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Alexei Goudzenko

Reimagining Food Systems in the Midst of a Hunger Crisis - IPS ipsnews.net - 0 views

ipsnews.net/news.asp

food systems reimagining

shared by Alexei Goudzenko on 04 Jun 11 - No Cached
  • "We can and must re- imagine other food systems that take numerous social dimensions into account."
  • These are poverty, caused by trade policies that dump heavily- subsidised produce from developed countries on third world markets, thus rendering local farmers jobless; environmental degradation brought on by industrialised farming, which now accounts for nearly one-third of global green house gas emissions; and an epidemic of malnutrition caused by the colonising effects of mono-crops and a flood of processed food from the global north to the global south.
  • Agro-ecology, which includes systems that produce their own fertiliser using materials and waste from the surrounding environment, is being increasingly viewed as the only viable solution to the hunger crisis. Since prices of fertiliser doubled during the 2008 food crisis, continents like Africa that import 95 percent of their chemical fertilisers could see radically different outcomes in production by adopting agro-ecological techniques.
Joey Keum

Canadian job market will get worse: TD - 1 views

www.financialpost.com/...story.html

jobs canadians market

shared by Joey Keum on 03 Jun 11 - No Cached
  • Derek Burleton, deputy chief economist with TD Economics, forecasts net job creation to slide to less than 200,000 in 2011, almost half of the 350,000 jobs created in 2010, before headwinds start to clear out in 2012.
  • This boosted the total share of service employment relative to overall employment to 78.1% in August 2010 from 74% in 1998.
  • Wage growth is also expected to remain "tepid," hovering at about 2% or around the rate of inflation in an environment of relatively high unemployment.
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  • This challenge ... will be more pronounced across the economy than that suggested by the comparatively high rates of unemployment," he said. "The sectoral shifts evidenced across the economy over the past decade — and in particular away from manufacturing to services — has created an increased mismatch in job skills along with the growing problem of skills atrophy."
  • Long-term, the solution is education and training, but there are limits on what can be done in the near-term, Mr. Burleton said.
Alejandro Enamorado

ROHAC: Income inequality doesn't matter - Washington Times - 1 views

www.washingtontimes.com/...ncome-inequality-doesnt-matter

income inequality rohac

shared by Alejandro Enamorado on 03 Jun 11 - No Cached
  • income inequality is not a useful measure. Measures of inequality tell us nothing about the living conditions of the poor, their health and their access to economic opportunity.
  • one should think primarily about lifting developing countries out of poverty rather than about reducing income disparities in wealthy countries.
  • Focusing on income inequality rather than drivers of poverty, obstacles to economic opportunity and systematic injustice obscures what really works and what does not in the realm of economic policy
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  • Putting in place restrictions on executive bonuses, taxing financial transactions and corporate profits does little to mitigate the flawed incentives that have led to exuberant financial booms. A genuine solution would consist of eliminating bailout guarantees to the banking sector, thus reducing the existing incentives for gambling with other people’s money.
  • the rise of cheap imports from countries such as China and new forms of large-scale retailing, epitomized by Wal-Mart and Sears, which have given the low-income groups access to goods that previously were enjoyed only by the rich. In terms of the actual material conditions of living, developed countries appear to be more equal than ever before.
  • growth of executive remuneration in the financial industry cannot be dissociated from a cozy relationship that has long existed between policymakers and bankers
Carolyne Wang

How paying people's way out of poverty can help us all - The Globe and Mail - 0 views

