities I didn't know existed. They forced me to be resilient, to sacrifice, to see how little I knew, and also how much. They put me in close contact with people who could've funded the college educations of ten thousand kids and also with people who would've rightly fallen on the floor laughing had I complained to them about how unfair it was that after I got my degree I'd have this student loan I'd be paying off until I was forty-three. They made my life big. They contributed to an education that money can't buy.

(1) The church-state issue. If parents could use their vouchers to pay tuition at parochial schools, would that violate the First Amendment? Whether it does or not, is it desirable to adopt a policy that might strengthen the role of religious institutions in schooling? The Supreme Court has generally ruled against state laws providing assistance to parents who send their children to parochial schools, although it has never had occasion to rule on a full-fledged voucher plan covering both public and nonpublic schools. However it might rule on such a plan, it seems clear that the Court would accept a plan that excluded church-connected schools but applied to all other private and public schools. Such a restricted plan would be far superior to the present system, and might not be much inferior to a wholly unrestricted plan. Schools now connected with churches could qualify by subdividing themselves into two parts: a secular part reorganized as an independent school eligible for vouchers, and a religious part reorganized as an after-school or Sunday activity paid for directly by parents or church funds. The constitutional issue will have to be settled by the courts. But it is worth emphasizing that vouchers would go to parents, not to schools. Under the GI bills, veterans have been free to attend Catholic or other colleges and, so far as we know, no First Amendment issue has ever been raised. Recipients of Social Security and welfare payments are free to buy food at church bazaars and even to contribute to the collection plate from their government subsidies, with no First Amendment question being asked. Indeed, we believe that the penalty that is now imposed on parents who do not send their children to public schools violates the spirit of the First Amendment, whatever lawyers and judges may decide about the letter. Public schools teach religion, too—not a formal, theistic religion, but a set of values and beliefs that constitute a religion in all but name. The present arrangements abridge the religious freedom of parents who do not accept the religion taught by the public schools yet are forced to pay to have their children indoctrinated with it, and to pay still more to have their children escape indoctrination.

Monday ushers in a particularly impressive clientele of red-eyed people properly pressed into dry-cleaned suits in neutral tones. They leave their equally well-buttoned children idling in SUVs while dashing to grab double-Americanos and foamy sweet lattes, before click-clacking hasty escapes in ass-sculpting heels and polished loafers with bowl-shaped haircuts that age every face to 40. My imagination speed evolves their unfortunate offspring from car seat-strapped oxygen-starved fast-blooming locusts, to the knuckle-drag harried downtown troglodytes they’ll inevitably become. One by one I capture their flat-formed heads between index finger and thumb for a little crush-crush-crushing, ever aware that if I’m lucky one day their charitable contributions will fund my frown-faced found art project to baffle someone’s hallway.

The man seemed not to have heard him. ‘At this life-giving time of the year, Professor Scrooge,’ said the pastor, clicking his pen, ‘it is more than usually desirable that we should make some slight contribution to babes and adults, who lie languishing in hospitals and care facilities, standing on street corners and under bridges, or living alone at home during this time. Many are in need of blood transfusions or food or pregnancy care every day in our large community; many others – especially the elderly – are in want of comfort and cheer.’ ‘Are there no abortion clinics?’ asked Scrooge. ‘Plenty of clinics,’ said the pastor, clicking the pen tip in again. ‘And Euthanasia facilities?’ demanded Scrooge. ‘Are they still in operation?’ ‘They are. Still,’ returned the gentleman, ‘I wish I could say they were not.’ ‘Welfare and Food Stamps are in full swing, then?’ said Scrooge. ‘Both very busy.’ ‘Oh! I was afraid, from what you said at first, that something had occurred to stop them in their useful course,’ said Scrooge. ‘I’m very glad to hear it.’ ‘Under the impression that they scarcely furnish Christian cheer of mind or body to the multitude,’ returned the gentleman, ‘a few churches are endeavoring to raise a fund to provide those in need with medical care and food as well as the comfort of a human presence and the message of eternal life through Jesus. We choose this time to sow into others’ lives because it is a time, of all others, when we rejoice in the life God gave to us through His Son. What shall I put down – in time, money, or blood – for you?’ ‘Nothing!’ Scrooge replied. ‘You wish to give anonymously, then?’ ‘I wish to be left alone,’ said Scrooge.

And a house with smooth ceilings and a bathroom on the first floor. We could sock away more than a few dollars for the kids’ college funds and max out our retirement contributions. I knew I was supposed to be leaning in—these were important years in my career, and I wasn’t getting any younger. If what I’d read was to be believed, opportunities to vault myself to the next level would be few and far between. But . . . I wasn’t so sure I wanted to upgrade my wardrobe and get a haircut that said business and perfect my ability to hobnob with the ultrarich. I was equally unenthused about the possibility of working even harder, at least at this particular job at this particular juncture, and regularly being away from my husband and children. Because now I knew—really and truly knew in a way I hadn’t before—that it could all end in an instant. And if, God forbid, that happened, would I take my dying breaths feeling glad for getting a chance to fly business class?

The most groundbreaking and important work can easily be forgotten and undervalued. Just like cleaning, nursing and teaching today, some of the most important jobs that keep society functioning, are desperately underpaid. While some might argue that bankers, academics and CEOs are paid more because they contribute more to the economy, we need to remember that pay is as much about power as it is productivity. Imagine for a moment what would happen if all the hedge fund managers in the City of London decided collectively to quit their jobs. How much of an impact on our lives would this actually have? While I'm sure there is a case to be argued that the loss of these jobs would cause some damage to the economy, it is not unreasonable to ask whether the world might actually be a better place? Compare this to the alternative case where all the carers - the workers who look after children, the elderly and the sick - stopped turning up for work. The negative human impact would be undeniably immediate and devastating.

tried to go to a counselor, but it was just too weird. Talking to some stranger about my feelings made me want to vomit. I did go to the library, and I learned that behavior I considered commonplace was the subject of pretty intense academic study. Psychologists call the everyday occurrences of my and Lindsay’s life “adverse childhood experiences,” or ACEs. ACEs are traumatic childhood events, and their consequences reach far into adulthood. The trauma need not be physical. The following events or feelings are some of the most common ACEs: •​being sworn at, insulted, or humiliated by parents •​being pushed, grabbed, or having something thrown at you •​feeling that your family didn’t support each other •​having parents who were separated or divorced •​living with an alcoholic or a drug user •​living with someone who was depressed or attempted suicide •​watching a loved one be physically abused. ACEs happen everywhere, in every community. But studies have shown that ACEs are far more common in my corner of the demographic world. A report by the Wisconsin Children’s Trust Fund showed that among those with a college degree or more (the non–working class), fewer than half had experienced an ACE. Among the working class, well over half had at least one ACE, while about 40 percent had multiple ACEs. This is really striking—four in every ten working-class people had faced multiple instances of childhood trauma. For the non–working class, that number was 29 percent. I gave a quiz to Aunt Wee, Uncle Dan, Lindsay, and Usha that psychologists use to measure the number of ACEs a person has faced. Aunt Wee scored a seven—higher even than Lindsay and me, who each scored a six. Dan and Usha—the two people whose families seemed nice to the point of oddity—each scored a zero. The weird people were the ones who hadn’t faced any childhood trauma. Children with multiple ACEs are more likely to struggle with anxiety and depression, to suffer from heart disease and obesity, and to contract certain types of cancers. They’re also more likely to underperform in school and suffer from relationship instability as adults. Even excessive shouting can damage a kid’s sense of security and contribute to mental health and behavioral issues down the road. Harvard pediatricians have studied the effect that childhood trauma has on the mind. In addition to later negative

Revitalized and healthy, I started dreaming new dreams. I saw ways that I could make a significant contribution by sharing what I’ve learned. I decided to refocus my legal practice on counseling and helping start-up companies avoid liability and protect their intellectual property. To share some of what I know, I started a blog, IP Law for Startups, where I teach basic lessons on trade secrets, trademarks, copyrights, and patents and give tips for avoiding the biggest blunders that destroy the value of intellectual assets. Few start-up companies, especially women-owned companies that rarely get venture capital funding, can afford the expensive hourly rates of a large law firm to the get the critical information they need. I feel deeply rewarded when I help a company create a strategy that protects the value of their company and supports their business dreams. Further, I had a dream to help young women see their career possibilities. In partnership with my sister, Julie Simmons, I created lookilulu.com, a website where women share their insights, career paths, and ways they have integrated motherhood with their professional pursuits. When my sister and I were growing up on a farm, we had a hard time seeing that women could have rewarding careers. With Lookilulu® we want to help young women see what we couldn’t see: that dreams are not linear—they take many twists and unexpected turns. As I’ve learned the hard way, dreams change and shift as life happens. I’ve learned the value of continuing to dream new dreams after other dreams are derailed. I’m sure I’ll have many more dreams in my future. I’ve learned to be open to new and unexpected opportunities. By way of postscript, Jill writes, “I didn’t grow up planning to be lawyer. As a girl growing up in a small rural town, I was afraid to dream. I loved science, but rather than pursuing medical school, I opted for low-paying laboratory jobs, planning to quit when I had children. But then I couldn’t have children. As I awakened to the possibility that dreaming was an inalienable right, even for me, I started law school when I was thirty; intellectual property combines my love of law and science.” As a young girl, Jill’s rightsizing involved mustering the courage to expand her dreams, to dream outside of her box. Once she had children, she again transformed her dreams. In many ways her dreams are bigger and aim to help more people than before the twists and turns in her life’s path.

