Best class sociology books according to redditors

We found 75 Reddit comments discussing the best class sociology books. We ranked the 23 resulting products by number of redditors who mentioned them. Here are the top 20.

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Top Reddit comments about Sociology of Class:

u/dsmith422 · 118 pointsr/politics

An administration employee of Kushner's prep school was shocked when he got into Harvard.

​



My book exposed a grubby secret of American higher education: that the rich buy their under-achieving children’s way into elite universities with massive, tax-deductible donations. It reported that New Jersey real estate developer Charles Kushner had pledged $2.5 million to Harvard University in 1998, not long before his son Jared was admitted to the prestigious Ivy League school. At the time, Harvard accepted about one of every nine applicants. (Nowadays, it only takes one out of twenty.)

I also quoted administrators at Jared’s high school, who described him as a less than stellar student and expressed dismay at Harvard’s decision.

“There was no way anybody in the administrative office of the school thought he would on the merits get into Harvard,” a former official at The Frisch School in Paramus, New Jersey, told me. “His GPA did not warrant it, his SAT scores did not warrant it. We thought for sure, there was no way this was going to happen. Then, lo and behold, Jared was accepted. It was a little bit disappointing because there were at the time other kids we thought should really get in on the merits, and they did not.”

​

https://www.propublica.org/article/the-story-behind-jared-kushners-curious-acceptance-into-harvard

u/woodwordandbern · 67 pointsr/KotakuInAction

I looked into his background and I swear to god this is true, I can't post where his dad works etc, but it is true. This kid has legacy status and his dad is a c-suite level executive. They are affluent from the Beverly Hills area.

The real question gamergate and sjws need to ask themselves is......

Should these affluent people be given affirmative action, when they come from wealthy backgrounds?

I hope that gamergate and the sjws can come together to oppose legacy status in society.

Why are the Zoe Quinn's (VV Family), Lifschitz's, Romero's, Graner's being given preferential treatment in the video game industry, when they come from affluent backgrounds? Why can't they help poor inner city people, Appalachian people, etc. Theres plenty of homeless in San Francisco that need help too. It's always these damn legacies that get help.

How legacy status works

http://www.amazon.com/The-Price-Admission-Americas-Colleges/dp/1400097975

u/kethinov · 64 pointsr/politics

What's your take on David Faris' new book It's Time to Fight Dirty: How Democrats Can Build a Lasting Majority in American Politics?

His arguments strike me as broadly compatible with yours, but he argues for a platter of considerably more ambitious things.

In short, he argues that once Democrats run the table again (like in 2009), they should ram a bunch of reforms through that are explicitly designed to undo unfair Republican advantages. Such reforms include:

  • Packing the court so that we don't have such a large percentage of justices nominated by presidents who lost the popular vote.
  • Term limits for Supreme Court justices structured in such a way that guarantees every president at least one nomination.
  • Admit Puerto Rico and DC to the union.
  • Break California into several states to get it more senators.
  • National early voting.
  • Pre-voter registration of 17-year-olds nationwide.
  • Making Election Day a national holiday.
  • Other voting rights reforms as well (e.g. bans on disenfranchising ex-cons, making it a federal crime to intimidate voters, etc).
  • Fighting gerrymandering by doubling the size of the House and having multimember districts with proportional representation.
  • Abolishing the filibuster so all those things can be enacted with a simple majority.

    These things seem philosophically in line with your proposal to fix the Electoral College, so I was wondering what you thought of each of those ideas.

    Also, if you could amend the Constitution with whatever changes you like, would you simply abolish the Electoral College? Would you abolish the Senate too? (I would.)
u/Yaquina_Dick_Head · 49 pointsr/politics

>And we don't have an equal and opposite force exerted by a liberal propaganda machine.

Michelle Obama is one of the smartest and classiest people ever, but sometimes I think she gave bad advice when she said "when they go low we go high." It only works, in a political environment like the USA is dealing with right now, if people care about someone going low. Not enough people do. The book It's time to Fight Dirty is awesome in how it lays out solutions like giving DC and Puerto Rico statehood, expanding the SC and so on. I don't know how realistic it is but it's a good blueprint. I'm fucking sick and tired of the Dems trying to play by the book and the fact they still respect traditional norms. Fuck that. It's time to go Moscow Mitch on their asses.

https://www.amazon.com/Its-Time-Fight-Dirty-Democrats/dp/1612196950

u/Tookoofox · 32 pointsr/esist

No. Voter suppression is a garbage tactic for garbage people. Here:

https://www.amazon.com/Its-Time-Fight-Dirty-Democrats-ebook/dp/B073YT8P8S/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1541731801&sr=8-1&keywords=time+to+fight+dirty

There's a whole book of dirty tricks that democrats should pull.

