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If Food Is a Right, Who Should Provide It?
If Food Is a Right, Who Should Provide It?
Nearly 850,000 Canadians visited food banks in one month last year.
At a recent public forum in Victoria, B.C. about the right to food, the first audience question was about federal politics and the October election, which put the panelists in an awkward position.
“We all work for charities that are very non-partisan and would never suggest that you vote in any particular way,” said Laura Track, counsel for the B.C. Civil Liberties Association, alluding to federal laws that restrict what organizations with charitable status can say.
The June 2 panel included Peggy Wilmot from the advocacy group Faith in Action, Roberta Bell from the Victoria Native Friendship Centre, Rudi Wallace from the Mustard Seed food bank, and Stephen Portman from the Together Against Poverty Society. A similar event with different panelists is planned for Vancouver on June 24.
Track did allow, “I agree that it’s a political issue for sure, and should be an issue in the next election.”
As the author of a soon-to-be-released report, Hungry for Justice: Advancing a Right to Food for Children in BC, she clearly sees ending hunger as a top priority. The report details rising food insecurity in Canada, critiques the treatment of hunger as a matter for charities to deal with, and considers what it would mean to recognize the right to food as a human right.
“The right to food is clearly protected in international human rights agreements that Canada has signed and agreed to uphold,” wrote Track. “But what does it mean to have a ‘right’ to something when that right so often goes unfulfilled?”
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
In Most Countries, 40 Hours + Minimum Wage = Poverty
In Most Countries, 40 Hours + Minimum Wage = Poverty
Last week, we noted that Democratic lawmakers in the US are pushing for what they call “$12 by ’20” which, as the name implies, is an effort to raise the minimum wage to $12/hour over the course of the next five years. Republicans argue that if Democrats got their wish and the pay floor were increased by nearly 70%, it would do more harm than good for low-income Americans as the number of jobs that would be lost as a result of employers cutting back in the face of dramatically higher labor costs would offset the benefit that accrues to the workers who are lucky enough to keep their jobs.
Regardless of who is right or wrong when it comes to projecting what would happen to low-wage jobs in the face of a steep hike in the minimum wage, one thing is certain: many working families depend on government assistance to make ends meet, suggesting it’s tough to persist on minimum wage in today’s economy and indeed, a new study by the OECD shows that in 21 out of the 26 member countries that have a minimum wage, working 40 hours per week at the pay floor would not be sufficient to keep one’s family out of poverty.
Here’s more from Bloomberg:
A global ranking out Wednesday by the Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development painted a grim picture of the situation in member countries straddling continents. The 34-member organization found that a legal minimum wage existed in 26 countries and crunched the numbers to see how they compared.Forget taking a siesta in Spain. There, you’d have to work more than 72 hours a week to escape the trappings of poverty. Turns out that is the norm, not the exception. In the 21 countries highlighted with blue bars in the chart below, a full 40-hour work week still won’t lift families out of relative poverty. This list includes France, home to the 35-hour work week, which almost met the threshold. Minimum wage workers there who are supporting a spouse and two children need to work 40.2 hours to get their families out of poverty. (The poverty line is defined as 50 percent of the median wage in any nation.)
One Last Look At The Real Economy Before It Implodes – Part 3
One Last Look At The Real Economy Before It Implodes – Part 3
In the previous installments of this series, we discussed the hidden and often unspoken crisis brewing within the employment market, as well as in personal debt. The primary consequence being a collapse in overall consumer demand, something which we are at this very moment witnessing in the macro-picture of the fiscal situation around the world. Lack of real production and lack of sustainable employment options result in a lack of savings, an over-dependency on debt and welfare, the destruction of grass-roots entrepreneurship, a conflated and disingenuous representation of gross domestic product, and ultimately an economic system devoid of structural integrity — a hollow shell of a system, vulnerable to even the slightest shocks.
This lack of structural integrity and stability is hidden from the general public quite deliberately by way of central bank money creation that enables government debt spending, which is counted toward GDP despite the fact that it is NOT true production (debt creation is a negation of true production and historically results in a degradation of the overall economy as well as monetary buying power, rather than progress). Government debt spending also disguises the real state of poverty within a system through welfare and entitlements. The U.S. poverty level is at record highs, hitting previous records set 50 years ago during Lyndon Johnson’s administration. The record-breaking rise in poverty has also occurred despite 50 years of the so called “war on poverty,” a shift toward American socialism that was a continuation of the policies launched by Franklin D. Roosevelt’s ‘New Deal’.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Greeks Face First Product Shortages As Cash Runs Out, “It’s Worse Than In 2012”
Greeks Face First Product Shortages As Cash Runs Out, “It’s Worse Than In 2012”
Just when you thought it was getting better (or so you would believe if you listened to the mainstream media’s punditry) Greece faces what ekathimerini reports is a “situation worse than in 2012.” From well-known Belgian beer to electronics equipment, the first occurrences of shortages in imported goods and raw materials have arisen as a result of Greek enterprises’ inability to pay with cash in advance.