As an aside, Sheldon Rovin in his first draft of a guide to Systems Thinking, repeated this old chestnut: The often-quoted tribal wisdom of the Dakota Indians, passed on from generation to generation, says that, ‘When you discover that you are riding a dead horse, the best strategy is to dismount.’ However, in government more advanced strategies are often employed, such as: 1. Buying a stronger whip. 2. Changing riders. 29 3. Appointing a committee to study the horse. 4.    Arranging to visit other countries to see how other cultures ride horses. 5. Lowering the standards so that dead horses can be included. 6. Reclassifying the dead horse as living impaired. 7. Hiring outside contractors to ride the dead horse. 82 8. Harnessing several dead horses together to increase speed. 9. Providing extra funding/training to increase the dead horse’s performance. 10.  Doing a productivity study to see if lighter riders would improve the dead horse’s performance. 3 11.  Declaring that as the dead horse does not have to be fed, it is less costly, carries lower overhead and therefore contributes substantially more to the bottom line of the economy than live horses. 12.  Rewriting the expected performance requirements for all horses. And, of course… 13.  Promoting the dead horse to a supervisory position.

Are you driving?” I asked Sam. “Nope. I plan to do some drinking,” Sam said. “You’re not old enough,” I reminded him. “Never stopped me before.” “Sam!” He halted and glared at me. “What? You gonna tattle to Mom and Dad?” Was I? No. But he didn’t know that. Besides, as irritating as my brother was, he was good for one thing: blackmail. And it was payback time for the snowball he’d hit me with yesterday. “Not if you make a contribution to the Kate-have-a-good-time fund.” “Ah, Kate, come on. I’m not hurting anyone. I’m a responsible drinker.” “How can you be responsible if you’re breaking the law?” “I don’t drive when I drink. No one gets hurt except me, if I happen to fall flat on my face.” “You get that drunk?” “I’ve got better things to do than discuss my life with you.” He reached into his back pocket and pulled out his wallet. “How much?” “Twenty should do it.” “Five.” “Ten.” He held out the bill that had one of my favorite presidents on it. “You know, Kate, no one likes a snitch.” I snatched it from his fingers, folded it up, and shoved it into the front pocket of my jeans. “Payback’s a bitch, Brother.” “What?” “I wouldn’t have tattled. But I didn’t like getting hit with a snowball yesterday, either. So now we’re even.” He snapped his fingers. “Give it back.” “Nope. Possession is nine-tenths of the law.” “You don’t even know what that means.” “And I suppose you do.

Neoliberal economics, the logic of which is tending today to win out throughout the world thanks to international bodies like the World Bank or the International Monetary Fund and the governments to whom they, directly or indirectly, dictate their principles of ‘governance’,10 owes a certain number of its allegedly universal characteristics to the fact that it is immersed or embedded in a particular society, that is to say, rooted in a system of beliefs and values, an ethos and a moral view of the world, in short, an economic common sense, linked, as such, to the social and cognitive structures of a particular social order. It is from this particular economy that neoclassical economic theory borrows its fundamental assumptions, which it formalizes and rationalizes, thereby establishing them as the foundations of a universal model. That model rests on two postulates (which their advocates regard as proven propositions): the economy is a separate domain governed by natural and universal laws with which governments must not interfere by inappropriate intervention; the market is the optimum means for organizing production and trade efficiently and equitably in democratic societies. It is the universalization of a particular case, that of the United States of America, characterized fundamentally by the weakness of the state which, though already reduced to a bare minimum, has been further weakened by the ultra-liberal conservative revolution, giving rise as a consequence to various typical characteristics: a policy oriented towards withdrawal or abstention by the state in economic matters; the shifting into the private sector (or the contracting out) of ‘public services’ and the conversion of public goods such as health, housing, safety, education and culture – books, films, television and radio – into commercial goods and the users of those services into clients; a renunciation (linked to the reduction in the capacity to intervene in the economy) of the power to equalize opportunities and reduce inequality (which is tending to increase excessively) in the name of the old liberal ‘self-help’ tradition (a legacy of the Calvinist belief that God helps those who help themselves) and of the conservative glorification of individual responsibility (which leads, for example, to ascribing responsibility for unemployment or economic failure primarily to individuals, not to the social order, and encourages the delegation of functions of social assistance to lower levels of authority, such as the region or city); the withering away of the Hegelian–Durkheimian view of the state as a collective authority with a responsibility to act as the collective will and consciousness, and a duty to make decisions in keeping with the general interest and contribute to promoting greater solidarity. Moreover,

I met with a group of a hundred or so fifth graders from a poor neighborhood at a school in Houston, Texas. Most of them were on a track that would never get them to college. So I decided then and there to make a contract with them. I would pay for their four-year college education if they kept a B average and stayed out of trouble. I made it clear that with focus, anyone could be above average, and I would provide mentoring support to them. I had a couple of key criteria: They had to stay out of jail. They couldn't get pregnant before graduating high school. Most importantly, they needed to contribute 20 hours of service per year to some organization in their community. Why did I add this? College is wonderful, but what was even more important to me was to teach them they had something to give, not just something to get in life. I had no idea how I was going to pay for it in the long run, but I was completely committed, and I signed a legally binding contract requiring me to deliver the funds. It's funny how motivating it can be when you have no choice but to move forward. I always say, if you want to take the island, you have to burn your boats! So I signed those contracts. Twenty-three of those kids worked with me from the fifth grade all the way to college. Several went on to graduate school, including law school! I call them my champions. Today they are social workers, business owners, and parents. Just a few years ago, we had a reunion, and I got to hear the magnificent stories of how early-in-life giving to others had become a lifelong pattern. How it caused them to believe they had real worth in life. How it gave them such joy to give, and how many of them now are teaching this to their own children.

It’s not like I wasn’t busy. I was an officer in good standing of my kids’ PTA. I owned a car that put my comfort ahead of the health and future of the planet. I had an IRA and a 401(k) and I went on vacations and swam with dolphins and taught my kids to ski. I contributed to the school’s annual fund. I flossed twice a day; I saw a dentist twice a year. I got Pap smears and had my moles checked. I read books about oppressed minorities with my book club. I did physical therapy for an old knee injury, forgoing the other things I’d like to do to ensure I didn’t end up with a repeat injury. I made breakfast. I went on endless moms’ nights out, where I put on tight jeans and trendy blouses and high heels like it mattered and went to the restaurant that was right next to the restaurant we went to with our families. (There were no dads’ nights out for my husband, because the supposition was that the men got to live life all the time, whereas we were caged animals who were sometimes allowed to prowl our local town bar and drink the blood of the free people.) I took polls on whether the Y or the JCC had better swimming lessons. I signed up for soccer leagues in time for the season cutoff, which was months before you’d even think of enrolling a child in soccer, and then organized their attendant carpools. I planned playdates and barbecues and pediatric dental checkups and adult dental checkups and plain old internists and plain old pediatricians and hair salon treatments and educational testing and cleats-buying and art class attendance and pediatric ophthalmologist and adult ophthalmologist and now, suddenly, mammograms. I made lunch. I made dinner. I made breakfast. I made lunch. I made dinner. I made breakfast. I made lunch. I made dinner.

