In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:BOOK REVIEWS 68J The Theology of Henri de Lubac: An Overview. By HANS URS VON BALTHASAR. Translated by Joseph Fessio, S. J., Michael M. Waldstein (Preface), and Susan Clements (Conclusion). San Fran· cisco: Ignatius Press/Communio, 1991. Pp. 127. $9.95 (paper). Except for the preface and conclusion, Hans Urs von Balthasar's The Theology of Henri de Lubac first appeared as the long essay, "Henri de Lubac-L'oeuvre organique d'une vie," in (...) Nouvelle Revue Theologique 97 (1975), 897-913 and 98 (1976), 33-59, and translated by Joseph Fessio, S.J., as "The Achievement of Henri de Luhac" in Thought 51 (1976), 7-49. The preface was added soon after for the German edition, Henri de Lubac: Sein organisches Lebenswerk (Frei· burg im Breisgau: Johannes Verlag, 1976). The conclusion was added for Balthasar's and Jesuit Georges Chantraine's Le Cardinal de Lubac: L'Homme et son oeuvre (Paris: Ed. Lethielleux, 1983). While de Lubac denied " a true, personal philosophical or theo· logical synthesis " in the multiplicity of his oeuvre, he did believe that there could he found " a pattern that constitutes its unity " (de Luhac on p. 10). A more systematic work had been planned with Bruno de Solages, Peres Congar, Chenu, and others. In de Luhac's words, " the lightning bolt of Humani Generis killed the project" (p. 11). We can only wonder at what might have been. At the center of de Lubac's thought is a spiritual perception of "the essence of Christian mysticism" (p. 11). A hook on this subject was planned hut never completed; its fundamental importance was indicated by de Luhac in 1956: "I believe my hook on mysticism has inspired me for a long time in everything I work on; in its light I make my judgments and gain the criteria for ordering my thoughts and ideas" (p. 11). The purpose of Balthasar's little book is to trace these "great spiritual options of the master" (p. 26). Balthasar wrote his preface after he had received from de Luhac the manuscript that would he published as his Memoire sur l'occasion de mes ecrits (1989; ET: At the Service of the Church (1993]). Accord· ing to Balthasar, this "meandering" text has great value in display· ing the organic unity of de Luhac's writings in the contexts which occasioned them-" as well as the legendary condemnations and banish· ments prepared for him by his order and by the Church" (p. 9). De Luhac adopted the " fundamental elan " (p. 13) of Blondel, Marechal, and Rousselot. They enabled de Lubac to see in Thomas Aquinas " the paradox of the spiritual creature that is ordained beyond itself by the innermost reality of its nature to a goal that is unreachable for it and that can only he given as a gift of grace " (p. 13). Balthasar is unambiguous in his belief in the correctness of their interpretation. 684 BOOK REVIEWS Blondel, Marechal, and de Lubac were " martyrs for truth " (p. 13). De Lubac " exposed himself to the attacks of a tutiorist scholastic theology, armed with nothing but the historical and theological truth" (p. 13). Of the three, de Lubac was the most persecuted. The conflict with scholasticism is presented in all its sharpness. One must go back to Thomas himself, over the commentatorial tradition of John of St. Thomas and Cajetan, whose work represents, in the words of Gilson, " a successful ' corruptorium Sanctae Thomae.'... Thomas has been castrated by it" (p. 14). Gilson's "unqualified assent" to de Lubac's Thomistic conclusions means much to Balthasar, because it is "the assent of the greatest authority in the field of the history of phi· losophy" (p. 15). Upon reading Sumaturel (1946), Gilson wrote to de Lubac that the difference between the scholastic and the humanist theologians, like de Lubac, in part lies in the way they understand propositions. The scholastics " understand only univocal propositions and those that seem to be univocal. The former [humanist theologiansJ, by contrast, are more interested in the truth that the proposition attempts to formulate and that partly escapes it" (p. 14). In their incomprehension and fear of analogy, the scholastics are represented as hankering after a security that... (shrink)

