Today is a federal holiday marking the day in 1965 when Union troops marched into Galveston, Texas to enforce the Emancipation Proclamation, liberating over 250,000 people from the condition of slave labor. President Abraham Lincoln, of course, signed the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1963, but it wasn’t until over two years later that the proclamation was fully enforced.

I hope we can mark today, Juneteenth, as a day of reflection, if not so much celebration. I have a colleague who refuses to celebrate Juneteenth, holding the position that the enslavement of Africans in the United States never should have happened. We don’t need to celebrate this day as much as confront it and the significance of both slavery and emancipation for the nation’s history, for our contemporary society, and for efforts to create an America that is socially, politically, and economically just and humane, that is genuinely egalitarian.

As a people, Americans of all races and identities still need to confront the facts of slavery and, even more broadly, labor exploitation as a whole, because the stakes are high for how, and even if, we can imagine a just and egalitarian America.

Americans are still divided on how they view slavery and thus, by extension, labor exploitation and economic inequality overall. Debates, even outright political fights, over how and if slavery should be taught or represented in textbooks rage on. One McGraw-Hill textbook represented slavery not as the brutal kidnapping of people into forced servitude that it was but as an “immigration pattern,” and described enslaved people as “workers,” with text reading, “[t]he Atlantic Slave Trade between the 1500s and 1800s brought millions of workers from Africa to the southern United States to work on agricultural plantations.”

Back in July 2020, Arkansas Senator Tom Cotton described slavery as “a necessary evil” as he pursued legislation that would have denied federal funding to schools that in any way used the 1619 Project materials in their curriculum. The 1619 Project, spearheaded by Nikole Hannah-Jones, illuminates the legacy of slavery in the contemporary United States and highlights the contributions of African Americans to U.S. society, culture, and political economy throughout U.S. history. He found the project divisive and his statements indicated he took issue with denunciations of slavery and critiques of America for its practice slavery, arguing that is was somehow a necessary feature of American history and building of a wealthy nation. He told the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette in an article published in July 2020:

“We have to study the history of slavery and its role and impact on the development of our country because otherwise we can’t understand our country. As the founding fathers said, it was the necessary evil upon which the union was built, but the union was built in a way, as Lincoln said, to put slavery on the course to its ultimate extinction.”

When pressed, Cottom could not identify any specific place where any of the nation’s founders or Lincoln said as much, but this kind of distortion is precisely that upon which we need to reflect.

The attitude and historical understanding Cotton espouses here underwrite a worldview that says for a nation or a people to build wealth and prosperity, there must be racism, exploitation, and inhumanity.

We only need to think about this assertion for two seconds to realize how ridiculous it is–while also being damaging and humanly destructive–and to revise the belief in a more common sense understanding of how we can create prosperity and wealth for all.

What Cotton’s assertion really means is that enslaving and exploiting people for their labor is “a necessary evil” for some to accumulate and hoard massive wealth while denying those performing the work the fruits of their own labors.

Think about it for two seconds. No less wealth would be produced if those doing the work shared equally and fairly in the fruits of their labor, in the wealth created. The wealth would just be distributed differently. In fact, as Frederick Douglass will teach us below, not exploiting and brutalizing people will actually lead to the creation of more social wealth.

Part of what informs Cotton’s assertion, though, and others like it, is the abiding belief that some lives matter more, are of greater value, than others. Refusing to confront slavery, or wanting to “white wash” it as the textbook cited above exemplifies, entails a denial of white supremacist ideology that declares people of color to be inherently inferior and to deem their lives as of less value.

Of course, we need to acknowledge that exploited white workers have also effectively had their lives deemed to be of less value, as when we endorse a political and economic system that denies some people adequate healthcare, housing, and a living wage, we are saying those lives matter less.

To make all lives matter, though, we need to challenge supremacist thinking as a whole, and starting with white male supremacy, which includes class supremacy, is a good start, especially on this Juneteenth.

Understanding and addressing the ideologies and structures that have made black lives not matter is key to making all lives matter in America if we really want an egalitarian social and economic order as opposed to one structured according to supremacist cultural values.

Racial justice enriches all lives

Reflecting on Juneteenth and how this nation has processed–or not–the historical facts and experiences of slavery hopefully will spur us to ask, what kind of world do we have to create that will make Black lives matter? We have to ask this question IF we want a world in which all lives matter. While many, including myself, have issues with those who challenge the “Black Lives Matter” assertion with the assertion of “All Lives Matter” because this substitution fails to recognize the particular ways Black lives, and the lives of people of color generally, have been specifically devalued in U.S. society, I of course believe all lives matter but believe that if we are going to achieve a society and political economy in which all lives matter we need to address the way “race” functions as one of many critical factors in the U.S. political economic system that devalue human life. We all gain from addressing the myriad ways our world works to discount people and justify their oppression.

It may be that one of the chief obstacles to meaningful transformation toward a humane society is the way the “racial conversation” tends to get framed in the dominant cultural and political discourse, figuring efforts to achieve a state of affairs we might call racial justice as necessitating losses for some rather than gains for all. As a society, we don’t recognize how the operations of “race” in our society hobble us collectively.

Gains not losses

The dynamic of the conversation now seems to position those asserting Black lives matter as somehow asking for something from the dominant culture that would require great sacrifice or economic loss, as though the uncashed check Martin Luther King, Jr. invoked in his famous “I Have a Dream” speech actually entailed a withdrawal from white Americans’ accounts, when what he asked for was payment on the promissory note of equal rights.

Discussions of race in the United States that center the concept of white privilege fuel this dynamic, cultivating the perception, indeed the powerful feeling among whites, that the achievement of racial justice in the United States will entail those of the white dominant culture somehow giving something up, losing the benefits of being white. Whether those benefits are ill-gotten or not, the prospect of change that entails having less generates anxiety and resistance, especially in a socio-economic world already characterized by diminishing returns for the working and middle classes.

It’s this kind of talk I find not only unproductive but severely misguided and damaging to our best social prospects. African Americans and people of color generally do indeed have a check to cash, but cashing this check will mean gains and not losses, morally and economically, for most Americans.

Frederick Douglass and changing the conversation

We can change the conversation by invoking Frederick Douglass and the analysis he offered in his slave narrative The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave about the relationship between racial liberation-the end of racial labor exploitation-and the larger economic self-interest of society at large, including whites.

At the end of his narrative, when he makes it North to freedom in New Bedford, Massachusetts, Douglass finds himself in a state of wonder, mesmerized by and in virtual disbelief of the wealth that appears before his eyes. He sees African Americans and workers of all types living in homes and is amazed at the absence of poverty and suffering. The reason the wealth and high standard of living all seem to enjoy in the North is such a revelation is that heretofore, in the political economy of slavery, Douglass has witnessed the production of wealth for some as entailing the suffering and degradation of many. Imagining wealth being produced without brutalizing many in the process was impossible for him.

