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calacuspr · 3 years

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This England team has shown us all what the power of sport really means

There have been a few times in recent years where the entire nation has appeared united and optimistic – and almost all of them have been connected to sport.

The World Cup in Italy in 1990, the EURO 96 in England and the London 2012 Olympic Games all come to mind as moments that will endure as epochs that transcend everything else going on in the world.

England has been particularly divided in recent years as the Leave and Remain factions argue; the challenges facing the nation during the COVID-19 pandemic; and the economic struggles that so many have encountered pretty much since the financial collapse a decade ago.

At Calacus, we work with organisations who see the value of sport to positively transform society and the England team has shown that throughout the build-up to EURO 2020 and beyond, they have brought the nation together in a way little else can.

Granted, it helped that England did so well, reaching the final of the tournament. It is hardly a new phenomenon that the squad is so multi-cultural, with players with family heritage from around the world.

While the aftermath of the defeat to Italy has shown the unpalatable side of society, the way in which the England manager and players have conducted themselves has been a masterclass in authentic communications.

STAY TRUE TO YOUR VALUES

Taking the knee has been part of football tradition in England for more than a year now, highlighting inequality and promoting diversity.

The England team have been criticised by many, with the Conservative MP for Ashfield, Lee Anderson, announcing that he would not watch “his beloved England team” while the players took the knee; Home Secretary Priti Patel suggesting that it was nothing more than “gesture politics.” and Prime Minister Boris Johnson refusing to criticise those who booed the team.

Given the racism that the likes of Marcus Rashford, Bukayo Saka, Raheem Sterling and others have suffered, particularly from online trolls, it’s remarkable that politicians sought to condemn them and accuse the team of Marxist tendencies and BLM affiliation rather than a compassionate plea for solidarity and equality over division.

England defender Tyrone Mings said: “Everyone’s entitled to their opinions. The home secretary is one of many, many people who oppose us taking the knee or refuse to defend it . . . we [have tried] to educate and inform the minority who refuse to acknowledge why we take the knee and want to boo it.”

Notably, the boos faded as the EURO 2020 tournament progressed and the team got to the later stages and it speaks volumes that many of those politicians who criticised the team then tried to associate themselves with them through staged photography that fooled no one.

CELEBRATE INCLUSION

This England team are no strangers to speaking up for those who don’t have a voice.

Marcus Rashford has campaigned for an end to child hunger and has twice forced the government to make u-turns over free school meals.

Raheem Sterling, one of the stars of the tournament for England and who has been vilified himself by media and fans alike, has fought hard to call out bigotry in the fight against racism.

EURO 2020 started during Pride month and saw players wear rainbow laces and captains use rainbow armbands, despite some mixed messaging from UEFA.

When England played Germany in the round of 16, captain Harry Kane joined his counterpart Manuel Neuer in wearing a rainbow armband with England's official Twitter account saying: “@HKane will join @DFB_Team 's Manuel Neuer in wearing a rainbow captain’s armband for tomorrow’s game at @wembleystadium to mark the end of Pride month, as the #ThreeLions stand in allyship with LGBTQ+ communities around the world.”

Kane himself explained: “From our point of view, it is a show of solidarity with the German national team from all of us at the England national team to be united in trying to kick out all inequalities there are. We’re on a huge platform on a big stage so it is obviously a great opportunity to do so.”

Jordan Henderson has shown himself to be a captain on and off the field, supporting local charities during lockdown as well as leading his Liverpool team to success over recent years.

He is thought to be one of the main drivers behind the team planning to donate its EURO 2020 prize money to good causes.

Their donation – which could be in the millions – will be made to NHS charities now that the football tournament has concluded.

The team made a statement last May which said: “Following positive discussions with the FA, the England senior men's squad are pleased to confirm that a significant donation from their international match fees will be made to NHS Charities Together via the #PlayersTogether initiative.

“This contribution will be taken from a fund already set aside to support a variety of worthy causes using all match fees collated since September 2018.”

While England supporters still let themselves down by booing national anthems at times during the tournament, it shows the progress that this England team has prompted that Joe White, an England fan who co-chairs Gay Gooners, Arsenal’s LGBT+ supporters group, attended the England v Germany match at Wembley Stadium “in full makeup.”

They wore red lipstick, shimmery eyeshadow and mascara along with a rainbow flag and England flag painted on their face to complete the look.

They tweeted: “This is a really small and personal point but today was my first game at Wembley in full makeup and overtly queer (as opposed to just camp). Absolutely no issues from fans and some lovely chats.

“Despite being absolutely petrified pre game, really proud of our fans”

Henderson responded: “Hi Joe great to hear you enjoyed the game as you should. No one should be afraid to go and support their club or country because football is for everyone no matter what. Thanks for your support, enjoy the rest of the Euros.”

How refreshing that the LGBTQ+ community can now support the national team with no fear of abuse or intimidation and that the Three Lions Pride can display positive banners – understandably celebrating Henderson’s goal against Ukraine.

ENCOURAGE TEAMWORK

England manager Gareth Southgate arguably had one of the most talented England squads in recent memory.

The team’s headquarters at St George’s Park became a centre of fun with photocalls featuring the likes of Bukayo Saka jumping into a pool on a flying unicorn inflatable and Ed Sheeran playing a special concert for the team not to mention a preview showing of Top Gun Maverick and call with its star Tom Cruise.

While early on, there was uproar among fans over players who had been left out of the starting XI or even the squad, with flair giving way to pragmatism, Southgate showed how much the team ethic mattered to him.

After the 4-0 victory over Ukraine, Southgate paid tribute to the members of his squad who had not featured much during the tournament.

He said: “I am thinking about the players who I had to leave out of the 23 because they have been such a massive part of what we’re doing. It is so difficult to keep a group of this size feeling valued and yet those guys have been phenomenal about how they have sacrificed themselves for the group.

"I feel the responsibility keenly. But it is these challenges that make us."

Not once during the tournament did any stories leak of disgruntled players, while the players reflected the afore-mentioned values by resisting well-trodden paths of nationalism that previous encounters with the likes of Germany may have engendered.

In fact, this England team have shown dignity in the face of criticism and the very definition of what it means to be a team – there are no egos, no vested interests.

Where once supporting England meant violence and xenophobia, this England team has inspired a new identity with a commitment to diversity, inclusion and a more tolerant society, which is a credit to them all.

SHOW REAL LEADERSHIP

It was quite telling when, during the celebrations following England’s win over Denmark, former international Gary Neville said: “The standard of the leaders in the past couple of years in this country has been poor but look at that man there... he’s everything a leader should be: respectful, humble, tells the truth, genuine. He’s fantastic, Gareth Southgate.”

