Recently Joe Brewer, Alnoor Ladha and Martin Kirk had the audacity to describe what they call the “Poverty Creation Industry.”  http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/15726-its-time-to-shine-a-light-on-the-poverty-creation-industry They write that, “Poverty is human-made. It is created – knowingly and with scientific efficiency – by a vastly...

Guest post by Taliesin Nyala, a co-owner of the Toolbox for Education and Social Action (TESA), a worker-owned cooperative based in Massachusetts created to democratize education and the economy while furthering the cooperative movement. TESA designs curriculum and resources for learning, such as Co-opoly: The Game of Cooperatives. Wall Street is booming while...

If business stopped externalizing its costs it would stop making money! I’m somewhat obsessed with the concept of “externalities” and its companion concept developed to capture them, “full cost accounting.” “Externalities” are the costs and negative impacts imposed by businesses onto society and the environment that are not paid for by those...

This is a guest blog post written by Nassy Avramidis, Junior Partner at Jeffrey Hollender Partners The other day, I threw a paper cup in the trash. There was no recycling bin in the vicinity and I was in a rush. Normally I am pretty conscious of the environment, but there are times when I slip up, and the guilt can be somewhat overwhelming. A lot of us,...

Have you heard about HSBC’s terrorist funding scandals? How about the many banks involved in LIBOR rigging, essentially playing games our money? If you’re an ordinary person, hearing these things was shocking.  But let me be clear: it’s not shocking that banks have shady deals, what is shocking is the extent to which they were able to commit these crimes...

Recently the Michael Moss in a New York Times Magazine cover story on “The Extraordinary Science of Addictive Junk Food” examined how food companies have known for decades that salt, sugar and fat are not good for us in the quantities American’s consume them, and yet every year they convince most of us to ingest about twice the recommended amount...

Not terribly well. According to a Fall 2013 survey conducted at Rutgers University, the recovery still isn’t so great for the bottom 99% and particularly those under 35. Nearly one-quarter (23%) of all respondents to the survey were laid off from either a full-time or part-time job during and after the recession (over the past four years). According to the...

We’ve all seen the news: droughts in the south, fires ravaging our forests in the west, hurricanes on the east coast. North America has been affected by significantly more weather-related extreme events in recent decades, especially in the year 2012, than may other parts of the globe. A  publication by Munich Re, the worlds foremost reinsurance agency, titled...

We’ve almost all seen the video that went viral this week, the one that illustrates the gaping wealth inequality that we have in the United States (If you haven’t yet, watch it here). Now that we can grasp the true depth of the problem, what do we do about it? If you’re feeling hopeless, you’re not alone. It’s a complicated struggle with tough...

What if your job, your finances, and your community were all aligned with what you value? SOCAP has created a special one-day event, SOCAP: Soul, to help answer that question and explore how change starts within us. SOCAP: Soul Boston – Social Capital Market’s first east coast event – will be held on Saturday, March 9th at MIT’s sustainably...