The implicit argument in Douglass’s narrative is that the most efficient and productive economy is actually the most humane economy. Humanity, as opposed to exploitation and oppression of any kind, is the key to creating an efficient economy that produces a high standard of living for all.

Returning to Baltimore

While Douglass’s narrative provides an instructive historical example, interestingly enough, I want to zoom ahead to Baltimore in 2015, when mass protests erupted in Baltimore over the police murder of the young African American Freddie Gray. It is worth remembering that Baltimore Orioles COO John Angelos offered an analysis similar to that of Douglass in commenting on the mass protest the uprising represented. He pointed out precisely that the economy suffered-meaning it ceased to function efficiently to serve the needs of all-in direct relation to rollbacks in civil and human rights. The devastation of rights, the desecration of humane social practices, he observed, has gone hand in hand with economic devastation. In commenting on the uprising, he focused “neither upon one night’s property damage nor upon the acts” but:

“rather upon the past four-decade period during which an American political elite have shipped middle class and working class jobs away from Baltimore and cities and towns around the U.S. to third-world dictatorships like China and others, plunged tens of millions of good, hard-working Americans into economic devastation, and then followed that action around the nation by diminishing every American’s civil rights protections in order to control an unfairly impoverished population living under an ever-declining standard of living and suffering at the butt end of an ever-more militarized and aggressive surveillance state.

“The innocent working families of all backgrounds whose lives and dreams have been cut short by excessive violence, surveillance, and other abuses of the Bill of Rights by government pay the true price, and ultimate price . . .We need to keep in mind people are suffering and dying around the U.S. . . . poor Americans in Baltimore and everywhere who don’t have jobs and are losing economic, civil and legal rights, and this makes inconvenience at a ballgame irrelevant in light of the needless suffering government is inflicting upon ordinary Americans.”

While Angelos does not in any targeted or overt way mention “race” or even specifically talk about the specific situation of African Americans, the context for his comments speaks for itself. He is making clear that the “racial” uprising of African Americans in Baltimore is expressive of the interests of all Americans, or at least working and middle class Americans, if not the “American political elite” he calls out. In avoiding the direct language of “race,” I don’t think Angelos’s point is to privilege “All Lives Matter” over “Black Lives Matter” but to underscore that making sure Black lives matter is the way to make sure that all lives matter.

Denying and rolling back civil and human rights, which enables exploitation and slavery, Angelos points out, following Douglass, does not make a better economy but leads to economic devastation.

White Americans, especially white working-class Americans . . . Read More here at AllThingsBeingEqual.net

The Hope

Over a decade ago, after casually following the WNBA for some years, I actually started attending games with my two boys, then eight and eleven years of age, and my partner who would later become my spouse. What I found in that arena, where my home team the Chicago Sky then played, was an environment and culture that realized what I have always understood to be the aspirational America.

People of all shapes and sizes, sexual orientations, and racial identities, were welcome and free to be themselves. Every night, effectively, was Pride night. Often, before games, we would sing “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” understood to be the African American national anthem. In the midst of an America still sadly rife with racism, sexism, and homophobia, the WNBA had created a haven for a democratic culture where all were recognized as free and equal. This space gave no oxygen to the discrimination, exclusion, and hate still rampant in an America where white male supremacist values continued to dominate American culture, society, and politics, constituting key obstacles to those struggling to push America toward evolving into a genuine democracy, which it has always pretended to be but has yet to really become. (To be sure, part of the obstacle to achieving democracy in America has been the failure to robustly acknowledge that the nation has fallen far short, that supremacist values informing a society stratified by race, class, and gender are inconsistent with democracy. We need to stop using the language of democracy to characterize our nation and perhaps refer to the United States as an aspirational democracy.)

I credit the WNBA, and the Chicago Sky in particular, with helping me raise my boys into young men vaccinated against the infections of patriarchy, racism, and homophobia that, among other forces, undermine and threaten American democracy and egalitarianism. The league, in my mind, represented a true engine of cultural transformation, pushing the nation to genuinely realize the democratic values of equality and freedom for all it has proudly trumpeted and yet never quite lived up to since its founding. It was wonderful to see young boys as well as men sporting Allie Quigley, Elena Delle Donne, Courtney Vandersloot, or later Candace Parker jerseys, signaling they looked up to these female athletes as role models in some way. In a nation that has yet to ratify an Equal Rights Amendment and has resisted asserting in the most basic language that women are equal to men and deserve equal protection under the law, I tend to see these gestures in which boys and men identify with women and celebrate their talents and abilities as some small steps for men and yet a giant leap for mankind in America when it comes to eroding and beginning to transform the stubbornly persistent male supremacist and heterosexist national culture.

I even remember in 2021 (the Chicago Sky’s championship season!), watching a playoff game on network television in which the male broadcaster, in calling the play-by-play, actually said, “Vandersloot passes to her wife.” If you don’t know, Courtney Vandersloot and Allie Quigly, both players on the 2021 Sky championship team, are married. To have a gay married couple in the WNBA actually acknowledged on network television represented to me, again, a giant leap for American culture toward a democratic culture, especially when for years, as documented in the important documentary Unfinished Business, the WNBA as a league–which we must differentiate from the players–was reticent to acknowledge the prevalence of lesbian players in the league, fearing it might hinder the building of a fan base, itself a powerful acknowledgement of and deferral to America’s homophobic and undemocratic culture and society. (To be clear, any society that creates layers of second-class citizens by denying them the same rights as others can’t really call itself a democratic and egalitarian culture and society.)

In all these respects, the WNBA has emerged as an institution in American culture that heightens the visibility and representation of women, particularly of women of color and lesbians, thus offering a material hope and indeed real engine for democratizing American culture and politics–and indeed our economy, as the league represents a key driver of economic opportunity and participation for women. The WNBA, along with the off-season Unrivaled league the players formed, have indeed become something of a key movement for advancing civil and human rights as well as democracy in America (for some of my additional writings on this topic, see here, here, here and here).

The Unrivaled league, in particular, because it is effectively player-owned and the players share more equitably in the league’s revenues and have been able to control and create workplace conditions that meet the needs of their lives, constitutes an actually existing example of what it means for workers to have a democratic voice in their workplace and to have a real sense of ownership in the world and wealth their work creates.

The Challenge

For those of us who have looked to the WNBA as a progressive cultural force or even just as a haven in a white male supremacist world, we have to recognize that the league’s success has brought with it threats to the league’s culture created in large part by its original and longtime fan base which has featured lesbians of color as a salient component.

Whether or not Caitlin Clark is responsible for bringing racist fans and MAGA politics into WNBA arenas and whether or not she aligns with those politics, it is nonetheless a fact that the national media attention showered on her drew a new audience into WNBA arenas, one more aligned with the white male supremacist and homophobic values of the dominant culture in the United States.

