Word: rifkin
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1970-1979
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...problems Rifkin sees stemming from this power concentrated at the top are two-fold. At one level, as I.F. Stone once said, the rich march on Washington all the time. The importance of a smooth-running economy to a President and the power of the multinationals in world politics have been evident for years. The "corporate giants" are able to find more receptive ears in the White House and on Capitol Hill than the average working Joe, a massive contradiction of American ideals and purpose...
Jefferson's yeoman farmer and today's middle American are both on the outside looking in. But the corporations also exert their influence directly, through the authoritarian organization of the shop. Working people in this country, according to Rifkin, are told what to do on the job and off the job. Because so few Americans are self-employed now this corporate influence is greater than the East India Tea Company could ever have dreamt back in the eighteenth century. Rifkin links the two struggles with these gems from Thomas Jefferson...
...idea of either economic democracy or an alternative bicentennial celebration. Most recently, direct fund-raising efforts have started to bring in more cash. What also helps, of course, is that most of the labor is free--only ten members of the Commission get anything at all and even Rifkin is reported to take home only $85 a week. And as the PBC becomes more visible, the early success begins to feed on itself to the point where it can now make money on the buttons, bumper stickers and other gimmicks they are turning out. The question remains though, about...
...weekends ago, Jeremy Rifkin published a piece in a special supplement in the Boston Sunday Globe where he argued that America needs to see control of production by workers if we are not to make a mockery of the Revolution. What he seems to be talking about is socialism without the European terminology. He stresses in Common Sense II that the "best kept secret in America" is that workers are perfectly capable of managing factories--in fact more capable than management. He reports that several major corporations have experimented with worker control but have decided to pull back...
...Rifkin's analysis and his strategy for change are brief and vague--purposely so. The major emphasis in Common Sense II and in most of the literature put out by the PBC so far is on breaking up the big corporations. The first priority is to get people thinking about economic injustice, and the focus for that discontent is the Fortune 500. Much of what they say and write, in fact, sounds like a new populism and is not far from what someone like, say. Sen. Fred Harris (D-Okla.) says...