Also: automatic voter registration. That's our answer.

u/Froolow · 28 pointsr/changemyview

The gap between rich and poor in developed countries (GDP > $4000/capita) is one of the best predictors - if not the best predictor - of violent crime, drug abuse, mental health problems, short life expectancy, depressed innovation, political non-participation, teenage birth rates, lower levels of trust and incarceration rates.

Not only that, but we're pretty sure that inequality actually causes these things, rather than simply being linked to them because we have very good data on the EU countries (which are all quite similar) and the American states (which are all very similar). We can trace the rise of these problems alongside the rise of inequality and link inequality-generating policies or price shocks to negative effects further along in time.

We can link this to a biological explanation in laboratory experiments; if chimps (or humans) are put in a situation where they are of 'low status' compared to everyone else in the room, they start to produce stress hormones which cause, for example, violence, overeating and stress-related mental health problems.

There is still some debate among proper academic sociologists whether there might be a third factor which causes both inequality and all the negative things stemming from inequality, and its not clear to me that the issue will ever be resolved beyond reasonable doubt (although the lab tests on hormone profiles are pretty convincing to me). It is also true inequality does not matter very much when overall income is very low, which is to say <$4000/capita. But there is certainly a correlation between stuff that 'matters' and the increasing gap between the rich and the poor, and very good evidence that this correlation is causal.

The Spirit Level is a good introductory book on the matter, being neither too technical nor too simplistic. Here is a quick summary by BBC news and here is a website where you can verify all the claims I have made, if you are so inclined.

u/cassius1213 · 16 pointsr/politics

A book was literally written about how poor a candidate for admission to Harvard Kushner fils was, how much Kushner père had to pay that university to buy the former entrance, and how that process writ large contributes to structural inequalities throughout America.

Cf., The Price of Admission

u/CunningAllusionment · 15 pointsr/Teachers

It's shit like this that makes it so important for teachers at underfunded public schools to find ways to teach students positive resistance to the oppressive structures in our institutions.

Check out the book "Educating for Insurgency"

u/TapDatKeg · 12 pointsr/Omaha

> If equal rights is a motivating factor for you, then you really only have one choice and that is to vote Democrat.

Equal rights to me means the rights of everyone, not just the people I agree with. Democrats tend to be a little too selective about which groups deserve which rights IMO. Like this, but the umbrella also represents other Constitutional rights. Republicans aren't better, they just favor other groups. My view is that it should cover everyone equally, but that feels like a minority opinion.

> Also, could you explain what frightening ideas the Democrats have said they would do if they have power?

Off the top of my head: stuffing the SCOTUS, breaking up Democratic strongholds into multiple states, allocating more Senators to states with large populations (or eliminating the Senate altogether), eliminating the Electoral College, etc. In fact, here's a book, written in earnest by a liberal Democrat, that offers a breadbasket of ideas many in the party are seriously considering for after they win back Congress and the White House.

I'm not going to quibble over the merits of these ideas. What's frightening to me is the serious consideration of proposals intended to create a "lasting" (read: permanent) majority. While I understand the appeal from an emotional standpoint, I think history is rife with examples warning against this type of arrangement.

Why? For one, it seems like the surest way to bring one of the most ambitious social experiments in history to a disappointing conclusion. Broadly, a one-party state that controls the Legislative, Executive AND Judicial branches is an oligarchy. What is the point in having a Bill of Rights if the court is packed with justices who will arbitrarily reinterpret those rights to suit the whims and political expediency of Congressional leaders? It gives the illusion of legitimacy, but really it's a democracy in the same way North Korea is a democracy.

To circle back to what I said earlier about equal rights, this concept is terrifying to me personally because a group with a tenuous relationship to freedom and equal rights is openly talking about how they can rig the system to grant themselves the ultimate say in the matter. I 100% do not trust them with that kind of power.

To be clear: I'm not saying "IF TEH DUMBOCRAPS WIN, THE US WILL TRYANNY AND WAR IN TEH STREETZ!!" What I am saying is that I am hesitant to vote for people who fantasize about how they could take over and rule over me the rest of my life. I don't want to enable Trump any more than I want to enable that agenda. I don't trust either party with my life, safety, liberty, economic security, etc. Hence why I'm conflicted.

u/[deleted] · 11 pointsr/AskHistorians

Hey, so the answers you have received have been pretty bad, so I'll try to add some context:

