Category Archives: Politics

Economic, Government, Politics, Society

Reducing income inequality

INCOME DISPARITIES

Intro: Most people agree that income inequality is too extreme and that it needs to be reduced. But by how much?

INEQUALITY remains a major political issue in the world today. Most people agree that inequality is too extreme and needs to be reduced.

In the UK, the income ratio between the richest 0.01 per cent and minimum-wage workers has reached around 150 to one. Within the FTSE 100 firms, pay ratios between CEOs and lower paid workers hover at about 100 to one. Similar inequalities prevail in many other countries, while in the United States the figures are much worse, with pay ratios and disparities sometimes reaching into the thousands.

There is nothing natural or inevitable about extreme inequality. It is the predictable result of an economic system that distributes income based on who owns the means of production and who has the most market power, rather than according to any common-sense principle of labour contribution, human needs or justice.

Inequality corrodes society and poisons democracy, but it is also ecologically dangerous. The wealthiest in society consume an extraordinary amount of energy, resulting in high emissions and making decarbonisation more difficult to achieve. Recent research by Joel Millward-Hopkins published in Nature Communications shows that if we want to ensure decent lives for everyone on the planet, and by decarbonising quickly enough to feasibly achieve the Paris Agreement goals on the climate, we will need to dramatically reduce the purchasing power of the rich, while distributing resources more equitably.

But how much should inequality be reduced? What is an appropriate level of inequality? Millward-Hopkins’ research shows that if we are to ensure that everyone has access to resources necessary for a decent living, then a distribution where the richest consume at most around six times that level would be compatible with achieving climate stability. This may sound radical, but this distribution is very close to what people around the world say is a “fair” level of inequality. In some countries – such as Argentina, Norway and Turkey – people say they want inequality to be even lower, with ratios less than four to one.

People want to live in a society that is fair. This is apparent when we look at public sector pay scales, the closest thing we have to a democratically determined distribution. In major British institutions like the National Health Service (NHS) and within the universities, where unions representing members have a say over pay scales, the gaps between the highest and lowest salary bands rarely exceed five to one. If we correct for career-stage, the gaps are much smaller: the starting salary for a doctor or a lecturer is only about twice as high as that of a cleaner.  

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European Union, Government, Politics, Russia, Society, Ukraine, United States

Eastern Europe is growing stronger amid the war in Ukraine

EUROPEAN UNION

Intro: The balance of power in the European Union is shifting eastward

AS 2022 draws to a close, Russia’s war in Ukraine rages unabated. Russian President Vladimir Putin sees what he still calls a “special military operation” as a life-or-death contest with the United States and its NATO allies. The West, for its part, considers the war a threat to its own security and has thrown its weight behind the defence of Ukraine’s territorial sovereignty.

There is an inherent problem, however, with framing the war as a clash between the US and Russia. It underplays the spirit, resilience, and enormous daily sacrifices of Ukrainian’s in resisting their mighty neighbour bent on re-creating a Moscow-centred imperial order. Had there been no resolve among Ukrainians to fight back aggression and revanchism then no amount of military and financial aid for Kyiv would have been sufficient to thwart the Kremlin’s ambition. 

That Eastern European countries and nations have agency and are more than pawns in the power struggles of larger players is imperative to understand. And it goes well beyond the example of Ukraine.

Poland has become a much more significant and influential player in European defence than it ever was. It is not just the fact that it is a front-line country which takes in many displaced refugees fleeing war from Ukraine, nor that it provides a land route to supply its neighbour with weapons and humanitarian aid, but, strategically, Poland is also ramping up its defence spending from 2.2 per cent of its gross domestic product to a record 3 per cent in 2023. That is one of the highest rates within NATO. The money will go into modernising and expanding its military forces and could make the Polish army one of the largest on the continent.

Warsaw is purchasing tanks and self-propelled howitzers from South Korea in a deal worth $5.8bn and will acquire state-of-the-art F35 fighter jets from the US in the future.

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Environment, Government, Politics, Society, United Nations, United States

Globalised food systems are making hunger worse

LONG-READ: FOOD SUPPLY

Intro: Food disruptions from the pandemic to the war in Ukraine show the need for strong local supply chains. Yet the US and others won’t learn

FROM COVID-19 to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war on Ukraine to climate change, it seems all the calamities afflicting the world are converging to make hunger worse. The latest United Nations report on hunger finds the increase in the number of undernourished people globally this year has eliminated any progress over the past decade.

Yet while the world has not seen hunger at these levels for years, scholars have long warned that a catastrophe was looming. The world’s food system is more interconnected and complex than ever, built upon layers of transnational dependencies. It is why a war in Europe can exacerbate a famine in Somalia — a country which imports most of its wheat and saw its supply of bread all but collapse overnight when exports of Ukrainian wheat ceased.

But instead of reducing the fragility of the food system, the latest international efforts led by the United States to end hunger are only exacerbating it — especially for Africa — by globalising the system further. Just this week, US President Joe Biden has promised African leaders gathered in Washington that the United States is “all in” on Africa. But the US needs to make sure that it is “all in” the right way, particularly when it comes to food.

The current crisis began when multiple pandemic-related shocks converged on the system, including lockdowns, a global economic downturn, and illnesses among food system workers, especially factory workers and migrant labourers. Climate change-related weather events, inflation and the Ukraine war have aggravated these stresses, rendering a complex and highly industrialised food system unable to serve the neediest people in the world even as it maintains steady supplies for the Global North.

It is increasingly clear that in moments when the world is under severe stress, globalisation is not a strength but a weakness, not a foundation for the system’s stability but a reason for its fragility. Any calamity anywhere in the world — whether a viral outbreak, drought or conflict — is a shock to the entire system, but one felt most acutely by the most vulnerable people and in the most vulnerable places.

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