Democracy Gone Astray

Democracy, being a human construct, needs to be thought of as directionality rather than an object. As such, to understand it requires not so much a description of existing structures and/or other related phenomena but a declaration of intentionality.
This blog aims at creating labeled lists of published infringements of such intentionality, of points in time where democracy strays from its intended directionality. In addition to outright infringements, this blog also collects important contemporary information and/or discussions that impact our socio-political landscape.

All the posts here were published in the electronic media – main-stream as well as fringe, and maintain links to the original texts.

[NOTE: Due to changes I haven't caught on time in the blogging software, all of the 'Original Article' links were nullified between September 11, 2012 and December 11, 2012. My apologies.]

Wednesday, January 18, 2012

Poverty lingers in prosperous G20, Oxfam says

The image of the G20’s rising giants is enticing: Chinese tourists trotting the globe, Indians lining up for electronic luxuries, Russian petrodollars fuelling designer boutiques.

But the reality for many in the world’s most prosperous countries is far grimmer, says a report released Thursday by the international charity Oxfam. And economic growth numbers tell only a fraction of the story.

“This report shows why anger about income inequality sparked protests that have swept the world, from Tahrir Square to Wall Street,” says Oxfam Canada’s executive director Robert Fox. “More than half of the world’s poorest people live in G20 countries, making them a key battleground in the fight against global poverty.”

But within many wealthier countries — including Canada — the battle appears to be a losing one.

“Income inequality is growing in almost all G20 members, while it is falling in most low- and lower-middle-income countries,” says the report, titled “Left Behind by the G20?”

Since 1990, it says, income inequality has increased in 14 of the 18 G20 countries for which there are comparable statistics. Canada comes fifth on the list of countries with the fastest-growing gaps, following Russia, China, Japan and South Africa. However, little of Canada’s inequality growth has happened since 2000.

Canada has also remained one of the best scorers on the overall inequality scale, after France, Korea and Germany. But that could change, Fox warns.

“This country has a history of greater social protection and support through unemployment insurance and other programs,” says Fox. “But that support is being reduced at the same time as market forces are cresting.

“The levels of social assistance and support for the poorest are not increasing at the rate of inflation. Meanwhile, there’s a documented increase in compensation for senior executives, and the wealthy are becoming wealthier at an increasing pace as the poor are falling behind.”

Korea is the only high-income country to reduce inequality during the past two decades. Brazil, one of the leading emerging nations, shrank its income gap over the same time span, along with Argentina and Mexico. But the gains in those three countries have been made by the middle class — and at the expense of the poor — showing that the “trickle down” effect of economic growth may stop short of the most vulnerable.

The survey was done by measuring net household income within all G20 countries except Saudi Arabia, which has no comparable data available.

The report also warns that environmental degradation targets poor people, even in relatively rich countries: “Economic activity is depleting the Earth’s natural assets, including the capacity of the atmosphere to absorb carbon dioxide, with the costs borne disproportionately by poor women and men.”

It is vital for G20 countries to upgrade their environmental policies, because they have the biggest ecological footprints: using 95 per cent of the Earth’s total biocapacity to generate their economic output.

“Australia and Canada’s annual economic output results in ecological footprints six times larger than what would be globally sustainable,” the report says.

Fixing the inequality gap and environmental degradation depends on strong policy decisions, the report says. They include redistributing wealth through social programs, investing in universal access to education and health care, and promoting reforms for progressive taxation. The report urges countries to tackle the inequalities that exclude girls and women from participating in economic growth, and to introduce land reform programs that give the rural poor a foot up the economic ladder.

Original Article
Source: Star 

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