Archive for the 'Poverty' Category

Pssst! That’s our lecturer! In the Susso queue!

Published
by
Paul Norton
6 days, 7 hours ago
in Authoritarianism, Education, Government, Howardia, Indigenous, Policy, Politics, Poverty and Uncategorized
. 98 Comments

This morning’s media reports that the Opposition now intends to support the Federal Government’s intention to bring back the Susso for several categories of welfare recipient including those on Newstart Allowance.

The use of the term “Susso” is not mere hyperbole as the percentage of the recipient’s income which is quarantined will only be able to be accessed using a special smart card (which will, over time, become generally recognised as the quarantinee’s smart card) at designated retail outlets which have the necessary hardware to read the cards. Further, in some towns in the Northern Territory where the scheme is in place for indigenous people, stores are reportedly establishing special checkouts for holders of the card in order to minimise delays in the other checkout queues. Anyone spending their quarantined income is thus “outed” as a welfare recipient – and exposed to all the prejudices which many in our society hold towards such people – whenever they co shopping.

The mooted national extension of the income quarantining scheme could have some interesting but unpleasant consequences for university staff and the Australian university sector as a whole.
Continue reading ‘Pssst! That’s our lecturer! In the Susso queue!’

Reaction to Abbott’s parental leave plan

Published
by
Mark
1 week, 5 days ago
in Feminism, Howardia, Media, Parenting, Policy, Politics, Poverty, Sociology and Women
. 59 Comments

As noted, Abbott’s International Women’s Day announcement of a paid parental leave plan has created a lot of debate here on LP [read previous threads here]. And it’s attracted a lot of commentary in the wider blogosphere and media.

Gary Sauer-Thompson at Public Opinion has a handle on the politics:

So the Coalition’s strategy [of] messing with the system by throwing anything at the Rudd Government that comes to hand continues. It doesn’t matter about the contradictions –introducing a big tax when the promise is no new taxes—as it is about getting noticed and destabilisation with whatever-it-takes to oppose the Rudd Government on everything.

The strategy is to wedge Labor—’’supporting big business over working families” is the new talking point— and to win back female voters who have been deserting the Coalition.

Trevor Cook asks whether Abbott is really a Liberal. Meanwhile, in The Age, Leslie Cannold disputes the claim that parental leave is solely a women’s issue and Julia Perry in the SMH examines who should pay.

I’ve built on the arguments I made in a post here yesterday in a piece for The ABC’s The Drum Unleashed to nail the canard that Abbott’s plan is more ‘generous’ than Labor’s policy, and set out my reasons why it’s not something progressives should support.

In other news

Published
by
Robert Merkel
3 months, 3 weeks ago
in Policy, Poverty and War
. 99 Comments

The “income management” system for welfare recipients inflicted upon Aboriginal people in the Northern Territory as part of the intervention no longer needs an exemption under the Racial Discrimination Act, because the government now plans to inflict it upon the entire Northern Territory welfare recipient population, as part of an eventual national rollout.

Oh, and we’re committing to buy a squadron of Joint Strike Fighters, for initial delivery in 2014 and the squadron operational by 2018. This armchair Biggles remains unconvinced by the JSF in the long term, but given that the US has committed to it being the only new fighter plane they will buy from now on, they must think it’s up to the job. Now let’s just hope the greenback stays in the doldrums to cover the inevitable further US-dollar cost blowouts.

Anything else sneak out under cover of conservaturmoil?

Cribb on the future of food

Published
by
Brian
4 months, 1 week ago
in Climate change, Developing world, International, Policy and Poverty
. 22 Comments

In this post I reminded people of Gwynne Dyer’s warning that:

“…the first and most important impact on human civilisation will be an acute and permanent crisis of food supply.”

He reckons that food supply issues will become acute after the the temperature rises by 1C.

I also relayed Hans Joachim Schellnhuber’s warning that under business as usual by 2100 “the carrying capacity of the planet [could reduce to] below 1 billion people”.

The Global Humanitarian Forum (Kofi Annan’s new gig) released a human impact report on climate change, The anatomy of a silent crisis, identifying increasing hunger and malnutrition as a major impact of climate change, jeopardising the achievement of the
Millenium Goals.

Caritas International along with the U.N. World Food Program and U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization, the World Health Organization, the International Federation of the Red Cross, Oxfam, World Vision and Save the Children have issued a statement entitled Climate change, food insecurity and hunger warning that “global warming will have a disastrous effect on the world’s poor and hungry”:

Undernutrition is already the single largest contributor to the global burden of disease, killing 3.5 million people every year, almost all of them children in developing countries. Unless urgent action is taken, it will not be possible to ensure the food security of a growing world population under a changing climate.

The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) have each released reports saying that “climate change will reduce agriculture production and raise food prices in the developing world.”

Our own Julian Cribb has thought long and hard about the future of food. He sees the issue through a different prism from climate change and actually rates it as a bigger problem. With a burgeoning population he estimates that world food production will need to increase by 110% by 2050.

