Economic downturns have historically led to significant social consequences in the United States. The Great Recession, for instance, resulted in substantial changes in income, wealth, and employment, affecting many lives. When an economy falters, the ripple effects extend far beyond stock market numbers and corporate balance sheets. They touch the…
Category: Finance and Economy
Exploring everything financial and alternative finance
Leadership is Inspiration, Not Declaration
Leadership is neither an imposition nor an entreaty; it is the silent force that compels without coercion. To lead is not to issue orders, nor is it to demand obedience, for obedience given out of fear or obligation is a fragile thing, dissolving the moment oversight is removed. True leadership…
Survival and Solidarity
I have lived long enough among squirrels and senators, mice and merchants, to suspect that the word “survival” has become tragically misused, as though it were a synonym for conquest. It is not. A man does not survive because he beats the rest of the world to the apple tree,…
“Get Together: How to Build a Community With Your People” by Bailey Richardson, Kevin Huynh, and Kai Elmer Sotto
There’s no shortage of books about “building community,” but most of them either drown in corporate jargon or get lost in abstract ideals. Get Together does neither. Instead, it offers something rare: a clear, practical, and genuinely useful guide to bringing people together in a way that actually works. Bailey…
How to Ethically Triage Needs In Community Service Settings
Given that we exist in a world where resources are finite, yet human need is seemingly infinite, the challenge of triaging community needs becomes both a moral and logistical necessity. The allocation of aid, services, and funding must be carried out in a way that maximizes impact while adhering to…
“1984” by George Orwell: A Book or A Prophecy?
Revisiting 1984 today feels less like reading a novel and more like stumbling upon an old prophecy that’s somehow still unfolding. George Orwell’s bleak vision of a world where truth is whatever the powerful say it is has never gone out of print, and for good reason. The book doesn’t…
Feeding the Landfill: How Globalized Food Systems Are Starving Us
Walk into any grocery store in America and you’ll see abundance. Aisles stacked high with everything from imported cheeses to out-of-season berries flown in from the other side of the world. Every imaginable cut of meat, vacuum-sealed and trimmed to perfection. The shelves are stocked, the freezers hum with excess,…
The Price of a Paycheck
A man wakes up before dawn, dresses in the dark, and walks out into the cold. He stands in the pale light of a bus stop or an office parking lot or a warehouse floor, and he works. The sun rises, the day passes, and he watches the clock because…
The Rational Light of Cooperation
There are truths that lie so close to the heart of human experience that we pass them by daily without recognition. We step over them as one steps over a sleeping beggar in the street—not out of cruelty, but because the sight of them touches a nerve we cannot bear…
The Company Store Never Closed
It’s easy to forget that America once ran on company stores and scrip. Coal miners in Appalachia were paid in vouchers redeemable only at their employer’s shop, and the prices were high enough to keep them permanently in debt. It was a tidy arrangement for the owners: keep your workforce…