www.theglobeandmail.com/...singlepage

Income Inequality Tax Cuts Homelessness Set Annual Income Unemployment

shared by Carolyne Wang on 02 Jun 11 - No Cached
  • there’s an increasing awareness, among even the country’s most wealthy, that poverty reaches beyond the tables of the hungry and digs into their own pocketbooks
  • When people are poor, out of work or homeless, it hurts the bottom line of all Canadians. And as the country struggles to maintain a shaky recovery amid growing global economic uncertainty, that’s not a hit they can afford to take.
  • If Ottawa and the provinces fail to make this a priority, Tory Senator Hugh Segal predicts, “over time, we will begin to run out of the money that we need to deal with the demographic bulge because it will be consumed in the health care requirements of the poor, which will increase. It will be consumed in the costs of the illiteracy and unemployment which relate to poverty. ... And it'll be unsustainable.”
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  • It’s already on the radar of some provinces: One of Christy Clark’s first actions as B.C. Premier was to raise the province’s minimum wage for the first time in a decade and offer a tax cut for low-income families. Ontario has launched a sweeping review of social assistance programs that Community and Social Services Minister Madeleine Meilleur has admitted are failing the province’s neediest.
  • Despite Canada’s reputation for a strong social safety net, the country is becoming economically polarized. And the decades-old dominant economic dogma that growing wealth among society’s highest earners would trickle down to those less fortunate is being challenged by an alternative approach: Eliminate crushing poverty among the lowest earners, and wealth will trickle up.
  • The ranks of the working poor have swelled as minimum wages fail to keep pace with rising costs and social assistance levels drop.
  • The recession widened the chasm, and a subsequent recovery hasn’t closed it.
  • On paper, almost as many jobs have been added as were lost during the financial crisis. But they offer fewer hours and less pay – and some of the hardest-hit sectors aren’t coming back.
  • Food bank use hit a record high in 2010. Tellingly, more of the people using those food banks have jobs – they just don’t make enough to pay the bills or feed their families.
  • As the incomes of the country’s top earners have risen, the incomes of Canada’s lower- and middle-income earners have stagnated.
  • Tony Masciotra is diversifying himself. The Argentine-Canadian father of two went back to school immediately after being laid off from his tool and die job at Ford Motor Co. in Windsor three years ago.
  • “I have records of over 100 jobs I have applied for,” he said. “I have looked really hard. ... But I haven’t been able to get a job yet.
  • Mr. Masciotra is part of a growing group of skilled labourers on the brink. The métiers in which they’ve worked for years are no longer economically viable: Many well-paying blue-collar jobs are being replaced by minimum-wage, service-sector ones. And that’s causing significant shifts on both sides of the border, notes MIT economist David Autor.
  • It gets more complicated, and more economically detrimental, if the people who’ve lost jobs aren’t the ones being hired to new ones.
  • They enter what Robin Somerville of the Centre for Spatial Economics calls “structural unemployment.” And if they leave the workforce entirely, they fall off the radar of unemployment stats: The numbers look better precisely because they’re worse.
  • The drop is even more significant because more Canadians are putting off retirement. That should mean more people in the workforce. But it doesn’t: So many younger workers are dropping out entirely that they outweigh the older ones sticking around longer.
  • “If you’re losing opportunities in some areas, and you’re not replacing them with opportunities of equal or greater value, then the overall level of income in the economy is reduced. And the ability of people to go out and buy goods and services is reduced.”
  • Homelessness costs taxpayers money – in both foregone wealth and social service spending.
  • Some see a solution in a 40-year-old experiment: In the 1970s, Manitoba wanted to see what would happen if it guaranteed poor people in a few communities a set annual income.
  • The philosophy behind this is simple: People are more likely to stay in school, out of emergency rooms and out of jail; they contribute to the economy through their purchases; they’re more likely to move eventually above the poverty line and pay taxes.
  • The irony is that Canada already scores high compared to other OECD countries when it comes to helping the elderly. Where it falls short is where it matters: The working-age poor – the ones who should be contributing to the economy.
  • $134,000 Estimated amount for emergency shelter, emergency hospital care, law enforcement and other social services for one homeless person in Calgary, for one year
  • $34,000 Estimated cost to proide supportive housing for one person in Calgary, for one year
  • $12,555 Average cost of hospital stay for non-homeless patient at St. Michael's Hospital in Toronto
  • $15,114 Average cost of hospital stay for homeless patient at St. Michael's Hospital in Toronto
dylan huber

Income inequality | The Economist - 0 views

www.economist.com/...income_inequality

Inequality Income solutions USA

shared by dylan huber on 02 Jun 11 - No Cached
  • Despite a quarter century during which incomes have drifted ever farther apart, the distribution of wealth has remained remarkably stable. The richest Americans now earn as big a share of overall income as they did a century ago, but their share of overall wealth is much lower. Indeed, it has barely budged in the few past decades.
  • distribution of wealth has remained remarkably stable. The richest Americans now earn as big a share of overall income as they did a century ago, but their share of overall wealth is much lower. Indeed, it has barely budged in the few past decades.
  • Productivity and globalisation have caused real income to rise much faster for those at the top of the income distribution than it has for the poor and middle class. High earners experienced more than a 30% increase in their real income over the last thirty years. Meanwhile, the bottom 50% of wage earners saw their real income increased by only 5-10%.
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  • Whether these shifts were good or bad depends on your political persuasion. Those on the left lament the gaps, often forgetting that the greater income disparities have created bigger incentives to get an education, which has led to a better trained, more productive workforce. The share of American workers with a college degree, 20% in 1980, is over 30% today.
  • the focus should be on giving everyone a an equal chance to be successful. This might mean making the tax code less regressive by expanding the earned income tax credit, eliminating tax subsidies to the rich, and improving access to quality education. 
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