Things That Work / Social Justice

(Sushil Nash)

Why We Should Give a Damn

Income inequality is creating an untenable situation that is dealing out a majority of the world's population. The disparity between rich and poor is leading to mass migration, extreme poverty, conflict, and human suffering.

The income divide is creating a world that is unfair and unjust. Hoarding wealth is creating:

• Reduced social mobility Income inequality can make it more difficult for individuals to move up the economic ladder.
• Increased poverty Income inequality can lead to higher rates of poverty particularly among children and other vulnerable groups.
• Political and social unrest ...
• Reduced economic growth ...
• Negative impact on health and well-being ...  (economicmatter.com)

What is the divide?

The Pew Research Center has crunched some of the numbers on this issue. The top 20% of income earners in this country brought in 52% of US income, more than the bottom four-fifths combined. Income inequality in the U.S. is the highest of all the G7 nations, according to data from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. Pew's numbers are from 2018. It's gotten worse, a lot worse. The top 1% of earners make over 20 times as much as the bottom 90%. (Source: Social Security Online) The gap between the rich and everyone else seems to be worsening.

Toward a Just World

According to the Network Movement for Justice and Development, Social justice is still a distant dream for millions. In 2020, the world still has six hundred million people living in extreme poverty. They live on 1.5 dollars a day or even lesser. The definition of social justice has changed over the decades. If it once meant equal access to food, clothing, and shelter; now it is about living with integrity, good education, proper healthcare, and so forth. If you look at the happiest countries in the world, you’ll see they have free access to healthcare, education and is a corruption-free democracy. Social justice is a human right, it is essential for achieving a well-rounded society. Those of us who care are standing up for the end of discrimination, equal healthcare systems, better educational opportunities for all, and equal participation.

Several organizations and institutions provide their own definitions for social justice. Here are a few:

• “Social justice may be broadly understood as the fair and compassionate distribution of the fruits of economic growth.”
  United Nations
• “Social justice is the view that everyone deserves equal economic, political and social rights and opportunities. Social workers aim to open the doors of access and opportunity for everyone, particularly those in greatest need.”
  National Association of Social Workers
• “Social justice encompasses economic justice. Social justice is the virtue which guides us in creating those organized human interactions we call institutions. In turn, social institutions, when justly organized, provide us with access to what is good for the person, both individually and in our associations with others. Social justice also imposes on each of us a personal responsibility to work with others to design and continually perfect our institutions as tools for personal and social development.”
  Center for Economic and Social Justice

What Can We Do?

It's simpler than you think. Pinning our hopes on the grand gesture results in a paralysis. Mindfood.com came up with ten things we can do to promote social justice every day.

1. Spread the word...
2. Listen more...
3. Attend a rally...
4. Reclaim your community...
5. Volunteer...
6. Support local organizations...
7. Adopt a politician...
8. Embrace diversity...
9. Sign a pledge...
10. Practice what you preach.

If you refuse to listen to the cry of the poor, your own cry for help will not be heard 

(Proverbs 21:13).

            

A Human Economy (This is America)

Billionaire's Club

According to a report from CBS News, a new billionaire is minted every two minutes. this growth of the elite is coming at a cost to the middle class and the poor. 

According to Oxfam, the world's wealth is not creating more opportunities for the vast majority of people.  The distribution of wealth is top heavy. The shift of wealth began growing with the tax cuts for the wealthy during the Reagan administration. It has only become worse during the Trump administration.  In 2017, President Trump reduced tax rates for individuals and corporations, a decrease that favors the rich and businesses.

Oxfam is calling for a new approach, A Human Economy.

Trickle down and all boats rise is not working. Oxfam is calling for new policies. Paul O'Brien is vice president for policy and advocacy at Oxfam America.

 "Fundamentally the human economy is built from different principals than the growth economy," O'Brien said. "For years, the consensus was, 'Growth solves everything.' But that has fallen apart. Our planet has limited boundaries. We can't burn more, use more, and break through ecological boundaries that are essential for sustaining human life."

O'Brien says, the "human economy" would provide health care, education and gender equality to people across the globe, he said. "All the data show that educating your children is the best way to build a healthy economy and create genuine shared wealth. We need to get kids into quality schools, and get rid of these legal and cultural barriers to women being treated unfairly in the workplace, being burdened and discounted."