The destruction of representative government and private capitalism of the old school was complete when Hitler came to power. He had contributed mightily to the final result by his ceaseless labors to create chaos. But when he stepped into the chancellery all the ingredients of national socialist dictatorship were there ready to his hand… The aim in which Bismarck had failed was accomplished almost at a stroke in the Weimar Constitution – the subordination of the individual states to the federal state. The old imperial state had to depend on the constituent states to provide it with a part of its funds. Now this was altered, and the central government of the republic became the great imposer and collector of taxes, paying to the states each a share. Slowly the central government absorbed the powers of the states. The problems of business groups and social groups were all brought to Berlin. The republican Reichstag, unlike its imperial predecessor, was now charged with the vast duty of managing almost every energy of the social and economic life of the republic. German states were always filled with bureaus, so that long before World War I travelers referred to the ‘bureaucratic tyrannies’ of the empire. But now the bureaus became great centralized organisms of the federal government dealing with the multitude of problems which the Reichstag as completely incapable of handling. Quickly, the actual function of governing leaked out of the parliament into the hands of the bureaucrats. The German republic became a paradise of bureaucracy on a scale which the old imperial government never knew. The state, with its powers enhanced by the acquisition of immense economic powers and those powers brought to the center of government and lodged in the executive, was slowly becoming, notwithstanding its republican appearance, a totalitarian state that was almost unlimited in its powers.

One of the greatest difficulties we human beings seem to have is to relinquish long-held ideas. Many of us are addicted to being right, even if facts do not support us. One fixed image we cling to, as iconic in today’s culture as the devil was in previous ages, is that of the addict as an unsavoury and shadowy character, given to criminal activity. What we don’t see is how we’ve contributed to making him a criminal. There is nothing more intrinsically criminal in the average drug user than in the average cigarette smoker or alcohol addict. The drugs they inject or inhale do not themselves induce criminal activity by their pharmacological effect, except perhaps in the way that alcohol can also fuel a person’s pent-up aggression and remove the mental inhibitions that thwart violence. Stimulant drugs may have that effect on some users, but narcotics like heroin do not; on the contrary, they tend to calm people down. It is withdrawal from opiates that makes people physically ill, irritable and more likely to act violently — mostly out of desperation to replenish their supply. The criminality associated with addiction follows directly from the need to raise money to purchase drugs at prices that are artificially inflated owing to their illegality. The addict shoplifts, steals and robs because it’s the only way she can obtain the funds to pay the dealer. History has demonstrated many times over that people will transgress laws and resist coercion when it comes to struggling for their basic needs — or what they perceive as such. Sam Sullivan, Vancouver’s quadriplegic mayor, told a conference on drug addiction once that if wheelchairs were illegal, he would do anything to get one, no matter what laws he had to break. It was an apt comparison: the hardcore addict feels equally handicapped without his substances. As we have seen, many addicts who deal in drugs do so exclusively to finance their habit. There is no profit in it for them.

The goal was ambitious. Public interest was high. Experts were eager to contribute. Money was readily available. Armed with every ingredient for success, Samuel Pierpont Langley set out in the early 1900s to be the first man to pilot an airplane. Highly regarded, he was a senior officer at the Smithsonian Institution, a mathematics professor who had also worked at Harvard. His friends included some of the most powerful men in government and business, including Andrew Carnegie and Alexander Graham Bell. Langley was given a $50,000 grant from the War Department to fund his project, a tremendous amount of money for the time. He pulled together the best minds of the day, a veritable dream team of talent and know-how. Langley and his team used the finest materials, and the press followed him everywhere. People all over the country were riveted to the story, waiting to read that he had achieved his goal. With the team he had gathered and ample resources, his success was guaranteed. Or was it? A few hundred miles away, Wilbur and Orville Wright were working on their own flying machine. Their passion to fly was so intense that it inspired the enthusiasm and commitment of a dedicated group in their hometown of Dayton, Ohio. There was no funding for their venture. No government grants. No high-level connections. Not a single person on the team had an advanced degree or even a college education, not even Wilbur or Orville. But the team banded together in a humble bicycle shop and made their vision real. On December 17, 1903, a small group witnessed a man take flight for the first time in history. How did the Wright brothers succeed where a better-equipped, better-funded and better-educated team could not? It wasn’t luck. Both the Wright brothers and Langley were highly motivated. Both had a strong work ethic. Both had keen scientific minds. They were pursuing exactly the same goal, but only the Wright brothers were able to inspire those around them and truly lead their team to develop a technology that would change the world. Only the Wright brothers started with Why. 2.

Was this luck, or was it more than that? Proving skill is difficult in venture investing because, as we have seen, it hinges on subjective judgment calls rather than objective or quantifiable metrics. If a distressed-debt hedge fund hires analysts and lawyers to scrutinize a bankrupt firm, it can learn precisely which bond is backed by which piece of collateral, and it can foresee how the bankruptcy judge is likely to rule; its profits are not lucky. Likewise, if an algorithmic hedge fund hires astrophysicists to look for patterns in markets, it may discover statistical signals that are reliably profitable. But when Perkins backed Tandem and Genentech, or when Valentine backed Atari, they could not muster the same certainty. They were investing in human founders with human combinations of brilliance and weakness. They were dealing with products and manufacturing processes that were untested and complex; they faced competitors whose behaviors could not be forecast; they were investing over long horizons. In consequence, quantifiable risks were multiplied by unquantifiable uncertainties; there were known unknowns and unknown unknowns; the bracing unpredictability of life could not be masked by neat financial models. Of course, in this environment, luck played its part. Kleiner Perkins lost money on six of the fourteen investments in its first fund. Its methods were not as fail-safe as Tandem’s computers. But Perkins and Valentine were not merely lucky. Just as Arthur Rock embraced methods and attitudes that put him ahead of ARD and the Small Business Investment Companies in the 1960s, so the leading figures of the 1970s had an edge over their competitors. Perkins and Valentine had been managers at leading Valley companies; they knew how to be hands-on; and their contributions to the success of their portfolio companies were obvious. It was Perkins who brought in the early consultants to eliminate the white-hot risks at Tandem, and Perkins who pressed Swanson to contract Genentech’s research out to existing laboratories. Similarly, it was Valentine who drove Atari to focus on Home Pong and to ally itself with Sears, and Valentine who arranged for Warner Communications to buy the company. Early risk elimination plus stage-by-stage financing worked wonders for all three companies. Skeptical observers have sometimes asked whether venture capitalists create innovation or whether they merely show up for it. In the case of Don Valentine and Tom Perkins, there was not much passive showing up. By force of character and intellect, they stamped their will on their portfolio companies.

Everyone knew there had never been a cowardly Confederate soldier and they found this statement peculiarly irritating. He always referred to the soldiers as “our brave boys” or “our heroes in gray” and did it in such a way as to convey the utmost in insult. When daring young ladies, hoping for a flirtation, thanked him for being one of the heroes who fought for them, he bowed and declared that such was not the case, for he would do the same thing for Yankee women if the same amount of money were involved. Since Scarlett’s first meeting with him in Atlanta on the night of the bazaar, he had talked with her in this manner, but now there was a thinly veiled note of mockery in his conversations with everyone. When praised for his services to the Confederacy, he unfailingly replied that blockading was a business with him. If he could make as much money out of government contracts, he would say, picking out with his eyes those who had government contracts, then he would certainly abandon the hazards of blockading and take to selling shoddy cloth, sanded sugar, spoiled flour and rotten leather to the Confederacy. Most of his remarks were unanswerable, which made them all the worse. There had already been minor scandals about those holding government contracts. Letters from men at the front complained constantly of shoes that wore out in a week, gunpowder that would not ignite, harness that snapped at any strain, meat that was rotten and flour that was full of weevils. Atlanta people tried to think that the men who sold such stuff to the government must be contract holders from Alabama or Virginia or Tennessee, and not Georgians. For did not the Georgia contract holders include men from the very best families? Were they not the first to contribute to hospital funds and to the aid of soldiers’ orphans? Were they not the first to cheer at “Dixie” and the most rampant seekers, in oratory at least, for Yankee blood? The full tide of fury against those profiteering on government contracts had not yet risen, and Rhett’s words were taken merely as evidence of his own bad breeding. He not only affronted the town with insinuations of venality on the part of men in high places and slurs on the courage of the men in the field, but he took pleasure in tricking the dignified citizenry into embarrassing situations. He could no more resist pricking the conceits, the hypocrisies and the flamboyant patriotism of those about him than a small boy can resist putting a pin into a balloon. He neatly deflated the pompous and exposed the ignorant and the bigoted, and he did it in such subtle ways, drawing his victims out by his seemingly courteous interest, that they never were quite certain what had happened until they stood exposed as windy, high flown and slightly ridiculous.

