Nouriel Roubini, Stephen Mihm, Crisis Economics (2010).Dick J. Reavis, Catching Out (2010). When the author, a journalist and a professor of English, reached age 62, he realized that his retirement income was too small to live on. So he started going to the nearby labor hall of a temporary day labor company, which sent him to various assignments: working at a construction site, driving cars at a used car auction lot, moving furniture at a college dormitory, standing with a flag while others were doing road repairs, painting steel widgets at a factory. As a rule, the workers were the people no other employer wanted: ex-cons, a hard drinker, a college student who dropped out because he played video games all day long instead of studying. The most pathetic day laborer was a nearly blind mildly retarded man who lived in a homeless shelter, and had to sleep on the grass when the shelter was full; a few days before his disability check came, he would acquire new "friends" who would "borrow" money from him on the check day, and then disappear. The workers were paid a pittance, and in turn had to pay somebody to drive them to the work site. In the last chapter, the author describes the economics and legal issues of such work. Apparently, the profit margin of the temp agency is merely about 5%; the rest of the difference between what the agency charged and what it paid its workers went to unemployment insurance, disability insurance, taxes, and the administrative overhead. However, the day labor agencies are a bonanza to the clients, who have the work done, but do not have to worry about health insurance or labor regulations. I am reminded of a certain software company I shall not name, about a third of whose workforce are technically not its employees. The author argues for a law that would require day laborers to be paid as much as regular employees performing the same kind of work; he says that France has this law. I know that for the H-1B visa holders, this is supposed to be the case, but usually is not, but the differential is smaller than what this book says it is between regular employees and day laborers. He also argues for the enforcement of existing labor laws using vice-squad techniques.
The first few dozen pages of Off the Books by Sudhir Alladi Venkatesh (2006). Poor African Americans on the South Side of Chicago do not participate in the formal economy very much. A lot of their economic lives consists of work under the table, barter and bribery. A woman cooks soul food in her apartment, and her children deliver it; she bribes their schoolteacher to look the other way when they work instead of going to school. A prostitute with six children, who is proud that none of them are by a john, puts in very long hours to put food on the table. I did not feel like finishing the book.
Nouriel Roubini, Stephen Mihm, Crisis Economics (2010). Yet another narrative history of the present financial crisis, its precursors and consequences. I find it amazing that it had so few political ramifications compared to the crisis of 1929-1941. The authors quote the CFO of Goldman Sachs, who said, “We were seeing things that were 25-standard deviation moves, several days in a row,” and say that if their models weren't crap, this would happen once in a million years. In fact, it would happen once every hundred trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion years.
А так же :
Место и роль языка в жизнедеятельности человека
Д. А. Нуриев, Б. Д. Нуриев Возникновение человека и человеческого общества непосредственно связано с формированием языка и языковой деятельности. Часто этот вопрос остается вне поля зрения ученых, когда они рассматривают функции языка, его место и роль в жизнедеятельности человека, когда осмысливаются проблемы этноса и межнациональных отношений.
Книги моего детства
Литература пятидесятых годов 19 века
Приходят 50-е годы. Существующая в эту пору крепостническая литература (С. Аксаков и др.) не пользуется сколько-нибудь значительной популярностью. В центре внимания в эту пору стоят все же те две группы русских реалистов. В 50-х гг. широко развертывается прежде всего либерально-дворянское движение, связанное с теми же именами Григоровича («Рыбаки», 1853; «Переселенцы», 1855), Гончарова («Обломов», 1859), Тургенева (повести 50-х гг.
Москва при сыновьях Калиты:
Симеоне Гордом и Иоанне II, Димитрии Донском
Преемник Иоанна Калиты, его сын Симеон, прозванный Гордым (1340-1353), соединил рассудительность и практическую ловкость своего отца с властительным характером. Получив от хана ярлык на великое княжение Владимирское, торжественно венчался на него во Владимире и принял "под руце свои" всех остальных русских князей и заставил младших братьев "целовать у отняго гроба крест" на том, что они все будут заодно и станут чтить его во отца место, имея общих врагов и друзей.
