Watch political philosopher Thomas Pogge set out his plan to end global poverty at the Royal Society of Arts (RSA) in London. Philosopher Thomas Pogge: A Global Plan to End Poverty from The RSA on FORA.tv
Does The Richness Of The Few Benefit Us All? By Zygmunt Bauman
28/01/2013 by
A most recent study by the World Institute for Development Economics Research at the United Nations University reports that the richest 1% of adult humans alone owned 40% of global assets in the year 2000, and that the richest 10% of adults accounted for 85% of the total world wealth. The bottom half of the [...]
How can we help the Bottom Billion?
17/01/2013 by
Around the world right now, one billion people are trapped in poor or failing countries. How can we help them? Economist and SEJ columnist Paul Collier lays out a bold, compassionate plan for closing the gap between rich and poor.
Occupy Wall Street and Percentiles
14/10/2011 by
One of the most striking successes of the Occupy Wall Street movement has been the “We are the 99 per cent” idea, and more specifically in the identification of the top 1 per cent as the primary source of economic problems. Thanks to #OWS, the fact that households the top 1 per cent of the [...]
The Moral Question
03/10/2011 by
We dodged another shut-down bullet, but only until November 18. That’s when the next temporary bill to keep the government going runs out. House Republicans want more budget cuts as their price for another stopgap spending bill. Among other items, Republicans are demanding major cuts in a nutrition program for low-income women and children. The [...]
The Danish middle class is shrinking
24/08/2011 by
The Danish middle class is shrinking. That can be read in a new report from The Economic Council of the Labour Movement (Arbejderbevægelsens Erhvervsråd), the Danish labour movement think-tank. The report shows that 31.5 percent of the Danish population belonged to the middle class in 2002. Seven years later that share had drop to 28.6 [...]
Celebrating Independence by Seeking to Regain it
04/07/2011 by
[vsw id="Woj8FQGvfvE" source="youtube" width="425" height="344" autoplay="no"] The signers of The Declaration of Independence combined political courage with intellectual honesty. Indeed for them, the first was entirely rooted in the second. As they said, since “prudence…will dictate that Government long established should not be changed for light and transient causes,” “a decent respect to the opinions of mankind [...]
On the New Looks of Inequality
04/04/2011 by
Frank Rich, a leading NYT op-ed columnist, observed in a recent issue of the voice of the liberal America: “economic equality seemed within reach in 1956, at least for the vast middle class. The sense that the American promise of social and economic mobility was attainable to anyone who sought it…” That was, he reminds [...]
Implications of Egypt for Autocrats
11/02/2011 by
Two decades ago the ‘end of history’ supposedly arrived: democracy was the only conceivable future. Instead, during the past decade China’s success rehabilitated autocracy. Now the uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt appear to have restored the primacy of democracy: even the most entrenched autocrats are revealed as vulnerable to the mass coordination of protest enabled [...]
Is it ‘the economy, stupid’ also in Egypt and Tunisia?
01/02/2011 by
Many commentators have referred to economic factors – stagnant incomes, high unemployment, price rises and rising poverty – as factors behind the Egyptian (and also Tunisian) revolutions, alongside the lack of political freedom, the liberating force of modern communications tools, etc. I haven’t had time to study this in detail, but here are a few [...]
Establishing Comprehensive Health Care Systems on the Basis of Solidarity – Developing and Coordinating Concepts for African Countries
24/01/2011 by
Following the 3rd Africa-EU Summit in Libya last November, I would like to propose establishing comprehensive health care systems in Africa on the basis of solidarity and sustainable health policy. Health is a human right In the 1948 United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the international community professed the extraordinary significance of the field [...]
Talking About an Energy and Jobs Revolution
13/12/2010 by
Creating decent new jobs, fighting poverty and curbing catastrophic climate change have historically been seen as three distinctive challenges, pursued by a trio of different movements: trade unions, development organizations and environmentalists. This should no longer be the case. In the past few years, as climate change has become ever more of a pressing issue [...]
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