Hundreds of people jostled for free vegetables handed out by farmers in a symbolic protest earlier on Wednesday, trampling one man and prompting an outcry over the growing desperation created by economic crisis.Images of people struggling to seize bags of tomatoes and leeks thrown from a truck dominated television, triggering a bout of soul-searching over the new depths of poverty in the debt-laden country.
“These images make me angry. Angry for a proud people who have no food to eat, who can’t afford to keep warm, who can’t make ends meet,” said Kostas Barkas, a lawmaker from the leftist Syriza party.
Other lawmakers from across the political spectrum decried the images “of people on the brink of despair” and the sense of “sadness for a proud people who have ended up like this“.
People have seen their living standards crumble as the country faces its sixth year of recession that has driven unemployment to record highs.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Climate change is likely factor in Syria’s conflict
Climate change is likely factor in Syria’s conflict
Researchers say climate change probably caused the savage drought that affected Syria nearly a decade ago − and helped to spark the country’s current civil war.
LONDON, 2 March, 2015 – In a dire chain of cause and effect, the drought that devastated parts of Syria from 2006 to 2010 was probably the result of climate change driven by human activities, a new study says.
And the study’s authors think that the drought may also have contributed to the outbreak of Syria’s uprising in 2011.
The drought, which was the worst ever recorded in the region, ravaged agriculture in the breadbasket region of northern Syria, driving dispossessed farmers to the cities where poverty, government mismanagement and other factors created the unrest that exploded four years ago. The conflict has left at least 200,000 people dead, and has displaced millions of others.
The study, by scientists from Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University, US, is published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The authors are quite clear that the climatic changes were human-driven (anthropogenic) and cannot be attributed simply to natural variability, but are careful to stress that their findings are tentative.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Greece at the Crossroads: the Oligarchs Blew It
Greece at the Crossroads: the Oligarchs Blew It
Once one oligarchy falls, it will threaten to topple a long line of oligarch dominoes.
A great many narratives invoking Greece are being tossed around, but only one really encapsulates the unvarnished truth: the Oligarchs blew it. The oligarchs in both Greece and the European Union/ECB had the opportunity a few years ago to trade some of their outsized wealth and political power for stability and sustainable expansion.
Instead, they chose to not just cling to every shred of their outsized wealth and power but to actively increase it. Their greed and hubris has now put their entire system of parasitic wealth extraction at risk of collapse. Their political stranglehold on power has been weakened, and there’s no going back: they blew it, and now it’s too late. The debt-serfs have finally had enough.
If you enter Greece in the custom search box on this site, six pages of blog entries come up. I have addressed the situation in Greece many times; this summarizes my conclusion:
Greece, Please Do The Right Thing: Default Now (June 1, 2011)
Thankfully, many in Greece have reached the same conclusion, for the same reasons:
Greece’s New FinMin Warns “We Are Going To Destroy The Greek Oligarchy System”
The basic problem is that Greece Is a Kleptocracy (June 28, 2011). Greece has shown the world how oligarchies can expand their wealth and power even as their populace slides deeper into poverty. A recent article, Misrule of the Few: How the Oligarchs Ruined Greece, lays out the key dynamics.
Writer Pavlos Eleftheriadis pulls no punches:
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
50 Numbers From 2014 That Sound Fake But That Are Actually Real
50 Numbers From 2014 That Sound Fake But That Are Actually Real.
2014 was quite a bizarre year, wasn’t it? The past 12 months brought us MH370, Ebola, civil war in Ukraine, civil unrest in Ferguson, the rise of ISIS and the fall of the Democrats in the midterm elections. Our world is becoming crazier and more unstable with each passing day, and I have a feeling that things are going to accelerate greatly in 2015. But for the moment things are relatively quiet as much of the world stops to celebrate the holiday season, so now is a good time to look back and see where we have been over the past year. The facts that I am about to share with you sound false, but they are all quite true. If you doubt any of these facts, just click the link on the number to find the source. It has been said that truth is stranger than fiction, and that was definitely the case during the past 12 months. In no particular order, the following are 50 numbers from 2014 that sound fake but that are actually real…
2.5 – Researchers have discovered that characters in cartoons for children are 2.5 times more likely to die than characters in adult dramas. But as long as those characters look cute and make funny noises it must be okay.
