Value, politics and democracy in the United States

2011 ◽  
Vol 59 (2) ◽  
pp. 186-199 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Graeber
Keyword(s):  
Working Class ◽  
Common Good ◽  
Intrinsic Value ◽  
The United States ◽  
Economic Interests ◽  
White American ◽  
The Arts ◽  
The Us ◽  
The Rich ◽  
American Working Class

This article examines the role of values in the political discourse of the last decade in the US. It embarks from what many observers had described as a puzzle: the fact that significant parts of the American working class voted against their economic interests but in line with what they perceived to be their values. As a result, a president had been re-elected who cut taxes for the rich while waging an expensive war in Iraq and increasing public debt to historically unprecedented levels. It is argued that large sectors of the white American working class were disappointed with liberal politicians because they associated them with a cultural elite that occupied positions in society that allowed them to pursue careers of intrinsic value in the arts, science, or politics but which were largely closed to the working class. It is thus suggested that the ‘culture wars’ in the US are better interpreted as a struggle over access to the means to behave altruistically. The article rejects the widespread assumption that individuals are narrowly conceived economic self-interest maximizers. Rather, it suggests that human fulfilment can be related to the satisfaction derived from working for the common good.

Progressive Catholicism in the United States

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew A. Shadle
Keyword(s):  
Common Good ◽  
The United States ◽  
Economic Life ◽  
Ethical Framework ◽  
Social Teaching ◽  
American Catholicism ◽  
The Common Good ◽  
The Us ◽  
The Common ◽  
American Society

American Catholicism has long adapted to US liberal institutions. Progressive Catholicism has taken the liberal values of democratic participation and human rights and made them central to its interpretation of Catholic social teaching. This chapter explores in detail the thought of David Hollenbach, S.J., a leading representative of progressive Catholicism. Hollenbach has proposed an ethical framework for an economy aimed at the common good, ensuring that the basic needs of all are met and that all are able to participate in economic life. The chapter also looks at the US Catholic bishops’ 1986 pastoral letter Economic Justice for All, which emphasizes similar themes while also promoting collaboration between the different sectors of American society for the sake of the common good.

scholarly journals The Future of Turkey - United States Relations

Jurnal ICMES ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 179-196
Author(s):  
Firmanda Taufiq
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
Economic Interests ◽  
The Us ◽  
The Future ◽  
Foreign Policies ◽  
The Government ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Role Of The Government

Throughout 2018, relations between Turkey and the United States seemed to deteriorate. The leaders of the two countries issued sharp diplomatic statements and the US even imposed economic sanctions on Turkey. This article aims to analyze how the future of relations between Turkey and the United States. Cooperation between the two has a long historical side after the Cold War. Relations between the two countries are based on various interests, both economic, political, military and security interests. The theory used in this study is the theory of national interest. The US has great interests in the Middle East and Turkey is the front-line ally in achieving those interests. However, there are many US foreign policies that ignore the Turkish concern and create tensions between the two countries. On the contrary, Turkey also has considerable economic interests, but the role of the government elite (in this case, President Erdogan) has a significant influence in the determination of Turkish foreign policy. The findings of this study, although it will go through complex challenges and processes, the US and Turkey will continue to maintain their relations.

Polish Immigration and the American Working Class

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dominic Pacyga
Keyword(s):  
Working Class ◽  
Labor Movement ◽  
Industrial Structure ◽  
Good Deal ◽  
The United States ◽  
Ethnic Community ◽  
Rust Belt ◽  
Radical History ◽  
American Working Class ◽  
Over Time

In the years after the Civil War, Polish immigrants became an important part of the American working class. They actively participated in the labor movement and played key roles in various industrial strikes ranging from the 1877 Railroad Strike through the rise of the CIO and the post-1945 era of prosperity. Over time, the Polish American working class became acculturated and left its largely immigrant past behind while maintaining itself as an ethnic community. It also witnessed a good deal of upward mobility, especially over several generations. This ethnic community, however, continued to be refreshed with immigrants throughout the 20th century. As with the larger American working class, Polish American workers were hard hit by changes in the industrial structure of the United States. Deindustrialization turned the centers of much of the Polish American community into the Rust Belt. This, despite a radical history, caused many to react by turning toward conservative causes in the late 20th and early 21st centuries.