First, it is imperative to understand that slavery in the U.S predates the existence of the country itself. The slave trade in the U.S, its practices and infrastructure, were one in the same as slave trading practices in other British colonies. A good read on these early practices for introduction would be [James Walvin's Slavery and British Society] (http://www.amazon.com/Slavery-British-Society-1776-1846-Walvin/dp/0807110493). Its a little dated, but you will understand more indepthly how American colonies connect to the British Slave trade, and how largely even after the War of Independence, the two countries remained connected in this regard. So just as it is imperative to understand how the two are connected, it is equally imperative then to concede that the premise of your question may be too narrow. Its hard to separate slavery in the United States from slavery in the rest of the world at the time, because slaves moved between the Americas, the West Indies, and even back to London, sometimes in just a few years times. One of these "common" slave experiences I would suggest you read is the [The History of Mary Prince] (http://www.amazon.com/History-Prince-Indian-Slave-ebook/dp/B0084CGEQK/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1369628146&sr=1-1&keywords=mary+prince). Take it with a grain of salt, as it was used during the time as abolitionist propaganda, however, it and its contents are still an integral part of the history of slavery in the Americas. But I digress:

Secondly, slaving practices and cruelty varied from estate to estate. It should not be said that slaves ever had an easy time, but some masters were more cruel than others. To say generally that slavery in the United States was "less cruel" or even "more cruel" I think is too much of a stretch and is something that is really unknowable or unarguable from a pure historical perspective (what exactly do we mean by cruel, and moreover, how as historians do we measure it?). All that can be said is that conditions (weather, climate, disease, etc.) was less harsh in the United States as it was in say, Jamaica or Barbados. Picking cotton in Georgia was preferred to say cultivating sugar in the West Indies. Moreover, the planter class themselves had, politically speaking, less influence in the United States than in the West Indies, as, they had to compete with other interests such as industrial, immigrant, low wage workers, and (to a lesser extent) political progressives.

Sorry if this isn't very helpful to you. It is quite a complex question. However if you take anything from this answer I hope it is that you cannot separate slavery in the United States from the slave trade in general or slavery amongst other industrial powers, as, they are intrinsically connected and inseparable from one another.

u/bontesla · 11 pointsr/news

That question is terrifying.

There's an interesting book that talks about how the way we calculate violent crime rates is completely wrong because it almost always excludes corporate crime (such as the poisoning of employees, town residents, and consumers).

If I were to sell you something poisonous, lie about its healthiness, and make it highly addictive... I'd be tried for murder. Yet the tobacco companies did exactly that. They knowingly hid science regarding the dangers of their products, fabricated science to lie about its healthiness, manufactured it to increase addiction rates, and then sold it to everyone targeting children and adults.

The book also talks about how OSHA workplace injury rates don't have an effective way to develop exposure that leads to illness (like asbestos causing cancer). Nor does it move statistics from the illness tally to the death tally if that illness is the cause of death.

A very good read if you're interested.

We police poverty, not crimes.

u/Morfolk · 8 pointsr/MurderedByWords

I'm not aware of any documentaries but there was a book published based on the research: Affluence and Influence

u/SuburbanDinosaur · 8 pointsr/Negareddit

A book wholly worth checking out is The Price of Admission, which uses Jared Kushner as a case study of how the wealthy can subvert all types of academic rigor in order to get the correct looking resume.

I just hope that this whole process with Trump and Kavanaugh can snap people out of the whole meritocracy ideal once and for all, because god knows it's gotten us into a lot of trouble.

u/sexyjc · 7 pointsr/ukraine

Olexander Motyl on modern history.

Also this. Tymothy Snyder is good on WW2.

This is about the RF but brilliant, undervalued and 100% relevant to Ukraine. Maybe a bit outdated though.

u/wenchette · 7 pointsr/hillaryclinton

Just when I think Reddit may not be a misogynist cesspool, I see that /r/politics is doing an AMA with this clown and The Donald is doing an AMA with an InfoWars "reporter."

u/diarekt · 7 pointsr/ShitLiberalsSay

https://www.amazon.com/Apprentices-Sorcerer-Tradition-Critical-Haymarket/dp/1608462021/


this book really exposes the similarities between liberalism and fascism by examining its history and the attitudes from proponents of both ideologies.


>20th-century European Fascism is conventionally described as a fierce assault on liberal politics, culture and economics. Departing from this analysis, Landa highlights the long overlooked critical affinities between the liberal tradition and fascism. Far from being the antithesis of liberalism, fascism, both in its ideology and its practice, was substantially, if dialectically, indebted to liberalism, particularly to its economic variant

u/jemyr · 7 pointsr/Libertarian

The argument made:

>A deep dive into the “angry white male” phenomenon should be instructive and interesting, though. Even conservatives understand the point: In 2016, right-wing pundit Wayne Allyn Root published a book called “Angry White Male.

>“We are marked for attack,” Root writes in the book. “We are marked for extinction. We are the victims of racism.”

>It might take a semester of study to fully understand how a conservative such as Root could write those words.

