The Made Up World of Money
Money might just be “the most powerful metaphor we have.
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Money is “a social agreement,” according to
Frederick Kaufman, a journalism professor at the City University of New York. You and the cashier both agree that a $20 bill a green piece of paper that any baby or dog wouldn’t hesitate to tear to shreds is worth something, and this consensus imbues the bill with value. Eventually, babies get on board, as they’re taught the value humans have long ascribed to different types of currency; a value that’s socially constructed, but so deeply ingrained in our society that it feels silly to question.
Last modified on Thu 22 Apr 2021 02.56 EDT
It was during the administration of Fiorello LaGuardia that the position of New York City mayor became known as the âsecond toughest job in Americaâ.
LaGuardia, New Yorkâs 99th mayor and a man whose name now graces the cityâs streets, parks, schools and an airport labeled one of the worst in the country, became regarded as one of the cityâs greatest ever leaders, despite facing a collapsing economy, all-powerful crime mobs and civic unrest when he took office in January 1934.
When New York Cityâs next mayor takes office, however, they will face problems on perhaps an even larger scale, with the Covid-19 pandemic having ravaged a city already beset by deep income inequality and facing a reckoning over racial discrimination in policing and governance. The job could prove, once again, to be second only in difficulty to being the occupant of the Oval Office.
The language we use to discuss immigration is dehumanizing: âcatch and releaseâ, âmigrant caravansâ, swarms â anything, in other words, but people
A man seeking asylum holds his infant daughter as they wait to be transported by the US Border Patrol after crossing from Mexico into California on 19 April. Photograph: Jim Urquhart/Reuters
A man seeking asylum holds his infant daughter as they wait to be transported by the US Border Patrol after crossing from Mexico into California on 19 April. Photograph: Jim Urquhart/Reuters
Thu 22 Apr 2021 06.31 EDT
Last modified on Thu 22 Apr 2021 06.33 EDT
This week, the Biden administration fulfilled a promise it made on Joe Bidenâs first day in office. Agencies that deal with immigration, such as US customs and border patrol, have now been instructed to change their official language practices. Gone are the terms âalienâ, âillegal alienâ and âassimilationâ. Instead, new vocabularies
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A year after New York City became the center of the global Covid-19 outbreak, the neighborhood considered at the time to be the âepicenter of the epicenterâ of the pandemic remains in crisis â laying bare many of the economic fault lines exposed by the coronavirus.
Corona, Queens, a welcoming enclave for many of the cityâs undocumented immigrants and home to many of the âessentialâ workers who kept New York running during the pandemicâs worst days, has had the highest number of infections and deaths in the city â and now has one of the lowest percentages of people vaccinated.