Don't fool yourself: It's mostly just about family connections and pure randomness.
#Capitalism#Liberalism#Philosophy#MoralPhilosophy#Inequality#Poverty: "Rawls thinks agents designing a society from behind the veil of ignorance might nevertheless allow some inequality, in exchange for greater economic efficiency. But in navigating such tradeoffs they’d be guided by the principle that inequalities need to earn their keep by (a) making the better-off positions available to every qualified applicant under conditions of meaningful equality of opportunity and (b) only allowing inequalities, even inequalities that satisfy condition (a), when whoever is worst off would still be better off than they would be under a more equal alternative.
The resulting loophole for acceptable inequalities is much narrower than many readers of Rawls over the decades have realized. Rawls himself, who certainly wasn’t a radical firebrand by personal inclination, had reluctantly come to realize by the end of his life that even a form of capitalism modified by a generous welfare state couldn’t meet his demanding standard.
Meanwhile, one of Rawls’s most important critics, the Marxist philosopher G. A. Cohen, argued that even this loophole was too large for it to be appropriate to call any arrangement that passed Rawls’s test “justice.” Cohen acknowledged that economic efficiency matters, for much the same reason Rawls thought it did — the standard of living of even the lower classes — but he thought we should keep a more demanding notion of egalitarian justice as our north star."
While we often appreciate the economic forces & structures that cause & reinforce poverty, this report from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation focusses on how stigma is keeping the poor, poor.
Among its recommendations is to stop designating the disabled & unpaid carers as 'economically inactive' while also rejecting the characterisation of low-paid work as 'unskilled'.
We should/must reject the narrative of the wealthy about the rest of us!
Child poverty is not an intractable problem; policy has been key in both its expansion & is how we can tackle it.
Again, the last fifteen years may not have been the only cause of a social problem but have compounded it & in many cases have seen policy choices intended to make things worse for the vulnerable.
After the election we need to see a sea change in socio-political attitudes & actions... whether we will is another issue altogether!
#Austerity#Populism#Europe#Globalization#Inequality: "Governments have repeatedly adjusted fiscal policy in recent decades. We examine the political effects of these adjustments in Europe since the 1990s using both district-level election outcomes and individual-level voting data. We expect austerity to increase populist votes, but only among economically vulnerable voters, who are hit the hardest by austerity. We identify economically vulnerable regions as those with a high share of low-skilled workers, workers in manufacturing and in jobs with a high routine-task intensity. The analysis of district-level elections demonstrates that austerity increases support for populist parties in economically vulnerable regions, but has little effect in less vulnerable regions. The individual-level analysis confirms these findings. Our results suggest that the success of populist parties hinges on the government's failure to protect the losers of structural economic change. The economic origins of populism are thus not purely external; the populist backlash is triggered by internal factors, notably public policies."
A drone view shows informal shacks of the high-density suburb of Masiphumelele extending into a wetland adjacent to Lake Michelle private estate in Cape Town, South Africa. REUTERS/Nic Bothma
Federal grants don’t always go to the communities that need them most.
Data for the US Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Community Development Block Grant program shows just that. The grants target low- and moderate-income communities, but a disproportionate share goes to the moderate-income neighborhoods, not the ones suffering the most.
"for decades, American schools have been re-segregating... around 4 out of 10 Black and Hispanic students attend schools where almost every one of their classmates is another student of color.
"'If you have the tools taken away from you ... by the Supreme Court, then you really don’t have a whole lot of tools,' said Stephan Blanford, a former Seattle Public Schools board member."
— #law#racism#inequality#ushistory
You may be privy to or unfamiliar with how the ultra-wealthy are taking advantage of the system. Either way, you’ll find this report by @ProPublica to be staggering. The facts are clear: there is a class war, and we’re losing.
“…it demolishes the cornerstone myth of the American tax system: that everyone pays their fair share and the richest Americans pay the most.”
Ready for news that will shock nobody? It turns out globalization mostly helps out the richest 10% and has little to no impact on the poorest.
"The influence of globalization on income inequalities worldwide was greater than we had expected. We were particularly surprised that these differences were mainly due to the gains of the richest and that the lower income groups benefited little or not at all."