As then Connecticut Sun coach Stephanie White said after a playoff game between the Sun and the Indiana Fever in Indiana in September 2024:

“We’ve seen a lot of racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia throughout the course of our country. Sport is no exception, and it’s unacceptable to be quite honest.”

This comment was motivated by complaints from Sun star Alyssa Thomas that Fever fans had been hurling racial slurs at her throughout the game. While, following White’s comments, sports might not have been a site exempt from the “racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia” virtually omnipresent “throughout the course of our country,” the WNBA largely had been. Indeed, Thomas commented on the unfortunate novelty of being subject to racist speech in a WNBA stadium, stating, “I think in my 11-year career I’ve never experienced the racial comments from the Indiana Fever fan base.” Her point: the WNBA culture had been free of this racist poison before the Caitlin Clark phenomenon.

Angel Reese, of course, perceived as Clark’s rival, has also been the subject of racist harassment and hateful comments from Fever fans and Clark’s MAGA following (see here and here). Clark fans crossed the moat and invaded the alternative and aspirational America we WNBA fans had been enjoying and building for ourselves. Clark became the darling of an invasive MAGA fan base ignorant and, frankly, uninterested in the history and tradition of the league and the many great players, often black and often lesbian, who in fact built the league and cultivated its excellence. They acted like Clark invented the league and women’s basketball itself, like the WNBA was nothing before her arrival. Of course, erasing and distorting the history of the contributions of people of color to America is standard white supremacist practice. Tellingly, Paige Bueckers, a white lesbian player who has been consistently far more outspoken about recognizing that black women built the league and who put up rookie numbers comparable to Clark’s, really received a fraction of fanfare accompanying Clark’s first year and entrance into the league.

So, that’s one challenge for the WNBA and Unrivaled: continuing to model and advance a non-sexist, anti-racist, LGBTQ-friendly culture as an alternative to the anti-democratic white male supremacist culture and MAGA politics invading WNBA arenas as the league grows in popularity and attracts new fans more representative of the U.S. dominant culture.

Indeed, the WNBA and Unrivaled players have played an historic role in the fight against fascism and white male supremacy in America, as documented in the 2024 film Power of the Dream, which in part charts the story of WNBA players organizing to help get Georgia Senators Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff elected to the U.S. Senate in 2020, saving the Senate from Republican rule and America from greater fascist rule.

So, that’s the question: Can the WNBA and Unrivaled players continue to offer a vision and energize efforts to achieve a truly democratic and egalitarian society in the U.S.

Another challenge facing the players and the league which must be confronted honestly if the hopes the WNBA represents as an egalitarian cultural institution are to be kept alive is the threat of corporate influence and the allure of wealth that always threaten to distract people from their core values.

Back in 2022, after a Sky game I attended, the Sky organization hosted a panel celebrating fifty years of Title IX of the 1972 Federal Education Amendments, which are part of the Civil Rights Act. Title IX stated that “no person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance.”

At this celebration, WNBA and Sky star Candace Parker not only spoke to the importance of Title IX but also to the importance of people supporting the WNBA. In particular, I recall her waving her arms around Wintrust Arena and inviting the audience to acknowledge that the league was not one owned by corporate sponsors and influence. The WNBA was the people’s league, and that is truly how it felt in the arena.

Now, however, the league is exploding in popularity, and the money and corporate invasion is following. Yes, the players succeeded in negotiating a much more lucrative collective bargaining agreement, forcing the league to pay them more equitably and share revenues.

The players and the league, though, will need to be careful, again, that with this corporate influence the values of the larger dominant U.S. culture do not erode the values and egalitarian culture vision the league had fostered,

Let’s be honest. In the face of the Trump’s regime assault on women’s rights, LGBTQ rights, voting rights, immigrant rights, and human and civil rights more broadly, corporate America has largely remained silent, more concerned with its tax breaks and record profits than with hallmark American values of democracy and egalitarianism.

We already see Draft Kings commercials accompanying WNBA games and former players, such as Lisa Leslie, appearing in advertisements. WNBA commentators now talk about gambling odds in their pre-game shows. Let’s be honest about this too. Gambling doesn’t represent opportunity and upward mobility for poor and working-class populations. Rather, these gambling platforms are predatory. They don’t continue to exist because those Americans who gamble are getting rich but rather because they are taking Americans’ money, which is particularly damaging to the nation’s most economically vulnerable. Preying upon, rather than aiding and supporting, America’s most vulnerable is counter to an egalitarian value system, which I’d like to believe the WNBA and Unrivaled have represented.

So, without question the WNBA and Unrivaled have been and can continue to be important cultural institutions for advancing civil and human rights to foster democracy and egalitarianism in America. The commitment to these values and practices, though, . . . read more at AllThingsBeingEqual.net.

The reporting on Donald Trump’s recent visit to China, on which he was accompanied by 15 prominent CEOs, tended to take an alarmingly matter-of-fact tone, indicating the worrying extent not just to which corporate power and interests are exerting disproportionate and inappropriate influence on the President and the federal government overall–which is nothing new–but also to which this corporate role in governance is being viewed as acceptable, as a matter of course.

This situation is not acceptable from the perspective of maintaining democracy and supporting democratic rights for Americans, particularly when it comes to matters of economic and workplace democracy.

Think about it for two seconds. The CEOs, who included Apple CEO Tim Cook, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, and Tesla CEO Elon Musk, among others, collectively wield a net worth of nearly $1 trillion.

Should the average American feel comfortable and confident that these billionaires are there representing their economic and political interests?

Why are corporate leaders and not elected representatives in China doing the business of representing the interests of their constituents, of the American public as opposed to private interests? The group is supposed to be an envoy of the U.S. government representing the interests of all Americans, not just a corporate elite.

Let’s answer both of these questions.

First, of course the average American should not feel at all confident that these billionaires will represent working-class and middle-class interests. Corporations–you may be shocked to learn–serve shareholders first, such that their interest is not in sharing booming profits with their employees but in always seeking to extract the most work out of employees for the least remuneration.

To support this assertion, recent reports show a snowballing trend of U.S. companies slashing employee benefits. Amid spiking layoffs, employees are afraid to fight back because so few workers (roughly only 10% of U.S. workers) enjoy significant rights and representation in the workplace. In other words, we have not achieved anything close to workplace democracy in the United States; and, arguably, we talk very little as a culture and society about workplace democracy such that most Americans, I’d venture to say, have no expectation they will have a say in how their workplace and by extension the overall national economy will operate.

It is telling that the same week Trump brought his oligarchic gang of CEOs to China to represent the nation (lol!), human rights experts from the United Nations urged the U.S. and Starbucks to respond to allegations of ongoing intimidation and harassment of employees engaged in unionizing activities since 2021. The right to organize unions is recognized in the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights as a basic human right. And, of course, unions are the most basic way employees have to gain a voice and secure representation and protection in the workplace.

Corporations such as Amazon and Walmart have long sought to deny their workers representation in the workplace and collective bargaining rights.