Causation is one of philosophy's most venerable and thoroughly-analyzed concepts. However, the study of how ordinary people make causal judgments is a much more recent addition to the philosophical arsenal. One of the most prominent views of causal explanation, especially in the realm of harmful or potentially harmful behavior, is that unusual or counternormative events are accorded privileged status in ordinary causal explanations. This is a fundamental assumption in psychological theories of counterfactual reasoning, and has been transported to philosophy by (...) Hitchcock and Knobe (2009). A different view--the basis of the culpable control model of blame (CCM)--is that primary causal status is accorded to behaviors that arouse negative evaluative reactions, including behaviors that stem from nefarious motives, negligence or recklessness, a faulty character, or behaviors that lead to harmful or potentially harmful consequences. This paper describes four empirical studies that show consistent support for the CCM. (shrink)

Volume 20, Issue 3, March 2020, Page 83-85.

For more than 20 years, both here and abroad, significant efforts have been undertaken to provide equal access to nutritional food for all citizens. Yet, the numbers of under-nourished continue to rise, as do those afflicted with non-communicable diseases (NCDs) such as obesity, diabetes, hypertension, and heart disease. Clearly, current efforts are not working. Relying on the psychological phenomena of learned helplessness and fundamental attribution error, it is argued that certain individuals may not be willing, or able, to take actions (...) that are currently prescribed regarding access to nutritious food. The water is muddied regarding potential solutions as the various actors involved (e.g., corporations, governments, individuals) cannot agree on a starting point and continue to point fingers regarding responsibility. It is posited that emphasis needs to shift from the current “one-size-fits-all” approach to one that is more tailored to the various actors, specifically the individuals. Within the group of individuals (consumers), based on Wenar’s Least Cost Theory, even further distinction must be made between those who see themselves as capable actors and those who do not. In this conceptual piece intended to refocus the discussion surrounding food access, we propose that future research should approach these issues from a unit of analysis perspective in an attempt to identify the solutions most likely to succeed at various participating levels. (shrink)

Killing is a topic that divides superhero fans like no other. Wonder Woman is a curious case, though. Traditionally associated with compassion and love, Diana is also a fierce warrior. While seeing Wonder Woman's choice through the lens of moral philosophy, it would seem that the deck is stacked against Lord in terms of one school of ethics, consequentialism. Consequentialism requires that we make a moral decision by choosing the option with the best (or least bad) outcomes. The simple math (...) dictates that Wonder Woman can guarantee the least loss of life by killing Max Lord. The decision Wonder Woman faced with respect to Max Lord closely resembles the one Superman faced when three renegade Kryptonians, each more powerful than Superman, wiped out the entire population of an Earth in an alternate dimension and threatened to do the same in his. (shrink)

If libertarianism is true, then there is a sense in which agents have it within their power to bring it about that some world is actual. Against recent arguments for the incompatibility of divine foreknowledge and human freedom, I offer an account of power over the past which takes this implication of libertarianism into consideration. I argue that the resulting account is available to Ockhamists and that it is immune to recent criticisms of the notion of counterfactual power over the (...) past. But I contend that it is not an option for Molinists and that this fact leaves that position vulnerable to incompatibilist arguments. (shrink)

Measuring gene expression on a global scale has been one of the vexing problems of cell biology. Velculescu et al.(1) recently proposed a system for identifying gene expression levels based on very short sequence tags – about nine base pairs – located at a specific site within a gene transcript. By coupling the strategy to current automated sequencing machines and the large expressed sequence tag databases, it should be possible to follow changes in gene expression for large numbers of genes (...) economically and accurately. (shrink)