Here is my six step process for how we will first start with ISIS and then build an international force that will fight terrorism and corruption wherever it appears. “First, in dedication to Lieutenant Commander McKay, Operation Crapshoot commenced at six o’clock this morning. I’ve directed a handpicked team currently deployed in Iraq to coordinate a tenfold increase in aerial bombing and close air support. In addition to aerial support, fifteen civilian security companies, including delegations from our international allies, are flying special operations veterans into Iraq. Those forces will be tasked with finding and annihilating ISIS, wherever they walk, eat or sleep. I’ve been told that they can’t wait to get started. “Second, going forward, our military will be a major component in our battle against evil. Militaries need training. I’ve been assured by General McMillan and his staff that there is no better final training test than live combat. So without much more expenditure, we will do two things, train our troops of the future, and wipe out international threats. “Third, I have a message for our allies. If you need us, we will be there. If evil raises its ugly head, we will be with you, arm in arm, fighting for what is right. But that aid comes with a caveat. Our allies must be dedicated to the common global ideals of personal and religious freedom. Any supposed ally who ignores these terms will find themselves without impunity. A criminal is a criminal. A thief is a thief. Decide which side you’re on, because our side carries a big stick. “Fourth, to the religious leaders of the world, especially those of Islam, though we live with differing traditions, we are still one people on this Earth. What one person does always has the possibility of affecting others. If you want to be part of our community, it is time to do your part. Denounce the criminals who besmirch your faith. Tell your followers the true meaning of the Koran. Do not let the money and influence of hypocrites taint your religion or your people. We request that you do this now, respectfully, or face the scrutiny of America and our allies. “Fifth, starting today, an unprecedented coalition of three former American presidents, my predecessor included, will travel around the globe to strengthen our alliances. Much like our brave military leaders, we will lead from the front, go where we are needed. We will go toe to toe with any who would seek to undermine our good intentions, and who trample the freedoms of our citizens. In the coming days you will find out how great our resolve truly is. “Sixth, my staff is in the process of drafting a proposal for the members of the United Nations. The proposal will outline our recommendations for the formation of an international terrorism strike force along with an international tax that will fund ongoing anti-terrorism operations. Only the countries that contribute to this fund will be supported by the strike force. You pay to play.

Under the impact of Western cultural influences, the souls of many Muslim men and women are slowly shrivelling. They are letting themselves be led away from their erstwhile belief that an improvement of living standards should be but a means to improving man’s spiritual perceptions; they are falling into the same idolatry of ‘progress’ into which the Western world fell after it reduced religion to a mere melodious tinkling somewhere in the background of happening; and are thereby growing smaller in stature, not greater: for all cultural imitation, opposed as it is to creativeness, is bound to make a people small... Not that the Muslims could not learn much from the West, especially in the fields of science and technology. But, then, acquisition of scientific notions and methods is not really ‘imitation’: and certainly not in the case of a people whose faith commands them to search for knowledge wherever it is to be found. Science is neither Western nor Eastern, for all scientific discoveries are only links in an unending chain of intellectual endeavour which embraces mankind as a whole. Every scientist builds on the foundations supplied by his predecessors, be they of his own nation or of another; and this process of building, correcting and improving goes on and on, from man to man, from age to age, from civilisation to civilisation: so that the scientific achievements of a particular age or civilisation can never be said to ‘belong’ to that age or civilisation. At various times one nation, more vigorous than others, is able to contribute more to the general fund of knowledge; but in the long run the process is shared, and legitimately so, by all. There was a time when the civilisation of the Muslims was more vigorous than the civilisation of Europe. It transmitted to Europe many technological inventions of a revolutionary nature, and more than that: the very principles of that ‘scientific method’ on which modern science and civilisation are built. Nevertheless, Jabir ibn Hayyan’s fundamental discoveries in chemistry did not make chemistry an ‘Arabian’ science; nor can algebra and trigonometry be described as ‘Muslim’ sciences, although the one was evolved by Al-Khwarizmi and the other by Al-Battani, both of whom were Muslims: just as one cannot speak of an ‘English’ Theory of Gravity, although the man who formulated it was an Englishman. All such achievements are the common property of the human race. If, therefore, the Muslims adopt, as adopt they must, modern methods in science and technology, they will do not more than follow the evolutionary instinct which causes men to avail themselves of other men’s experiences. But if they adopt - as there is no need for them to do - Western forms of life, Western manners and customs and social concepts, they will not gain thereby: for what the West can give them in this respect will not be superior to what their own culture has given them and to what their own faith points the way. If the Muslims keep their heads cool and accept process as a means and not an end in itself, they may not only retain their own inner freedom but also, perhaps, pass on to Western man the lost secret of life’s sweetness...

Another dangerous neoliberal word circulating everywhere that is worth zooming in on is the word ‘resilience’. On the surface, I think many people won’t object to the idea that it is good and beneficial for us to be resilient to withstand the difficulties and challenges of life. As a person who lived through the atrocities of wars and sanctions in Iraq, I’ve learnt that life is not about being happy or sad, not about laughing or crying, leaving or staying. Life is about endurance. Since most feelings, moods, and states of being are fleeting, endurance, for me, is the common denominator that helps me go through the darkest and most beautiful moments of life knowing that they are fleeing. In that sense, I believe it is good for us to master the art of resilience and endurance. Yet, how should we think about the meaning of ‘resilience’ when used by ruling classes that push for wars and occupations, and that contribute to producing millions of deaths and refugees to profit from plundering the planet? What does it mean when these same warmongers fund humanitarian organizations asking them to go to war-torn countries to teach people the value of ‘resilience’? What happens to the meaning of ‘resilience’ when they create frighteningly precarious economic structures, uncertain employment, and lay off people without accountability? All this while also asking us to be ‘resilient’… As such, we must not let the word ‘resilience’ circulate or get planted in the heads of our youth uncritically. Instead, we should raise questions about what it really means. Does it mean the same thing for a poor young man or woman from Ghana, Ecuador, Afghanistan vs a privileged member from the upper management of a U.S. corporation? Resilience towards what? What is the root of the challenges for which we are expected to be resilient? Does our resilience solve the cause or the root of the problem or does it maintain the status quo while we wait for the next disaster? Are individuals always to blame if their resilience doesn’t yield any results, or should we equally examine the social contract and the entire structure in which individuals live that might be designed in such a way that one’s resilience may not prevail no matter how much perseverance and sacrifice one demonstrates? There is no doubt that resilience, according to its neoliberal corporate meaning, is used in a way that places the sole responsibility of failure on the shoulders of individuals rather than equally holding accountable the structure in which these individuals exist, and the precarious circumstances that require work and commitment way beyond individual capabilities and resources. I find it more effective not to simply aspire to be resilient, but to distinguish between situations in which individual resilience can do, and those for which the depth, awareness, and work of an entire community or society is needed for any real and sustainable change to occur. But none of this can happen if we don’t first agree upon what each of us mean when we say ‘resilience,’ and if we have different definitions of what it means, then we should ask: how shall we merge and reconcile our definitions of the word so that we complement not undermine what we do individually and collectively as people. Resilience should not become a synonym for surrender. It is great to be resilient when facing a flood or an earthquake, but that is not the same when having to endure wars and economic crises caused by the ruling class and warmongers. [From “On the Great Resignation” published on CounterPunch on February 24, 2023]

Some of the world’s biggest banks and investor groups have swung behind a pledge to raise $200bn by the end of next year to combat climate change. In a move the UN said was unprecedented, leading insurers, pension funds and banks have joined forces to help channel the money to projects that will help poorer countries deal with the effect of global warming and cut reliance on fossil fuels. The announcement came at the start of a UN climate summit in New York aimed at bolstering momentum for a global agreement to lower planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions due to be signed in Paris at the end of 2015. “Change is in the air,” said UN secretary-general, Ban Ki-moon. “Today’s climate summit has shown an entirely new, co-operative global approach to climate change.” The summit opened with business and government pledges to make cities greener, create a renewable energy “corridor” in Africa and rein in the clearing of forests for palm oil plantations. The private sector’s contributions marked a “major departure” from past climate summits, the UN said, adding in a statement that financial groups “had never previously acted together on climate change at such a large scale”. One obstacle to the Paris agreement is developing countries’ insistence that richer nations must fulfil pledges made nearly five years ago to raise $100bn a year by 2020 for climate action.

Money bought access. But the Second American Revolution had happened, people began taking the Constitution seriously again, and the practice of renting and buying congressmen had been stopped by the simple expedient of getting money out of the campaigns. Contributions of all types became illegal. Campaigns were funded by the voters. You gave money to a politician, it constituted bribery, and you could go to jail.