Southgate has been humble, engaging, honest and resolute that he knew what he wanted to do and would not waver, even when senior politicians criticised some of the decisions made by him and his management team.

Ahead of the tournament, in an essay on patriotism, titled Dear England, Southgate linked football and national identity and underlined why the game means so much more than just sporting excellence.

“I have a responsibility to the wider community to use my voice, and so do the players. It’s their duty to continue to interact with the public on matters such as equality, inclusivity and racial injustice, while using the power of their voices to help put debates on the table, raise awareness and educate.

“On this island, we have a desire to protect our values and traditions – as we should – but that shouldn’t come at the expense of introspection and progress.”

Southgate has been calm and assured throughout his tenure, ensuring that he and the team are consistent in their focus, messaging and conduct. There have been no scandals, no drama and every press conference or media opportunity has been assured and engaging.

FACE ADVERSITY HEAD-ON

Losing on penalties is part of football, but it’s also something that England have encountered at a number of major tournaments.

The backlash after England’s defeat was brutal, with the three players who missed penalties, Jadon Sancho, Marcus Rashford and Bukayo Saka all targets of racist abuse.

Some MPs also used the defeat as an opportunity to tell players to keep out of politics, such as Andrew Rosindell, who tweeted: “We are all proud of our England team, who have had the support of the whole country over recent weeks, but please focus of football, not politics. If you win for England, you win for everyone!”

Home Secretary Priti Patel expressed her outrage at the racism, prompting Mings to again address her double standards.

He said: “You don’t get to stoke the fire at the beginning of the tournament by labelling our anti-racism message as ‘Gesture Politics’ & then pretend to be disgusted when the very thing we’re campaigning against, happens.”

Soon after the game, the mural in tribute to Rashford was vandalised, prompting hundreds of positive messages and fans voicing their support for the Manchester United forward.

Rashford tweeted: ““I’ve grown into a sport where I expected to read things written about myself. Whether it be the colour of my skin, where I grew up, or, most recently, how I decide to spend my time off the pitch.

“I dreamt of days like this. The messages I’ve received today have been positively overwhelming and seeing the response in Withington had me on the verge of tears. The communities that always wrapped their arms around me continue to hold me up.

“I’m Marcus Rashford, 23-year-old black man from Withington and Wythenshawe, South Manchester. If I have nothing else I have that. For all the kind messages thank you. I’ll be back stronger. We’ll be back stronger.”

CONCLUSION

The England team have shown without doubt the power of sport to unify – and while EURO 2020 is now over, we have the Olympic Games coming up where athletes will come together in the spirit of competition and camaraderie.

As Southgate put it: “The reality is that the result is just a small part of it. When England play, there’s much more at stake than that.

“It’s about how we conduct ourselves on and off the pitch, how we bring people together, how we inspire and unite, how we create memories that last beyond the 90 minutes. That last beyond the summer. That last forever.”

While the positivity has proved to be a brief moment in time, the England squad showed society how to empathise, respect and engage in a way that has been in short supply for so long.

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siumerghe · 3 years

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“Double White” in Men with Sword: trust issues?

When Nansu King said that Tianji lost because Jian Bin didn’t trust Qi Zhikan my reaction was o_O?! Really?!

I don’t think there is anything in the story that supports this claim. Even when QZK secretly communicated when someone, JB didn’t suspect him of being a traitor. He only wanted QZK to be honest with him, and after QZK gave an explanation (a very flimsy one, actually) JB was like: “Ok, I believe you 100%, no proof needed, pls don’t hide anything from me”. Murong Li did try to sow discord between them but the subsequent events show that he failed: throughout the story, “Double White” demonstrated stable trust in each other. Every time QZK got whatever he asked from JB, be it a royal token of authority, a carte blanche at crucial diplomatic negotiations, or commanding the allied army. And JB kept protecting him at court, even going as far as instigating the army to rebel(!) if QZK were to be punished for the unsuccessful campaign.

There was only one(!) case when JB and QZK disagreed with each other (which is a normal thing and doesn’t necessarily indicate a mistrust) - whether to attack Tianxuan or Nansu. JB didn’t blindly accept the Grand Astrologer’s suggestion to attack Nansu - he spent the whole night thinking about it before concluding that Nansu would be indeed a better target. Still, he was ready to accept QZK’s opinion and attack Tianxuan, it’s just that QZK himself chose not to insist. So where is distrust here? (It was MRL, the source of QZK’s info, whom JB didn’t trust - and he was totally right doing so.)

At the moment, attacking Tianxuan indeed seemed more reasonable, however, future events showed that JB’s decision was the correct one: it turned out that Nansu had been targeting Tianji from the start (according to Nansu King’s own words). If Tianji had attacked Tianxuan, later Nansu would have easily swallowed both war-worn states, which probably was MRL and Nansu King's plan all along. Not to mention that Tianshu would have supported its ally Tianxuan, so first Tianji, already weakened by food shortage, would have faced war at two fronts - and then an attack by Nansu.

Thanks to JB not following QKZ’s (actually, MRL’s) suggestion to attack Tianxuan, later Tianxuan turned out to be the only kingdom that gave Tianji the real help (an army) against Nansu, as opposed to Tianquan and Tianshu, that provided only supplies (Tianshu withheld its army even when directly asked for help).

The more I think about it the more I respect JB as a politician. Being a young ruler of a newly founded kingdom, without any older and reliable advisers, he managed: - to create a powerful army (in the beginning the situation was so bad that he had to protect the borders himself; not to mention that only several years ago Tianxuan took their capital(!) and stole the important relic), - to suppress the Grand Astrologer’s meddling in state matters (no, he couldn’t simply kill him without dire consequences for the state - at least, not in the semi-realistic setting of MwS S1), - to counterbalance the Grand Astrologer’s influence at court by elevating QZK (he basically exchanged the position of the High General for QZK - a position with real power - for the Astrology Office for the Grand Astrologer which turned out to be an empty title with no authority), - to protect QZK many times with clever political maneuvering, - not to fall into the trap of attacking Tianxuan...

Did Tianji have a chance to survive at all? What was JB’s fatal mistake, the point of no return?

Tianshu’s economic trick did weaken Tianji, but it was the risky decision to replenish the granaries by war after which everything spiraled out of control: precious resources were squandered on an unsuccessful campaign, Tianji lost a significant part of its army, morale plummeted, refugees appeared... However, war wasn’t the only option to resolve the food crisis: after QZK had been defeated, JB said that now they have to resort to buying food from other countries for high prices. So, perhaps, that’s what they should have done in the first place? Sacrifice their pride and NOT START A WAR BECAUSE OF A FOOD SHORTAGE?! I don’t want to mention the dubious moral of this decision (to murder people and steal their food). It’s like quenching fire with gasoline because war requires lots of resources. Instead, they should have bought food from other countries, confiscate excessive grain from rich and powerful (like they did to supply the army), and introduce a system of state granaries to prevent hunger in the future (such systems existed irl in Ancient China). These measures would have allowed Tianji to survive the crisis. At least, Tianji would have met Nansu as a stable state with the unscathed army (and with Tianxuan and Tianshu as potential allies against the common foe). In this case, Nansu probably wouldn’t even have attempted the invasion.

