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The Poor and the Heartless
Last year, the top 10 percent of American earners took home more than half of the country’s total income. The top 1 percent took home a fifth. That’s the greatest income disparity ever recorded, and it’s getting worse. Indeed, the income of the wealthiest has grown dramatically during the recession that began in 2008, while the less fortunate have seen their incomes stagnate. This inequality has all sorts of consequences for the poor, besides the obvious financial burden of everyday living. As Maia Szalavitz reported in Time magazine this week, the poor also suffer from poorer health and higher mortality.
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Infused with faith: Religious ritual and hope for peace
Israeli-Palestinian peace talks begin this week, and it’s fair to say that attitudes range from guardedly hopeful to sneeringly cynical. After all, this conflict has been going on since the mid-20th century, with a lot of dashed promises along the way. It was just a year ago that missiles from Gaza were raining down daily on Israel. All of the final status issues are on the table, both sides agree—land, borders, settlements, Jerusalem. It’s widely assumed that the animosity and conflict between Palestine and Israel are fueled by these geopolitical issues, rather than by clashing religious values.
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Heat wave psychology: Long past, greener future?
I live in Maryland, where we have been suffering through an unrelenting heat wave all summer, and I confess I have cranked up the AC on the worst days. But I always feel guilty about it when I do, and I turn it off whenever the air dips back into the tolerable range. So I’m no saint, but I am mindful. I am motivated by thoughts of the future generations, my kids and their kids and all of the people who will have to inhabit this overheating planet. We all make more or less responsible choices like this every day. We drive hybrids or guzzlers, recycle or don’t, protest or endorse the Keystone XL pipeline.
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The Psychology of Exile
When I was in middle school, one of the assigned readings was a story called “The Man Without a Country.” It was written by Edward Everett Hale in 1863, and told the story of a young American army lieutenant, Philip Nolan, who is tried for treason along with Aaron Burr. During the trial, he angrily denounces his country, declaring his wish to never hear mention of the United States again, and the shocked judge complies: He sentences Nolan to spend the rest of his life in exile, aboard U.S. warships, where he will hear no word of life in America. I found this story very sad at the time, and still do.
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So Damn Superior: Parsing Partisan Politics
A new Gallup poll shows that Americans’ confidence in the Congress is at an all-time low. A measly 10 percent of citizens express confidence in lawmakers, and most say they have little or no confidence. That is the worst rating of any American institution—including the military, HMOs and labor unions—since this polling began in 1973. A lot of this disaffection has to do with the extreme partisanship that has seemingly paralyzed Capitol Hill. Today’s is not the first political stalemate in American history, but it is certainly one of the most maddening. Lawmakers—and the country itself—appear locked into extreme ideological positions that allow little if any room for compromise.
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A Salvo in the Soda Wars
New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg’s controversial ban on large, sugary drinks was slated to go into effect today, but a state judge struck it down at the last minute. Supreme Court Justice Milton Tingling invalidated the proposed regulations—approved by the city board of health in September—that would have prohibited city restaurants, movie theaters and other food service providers from serving sugary drinks larger than 16 ounces. The regulations were intended to help curb troubling obesity rates.
