Americans have two very separate views of socialism. We need to learn to talk constructively about both of them.
Tag: education
A Nobel Prize for Food Aid Distribution: World Food Programme
Distribution is important enough to the social good that the United Nations World Food Programme has won the 2020 Nobel Peace Prize. WFP provides food aid distribution and other services for 100 million people across 88 countries every day to combat world hunger. They often work inside war zones and epidemics and famines.
Reparations for Racism: A Social Goods Approach
Recent and ongoing incidents of blatant racism and police brutality against African Americans has reignited the discussion of reparations for the US history of slavery and racism. After 250 years of legal slavery and another 150+ years of discrimination, what could reparations even look like? Here’s a design experiment for reparations, based on topics covered...Continue reading
Poverty Mentality Is Not What You Think
Self-help gurus and billionaires and other blowhards think people are poor because they have a poverty mentality.
Why Poor Kids Who Are Accepted To College Don’t Matriculate
Many students who graduate high school and get accepted to college don’t matriculate at a two-year or four-year college. This scenario happens enough to earn its own name: summer melt.
Social Goods Deliver Human Rights
Is healthcare a right or a social good? I examine the relationship between human rights and social goods.Continue reading
Designing Healthy Communities Where Low-Income Populations Live Longer
Research by Raj Chetty of Stanford University shows that designing healthy communities can increase life expectancy, especially for low-income populations. What features can you design into healthy communities for people earning incomes in the bottom quartile?
How Government is Different Than Business
The United States recently elected billionaire businessman Donald Trump as its 45th president. Trump has no prior experience in government, and campaigned in part on his business track record. Voters seemed to like that, apparently thinking that government needs to run more like a business. While government can certainly learn from business, it’s important to...Continue reading
Designing Better Student Loans Using System Thinking
Students go into debt to pay for college. In the United States, the amount of student debt has surpassed $1.3 trillion, which puts it on par with auto loans. Americans like to think the student debt is an American phenomenon, but this article from the New York Times shows that students in other countries also...Continue reading
Marketing Free School Lunch in the Summer
Low-income kids fall behind during the summer, not just academically, but in health and nutrition as well. When school is out, students lack access to free school lunch. How do communities distribute free school lunch to these 21 million children when they aren’t in a central location such as the neighborhood school?