>Read more here: https://www.kansascity.com/opinion/editorials/article228836999.html#storylink=cpy

u/geneusutwerk · 6 pointsr/AskSocialScience

Almost all activism tends to be dominated by those that are at least relatively well off. This is because participating in political activism is partially a function of being able to have the time and resources to actually do it. Now, this does not mean that poor people or others do not care about these issues, but that they just might not have time to participate in it.

If you want some scholarly literature:

u/Aghast_Cornichon · 5 pointsr/legaladvice

An excellent primer on the topic: The Price of Admission, by Daniel Golden (2007).

It's an interesting question of whether the admissions administrator accepting a direct bribe would be a crime; it probably would be if this is a public institution, while it would merely be unethical privately.

But just pulling strings ? Hell, that's called Tuesday.

u/YourLizardOverlord · 5 pointsr/ukpolitics

If inequality means that my neighbour has a Porsche Carrera GT in the driveway and I've just got a 10 year old Mondeo, big deal.

But that's not what it means in the UK.

  • People in the top income decile have a lot more political influence. So much for democracy.

  • People in the bottom income decile often have to live in shitty substandard housing.

  • So their kids have to go to the sort of school you tend to find in areas with shitty substandard housing, and they get an inferior education.

  • They can't afford stuff for their kids which give useful formative experiences, such as holidays and school trips.

  • So their kids are likely to end up being in a similar position when they grow up. This limits their opportunities.

  • And if they have any skills, it limits their usefulness to the rest of us. Instead of becoming useful contributing members of society, they end up competing for the dwindling pool of unskilled labour.

  • If you like capitalism, inequality is bad when it means that not enough people can afford to buy your products.

  • If you believe The Spirit Level then inequality also leads to a nastier, unhappier, more unpleasant society.

u/liverandeggsandmore · 4 pointsr/news

Daniel Golden won a Pulitzer Prize in 2004 for his reporting on admissions preferences at elite American universities given to the children of wealthy donors and influential alumni.

He turned his reportage into an excellent book, released in 2007, titled "The Price of Admission: How America's Ruling Class Buys Its Way into Elite Colleges--and Who Gets Left Outside the Gates".

The context of his book is, of course, only partly related to the topic of this post, but it does add an important piece to the picture of how the wealthy and powerful receive advantages at every stage in the game. And how they are able to transmit said advantages to their children, to help them get a leg up in their rise to the top.

u/feedmeether · 3 pointsr/UKPersonalFinance

this is patently false and based on a belief we live in a meritocracy. great book analysing these issues in relation to class by friedman: https://www.amazon.co.uk/class-ceiling-Sam-Friedman/dp/1447336062

in essence, a great amount of progression is suggested to be down to the 'gut feelings' of management that can be attributed to social and cultural capital, and this is true even when other aspects (like working hours) are accounted for.

i'd suggest they keep going to these lunches and after-work drinks, as it will likely cost more not to in the long run.

u/Steph_Swainston · 3 pointsr/Fantasy

Hi, rogerd,
Thanks for understanding Castle so well. I might have to break this into separate replies:

  1. I don't think the trend has died down, if anything it's worse. I can certainly write a book a year, but at that time I had a lot of other things to deal with -- repairing my house, neighbours bullying, noise pollution, chronic pain, lack of money -- so I suffered a great deal of stress. I moved house and I'm in a better position now. Small presses are probably the answer for me. I'm 107K words into the next novel, and I'll finish it next year.

  2. Exactly! And it mirrors some things I've seen in the real world -- I'm fascinated by different character types and what people will do for fame. And what fame actually entails. I've studied the careers of, say, Lance Armstrong, Jim Slater, and I'm looking at Donald Trump. These people have done extraordinarily nasty things in order to gain success (fame & fortune) and -- what's amazing is -- society lets them. Not only lets them, but upholds them. There is a myth that if they're successful, they must have done something right. Things which people will excuse, because they're famous, or because they have built a personal myth in which people want to believe. So [Ata](/s "gets away with killing Shearwater Mist"), because the unspoken rules of our society are reflected in theirs.

    Another aspect is what sort of people gain success? We have a belief that, if you are naturally blessed with talent, or if you work hard you'll be successful. That's a myth too -- the book Outliers shows the processes that are really going on. Also a Vice article. Another book.

    Jant is more laid-back than the others (horizontal, in fact), because he can fly, he can take a bunch of drugs and still maintain immortality. The immortals are on a spectrum -- at one end are the biological freaks like Jant (and Simoon), and at the other end are people who practise all the time, like Hurricane. Lightning is somewhere in the middle.

