I Could Have Housed Someone, but I Didn’t.

The Joyce Hotel closure represents all that is wrong with urban housing. The other night, I was at my favorite Egyptian food cart on SW 9th Ave, just a few blocks from Joyce Hotel. This five dollar meal has become an affordable option for me, but as recently as the beginning of this year, it …

David Schor on HET Ep.39

Assistant Attorney General for the State of Oregon, candidate for Mayor of Portland, David Schor is today’s guest on the Horizon at End Times podcast. Today, I’m gladly, willingly putting forward my two endorsements for both Mayor and President. Hint: They are both Democratic Socialists. The age of neoliberalism is descending upon us like an …

Furrows of Worry

How we trade truth for belief for money Home is where the heart is, so you’re never really homeless. This cliche might be mustered up by some average passerby, one whose heart is not frozen by the coldness of economic analysis. It implies at least that he or she is reassuring someone that life is …

Everybody Deserves Gentrification

Housing isn’t any kind of crisis right now, it’s wealth disparity Your house, your tent in the city, your apartment in the sky, your manor and estate on the hill, your cottage and farm in the country — or whatever place you call home — is treated like a commodity, a raw material for the new digital …

WHY AMERICA NEEDS FEWER JOBS

Family Values and the Workforce Participation Rate This morning, I read about Jeb Bush and his recent comment that, “workforce participation has to rise from its all-time modern lows.” So in order for us to achieve his demand that we grow the economy by 4% annually, “people need to work longer hours and through their …

Weeding the People is Tricky Business

Oregon’s first legal cannabis trade show exemplified the frustrations of regulated freedom. Weed The People was an overwhelming success. In fact and in literal terms, overwhelming indeed and financially successful too. Perhaps the term “beautiful disaster” popularly coined by the mainstream stoner rock band, 311, would be more appropriate. Thankfully, Aquarium Drunkard’s music picks didn’t …

On Being in Economics

Featured Image by Jax Ko A Philosophical Foundation for the Critique of Capitalism Everything in the world that is bought and sold using currency can be defined by its market in the economy. Every aspect of life is commodified for the marketplace, from drinking water to wiping our ass. How we sleep, what we eat, …

3 Reforms to Make Corporate Personhood Okay

The fact is and shall continue that corporations are lawful people. I don’t agree with it, but that is how it is and there is not a lot of momentum to change that. After all, the law is time stamped with the rule of a century in legal cases in defense of corporations, branding them …

The Cognitive Dissonance of Midterms 2014

Midterms 2014 point to America’s cognitive dissonance. We statistically hate congress more than Obama, yet the congress that has been selected leads right back to the policies that we voted against this year. In three states, voters simultaneously unseated democratic senators and pushed forward democrat labor policy: a minimum wage raise. Arkansas, Alaska, and South …