Stream of Reading (Prepare to be Forwarded) – An Archive of What I'm Reading
Planning to retire? Not long ago, many of us would have automatically answered “yes” to that question, and with good reason. In the 20th century, retirement became the norm—something most people did. Thanks to generous programs like Social Security (enacted in 1935) and Medicare (1965), millions of people who once might have worked till they…
Thirty-nine minutes into his southbound ride from Wilmington, Delaware, to Washington, D.C., Joseph H. Boardman, president and CEO of Amtrak, begins to cry. We’re in the dining car of a train called the Silver Star, surrounded by people eating hamburgers. The Silver Star runs from New York City to Miami in 31 hours, or five…
Amy Chozick has a fascinating story about politicians struggling to find a vocabulary to describe families who are not poor but who feel their economic struggles are sufficiently severe that they no longer self-identify as middle-class. I don’t have any advice to offer political wordsmiths, but the discussion is a good a reminder that household…
Submitted by Dark Bid In society, exclusivity creates desirability. Whether it’s that special country club or elite college, privilege is defined by the rejection rate. In the previous era, the Ivy League was one of those prized organizations, and McDonald’s was the exact opposite. Now, the New Normal has seized our social convention and turned…
The American dream of equal opportunity, based on the conviction that intelligence, hard work and character are the keys to success, may be on life support. These days children raised at the top or bottom fifths of the income pyramid tend to stay there, even as adults. Higher education is considered a major contributor to economic…
The women begin to arrive just before 8 a.m., every day and without fail, until there are thickets of young Asian and Hispanic women on nearly every street corner along the main roads of Flushing, Queens. As if on cue, cavalcades of battered Ford Econoline vans grumble to the curbs, and the women jump in….
12/21/2014 Font: – + The End of Tolerance? Anti-Muslim Movement Rattles Germany By SPIEGEL Staff REUTERS Members of the loosely organized “Patriotic Europeans against the Islamization of the West,” gather at a major protest in Dresden in eastern Germany on Dec. 8. Disenchanted German citizens and right-wing extremists are joining forces to form a protest…
Last May, the first women to edit the New York Times and Le Monde were very publicly forced out of their jobs within a few hours of each other. What followed was perhaps just as surprising as the events themselves: a viral national debate about a previously little-noted problem, the incredible paucity of women running…
A humanitarian crisis is developing in Europe as refugees traveling through Libya and other countries seek to enter the European Union via the Mediterranean Sea, resulting in a tragic loss of life for those on overcrowded boats. Most people are fleeing countries in the Middle East and Africa, either because of civil war (Syria and…
I was asleep when I heard the door rattle against the frame. My eyes flashed open and I sprung upright in my under-desk sleep space. Was it all over? Had someone come to work early? I peered over my desk, afraid of what I might see. The morning sun burned through the chicken-scratch graffiti of…