Category Archives: Business

Business, Economics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Social Commentary

The World’s Greatest Philanthropist

29 Comments

…was Steve Jobs.

The part of the piece that most struck me was this:

A 2006 Wired article on Jobs, “Great Wealth Does Not Make a Great Man,” reported that even though his wealth was estimated at $3.3 billion, Jobs’s name did not appear on Giving USA’s list of gifts of $5 million or more for the previous four years, nor on another that list showing gifts of $1 million or more. (The article acknowledged that he could have been giving anonymously.)

The article took a cheap shot: “Jobs can’t even get behind causes that would seem to carry deep personal meaning…he is a cancer survivor. But unlike [Lance] Armstrong, Jobs has so far done little publicly to raise money or awareness for the disease.” It went on, “…he’s nothing more than a greedy capitalist who’s amassed an obscene fortune. It’s shameful…[Bill] Gates is much more deserving of Jobs’ rock star exaltation. In the same way, I admire Bono over Mick Jagger, and John Lennon over Elvis, because they spoke up about things bigger than their own celebrity.” Yes, but in part their own celebrity was connected to the things they spoke up about.

Emphasis mine.

Really? Is there an adult on the planet, or at least in this country, who is unaware of cancer? Really? Does their awareness really need to be raised? Will the elevation of their “awareness” somehow magically result in less cancer?

This kind of “journalism” isn’t just stupid, it is insipid.

Business, Economics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary

Think Things Can’t Get Worse?

14 Comments

Think again. As long as the people who put these economically ruinous policies in place remain in power, they’re likely to.

[Update a couple minutes later]

How government spending impoverished us all. I think that the GDP is indeed a very flawed way of assessing the state of health of the economy. If we had a better measure, the notion that WW II ended the Great Depression wouldn’t make much sense at all. It simply set the stage for the recovery in the late forties, once we returned to sane economic policies after fifteen years.

Business, Economics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary

October 14th

3 Comments

A day that should live in infamy:

Hank Paulson’s bloodless banking coup demonstrated that a nearly all-powerful government which believes it is untouchable can and will do anything once it gins up enough of a crisis atmosphere. Paulson’s putsch gave cover to the long list of heavy-handed actions which have followed during the Obama administration, from arbitrarily changing the pecking order in bankruptcy, to preventing nonunion manufacturing plants from opening, to defying direct court orders, to Dodd-Frank’s attempt to permanently keep the government in banks’ boardrooms — and much, much more.

This, too, is what fascism looks like.