China and the Iranian Nuclear Crisis: Between Ambiguities and Interests

2011 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 227-253 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lounnas Djallil
Keyword(s):  
The United States ◽  
The Other ◽  
Complex Relationship ◽  
Economic Interests ◽  
Oil Supply ◽  
Security Issues ◽  
The Us ◽  
Nuclear Issue ◽  
The One ◽  
Nuclear Crisis

AbstractThis article analyses, the complex relationship between Tehran, Beijing and Washington on the Iranian nuclear issue. Indeed, China's policy towards Iran has often been described as ambiguous, in supporting Washington, on the one hand, while protecting Tehran, on the other hand. In this article, we argue that, in fact, Beijing policy vis-a-vis Tehran depends on the state of its relationships with Washington. Indeed, a closer analysis shows that China is using Iran as a bargaining chip with the United States on, among others, two key security issues, i.e., Taiwan and the oil supply. The guarantee of a secured oil supply from the Middle-East in addition to a comprehensive policy of the US with regard to Chinese security interests in Taiwan as well as the use of smart sanctions against Tehran, which would thus take into account, to a certain extent, Beijing economic interests in Iran, are, indeed, the guarantee of Beijing's support to the US policy towards Iran.

scholarly journals Neoliberalism, Class and Culture: The 2008 Federal Elections in Canada and the United States

2012 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Tim Fowler
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Working Class ◽  
The United States ◽  
Research Note ◽  
Economic Relation ◽  
The Arts ◽  
Cultural Variable

In the 2008 federal elections in Canada and The United States, conservative parties used class rhetoric in an attempt to draw votes from the working class. They did so by defining class along narrowly cultural lines, so excluding economic concerns. This research note examines the cases of ‘Ordinary Canadians Don’t Care About The Arts’ and ‘Joe the Plumber’ to show how conservative parties in Canada and the United States are redefining class as a purely cultural variable. Although the rhetoric was not entirely successful, the cases are instructive about the ways that the understandings and importance of class as an economic relation is suppressed by pro-capitalist parties in political elections.

The Italian Immigrant Working-Class Experience in the United States

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marcella Bencivenni
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
World War I ◽  
Working Class ◽  
The United States ◽  
Immigrant Workers ◽  
World War ◽  
Italian Americans ◽  
Political Events ◽  
American Working Class ◽  
Steel Industries

Close to seventeen million people in the United States, approximately 6 percent of the total population, identified themselves as Italian Americans in the 2016 census. Constituting the nation’s fifth largest ancestry group, they are the descendants of one of the greatest diasporas in human history. Since 1860, twenty-nine million Italians have left their homeland for better opportunities worldwide. Close to six million of them have settled in the United States with about five million arriving prior to World War I. Along with other European groups of the great transatlantic migrations of 1870–1920—Jews, Poles, Croatians, and Finns—they became an essential part of the American working class, building, shaping, and enriching its life and culture. Among the most ubiquitous of the early foreigners, Italians were initially confined to unskilled and manual jobs but gradually made their way into the ranks of semi-skilled operatives in mass-production manufacturing. By 1910, they constituted a vital segment of the American multinational workforce in the mining, garment, and steel industries and played key roles in the labor struggles of the early 20th century, providing both key leadership and mass militancy. Like other ethnic groups, Italian immigrant workers lived deeply transnational lives. Their class consciousness was continually informed by their ethnic identity and their complicated relationship to both Italy and the United States, as they sought to transform, and were transformed by, the political events, industrial conditions, and cultures of the two countries. The story of how Italian immigrant workers became “American” sheds light not only on their experience in the United States but also on the transnational character of the labor movement and the interplay of class, race, gender, and ethnic identities.