And whose suggestion it was to start the war in order to resolve the food crisis?! QZK!

In the end, Tianji lost not because JB didn’t trust QZK - but because he trusted him too much and overestimated his abilities. QZK was a talented warrior and tactician, but strategy and politics weren’t his forte. He knew that he excels in warfare, so he tried to solve every problem by war - a big mistake. That’s where the lack of a wise Prime Minister in Tianji is especially apparent.

So, when Nansu King said that Tianji lost because JB didn’t trust QZK, he either lied or was uninformed. He and MRL did plan to drive a wedge between JB and QZK (like when MRL kept telling QZK that JB didn’t trust him), but in the end only JB and QZK (and viewers) can know whether their plan had been successful or not. The words about the lack of trust between JB and QZK aren’t supported by JB’s actions - they are just words.

When, in the end, JB said that he failed QZK he referred not to the lack of trust. With the best intentions in mind, JB brought QZK to the capital, placed him in the snake pit that was the royal court, used him as a counterbalance for the Grand Astrologer (thus pitting the Grand Astrologer and QZK against each other), showered him with gifts and honors QZK didn't need - and in the end sent to the war with no chance to win. JB many times promised QZK to protect him but failed to fulfill this promise.

#men with sword #meta #刺客列传

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newstfionline · 3 years

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Wednesday, September 8, 2021

Trudeau is met with flying gravel at campaign stop (Washington Post) Hours after Prime Minister Justin Trudeau vowed that he “won’t back down” in the face of the “anti-vaxxer mobs,” protesters—many of them opposed to coronavirus vaccinations and public health measures—threw gravel at him at a campaign stop on Monday evening. The incident occurred while Trudeau was boarding his campaign bus after an event at a brewery in London, Ontario, a city some 120 miles southwest of Toronto. Videos posted to social media of the episode show protesters throwing gravel in the direction of the prime minister and some of the reporters traveling with him. It was the latest ugly scene in a 36-day federal election campaign that has not been short of them. Vandals have defaced candidate lawn signs with antisemitic graffiti. Candidates of all political stripes have reported being targeted with sexist and racist slurs.

Ida’s aftermath (1440) The death toll from Hurricane Ida rose to at least 60 over the holiday weekend, with more than half of the victims coming from the Northeast. At least 27 people were confirmed dead in New Jersey, 17 in New York, and five in Pennsylvania, with a number of isolated deaths reported up the Mid-Atlantic. As of this morning, 13 victims have been identified in Louisiana and two in Mississippi. Assessing the storm’s weeklong path of destruction from the Gulf to Massachusetts, analysts estimated Ida caused as much as $95B in total damage and economic loss. More than half a million customers remained without power in Louisiana, mostly in New Orleans and surrounding parishes, as of this morning. Out in the Atlantic, Hurricane Larry is expected to strengthen into a Category 4 storm, but is not currently projected to make US landfall.

Powerful earthquake near Mexico’s Acapulco kills at least 1 (AP) A powerful earthquake struck near the Pacific resort city of Acapulco on Tuesday night, killing at least one person and causing buildings to rock and sway in Mexico City hundreds of kilometers away. The U.S. Geological Survey said the quake had a preliminary magnitude of 7 and was centered 17 kilometers (about 10 miles) northeast of Acapulco. The mayor of Acapulco, Adela Román, said in statement to the television news outlet Milenio that “there is no really serious situation” so far and no reports of casualties. “There are nervous breakdowns; people are worried because there have been aftershocks,” she said, adding that there are “many gas leaks in many places” as well as some landslides and fallen walls.

El Salvador first country to make Bitcoin legal currency (BBC) From today, businesses in El Salvador will be obliged where possible to accept the controversial blockchain-backed currency as payment as the country has just become the first to make Bitcoin a legal tender. Millions of people are expected to download the government’s new digital wallet app which gives away $30 (€25) in Bitcoin to every citizen.

Bolsonaro’s Supporters Rally (Foreign Policy) Thousands of Brazilians took to the streets across the country today, answering—and protesting—a call by President Jair Bolsonaro for a popular show of force as corruption investigations, lagging poll numbers, and the reemergence of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, have weakened his position ahead of the October 2022 presidential election. A September 1 poll shows Lula trouncing Bolsonaro by double digits in a one-on-one matchup. Those election polls pair with recent polls showing more than 50 percent of Brazilians say the Bolsonaro government is bad or terrible, although those that say his administration is good or excellent has held steady at roughly 25 percent.

Venice prepares to charge tourists (Reuters) From a control room inside the police headquarters in Venice, Big Brother is watching you. To combat tourist overcrowding, officials are tracking every person who sets foot in the lagoon city. Using 468 CCTV cameras, optical sensors and a mobile phone-tracing system, they can tell residents from visitors, Italians from foreigners, where people are coming from, where they are heading and how fast they are moving. Every 15 minutes, authorities get a snapshot of how crowded the city is—alongside how many gondolas are sliding on the Canal Grande, whether boats are speeding and if the waters rise to dangerous levels. City authorities are preparing to demand that tourists pre-book their visit on an app and charge day-trippers between 3 and 10 euros to enter, depending on the time of the year. Airport-like turnstiles are being tested to control the flow of people and, should the numbers become overwhelming, stop new visitors from getting in. Potential visitors are sceptical. “It brings the wrong tone in me when I hear that I have to pay entrance just to see the buildings in the streets of the city” said Marc Schieber, a German national in Venice for the current film festival. “I think it is probably a new way to generate money.”

Lukashenko continues crackdown on opposition (NYT) Belarusian opposition leader Maria Kolesnikova was found guilty Monday of conspiracy to overthrow the government in Minsk and sentenced to 11 years in prison after a closed trial. Kolesnikova is one of the key opposition figures jailed in Belarus after protests ignited in August last year over presidential elections rejected by opposition activists as rigged. President Alexander Lukashenko, who has been in power since 1994, launched a violent crackdown on the protests, jailing hundreds of the regime’s opponents.

Myanmar resistance movement calls for nationwide uprising (AP) The main underground group coordinating resistance to Myanmar’s military government called for a nationwide uprising on Tuesday. The National Unity Government views itself as a shadow government composed of elected legislators who were barred from taking their seats when the military seized power in February. The group’s acting president Duwa Lashi La called for revolt “in every village, town and city in the entire country at the same time” and declared what he called a “state of emergency.” The country has been wracked by unrest since the military ousted the elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi, with a low-level insurrection in many urban areas. There has been more serious combat in rural areas, especially in border regions where ethnic minority militias have been engaging in serious clashes with the government’s troops.

