As much as we think we know about the modern university, very little has been said about what it’s like to work there. Instead of the high-wage, high-profit world of knowledge work, most campus employees-including the vast majority of faculty-really work in the low-wage, low-profit sphere of the service economy. Tenure-track positions are at an all-time low, with adjuncts and graduate students teaching the majority of courses. This super-exploited corps of disposable workers commonly earn fewer than $16,000 annually, without benefits, teaching as many as eight classes per year. Even undergraduates are being exploited as a low-cost, disposable workforce.
Marc Bousquet, a major figure in the academic labor movement, exposes the seamy underbelly of higher education-a world where faculty, graduate students, and undergraduates work long hours for fast-food wages. Assessing the costs of higher education’s corporatization on faculty and students at every level, How the University Works is urgent reading for anyone interested in the fate of the university.
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This book takes a close look at today’s economy and offers a bleak prediction for its future. However, those positioned to handle dramatic shifts in consumer spending, the mortgage industry, and the stock market are at a great advantage.
Author Warren Brussee offers insight into the coming economic situation and provides steps to prepare for it. For example, he recommends that savings be in Treasury Inflation Protected Securities until the stock market drops 73% from its 2004 level. Methods of determining when the stock market is again a good buy are defined, and different investment options are evaluated. Even during a depression, people will need to save for their future, and Brussee provides detailed charts that show retirement savings requirements.
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A lucid and original account of where money comes from and why most people and businesses are so heavily in debt. It explodes more myths than any other book this century, yet it’s all about subjects very close to home: mortgages, building societies and banks, agriculture, transport, global poverty, and what’s on the supermarket shelf. The author proposes a new mechanism for the supply of money, creating a supportive financial environment and a decreasing reliance on debt.
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In this survey of international economic thought, Michael Hudson rewrites the history of trade, development and debt theorizing. He shows that mainstream free-trade surveys are censorial in excluding the protectionist logic that has guided the trade policy of Europe and the United States, especially by leaving out discussion of the transfer problem and payment of international debts. He points out that most economists throughout history have focused as much on war financing as on trade and development. Free-trade ideology and IMF-style financial austerity under today’s rules, rather than benefiting all parties and maximizing welfare, leave “client” nations severely indebted. By excluding dynamics that used to be central to trade theory such as emigration and technology transfer, today’s global production and financial policies tend to concentrate economic and political power in the hands of dominant nations. Prof. Michael Hudson (Economics Department, University of Missouri, Kansas City) is a frequent contributor to The Financial Times, Counterpunch, and Global Research.
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The United States has been spending its way deeper and deeper into the red, and saddling future generations with the mess-but who’s paying attention?
To answer that question, the companion book to the critically acclaimed documentary I.O.U.S.A. talks with some of the most revered voices in the nation, including Warren Buffett; former Treasury Secretaries Paul O’Neill and Robert Rubin; Pete Peterson, CEO of The Blackstone Group; Congressman Ron Paul (R-Texas); and bestselling Empire of Debt author Bill Bonner.
Armed with these interviews, historical references, and damning statistics, the book takes a lively and entertaining romp through the four deficits the nation faces: the budget deficit, the personal savings deficit, the trade deficit-and what former U.S. Comptroller General David Walker, who resigned abruptly in 2008 over Congress’s lack of action, calls the “leadership deficit in Washington.
Defiantly non-partisan, the empowering solutions outlined in these pages are a must-read for any American who wants to help change “business-as-usual in Washington as a new administration heads towards the Oval Office. “We the People can get our politicians to stop spending, promote responsible economic programs, and hand our children and grandchildren the secure future they deserve.
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