$4.20 – The price of ground beef just hit a brand new record high of $4.20 a pound. Exactly 10 years ago, it was just $2.21 a pound. What do you thinkClara Peller would say about this?
oftwominds-Charles Hugh Smith: Prosperity Amidst the Ruins
oftwominds-Charles Hugh Smith: Prosperity Amidst the Ruins.
The fundamental problem facing the global economy is not slow economic growth but political inequality.
It’s striking: as economies stagnate, the top tier is living even larger while the low-income masses sink further into marginalized poverty. I call this widening divide between the vested interests/wealthy and the rest of society prosperity amidst the ruins.
Want to See How Governments Are Making Real Progress? Look to the Cities Tackling Our Biggest Problems by Sarah van Gelder — YES! Magazine
If you’ve been looking to the federal government for action on big challenges such as poverty, climate change, and immigration, this has been a devastating decade. Big money’s dominance of elections, obstructionism by the Tea Party, and climate denial have brought action in Washington to a near standstill. But while the media focuses on the gridlock, a more hopeful story is unfolding. Cities are taking action.
Climate change is a case in point. Cities are already experiencing the damage caused by an increasingly chaotic climate. Many are located along coastlines, where rising sea levels coupled with giant storms bring flooding and coastal erosion. Some low-lying areas are being abandoned.
Others cities face protracted water shortages due to diminishing rainfall and shrinking snowpack. And cities are subject to the urban heat island effect that can raise temperatures to lethal levels.
Cities can’t afford to wait for the ideological wars to play out.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Activists ‘Fed Up’ With Rate Rise Talk Offer Plosser a City Tour – Bloomberg
Activists ‘Fed Up’ With Rate Rise Talk Offer Plosser a City Tour – Bloomberg.
Labor and community organizers meeting with Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen challenged officials who are ready to raise interest rates to first come visit the poorest neighborhoods with them before saying that the economy has recovered.
Kati Sipp, one of about two dozen activists meeting Yellen, said at a press conference yesterday in front of the central bank in Washington that she would show Philadelphia Fed President Charles Plosser “what life is like in this economy” for his city’s unemployed.
“Clearly Charles Plosser hasn’t been coming out the way that I work,” said Sipp, director of Pennsylvania Working Families. “I work on 60th Street in West Philadelphia in a storefront office, and every single day someone or a couple of people come in to my office because they are looking for work.”
A spokeswoman for the Philadelphia Fed declined to comment.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Youth Should Work For Free – Bank of Canada Recommends | Armstrong Economics
Youth Should Work For Free – Bank of Canada Recommends | Armstrong Economics.
What is seriously being overlooked here around the world politically is we are dealing with a revolution of the youth as a consequence of the collapse in Marxism. Pictured above is Bank of Canada Governor Stephen Poloz who has amazingly stated that the rising unemployment among the youth who are living in their parent’s basements, should just consider working for free. That’s right! Adult children stuck in their parents’ basements should take unpaid work to bolster resumes as they wait for the recovery to take hold, which does not appear to be until about 2020.
The Bank of Canada estimates about 200,000 young people want to work or work more in Canada, but this seems to be an under-estimation. Poloz actually said that they may be scarred by prolonged unemployment that prevents them from moving out on their own.
Here in lies the crisis and it is the product of Marxist-Socialism and raising the taxes on the hated “rich” who create the jobs, yet the average person pictures Warren Buffet not the owner of the local store selling bread and milk. Small business creates 70% of the work force – not the big corporations that banks and politicians cater toward these days. They keep raising taxes on small business preventing people from trying to expand or start a business and the tax revenues go only in the pockets of politicians – they do not lower taxes for the middle class. Great slogans that the rich should give back, but the problem is it goes nowhere but to fund the pensions of government workers – nothing to lower the taxes on the lower classes.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Child Poverty Jumps by 2.6 Million in Developed World Since 2008, While Number of Global Billionaires Doubles | Liberty Blitzkrieg
Two headlines came across my screen today, which taken together pretty much sum up the effects of policy decisions made by Central Bankers and politicians since the financial crisis. The financial oligarchs got bailed out, and the rich got richer due to decisions made by “leaders” around the globe. As such, the entire planet has now been transformed into a neo-feudal tinderbox. Myself and countless others warned all the way back to 2008 that this is what would happen, and here you have it.