In short, in large part and in many cases, corporate America has shown itself to be an enemy of human rights and hence of the majority of Americans.

So, it should be alarming to us all that Trump has designated a gang of human-rights-denying billionaire CEOs to join an official U.S. governmental envoy representing the nation and its interests.

But to the second question, why did Trump select them?

Well, if you haven’t figured it out by now, I’ll do my best to state the obvious again.

The Trump administration serves the interests of corporate oligarchs and has no interest in democracy. Serving the interests of the nation’s democratic republic would mean serving the public good and working for the interests, health, and well-being of all.

We only have to look at Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill” to understand this point. The bill cuts healthcare and food assistance programs, among others, for Americans while giving over $2.3 trillion in tax cuts for the top 10%, with over $1 trillion of those cuts going to the top one percent, while also reducing the incomes of working-class Americans.

The China visit simply makes crystal clear, for those who did not already know, that Trump’s vision is to install oligarchic rule and destroy democracy. If it hasn’t already happened, it’s happening; it’s what he’s doing.

And let’s be clear that it doesn’t have to be this way. We have seen our U.S. government behave far differently under recent administrations, seeking to serve the public good and, particularly, to advance the social and economic interests and well-being of working-class and middle-class Americans.

Jake Sullivan, for example, the National Security Advisor during the Biden Administration, articulated a vision of both foreign and domestic policy–recognizing the connection between the two–that acknowledged the failures of corporate tax cuts, deregulation, and privatization to create an economy that shared wealth and supported working-class and middle-class interests by investing in public infrastructure and the public good–as opposed to private corporate interests–overall.

He articulated a policy informed by this vision: “To build. To build capacity, to build resilience, to build inclusiveness, at home and with partners abroad. The capacity to produce and innovate, and to deliver public goods like strong physical and digital infrastructure and clean energy at scale. The resilience to withstand natural disasters and geopolitical shocks. And the inclusiveness to ensure a strong, vibrant American middle class and greater opportunity for working people around the world. All of that is part of what we have called a foreign policy for the middle class.”

The focus was on building up the public sphere and infrastructure to serve the public good, and this focus was rooted in a powerful acknowledgment that giving more to the wealthy and supporting corporate interests only enhanced inequality and worked against the interests of improving incomes and life generally for the working-class and middle-class. The policies aimed to address the conditions that had been fostering and exacerbating inequality and undermining democracy for half a century.

“Finally, we faced the challenge of inequality and its damage to democracy. Here, the prevailing assumption was that trade-enabled growth would be inclusive growth — that the gains of trade would end up getting broadly shared within nations. But the fact is that those gains failed to reach a lot of working people. The American middle class lost ground while the wealthy did better than ever. And American manufacturing communities were hollowed out while cutting-edge industries moved to metropolitan areas. Now, the drivers of economic inequality — as many of you know even better than I — are complex, and they include structural challenges like the digital revolution. But key among these drivers are decades of trickle-down economic policies — policies like regressive tax cuts, deep cuts to public investment, unchecked corporate concentration, and active measures to undermine the labor movement that initially built the American middle class. Efforts to take a different approach during the Obama Administration — including efforts to pass policies to address climate change, invest in infrastructure, expand the social safety net, and protect workers’ rights to organize — were stymied by Republican opposition.”

The challenge, of course, is that Democratic efforts aimed at reversing decades of policies entrenching structures that enforce and heighten inequality require time to implement and take effect and also often require Republican cooperation.

When American voters don’t see impact quickly enough, they have tended to fall for the lure of the demagogue…. read more at AllThingsBeingEqual.Net.

Trump’s China Visit Clearly Reveals Oligarchic Rule Stifling Social and Economic Democracy for… was originally published in DataDrivenInvestor on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

“Availability,” not “affordability,” really needs to be the word of the day to truly capture the grave dangers looming on the economic horizon for Americans and, in fact, for all peoples around the globe.

Don’t get me wrong. Affordability is still a huge issue, with the producer price index soaring 6% this April compared to last year. Inflation is surging, and Americans are struggling. No amount of lying can obscure this basic reality most Americans are experiencing.

But it’s one thing to pay high prices for what we need. It’s another to not have access at all to resources and basic necessities we need to live on a day to day basis. This is why “availability” is a more appropriate and accurate word to represent the reality of the national and global economic situation and the grave dangers approaching us in the near future, probably sooner than later.

To understand fully the devastating path down which Donald Trump’s arrogant leadership and ill-conceived war are taking America and the entire globe, it’s precisely this issue of the availability of resources necessary to meet basic human needs that we need to be tracking and understanding.

As an example, let’s take the issue of jet fuel. Experts and analysts have sounded the alarm that the supply issues are serious and that shortages are not just imminent but will have long-term consequences.

John Gradek, who teaches aviation risk management at McGill University, has warned, “We’re going into crisis mode,” elaborating that “the industry has never seen this before, where the actual supply of the product needed to support aviation, that pipeline, is drying up.”

Matt Smith, director of commodity research at the energy data and analytics platform Kpler, says that the jet fuel shortage is “slow-motion car crash,” insisting, “It’s not going to be a short-term issue, because it can’t be easily solved.”

These views are not outliers but rather mainstream. Goldman Sachs, for example, has informed investors that Europe’s jet fuel supply is expected in June to dip below what the International Energy Agency identifies as a critical 23-day shortage threshold. In April, this agency calculated that Europe had “maybe six weeks of jet fuel left” and that countries in Asia, Africa, and Latin America would feel the impact sooner.

These conditions are expected to significantly reduce air traffic in 2026. Keep in mind that air traffic isn’t just about people going on discretionary vacations for a good time; it’s also how we transport goods. Reducing air traffic threatens the availability of basic resources around the globe.

We already know that the closing of the Strait of Hormuz is making it difficult for American farmers not just to afford but even to access the fertilizer necessary for them to grow their crops.

Again, it’s challenging enough to afford elevated food prices; it’s a far more dire situation to face actual food supply shortages.

And gasoline shortages can negatively impact the availability of food and other goods as well. California, for example, according to some sources, has roughly six weeks of gas supply left. The prospect of rationing is real. Again, the availability of food in the U.S. depends greatly . . . read more at AllThingsBeingEqual.net.

If one wanted intentionally to craft a foreign policy and set of strategic actions for the United States designed to undermine its national interests and security as well as the economic well-being of its population, it might be hard to do so and match the playbook Donald Trump has been implementing.

Beyond the fact that Trump violated the U.S. Constitution in engaging in an attack of war without congressional authorization–itself a form of treason–let’s also consider that the U.S. Constitution defines treason as providing aid and comfort to the enemy.

Has Trump provided aid and comfort to the enemy?

This question could easily be answered affirmatively.

Consider the fact–a most cruel and strange irony–that while locked in battle with Iran, Trump also lifted sanctions in order to enable other countries to buy oil from Iran. Indeed, respectable news outlets have reported that the global energy crisis spawned by Trump’s ill-advised and poorly-strategized attack on Iran has actually generated billions of dollars in wealth through oil sales for Iran.

