News item: the highest rate of unemployment in America is among the folks with the least amount of formal education ————— So, here is the real problem. There are jobs going unfilled because the need for specific education is so high. And, there are workers ready to work, with lower levels of formal education, and… Read More Jobs, Jobs Everywhere – But Not for the Lesser-Educated
As I have written frequently, I live in (more than) a couple of different worlds. I read, and present synopses of business books. But I also speak monthly at the Urban Engagement Book Club for CitySquare. I present synopses of books dealing with social justice, racism, poverty – issues of human need. Sometimes, I feel… Read More These Times Call For “Big Citizenship” – (Insight from the Book by Alan Khazei, Founder of City Year)
For practically every family, the ingredients of poverty are part financial and part psychological, part personal and part societal, part past and part present. Every problem magnifies the impact of the others, and all are so tightly interlocked that one reversal can produce a chain reaction with results far distant from the original cause. If… Read More Putting Our Minds to Finding Work Solutions for The Under-Skilled May Be the Most Patriotic Thing We Can Do
It is a great principle in psychiatry that “all-symptoms are overdetermined. This means that they have more than one cause. I want to scream this from the rooftops: “All symptoms are overdetermined.” Except that I want to expand it way beyond psychiatry. I want to expand it to almost everything. I want to translate it,… Read More There Just May Not Be a Magic Bullet – It’s Practically always “Both-And”
For the first major chapter in my life, I served churches in California and Texas as a minister. I still serve as a “guest preacher” occasionally, and I present books at the Urban Engagment Book Club for Central Dallas Ministries. So, each month, I read and present a minimum of two book synopses – one… Read More Maybe We All Have A “Hole” In Our Approach To Life — Insight From “The 2010 Christian Book Of The Year”
Last night, I presented my synopsis of This Time is Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly by Carmen M. Reinhart & Kenneth S. Rogoff. I presented this at a gathering hosted by a financial planning team, and a member of that team took the floor following my presentation for his observations and Q & A. … Read More Clusters of Crises – Interlocking Solutions
Most of the people I write about in this book do not have the luxury of rage. They are caught in exhausting struggles. Their wages do not lift them far enough from poverty to improve their lives, and their lives, in turn hold them back. The term by which they are usually described, “working poor,”… Read More “Nobody who works hard should be poor in America” writes David Shipler
“A few years ago, students came to business school thinking they would get rich right away,” Dartmouth’s Mr. Fairbrothers says. “But now, I think students are trying to focus on doing reasonably well while doing some good.” This is the concluding paragraph in a Wall Street Journal article entitled: M.B.A.s Seek Social Change: Enterprises With… Read More Business and Social Change — M.B.A.s seek Social Change
First Friday Book Synopsis 