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) has emerged as an effective way for firms to create favorable attitudes among consumers. Although prior research has addressed the direct influence of proactive and reactive CSR on consumer responses, this research hypothesized that consumers’ perceived organizational motives (i.e., attributions) will mediate this relationship. It was also hypothesized that the source of information and location of CSR initiative will affect the motives consumers assign to a firms’ engagement in the initiative. Two experiments were conducted to test (...) these hypotheses. The results of Study 1 indicate that the nature of a CSR initiative influences consumer attribution effects and that these attributions act as mediators in helping to explain consumers’ responses to CSR. Study 2 suggests that the source of the CSR message moderates the effect of CSR on consumer attributions. The mediating influence of the attributions as well as the importance of information source suggests that proper communication of CSR can be a viable way to inculcate positive corporate associations and purchase intentions. (shrink)

Following other contributions about the MAX accidents to this journal, this paper explores the role of betrayal and moral injury in safety engineering related to the U.S. federal regulator’s role in approving the Boeing 737MAX—a plane involved in two crashes that together killed 346 people. It discusses the tension between humility and hubris when engineers are faced with complex systems that create ambiguity, uncertain judgements, and equivocal test results from unstructured situations. It considers the relationship between moral injury, principled outrage (...) and rebuke when the technology ends up involved in disasters. It examines the corporate backdrop against which calls for enhanced employee voice are typically made, and argues that when engineers need to rely on various protections and moral inducements to ‘speak up,’ then the ethical essence of engineering—skepticism, testing, checking, and questioning—has already failed. (shrink)

In "Behavioral Law and Economics: The Assault on Consent, Will, and Dignity," Mark D. White uses the moral philosophy of Immanuel Kant to examine the intersection of economics, psychology, and law known as "behavioral law and economics." Scholars in this relatively new field claim that, because of various cognitive biases and failures, people often make choices that are not in their own interests. The policy implications of this are that public and private organizations, such as the state and employers, (...) can and should design the presentation of options and default choices in order to "steer" people to the decision they would make, were they able to make choices in the absence of their cognitive biases and failures. Such policies are promoted under the name "libertarian paternalism," because choice is not blocked or co-opted, but simply "nudged." White argues that such manipulation of choice is impossible to conduct in people's true interests, and any other goal pursed by policymakers substitutes their own ends, however benevolent they may be, for people's true ends. Normatively, such manipulation should not be conducted because it fails to respect the dignity and autonomy of persons, what some hold to be the central idea in Kant's ethical system, and which serves to protect the individual from coercion, however subtle, from other persons or the state. (shrink)

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the International Conference on Spatial Information Theory, COSIT 2005, held in Elliottville, NY, USA in September 2005. The 30 revised full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 82 submissions. The papers are organized in topical sections on vagueness, uncertainty, and gradation; paths and routes; ontologies and semantics; ontologies and spatial relations; spatial reasoning: cognitive maps and spatial reasoning; time, change, and dynamics; landmarks and navigation; geographic information, and spatial behaviour.

Clinical bioethics is big business. There are now hundreds of people who bioethics in community and university hospitals, nursing homes, rehabilitation and home care settings, and some who play the role of clinical ethics consultant to transplant teams, managed care companies, and genetic testing firms. Still, there is as much speculation about what clinically active bioethicists actually do as there was ten years ago. Various commentators have pondered the need for training standards, credentials, exams, and malpractice insurance for ethicists engaged (...) in clinical consultation. Much of the discussion seems to accept an implicit presumption that all clinical ethics consultation practices look pretty much alike. But is this accurate? What do clinical ethicists do, how and where do they do it, and what kind of clinical ethics is useful in the hospital and in other settings? (shrink)

Prior research has studied the antecedents of beliefs regarding ethics and social responsibility (ESR). However, few studies have examined how individual well-being may be related to such beliefs. In this exploratory study, we assessed the relationship between perceived importance of ESR – both individually and of one's company – and indicators of physical and psychological well-being. Results demonstrated that perceived importance of ESR was associated with three aspects of well-being: exuberance for life, sleep problems, and job stress. The results are (...) discussed in terms of future directions for research, and the need for a conceptual framework connecting individual and organizational perceptions of ESR and outcomes of well-being. (shrink)

