1. Articles on PR for People
  2. Articles on PR for People

Articles on PR for People

World Views
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Happiness versus the “Gross Misery Index”

Peter Corning's picture
Peter Corning
December 04, 2017

The United Nations now publishes an annual World Happiness Report, and it shows that the overall trend since the depths of the Great Recession, in 2008-2009, continues to improve.  By the U.N.’s criteria, the world is getting happier.  Likewise, the Gallup polling organization, which does an ambitious annual survey across some 140 countries of people’s subjective sense of well-being, reports that its metric is also rising. 

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World Views
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Should We Have a “Gross National Happiness” Index?

Peter Corning's picture
Peter Corning
December 04, 2017

It seems that happiness is busting out all over – like that famous lyric from the classic Broadway musical, Oklahoma.  True, happiness is not much in evidence in our  economy, or in our shrill and rancorous politics.  But never mind.  An explosion of research and a bumper crop of writings about happiness can be found -- somewhat incongruously -- in various academic journals these days, as well as in the bookstalls.  A dozen titles were counted in a local bookstore recently without breaking a sweat.

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World Views
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Stakeholder Capitalism: An Idea Whose Time Has Come?

Peter Corning's picture
Peter Corning
November 30, 2017

 What do BP, Goldman Sachs, Enron, World Com, Bernie Madoff, and a long list of other “malefactors of great wealth” (to borrow a pejorative from President Theodore Roosevelt) all have in common?

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World Views
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Ayn Rand Shrugged

Peter Corning's picture
Peter Corning
November 28, 2017

It is somewhat amazing that Ayn Rand’s novel Atlas Shrugged, first published in 1957, is near the top of the current best-seller list.  It has long enjoyed a cult following as a sort of CEO’s bible, inspiring each new generation of libertarian political conservatives.  Now it seems that the gospel according to Ayn is spreading beyond the Tea Party to the parasitical “masses” that she denounces. 

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Politics
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The Doctrine of Fairness

Peter Corning's picture
Peter Corning
November 25, 2017

The Doctrine of Fairness: Where the Justices Meet Justice...For better and worse, our Supreme Court is a political institution and not, despite its trappings, a temple of Olympian detachment -- as the Roberts court has amply demonstrated.  The justices play a deadly serious intellectual game in which they deploy arcane legal reasoning to justify imposing their sometimes highly partisan rulings on the rest of us. 

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World Views
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Toward a New Social Contract

Peter Corning's picture
Peter Corning
November 20, 2017

The term “social contract” has a deep history in political theory.  Today it generally refers to the implicit bargain that exists in any stable society over social rights and duties, and the division of economic benefits and costs. In the U.S., the social contract has become badly frayed over the past 30 years, as the gap between the rich and the poor has widened to Biblical proportions and an estimated one quarter of our population has sunk into more or less extreme poverty. 

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