Mortimer Jerome Adler: True freedom..

True freedom is impossible without a mind made free by discipline.

Mortimer Jerome Adler

The author of How to Read a Book was born on 28/12/1902.

Umberto Eco: Books are not..

Books are not made to be believed, but to be subjected to inquiry. When we consider a book, we mustn’t ask ourselves what it says but what it means…

Umberto Eco

The author of The Name of the Rose was born on this day in 1932.

Joschka Fischer – Europe’s Winners and Losers

Thinking in categories such as ‘winners’ and ‘losers’ hardly help to find a compromise.

Joschka Fischer, former Foreign Minister and Vice Chancellor of Germany, knows how to attract attention. Deploying pithy headlines such as Europe’s Winners and Losers for his latest article on the European crisis for Project Syndicate does just that (here). With our curiosity sufficiently stimulated let’s have a quick look at the article.

Everyday Life – The ‘Busy’ Trap

We really should slow down quite a bit

Being ‘busy’ is a phenomenon so common and widespread that we might call it pandemic. Only very few are unaffected by it. Kim Kreider has written a wonderful article (here) about it. He combines a short analyses with an extended description on how he is trying to dodge The ‘Busy’ Trap.

He argues that the best part of our daily busyness and stress is self-inflicted. So who is (or thinks of himself or herself) busy and why?

It’s almost always people whose lamented busyness is purely self-imposed: work and obligations they’ve taken on voluntarily, classes and activities they’ve “encouraged” their kids to participate in. They’re busy because of their own ambition or drive or anxiety, because they’re addicted to busyness and dread what they might have to face in its absence.

Is it that we keep ourselves busy just to avoid facing up to the possibility that our lives are actually empty and meaningless?

Busyness serves as a kind of existential reassurance, a hedge against emptiness; obviously your life cannot possibly be silly or trivial or meaningless if you are so busy, completely booked, in demand every hour of the day.

Isn’t that silly? If we need to schedule in time for family and friends, time to read or just time to be idle we know we have gone too far. Time to come back!

Recommended: The ‘Busy’ Trap – NYTimes.com.

Obamacare ruling – June 28, 2012 – A day to remember

Millions of ordinary Americans will benefit from Obamacare

June 28, 2012 will be a day to remember. The US Supreme Court declared President Obama‘s Affordable Care Act (ACA) and its centre piece the ‘individual mandate’, which requires virtually everyone in the US to buy health insurance cover or to pay a fee, constitutional. This ruling comes as a surprise to many. It has the potential to change the US as we know it and will surely boost Obama’s campaign for re-election (election day November 06, 2012).

Paul Krugman, economist and widely read columnist for The New York Times, identifies, beside President Obama, the real winners of this legislation (article here).

So the Supreme Court — defying many expectations — upheld the Affordable Care Act, a k a Obamacare. There will, no doubt, be many headlines declaring this a big victory for President Obama, which it is. But the real winners are ordinary Americans — people like you.

Why? Well there are estimated 46 million Americans currently without health insurance (here), about 30 million would gain access via Obamacare  (according to Congressional Budget Office). Many will enjoy health insurance for the first time in their lives. Krugman thinks this an underestimation. He writes:

(…) add in every American who currently works for a company that offers good health insurance but is at risk of losing that job (and who isn’t in this world of outsourcing and private equity buyouts?); every American who would have found health insurance unaffordable but will now receive crucial financial help; every American with a pre-existing condition who would have been flatly denied coverage in many states.

Obamacare will replace individual insecurity, risk, hardship with collective insurance cover, a monumental shift. Krugman concludes:

For almost all of us stand to benefit from making America a kinder and more decent society.

All said!

Paul Krugman: The Real Winners

See also:

What’s wrong about health care for all?