This has been a collective project from the beginning, and so our first acknowledgment goes to all those who supported and contributed. Funded by a grant from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, as part of its initiative on Digital Media and Learning, we thank Constance

The Krishnas' resolution was brilliant. They switched to a fund-raising tactic that made it unnecessary for target persons to have positive feelings toward the fund-raisers. They began to employ a donation-request procedure that engaged the rule for reciprocation, which, as demonstrated by the Regan study, is strong enough to overcome the factor of dislike for the requester. The new strategy still involves the solicitation of contributions in public places with much pedestrian traffic (airports are a favorite), but now, before a donation is requested, the target person is given a "gift"—a book (usually the Bhagavad Gita), the Back to Godhead magazine of the Society, or, in the most cost-effective version, a flower. The unsuspecting passerby who suddenly finds a flower pressed into his hands or pinned to his jacket is under no circumstances allowed to give it back, even if he asserts that he does not want it. "No, it is our gift to you," says the solicitor, refusing to accept it. Only after the Krishna member has thus brought the force of the reciprocation rule to bear on the situation is the target asked to provide a contribution to the Society. This benefactor-before-beggar strategy has been wildly successful for the Hare Krishna Society, producing large-scale economic gains and funding the ownership of temples, businesses, houses, and property

What had begun as a system of large-scale insurance had simply become a system of taxation, with today’s contributions being used to pay today’s benefits, rather than to accumulate a fund for future use. This ‘pay-as-you-go’ approach had replaced the principle of thrift with the practice of entitlement . . . [But this approach] is rooted in a false conception of how human beings behave. It destroys, at the individual level, the link between contributions and benefits. In other words, between effort and reward.

State and federal budgets, to which Asians, Hispanics, and African Americans contribute, are uniformly controlled by whites who seem to uniformly believe that the only ancestor worship worth funding is theirs.

Frankly, we hesitate to pile on the data, since even when numbers are persuasive, they are not galvanizing. A growing collection of psychological studies show that statistics have a dulling effect, while it is individual stories that move people to act. In one experiment, research subjects were divided into several group, and each person was asked to donate $5 to alleviate hunger abroad. One group was told the money would go to Rokia, a seven-year-old girl in Mali. Another group was told that the money would go to address malnutrition among 21 million Africans. The third group was told that the donations would go to Roka, as in the first group, but this time her own hunger was presented as part of a background tapestry of global hunger, with some statistics thrown in. People were much more willing to donate to Rokia than to 21 million hungry people, and even a mention of the larger problem made people less inclined to help her. In another experiment, people were asked to donate to a $300,000 fund to fight cancer. One group was told that the money would be used to save the life of one child, while another group was told it would save the lives of eight children. People contributed almost twice as much to save one child as to save eight. Social psychologists argue that all this reflects the way our consciences and ethical systems are based on individual stories and are distinct from the parts of our brain concerned with logical and rationality. Indeed, when subjects in experiments are first asked to solve math problems, thus putting in play the parts of the brain that govern logic, afterward they are less generous to the needy.

Neither the privatisation of the NHS, nor the values that are being trampled on in the process, have been properly discussed in the mainstream media. Most journalists (or ‘churnalists’) swallowed and regurgitated government press releases. The publicly-funded BBC has avoided probing too deeply, for fear of reprisals when the licence fee renewal has to be approved by government. These failures of what Burke named the Fourth Estate (the news media) have contributed to what (to change philosopher) Friedrich Engels described as ‘false consciousness’. It explains why many will have voted for parties that may bring about their financial ruin, or that of their children, if they are foolish enough to fall ill. The money men, who know the price of everything and the value of nothing, rule more and more of our lives. Democracy is dying. Hence my radicalisation. If my impotent rage lands me in jail, I might, like Bertrand Russell, see it as an opportunity to spend more time on philosophy. © Prof. Raymond Tallis 2014

loss preservation funds were verified to calculate objective and fair fee contributions. C. Fast and Effective Civil Appeal Processing

Flexible benefits are just becoming an option for some workers. But more creativity is needed to take benefits to their natural end in organizations looking for self-determination and self-management. Employees should be able to customize their health plans, pension fund contributions, insurance, meal tickets, and even health club or collective purchasing programs. By letting the employees make their own calculations and freely choose their own health benefits, we transfer responsibility to our people. We hand them their freedom.

Vote on changes proposed to the 'Broadcasting Development Fund Contribution Rates for Terrestrial Broadcasting Networks' Voting Vote on issues related to the appointment of members of the Media Diversity Committee

So how do my election law offenses compare to those of leading progressives? Well, let’s see. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid took $31,000 in late 2013 from his campaign funds to buy jewelry for his granddaughter Ryan Elisabeth Reid’s wedding. In his campaign year-end report, Reid tried to hide his granddaughter’s relationship to him by simply listing the transaction as a “holiday gift” to one “Ryan Elisabeth.” The impression Reid sought to convey was that he was buying gifts for his supporters. When it came to light that Reid had funneled campaign money to his granddaughter, Reid agreed to repay the money, but waxed indignant at continuing questions from reporters. “As a grandparent,” he fumed, “I say enough is enough.” Although Reid’s case involves obvious corruption, the Obama administration has neither investigated nor prosecuted a case against this stalwart Obama ally.6 Bill Clinton, you may recall, had his own campaign finance controversy. Following the 1996 election, the Democratic National Committee was forced to return $2.8 million in illegal and improper donations, most of it from foreign sources. Most of that money was raised by a shady Clinton fundraiser named John Huang. Huang, who used to work for the Lippo Group, an Indonesian conglomerate, set up a fundraising scheme for foreign businessmen seeking special favors from the U.S. government to meet with Clinton, in exchange for large sums of money. A South Korean businessman had dinner with President Clinton in return for a $250,000 donation. Yogesh Gandhi, an Indian businessman who claimed to be related to Mahatma Gandhi, arranged to meet Clinton in the White House and be photographed receiving an award in exchange for a $325,000 contribution. Both donations were returned, but again, no official investigation, no prosecutions.7

Sec. Particulars Amount 80C Tax saving investments1 Maximum up to Rs. 1,50,000 (from FY 2014-15) 80D Medical insurance premium-self, family Individual: Rs. 15,000 Senior Citizen: Rs. 20,000 Preventive Health Check-up Rs. 5,000 80E Interest on Loan for Higher Education Interest amount (8 years) 80EE Deduction of Interest of Housing Loan2 Up to Rs.1,00,000 total 80G Charitable Donation 100%/ 50% of donation or 10% of adjusted total income, whichever is less 80GGC Donation to political parties Any sum contributed (Other than Cash) 80TTA Interest on savings account Rs. 10,000 1              Tax saving investments includes life insurance premium including ULIPs, PPF, 5 year tax saving FD, tuition fees, repayment of housing loan, mutual fund (ELSS) (Sec. 80CCB), NSC, employee provident fund, pension fund (Sec. 80CCC) or pension scheme (Sec. 80CCD), etc. NRIs are not allowed to invest in certain investments, such as PPF, NSC, 5 year bank FD, etc. 2              Only to the first time buyer of a self-occupied residential flat costing less than Rs. 40 lakhs and loan amount of less than 25 lakhs sanctioned in financial year 2013-14 Clubbing of other’s income Generally, the taxpayer is taxed on his own income. However, in certain cases, he may have to pay tax on another person’s income.  Taxpayers in the higher tax bracket (e.g. 30%) may divert some portion

Each year millions of children die from easy to beat disease, from malnutrition, and from bad drinking water. Among these children, about 3 million die from dehydrating diarrhea. As UNICEF has made clear to millions of us well-off American adults at one time or another, with a packet of oral rehydration salts that costs about 15 cents, a child can be saved from dying soon. By sending checks earmarked for Oral Rehydration Therapy, or ORT, to the U.S. Committee for UNICEF, we Americans can help save many of these children. Here's the full mailing address: U.S. Fund for UNICEF 125 Maiden Lane New York, NY 10038 Now, you can write that address on an envelope well prepared for mailing. And, in it, you can place a $100 check made out to the U.S. Fund for UNICEF along with a note that's easy to write: WHERE IT WILL HELP THE MOST, USE THE ENCLOSED FUNDS FOR ORT. So, as is reasonable to believe, you can easily make a big difference for vulnerable children. [...] With our $3 figure in mind, we do well to entertain this proposition: If you'd contributed $100 to one of UNICEF's most efficient lifesaving programs a couple of months ago, this month there'd be over thirty fewer children who, instead of painfully dying soon, would live reasonably long lives. Nothing here's special to the months just mentioned; similar thoughts hold for most of what's been your adult life, and most of mine, too. And, more important, unless we change our behavior, similar thoughts will hold for our future. That nonmoral fact moved me to do the work in moral philosophy filling this volume.

