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Some industries, like construction and education, had relatively low rates of wage theft — 12 to 13 percent; restaurants, grocery stores, and warehouses fell in the mid-range of 20 to 25 percent; textile and clothes manufacturing and other services hit 40 percent; and a whopping 66 percent of child care workers endured minimum wage violations, and 90 percent put up with overtime violations.

Race and gender played big roles. Women saw minimum wage violations at significantly higher rates than men. Wage theft was three times higher for blacks than for whites, and highest of all for Latinos. Employees at smaller businesses were more at risk, as well as employees with less education — though wage theft happens often even to the college educated. One of the biggest crime waves in America isn’t what you think it is

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As I’ve written about before, a report by the Chief Public Health Officer in Canada looked at this question of potential savings, and estimated that:

$1 invested in the early years saves between $3 and $9 in future spending on the health and criminal justice systems, as well as on social assistance.
It’s rare to see this kind of return on investment. That is, outside of vaccinations. That’s the power of immunizations. Spending $1 on a vaccine for a kid can save $10, but also just giving the same kid $1 can save $9 some decades down the road too. Universal Basic Income as the Social Vaccine of the 21st Century — Basic income — Medium

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A total of $32 million was spent by the United States over a 10-year period in the global campaign to eradicate smallpox. The entire $32 million has been recouped every 2 months since 1971 by saving the costs of the smallpox vaccine, administration, medical care, quarantine and other costs. According to General Accounting Office (GAO) estimates from a draft report, “Infectious Diseases: Soundness of World Health Organization Estimates to Eradicate or Eliminate Seven Diseases,” the cumulative savings from smallpox eradication for the United States is $17 billion. The draft report also estimates the real rate of return for the United States to be 46 percent per year since smallpox was eradicated. Universal Basic Income as the Social Vaccine of the 21st Century — Basic income — Medium

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We estimate that the United States invested approximately US dollars 35 billion in polio vaccines between 1955 and 2005… The historical and future investments translate into over 1.7 billion vaccinations that prevent approximately 1.1 million cases of paralytic polio and over 160,000 deaths. Due to treatment cost savings, the investment implies net benefits of approximately US dollars 180 billion, even without incorporating the intangible costs of suffering and death and of averted fear. Retrospectively, the U.S. investment in polio vaccination represents a highly valuable, cost-saving public health program. Universal Basic Income as the Social Vaccine of the 21st Century — Basic income — Medium

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We do a disservice to the cause of justice by intimating that bias and discrimination are immutable, that racial division is inherent to America. If you think nothing’s changed in the past 50 years, ask somebody who lived through the Selma or Chicago or Los Angeles of the 1950s. Ask the female CEO who once might have been assigned to the secretarial pool if nothing’s changed. Ask your gay friend if it’s easier to be out and proud in America now than it was thirty years ago. To deny this progress, this hard-won progress -– our progress –- would be to rob us of our own agency, our own capacity, our responsibility to do what we can to make America better.

Of course, a more common mistake is to suggest that Ferguson is an isolated incident; that racism is banished; that the work that drew men and women to Selma is now complete, and that whatever racial tensions remain are a consequence of those seeking to play the “race card” for their own purposes. We don’t need the Ferguson report to know that’s not true. We just need to open our eyes, and our ears, and our hearts to know that this nation’s racial history still casts its long shadow upon us. President Obama’s Speech in Selma — Medium

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What a glorious thing, Dr. King might say. And what a solemn debt we owe. Which leads us to ask, just how might we repay that debt?

First and foremost, we have to recognize that one day’s commemoration, no matter how special, is not enough. If Selma taught us anything, it’s that our work is never done. The American experiment in self-government gives work and purpose to each generation.

Selma teaches us, as well, that action requires that we shed our cynicism. For when it comes to the pursuit of justice, we can afford neither complacency nor despair. President Obama’s Speech in Selma — Medium

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And yet, what could be more American than what happened in this place?What could more profoundly vindicate the idea of America than plain and humble people –- unsung, the downtrodden, the dreamers not of high station, not born to wealth or privilege, not of one religious tradition but many, coming together to shape their country’s course? President Obama’s Speech in Selma — Medium

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Since the 8 November 2016, I’ve basically abandoned social media. All the major media sites (Facebook, Twitter) have revealed themselves to be pools of despair and angst.

I’ve been thinking a lot about what comes next. So much of the country’s reaction to this election is the sheer shock of what happened. This time, the polls were wrong. The outcome was wrong. For me, at least, the woman I thought was going to be president isn’t. I don’t live in the country I thought I live in.


This past week has been a complete contrast to the week before. I have another post I’ve been working on about the All Things Open conference that happens in Raleigh every year. One of my favorite talks was by Jono Bacon about community exoskeletons. In a nutshell, we need to give our communities the infrastructure that they need to be productive, sustainable places for contributors.

Jono’s talk was about technical communities. However, the core ideas apply to our communities: Twitter, Facebook, our political parties, and our government can all be more productive, sustainable places. They all need exoskeletons.

I don’t know what this looks like at scale. I don’t have an answer for how we fix what’s broken. What I do know is that, as I mentioned at the top, I had to abandon Twitter & Facebook. I haven’t really been back. They’ve both been alternating between hopeless & depressing and shocking & cruel. Here’s the thing: social media should be our modern-day Agora. It should be the place where we reminisce, befriend, debate, & organize. We should leave our social media sites feeling challenged and invigorated. They should educate us. Our friends list should be more than a list. It should be a great, teeming, unruly hive mind.

These are big problems that we don’t have solutions to. What do we do about? How do we fix all of it? I have no idea. That’s part of what we see on facebook: sheer despair over what we see. Despair over the direction our country is heading in. Despair over being wrong. Articles and arguments on Facebook don’t fix any of that. They make it worse.

For that we turn to one of the great books of our time:

‘What did your father say?’ asked Fizban gently.

‘He said kenders were small because we were meant to do small things. ‘If you look at all the big things in the world closely,’ he said, ‘you’ll see that they’re really made up of small things all joined together.’ That big dragon down there comes to nothing but tiny drops of blood, maybe. It’s the small things that make the difference.’

This is what we do. We do small things. We reach out to our neighbors. We take care of the poor. We write letters. We volunteer. We organize. Those things will make a difference. As we solve the little things, we’ll find solutions to the big things.