I HAVE A CONFESSION TO MAKE. I may have to give up my membership in the Democratic Party to say this, but I will no longer live with the secret shame: I think the pre-Oil Crisis cars made by American car companies up until the late 1970s were just wonderful. I know — they were […]
Matt Talbot: Giving gratitude and respect closer to home
GIVEN THE IMMENSE SACRIFICES of our military men and women over the last 14 years, it is customary for civilians, both prominent and ordinary, to say “thank you for your service.” It is fitting and proper that we should do so. The sacrifices they have made, in blood, pain and sanity, ought to entitle them […]
Matt Talbot: A jewel among cities
I MENTIONED LAST WEEK THAT I have begun writing a book about my experiences growing up in the Bay Area. Part of the reason for that decision was that I was recently laid off from the tech company I worked for in San Francisco (they were very good to me in terms of severance, so […]
Matt Talbot: Growing up in Richmond and the ‘black experience’
THE MID-1960S WERE HEADY DAYS in the United States. The Civil Rights Act had passed in 1964 and been signed into law by President Lyndon Johnson, and the following year President Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act. Medicare and Medicaid provided medical care to (respectively) the aged and the indigent. President Johnson’s State of the […]
Matt Talbot: Are we ready for the ‘Really Big One’?
TOWARD THE END OF LAST WEEK’S COLUMN, I mentioned that I was planning to put together a disaster kit to prepare for the effects of the strong El Niño event expected this winter. In researching what to include in a disaster kit, I came across a recent article in The New Yorker by Kathryn Schulz […]
Matt Talbot: Will this year’s El Niño be ‘super’? Be prepared
AS FAR BACK AS I CAN REMEMBER, I have always been interested in meteorology. I remember more or less living in the library of my elementary school, devouring every book I could find about weather. By the fifth grade I could read a weather map and identify every element — the isothermal lines that showed […]
Matt Talbot: One giant leap…
AS YOU ARE NO DOUBT AWARE, NASA’s New Horizons probe arrived at Pluto this week, and pictures and other data are now being beamed back to earth to the amazement of just about everyone who has seen those first, tantalizing glimpses of a heretofore hidden world. Watching the first data come in from that distant […]
Matt Talbot: A unique remedy for underserved communities
ONE IDEA I’VE BEEN MEANING TO WRITE ABOUT is a proposal to provide banking services to underserved communities — typically poorer neighborhoods and neighborhoods of color — through the U.S. Postal Service. As a practical matter, the only financial services now available in those underserved communities are payday lenders and check cashing joints. For those […]
Matt Talbot: Love over darkness
IN SOUTH CAROLINA, a community is mourning the loss of their mothers, fathers, sons, daughters and children. The youngest victim was 26; the oldest, 87. For me, amid the accounts of the dark and troubled mind of the gunman, I also heard a powerful and consistent answer to that darkness: love.
Matt Talbot: Examining post-WW2 growth of income gaps
TO HEAR MANY CONSERVATIVES DESCRIBE IT, the relations between labor and capital ought to be a frictionless market, where each side negotiates for a piece of the profits generated. Here’s the actual “Market” for labor, absent some counter-balancing force to stand up for labor: