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In America, losing a job means making a hundred phone calls to a state unemployment-insurance system. Getting hit by a car means becoming your own hospital-billing expert. Having a disability means launching into a Jarndyce v. Jarndyce–type legal battle. Needing help to feed a toddler means filling out a novel-length application for aid.

The Atlantic • The Time Tax

A cynic might conclude that preventive medicine exists to transform people into raw material for a profit-hungry medical-industrial complex.

Barbara Ehrenreich • Natural Causes: An Epidemic of Wellness, the Certainty of Dying, and Killing Ourselves to Live Longer

Professor Barbara Demeneix – a prestigious scientist in France who has won several major awards, including the Légion d’honneur, the country’s highest civilian prize – explained to me: ‘At every stage of your life, different forms of pollution will affect your attention span,’ and she has concluded this is a factor in why ‘we’ve got neurodevelopmen

Johann Hari • Stolen Focus: Why You Can't Pay Attention

It is an attack on the cruel idea that work confers dignity and therefore that people who don’t work—the old, the disabled—lack value. On the contrary, dignity is intrinsic to all human beings, and in designing a work regime rigged for the profit of the few and the exhaustion of the many, we have failed to honor one another’s humanity.

The Baffler • The New Neurasthenia

$2.00 A Day: Living on Almost Nothing in America

Kathryn J. Edin

amazon.com

Cover of $2.00 A Day: Living on Almost Nothing in America

Hatred is depressing—it is of course depressing to be hated, but it is also depressing to hate. The erosion of the social safety net means that more and more people are at a sudden breaking point, and there are few messages of authentic comfort to offer them in these pitiless times. One is done in by disease, by isolation and despair, and by life c

newyorker.com • Anthony Bourdain, Kate Spade, and Preventable Tragedies

Perpetual growth, whether of a particular company or an entire economy, is of course an absurdity, but positive thinking makes it seem possible, if not ordained.

Barbara Ehrenreich • Bright-sided: How Positive Thinking is Undermined America

The insatiable goals to acquire more, succeed conspicuously, and be as attractive as possible lead us to objectify one another, and even ourselves. When people see themselves as little more than their attractive bodies, jobs, or bank accounts, it brings great suffering…You become a heartless taskmaster to yourself, seeing yourself as nothing more

Arthur C. Brooks • The Satisfaction Trap

For instance: in our society, there seems a general rule that, the more obviously one’s work benefits other people, the less one is likely to be paid for it. Again, an objective measure is hard to find, but one easy way to get a sense is to ask: what would happen were this entire class of people to simply disappear? Say what you like about nurses, ... See more

Sublime

The Atlantic • The Time Tax

Barbara Ehrenreich • Natural Causes: An Epidemic of Wellness, the Certainty of Dying, and Killing Ourselves to Live Longer

Johann Hari • Stolen Focus: Why You Can't Pay Attention

The Baffler • The New Neurasthenia

$2.00 A Day: Living on Almost Nothing in America

newyorker.com • Anthony Bourdain, Kate Spade, and Preventable Tragedies

Barbara Ehrenreich • Bright-sided: How Positive Thinking is Undermined America

Arthur C. Brooks • The Satisfaction Trap

David Graeber • On the Phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs by David Graeber (366ES) — Atlas of Places