UN Special rapporteur Olivier De Schutter just published a report on fighting poverty with decent jobs:
A/HRC/53/33
Page 32 of 85
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
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)
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:
The 10th edition of the authoritative Global Rights Index shows that the global cost-of-living crisis has been met with a crackdown on the rights of working people in every region of the world.
A new Oxfam Report on the dangerous practice of funding private hospitals, forgetting the non rich…
How rich-country government and World Bank funding to for-profit
private hospitals causes harm, and why it should be stopped
Full English report .pdf (oi-files-d8-prod.s3.eu-west-2.amazonaws.com)
When it comes to strikes, there has been a long-running battle between the commission and the European Transport Workers’ Federation (ETF) and the ATCEUC, which represent ATC workers at the EU level. The ETF and ATCEUC rebuff any measures significantly encroaching on the right to strike—article 153(5) of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union clearly states that the right to strike is excluded from EU competencies.
This new paper from Stephen Kidd, Nayha Mansoor and Angela Barca explains how universal social security can be achieved, in spite of government fiscal constraints.
In a collaboration with Act Church of Sweden and Action Against Hunger, the study also outlines how schemes could be rolled out in specific countries, and the potential impacts of universal systems.
Last month, the European Parliament hosted a landmark, Beyond Growth conference. As European trade-union federations representing public-service workers across Europe, we believe that this concept, of going ‘beyond growth’ towards wellbeing within planetary boundaries, may hold the key to a different Europe.
Many who spoke during the conference stressed the role of ‘universal basic services’ at the core of an alternative—moving away from the commercialisation of public services and commodification of all aspects of life, reclaiming democratic public control and imagining an economy orientated towards human rights that works for people and the planet. With the European Parliament elections a year ahead, the political parties are well-advised to take up these concepts and demand that the next European Commission’s work programmes be based on this perspective.
In the face of the unprecedented global crises that the world is currently facing, upholding and fulfilling the human right to food and a clean, safe and healthy environment have become critically important. The Human Rights Council (HRC) adopted two important resolutions on these issues in its 52nd Session, held from 27 February to 04 April 2023. The present policy brief discusses the implications and scope of these resolutions to strengthen and advance fundamental human rights, building resilience and promoting the role of multilateralism as a tool to face the triple planetary crises and recover better from the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Policy Brief of the South Centre
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