Raising taxes on the world's richest people and corporations would help fund those programs, with Oxfam calculating that boosting taxes on the richest by 0.5 percent would raise enough money to educate the 262 million children who currently don't receive an education and provide healthcare that would save 3.3 million people from preventable deaths.

In the past, unequal distribution of wealth has led to unequal opportunity, slowed economic growth, lowered expectations, social unrest and revolution. It matters.

This is America Too

The Income Gap

It's more than low income. It's despair, It's hopelessness. It's the powerless and voiceless.

It's more than throwing money at a situations. It's about facilitating long term solutions with the help of those affected.

The World Bank says access to good schools, health care, electricity, safe water, and other critical services remains elusive for many people, often determined by socioeconomic status, gender, ethnicity, and geography. Moreover, for those who have been able to move out of poverty, progress is often temporary: Economic shocks, food insecurity and climate change threaten to rob them of their hard-won gains and force them back into poverty.

The World Bank's goal is ending extreme poverty within a generation and promoting shared prosperity in a sustainable manner across the globe. This at a time when the elite continue gather and hold more than the rest of the world. The gap is widening.

According to inequality.org, the world’s 10 richest billionaires own $745 billion in combined wealth, a sum greater than the total goods and services most nations produce on an annual basis.

Mind Our Gap

The gap is widening here. According to a recent report on CNBC, The rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer.

The top 1 percent of families took home an average of 26.3 times as much income as the bottom 99 percent in 2015, according to a new paper released by the Economic Policy Institute, a non-profit, nonpartisan think tank in Washington, D.C. This has increased since 2013, showing that income inequality has risen in nearly every state.

Tax breaks for the rich are always touted as job creators as they invest in the economy. All boats will rise?

Maybe not. There are more jobs. Unemployment is low, but wages remain relatively low. The gap widens.

Worldwide?

According to Oxfam

Inequality gap widens as 42 people hold same wealth as 3.7bn poorest. The goal of shared prosperity seems further out of reach.

10 Billion Strong

Dwindling Resources

Estimates are out from the United Nations that the earth's population will be 10 billion by mid century. Can that be sustained?


According to research published in 2011 by Live Science, 10 billion people is the uppermost population limit where food is concerned. Because it's extremely unlikely that everyone will agree to stop eating meat, Wilson thinks the maximum carrying capacity of the Earth based on food resources will most likely fall short of 10 billion.


By the middle of this century parts of the world will be experiencing some serious shortages. According to a report on NPR, "Already, roughly 800 million people go to bed hungry, according to this 2015 U.N. report. It says a full one-third of the world's food is wasted every year. If just a quarter of it could be recovered, it would be enough to feed 870 million people."

Income Inequality

To survive it is going to take a greater sharing of resources, but is that really going to happen? USA Today reported a couple of days ago that a new billionaire is created every other day. "Previous Oxfam reports have shown the world's richest 1% own more wealth than the rest of the global population combined, a trend that is reaffirmed in the latest report from Oxfam. "Oxfam said the massive inequality is being driven by factors that include excessive financial returns to company owners and shareholders at the expense of ordinary workers and the rest of the economy; the ability of rich individuals and corporations to use tax havens that allow them to evade or shield trillions of dollars from tax authorities; public policy that permits market conditions that push down wages and infringe on labor rights; and extreme wealth that is inherited, not earned." (USA Today - Inequality Crisis)


Previous reports from Oxfam show the world’s richest 1% own more wealth than the rest of the global population combined, a trend that is reaffirmed in the latest edition. A report from The Institute for Policy Studies, a think tank, warned in November that President Trump’s tax reforms would “exacerbate existing wealth disparities.”

Investing in Ourselves

Sharing the wealth is a big part of the discussion in Davos this week. French President Emmanuel Macron told the global elite to invest, share and protect to reign in the excesses of global capitalism. He stated the framework should be on cooperation and multilateralism.

You can read more about his speech at Bloomberg's website.

What's Wrong with Trending News?

Why is Journalism Important?