Forget Tiger Moms. Now China's 'Chicken Blood' Parents Are Pushing Kids To Succeed (NPR) They schedule their children's days in 15-minute increments. They scour online forums and swap tips on the most exclusive tutors and best sports coaches. Some even buy second homes next to the best public schools. Forget Tiger moms. These are China's jiwa or "chicken" parents, who are known for their attentive—some say obsessive—parenting style. The term is used to describe aggressive helicopter parenting, and comes from an unproven Chinese medicine treatment dating back to the 1950s, in which someone is injected with fresh chicken blood to stimulate energy. Jiwa parenting culture, a relatively new phenomenon, is now in the crosshairs of Chinese authorities. At a time when the government wants to see families having more children and raising more future workers, it fears that hyper-competitive parenting pressures—combined with the meteoric growth of China's private education sector, now worth billions—are deepening inequality and discouraging couples from having larger families, a priority of the country's new three-child policy. As more parents complain about the burnout brought on by jiwa culture, there's concern that the financial and emotional toll is making many reluctant to have a second, much less a third, child.

Singapore trials patrol robots to deter bad social behaviour (Reuters) Singapore has started trialing robots to patrol public areas and deter poor social behaviour in its latest effort to further augment its strong portfolio of surveillance tools. Ranked one of the safest countries in the world, Singapore has put two autonomous robots on trial to detect bad behaviour such as flouting of COVID-19 safety measures, smoking in prohibited areas and the improper parking of bicycles, Singapore’s Home Team Science and Technology Agency said in a statement on Sunday. It said the two patrol robots, named Xavier, are equipped with cameras that can detect bad social behaviour and trigger real-time alerts to the command and control centre. The agency said that during the three-week trial, the robots would be used for surveillance and displaying messages to educate the public on proper behaviour. Singapore’s home affairs minister, K Shanmugam, said in August the city-state aimed to have more than 200,000 police cameras by 2030, more than double the current number of cameras deployed.

3-year-old boy found after 3 days’ lost in Australian woods (AP) A 3-year-old boy wearing a sweat shirt and diapers was found sitting in a creek and cupping water in his hands to drink on Monday, three days after he was lost in rugged Australian woodland. Hundreds of people had been searching for Anthony “AJ” Elfalak, who has autism and is non-verbal, since he went missing from his family’s remote rural property near the village of Putty, north of Sydney, late Friday morning. His father, Anthony Elfalak, said AJ had been bitten by ants, had diaper rash and suffered abrasions. “It’s a miracle,” the father told reporters after he and his wife, Kelly Elfalak, were reunited with their son.

US-built databases a potential tool of Taliban repression (AP) Over two decades, the United States and its allies spent hundreds of millions of dollars building databases for the Afghan people. The nobly stated goal: Promote law and order and government accountability and modernize a war-ravaged land. But in the Taliban’s lightning seizure of power, most of that digital apparatus—including biometrics for verifying identities—apparently fell into Taliban hands. Built with few data-protection safeguards, it risks becoming the high-tech jackboots of a surveillance state. As the Taliban get their governing feet, there are worries it will be used for social control and to punish perceived foes. “It is a terrible irony,” said Frank Pasquale, Brooklyn Law School scholar of surveillance technologies. “It’s a real object lesson in ‘The road to hell is paved with good intentions.’”

The other Afghan women (New Yorker) Anand Gopal traveled to rural Afghanistan to meet women living under Taliban rule, whose voices are not often heard in international media. “Unlike in relatively liberal Kabul, visiting women in these hinterlands is not easy” since they don’t typically speak to unrelated men, Gopal writes. Many of those he interviewed seemed to prefer Taliban rule to the US-led occupation. “To locals, life under the coalition forces and their Afghan allies was pure hazard; even drinking tea in a sunlit field, or driving to your sister’s wedding, was a potentially deadly gamble,” Gopal writes. “What the Taliban offered over their rivals was a simple bargain: Obey us, and we will not kill you.”

Israel searches for 6 Palestinians after rare prison break (AP) Israel launched a massive manhunt in the country’s north and the occupied West Bank early Monday after six Palestinian prisoners tunneled out of their cell and escaped from a high-security facility in the biggest prison break of its kind in decades. The escape marks an embarrassing security breach just ahead of the Jewish New Year, when Israelis flock to the north to enjoy beaches, campsites and the Sea of Galilee. The prisoners appear to have gone into hiding and there was no indication Israeli authorities view them as an immediate threat. Israel’s Army Radio said 400 prisoners are being moved as a protective measure against any additional escape attempts. The radio said the prisoners escaped through a tunnel from the Gilboa prison, just north of the West Bank, which is supposed to be one of Israel’s most secure facilities.

Zuma on parole (BBC) Former South African president Jacob Zuma has been granted medical parole for an unknown illness. Zuma has been in hospital for the past month, where he has undergone surgery and will reportedly remain there until he has been discharged. The 79-year-old is serving a 15-month sentence for contempt of court at Estcourt Correctional Centre. Zuma turned himself in to the authorities in July after being sentenced for failing to attend an inquiry into corruption during his presidency. The unprecedented jailing resulted in violent protests and looting by his loyal body of supporters. He also faces a separate corruption trial, which is due to resume on 9 September. The Democratic Alliance party criticized the parole, saying it’s “entirely unlawful and makes a mockery” of prison regulations.

#headlines #news

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ayittey1 · 6 years

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Infamous Quotes of African Autocrats and Their Cohorts

Sekou Toure, the late and former president of Guinea (1958-1984):

"We prefer to live in poverty in liberty to riches in slavery." In 1958.

“Before independence, there were 12 political parties in Guinea. Now there is only one: Le Parti Democratique de Guinea (PDG). Anyone who says I am a dictator because we have only one party and no opposition doesn't understand what we are trying to accomplish. The party is not a goal, but a method to achieve the goal of human freedom. Our constitution permits complete freedom for the existence of Opposition parties. However, in the last election, 91 percent of the people voted for the PDG. The Opposition received only five or six percent of the votes, and decided to join our party. This meant reconciliation, and two of their leaders received responsible posts. Actually, the Opposition's point of view can be expressed much better within the party than from outside it (Italiaander, Rolf, The New Leaders of Africa. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice‑Hall: 1961; p.146.