    And I'm showing the other ways people rise to success, or 'get in to the Circle'. I was very naive at the beginning. I thought success in our world was due to personal effort. But you can see how Mist and Ata were both born to seafaring lives -- Shearwater Mist was a coastal trader (so was his father). Ata was from Grass Isle. In Fair Rebel and the next book it's deeper so for example [Gayle](/s "the Lawyer has been "hothoused" into it by her parents -- also lawyers -- who started her in law at an early age"). I'm interested in the effect that has on her, and also to compare her with [Simoon](/s "the Treasurer, who finds his mathematics effortless and enjoyable").
u/BananaTurtleHorse · 2 pointsr/dancarlin

That looks interesting. I'm definitely interested in all kinds of reform. This is a book I enjoyed which had more practical ideas:
https://www.amazon.com/Its-Time-Fight-Dirty-Democrats-ebook/dp/B073YT8P8S

A lot of the ideas are about increasing democracy but it's interesting in that the whole book could play out in real life, everything in there could be accomplished by democrats with 1 person majorities in the house, Senate, and the president. That's interesting to me because it's a more pragmatic look at changing the system as is.

Like I said before, once we get to the point where changes are unconstitutional I tend to get less interested in reforming democracy in a way that's more effective, and more interested in eliminating it. Since at that point it's all impossible anyway barring a revolution, but I might as well dream big.

Do you know if the authors of your book make an effort to keep their reforms constitutional or possible within our current system as is?

EDIT: I don't mean to get too partisan. I'm not a republican, but I have to admire their gamesmanship in manipulating the system to achieve their ideological goals. Vote suppression, gerrymandering, changing legislative rules or norms, politicizing the courts. It's all directed towards outcomes I couldn't disagree more with, but unlike others I can't condemn attacks on democracy or minority rule when I'd do it in a heartbeat if I could.

u/GnomeyGustav · 2 pointsr/technology

This looks very interesting! Have you read this book by the same author? I'll have to pick that one up as well. Thanks for the suggestion!

EDIT: I think I found a preprint of this article in case anyone else is interested.

u/Melack70 · 2 pointsr/WritingPrompts

Read 'The Spirit Level', it's basically this question!

u/Hemingwavy · 2 pointsr/politics

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1612196950/?tag=slatmaga-20

Twelve ways for Democrats to defeat the biased political system.

You uncap the HoR to ensure you never lose the presidency and from there pack the courts and make PR and DC states, split California into multiple states.

u/Suddenly_Elmo · 2 pointsr/politics

>ever increasing wealth disparity is to an extent normal and a sign of a healthy society. A rising tide really does raise all ships

These are both empirically untrue statements. As demonstrated pretty conclusively by The Spirit Level, the more unequal a society becomes, the less healthy it becomes in almost every measurable way (crime levels, life expectancy, health outcomes etc). Equally, despite huge economic growth and productivity increases, real wages have remained stagnant since the 60s.

u/walt_hartung · 2 pointsr/aznidentity

I havent read it, but this is supposed to be pretty good. Might be a good place to start:

The Price of Admission

u/Etular · 2 pointsr/worldpolitics

> What's your revenue, asshole? Let me help you: zero. You're a social parasite. Instead of posting excruciatingly long and bullshity posts (not only this one, all of your posts are depressingly horse-manurey), maybe you could actually DO something useful.

I'm going to be heading to university this September, with the hope of working in academia - I don't have a job yet because, instead, I'm planning it out. Following university, I've be heading to the continent through European Voluntary Service, and possibly EURES as a means of finding a job. I have business start-up ideas, myself, written down, but I'm not that much of an idiot to try to create one either straight away, and especially not in this climate.

And, for the record, I contribute more to the economy than you do by a long shot, as I'm one of the people who contributed £22.7 billion to the UK economy in 2007/8, and have been similarly up to this year, where I am still volunteering.

Do I take any of that money home? No, but I certainly give to the economy, and take absolutely nothing from it, as I'm still living with my employed parents. If I were to rely on the welfare system, my contributions to it would make me fully entitled to do so, as would everyone else's - everyone is entitled to welfare; that's why it exists.

> And, just so that you'll feel shitty, my company is 15 years old, not a fucking startup like you arrogantly and dismissively suggested, employing young people from 15 fucking countries from around the world, making 200% above the EU average for the industry (which is a top-earning industry, btw), free in-house daycare, no overtime whatsoever, 30 days paid vacation, every Friday is optional non-working, etc, and my salary is below the team's average.

I don't feel shitty, actually, but I you seem to have some big issues - if your company was so successful, assuming you aren't one of the many individuals who deserve to be mocked on /r/QuitYourBullshit, then surely you wouldn't be so violently aggressive towards your potential consumers. What do you have to gain by claiming that they're all lazy, other than to promote right-wing biases that have already been thoroughly debunked?

Tell me, as I await for the experts to point holes in your fabricated story, what industry are you in? Dare I ask, what is your company, and where is it based? Do tell me your long-winded story about how "hard work" let to your success.

> You think social equality not possible? A lie? That all is lost? Fuck you! It is certainly impossible with people like you. Now, please do me a favor, and commit suicide. Now. Please. I can't stand human waste such as yourself.

