Annie Leonard ("The Story of Stuff") urges us to stay home on Black Friday, offering us some stunning images in this one-minute video: What else is there to do? Fifty years ago, people would have thought you were an idiot to even ask this question. Although I have NEVER shopped on Black Friday, I signed Annie Leonard's Pledge.
William K. Black is spot on in his analysis of Mitt Romney, the candidate of America's Social Darwinist Party (aka the Republican Party):
Romney's initial non-apology for his dismissal of the 47 percent claimed that he was not "elegant" in his statements, but that is a deliberate effort to divert our attention from the real point. His consignment of nearly half of all Americans to the trash heap was deliberately crude because his fellow plutocrats love the crudeness of his dismissal of those they see as immoral moochers. His speech demonstrated perfect pitch for his audience because his plutocratic peers are the only Americans who Romney knows and understands.
Salon presents a young adult's description of how Ayn Rand destroyed her family. This vivid and intensely personal article by Alyssa Bereznak exposes the ugly underbelly of objectivism, summed up by the following words by Ayn Rand:
My philosophy, in essence, is the concept of man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute.I disagree with those who believe that Rand offers a path to a meaningful life. I see life as a yin-yang dynamic, a struggle we all have trying to balance our own needs and wants with the needs of the group. [More . . . ]
I'm not convinced that most rich kids hate their parents, but there are presumably some who do. I also know many non-rich kids who don't get along with their parents. Franco Lombardo says many rich kids hate their parents in his new book, "The Great White Elephant: Why Rich Kids Hate Their Parents." Lombardo bases his claim on the failure of 70% of rich families to pass their wealth-making ability onto the next generation intact. This reminds me of a proverb:
The first generation in a family makes money (goes from rags to riches); the second generation holds or keeps the money; and the third generation squanders or loses the money (and so goes back to rags).In this report by CNBC, he gives three reasons:
First, wealthy parents don't say "no" enough. "A child grows up with a sense that they get whatever they want," Lombardo says. "When they go out into the world and the world tells them 'no," they're angry. And they resent their parents." The second cause is time. Wealthy parents are often absent parents, and the kids feel abandoned. . . . The third reason is society , , , makes fun of rich kids. So parents tell their kids at an early age to hide their wealth. When the kids grow up, they feel that a big part of their identity has to remain hidden - and they blame their parents.These reasons make some sense to me, but I like to see some numbers quantifying this supposed hate. I'd like to know who we "know" that rich kids hate the parents any more than non-rich kids hate their parents.
Do you need to get away from it all? Do you crave an island of your own? Richie Sowa was in that position. Rather than find an island or buy one, he decided to make his own. The foundation of his island is consists of empty plastic water bottles. Sowa is now growing his own bananas, coconuts, spinach, almonds and tomatoes. In the video below, he says that he has everything he wants. Although his island is currently in Mexico, he plans to keep increasing the size of the island, until he sets out to sea.