David Lay Williams

5 Takeaways on America’s Boom in Billionaires

We have been persistently assured that the growth of the super rich would make things better for everyone. How’s that working so far?

5 Takeaways on America’s Boom in Billionaires

We have been persistently assured that the growth of the super rich would make things better for everyone. How’s that working so far?

America’s teachers are working two jobs and barely getting by | CNN Business Ashley loves her day job teaching math, reading and science to fifth-graders in Washington. But like many other teachers, Ashley relies on a side hustle or two to get by.

This should not be happening in the richest country in world history.

Book - Migration and the Origins of American Citizenship — Anna O. Law

What's the German word for the interminable period between the finalization of your book manuscript and when it comes out for the public to view and react to? I know the book isn't terrible, but have not a good sense beyond that. Soon. More here:

A ‘slap in the face’: Marquette University students, alumni frustrated with AI-focused commencement speaker decision A number of Marquette University students simultaneously experienced a “slap in the face” Feb. 23 when the university announced Chris Duffey, alumnus and artificial intelligence leader, will be the 20...

Kudos to the brave students of Marquette University, who know when they've been sold a bill of goods. No one wants AI on university campuses except for billionaires and the college administrators who see an opportunity for a cash grab.

#EUSocialForum - now the anti-poverty panel!

Welcome to Wyoming, the Frontier of America’s New Gilded Age

Excellent new piece in the @nytimes.com on how inequality happened in a small Wyoming town with obvious lessons more broadly for the republic.

"When the state is growing weak, the multitude of crimes is a guarantee of impunity." -- Rousseau, Social Contract, 2.5

Author copies just arrived! The book officially comes out on March 24, but now I have the first printed examples in hand for my presentation in The Hague tomorrow afternoon as part of the Radical Readings of the Philosophical Canon workshop

Congratulations!!!

Inequality Without Class - Dissent Magazine To grasp where inequality is headed—much less to reduce it—we will need to look beyond the economic.

An excellent review of my "Visions of Inequality"
Inequality Without Class
To grasp where inequality is headed—much less to reduce it—we will need to look beyond the economic
by Simon Torracinta
dissentmagazine.org/article/ineq...

You won’t want to hear this, but this was precisely Rousseau’s complaint against cosmopolitans in the 18th century.

First new review in a while (in HAL: Open Science). Review by Dan-Andrei Năfureanu from the University of Bucharest.

hal.science/hal-05511717...

Cover of the book “The Greatest of All Plagues: how economic inequality shaped political thought from Plato to Marx” by David Lay Williams

Everyone needs to read this book. It explains how we have long known about the corrosive and disastrous effects of letting rich people get filthy rich. Since the beginning of civilization, our greatest philosophers have been shouting it from the rooftops. This is not new, yet we’ve not learned…

Billionaires’ Low Taxes Are Becoming a Problem for the Economy Tax avoidance by the superwealthy is an economic issue as well as a political one.

Even the @wsj.com op-ed page is coming to face facts about inequality.

It’s easy to think writing is mainly the transcription of ideas you already have—that is, until you try to write something worthwhile, and you find what you thought were saying transform into something far more interesting in the process. This skips that last step, and that is *not* an improvement.

Effective altruists: we should encourage people to get as rich as possible to give more money away.

Billionaires: . . .

Hard Z -- not the "ts" sound.

These economic royalists complain that we seek to overthrow the institutions of America. What they really complain of is that we seek to take away their power. Our allegiance to American institutions requires the overthrow of this kind of power. In vain they seek to hide behind the Flag and the Constitution. In their blindness they forget what the Flag and the Constitution stand for. Now, as always, they stand for democracy, not tyranny; for freedom, not subjection; and against a dictatorship by mob rule and the over-privileged alike.

Governments can err, Presidents do make mistakes, but the immortal Dante tells us that divine justice weighs the sins of the cold-blooded and the sins of the warm-hearted in different scales.

It's Presidents' Day. Here's a favorite bit from FDR's 1936 nomination acceptance speech. Let us hope we can elect someone on this platform once again. (Would also be nice to elect someone who actually reads great books.)

www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/ac...

Priorities! -- So much money to be made on selling cheating technology to lazy and desperate rich kids!

This is all very funny to me because the English and the Scots literally fought a war over cultural (religious) differences. Yet now when it's convenient, people like this are happy to say they are one culture united against some other perceived opponent.

A New World of Revolutions The hemispheric politics that shaped popular revolutions against European colonial rule

Also, you should pre-order @arturochang.bsky.social's forthcoming important @princetonupress.bsky.social on related themes, that should be available early this summer.

I'm sure you're sad to be on the list.

Opinion | How A.I. Companies Are Preying on College Students

“Young people are quickly becoming so dependent on A.I. that they are losing the ability to think for themselves. And rather than rallying resistance, academic administrators are aiding and abetting a hostile takeover of higher education.”

If my students are any indication, they are completely over the hype and fully sick of this constant assault from the tech companies. They are hungry for real conversations about important matters with -- get this! -- real people. No one wants to discuss the meaning of life with a bot. Sorry, bros!

I think the greatest gift college professors in the humanities can give to students right now is a seminar room where, for 80 minutes twice a week, nothing that happens to them is a sales pitch for an AI product.

"[T]he rich man holds the Law in his purse." -- Rousseau, Letters Written from the Mountain (#9).

Big congratulations to @ladyprofessor.bsky.social and @fthames.bsky.social on their new book!

A pedagogical tax Why the rich should be Uber-taxed

@brankomilan.bsky.social has been writing excellent stuff lately. He is now pushing for a “tax on greed.” Worth reading!

open.substack.com/pub/branko2f...

Why We All Care About Inequality (But Are Loath to Admit It) Is it envy or justice?

Nice piece in @brankomilan.bsky.social's Substack about inequality and envy. Highly recommended!