The rapid, recent emergence of new medical knowledge models has engendered a dizzying number of new medical initiatives, programs and approaches. Fields such as evidence-based medicine and translational medicine all promise a renewed relationship between knowledge and medicine. The question for philosophy and other fields has been whether these new models actually achieve their promises to bring about better kinds of medical knowledge—a question that compels scholars to analyze each model’s epistemic claims. Yet, these analyses may miss critical components that (...) explain how these models actually work and function. Using the case of translational medicine, this paper suggests that analyses which treat these models as a primarily epistemic interventions miss the way that new approaches are increasingly shaped by specific financial and commercial agendas. Ultimately, social epistemological analyses that are attentive to market forces are required to make sense of emerging bioscientific research models, which are increasingly tethered to or a manifestation of increasingly financialized models of science research and innovation. (shrink)

Is it rational to strive for the unattainable? In this short and provocative study, Nicholas Rescher vigorously defends both the rationality and practicality of seriously pursuing impossible dreams.

American orthodox medicine consolidated its professional authority in the early 20th Century on the basis of its unbiased scientific method. The centerpiece of such a method is a strategy for identifying truly effective new therapies, i.e., the randomized clinical trial (RCT). A crucial component of the RCT in illnesses without established treatment is the placebo control. Placebo effects must be identified and distinguished from pharmacological effects because placebos produce actual but unexplained therapeutic successes. The blinding necessary for a proper placebo-controlled (...) RCT therefore introduces an epistemic bias into orthodox medicine: therapeutic successes that rely upon a direct link between knowing and healing, such as placebo effects, are discarded in favor of therapeutic successes that rely upon an indirect link between knowing and healing, such as pharmacological interventions. Where the capacity to produce therapeutic results once validated the method of clinical medical science, now method validates results. The clinical consequences of this method of testing therapies include a diminished vision of the therapeutic potential of the doctor-patient relationship and of the potential human resources available for healing. Keywords: doctor-patient relationship, epistemology, placebo effect, professionalization, randomized clinical trials CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this? (shrink)

We show that the fundamental legal structure of a well-written financial contract follows a state-transition logic that can be formalized mathematically as a finite-state machine (specifically, a deterministic finite automaton or DFA). The automaton defines the states that a financial relationship can be in, such as “default,” “delinquency,” “performing,” etc., and it defines an “alphabet” of events that can trigger state transitions, such as “payment arrives,” “due date passes,” etc. The core of a contract describes the rules by which different (...) sequences of events trigger particular sequences of state transitions in the relationship between the counterparties. By conceptualizing and representing the legal structure of a contract in this way, we expose it to a range of powerful tools and results from the theory of computation. These allow, for example, automated reasoning to determine whether a contract is internally coherent and whether it is complete relative to a particular event alphabet. We illustrate the process by representing a simple loan agreement as an automaton. (shrink)

An Argument From Evolutionary Naturalism An Argument from Personal Dignity References.

Understanding arithmetic word problems involves a complex interaction of text comprehension and mathematical processes. This article presents a computer simulation designed to capture the working memory demands required in “bottomup” comprehension of arithmetic word problems. The simulation's sentence‐level parser and text integration component reflect the importance of processing the problem from its original natural language presentation. Children's probability of solution was analyzed in exploratory regression analyses as a function of the simulation's sentence‐level and text integration processes. Working memory variables measuring (...) the combined effects of concepts to remember and text integration inferences account for a significant proportion of variance in children's solution probabilities across the first four grade levels (K‐3). Consistent with previous results from others, which highlighted the significance of small changes in problem wording, the simulation offers a process‐oriented perspective as to why natural language presentation constrains the comprehension of mathematical relationships. (shrink)

THERE are several answers in Aquinas to the question, what is the ground of the world's intelligibility. The fullest- answer is contained by the account of creation and expressed in the doctrine of divine Ideas. I would like to trace the lines of that doctrine in Aquinas's corpus as a means of showing how an account of creation at once clarifies and inverts the analysis of natural intelligibility.