It Matters a Lot Really

NPR reported yesterday there are problems with having algorithms select news content for you. You may recall that Face Book fired its news curators after charges that the curators were biased toward liberal views. Congress got upset. Remember that congress is run by Republicans and they didn't like reports from The Times, The Post and the BBC.  An algorithm is now selecting stories. Instead of real news...something else is up there.

NPR's Aarti Shahani says about a million viewers clicked on a story from a dubious news source that claimed former Fox Commentator Megyn Kelly is a supporter of Hilary Clinton, and that is the reason she got fired by Fox. The story is false, but hundreds of thousands of people clicked on the story and believed it.

Part of the problem is ours. We seek and have friends that think like us and generally agree with our point of view. Social media enforces our opinions by selecting posts for us through algorithms that we 'like' further reinforcing our point of view. 

Trending is not Journalism. Accuracy and fairness in the news are extremely important. Otherwise we will be unable to ferret out the truth. Political candidates will often stretch the truth or omit context. Real  journalist do their job when they dig deeper.

Recently Donald Trump, in an effort to attract black voters, quoted unemployment figures for minority youth that were not even close to accurate. His devout followers believe him. They share his assertions on line with like minded people further cementing their belief in false information.

Trump's numbers are just plain wrong. Of course, Trump wants the facts to fit his narrative that the US is falling apart and only he can fix it. I wanted to know more. The numbers seemed out of whack. I dug deeper.

The actual youth unemployment figures are below as published by the Washington Post.

The economy has changed and become stronger since 2012. According to Pew's research, the economy is no longer the number on issue with voters. Security and safety in the face of growing violence is. Pew says The economy still is important, just not the top concern. Here's part of report published by NPR...

In 2012:

• Jobs. The unemployment rate was a painful 8.1 percent in August, 2012. Many voters feared that as the Affordable Care Act phased in, the job market would get even worse.
• Gas prices. The average price of gas in August, 2012, was $3.69 a gallon, the second highest average on record.
• Federal deficit. As the fiscal year was wrapping up, the annual deficit was $1.1 trillion, or 6.7 percent of GDP.

Since then, a lot has changed in those three areas. Here's how things look...

In 2016:

• Jobs. The unemployment rate has plunged to 4.9 percent.
• Gas prices. Gas prices have tumbled this year, and now average around $2.12 a gallon.
• Federal deficit. For fiscal 2016, the deficit will be $590 billion, or 3.2 percent of GDP.

As the report points out, serious issues remain, not the least of which is the growing income inequality. If you want to know more about the growing anger over income inequality, look at the success of the Trump and Sanders campaigns. And, once you go there, dig deeper to discover the reasons behind the disparity and what might be done to solve this issue.

A serious commitment to finding the truth leads an informed electorate. Search for it. Use it. Support it.

Working Mix Tape

Labor Day is coming. I thought I would get an early start on musical connections. As a backdrop to all this is the widening gap between the top 1% and the rest of us. We're working harder and keeping less.

I recently read an article in the Huffington Post about the widening gap between the very rich and rest of us. Among the 10 worst countries with a huge gap between the wealthy and the rest of the population is the United States. Big government is often blamed but, this has more to do with accumulation of wealth by the top 1%. That accumulation is being stimulated a regressive tax system that cuts taxes for the wealthy. That's according to reports generated through the Gini Coefficient. The gap is the worst it has been since the start of The Great Depression.


Everybody Knows - Leonard Cohen
Everybody knows that the dice are loaded
Everybody rolls with their fingers crossed
Everybody knows that the war is over
Everybody knows the good guys lost
Everybody knows the fight was fixed
The poor stay poor, the rich get rich
Thats how it goes
Everybody knows

Working For A Living - Huey Lewis and the News
Big Boss Man - Jimmy Reed
Take This Job and Shove It - Johnny Paycheck
Call It Stormy Monday - T-Bone Walker
Working In A Coal Mine - Lee Dorsey
Coal Tattoo - Judy Collins
Chain Gang - Sam Cooke
Back On The Chain Gang - The Pretenders
Work Song - Nina Simone
Lift Up Every Stone - John Hiatt
Working for the Weekend - Loverboy
Someday - Steve Earle
Get a Job - Silhouettes
Mill Worker - Emmylou Harris

What are your favorite work songs? I would like your input. Feel free to add to the list.