So, let’s put this situation in perspective: while Trump has declared Iran to be a most dangerous adversary, his actions are actually enriching and empowering them.

Last time I checked, Russia was also an enemy of the U.S. Yet Trump has also lifted sanctions on Russian oil, allowing Vladimir Putin to haul in billions to fund his war on Ukraine and his overall assault on global democracy.

Moreover, Russia has been providing intelligence to Iran so they can target U.S. military installations with their missiles.

It’s hard to see how Trump’s actions and policies are not providing aid and comfort to the very nations who are adversaries of the United States.

Additionally, Trump’s actions have substantially empowered Iran. Having no plan to secure the Strait of Hormuz, his war has allowed Iran to seize control of this vital waterway and hold the global economy hostage, to the detriment of peoples and economies around the globe.

In addition to harming farmers’ economic fortunes by choking access to and raising prices on necessary fertilizers, Iran’s closure of the strait, a result of Trump’s lack of thought and strategy, also threatens the global food supply, beyond just surely promising to raise the cost of food.

So, Trump’s war is undermining Americans’ economic well-being as the war . . . read more at AllThingsBeingEqual.net

Let’s start with this basic question: Have you ever seen an authoritarian state that features a healthy economy that serves the needs and well-being of its citizens?

I’ll say the answer is “no,” and leave it to readers to correct me if they can think of an example or instance I’ve overlooked.

But the bottom line is that autocratic regimes tend to function as kleptocracies, stealing and hoarding the nation’s wealth and resources and directing governmental practice to serve the interests of those who control government and their cronies. In such a system, leaders and their cronies are unchecked by democratic structures designed to ensure the interests of a nation’s people enjoy representation and are reflected in legislation and in social and economic policy and practices.

We might think of Russian autocrat Vladimir Putin and his gang of oligarchs who hoard hundreds of billions of dollars generated by the Russian economy rather than sharing it democratically with the nation’s people who no doubt play a large role in doing the work that produces that wealth.

Fundamentally, the point is we need to recognize that autocratic or oligarchic political systems are not consistent with fostering democratic economies that prioritize meeting the needs and ensuring the well-being of a nation’s people. They tend to govern and create policies in ways that foster increasing accumulation of wealth for the wealthiest elite.

Trump’s ongoing aggression against Iran is a perfect example of this point that autocratic political rule does not tend to support democratic economies that prioritize meeting the needs of the people and sharing the nation’s wealth with them. Putting aside the apparent bumbling incompetence, lack of planning and clear objectives, and the hubris characterizing Trump’s bombing of and military actions in Iran, it is important to remember that Trump initiated this “war” in violation of our constitutional processes and laws.

The U.S. Constitution is clear that Congress alone possesses the power to declare war. The founders, who carefully wrote the Constitution precisely to protect democracy from authoritarian threats, crafted this article explicitly to ensure representatives elected by the people, and not a single executive, make this important decision with the interests of those they represent at heart.

Trump’s autocratic initiation of war, in violation of the U.S. Constitution, has generated global economic instability and a global energy crisis and particularly has intensified the affordability crisis many Americans are experiencing. In addition to higher gas prices, disruptions to the supply chain promise higher prices in many areas. The closing of the Straits of Hormuz has in particular prevented supplies of fertilizer from reaching farmers in the U.S. This development will raise the price of fertilizer and make it scarcer, threatening food supplies and raising food prices.

And this one autocratic man, Trump, took it upon himself to inflict even more economic pain on Americans than they have already been enduring under his inflationary economy resulting directly from his policies, such as his tariffs which the U.S. Supreme Court ruled to be illegal.

Put this situation in perspective: One man, Donald Trump, took it upon himself to initiate a war with Iran, a decision that impacts the economic lives of hundreds of millions of Americans and their families.

I ask readers if they want one man determining their fate, which is what we call dictatorship, or if they would prefer a robust system of checks and balances, of what we call democracy, that engages elected representatives in considering the interests of their constituents.

Consider also that this one man, Donald Trump, also recently celebrated the spiking oil prices that are burdening everyday Americans just trying to get by, saying recently, “The United States is the largest oil producer in the World, by far, so when oil prices go up, we make a lot of money.”

The “we” Trump is identifying with here seems to be the oil companies, for surely the average American consumer is being hurt, not made rich, by the surging prices at the pump.

Let me suggest to readers that clearly this one man, this autocrat, cannot and does not represent the economic interests of the hundreds of millions of working-class and middle-class Americans. We are talking about a guy whose family has made close to $4 billion “off the presidency” since he took office, while the vast majority have seen their economic situation deteriorate. Is the autocrat representing average Americans, or himself? The answer seems pretty clear.

Trump’s assault on Iran and its people bears the same authoritarian and illegal characteristics of Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine’s sovereign national territory. The behavior is autocratic, not democratic, and we can see that autocracy does not serve the economic interests of the vast majority of Americans.

So, to return to the main question, does authoritarianism foster, or tend to foster, an economy that serves the well-being of the nation’s people?

It seems clearly that the answer is no.

So, while polls tend to identify concerns over affordability and concerns over the erosion of democracy in the U.S. as separate issues, what needs to be underlined is that maintaining and strengthening democracy is the basis for addressing affordability issues. The issues cannot be separated. They are not just intimately linked; they are one and the same.

If Americans want an economy that serves them, they need to press for increased democracy, rather than electing authoritarian leaders such as Trump who defy and disregard the U.S. Constitution and seek to dismantle democratic structures and undermine elections.

The war Trump initiated is by many estimates costing at least $1 billion per day and is anticipated to have cost $25 billion by March 25. One has to wonder if a truly democratic process were instituted to decide whether we should fund war and intensify the affordability crisis or use funds to improve Americans’ lives directly, what the choice would be. For example, this $25 billion and counting could have been used to fund the Affordable Care Act health insurance subsidies that have not been renewed. The failure to renew these subsidies has resulted in increases in monthly subsidies by hundreds of dollars for many Americans and in one in ten Americans on ACA plans losing their coverage.

If we want an economy designed to meet the needs of all Americans rather than enable the accumulation of wealth for a few, we need a political system designed to represent and respond to the interests and needs of all Americans. That’s what democracy, not autocracy . . . read more at AllThingsBeingEqual.net

Let’s start with this basic question: Have you ever seen an authoritarian state that features a healthy economy that serves the needs and well-being of its citizens?

I’ll say the answer is “no,” and leave it to readers to correct me if they can think of an example or instance I’ve overlooked.

But the bottom line is that autocratic regimes tend to function as kleptocracies, stealing and hoarding the nation’s wealth and resources and directing governmental practice to serve the interests of those who control government and their cronies. In such a system, leaders and their cronies are unchecked by democratic structures designed to ensure the interests of a nation’s people enjoy representation and are reflected in legislation and in social and economic policy and practices.