Continue reading ‘Cribb on the future of food’

Left Renewal Discussion in Melbourne

Published
by
Paul Norton
5 months ago
in Activism, Economics, Environment, Melbourne, Politics and Poverty
. 2 Comments

Here’s an upcoming event which should interest LP habitues and others who’ll be in Melbourne on the date in question.

Global Economic Crisis : Perspectives, impacts & implications
A Left Renewal roundtable organised by the SEARCH Foundation
Continue reading ‘Left Renewal Discussion in Melbourne’

Norman Borlaug RIP

Published
by
Robert Merkel
6 months, 1 week ago
in Developing world, Policy, Poverty and Science
. 34 Comments

While Patrick Swayze’s death gets more media attention, (I never got Dirty Dancing, but his turn in Donnie Darko remains one of the more disturbing performances I’ve ever seen) a man who made a far greater impact on the lives of more people died a few days ago after a very long and exceptionally productive life. Norman Borlaug brought modern plant-breeding techniques to the developing world, allowing countries like Mexico and India to become self-sufficient in grain production, receiving the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970 for his work.

Borlaug remained an unapologetic advocate for industrial agriculture, as shown in this 2000 interview, making a point that is often neglected in discussions of the environmental impact of organic compared to high-tech agriculture:

Reason: Environmentalists say agricultural biotech will harm biodiversity.

Borlaug: I don’t believe that. If we grow our food and fiber on the land best suited to farming with the technology that we have and what’s coming, including proper use of genetic engineering and biotechnology, we will leave untouched vast tracts of land, with all of their plant and animal diversity. It is because we use farmland so effectively now that President Clinton was recently able to set aside another 50 or 60 million acres of land as wilderness areas. That would not have been possible had it not been for the efficiency of modern agriculture.

The hard cases – protecting vulnerable teenagers

Published
by
Robert Merkel
8 months, 3 weeks ago
in Health, Parenting, Poverty and Women
. 6 Comments

The annual report of the Victorian Child Death Review Committee, examining the deaths of children known to Victoria’s child protection services, was released last week.

While the deaths of children are always tragic, it is good (and surprising, to me) news that the mortality rate for children known to child protection is, apparently, “broadly comparable with the death rate among 0–17 year olds in the general Victorian community.

More than half of the children who died were infants, many of whom died in hospital and had severe disabilities, but two of the deaths that drew the particular attention of the committee (and an Age newspaper report) were of two adolescent girls, one of whom committed suicide, and the other who died from “drug-related causes” (presumably an overdose).

Continue reading ‘The hard cases – protecting vulnerable teenagers’

Drug-resistant malaria

Published
by
Robert Merkel
9 months, 3 weeks ago
in Developing world, Medicine, Poverty and Science
. 4 Comments

While we’re all worrying about swine flu, here’s something else to worry about – drug-resistant malaria.

At the moment artemisinin-derived drugs, such as artesunate, are the main therapy available against malaria. It’s currently very effective. But it seems that in one area of Cambodia, the parasite that causes malaria is starting to show resistance to these drugs:

Dr Delia Bethell, an investigator working on the clinical trials, said he wasn’t alone. Out of about 90 patients included in the study so far, roughly a third to half were still positive for malaria parasites after three days, some even after four or five days.

“It appears that the artesunate is working more slowly than previously,” she said.

“It appears that the parasite probably is developing some kind of tolerance or is somehow less sensitive to the effects of the drug. But nobody knows why that might be.”

Continue reading ‘Drug-resistant malaria’

GST votes, a decade on

Published
by
Robert Merkel
10 months, 1 week ago
in Economics, Howardia, Policy, Politics and Poverty
. 35 Comments

Andrew Bartlett has had a couple of fascinating posts up recently. The first is a look back on Brian Harradine’s speech in the Senate when he announced his intention to vote against the tax. Bartlett quotes the key part of Harradine’s speech:

The question now in my mind is whether it is inherently regressive to such an extent that it should not be supported. The GST burdens the poor and those with the least capacity to pay. It discriminates against the poor and the pensioners who are living a hand-to-mouth existence and spending the bulk of their income on the necessities of life—food, clothing, rent, heating, power, bus fares and so on.

I have always been conscious of the fact that the true test of a civilised society is how it regards and treats its most vulnerable. But I do not claim here a monopoly on moral judgments in respect of this. I do not criticise the government, and I do not reflect upon the government or on any of its members. I just happen to believe that the inherently regressive nature of the GST does not achieve that test. The regressive nature of the goods and services tax is why compensation is invariably needed to secure its passage wherever it is introduced throughout the world. The government’s genuine attempt to compensate and to lock in that compensation is something to be commended, but it cannot be guaranteed.

But one thing can be guaranteed, and that is that the goods and services tax, once enshrined in legislation, will never be removed. Decisions we make now on this issue are not for the next three years; we are making decisions here that will affect generations.

Continue reading ‘GST votes, a decade on’

Unemployed miss out…again

Published
by
Robert Merkel
10 months, 1 week ago
in Economics, Policy and Poverty
. 60 Comments

Josh Gordon in The Age on Wayne Swan’s budget:

In 2005, the former academic and social justice campaigner published Postcode, a book that said Australia had become a “frayed patchwork of winners and losers from economic change”, and that there was an urgent need to tackle disadvantage…

True, which is why it might seem strange that the disadvantage experienced by the unemployed is about to become even more entrenched, thanks to this budget.