During periods of scarcity, or the fear of it, many health systems create or adopt triage protocols to determine how to best allocate limited resources. Interest in such protocols has become acute...

Prior research has studied the antecedents of beliefs regarding ethics and social responsibility (ESR). However, few studies have examined how individual well‐being may be related to such beliefs. In this exploratory study, we assessed the relationship between perceived importance of ESR – both individually and of one's company – and indicators of physical and psychological well‐being. Results demonstrated that perceived importance of ESR was associated with three aspects of well‐being: exuberance for life, sleep problems, and job stress. The results are (...) discussed in terms of future directions for research, and the need for a conceptual framework connecting individual and organizational perceptions of ESR and outcomes of well‐being. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:In, Out Me, You Mental, Moral Where Do I Begin?Mark D. Rego (bio)I once attended a Buddhist meditation retreat, led by an American meditation teacher. The instructor had studied and practiced is Asia for many years and was well versed in the practices and teachings of Buddhism. Among his opening remarks was something along the line of the following: "One question that is asked on every retreat is, (...) 'if there is no true self, then who is it who has come here to become free of the illusion of a self?' The answer is, I don't know, but we can start anyway."This sense of practicality in the face of unanswerable questions is built into Buddhism, as is the relationship among the particularities of each individual, a process akin to externality, mental well-being, and morality.I raise Buddhism both because of its central interest into the nature of the self (an obviously germane consideration in the papers under discussion) and because of this second feature noted, namely the comfortable integration of individuality, character building, ethical action, and mental well-being (the issue of the true self will, thankfully, have to wait). It is this theme that I raise via the discussion of externality.The commentaries of Talmadge and Graham, unintentionally I think, pull me toward a beguiling observation in my daily practice of psychiatry. Namely, patients commonly report their clinical improvements in terms of how they deal better with others, how they are more thoughtful and even handed (with themselves included), and how they better cope with the demands of their individual lives. In senses both highly individual and highly principled, and in ways both explicit and implicit, when patients feel better they often feel that they are better people (all the kinds of treatment mentioned in my paper equally apply; there is no exclusivity in this result).There is also an interesting consistency in a dual manner in which this is expressed. In one way people report the improved coping, handling, and so on mentioned. In the next breath the same person commonly says, "I feel like myself."The meditation instructor would be pleased; it appears that through a process of becoming aware of and letting go of some form of negativity an individual feels better, acts better, and feels more unified. (As the instructor was psychologically sophisticated, he would not mistake the "like myself" sentiment as a Buddhist heresy. Rather, he would understand it as a reflection of being more at ease with and aware of disparate parts of himself.) And all this without figuring out who the real self is. [End Page 331]I mention these observations about Buddhism and clinical care because when I consider the processes of evaluating, deciding, and forging identity and volition it seems to me that somewhere between the lines the individual is aligning himself with some sense of what is good. The resultant experience of volition and cohesive identity is, often but not always, experienced as good both psychologically and morally.Change, Others, and ValuesIn the two commentaries that follow my paper on Frankfurtian externality and therapeutic change (Rego 2004), Talmadge (2004) and Graham (2004) highlight different aspects of externality and therapeutics. Talmadge, an addiction psychiatrist, expands the theme of volitional change in recovery from addiction. For Talmadge, as for most in the field, the question of when and how an addict has truly committed to change (hitting "rock bottom"? accepting the first of the twelve steps?) is perennially in the air. Such knowledge would be invaluable in guiding addicts along their rocky paths.Although still far short of the mark, Talmadge finds some illustrative guidance in Frankfurt. The shift that takes place within the addict to place him on the road to recovery is not necessarily "rock bottom," or conformity to a program's dictates or a state of new knowledge. Rather, it is a shift in will. By whatever process (and Talmadge is quite aware that there seem to be many paths) the addict has come to care about sobriety in a way he or she did not before. He or she now cares in a way that is part of him or her... (shrink)