That makes little sense to the topic, but okay. My opinion is, obviously, that social equality cannot work in a free market, capitalist system - a belief that is further reinforced by research such as that found in The Spirit Level, which draws upon other well-documented conclusions.

Enlighten me, where is your argument and sources? As all I see is a whiner getting an e-peen from preaching to the masses that they just "aren't trying hard enough". A person who eithr likes to pretend he has a business, or who created a business pre-depression and profited most from the collapse, and now likes to look down upon those less fortunate than themselves.

Whether nouveau riche and forgot his roots, or old money, all I see is a bitter, despicable man obsessed with schadenfreude - loving to laugh at those poorer than him, who couldn't succeed at the rat race, and having no sympathy because, quite frankly, "they deserved it".

> Instead of posting excruciatingly long and bullshity posts

You're clearly not a very literate man, are you? If you were, this wouldn't be a problem. I bet it burns you up inside to know I am better at this than you. Trust me, it only takes me about 5-10 minutes to write this - it's not a waste to see your reaction to this post.

___

On that note, to do a little snooping myself, I would never have expected someone who owns such an allegedly-multicultural 50-person company to be such a raging antisemite, but I guess that's just what business leaders are like these days. Your profile is a goldmine - it certainly isn't the only cultural gaffe you make, but most are deleted from their original source.

u/SeriouslyItsAmy · 2 pointsr/SandersForPresident

DSA, I would guess. They’re the only organization you’ve identified not committed to a candidate or party, but an ideology instead.

Honestly, though.Progressives are at a disadvantage right now. Manchin won’t last in WV. Jones won’t last in AL. If Dems win the Senate, House and WH in 2020, do the following please:

  1. Abolish filibuster for everything
  2. Admit DC, PR, VI and Guam as states
  3. Reestablish VRA
  4. Nationally restore felon voting rights
  5. Split California into 7 states

    Then, we have, like 14 new Senators, and people who can actually vote for them. Read this: It’s Time to Fight Dirty by David Faris

    We just need the will to change
u/hypnosifl · 2 pointsr/ChapoTrapHouse

For a take that sees value in certain aspects of the "privilege" concept but also sees how rhetoric around it can become corrosive when it's mainly being used for personal shaming, check out this article (an excerpt from a book on the subject).

u/IMadeThisJustForHHH · 2 pointsr/news
u/knees_of_nakamura · 1 pointr/phoenix

Chicago is well known in the community. He was on the cover and discussed in this book about homelessness as well: https://www.amazon.com/Homeless-Hero-Understanding-Soul-Home/dp/1458210642

u/Smashtronic · 1 pointr/news

It's funny that this is a Harvard study because their (and other Ivy League schools) less than fair admissions practices heavily contribute to aristocracies, which contribute to the rise of oligarchies.

Check out this book.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/1400097975?pc_redir=1410065014&robot_redir=1

u/FuntCase89 · 1 pointr/IntuitiveDominant

United Kingdom.

My political views are... complicated. On political spectrum tests, I'm very much left-libertarian, but a lot of my views don't fit the typical leftist picture.

For me, politics should be about achieving one or more end goals, rather than blindly following any particular ideology.

For me, the main end goal which politics should achieve is achieving the greatest well-being for the greatest number of people, with safeguards in place using principles of distributive justice, to ensure that no minority group is made to suffer disproportionately for the benefit of the majority.

Despite my Marxist leanings, I'm actually in favour of a regulated free market that encourages growth of small businesses and discourages monopolies, as a successful free market requires competition. I like the idea of anarcho-syndicalism, in principle, but I believe that it's unworkable in a country with a high population density like the UK.

Certain things, in my opinion, cannot be improved with free market forces. Commodities with inflexible demand, like healthcare, utilities, public transportation, should be operated and funded by the state. I'm also a firm believer in the benefits of affordable state housing for the poorer sections of society. Under the current deregulated system, private landlords have been steadily increasing rents to suck up a higher proportion of people's incomes, transferring wealth from the poorest to the richest.

Wealth inequality is very strongly associated with poorer quality of life in many aspects for people in developed countries (the book The Spirit Level provides solid evidence that this is the case.)

Like most iNtuitive-doms here, I'm a very strong believer in personal autonomy, that the state should interfere as little as possible in the private lives of its citizens.

u/nac_nabuc · 1 pointr/Documentaries

> but corruption as we traditionally know it...

