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The New Global Inequality Debate: “A Symbol of Our Struggle against Reality”?

17 Oct 2013

Guest post from Paul O’Brien .. http://www.oxfamamerica.org/whoweare/oxfam-experts/paul-o2019brien , Oxfam America’s Vice President for Policy and CampaignsPaul-OBrien

This blog will make more sense if you watch at least a few seconds of this Monty Python skit .. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sFBOQzSk14c .. first.

Monty Python haunts me. Too close to the bone if you work in a rights-based organization. When I got into development work in the 1990’s, the UN and some NGOs were getting their heads around “rights based programming”. We re-described “needs” as “rights”; talked about “beneficiaries” as “rights bearers”, slammed our fists on the table, and, for the most part, went back to business as usual. I now evoke “Monty Python” at Oxfam to urge colleagues never to do just that.

Here’s what I realized: most good programme staff already understood the rights principles that mattered; the bad ones just learned to spin. I came to think a rights lens was not useful for engaging or describing rights victims, but could help to push practitioners to identify perpetrators, and work out how to hold them to account even if it meant risking our programming or our relationships with elites. That work was different and difficult and separated the real rights-based organizations from the PR machines. Some organizations ultimately backed away. Others radically changed their business model. I joined Oxfam because I believed it was serious about holding the powerful accountable.


sharing prosperity?

But now I’m getting nervous again—I listen to some of the new thinking on “inequality”, and hear Monty Python. Look at how the UN and World Bank are talking about inequality. The authors of the UN’s High Level Panel Post 2015 report .. http://www.post2015hlp.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/UN-Report.pdf .. tried to hardwire inequality into the new MDG goals by committing to “leave no one behind.” But the draft goals only focus on one side of the inequality equation: on poverty, ignoring wealth (such as the $240 billion amassed by the world’s richest 100 people last year). The World Bank proudly commits to “shared prosperity” for the bottom 40 percent in its forthcoming strategy. But sharing by whom? Until they answer that question, Oxfam and others will keep challenging them “to reduce disparities between the top and bottom .. http://www.ipsnews.net/2013/03/world-bank-2030-draft-strategy-criticised-for-omitting-inequality/ ”.

Why does this matter? Because reframing the poor as “the unequal poor” while shutting off discussions about the obligations of the wealthy will waste a huge amount of development thinking over the coming two years, and change very little. It’s not as if the last UN strategy was “let’s make sure to leave a few folks behind”. Or the World Bank used to promote “Prosperity Reduction Strategies” for the poor.

My test for whether inequality discussions are adding value or are just “a symbol of our struggle against reality” (h/t John Cleese) is whether we find a fresh and useful way to talk about unfair wealth, not unequal poverty.

Here is an interesting debate: Is there a quantity of wealth which is just unfair or is it only a certain type of wealth? Africa’s richest man .. http://www.forbes.com/profile/aliko-dangote/ .. has made $16 billion while 80 million of his fellow Nigerians survive on less than $2 a day. Africa’s richest woman .. http://www.forbes.com/sites/kerryadolan/2013/08/14/how-isabel-dos-santos-took-the-short-route-to-become-africas-richest-woman/ .. has amassed $3 billion while most of her Angolan compatriots live in extreme poverty. Is it the level of wealth that we should be worried about or the fact that it was made in two of the world’s most corrupt countries? Are we OK that Bill Gates is worth $72 billion because he got it cleanly and gives most of it away (some of it to Oxfam)? The answer to those questions will change how we measure inequality, what research we do, what policy solutions we seek and how we build or join movements for change. That’s the debate I want to be part of.

See also Ricardo Fuentes v World Bank on inequality
http://blogs.oxfam.org/en/blogs/13-10-10-why-world-bank-not-walking-their-talk-inequality

And here’s Paul’s inequality rant at a recent CGD meeting, which triggered this post

http://oxfamblogs.org/fp2p/the-new-global-inequality-debate-a-symbol-of-our-struggle-against-reality/

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RICHEST 85 WEALTHIER THAN HALF THE WORLD
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/21/85-richest-people_n_4641021.html

Comments (409) | Shares (573) | Income Inequality



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Murph S. (murphthesurf3)
Political Pundit · 7,389 Fans · Progressive: Like Ike and Clinton!

