Oprah Winfrey &

The Dumbing Down of America

Success becomes confused with market values. Success in all domains becomes defined by the ideology of the marketplace. Only a few turned up to your party, so it wasn't a success. You only have a few friends on Facebook, so you aren't a success.

Debates about "political correctness", whether in the race, gender, or ethnicity conflicts can only be explained by the culture of prudery which prevails in American political discourse of all sorts. Like the 'sexual crimes' mania in the media.

The financial sector employs about 6% of all workers but ‘produced’ 40% of all companies' profits. Making money without actually making something turned out to be the largest growth sector of economy from the early 1980s until the current crisis.

The shibboleths of neoliberalism - such as the needs for privatization of public entities, the free reign of markets, the obviousness of the success of welfare reform, the evils of raising the minimum wage - are unquestioned and commonplaces today.

Congress should change the wall-street environment. There needs to be more competition. The impulse last year to have bigger banks take over failing big banks now looks exactly wrong. Congress also needs to force banks to hold a lot more capital.