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Mengistu Haile Mariam, former PM of Ethiopia (1974-1991):

“We are now on the threshold of the formation of the People's Democratic Republic of Ethiopia. The constitution was drafted by representatives of the people themselves. It has been submitted to all Ethiopian citizens including those living abroad, and it will be promulgated after it is put to a referendum. Such democratic participation is unparalleled in the history of Ethiopia. Once the constitution assumes its final shape, Ethiopia will never again be ruled by the personal absolutism of any one individual or a handful of individuals. The victory of socialism is inevitable!" (Time, Aug 4, 1986; p. 34).

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Flight Lt. Jerry Rawlings, former president of Ghana (1981-2000):

On handing over power and returning Ghana to democratic rule in 1988:

“Hand over power to who?”

On the performance of his own military regime, eight years after seizing power:

“Despite probes, Committees of Enquiry, dismissals and prosecutions of wrongdoers, despite restructuring exercises, new management, the provision of new equipment and capital, many of our organizations, state enterprises and corporations continue to swallow public money and fail to provide the services and goods which we expect of them, and also fail to pay their tax obligations, dividends and other expected revenues . .

Too many people in these outfits, from management to workforce, still steal, embezzle and cheat . . . They still do not care about waste, carelessness, inefficiency and lack of maintenance . . . There are innumerable abuses including the misuse of fuel, vehicles and even office stationery. In some public institutions and organizations, managements have developed a tendency to spend resources carelessly on frivolous and luxury office and residential furnishing” (People's Graphic, Jan 6, 1990).

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General Yakubu Gowon, former president of Nigeria (1966-1974)

in a lecture at the Oxford and Cambridge Club entitled "Charting Nigeria's Path to Democracy in this Decade and Beyond."

“Nigeria's problems started shortly after independence because the army allowed itself to be polluted and politicised, hence the incessant coups and countercoups. The military intervention in politics in 1966 started a chain of reaction whose deleterious effects are still relevant in our national life even today, so many years after the ill-advised putsch . . .

The military should not get itself involved in politics. The sooner they leave the stage the better, or else the people may rise up against them (West Africa, June 11-17, 1990; p. 993).

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Major General Joseph Momoh, former president of Sierra Leone (1985-1992)

In his own admission in public, Maj. Gen. Joseph Momoh stated that after 5 years in office, he had achieved nothing. This confession is particularly correct. Under his leadership, Sierra Leone deteriorated immeasurably, but Momoh amassed considerable wealth in real [estate] property and cash, both locally and overseas. This ugly truth about Momoh equally applies to his political acolytes--ministers, party functionaries, heads of parastatals, his close political advisers, some high commissioners and ambassadors, and others too numerous to mention. Knowingly and shamelessly, Momoh headed a corrupt regime and, morally weak, was unable to take appropriate action against any of his ministers for corruption (West Africa, May 18-24, 1992; p. 840).

****************************

Hastings Banda, the late and former President of Malawi (1961-1994):

“One party, one leader, one government and no nonsense about it” (The Washington Post, June 16, 1999; A24).

"I want to be blunt. As long as I am here and you say I must be your president, you have to do what I want, what I like, and not what you like and what you want. Kamuzu is in charge...That is my way" (The Washington Post, Sept 9, 1991; p. A20).

He insisted that any reference to him must employ the full title: His Excellency the Life President Ngwazi Dr. H. Kamuzu Banda. He warned opposition exiles that should they dare return to Malawi, they would become meat for his crocodiles. And no nonsense about that!

Banda "told dissidents in exile that they would become `meat for crocodiles' if they came home" (The Economist, March 21, 1992; p. 46). Indeed, “suspected opponents were imprisoned by the tens of thousands and, from time to time, fed to crocodiles. The bullet-riddled bodies of ministers accused of disloyalty were found in `mysterious car accidents’” (The Washington Post, June 16, 1999; A24).

****************************

Kwame Nkrumah, the Late President of Ghana (1957-1966:

“We must achieve in a decade what it took others a century” in 1957 [Comment: Ghana is still at it]

“The independence of Ghana is meaningless unless linked up with the total liberation of Africa” in 1958. [Comment: Ghana’s independence is still meaningless. At independence, we traded one set of masters (white colonialists) for another set (black neo-colonialists) and the oppression and exploitation of the African people continued unabated]

“Industry rather than agriculture is the means by which rapid improvement in Africa's living standards is possible” in 1957. [Comment: Africa’s industrialization spree failed; state-owned enterprises were sold off in the 1980s, Agriculture was neglected, leading to huge expenditures – about $25 billion annually – on food imports. Africa used to feed itself in the 1960s]

“We would be hampering our advance of socialism if we were to encourage the growth of Ghanaian private capitalism in our midst” in 1964. Socialism is an alien economic ideology and failed miserably in every African country which experimented with it – from Benin, Ethiopia, Mali to Tanzania, Zambia and Zimbabwe]

“The Convention People’s Party (C[[\\PP) is the state and the state is the party. Socialism is the objective of social, industrial and economic programs” in 1973 [Comment: The state does not belong to any one particular individual or political party]

****************************

The Late President Felix Houphouet-Boigny of Ivory Coast (1960-1993):

“Colonialism was good for Africa. Thanks to it, we have one united Ivorian nation, not 60 tribes who know nothing about each other” in 1983.

“There is no number 1, 2, 3 or 4. In Cote d'Ivoire there is only a number one: that's me and I don't share my decisions,” in 1988

"I do have assets abroad. But they are not assets belonging to Cote d'Ivoire. What sensible man does not keep his assets in Switzerland, the whole world's bank? I would be crazy to sacrifice my children's future in this crazy country without thinking of their future" (La Croix, Paris, March 13, 1990).

****************************

The Late President Mobutu Sese Seko of Zaire (now Congo DR) (1965-1997):

"European businessmen were the ones who said, 'I sell you this thing for $1,000, but $200 will be for your (Swiss bank) account” in 1988

"Yes, I have a fair amount of money. However, I would estimate it to total less than $50 million. What is that after 22 years as head of state of such a big country?" (World Development Forum, No. 9, 1988; p. 3

If you steal, do not steal too much at a time. You may be arrested. Steal cleverly (yiba na mayele), little by little” in and address to party regulars in 1991.

****************************

Kenneth Kaunda, former President of Zambia (1964-1991):

"Why should anyone in public life impose himself on the people? The decisions must be made by the `people. In my case, it was a call for change. The tide was for change in the country. I respected it. Look at me now. You are watching a relaxed old man. I'm very happy with what I'm doing.” (The New York Times, Jan 31, 2002; p.A4).

Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe (1980 – Still in power):

“In Zimbabwe, socialism means what is mine is mine but what is yours we share until it all becomes mine” -- A minister in Robert Mugabe's cabinet in the 1990s.

