[TLDR (too long didn’t read): If you are reading this, chances are you care about HR. This Reader is about how the obsession with economic growth concentrates power to the further detriment of HR. For a quick overview, just read the bolded text]. Traducir/traduire los/les Readers; usar/utiliser deepl.com.
-Let us not forget: Equality of opportunity is what the lottery promises: everyone can win; in reality only one person wins. (Louis Casado) This is why, in human rights (HR) work, we strive for equality of results and not of opportunity.
1. ‘Elemental Watson’: To a large extent, the growth of inequality is due to the fact that the wealth of those rendered rich (based on the stock of all their assets) grew faster than the economy and the income of the rest, that is, faster than the wages of those who struggle to survive.* (Thomas Piketty)
*: From prehistory to the present day, all the socioeconomic systems known to humanity tended towards inequality and ended in global catastrophes. (Walter Scheidel)
Does the obsession with growth play a key role?
2. The World Bank has been as reluctant as has the World Economic Forum in looking at inequality. But, alas, its own researchers have indicated that a too-high inequality hinders growth, so the Bank could not escape anymore and fighting inequality eventually(?) became a policy priority. But the Bank cleverly keeps looking at inequality as if it can be tackled by raising the incomes of the poorest 40% in societies, as it already said in the 1970s! In all truth, the Bank knows about possible solutions such as redistribution through taxes and transfers, but it keeps warning that these also may hinder growth. So, income and wealth redistribution is not on its agenda. (Francine Mestrum) …wither HR.
3. I am reminded of Kenneth Boulding’s work on economic growth. His words were: “Anyone who believes that exponential growth can go on forever in a finite world is either a madman or an economist.” Or as Edward Abbey remarked around the same time: “Growth for growth’s sake is the ideology of the cancer cell.”**
**: I have to mind you that so-called green growth is another pacifier we are told to stick in our mouths. But this is part of another discussion since what it will do to HR is anything but unclear.
4. Given the huge rise of income and wealth inequality in the last years coupled with the lack of much economic growth, it is abundantly clear that inequality is neither good for growth nor for HR. [Consider inequality of power as a highly toxic odorless, colorless, invisible gas that kills us through various diseases, injustices or trauma that we are almost entirely unaware of]. Inequality is actually good for the growth of CEOs’ income so, corporations get away with murder. Ahh!, inequality is also not good for the environment and the rights of nature. (Stephen Bezruchka)
Social myths do not come from the people; they come from and are propagated by the holders of power
-When today there is compassion for the suffering that catastrophes can and do produce, at the same time there is total disinterest in inequalities (and in HR). We thus end up ‘helping the poor and the marginalized’ on condition that we do not question the order of the world and power relations in it. (Albino Gomez).
5. To suggest that the problem of inequality be solved with handouts is like fighting an infection with aspirin. Instead of being cured, the infection increases. Handouts keep people in a state of lethargy primarily through the great propaganda power of the media.
6. Inequality is not only economic; it is also racial, sexual, religious, ideological and cultural. One of the conservative hypotheses (since they never reached the category of theories) was based on justifying inequality as a natural consequence of prosperity. [“Inequality is a necessary and inevitable consequence of prosperity”). ?? This show of radical ignorance is the flag of neoliberals –i.e., missionaries against the intervention of governments].
7. Prosperity was built on slavery and by force of brutal imperial interventions. The rest is only myths. Where is it shown that prosperity comes from entrepreneurship and the management of the accumulated wealth of those rendered rich? Since they want to keep what they have accumulated, they claim there is no need to ‘punish success’ with taxes. (Note: A less relevant discussion here is about the necessity or convenience of inequity for the haves …topic for another Reader). (Jorge Majfud)
Sadly, society and the state accept inequality and all that is private
8. Governments try to mitigate inequality with patch actions to keep that acceptance current. We must be actively critical of the state because, whether they accept it or not, it is controlled by the private sector.*** Therefore, it is most often not a question of backing the state. Letting the state get away with not regulating is our problem. (Mind you, as HR activists, we also have contradictions and partial responses to inequality…).
***: As you well know, harnessing the energy of the private sector, for example for nutrition purposes, has been a mantra of the development community for decades, with renewed interest as we speak. Yet, despite the numerous conferences, the multiple committees, and some bits-and-pieces of food industry projects (these coupled with more than a modest amount of self-publicity), this all has not added up to much. Although both business and development leaders continue to say the right words, it is useful to know the history, that for all the nurturing of industry over the years, there has been little of real consequence, little that has actually made a difference. Perhaps many were naïf in wishing this would work. But at some point, when we come right down to it –and I am down to it– the nutrition community may want to make a judgment concerning corporate values and objectives, and recognize that a consequential contribution to nutrition by the private sector just may not be in the cards. (Alan Berg)
Bottom line
9. Does the power of HR rhetoric and deeds succeed in overcoming power inequalities? If not, why?
Claudio Schuftan, Ho Chi Minh City
Your comments are welcome at schuftan@gmail.com
All Readers are available at www.claudioschuftan.com
Postscript/Marginalia
–It is important to note that the international part of the New International Economic Order (NIEO) was quietly abandoned, very rapidly after Alma Ata in 1978. So, for example, inequality is considered ONLY within nations and not between nations. In effect, this represents an abandonment of the NIEO upon which Health-for-All was predicated. Because, of course, the major determinants of poverty and powerlessness in countries rendered poor are international and not national! Note also that unfair trade is just one of the ways in which resources are transferred from South to North which, as you well know, continues today. I think all this needs to be mentioned over-and-over. (Alison Katz)