Category: News (page 34 of 75)

The World Bank’s ‘Evolution Roadmap’

A civil society briefing – published in response to the World Bank’s public consultation on the ‘Evolution Roadmap’ and endorsed by 74 organisations and indidivuals (see pp. 9-10) – calls for a World
Bank Group roadmap that prioritises people, participation and the planet over profit and economic
growth. It provides an alternative analysis of the current ‘crisis of development’ which the Evolution
Roadmap seeks to respond to; presents key evidence on the damaging effects of the ´Cascade´
approach to date; and proposes an alternative pathway towards a more equitable and sustainable
World Bank Group ‘evolution’, which would reverse the flow of the Cascade, putting public interest –
including grassroots voices, and economic, social, women’s, girls’ and human rights – at the centre
of the public development paradigm for the 21st century, rather than the profits of corporations and
private finance

Read the briefing

Why the Paris Financing Summit failed

The recent Paris Summit for a New Global Financing Pact was touted by its organisers, including the French president, Emmanuel Macron, as a groundbreaking initiative to forge a ‘new contract’ between the global north and south that would address climate change and foster sustainable development. The fact that most G20 leaders did not even bother to show up, however, casts doubt on the feasibility of the effort.

Despite the participation of roughly 50 heads of state, high-ranking representatives of international institutions, private-sector executives and climate experts, the summit did not live up to its lofty promises. It failed to introduce the necessary measures to narrow the climate-finance gap, provide lower-income countries with the fiscal space they need to weather the current debt crisis and overhaul the global financial architecture.

Shockingly, the summit concluded without a single firm commitment.

Read the article by Jayathi Ghosh and others

Debunking the Five Major Myths About Outmigration

Don’t tax the rich! If you do, they will leave the country … Well, no, they won’t! Read here why not

Debunking the Five Major Myths About Outmigration – Mass. Budget and Policy Center (massbudget.org)

You can’t own the Sea

No matter how rich you are … The deaths aboard the Titan submersible are a tragedy — a tragedy born of the hubris of the ultra-wealthy.

Read Jacobin’s article

The Rice Bowl of the Chinese People

At the 2012 United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development held in Rio de Janeiro (Brazil), member states decided to replace the Millennium Development Goals (established in 2000) with Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The first SDG was to ‘end poverty in all its forms everywhere’. Despite the enthusiastic verbiage, it was clear that poverty was simply not going to be ended across the world. Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, the data showed that poverty had become intractable.

So how did China eradicate poverty ?

Read Vijay Prashat’s story

World Bank’s “B-Ready” index promotes race to the bottom for workers

The ITUC warns that the World Bank’s new “B-Ready” project signals bad news for working people, as it will undermine labour rights and social protection across employment sectors.

Described as the Bank’s “corporate flagship”, B-Ready presents itself as an index that supposedly measures the business and investment climates in 180 economies worldwide annually.

ITUC’s Analysis https://www.ituc-csi.org/IMG/pdf/b_ready_memo_en.pdf

The job guarantee in the fight against Poverty

UN Special rapporteur Olivier De Schutter just published a report on fighting poverty with decent jobs:

G2307164.pdf (un.org)

A/HRC/53/33

Wealth tax and wealth redistribution in Africa

Sub-Saharan Africa is one of the most unequal places in the world, with significant levels of social, gender, and income inequality. Several countries in the region have a tax structure that is heavily weighted towards consumption taxes, which can be regressive and inflict a significant burden on those with low and middle incomes. Implementing progressive tax systems, whereby those with higher earnings pay a larger share in taxes, is one way through which governments might optimize the impact of tax revenue on reducing inequality. The adoption of a wealth tax may facilitate wealth redistribution in Sub-Saharan African nations and could help bridge the inequality gap in the region. High statutory wealth tax rates of between 5-8% are needed in order to have an effective tax rate of 3-5%.

Read the paper by South Centre

The Political Opposition to the Prevailing System has been shattered

1. Marxism has been fundamental in understanding, and in making people understand how, in the modern world, every change of habit and of opinion (that has become hegemonic) always has a bottom structural root. If one does not understand how to situate the problem with respect to the mechanisms of distribution of the economy and of power (most often coincident), one ends up losing sight of the only sphere where the causally decisive levers can be moved.

2. To this must be added the fact that the generational distribution of political consciousness has followed a downward curve. This is a historically unprecedented fact. Until recently, young people were part of the fighting ranks, universities were always niches of protest. The question is: what happened?

3. To get a clue, it is interesting to note what issues activism is focused-on today. Namely: a) on an environmentalism focused on climate change; b) on issues of identity, violence and gender equality; c) on food practices (veganism, synthetic and insect meat; and d) on appeals to human rights in a very selective version. But, on the other hand: There can and does exist: a) an authentic structural environmentalism; b) a historical-structural awareness of the sexual division of labor; c) a correct analysis of the exploitation of nature; and d) a political consciousness in the application of human rights. But none of this is largely part of the current political activism that is rigorously sanitized of its structural implications. (Keep in mind the role of the media apparatus and of school and university indoctrination on this…).

4. The new system of control provides places where it is possible to engage in fake revolutions with cardboard swords, where real power plays its games. This construction process creates artificial fences without structural anchorage. Today, these carefully castrated political agendas spread and make their strident voice heard, which are echoed with benevolence and are finally blessed by the spokesmen of power.

5. Ergo, forgetting what the real levers of power are, activists devote themselves, body and soul, to rather moralizing actions. This infantilization of the historical-political analysis renders any activism fatally impotent when the world is examined as if the distribution of moral adjectives were at its center. Too much energy and passion are invested in carefully delimited fields (you end up taking the shape of the boot that tramples you –so you suffer less… but you jump with bloodshot eyes if somebody uses a frowned-upon gender pronoun…). Aha! And while all this is happening, and it happens a lot,these activists are furiously fighting among themselves…. (all from A. Zhok, Historia de una Involución: De la Política Estructural al Moralismo Histérico)

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Stop Austerity!

For the ‘Stop Austerity’ Campaign, Isabel Ortiz and her team have listed 143 countries whose people are victims of the latest austerity policies. These policies are the result of recommendations given by the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank but are avidly accepted by most governments. It is obvious some of the current fiscal problems of countries can be seen as a consequence of the pandemic. However, it is a fact that the post-pandemic shock is much more severe than the post financial crisis shock of 2009.

It looks as ‘old news’, since most countries – an most of all their people – are suffering from the successive fiscal and austerity crises since the 1980s. It is almost unbelievable that 40 years later, these policies are still being pursued and their cumulative consequences are hardly mentioned anymore. We are now living a deep economic and social crisis, coupled to severe threats to democracy and to the planet’s health.

Read the article by Francine Mestrum:

Stop austerity! | Meer

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