"We now have to admit that we are reaping the bitter fruits of our unwholesome and negative behavior. Our image as leaders of the party has been tarnished. The people are crying for our blood and certainly are entitled to do so after watching our actions" (New African, Dec 1989; p. 20).

****************************

President Yoweri Museveni of Uganda (1986 – Still in power):

“No African head of state should be in power for more than 10 years” in 1986.

“We should not practice dictatorship under the guise of independence, because independence does not mean dictatorship. Without democracy, there can be no development. Democracy is the sine qua non for the effective administration of a modern state” in July 1990.

"There is no way you can develop the economy without democracy" in a speech before the OAU in Addis Ababa (New York Times, July 10, 1990; p. A3).

“Without democracy, there is no way you can bring about development because people cannot speak freely, they cannot criticize wrong programs, they cannot criticize corruption, and without criticism things are bound to rot” in a speech at Makerere University on June 8, 1991.

"I'm not ready to hand over power to people or groups of people who have no ability to manage a nation" during the presidential elections in March 2001 (The New York Times, March 11, 2001; p.A6).

"I will punish areas that failed to support me in the March election by reducing government services there" (The Washington Post, Sept 2, 2001; p.A20).

"The Movement (NRM) shall rule for more than 60 years. Apart from British colonialists who ruled Uganda for 60 years, no other regime has been successful in holding onto power like the Movement. We are going to break the British record. If Besigye (opposition leader) tried subversion he would be dealt with” Museveni’s Defense Minister, Amama Mbabazi,(The Monitor, Feb 1, 2002).

“All the poor should be arrested because they hinder us from performing our development duties. It is hard to lead the poor, and the poor cannot lead the rich. They should be eliminated."

n Uganda’s Agriculture Minister, the late Kibirige Ssebunya, (New Vision, Kampala, Dec 15, 2004). He advised local leaders to arrest poor people in their areas of jurisdiction.

****************************

Laurent Gbagbo, former president of Ivory Coast, (2000 – 2011 and now on trial at The Hague):

"We are the country with the most millionaires, which means we have the most thieves. The more Houphouet ages, the more his collaborators sense an end to the regime, and the more they steal" (West Africa, April 3-9, 1989).

"I was arrested on April 11, 2011 under the French bombs . . . It's the French army that did the work," describing how he was arrested at his first appearance before the ICC at The Hague.

***************************

General Ibrahim Babangida, former President of Nigeria (1985-1993):

“Ever since the majority of our countries became independent in the 1960s we have conducted our lives as if the world owes us a living" in 1990.

“Every military regime is a fraud. Anybody who heads a military regime subverts the wishes of the people.” in The African Observer, Jan 18-31, 1999, 6).

"Two decades ago, the central challenge of the Nigerian society and economy that we grappled with, was the big, inefficient State that had a stranglehold on the society, occupied the commanding heights of the economy; and behaved like a general business enterprise, producing and selling myriads of commodities running airlines; managing commercial banks and owning cement factories. Naturally, it ended up as a colossal failure in this regard, since it neither had the bottom-line sense of a business enterprise nor the residual claimant motivation to ensure proper and efficient management of the societal resources under its care.

Today, however, Nigeria faces a qualitatively different challenge. The reality in our country is that of an abysmal lack of governance. The State has virtually become overwhelmed by multi-dimensional crisis constraining its ability to minister to the needs of the people.” (The Vanguard, Lagos, Sept 16, 2010).

****************************

Daniel arap Moi, former President of Kenya (1978-202):

"I call on all ministers, assistant ministers and every other person to sing like parrots. You ought to sing the song I sing. If I put a full stop, you should put a full stop. This is how the country will move forward,” in 1990

To move forward in the fight against AIDS, President Moi "pleaded with Kenyans to refrain from sex even for only two years, saying that was the best way to check the epidemic" (Reuters, July 13, 2001).

"You [women] can achieve more, can get more but because of your little minds, you cannot get what you are expected to get!" said President Moi as he opened a regional women's seminar in Nairobi on March 6, 2001 (BBC News On Line, March 12, 2001). Perhaps, senility had set in.

****************************

Lt/General Omar al-Bashir of Sudan (1989 – Still in power):

“Under Shari’a Law, theft is punishable by amputation of the right hand or, if there are more than three people or weapons involved, cross amputation: right hand, left foot. My junta will destroy anyone who stands in the way. . .and amputate [the limbs of] those who betray the nation" in 1990.

****************************

Julius Nyerere, the late and former president of Tanzania in 1997: “Africa will have to rely upon Africa. If African Governments do Africa will develop; if they don't Africa will be doomed.”

“In my view, three factors militate against economic and social growth in Africa. The first of these is corruption. This is a widespread cancer in Africa. The second factor which makes business reluctant to invest in Africa is political instability. But even if African countries were to become paragons of good governance and political stability, despite the corruptive and disruptive nature of poverty itself, foreign investors would not be coming rushing to Africa. Most African countries still lack the necessary physical infrastructure and the education and training in skills needed for rapid economic and social development. This, in my view, is the third and the most important factor militating against significant flows of foreign direct investment to Africa.” (PanAfrican News, September 1998).

****************************

Joseph Kabila, the President of Congo DR in 2001:

“There is a government. I am the president of this country, and we are in charge of whatever is going in the country. Is it surprising? Since I came into office I've never taken orders from anybody, nobody whatsoever." (The New York Times, April 15, 2001; p.3)

****************************

Olusegun Obasanjo, former President of Nigeria in 2002 (1999 – 2007):

“Corrupt African leaders have stolen at least $140 billion (£95 billion) from their people in the decades since independence.”

****************************

Colonel Muammar Khaddafi, the late President of Libya (1969 – 2011):

“The administration has failed and the state economy has failed, enough is enough” in 2008 (The New York Times, March 19, 2009; p.A7).

******************************

Moussa Traore, the late and former president of Mali: Asked to resign on March 25, 1991, he retorted: "I will not resign, my government will not resign, because I was elected not by the opposition but by all the people of Mali!!!!

But two days later when he tried to flee the country, he was grabbed by his own security agents and sent to jail. From there, he lamented: "My fate is now in God's hands."

******************************

Levy Mwanawasa, the late and former president of Zambia (2002 – 2008):

I failed Zambia, says president. President Mwanawasa has said he is "tired" of his office Zambia's president has apologised to his country for failing to tackle poverty, but insisted he will stay in office until elections are due in 2006.

"It has not been possible to reduce poverty and I feel sad about it," Levy Mwanawasa said, describing the issue as "one of my failures. . . Unfortunately, if Zambians made a mistake to elect me as president, they are stuck with me." (news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/4163475.stm)

******************************

Meles Zenawi the Late and former PM of Ethiopia (1991 – 2012)

“Democracy should not be a toy for the elite to play with. It should involve even the so-called "ignorant peasant." Because only when you involve the bulk of the people can you have a real check to central authority” in October 1991..