I argue in this article that there is a mistake in Searle's Chinese room argument that has not received sufficient attention. The mistake stems from Searle's use of the Church-Turing thesis. Searle assumes that the Church-Turing thesis licences the assumption that the Chinese room can run any program. I argue that it does not, and that this assumption is false. A number of possible objections are considered and rejected. My conclusion is that it is consistent with Searle's argument to hold (...) onto the claim that understanding consists in the running of a program. (shrink)

How far is Thomas Aquinas available for current discussions in political philosophy? While there are certainly things to be learned from him about our political preoccupations, the pedagogy of his moral teaching typically resists our familiar questions. This holds even when the question is put in terms that Thomas should recognize—say, as a question about the virtues appropriate for a democracy. Thomas not only gives different meanings to these terms, he moves political topics away from the center of theological attention (...) and so organizes them very differently. A reader can notice these differences at many points but perhaps especially in the attention that Thomas gives in the Summa to the gifts of the Holy Spirit. His account of these gifts qualifies significantly what he says of virtue and suggests large limits on human agency, whether in ethics or in politics. (shrink)

Mandating psychiatric evaluation for patients who request physician‐assisted suicide may not offer the clearcut protection from possible coercion or other abuse that proponents assert. Competence itself is a complex concept and determinations of decisionmaking capacity are not straightforward, nor is the relationship between mental illness and decisionmaking capacity in dying patients clearly understood. And casting psychiatrists as gatekeepers in end‐of‐life decisions poses risks to the profession itself.

The proliferation of personal data collection practices fundamentally reshapes how society is ordered and commercialized, and demands reconsideration of the possibilities for a just and equitable s...

Standard linguistic analysis of syntax uses the T-model. This model requires the ordering: D-structure > S-structure > LF, where D-structure is the sentences deep structure, S-structure is its surface structure, and LF is its logical form. Between each of these representations there is movement which alters the order of the constituent words; movement is achieved using the principles and parameters of syntactic theory. Psychological analysis of sentence production is usually either serial or connectionist. Psychological serial models do not accommodate the (...) T-model immediately so that here a new model called the P-model is introduced. The P-model is different from previous linguistic and psychological models. Here it is argued that the LF representation should be replaced by a variant of Frege'sA three qualities (sense, reference, and force), called the FregeA representation or F-representation. In the F-representation the order of elements is not necessarily the same as that in LF and it is suggested that the correct ordering is: F-representation > D-structure > S-structure. This ordering appears to lead to a more natural view of sentence production and processing. Within this framework movement originates as the outcome of emphasis applied to the sentence. The requirement that the F-representation precedes the D-structure needs a picture of the particular principles and parameters which pertain to movement of words between representations. In general this would imply that there is a preferred or optimal ordering of the symbolic string in the F-representation. The standard ordering is retained because the general way of producing such an optimal ordering is unclear. In this case it is possible to produce an analysis of movement between LF and D-structure similar to the usual analysis of movement between S-structure and LF. The necessity of analyzing corrupted data suggests that a maximal amount of information about a language's grammar and lexicon is stored. (shrink)

Within common mental health treatments there exists a paradox, in which personal agency over a problem appears to increase by disownership of the problem. I endeavor to explain this paradox and by doing so, shed light on the relationships among identity, psychopathology, and therapeutic agency. The work of the philosopher Harry Frankfurt, with emphasis on his concept of externality, is used as the model for unraveling the paradox of agency.