Wealth Defense and the Complicity of Liberal Democracy

Wealth ◽  
2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeffrey A. Winters
Keyword(s):  
Government Policy ◽  
Wealth Inequality ◽  
The United States ◽  
Protective Services ◽  
Historical View ◽  
Wealth Concentration ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Us ◽  
The Rich ◽  
Modern Era

Sustaining extreme material inequality is neither easy nor automatic. It requires constant and active strategies of wealth defense by the rich, including using their money to hire protective services (which in the twentieth century took the form of a specialized wealth defense industry). An important transformation over the centuries was the movement of violence out of the hands of the rich in exchange for their support for impersonal institutions of coercion whose first priority has been the defense of property rights that make great fortunes viable politically. This chapter focuses on the changing politics and power that undergird wealth stratification. The analysis takes a deep historical view of the social tensions inherent in wealth concentration, starting with the origins of wealth inequality, and continuing with a discussion of the strategies and politics of wealth defense as personal fortunes grew in scale and as threats and predations multiplied. The second half of the chapter focuses on the modern era through an examination of the United States from the 1780s to the present. The US case demonstrates that for democracy and extreme wealth stratification to be compatible, democracy must first be structurally impaired and ideologically reframed to hinder egalitarian impulses from becoming government policy.

Donald Trumps Ziel, den „Sumpf trocken zu legen“. Zum US-Wirtschaftsaufschwung seit 2009

2018 ◽  
Vol 48 (190) ◽  
pp. 91-114
Author(s):  
Trevor Evans
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Business Cycle ◽  
Financial System ◽  
The United States ◽  
Economic Situation ◽  
Donald Trump ◽  
The Us ◽  
Current Economic Situation

The current economic situation in the United States can be seen as the result of three factors. The first is the long-term shift to a neo-liberal order. The second factor is the US business cycle. Periods of economic expansion in the 1980s, the 1990s and the early 2000s were each brought to an end by increasingly severe crises, the most recent of which in 2007-2009 came perilously close to causing a collapse of the US financial system. The most recent expansion, which began in mid-2009, has been unusually weak, and is already relatively long by comparison with other recent expansions.The third factor is the presidency of Donald Trump which began in January 2017. Despite a populist rhetoric and the dependence of his electoral victory on mobilising white working-class support, in government he has pursued an unashamed series of measures which primarily benefit the very richest sectors of US society.

Should we build better? The case for resilient earthquake design in the United States

2020 ◽  
pp. 875529302094418
Author(s):  
Keith A Porter
Keyword(s):  
Earthquake Engineering ◽  
The United States ◽  
Rating Systems ◽  
Economic Interests ◽  
The Us ◽  
Earthquake Design ◽  
Strength And Stiffness ◽  
Performance Based Earthquake Engineering ◽  
Real Estate Sales ◽  
New Buildings

America seems to have an earthquake investment gap, paying billions more annually on average to recover from earthquakes than it invests to prevent losses beforehand. Two large studies for Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and the US Geological Survey (USGS) offer insight into how well American buildings will resist future catastrophic earthquakes. They suggest that the public prefers new buildings to do more than to assure life safety, which has been the building code’s historic objective. They also suggest that greater resilience would better serve society’s economic interests. People expect to be safe in new buildings and the building code delivers safety. But people also want to use buildings after the Big One. America has a few options for meeting those expectations, including stronger, stiffer construction, with geographically optimized strength and stiffness. Greater strength and stiffness is not the only option to improve resilience, but such an approach offers the advantages that it could be implemented in practice by any structural designer without requiring additional technical expertise, software, of proprietary technology. It would produce a healthier economy and save society an average of $4 for every $1 of added cost. The savings cross property lines, benefiting tenants, owners, lenders, developers, and everyone who does business with them. The added cost would amount to approximately 1%, and experience in Moore, Oklahoma, shows that it would probably affect real estate sales and prices little or not at all. The solution addresses ethical considerations by responding to the public’s expectations for better performance and by optimizing utilitarian outcomes. Other options such as second-generation performance-based earthquake engineering, innovative technologies, and rating systems could complement this approach and further increase resilience.

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