We might think of Russian autocrat Vladimir Putin and his gang of oligarchs who hoard hundreds of billions of dollars generated by the Russian economy rather than sharing it democratically with the nation’s people who no doubt play a large role in doing the work that produces that wealth.

Fundamentally, the point is we need to recognize that autocratic or oligarchic political systems are not consistent with fostering democratic economies that prioritize meeting the needs and ensuring the well-being of a nation’s people. They tend to govern and create policies in ways that foster increasing accumulation of wealth for the wealthiest elite.

Trump’s ongoing aggression against Iran is a perfect example of this point that autocratic political rule does not tend to support democratic economies that prioritize meeting the needs of the people and sharing the nation’s wealth with them. Putting aside the apparent bumbling incompetence, lack of planning and clear objectives, and the hubris characterizing Trump’s bombing of and military actions in Iran, it is important to remember that Trump initiated this “war” in violation of our constitutional processes and laws.

The U.S. Constitution is clear that Congress alone possesses the power to declare war. The founders, who carefully wrote the Constitution precisely to protect democracy from authoritarian threats, crafted this article explicitly to ensure representatives elected by the people, and not a single executive, make this important decision with the interests of those they represent at heart.

Trump’s autocratic initiation of war, in violation of the U.S. Constitution, has generated global economic instability and a global energy crisis and particularly has intensified the affordability crisis many Americans are experiencing. In addition to higher gas prices, disruptions to the supply chain promise higher prices in many areas. The closing of the Straits of Hormuz has in particular prevented supplies of fertilizer from reaching farmers in the U.S. This development will raise the price of fertilizer and make it scarcer, threatening food supplies and raising food prices.

And this one autocratic man, Trump, took it upon himself to inflict even more economic pain on Americans than they have already been enduring under his inflationary economy resulting directly from his policies, such as his tariffs which the U.S. Supreme Court ruled to be illegal.

Put this situation in perspective: One man, Donald Trump, took it upon himself to initiate a war with Iran, a decision that impacts the economic lives of hundreds of millions of Americans and their families.

I ask readers if they want one man determining their fate, which is what we call dictatorship, or if they would prefer a robust system of checks and balances, of what we call democracy, that engages elected representatives in considering the interests of their constituents.

Consider also that this one man, Donald Trump, also recently celebrated the spiking oil prices that are burdening everyday Americans just trying to get by, saying recently, “The United States is the largest oil producer in the World, by far, so when oil prices go up, we make a lot of money.”

The “we” Trump is identifying with here seems to be the oil companies, for surely the average American consumer is being hurt, not made rich, by the surging prices at the pump.

Let me suggest to readers that clearly this one man, this autocrat, cannot and does not represent the economic interests of the hundreds of millions of working-class and middle-class Americans. We are talking about a guy whose family has made close to $4 billion “off the presidency” since he took office, while the vast majority have seen their economic situation deteriorate. Is the autocrat representing average Americans, or himself? The answer seems pretty clear.

Trump’s assault on Iran and its people bears the same authoritarian and illegal characteristics of Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine’s sovereign national territory. The behavior is autocratic, not democratic, and we can see that autocracy does not serve the economic interests of the vast majority of Americans.

So, to return to the main question, does authoritarianism foster, or tend to foster, an economy that serves the well-being of the nation’s people?

It seems clearly that the answer is no.

So, while polls tend to identify concerns over affordability and concerns over the erosion of democracy in the U.S. as separate issues, what needs to be underlined is that maintaining and strengthening democracy is the basis for addressing affordability issues. The issues cannot be separated. They are not just intimately linked; they are one and the same.

If Americans want an economy that serves them, they need to press for increased democracy, rather than electing authoritarian leaders such as Trump who defy and disregard the U.S. Constitution and seek to dismantle democratic structures and undermine elections.

The war Trump initiated is by many estimates costing at least $1 billion per day and is anticipated to have cost $25 billion by March 25. One has to wonder if a truly democratic process were instituted to decide whether we should fund war and intensify the affordability crisis or use funds to improve Americans’ lives directly, what the choice would be. For example, this $25 billion and counting could have been used to fund the Affordable Care Act health insurance subsidies that have not been renewed. The failure to renew these subsidies has resulted in increases in monthly subsidies by hundreds of dollars for many Americans and in one in ten Americans on ACA plans losing their coverage.

If we want an economy designed to meet the needs of all Americans rather than enable the accumulation of wealth for a few, we need a political system designed to represent and respond to the interests and needs of all Americans. That’s what democracy, not autocracy, is designed to do . . . read more at AllThingsBeingEqual.net

The Supreme Court has now heard the arguments of the Trump administration and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) regarding birthright citizenship as spelled out in the 14th amendment. Now we wait for the decision.

How will this decision impact not some, not most, but all, Americans?

In the way this issue has been covered and discussed, it’s not at all clear to me that the majority of Americans fully understand the stakes of this decision and how the efforts of the Trump administration, with Stephen Miller pulling the strings of the wonderfully awful wizard Trump, fit within a larger plan to redefine American identity and citizenship and thus grant, limit, or outright cancel rights to Americans on the basis of that redefinition.

Conventional understandings of the stakes of revoking birthright citizenship tend to focus on what the decision will mean for the children born in the United States to undocumented immigrants. The stakes are much higher and implications much broader because if birthright citizenship is revoked, the very definitional foundations of citizenship will be unsettled, calling every American’s citizenship into question, which I believe is the Trump administration’s goal.

Just consider the facts that ICE has been given license to detain people using racial profiling and has in fact indiscriminately detained American citizens. It is less about whether or not one actually enjoys legal citizenship than it is pursuing terror as a form of control and governance and labeling acts of defiance to ICE’s extralegal terrorist campaign as un-American.

Ask yourself this: how do you prove your citizenship now? If an ICE agent were to approach you and ask for proof of citizenship, what would you provide? Your driver’s license? A state identification card? Your library card? Your employee identification badge? These don’t quite really do it.

And say you had a birth certificate or social security card with you, would that do the trick? Well, say birthright citizenship has been revoked and your birth certificate thus doesn’t prove citizenship. Then what?

You see where this is going. If there’s no birthright citizenship, what makes anybody a citizen?

If we look back at National Security Presidential Memorandum/NSPM-7, issued on Sept. 25, 2025, we can discern where the Trump administration is going in terms of developing a new litmus test for citizenship rooted in a narrow conservative belief system that itself defies foundational American principles of freedom of speech and thought. In this memo we find a presidential directive that authorizes preemptive law enforcement actions against Americans not for any violent or illegal actions they’ve taken but for their ideological and political beliefs.