What is disadvantage? In Postcode, Swan quotes the great economist John Kenneth Galbraith: “People are poverty stricken when their income, even if adequate for survival, falls radically behind that of the community.” In other words, disadvantage (or poverty) is a relative concept, measured against acceptable social norms.

Pensioners are not well off by any stretch, with many living below the poverty line. But the $32 a week increase for single age pensioners means they will now take home $335 a week, including income supplements. And that means the relative lot of the unemployed is about to get worse.

How many middle-class unemployed is it going to take before we see action on this?

Thinking about risk and swine flu

Published
by
Robert Merkel
10 months, 3 weeks ago
in Developing world, Health, Medicine and Poverty
. 34 Comments

The misallocation of attention and resources on rare but spectacular risks, to the detriment of dealing with mundane but far more lethal ones, is something I’ve personally commented on more than once; our skewed psychology of risk is still not widely appreciated enough. But in the course of making a reasonable point about stereotypes and our lack of empathy with the other, John Watson, in purporting to analyze the risks of epidemics, demonstrates a pretty poor understanding of risk himself. In a nutshell, Watson argues that we are overly worried about the comparatively minor threat of swine flu, and ignoring developing-world killers like tuberculosis, malaria, and AIDS.

We should, undoubtedly, try to do more to fix these humdrum killers in developing countries (not to mention indoor air pollution, which kills comparable numbers of people throughout India and China). But that doesn’t mean that the concern about swine flu is in any way unjustified, or discriminatory towards the developing world.
Continue reading ‘Thinking about risk and swine flu’

Hierarchy is a health hazard

Published
by
Paul Norton
11 months, 2 weeks ago
in Authoritarianism, Economics, Health, Industrial Relations, Medicine, Politics and Poverty
. 52 Comments

This, in a nutshell, is the key finding of the Whitehall II Study. The higher a person’s position in workplace and other organisational and social hierarchies, the better their health is likely to be and the longer their life expectancy.

In an interview with the BBC, epidemologist and Whitehall II study director Professor Michael Marmot explains the findings of the study. Amongst other things he states that a key factor in the link between social status and good health is the degree to which one is in control of one’s work and life rather than being subject to the control of others.

If these findings are correct, there are important political consequences.
Continue reading ‘Hierarchy is a health hazard’

Fictitious capital and the first recession of the services economy

Published
by
Mark
11 months, 3 weeks ago
in Culture, Developing world, Economics, Immigration, Industrial Relations, International, Markets, Poverty, Security and Sociology
. 46 Comments

Karl Marx’ concept of ‘fictitious capital’ has enjoyed something of a revival recently – in the context of explaining the Global Financial Crisis. It’s interesting to observe [h/t Richard Metzger at Boing Boing] that Marx doesn’t appear to have invented the term – the phrase was used by Thomas Jefferson and the concept goes back to Ricardo and Adam Smith, and beyond them to earlier writers in the Eighteenth Century. There’s a bit of a message in that. Observers such as David Harvey argued quite some time ago – contrary to all the hype that was around in the 90s about the ‘new economy’ – that the increased and increasingly ubiquitous role of financial capital was what was distinctive about globalisation. More broadly, following the French historian Fernand Braudel and some of his epigones in world systems theory, we can conclude that markets predate capitalism. In tracing the history of capitalism, Giovanni Arrighi argues that particular accumulation regimes tend to emphasise financialisation as an accumulation strategy towards the end of their life cycle, as the limits of ‘material expansion’ are reached. There’s a recombination effect where the production of tangibles is eclipsed by the circulation of intangibles – each time opening up a new cycle of innovation across an ever larger geographical space and constructing a new ’spirit of capitalism’ which brings in its wake newly reassembled subjectivities, new political divisions and new forms of inequality.

The ‘age of neo-liberalism’, then, saw a shift of power towards finance capital and a harnessing of immaterial labour to the creation of intangible value. It saw a new logic of personality where constant change and the ability to network trumped security and the old bourgeois virtues. What’s also new about the era of globalisation is the world wide scope and reach of one economic system, and the geographical dispersion of networks of value creation – where, for instance, value can be added by design in the metropoles to products manufactured in the developing world. Within the developed world, we’ve had a bifurcated services economy – with Robert Reich’s “symbolic analysts” at the top of the tree forming a highly mobile elite and personal services provided by low skilled and often immigrant labour (mobile in a somewhat different way) or younger workers whose mobility into high end occupations is temporal. It’s been the less skilled and relatively immobile workforce in the declining ‘productive’ sectors who’ve largely been the losers in this conjuncture – a fact which explains a lot about the politics of the last couple of decades.

One way of looking at the current financial crisis is that it’s the first major recession to hit the developed world since the value creation switch was flicked from the production of things to the creation of intangibles. If one takes a Schumpeterian view, the “creative destruction” now occurring should lead to the emergence of a new frontier of value creation. Continue reading ‘Fictitious capital and the first recession of the services economy’