Maybe they do not mean corruption in the traditional "bribing" sense, but more subtle ways or just in the sense of decay, lack of integrity or honesty. In this sense there is a very good case for it I'd say. When hundreds of millions of dollars are poured over politics by big interest groups, you have to be quite optimistic or flat out naive to think that's all honest. Of course, the US are still a better place than China, Brasil, Russia or Mozambique... but that wouldn't unvalidate the criticism. I accept that a compared view should be taken to realize how well off most of us here are, but it shouldn't lead to us giving up standards. If it's true that normal citiziens have virtually no way to really affect politics, that the agenda basically dominated by affluent americans, it would be a big problem and just unacceptable. And from what I know, there is a pretty good case.

https://www.amazon.com/Affluence-Influence-Economic-Inequality-Political/dp/0691162425

u/willebrord_snellius · 1 pointr/Economics

Your question refers specifically to income equality, but regarding equality more generally I think you might find The Spirit Level an interesting read.

u/theKinkajou · 1 pointr/dataisbeautiful

This is correct. No time, but also (possibly) not growing up in a culture/community where the idea of "civic duty" was ingrained in them.

See The Unheavenly Chorus and Why We Vote: How Schools and Communities Shape Our Civic Life

u/RedPillWizard · 1 pointr/skeptic

think what you want, its not like theres a source or citation that this sub would believe anyways. I only arrived at this after years of reading books and countless articles, piecing together things by myself. Its not like its one shadowy group controlling everything, that is a strawman. This kind of info is complex and it doesnt just get handed to you. Ill throw you guys a bone since I have a little time to kill:


<br />
*“The ‘affirmative task’ before us is to “create a New World Order.”<br />
–VP Joe Biden, speech Import Export Bank, April 5, 2013*<br />
<br />
~~~~~~~~~~~<br />
<br />
*“The drive of the Rockefellers and their allies is to create a one-world government combining supercapitalism and Communism under the same tent, all under their control. Do I mean a conspiracy? Yes, I do. I am convinced there is such a plot, international in scope, generations old in planning, incredibly evil in intent.”<br />
–Rep. Larry P. MacDonald, killed in Korean Air Lines 007, 1983*<br />
<br />
~~~~~~~~~~~<br />
<br />
*“I think that his [Obama’s] task will be to develop an overall strategy for America in this period, when really a New World Order can be created.”<br />
—Henry Kissinger, CNBC 2008*<br />
<br />
~~~~~~~~~~~<br />
<br />
*“In the next century, nations as we know it will be obsolete; all states will recognize a single, global authority. National sovereignty wasn’t such a great idea after all.”<br />
—Strobe Talbot, Deputy Secretary of State, TIME, July 1992*<br />
<br />
~~~~~~~~~~~<br />
<br />
Consider what multibillionaire banker David Rockefeller wrote in his 2002 memoirs:<br />
<br />
*“Some even believe we are part of a secret cabal working against the best interests of the United States, characterizing my family and me as ‘internationalists’ and of conspiring with others around the world to build a more integrated global political and economic structure — one world, if you will. If that’s the charge, I stand guilty, and I am proud of it.”*<br />
<br />
~~~~~~~~~~~<br />
<br />
*&quot;“We have before us the opportunity to forge, for ourselves and for future generations, a New World Order. A world where the rule of law, not the law of the jungle, rules all nations. When we are successful–and we will be–we have a real chance at this New World Order. An order in which a credible United Nations can use its peacekeeping forces to fulfill the promise and vision of its founders.”<br />
—George H.W. Bush, March 21, 1991*<br />
<br />
~~~~~~~~~~~<br />
<br />
https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/post2015/transformingourworld<br />
<br />
https://swprs.org/the-american-empire-and-its-media/<br />
<br />
http://carnegieendowment.org/1998/06/01/benevolent-empire-pub-275<br />
<br />
https://www.cfr.org/<br />
<br />
https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/opinions/1993/10/30/ruling-class-journalists/761e7bf8-025d-474e-81cb-92dcf271571e/?utm_term=.d89ef9f71460<br />
<br />
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trilateral_Commission<br />
<br />
<br />
https://www.amazon.com/Running-World-National-Security-Architects/dp/1586484230/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&amp;amp;qid=1523640550&amp;amp;sr=8-2&amp;amp;keywords=rothkopf<br />
<br />
https://www.amazon.com/Superclass-Global-Power-Elite-Making/dp/0374531617/ref=sr_1_6?ie=UTF8&amp;amp;qid=1523640550&amp;amp;sr=8-6&amp;amp;keywords=rothkopf<br />
<br />
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y3qkf3bajd4<br />
<br />
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rQouKi7xDpM<br />
u/megglin · 1 pointr/AskSocialScience

This one looks at the many (and often hidden) political advantages enjoyed by the wealthy class: The Unheavenly Chorus.

u/DukeOfGeek · 1 pointr/worldnews
u/alanquinne · 1 pointr/unpopularopinion

https://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2010/dec/07/world-education-rankings-maths-science-reading

Scroll down to the regional rankings: Shanghai was #1, followed by South Korea.

