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Meritocracy: The Tyranny of Merit

“The Tyranny of Merit  [by Michael Sandel] is infused with moral urgency, elegantly written and cogently argued, with a core conclusion both succinct and indisputable: meritocracy does not counter inequality, it justifies it.” Why the ideal of meritocracy only deepens inequality

Israel

  Founding Generation of Looters Related “Yitzhak Epstein, one of the first settlers in the Land of Israel, a member of “Hovevei Zion,” argued forcefully in his essay “A Hidden Question” (1907), which caused a great stir among the small Jewish population in the country, that the Palestinian reaction to Jewish immigration is rooted, among other causes, in economic competition and dispossession, not in hatred or antisemitism. The list of those who made similar arguments is a lengthy one.” —Adam Raz

Finance

“A crash in the dollar is likely and it could fall by as much as 35 per cent by the end of 2021.“ “The end of the dollar’s exorbitant privilege”

Work

The assumptions underpinning our modern economy – that we are competitive by nature, that our desires will always exceed our means – were wrong. And second, it meant that for the vast majority of our history, while we roamed the Earth as hunter-gatherers, we enjoyed more leisure time than we do today. Lots of these things that we think we are hostage to are actually not a part of our nature. In a 2015 YouGov survey, 37% of Britons said their work did not meaningfully contribute to the world. In 2017, a Gallup poll of 155 counties found that only one in 10 western Europeans described themselves as engaged by their jobs. Though labour productivity has increased roughly four- or five-fold in industrialised nations since post-WWII, average weekly working hours have remained stubborn at just under 40 hours a week. A recent report by  Tax Justice  found that Britons think accumulating wealth is positive and morally right, and are broadly supportive of the ultra-rich, believing them to have b