The issue of the dimensionality of materialism and postmaterialism, and their impact on key social and personal indicators, has been a hotly debated topic for decades. This study sought to achieve two goals to further our understanding of these constructs. First, it assessed whether an interactive materialism–postmaterialism conceptualization could be expanded to predict outcomes related to well-being. Second, the study extended the interactive model by using Richins’ three dimensions of materialism instead of the unidimensional construct utilized in previous studies. Results (...) indicated that the interactive model successfully predicted three different measures of well-being, specifically physical symptoms, stress, and subjective vitality. Results are discussed in terms of extending materialism–postmaterialism theory, both with respect to refining the materialism construct as well as its associations with new criterion variables. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Beyond the Ethics of Wealth and a World of Economic InequalityMark D. WoodAnalyzing the ethics of wealth and the relationship between the dominant ethics of wealth and economic inequality is vital to creating a humane mode of global life. We are living during a period in which the unequal concentration of wealth—which is to say, the unequal concentration of the resources that make human existence, development, and fulfillment possible—has (...) never been greater.1 The World Bank reports that almost “1.3 billion people remain below the extreme poverty line with an income of US $1.25 or less a day. Close to 2.5 billion—more than one-third of the world’s population—live on less than US $2 a day, another common measurement of deep deprivation,”2 and a staggering 80 percent of the world’s population struggles to survive on less than US $10 dollars a day.3 Credit Suisse’s 2012 Global Wealth Report indicates “the bottom half of the global population [or more than 3.5 billion persons] possess barely 1 percent of total wealth... In sharp contrast, the richest 10 percent own 86 percent of the world’s wealth, with the top 1 percent alone accounting for 46 percent of global assets.”4 Given the history of international colonial and neocolonial relations, it comes as no surprise that wealth is highly concentrated in Western Europe and North America, while the overwhelming majority of individuals living in poverty are concentrated in Africa, India, Asia, and Central and South America.5The wealth gap between the top 10 percent and the bottom 90 percent is, however, also reaching record levels in developed nations. While in 2012, the United States had the seventh highest average wealth holdings per adult in the world, “among nations with at least a quarter-million adults, only Russia, Ukraine, and Lebanon are more unequal” than the United States.6 A Reuters investigative report published in 2012 reveals that “inequality has risen not just in plutocratic hubs such as Wall Street and Silicon Valley, but also in virtually every corner of the world’s richest nation: Inequality has increased in 49 of 50 states since 1989,” with Mississippi being the only exception, even as it still “ranks worst in the nation on both counts.”7 In 2010, “the top 1 percent of households (the upper class) owned 35.4 percent of all privately held wealth, and the next 19 percent (the managerial, professional, and small business stratum) had 53.5 percent, which means that just 20 percent of the people owned a remarkable 89 percent, leaving only 11 percent of the wealth for the bottom 80 percent [End Page 125] (wage and salary workers).”8 In The Price of Inequality (2012), Nobel Prize–winning economist Joseph E. Stiglitz indicates that the “six heirs to the Walmart empire command wealth of $69.7 billion dollars, which is equivalent to the entire wealth of the bottom 30 percent of U.S. society.”9 In short, six individuals possess more wealth than do ninety-six million individuals—though this figure is misleading inasmuch as most of the ninety-six million own almost nothing but mounting debt. Most significantly, the top 10 percent own between 81 percent and 94 percent of all stocks, bonds, trust funds, and business equity, and almost 80 percent of non-home real estate.10 G. William Domhoff makes the vital point that inasmuch as “financial wealth is what counts as far as the control of income-producing assets,” that is, control of the means of producing wealth, “we can say that just 10 percent of the people own the United States of America.”11 Meanwhile, according to the latest census, fifty million Americans qualify as poor and another 100 million qualify as low income.12The concentration of the lion’s share of wealth in the hands of a tiny fraction of humanity is devastating for the majority of people living on the planet and ultimately for everyone. On the ground, capitalism’s champagne glass–shaped distribution of wealth means that hundreds of millions of persons have barely enough of the basics necessary to exist. Between 24,000... (shrink)