Ni5: Perspectives

This is where we offer some of our thoughts and perspectives to you. We won't promise they're better than anyone else's. Or even right. But we'll at least provide interesting ways of looking at things.

Combined with the information we provide in the other parts of this site, we hope to encourage interesting and meaningful conversations about things that affect you.

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Feeling good? I know someone who isn't.

Date: 2019-Mar-26 Author: Barry Shatzman

Hey... i need your writing advice (I'll get to that part in a minute, but first i gotta tell you something).

An article i read today....

... really affected me. It's something i think about every time i read a story like this.

We focus on the uplifting - George H.W. Bush's "thousand points of light" and GoFundMe pages - while turning the person suffering through the struggle into little more than a prop for a story.

And people just eat these stories up. Someone even coined a term for them... perseverance porn.

Now at least i can pass along one bit of good news. There was an update to the homeless chess kid's story, and his family now has a home and savings.

But this changes life for only 1 person. It changes nothing for the millions of others in situations at least equally as bad. But even more significant, it does nothing to address the causes of why we have these situations in the first place.

Some will say the best way to fix the problem is to lower taxes on the wealthiest Americans, while making it tougher for the rest of us to get health care, eat nutritious food, and live in a place that's clean and safe.

Others would rather base policy on evidence. That higher marginal tax rates for the wealthy can reduce unemployment. That a higher minimum wage won't necessarily result in job losses or higher prices. Or that healthcare for all Americans actually would save money.

These are the stories we need to be telling.

OK this was choice one. Here's the other one.