At least half of all farmworkers in the United States are undocumented Mexican immigrants. And “documentation” often dictates inclusion in a guest-worker program that’s been compared to slavery. Americans avoid these jobs, yet elected a president who promised mass deportation. There’s a crisis brewing in our fields, and it’s about to get much, much worse.
economics
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
Free Education, or Freedom From Education? A Deep Dive Into DeVos
Journalist and public education advocate Jennifer Berkshire traveled to the heart of DeVos-land — the Acton Institute for the Study of Religion and Liberty in Grand Rapids, Michigan — to learn more about Betsy DeVos and her family’s life-long attempt to dismantle the “nanny state.”
Posted inEditor's Pick
Holy Warriors Against the Welfare State
A trip to the DeVos seat of power in Michigan, home of evangelism and Amway.
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What’s Left at the Bottom of Pandora’s Box
When writer Dale Maharidge and photographer Matt Black traveled through California, Ohio, and Maine to labor alongside the working poor, t hey found lots of things they expected — long hours, low pay, financial uncertainty — and one thing th ey didn’t: hope.
Posted inEditor's Pick
A Photographic Chronicle of America’s Working Poor
Writing Dale Maharidge and photographer Matt Black traveled through Maine, Ohio, and California for this piece updating the landmark study of the American working poor, Now Let Us Praise Famous Men.
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America’s Great Divergence
A growing earnings gap between those with a college education and those without is creating economic and cultural rifts throughout the country.
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The ‘Second Great Chocolate Boom’
The ‘First Great Chocolate Boom’ occurred at the end of the 19th and early 20th century. The industrial revolution turned chocolate from a drink to a solid food full of energy and raised incomes of the poor. As a result, chocolate consumption increased rapidly in Europe and North America. As the popularity of chocolate grew, production spread […]
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The Invisible Hand: Who Was Adam Smith?
In a recent essay for Adbusters, Douglas Haddow posited that algorithms are the new “invisible hand” guiding our capitalist system. But before Haddow got to that conclusion, he explored the original idea of the invisible hand, and the man behind the phrase: If we want to interrogate the true nature of these numbers, the wizard […]
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Using the British Railway Mania of the 1840s to Explain the Beanie Baby Craze
Andrew Odlyzko, a mathematician and bubble expert, proposes a simpler theory explaining speculative panics in his study on the British Railway Mania of the 1840s. Odlyzko credits Railway Mania in part to a “collective hallucination,” an extreme form of groupthink wherein a significant chunk of society feverishly buys into a shared dream with no regard for the skeptics and […]
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The Painful Business of Running a Franchise
It’s not just the workers who get a lousy deal. Over the years, Bob Baber, the Quiznos franchisee, became increasingly frustrated by the terms of his contract. One of the issues that galled him the most was that Quiznos was allowed to (and did) place additional sub shops in his franchise area, creating what he […]