The Futures Foundation

South Pacific futures: Oceania toward 2050
Alternative scenarios for the future of the South Pacific include one from the Globalists, who see a movement towards generally beneficial world market competition;  Oceanians, who identify a tendency toward greater regional consciousness of positive potentials;  Dependency analysts who observe the Pacific Islands drifting into unfavourable relations with global markets;  MIRABers, who see a trend to reliance on income from Migrant Remittances, Foreign Aid and Bureaucracy, and a focus on Ethics in the context of a growing Asianisation of the South Pacific.
Foundation for Development Cooperation           www.fdc.org.au  

The Rich and the Rest: growing concentration of wealth...
A century ago, battles against what angry Americans called plutocracy -- rule by the rich -- raged all across the US.  Those battles would eventually leave the world's first mass middle class by the 1950s.  Today that plutocracy is back and that middle class is hurting.  What about tomorrow?   In the 21st century, will Americans continue to tolerate enormous disparities in the property people own and the wealth individuals have accumulated, asks economist Sam Pizzigati?
The Futurist             July/August 2005

...with beer and circuses for the poor electors
For a certain segment of the population, Nascar's raid on American culture -- its logo festoons everything from cellphones to honey jars to post office walls to panties; race coverage, it can seem, has bumped everything else off television;  and, most piercingly, Nascar dads now get to pick our presidents -- triggers the kind of fearful trembling the citizens of Gaul felt as the Huns came thundering over the hills.  To these people, stock-car racing represents all that's unsavory about red-state America: fossil-fuel bingeing; lust for violence; racial segregation; runaway Republicanism...etc.   What's the appeal of watching... traffic?
New York Times Book Review            22 05 05