✅ Predicting a cardiac arrhythmia 30 minutes before its onset
✅ #Gender inequalities in times of crisis
✅ An #OpenAccess book on scientific communication
✅ A powerful new approach against #cancer
✅ #Housing accessibility during periods of inflation
[...]
Some (qualified) better news on the forced cashless society:
Cash Access UK (set up by the major banks) has committed to have opened 100 community banking hubs by the end of the year. This hubs offer joint services across the constituent banks.
It remains to be seen whether this deal with some of the companies about lack of banking services (including access to cash)... and from a local point of view, when one turns up in the Lune Valley's banking desert.
Holly Pester's short novel The Lodgers (2024), is a timely mediation on the unanchoredness of the peripatetic life of the renter/lodger. At times elliptical, with two narratives whose relations remains unsettled, this is a book which offers a real feeling for a key element of modern life; moving from one lodging/rental to another. While at time wry, it remains elegiac in its approach to tenant's despair & longing.
Here's a piece from BMJ, looking at social determinants of heath suggesting the crisis in health is not one of perception, but a wider problem with how our health is impacted by the social structures we encounter.
The authors conclude: 'A common response is that we cannot afford such action [on inequality & health] —we argue, we cannot afford inaction'!
Health inequality compounds social inequality which makes health worse
Ha ha... once again like Lucy & Charlie Brown, the BoE holds interest rates steady, but offers the prospect of a cut in the future... just whisk that ball away Mr. Bailey (each time).
I'm sure they'll eventually cut the rate but the sado-monetarists need more 'evidence' before they do;
but not evidence that inflation is easing, whatever they say; rather they want evidence that workers have been properly tamed/beaten down, that they/we have been disciplined!
"Leaders of the slaveholding South called the Declaration [of Independence] 'a most pernicious falsehood.' South Carolina’s John C. Calhoun called the very idea of equal rights a 'false doctrine.'..
"The influential 'second' Ku Klux Klan of the 1920s was anti-Catholic and anti-Jewish as well as anti-Black, which was why, unlike the original Klan, it flourished outside the South.. Christian nationalism has been a powerful force throughout America’s history" https://wapo.st/3QonhLY
— #GiftArticle
"There is no reason to doubt that he [Jamie Dimon] spoke for many of the richest Americans and for other corporate leaders. There was no outcry among them.. They know that Trump’s White working-class followers don’t have to be paid off economically because most care chiefly about the culture wars. Trump can still cut taxes and reduce other obstacles to corporate profit.. Trump will want to make deals for himself and his family, as he did in his first term."
— #inequality#corporations
Boyd said: “I started out six years ago talking about the right to a healthy environment having the capacity to bring about systemic and transformative changes. But this powerful human right is up against an even more powerful force in the global economy, a system that is absolutely based on the exploitation of people and nature. And unless we change that fundamental system, then we’re just re-shuffling deck chairs on the Titanic.”
>Boyd said: “There’s no place in the climate negotiations for fossil-fuel companies. There is no place in the plastic negotiations for plastic manufacturers. It just absolutely boggles my mind that anybody thinks they have a legitimate seat at the table.
>In his final interview before handing over the special rapporteur mandate, Boyd said he struggles to makes sense of the world’s collective indifference to the suffering being caused by preventable environmental harms.
>over 40 million people have died of air pollution since I became special rapporteur in 2018, yet I just can’t get people to care.
>“I can’t get people to bat an eyelash. It’s like there’s something wrong with our brains that we can’t understand just how grave this situation is"
>"If we don’t have a living, healthy planet Earth, then all the other rights are just words on paper.”
I can only agree ... without a livable planet and a stable biosphere, everything else is for nought, as "home" is then unlivable.
Across Europe countries are suffering various housing crisis.... on the one hand it does suggest this is a wider problem than just a UK-specific policy problem.
However, on the other, this plausibly looks like a factor in the rise of the new/hard Right.
There are many aspects to these crises including loss of public housing but the treatment of housing as an asset class rather than homes for living in, is playing a major negative role.