This week, I have been mostly reading:

• Benign and powerful: the contradictory language of metadata retention - Adam Henschke in the Conversation: 'More than mere inconsistency, these “rhetorical contradictions” are used to convince us that we needn’t worry about retention and use of metadata, but at the same time is absolutely necessary for our individual and national security.'
• The Right Thing to Do: Homeless edition - Ian Welsh: "Utah’s Housing First program cost between $10,000 and $12,000 per person, about half of the $20,000 it cost to treat and care for homeless people on the street."
• Profits up, investment down: why it matters for low pay - James Meadway, New Economics Foundation Blog: "[UK] Wages have fallen since the crash in 2007. Profits (net surplus outside of the North Sea) have gone through the roof. If it’s not quite a zero-sum game, it starts to look very close to one. The recovery has been driven by consumer spending. With real wages falling, this has come from a rise in borrowing by households." Yay for the credit card welfare system! Also: Almost 80% of UK Self-Employed Workers Living in Poverty - Catherine Phillips, Newsweek. Having been in that situation, I can easily believe it.
• Talking Trash: High-Status Explanations for Watching Low-Brow TV - The Reading List, The Society Pages
• A negative interest rate world? Why? - Ian Welsh: "In the United States more than all the gains of the last “recovery” have gone to the top 10% (really the top 3% or so.)  There has limited broad based demand for new goods.  Luxury goods, investment art, and London and Manhattan real-estate do not scale.  Without widespread demand, opportunities for new businesses, with new employers, are limited."
• New Zealand Spies on Neighbors in Secret “Five Eyes” Global Surveillance - Ryan Gallagher at the Intercept: "Everything we do is explicitly authorized and subject to independent oversight." Oh. That's all right then.
• How Higher Education Perpetuates Intergenerational Inequality - Timothy Taylor: "The effects of these patterns on inequality of incomes in the United States are clearcut: higher income families are better able to provide financial and other kinds of support for their children, both as they grow up, and when it comes time to attend college, and when it comes time to find a job after college. In this way, higher education has become a central part part of the process by which high-income families can seek to assure that their children are more likely to have high incomes, too."