Sunday, March 21, 2004
Excerpt
"It is estimated that one in eight American adults have worked at a McDonald's. This acts as a kind of moral instruction for the working class, as jail time does for ghetto residents. It is one reason behind America's low unemployment rate. As my old professor Milton Friedman taught me, unemployment falls when workers give up hope of higher pay."
"What makes this myth of happy small town America off limits to challenge is that is provides pleasant code words for the ugliest corner of the American psyche. When politicians talk about "small town American values", "family values" and the "hard-working small businessman" everybody knows the color of that town, that family and that businessman - white. Pleasantville USA is implicitly placed against the urban jungle populated at the bottom by dark skinned muggers and pregnant teenagers on the dole, and at the top by Jewish financers of Hollywood pornography." - taken from The Best Democracy Money Can Buy by Greg Palast.
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