Before any of you get on your high horse about taxpayers’ money, not that I think you would, you splendid things, it’s all paid for out of contributions from our salary. I paid into another fund so I even got some pocket money when I got there.

Why are you crying?” She didn’t answer. He watched her swallow down something, eyes still closed and he waited. And still, she offered no enlightenment. “Gabrielle, why are you crying?” Women were so fickle. She had no issue expressing herself any other time. He watched her inhale a breath through her nose, watched her chest rise and fall and then she opened her eyes and looked up at him like an insubordinate student; but still her lips didn’t part. Power tried to maintain composure, but ‘why the fuck are you crying and fucking answer me now’ was on the tip of his tongue and ready to spill. “Gabrielle, why are you-” “Because I cry!” Power’s lids widened a bit as she leaped to her feet with that, then they returned to normal size. “I cry! It’s what I do. I cry, okay?” She flailed her arms and paced the tiny space with the words. “I go all day – waking up, making breakfast, smiling, and taking shit from my boss, serving customers and arguing with dead beat dads, and…and… and barely making PTA meetings, putting off church fund contribution begging-ass folk, and checking homework, and…and making dinner, and stomaching I found the love of my life stories from Glo, and fighting off a crack head mother…worrying about a stupid, reckless teenager who I want the best for, and loving a son, and scraping and…and scouring everything I have to pay stupid bills and I can never catch up! Something’s always due, something’s always…broke! Something is always needed.

What resulted from this approach was a complicated flowchart enabling the Kochs to use their fortune to influence public policy from an astounding number of different directions at once. At the top, the funds all came from the same source—the Kochs. And in the end, the contributions all served the same pro-business, limited-government goals. But they funneled the money simultaneously through three different kinds of channels. They made political contributions to party committees and candidates, such as Dole. Their business made contributions through its political action committee and exerted influence by lobbying. And they founded numerous nonprofit groups, which they filled with tax-deductible contributions from their private foundations. Other wealthy activists made political contributions, and other companies lobbied. But the Kochs’ strategic and largely covert philanthropic spending became their great force magnifier.

The CEO’s greatest influence on the company isn’t her contributions to the product, the strategy, or even getting the company funded. The CEO’s greatest contribution to the company is the wizardry required to hire a team that is going to be amazingly effective at executing the company’s strategy. Great CEOs hire teams that are far better than they have any right to expect. Put succinctly, a core competency for a CEO is to “date up.” This

From a purely financial perspective, the time and energy people devote to these events can often be better spent, said Leo Arnoult, president of Arnoult & Associates, a fund-raising consulting firm and a past chairman of Giving USA, which releases an annual report on charity contributions. The money that individuals contribute to these events is small compared with the money from a charity’s largest donors, who typically contribute 60 to 70 percent of what an organization raises in a year, he said.

Nonchoices are choices, too. And they are very telling choices at that. Each nonaction denotes a parallel action; each nonchoice, a parallel choice; each absence, a presence. Take the well-known default effect: more often than not, we stick to default options and don’t expend the energy to change, even if another option is in fact better for us. We don’t choose to contribute to a retirement fund —even if our company will match the contributions—unless the default is set up for contributing. We don’t become organ donors unless we are by default considered donors. And the list goes on. It’s simply easier to do nothing. But that doesn’t mean we’ve actually not done anything. We have. We’ve chosen, in a

A half century ago, America contributed over 80% of all money given to, and used in foreign missionary activities. Modern missions were founded in this nation during the mid-1860’s, and then spread around the world. It is without question a true statement that America has been a golden cup in the Lord’s hand for great good, for many people. American Christians have written, printed and distributed around the world millions and millions, hundreds of millions, of Bibles, tracts, commentaries, Bible studies, and other Christian literature, in every known language, and in many languages previously unknown.  The Jesus Film Project has shown The Jesus Film in every nation, translated into 1,043 languages and dialects, with over 6 billion viewings over the last 30 years, mostly funded by American Christian contributors. Truly, America has been a golden cup in the hands of the Lord.

He felt a giant among pygmies, a pike among crappies, as he stood there among the legislators, most of whom owed him for flavors - special bills passed for their law clients, state jobs for constituents, " contributions" for their personal campaign funds, and so on.

With no-load index funds, no transaction fees are levied on contributions. Moreover, mutual funds will automatically reinvest all dividends back into the fund whereas additional transactions could be required to reinvest ETF dividends. We recommend that individuals making periodic contributions to a retirement plan use low-cost indexed mutual funds rather than ETFs.

The longer the time horizon, the less the variability in average annual returns. Investors should not underestimate their time horizons. An investor who begins contributing to a retirement plan at age 25, and then, in retirement, draws on the accumulated capital until age 75 and beyond, would have an investment lifetime of 50 years or more. Our colleges, universities, and many other durable institutions have essentially unlimited time horizons.

So since I tossed snow at you earlier, am I going to have to make a contribution to the Kate-have-a-good-time fund?” he asked. I angled my chin haughtily. “You might. It’ll cost you more, though, since you also tackled me to the ground.” “I’m strapped for cash. We might have to work it out in trade.” “What kind of trade?” He gave me a grin that made me think I was in deep trouble. “We’ll work something out. Maybe it’ll end up being a good time for us both.

The five chairs of the power committees,” for example, “must contribute $500,000 [each] and raise an additional $1 million” for congressional campaign funds. Big donors thus get to choose not just who runs for office, but who, once elected, leads.

This graph shows the growth of an initial investment of $10,000 with monthly contributions of $200 invested at 10% for 61 years. Source: investor.gov

Many of the construction workers chafed at the primitive living conditions. Still, many remember the experience as a great adventure and as their own contribution to winning the war. “It was exciting,” said one many years later. “I had three hots and a cot. I had a good-paying job that wasn’t too hard. I was free to come and go as I pleased, and nobody was shooting at me.” They were patriotic about what they were doing, even though they had no idea what the gigantic plants they were building would make. In 1944, the craft unions organized a campaign to ask everyone for a day’s pay, raising $162,000 in seven weeks. With the funds, the unions bought a four-engine B-17 bomber for the US Army Air Forces. Named “Day’s Pay,” the bomber flew from Boeing Field in Seattle to the Hanford airstrip to be presented to the Fourth Air Force. “This activity, conceived by the workmen and handled by them, . . . was the most effective single morale booster during the job,” Matthias recalled. It did more “to develop an attitude of teamwork and desire to help the war than any other thing.

We must discern the difference between racist power (racist policymakers) and White people. For decades, racist power contributed to stagnating wages, destroying unions, deregulating banks and corporations, and steering funding for schools into prison and military budgets, policies that have often drawn a backlash from some White people. White economic inequality, for instance, soared to the point that the so-called “99 percenters” occupied Wall Street in 2011, and Vermont senator Bernie Sanders ran a popular presidential campaign against the “billionaire class” in 2016.

one can’t really separate out any individual’s contributions from those of others. Even in the context of technological change, most inventions entail the synthesis of preexisting elements rather than invention de novo. Today, at least in many critical sectors, a large fraction of all advances depend on basic research funded by the government.

.. Italian journalists (like members of the Italian parliament) are among the best paid in the world. ... By law, all journalists get not only the extra 13th month bonus in December, but a 14th month paycheck in June. When you start out, you nevertheless get 26 vacation days a year...plus five days of personal leave. After five years, your annual vacation days increase to 39 plus five days, and after 15 years to 35 days (plus five). Abs if you work for a lifetime, which means 35 years of social security contributions to INPG, you’ll end up with a pension that is pretty close to your final year’s salary.

The bleak predictions of broad unemployment and unrest have put many of the Silicon Valley elite on edge. People who have spent their careers preaching the gospel of disruption appear to have suddenly woken up to the fact that when you disrupt an industry, you also disrupt and displace real human beings within it. Having founded and funded transformative internet companies that also contributed to gaping inequality, this cadre of millionaires and billionaires appear determined to soften the blow in the age of AI.