So what then is to be done?

RECOMMENDATIONS from Oxfam
http://www.oxfam.org/en/policy/working-for-the-few...

Those gathered at Davos for the World Economic Forum have the power to turn around the rapid increase in inequality.

Oxfam is calling on them to pledge that they will:

Not dodge taxes in their own countries or in countries where they invest and operate, by using tax havens;

Not use their economic wealth to seek political favors that undermine the democratic will of their fellow citizens;

Make public all the investments in companies and trusts for which they are the ultimate beneficial owners;

Support progressive taxation on wealth and income;

Challenge governments to use their tax revenue to provide universal health care, education and social protection for citizens;

Demand a living wage in all the companies they own or control;

Challenge other economic elites to join them in these pledges.

Oxfam has recommended

Policies in multiple contexts to strengthen the political representation of the poor and middle classes to achieve greater equity. These policies include:

A global goal to end extreme economic inequality in every country. This should be a major element of the post 2015 framework, including consistent monitoring in every country of the share of wealth going to the richest one percent.

Stronger regulation of markets to promote sustainable and equitable growth; and Curbing the power of the rich to influence political processes and policies that best suit their interests.

The particular combination of policies required to reverse rising economic inequalities should be tailored to each national context.

But developing and developed countries that have successfully reduced economic inequality provide some suggested starting points, notably:

Cracking down on financial secrecy and tax dodging;

Redistributive transfers; and strengthening of social protection schemes;

Investment in universal access to healthcare and education; Progressive taxation;

Strengthening wage floors and worker rights;

Removing the barriers to equal rights and opportunities for women

22 Jan 5:36 PM

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Antony C. (outlandish)
Political Pundit · 11,984 Fans · In something we trust

Before the b grade Hollywood actor turned up to play the role of the President and read his daily script provided by his VP and Neo Con team, who have all either been brought into disrepute or recanted their entire philosophies, a middleclass family consisted of 1 member of the household, doing an average job that paid enough money to put his or her kids through college, buy a home, a new car every couple of years, a decent holiday break, all the mod cons of modern life and to even save money for a retirement or investment nest egg.

Corporations used to value their employees and American corporations didn’t have their head office located in a post office in a tax haven nation.

Along came trickledown and America went from being the largest creditor nation in the world to the largest debtor nation by the time the script reading actor had finished his role of a lifetime.

By the end of his 8 year leading part in White House Playhouse Theater, income had stagnated for all but the very rich and well connected and the wealth inequity gap had tripled.

Having tasted the ballooning effect of their incomes, CEOs started devising new and more novel ways of accelerating the wealth gap and declared silent class warfare while the middleclass tightened their belts and a second member of the family had to join the workforce to maintain parity with their former life style. (The end of the June Cleaver era had come to America).

As the full trickledown reality played its course that gap widened until CEO’s and the top 1% saw the wealth disparity favor them 500 fold over 3 decades and the middleclass measure remained flat, in income, with more hours needed to maintain a valid lifestyle and ideas like family holidays almost a thing of the past, American workers became the longest hour workers in the entire developed world and least rewarded for the amount of hours they put into their jobs.

Companies started to export jobs to cut jobs as the middleclass market expanded into formally 3rd world countries, removing a stream of revenue meant for the maintenance, upkeep and planning for the future of the nation which included the safety net and pensions.

Fast forward to the Bush43 era and the job of starving the beast reached its culmination when the national treasury was looted on a pretext of war that was nothing more than largesse provided by tax payers to corporate war profiteers.

You and I paid corporations to empty our nation’s savings, our savings and many of us lost loved ones who went to war and the middleclass began to collapse.

A wasteful war of lies can find money but feeding the poor victims of a failed economic policy, not so much.

Idolatry of the new radiant rich has broken the world and morale of the people, worship of the unscrupulous has become a religion and the gilded calf is the new God.

22 Jan 6:18 PM

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/

.. good to see you Soul Washer ..

great album!
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See also:

For the Love of Money
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=96135462