Though neither Charlie Kirk’s murderer nor the shooter who purportedly attempted to assassinate Trump can be linked to “anti-fascist” politics, Trump nonetheless invokes those episodes as evidence of a wave of anti-fascist political violence, as he writes,

There are common recurrent motivations and indicia uniting this pattern of violent and terroristic activities under the umbrella of self-described “anti-fascism.” These movements portray foundational American principles (e.g., support for law enforcement and border control) as “fascist” to justify and encourage acts of violent revolution.

This “anti-fascist” lie has become the organizing rallying cry used by domestic terrorists to wage a violent assault against democratic institutions, constitutional rights, and fundamental American liberties. Common threads animating this violent conduct include anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, and anti-Christianity; support for the overthrow of the United States Government; extremism on migration, race, and gender; and hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on family, religion, and morality.

So, if, like Senator Bernie Sanders or Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, one identifies with socialist as opposed to capitalist politics, then one can be labeled an un-American domestic terrorist and, presumably, deprived of citizenship rights and, it would seem to follow, detained or deported.

And the language here is frighteningly vague when we consider terms such as “anti-Americanism,” “anti-Christianity,” or “extremism on migration, race, and gender.” If one expresses one’s Jewish or Islamic beliefs, or one’s atheism, does that constitute “anti-Christianity”? If one speaks out against white Christian nationalism, is that “anti-Christianity”?

If one supports gay marriage or is in a gay marriage or supports transgender rights or is transgender, is one expressing “hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on family, religion, and morality”?

What we see here is an effort to define American-ness, and by extension American identity and citizenship, I think, in terms of belief and values and thus, as this memorandum, enable the persecution of people as domestic terrorists on the basis of their “un-American” beliefs and values.

The memorandum also forecloses the possibility of legitimate anti-fascist politics and acts of resistance, as any expression of anti-fascism or resistance to fascism is already declared to be un-American . . . read more at AllThingsBeingEqual.net

Remember the 1980 movie 9 to 5, co-starring Dolly Parton, Jane Fonda, and Lily Tomlin? Younger readers probably don’t. Readers of a certain age might. If you don’t know it or don’t remember it, here it is in a nutshell (and I recommend watching it again or for the first time):

Parton, Fonda, and Tomlin work in the typical sexist office of capitalist America where women are underpaid and typically unrecognized for what they do because they are women. They endure sexual harassment in addition to having workplace culture and rules refuse to recognize the reality of women’s lives, such as the demands of parenting (which need not and should not be a women’s issue alone, but this is 1980, and maybe not much has changed anyway). Fed up, this trio of women kidnap their boss, played by Dabney Coleman, hook him up to a garage door opener in his house so he can’t escape and so they can suspend him if he gets ornery, and they effectively start running the store. Immediately the workplace thrives, transformed into a happier and more efficient enterprise, effectively worker-run and worker-friendly. The three institute company-provided childcare in the workplace, job-sharing so employees can accommodate other life and famjly priorities and keep their jobs, equitable salaries, and an overall culture of respect and dignity that empowers and recognizes the talents and skills of workers as well as their humanity. It is a just and humane workplace.

I think about this film a lot and often wish it survived more prominently as vital cultural touchstone for our social imaginations, for our revolutionary imaginations. Humane workplaces — indeed, humane economies — free from exploitation, operate more efficiently and productively and form the basis of a much happier and fulfilling world. Wise folks such as Frederick Douglass, as I’ve written about elsewhere, often remind us of this important truth.

While the film may have had a utopian dimension, there was nothing impractical or fantastic about it. The vision of a workplace free from sexism and exploitation that recognizes people’s humanity and dignity and allows them to share in the fruits of their labor should not be considered a pipe dream.

It sounds like a baseline benchmark for any society that wants to call itself civilized.

The players of the WNBA seemed to agree, and for them the vision portrayed in 9 to 5 was hardly a utopian fantasy. Led by star players Napheesa Collier and Breanna Stewart, the players formed Unrivaled, an alternative three-on-three league whose season ran between the end and beginning on the WNBA season. The economics and organization of the league provided a corrective to everything players complained about with the WNBA and realized a world much like 9 to 5 imagines. League facilities included childcare, chefs and nutritionists for the players, trainers, and more. The minimum salary of over $200,000 was nearly triple that of the WNBA, and the players enjoyed revenue-sharing on top of that.

Since the workers/players share in the profits — a version of ownership — they of course have incentive for it to succeed economically. As they play, they have an incentive for it succeed in human terms.

Apparently, the venture has worked and worked quite well. Take Angel Reese’s tweet from last January:

“We get to work out, use the weight room, create new bonds/friendships, get treatment, get massages, use the sauna, getting 2 meals a day, and then a facial before I leave for the day??? Yeah i love it here.”

The players seem to have created the world they want: one where the workers own and control their world, sharing in the fruits of their labor and organizing the workplace in ways that support their bodies and spirits, rather than grinding them down, affording them honor and dignity.

It almost sounds like a socialist utopia. But, of course, socialism is evil, we are taught in our capitalist society. Let’s never forget that.

As these same players now find themselves in laborious and frustrating collective bargaining with the WNBA, we have to wonder if the players even really need the WNBA.

Why keep engaging in and thus sustaining the contentious relationship between owners and players, between labor and capital, when the players have already shown they make this divisive form of economic organization disappear by becoming owners and players, by making capital and labor one and the same by owning the league, or at least sharing the fruits of their labor?

Let’s look at what’s been going on in the collective bargaining drama between WNBA league owners and the players to give some context here.

Last December, 98% of WNBA players authorized their union to call a strike if necessary. The current contract, previously scheduled to expire last October 31, was extended until January 9.

Negotiations have been stalled for months with the primary impasse being the issue of revenue-sharing. Players are demanding a revenue-sharing model that would allow their salaries to grow in step with the economic growth of the very league they make possible.

The NBA players enjoy such a structure, receiving 49%-51% of the NBA’s basketball-related income, while WNBA players currently receive 9.3% of the income the league generates.

So, the players’ demand is far from outlandish. Arguably, far more outlandish, even outrageous, is the meager percentage of the WNBA’s revenues currently allotted for players’ salaries.

NBA Commissioner Adam Silver has pushed back on the demand for revenue-sharing, objecting to concept of “share.” He said in an October 21 interview, “I think you should look at it in absolute numbers in terms of what they’re making, and they’re going to get in this cycle of collective bargaining, and they deserve it.”

So much for what we all learned in kindergarten about the importance of sharing.

What Silver is holding fast to is the typical divide between capital and labor. He, and the league he represents, is resisting a transformation in the very structures of ownership and labor relations. To give the players what they want would signal the erosion of the division between capital and labor and sow the seeds for a more powerful vision and indeed realization of collective ownership, of worker ownership.

The funny thing is, what the players are bargaining for, they have already realized in Unrivaled.

Do they even need the WNBA? In many ways, they have all the leverage. Since they formed the three-on-three league that plays in the WNBA off-season, why not create a five-on-five league that plays when the WNBA season typically runs.

Who needs these owners? It’s hard to believe players . . . read more here at AllThingsBeingEqual.net

Again and again, I hear this question raised in public discourse: “Is a college education worth it?”