These are not marginal or idiosyncratic categories of income (although the need to translate from tax categories to moral ones inevitably introduces judgment and imprecision into any accounting). Founder’s shares, carried interest, and executive stock compensation give nominally capital gains a substantial component of labor income, especially among the very rich. To begin with, roughly half of the twenty-five largest American fortunes, according to Forbes, arise from founder’s stock still held by the founders who built the firms. Moreover, the share of total capital gains income reported to the Treasury that is attributable to carried interest alone—to the labor of hedge fund managers—has grown by a factor of perhaps ten in the past two decades and now comprises a material share of all the capital gains reported by one-percenters. And over the past twenty years, roughly half of all CEO compensation across the S&P 1500 has taken the form of stock or stock options. Pensions and housing also contribute substantially to top incomes today, roughly doubling the shares that they contributed in the 1960s. Once again, the data cannot sustain precise measurements, but these forms of labor income, taken together, plausibly comprise roughly another third of top incomes, sitting atop the roughly half of top incomes attributable to labor on even the most conservative accounting. The data therefore confirm—top-down—the narrative of labor income that bubbles up from a survey of elite jobs. Both the top 1 percent and even the top 0.1 percent today receive between two-thirds and three-quarters of their income in exchange not for land, machines, or financing but rather for deploying their own effort and skill. The richest person out of every hundred in the United States today, and indeed the richest person out of every thousand, now literally works for a living.

The MTA had become increasingly reliant on borrowing money against its future revenue rather than on funding from the state and city. The State of New York had contributed $1.8 billion for the MTA’s first five-year capital program, but nothing for the 2000–2004 program. Meanwhile, successive mayors cut New York City’s contributions to the MTA’s capital programs. The public did not understand the MTA’s predicament. A citywide survey indicated that most New Yorkers thought the MTA earned a profit on its subway service. In fact, subway riders paid only 44 percent of the authority’s operating costs, with taxes and tolls making up the rest. In 2004, the fastest-growing portion of the MTA’s budget was the interest expenses on its debt. The MTA’s outstanding debt had skyrocketed from $9 billion in the early 1990s to nearly $20 billion by 2004, and its annual interest payments were over $800 million.95

In articulating their theory of growth machines, Logan and Molotch contrast the exchange value of land (its economic worth) with its use value (value as living space) to illustrate the conflicting interests of developer-led growth coalitions focused on exchange value and the interests of city residents on use value. In North America, according to the two authors, exchange regularly trumps use. This fact underlies the development of a growth machine. Growth machines develop in the following manner: place entrepreneurs see the potential for profit from the development and intensification of their property holdings, namely, through the increase in rent. These "rentiers" develop a close relationship with other local business interests. In particular, businesses that rely on the growth of a city to increase their profitability, such as newspapers, are likely to support the interests of developers. Developers and their allies, through constant interaction with government, through ample campaign contributions, and through their ability to organize and mobilize, can co-opt local politicians, effectively coercing their involvement in the growth coalition. They supply politicians with the funds necessary to run effective election campaigns. Politicians, in turn, along with local media and other members of the growth coalition, help to perpetuate a link between civic pride and a city's economic and physical growth. This link undermines interest in the use value of land (specifically the use and maintenance of existing areas) as the city focuses increasingly on growth. Molotch argues in a later article that this coalition of growth interests reflected the most common political coalition in American cities, while acknowledging its limited applicability elsewhere. He argues that Americans' acceptance of developers' actions " as the baseline of urban process, rather than as disruptions," is evidence that Americans take developers' "presence for granted"....Numerous authors, in adopting growth machine theory, also added anti-growth citizen coalitions to the mix. Current analyses adopting the theory now invariably include the neighborhood-association-led anti-growth coalition as the foil of the developer-led growth coalition.

Another appropriate policy response limits investment alternatives to a well-structured set of choices. Government-provided tax advantages encourage individual participation in defined contribution programs. Suppose the government were to award tax benefits only to accounts that invest in low-cost, market-mimicking funds. By restricting tax-advantaged investments to passive vehicles, investors face far fewer opportunities to make investment mistakes. Government regulation might address market-timing issues by limiting the number and frequency of moves between funds. Educational efforts might deal with the challenges of asset allocation, encouraging individuals to adopt investment programs that fit their specific risk profiles and time horizons. Acting in loco parentis, the government could create powerful incentives to adopt passively managed, appropriately allocated investment programs

In the United States, private and corporate funding for elections has increased more than twentyfold since 1976, and it topped $2.5 billion during the 2012 Obama–Romney presidential race.49 Since 2005, the fossil-fuel industry alone has spent $1.7 billion in the United States on lobbying and campaign contributions, which explains their entrenched political support.

The glaring exception to that custom was the United States, even before the Trump-era retreat from the international community. The National Weather Service sent not its director but its deputy director, a gesture universally understood as a slight to the weather community as a whole. To compensate, or maybe rather to reiterate the arrogance of the gesture, the United States contributes 20 percent of the WMO’s budget, double the next largest member (Japan) and three times the amount from G7 states like France and Germany. (The formula is determined in parallel with funding to the United Nations as a whole.)

But ethnic diversity also has an effect on other aspects of how societies operate. Putnam (2007) has shown that ethnic diversity dramatically reduces trust and makes people much less inclined to invest in the ‘common good.’ The result of this is that ‘Welfare States’ tend to collapse. Welfare States are predicated upon high levels of trust. People are prepared to pay tax so that others, whom they trust and see as members of their in-group, can be assisted in hard times. They do this because they trust that these people will do the same for them. To some extent, a welfare state involves looking after your own genetic interests. By funding a health service, for example, you are assisting your ethnic kin. But once you are no longer doing this in such a clear cut way, because the society is ethnically diverse, then the incentive to contribute to the common good is reduced (Putnam, 2007).

Engineer’s fascination with CPVC began in the mid-1990s. During this period, in the construction and plumbing industry, pipes were still made of iron and copper. Engineer saw that corrosion was a major problem with galvanized pipes and India was materially behind the evolution curve in the use of plastics for pipes. In the United States, CPVC was the new anti-corrosion solution for plastic pipes, which was swiftly replacing metal (iron and copper) pipes in industrial applications. CPVC was also a superior product compared to PVC because of higher ductile strength, which gave it the ability to handle hot water up to 200 degrees Fahrenheit (93° Celsius) (PVC can handle hot water only up to 140 degrees Fahrenheit [60° Celsius]). B.F. Goodrich (now known as Lubrizol) held the patent for CPVC resin technology, and Engineer decided to tie up with them to bring CPVC to India. He travelled to the United States to forge a techno-financial joint venture (JV) deal with Thompson Plastics of USA, which provided Astral with the technical know-how for setting up the CPVC plant. Astral also acquired the licence for CPVC resin procurement from Lubrizol (the first Indian company to do so). With a JV partner on board and a licence in his hand, Engineer set up Astral Poly Technik in March 1996. Thompson put up 20 per cent of equity for the company and Engineer approached his uncle to fund another 20 per cent. For his personal equity contribution, Engineer sold his house in Ahmedabad. I met Engineer at Astral’s corporate office located off the bustling Sarkhej–Gandhinagar Highway and behind the prestigious Rajpath Club in Ahmedabad. Recalling those early days, Engineer told me, ‘There was a time when everything my father-in-law and I owned was mortgaged to build Astral.

The economist Harry Markowitz won the 1990 Nobel Prize in Economics for developing modern portfolio theory: his groundbreaking “mean-variance portfolio optimization” showed how an investor could make an optimal allocation among various funds and assets to maximize returns at a given level of risk. So when it came time to invest his own retirement savings, it seems like Markowitz should have been the one person perfectly equipped for the job. What did he decide to do? I should have computed the historical covariances of the asset classes and drawn an efficient frontier. Instead, I visualized my grief if the stock market went way up and I wasn’t in it—or if it went way down and I was completely in it. My intention was to minimize my future regret. So I split my contributions fifty-fifty between bonds and equities. Why

The idea is simple: Provide full public financing of elections for qualified candidates. That is, give candidates who have established a broad base of community support a grant to run their campaigns. If candidates accept public funds, they must agree to forgo any private contributions. Clean elections grants equal opportunity to run for public office. It ensures that elections are fair by stripping away the corrosive influence of money. Elections are a public good and should be supported by the common wealth. Clean

One must Judge Patents of Public Funded Institutions in India by their Inventive Contribution, not financial or commercial value they have generated. Our academicians and researchers are driven by public interest, not commercial benefit. Financial benefit is a mere side effect for them.

Those hundreds of “gender projects” funded by aid money might have been more effective if they had also included men. The fact that Westerners often came in intending to promote only women in a country where the majority are unemployed also contributed to the perception that the entire idea of human rights and gender equity was a stand against men.

