|
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*
Concern
for the public good must become the animating
force of our economic order.”
-- Marjorie
Kelly
“We
have words for racism and sexism, but wealth
discrimination isn’t fully recognized. It
is a bias in favor of the wealthy and against
labor, the environment, and the community.
Concern for the public good must become the
animating force of our economic order.”
-- Marjorie
Kelly
|
The
gross national product includes air pollution
and advertising for cigarettes, and ambulances
to clear our highways of carnage. It counts special
locks for our doors, and jails for the people
who break them ... It does not allow for the health
of our families, the quality of thier education,
or the joy of their play.
-- Robert
F. Kennedy |
 |
The
love of money as a possession--as distinguished from
the love of money as a means to the enjoyments and
realities of life--will be recognized for what it
is, a somewhat disgusting morbidity, one of those
semi-criminal, semi-pathological propensities which
one hands over with a shudder to the specialists in
mental disease
-- John Maynard Keynes
|
*
We
must recognize that we can't solve our problems
now until there is a radical redistribution
of economic and political power....[What is
required is] a radical restructuring of the
architecture of American society.
--
Martin Luther
King, Jr
|
 |
|
|
*
When
the institutions of money rule the world, it
is perhaps inevitable that the interests of
money will take precedence over the interests
of people. What we are experiencing might best
be described as a case of money colonizing life.
To accept this absurd distortion of human institutions
and purpose should be considered nothing less
than an act of collective, suicidal insanity."
-- David Korten
|
But
once we concede that people do care about status,
it necessarily follows that the status competition
that makes people buy expensive consumer goods in
order to impress other people constitutes a failure
of the market economy - a failure as real as traffic
congestion, or pollution, or any other activity in
which the individual pursuit of self-interest leads
to a collectively bad outcome. Suppose that we could
somehow agree to stop competing over who has the fanciest
car; everyone could then work a bit less, spend more
time with their families, and raise the sum total
of human happiness. Or to put it a bit differently,
Americans (or at least the top few percent of the
income distribution) have gotten into a sort of arms
race of conspicuous consumption that, like most arms
races, consumes huge quantities of resources yet in
the end changes little.
--Paul Krugman
|
|
*
"It's
a measure of the depth of our consumer trance
that the death of the planet is not sufficient
to break it."
-- Kalle Lasn
|
|
*
Many
Americans hunger for a different kind of society
-- one based on principles of caring, ethical
and spiritual sensitivity, and communal solidarity.
Their need for meaning is just as intense as
their need for economic security."
-- Michael Lerner
|
|
*
"This
focus on money and power may do wonders in the marketplace,
but it creates a tremendous crisis in our society.
People who have spent all day learning how to sell
themselves and to manipulate others are in no position
to form lasting friendships or intimate relationships...
Many Americans hunger for a different kind of society
-- one based on principles of caring, ethical and
spiritual sensitivity, and communal solidarity. Their
need for meaning is just as intense as their need
for economic security."
-- Michael Lerner
Workers
Day
- May 1
Fair
Trade Day - 2nd Sat in May
End
Poverty Day - October 17
Buy
Nothing Day - 4th Fri in November