&gt; How would they be out studying someone who attends the same university? Wouldn't that mean they were equal, educationally?

I was referring to OP's stupid claim that 'Chinese cheat their way into Western universities'. No, they out-study their way into Western universities, because of the premium Chinese society places on education, and the way in which children spend their whole lives studying for super-competitive entrance exams which determine their entire futures.


&gt;Where are you getting these numbers for your so-called "legacy" students? You do realize that even these students must have an education in the first place to attend these universities?

No. They literally buy their way into universities like Harvard, or are granted admission despite lacking the competitive requirements because their parents went there.

Sources:

CNBC: Harvard's incoming freshman class is one-third legacy—here's why that's a problem

The Price of Admission: How America's Ruling Class Buys Its Way into Elite Colleges--and Who Gets Left Outside the Gates

The Story Behind Jared Kushner’s Curious Acceptance Into Harvard

u/dpeters11 · 1 pointr/FCCincinnati

Though that's not necessarily true. There's even a book on it.
https://www.amazon.com/Price-Admission-Americas-Colleges-Outside/dp/1400097975

However, while we do know there is wiggle room in the SSS requirement, we also know that we don't meet the requirements for that exception.

u/spiralxuk · 1 pointr/Economics

http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Spirit-Level-Equality-Everyone/dp/0241954290

A summary of research done by epidemiologists about the effects of income inequality on societies. There's a good body of research on the subject.

u/IanPhlegming · 1 pointr/conspiracy

1 Evil Spirit on Top

13 bloodline families report to it.

Each 13 families have 13 other families that report to it.

The "Council of 300" is a good place to start--this is a conventional book about it, by one of Kissinger's right hand pawns. https://www.amazon.com/Superclass-Global-Power-Elite-Making/dp/0374531617

u/smirnovamon · 1 pointr/booksuggestions

Elizabeth Lee's book "Class and Campus Life" is exactly this, a nonfiction ethnographic account of working class experience in elite colleges https://www.amazon.com/Class-Campus-Life-Experiencing-Inequality-ebook/dp/B01E5LHMKU

u/NeverHadTheLatin · 1 pointr/ukpolitics

I'd recommend reading The Spirit Level and The Price of Inequality.

There appears to be a correlation between inequality and rising crime rates, ill-health, and social deprivation.

Part of this comes from the choices people can and do make when they live in a society where there is a wide gulf between the top and the bottom. It helps to reinforce class distinctions which creates a barrier around social mobility.

Inequality isn't bad in-of-itself, but that's like saying having a McDonalds in every major town isn't bad in-of-itself - the issue is that it almost always exasberates existing social problems.

u/sbdeli · 0 pointsr/The_Mueller

I really wish I lived in the world you’re describing, but that’s not how I see it. The Democrats have consistently underestimated the threat Trump poses, and under-reacted in opposing him.

I think we would do well to spend less time assuring ourselves that:

“it could have been worse”

“we can still undo this later”

“he’s obviously guilty, it’s a matter of time”

And more time thinking of how to effectively resist and block his agenda, here in the present tense. Quite frankly I think our Republican friends across the aisle do a consistently stronger job of this.

I’m a big fan of the Indivisible Guide, written by former democratic congressional staffers who witnessed the rise of the Tea Party, and have written a guide on how to emulate the most effective portions of their model of political organization.

As well as David Faris’, “It’s Time to Fight Dirty”: How Democrats can Build a Lasting Majority in American Politics

u/railfananime · 0 pointsr/changemyview

O.K. Fair point? But then you make that situation as rare as possible, not your priority. Tell you what read this book: https://www.amazon.com/Price-Admission-Americas-Colleges-Outside/dp/1400097975. Or let me point you tothis article: https://www.propublica.org/article/the-story-behind-jared-kushners-curious-acceptance-into-harvard Δ

u/blalien · 0 pointsr/news

This book just released in April. I haven't read it yet, but it's getting good reviews.

u/takeonme864 · -5 pointsr/politics

we never had a democracy. studies show that public opinion isnt reflected in policy. https://www.amazon.com/Affluence-Influence-Economic-Inequality-Political/dp/0691153973 . keep shouting about democracy though lol

u/darthhayek · -8 pointsr/Libertarian

&gt;Even conservatives understand the point: In 2016, right-wing pundit Wayne Allyn Root published a book called “Angry White Male.

&gt;“We are marked for attack,” Root writes in the book. “We are marked for extinction. We are the victims of racism.”

W.A.R. is right, and that citation doesn't support the premise of the college course. People criticizing white genocide doesn't mean you start teaching people the positive benefits of genociding an entire race. As for W.A.R., I hope you're aware that he was the Libertarian Party's Vice Presidential nominee in 2008.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_Libertarian_National_Convention

cc /u/Blackened10