One Stanford op-ed in particular was picked up by the national press and inspired a website, Stop the Brain Drain, which protested the flow of talent to Wall Street. The Stanford students wrote, The financial industry’s influence over higher education is deep and multifaceted, including student choice over majors and career tracks, career development resources, faculty and course offerings, and student culture and political activism. In 2010, even after the economic crisis, the financial services industry drew a full 20 percent of Harvard graduates and over 15 percent of Stanford and MIT graduates. This represented the highest portion of any industry except consulting, and about three times more than previous generations. As the financial industry’s profits have increasingly come from complex financial products, like the collateralized debt obligations (CDOs) that ignited the 2008 financial meltdown, its demand has steadily grown for graduates with technical degrees. In 2006, the securities and commodity exchange sector employed a larger portion of scientists and engineers than semiconductor manufacturing, pharmaceuticals and telecommunications. The result has been a major reallocation of top talent into financial sector jobs, many of which are “socially useless,” as the chairman of the United Kingdom’s Financial Services Authority put it. This over-allocation reduces the supply of productive entrepreneurs and researchers and damages entrepreneurial capitalism, according to a recent Kauffman Foundation report. Many of these finance jobs contribute to volatile and counter-productive financial speculation. Indeed, Wall Street’s activities are largely dominated by speculative security trading and arbitrage instead of investment in new businesses. In 2010, 63 percent of Goldman Sachs’ revenue came from trading, compared to only 13 percent from corporate finance. Why are graduates flocking to Wall Street? Beyond the simple allure of high salaries, investment banks and hedge funds have designed an aggressive, sophisticated, and well-funded recruitment system, which often takes advantage of [a] student’s job insecurity. Moreover, elite university culture somehow still upholds finance as a “prestigious” and “savvy” career track.6

What about the Russians? They had tried to destroy us. Was she going to help? I wanted to file a lawsuit. We needed to sue those sons of bitches for what they did to us. I knew the campaign had over $3 million set aside in a legal fund. Could she help me get this lawsuit started? And don’t forget the murder of Seth Rich, I told her. Did she want to contribute to Seth’s reward fund? We still hadn’t found the person responsible for the tragic murder of this bright young DNC staffer. You’re right, she said. We’re going to get to that. But she really had to go. She had made the call and checked it off her list, and

Facebook would become our biggest fund-raising tool, bringing in some $250 million in contributions. The base and the supporters would vote with their credit card every day. Ten bucks here, five dollars there. If they liked what they heard or saw, they might give you twenty bucks. For each dollar we spent on ads, we were making around $1.70 back. Most campaigns spend a dollar and make only 70 cents.

The period 1820–1850 was one of extremes in the development of education. Incompetent trustees of academy endowments frittered away assets; visionary legislatures set up educational funds, only to raid them for any emergency which arose; forward-looking men wagged an admonishing finger at those in places of responsibility; Governors addressed legislatures, and the press at times vigorously argued in behalf of the uneducated masses. Meanwhile, religious denominations were establishing or getting control of colleges, seminaries, and academies throughout the State; but this contributed little if anything to elementary education.

Nietzsche hoped that Bayreuth would be the fulfillment of his Greco-German dreams—a modern festival along Hellenic lines, fusing Apollonian and Dionysian elements, presented before an audience of elite aesthetes. Wagner, for his part, clung to his fantasy of a great popular festival, open to people of all backgrounds. Supporters were building up an international network of Wagner Societies, whose members made advance contributions in exchange for tickets. Through their patronage, Wagner hoped to keep admission free. By 1873, fund-raising was lagging, especially among German notables. Two of the biggest donors were, reputedly, Abdülaziz, the sultan of the Ottoman Empire, and Isma’il Pasha, the khedive of Egypt.

THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN A TAX SHELTER AND TAX DEFERMENT The first lesson I learned was simple: not every tax break is scuzzy. Leona Helmsley, also known as the “Queen of Mean,” may have been sentenced to sixteen years in prison for tax evasion (ah, sweet justice), but there’s a big difference between legal and illegal tax avoidance. When I first started out, I didn’t have nearly as many tax-avoidance strategies as the rich did, but there are a few available to anyone, and taking advantage of every opportunity is absolutely critical. Tax sheltering means putting your money someplace where taxes no longer apply. Think of taxes as gravity in The Matrix, or logic in the Transformers movies. Even if it technically exists, it doesn’t apply to you. For example, if you invest in an index ETF and it goes up, it’s not reported on your tax return. If you earn interest on that account, ditto. Once your money is inside a tax shelter, you never get taxed on it again. This is because the money that goes into a tax-sheltering account has already been taxed. Tax deferment, on the other hand, is the process of taking a chunk of your income and choosing not to pay income taxes on it that year. Here’s how it works: You contribute a portion of your income to a tax-deferred account. The amount you contribute reduces your taxable income for that year, and accountants would call this contribution “deductible.” So, if you made $50,000 one year, and you chose to defer $10,000, then that year you would only be taxed as if you earned $40,000. That $10,000 you deferred gets put into a special account where it can grow tax-free, but if you withdraw it, it will be added on to your taxable income and you’ll pay taxes on it then. This is because money going into tax deferral hasn’t been taxed yet. To recap . . . Tax Shelter Tax Deferral Contributions are . . . Not deductible Deductible Growth/interest/dividends are . . . Tax-free Tax-free Withdrawals are . . . Tax-free Taxed as income

A Roth can also be a backup emergency fund. Because your contributions are made with after-tax dollars, you are free to withdraw them (though not the earnings on them) at any age without incurring taxes or penalties.

Connecticut’s Solidarity Dividend was almost immediate. In the first legislative cycles after public financing, the more diverse (by measures of race, gender, and class) legislature passed a raft of popular public-interest bills, including a guarantee of paid sick days for workers, a minimum wage increase, a state Earned Income Tax Credit, in-state tuition for undocumented students, and a change to an obscure law championed by beverage distributor lobbyists that resulted in $24 million returning to the state—money that could contribute to funding the public financing law. Despite regular efforts to curtail it, Connecticut’s Citizens’ Election Program has endured for over a decade, highly popular with both Connecticut residents and candidates, 73 percent of whom opted into the system in 2014.

Anand was on tour in a distant village when the shattering news of the Chinese invasion was announced. Within hours, there was an astonishing metamorphosis in the prevailing atmosphere. Except for the lone troubled voice that came from the radio, there was a numbed silence all around. Every citizen was in the grip of an indescribable mixture of anger, anguish, a sense of disappointment, and above all, a feeling of unity with every other Indian. Just when Anand was about to leave, a lad of about ten came forward. He put his hand in his shirt pocket and produced a twenty-five paise coin. He held it out tentatively and stammered, "This is my contribution to defeat China..." Anand accepted the coin and hugged the boy. He controlled his emotion with some difficulty. The gesture electrified the atmosphere. For the first time faces brightened somewhat. "Why not raise a fund in the village?", said the Sarpanch. "Yes!" interjected the villagers. "We must give and give and give until it hurts! Each a little more than he can afford to." God! Does this country need the threat of external aggression to unite it internally? wondered Anand, as his car turned into the highway.

People who’ve adopted an individualist attitude aren’t necessarily sociopaths or assholes: they’ll still donate to a GoFundMe to help a local kid with cancer, or even stop to help someone on the side of the road if they look “safe.” They chip into the gift fund for a co-worker’s fiftieth birthday, tithe to their church, and fundraise for their children’s school. They do want to help others, but they want it to be on their own terms and arbitrate who’s worthy of receiving it. They are often obsessed with the idea of “fairness”: that one can benefit from something only insomuch as they’ve contributed to it themselves.

The long tail is a myth, a fact evidenced by the current music business, in which 80 percent of the revenue is generated by 1 percent of the content. Even at the height of the early blockbuster era, spawned by Michael Jackson’s Thriller, 80 percent of the revenue was spread among the top 20 percent of the content. So even in a different winner-takes-all scenario, the revenue was spread out among more artists than it is today. Economists have noted that winners “take all” in many sectors (including hedge funds), and that this has clearly contributed to global income equality, but in the digital media business it seems especially Darwinian. In a world where four hundred hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute of every day, the commodification of what was once considered an art (or at least a craft) has become inevitable. For all the stories promoted by Google about YouTube millionaires, the traffic statistics tell another story. Most YouTube videos have fewer than 150 views.

There are a lot of great investors in the world, hedge fund guys that make a lot of money. But they have very little purpose. They don’t create anything tangible, fix anything, or provide a service. On the other hand, there are incredibly important roles in society that are underpaid but deeply respected. The variables in this equation are: - Value created → what you contribute to society - Value awarded → how the market values the work - Value captured (by you) → how much you earn