Let’s first examine the results from Oxfam’s report on the billionaire growth spurt. I hope all 1,645 of you have sent thank you notes to the patron saint of oligarchy: Ben Bernanke. From NBC:
The super-rich club has become less exclusive, with the amount of billionaires doubling since the financial crisis, according to a report from global charity Oxfam. There were 1,645 billionaires globally as of March 2014, according to Forbes data cited in the Oxfam report, up from 793 in March 2009.
The report ‘Even it Up: Time to End Extreme Inequality’ noted that the world’s richest 85 people saw their wealth jump by a further $668 million per day collectively between 2013 and 2014, which equates to half a million dollars a minute.
Unsurprisingly, this reverse Robin Hood policy of Central Banks and governments the world over has also resulted in increased poverty. Rob from the middle class and give to the oligarchs. Here’s what you get…
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
The Many Ways the State Taxes the Poor – Julian Adorney – Mises Daily
The Many Ways the State Taxes the Poor – Julian Adorney – Mises Daily.
Most defenders of the state assume that government services help the poor. And, sometimes, some poor people do benefit financially from government programs. But there’s a hidden cost: taxation and mandatory programs (Social Security, for instance) that hurt the needy by restricting their choices. Government taxes away income that low-income households could invest in improving their lives. At the same time, state-sponsored benefits create incentives that keep the poor trapped in poverty.
Many assume that government barely taxes the poor, but the reality is otherwise. The poorest fifth of Americans pay 16 percent of their incomes in taxes (including federal, state, and local). One in six dollars they earn goes straight to the government. For a family living at the margin, those taxes can be the difference between food on the table and hungry children.
Admittedly, a big chunk of government expenses is for programs designed to help the poor. But even when this money actually helps — and it rarely does — it’s important to note the pernicious effects of taxation. Consider: every dollar of taxes is one dollar that a worker must give to the government first, regardless of whether that dollar could help him feed his family or improve his livelihood. If a poor man is faced with the choice of paying taxes or starting a business, he had best choose the former, otherwise he’ll go to jail.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Special Report: Why Madrid’s poor fear Goldman Sachs and Blackstone | Reuters
Special Report: Why Madrid’s poor fear Goldman Sachs and Blackstone | Reuters.
(Reuters) – Last year Madrid’s city and regional governments sold almost 5,000 rent-controlled flats to private equity investors including Goldman Sachs and Blackstone. At the time, the tenants were told their rental conditions would remain the same.
But as old contracts expire, dozens of people have received demands for higher rent, been told their rents will increase dramatically, been threatened with eviction or moved out to escape the insecurity. Thousands of Spain’s poor now depend for their homes on the generosity of private equity.
Jamila Bouzelmat is one of them.
The mother of six lives in a four-bedroom flat on the outskirts of the Spanish capital that was bought jointly by Goldman and a Spanish firm. The 44-year-old said that until March her family paid 58 euros ($73) a month in rent out of her husband’s 500-euro unemployment benefit. In April, her bank statement shows, her new landlords suddenly took 436 euros from her bank account.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
The Age of Vulnerability by Joseph E. Stiglitz – Project Syndicate
The Age of Vulnerability by Joseph E. Stiglitz – Project Syndicate.
NEW YORK – Two new studies show, once again, the magnitude of the inequality problem plaguing the United States. The first, the US Census Bureau’s annual income and poverty report, shows that, despite the economy’s supposed recovery from the Great Recession, ordinary Americans’ incomes continue to stagnate. Median household income, adjusted for inflation, remains below its level a quarter-century ago.
It used to be thought that America’s greatest strength was not its military power, but an economic system that was the envy of the world. But why would others seek to emulate an economic model by which a large proportion – even a majority – of the population has seen their income stagnate while incomes at the top have soared?
A second study, the United Nations Development Program’s Human Development Report 2014, corroborates these findings. Every year, the UNDP publishes a ranking of countries by their Human Development Index (HDI), which incorporates other dimensions of wellbeing besides income, including health and education.
Read more at http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/economic-failure-individual-insecurity-by-joseph-e–stiglitz-2014-10#qtjXzquHerihJ4ZK.99