In an Interview:

"Good day. My name is Gobano Madnamaraso." "When our leaders are young - most of our African leaders - they are visionaries. They have wonderful visions for our continent. They are admirable. The speak good, they do good. But something happens to them once they are seated in those chairs of power. My question is: We want to see our continent change, but we are afraid of this power that corrupts even some of the best, most admirable leaders on our continent, and what is this poison that happens in these chairs of power and how can we prevent it? " Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi pointed to greedy foreign corporations as a main driver of corruption. "What is the poison that leaders face when you go to national palaces, and transforms people with vision sometimes into ordinary thieves? Let's start with the total amount of loot in Africa, and what our role as leaders in that loot[ing] is," said Meles. "The vast majority of the loot[ing] is done by properly organized companies through all sorts of accounting gimmicks." Meles said African leaders are forced to be facilitators for foreign companies who demand favors in return for their investment that might means jobs for their people. "It's a difficult thing to manage because our bargaining cards are very limited," he said. "We need these companies to create jobs, in order for them to come to Africa. The image is very negative, so the risk is artificially spiked. And if the risk is artificially spiked, the return has to be commensurate with the risk. And so it's difficult to attract them without extraordinary returns." The Ethiopian leader said that sometimes leaders give in to temptation. "Sometimes we facilitate without being paid," he said. "At other times we say, 'Okay, if your family's farm is being looted, why not join in?' I think that is the most insidious form of corruption. It affects everybody, including those whose hands are not in the till."VOA, May 10, 2012

http://www.voanews.com/english/news/africa/-Ethiopias-Meles-Blames-African-Corruption-on-Foreign-Investors-151033585.html

******************************

President Isaiah Afewerki of Eritrea (1993 -- Still in power):

"What is free press? There is no free press anywhere. It's not in England; it's not in the United States. We'd like to know what free press is in the first place." (BBC, Sept 11, 2004). He closed all the independent newspapers and arrested most private journalists. The rest fled the country.

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covid19worldnews · 4 years

Text

Another Now by Yanis Varoufakis

When Margaret Thatcher coined “Tina” – her 1980s dictum that “There is no alternative” – I was incensed because, deep down, I felt she had a point: the left had neither a credible nor a desirable alternative to capitalism.

Leftists excel at pinpointing what is wrong with capitalism. We wax lyrical about the possibility of some “other” world in which one contributes according to one’s capacities and obtains according to one’s needs. But, when pushed to describe a fully fledged alternative to contemporary capitalism, for many decades we have oscillated between the ugly (a Soviet-like barracks socialism) and the tired (a social democracy that financialised globalisation has rendered infeasible).

During the 1980s, I participated in many debates in pubs, universities and town halls whose stated purpose was to organise resistance to Thatcherism. I remember my guilty thought every time I heard Maggie speak: “If only we had a leader like her!” I was, of course, under no illusion: Thatcher’s programme was despotic, antisocial and an economic cul-de-sac. But, unlike our side, she understood that we lived in a revolutionary moment. The postwar class war armistice was over. If we wanted to defend the weak, we could not afford to be defensive. We needed to advocate as she did: out with the old system, in with a brand new one. Not Maggie’s dystopian one, but a brand new one nevertheless.

Alas, our lot had no vision of a new system. Instead, we were in the business of bandaging corpses while Thatcher was digging graves to clear the way for her spanking new spiv capitalism. Even when we were putting up a splendid fight in defence of communities that deserved defending, our causes screamed “anachronism” – fighting to preserve dirty coal-fired power stations or the right of male rightwing trade unionists to reach sordid deals behind closed doors with the likes of Robert Maxwell and Rupert Murdoch.

Just as when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, we on the left – social democrats, Keynesians and Marxists alike – had the sense we would live the rest of our days as history’s losers, so in 2008, with Lehman’s collapse, those living the ideology of neoliberalism saw history erupt with similar soul-destroying force. Some years later, surveillance capitalism forced tech-evangelists, who thought they had seen in the internet an irresistible global democratic force, also to shed their illusions.

Traders on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, in September 2008. Photograph: Richard Drew/AP

Two years ago I decided we need a blueprint, a sense of how democratic socialism could work today, with our current technologies and despite our human failings. My reluctance to attempt such an undertaking was immense. Two people helped me overcome it. One is Danae Stratou, my partner. From the week we first met, she has been telling me that my critique of capitalism meant nothing unless I could answer her pressing question: “What’s the alternative? And precisely how would things – like money, companies and housing – work?”

The second, and most unlikely, influence was Paschal Donohoe, Ireland’s finance minister and president of the Eurogroup. A political opponent who thought little of me as a finance minister (a mutual assessment), he was kind enough to write a generous review of an earlier book of mine. While Donohoe liked my account of capitalism he thought the book’s ending, in which I tried to sketch some features of a postcapitalist society, was “most disappointing”.

He was right, I thought. So I decided to write Another Now.

In a bid to incorporate into my socialist blueprint different, often clashing, perspectives I decided to conjure up three complex characters whose dialogues would narrate the story – each representing different parts of my thinking: a Marxist-feminist, a libertarian ex-banker and a maverick technologist. Their disagreements regarding “our” capitalism provide the background against which my socialist blueprint is projected – and assessed.

•••

Capitalism took off in earnest when electromagnetism met share markets at the end of the 19th century. Their coupling gave rise to networked megafirms, such as Edison, that produced everything from power stations to lightbulbs. To finance the huge undertaking, and the massive trade in their shares, the need arose for megabanks. By the early 1920s financialised capitalism roared, before the whole juggernaut crashed in 1929.

Our current decade began with another coupling that seems to be propelling history at dizzying velocity: the one between the enormous bubble with which states have been refloating the financial sector since 2008, and Covid-19. Evidence is not hard to spot. On 12 August, the day the news broke that the British economy had suffered its greatest slump ever, the London Stock Exchange jumped by more than 2%. Nothing comparable has ever occurred. Financial capitalism seems finally to have decoupled from the underlying economy.

Another Now begins in the late 1970s, straddles the crises of 2008 and 2020 but also sketches out an imaginary future, and concludes in 2036. There is a moment in the story, on a Sunday evening in November 2025 to be precise, when my characters try to make sense of their circumstances by looking back to the events of 2020. The first thing they note is how drastically the lockdown changed people’s perception of politics.

Before 2020, politics seemed almost like a game, but with Covid came the realisation that governments everywhere possessed immense powers. The virus brought the 24-hour curfew, the closure of pubs, the ban on walking through parks, the suspension of sport, the emptying of theatres, the silencing of music venues. All notions of a minimal state mindful of its limits and eager to cede power to individuals went out of the window.

