Michael J. Sandel teaches the very popular course, JUSTICE, at Harvard University. Every semester about 800 students pile into the large lecture hall to hear Sandel’s thought’s about how to make moral decisions. What Money Can’t Buy is an extension of Sandel’s thoughts of moral limits on behavior. Sandel points out some things are not for sale. For example, friendship. Or love. Yes, you can buy sex, but you can’t buy love. Sandel provides examples like Wal-Mart buying insurance on their employees (and collecting when they die). Moral or not? A woman has set up a trust that will pay drug-addicted women $300 to be sterilized so they don’t give birth to drug-addicted children. Moral or not? Sandel gives the reader plenty to think about in What Money Can’t Buy. GRADE: A
I wonder if WalMart gives their employees a cut of the premium if they DON’T die.
The overriding problem of our time is that we have one political party that apparently believes the role of government is first and foremost to allow certain people to get richer, no matter what other “moral” factors (people’s lives, the environment, the common good, etc.) are involved.
Good question, Deb. But something tells me Wal-Mart isn’t sharing. When the Rich can buy politicians there’s no surprise the tax code favors the wealthy while the Middle Class gets stuck with the bills.
Ditto what Deb said. I don’t understand how anyone not in the one percent can fall for it. And I blame the Reagan years as sealing our fate in terms of prioritizing allowing the rich to get richer. No one since then, including Clinton, did much to stop it with the deregulation of banks and economic forces.
The Rich learned how to “manage” the Republican Party under Reagan, Patti. Now, with the Super PACs they don’t even need the political parties.
We discuss that all the time: how can poor people and those barely scraping by be so easily taken in by the Republican/Fox News bullsh!t take on events. You have NO health insurance, your kids aren’t covered for anything and you’re going to vote for a party that pledges to repeal a law that gives it to you? I don’t get it.
The question of moral or not? Walmart’s behavior is not only immoral but sickening.
Uneducated people are the easiest to manipulate, Jeff. Politicians know the power of ignorance.