The frequency of the question registers a growing cultural doubt worth unpacking and addressing because the social and economic — indeed, the human! — stakes are high, and the question itself distorts our understanding of the social role, benefits, and even necessity of higher education. The question itself is a symptom of a deep cultural illness and abiding condition of alienation in American culture, society, and political economy, as I’ll explain.

A recent NBC poll revealed that 63 percent of people believe a bachelor’s degree is “not worth the cost because people often graduate without specific job skills and with a large amount of debt to pay off.”

Actual data contradicts this now prevailing belief, indicating college graduates earn hundreds of thousands dollar more over the course of their careers than those with only a high school diploma or less.

Regardless of that truth, though, the question is mis-posed and distracts us from understanding the real value of a college education and the necessity of our population pursuing college educations if the outcome we want is a healthy and effective economy and a humane democratic society.

A better way of approaching the issue, I’d like to suggest, is to reframe the question in two ways.

First, we need to extend and qualify the question by asking, “Is a college education worth it FOR WHOM?”

Relatedly, instead of just looking at the dollar and cents of the current situation, we need to ask, “What can we do to make higher education accessible and affordable?”

Let’s start with the first question, and let me suggest that that a college education is worth it and indeed necessary for all of us collectively if we want a healthy democratic society, a livable planet, and an economy that meets people’s needs. With all the socjal challenges facing us, imagine we as a society were not educating doctors, nurses, engineers, scientists, agricultural experts, journalists, historians, artists, people who speak multiple languages and understand other cultures, and writers and problem-solvers with a host a disciplinary expertises?

You — we all — need other people with skills, abilities, and knowledge to figure out how we can grow, produce, and distribute enough food to nourish all of us; to keep us healthy and take care of our medical needs; to make sure we have a habitable environment to live in and clean water to drink; to make sure we have energy to cool and warm our homes and fuel our economy; to communicate, write, and inform us about what’s happening in our world; to entertain us with movie, music, and other arts; to think with an understanding of social and cultural history as we develop public policy; and much more. I’m only scratching the surface.

I hope you’re getting the point that having people cultivate the skills and knowledge university educations provide isn’t just a matter of individual interest but of collective interest.

Or, put another way, it is in your individual interest that others receive college educations in broad areas of specialization.

As a professor myself teaching in an urban institution, I often ask students if they have an interest in farming. Few do. The next question I ask is if they have an interest in others learning to farm. They typically stop and think about it, perhaps for the first time, and realize they do.

The question makes them contemplate the inevitable reality that is our dependence on each other to meet our needs, to make our lives possible.

Generally, in my observation, our culture teaches us to think and understand the world in narrowly individualistic terms. People tend to think about their careers and the work they do not in terms of their benefit to or impact on others or their service to the public good, but in terms of their own individual pursuits and interests, the salaries they garner, and hence the kind of life they can enjoy (the house they’ll live in, the care they’ll drive, the vacations they’ll take, where they’ll send their kids to school, and so on).

This individualistic thinking is the hallmark, in my view, of neoliberalism, summed up in Margaret Thatcher’s infamous statement, “And, you know, there is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families.”

This neoliberal mentality encourages us to think about our actions and behaviors — and the work we do in the world — in terms of our private interests, rather than the public good. This same mentality can also blind us to, or excuse, anti-social dimensions of work we engage in that is harmful to others and arguably to the public good (manufacturing cigarettes, polluting the environment, engaging in predatory lending, paying works poverty wages, and so forth).

And this distorted understanding of ourselves as atomized individuals with only private interests fosters the condition of alienation plaguing American society. Not understanding our relationship to and our necessary dependence on the others, that we are social beings, prevents us from recognizing our interest in supporting others and helping them develop themselves, as opposed to competing with them for or trying to deny others resources. We experience others as disconnected from us, isolated from and unrelated to us, at our own peril.

Sadly, neoliberal ideology betrays the vision of the nation’s founders, who insisted the success of the republic would depend on the virtue of each and every individual, by which they meant the commitment of individuals to subordinate their avarice and private ambitions for the sake of the public good (res publica). For our founders, there was such a thing as a society, and our commitment to the social interest, the public good, was the essential and central component of democracy. It was a principle of mutual aid.

When it comes to higher education and the role of universities in U.S. society, it is also important to recognize that this neoliberalist ideology represents a departure from the dominant political, social, and economic thinking that gave rise to public higher education. Think about the large land grant universities (such as flagship state universities) enabled though the Morill Act of 1862. These public institutions were created with the understanding that higher education serves, indeed is vital to, the public good, the social collective. These public institutions transformed higher education beyond a narrow focus on classical education, expanding the focus of universities to include teaching practical agriculture, science, military science, and engineering, in addition to other areas of study.

In short, public higher education was founded on the understanding, the irrefutable reality, that for us to succeed as a society, as a people, we needed to educate people with the technical knowledge and skills and humane sensibilities required to do the work that makes all over lives possible. Looked at in other terms, the founding of public higher education was rooted in an understanding of our dependence on one another to meet our basic needs and in an ethos of mutual aid.

Meeting all of our individual and social needs and addressing all of our social challenges requires we have people with high levels of technical expertise and people who continue to do research into the many problems we have not yet solved, such as cures for diseases or medicines to prevent them. Understanding our world helps us figure out better how to live in it.

So the question we should be asking isn’t really whether or not a college education is worth it; rather, we need to ask:

Can we really afford to have Americans not pursue a college education to develop the skills, knowledge, and imaginations — and do the research — necessary for a successful society and economy that meets our needs and supports our lives, materially, spiritually, and otherwise?

So, the question is, if we cannot afford NOT to have a college-educated population, how do we make college affordable?

Well, the first step is recognizing, or reminding ourselves as a nation of what once common sense to us, that higher education is more of an investment than an expenditure, necessary to the functioning of the nation’s society and economy and to the creation of the nation’s wealth.

If Americans recognized that investing in each other served them, the discussion regarding and approach to tax-funded (not free!) higher education would, I think, be far different.

If we all recognized that private business, organizations, and corporations are basically getting a highly educated workforce for free, really not shouldering a fair share of the investment.

Think about it: individuals pay the cost of training themselves so corporations can benefit from their training.

We have been taught to look at the situation in a rather upside-down way: that private individuals only benefit in this investment in themselves, without recognizing the broader benefits to society and to private organizations, businesses, and corporations. It would make sense for all the beneficiaries of an educated population to bear the costs of this investment.

In tax terms, making higher education available to all is more than doable. It would constitute and economic boom for most Americans. The Trump tax cuts in his Big Beautiful Bill cost about $4.2 trillion over a decade (roughly $400 billion annually), and the bulk of those benefit the wealthiest.

By many estimates, the cost of funding higher education for all, as many nations do, would range from $28 to $58 billion, read more here at AllThingsBeingEqual.net