Daily Topics - Tuesday January 15th, 2013
By shawnt56
Catch The Thom Hartmann Program LIVE 3-6pm ET M-F!
Hour One: Returning Vets get low wages and poor benefits...
Hour Two: Nevermind the fiscal cliff...the fiscal storm is about to hit! Emily Wismer, Independent Womens Forum
Hour Three: RNC election rigging...the ONLY way to win?
Thom's Blog Is On the Move
By webmaster
Hello All
Thom's blog in this space and moving to a new home.
Please follow us across to hartmannreport.com - this will be the only place going forward to read Thom's blog posts and articles.
Images of Thom
From The Thom Hartmann Reader:
"Thom is a national treasure. Read him, embrace him, learn from him, and follow him as we all work for social change."
From The Thom Hartmann Reader:
"Through compelling personal stories, Hartmann presents a dramatic and deeply disturbing picture of humans as a profoundly troubled species. Hope lies in his inspiring vision of our enormous unrealized potential and his description of the path to its realization."
From Cracking the Code:
"No one communicates more thoughtfully or effectively on the radio airwaves than Thom Hartmann. He gets inside the arguments and helps people to think them through—to understand how to respond when they’re talking about public issues with coworkers, neighbors, and friends. This book explores some of the key perspectives behind his approach, teaching us not just how to find the facts, but to talk about what they mean in a way that people will hear."
Tom,
The economy, simply put, is nothing more or less than what we do with our human efforts and resources and how we devide up the results of that effort. It is therefore the biggest moral issue for our species. When talking about the economy we need to use appropriate language.
The two most important terms to use are "contributions" and "extractions". Contributions come from either physical or mental exertions that add to the real pool of goods or services valued by society. Extractions are what individuals take out of that pool for their own use. For example we might say, "The CEO extracted 1000 times what his contributions (managerial work) warranted." Or, "The hedge fund manager's extractions were huge despite his making no contribution." Or, "The school teacher's contributions are vital while her extractions are very small."
Once people start to understand that there is no correlation between contributions and extractions under unregulated capitalism, their support for things like progressive tax scales, fair trade, protection of our commons, etc. goes way up.
Love your show and your writings!