Many salivated at this show of raw state power. Even free-marketeers, who had spent their lives shouting down any suggestion of even the most modest boost in public spending, demanded the sort of state control of the economy not seen since Leonid Brezhnev was running the Kremlin. Across the world, the state funded private firms’ wage bills, renationalised utilities and took shares in airlines, car makers, even banks. From the first week of lockdown, the pandemic stripped away the veneer of politics to reveal the boorish reality underneath: that some people have the power to tell the rest what to do.

The massive government interventions misled naive leftists into the daydream that revived state power would prove a force for good. They forgot what Lenin had once said: politics is about who does what to whom. They allowed themselves to hope that something good might transpire if the same elites that had hitherto condemned so many to untold indignities were handed immeasurable power.

It was the poorer and the browner people who suffered most from the virus. Why? Their poverty had been caused by their disempowerment. It aged them faster. And it made them more vulnerable to disease. Meanwhile, big business, always reliant on the state to impose and enforce the monopolies on which it thrives, boosted its privileged position.

The Amazons of this world flourished, naturally. The lethal emissions that had temporarily subsided returned to choke the atmosphere. Instead of international cooperation, borders went up and the shutters came down. Nationalist leaders offered demoralised citizens a simple trade: authoritarian powers in return for protection from a lethal virus – and scheming dissidents.

Demonstrators gather outside Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos’ $80m New York City penthouse, to protest the retailer’s treatment of workers during the pandemic, in August. Photograph: John Marshall Mantel/SIPA/REX/Shutterstock

If cathedrals were the middle ages’ architectural legacy, the 2020s will be remembered for electrified fences and flocks of buzzing drones. Finance and nationalism, already on the rise before 2020, were the clear winners. The great strength of the new fascists was that, unlike their forerunners a century ago, they don’t need to wear brown shirts or even enter government to gain power. The panicking establishment parties – the neoliberals and social democrats – have been falling over themselves to do their job for them through the power of big tech.

To stop new outbreaks governments tracked our every move with fancy apps and fashionable bracelets. Systems designed to monitor coughs now also monitored laughs. They made earlier organisations specialising in surveillance and “behaviour modification”, like the infamous KGB and Cambridge Analytica, seem positively neolithic.

What was the moment when humanity lost the plot? Was it 1991? 2008? Or did we still have a chance in 2020? Like epiphanies, the fork-in-the-road theory of history is a convenient lie. The truth is we face a fork-in-the-road every day of our lives.

•••

Suppose we had seized the 2008 moment to stage a peaceful hi-tech revolution that led to a postcapitalist economic democracy. What would it be like? To be desirable, it would feature markets for goods and services since the alternative – a Soviet-type rationing system that vests arbitrary power in the ugliest of bureaucrats – is too dreary for words. But to be crisis-proof, there is one market that market socialism cannot afford to feature: the labour market. Why? Because, once labour time has a rental price, the market mechanism inexorably pushes it down while commodifying every aspect of work (and, in the age of Facebook, our leisure too).

Can an advanced economy function without labour markets? Of course it can. Consider the principle of one-employee-one-share-one-vote underpinning a system that, in Another Now, I call corpo-syndicalism. Amending corporate law so as to turn every employee into an equal (though not equally remunerated) partner is as unimaginably radical today as universal suffrage was in the 19th century.

In my blueprint, central banks provide every adult with a free bank account into which a fixed stipend (called universal basic dividend) is credited monthly. As everyone uses their central bank account to make domestic payments, most of the money minted by the central bank is transferred within its ledger. Additionally, the central bank grants all newborns a trust fund, to be used when they grow up.

People receive two types of income: the dividends credited into their central bank account and earnings from working in a corpo-syndicalist company. Neither are taxed, as there are no income or sales taxes. Instead, two types of taxes fund the government: a 5% tax on the raw revenues of the corpo-syndicalist firms; and proceeds from leasing land (which belongs in its entirety to the community) for private, time-limited, use.

When it comes to international trade and payments, Another Now features an innovative global financial system that continually transfers wealth to the global south, while also preventing imbalances from causing strife and crises. All trade and all money movements between different monetary jurisdictions (eg the UK and the eurozone or the US) are denominated in a new digital accounting unit, called the Kosmos. If the Kosmos value of a country’s imports exceeds its exports, it is charged a levy in proportion to the trade deficit. But, equally, if a country’s exports exceed its imports, it is also charged the levy. Another levy is charged to a country’s Kosmos account whenever too much money moves too quickly out of, or into, the country – a surge levy of sorts that taxes the speculative money movements that do such damage to developing countries. All these levies end up as direct green investments in the global south.

But it is the granting of a single non-tradeable share to each employee-partner that holds the key to this economy. By granting employee-partners the right to vote in the corporation’s general assemblies, an idea proposed by the early anarcho-syndicalists, the distinction between wages and profits is terminated and democracy, at last, enters the workplace.

From a firm’s senior engineers and key strategic thinkers to its secretaries and janitors, everyone receives a basic wage plus a bonus that is decided collectively. Since the one-employee-one-vote rule favours smaller decision-making units, corpo-syndicalism causes conglomerates voluntarily to break up into smaller companies, thus reviving market competition. Even more strikingly, share markets vanish completely since shares, like IDs and library cards, are now non-tradeable. Once share markets have disappeared, the need for gargantuan debt to fund mergers and acquisitions evaporates – along with commercial finance. And given that the Central Bank provides everyone with a free bank account, private banking shrinks into utter insignificance.

Some of the thornier issues I had to address in writing Another Now, to ensure its consistency with a fully democratised society, included: the fear that powerful people will manipulate elections even under market socialism; the stubborn refusal of patriarchy to die; gender and sexual politics; the funding of the green transition; borders and migration; a bill of digital rights and so on.

Writing this as a manual would have been unbearable. It would have forced me to pretend that I have taken sides in arguments that remain unresolved in my head – often in my heart. I, therefore, owe an immense debt of gratitude to my spirited characters Iris, Eva and Costa. Above all else, they allowed me seriously to ponder the hardest of questions: once we have conceived of a feasible socialism that blasts Thatcher’s Tina out of the water, what must we do, and how far are we willing to go, to bring it about?

• Another Now by Yanis Varoufakis is published by Bodley Head. To order a copy go to guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply.

https://www.covid19snews.com/2020/11/02/another-now-by-yanis-varoufakis/

#covid19

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labourpress · 8 years

Text

Peter Dowd speech at the close of tonight's Budget debates

Peter Dowd MP, Labour’s Shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury, speaking at the close of the Budget debates tonight, said:

Mr Speaker, last week the Chancellor painted a rosy picture of the nation’s finances.

He claimed the Conservative Party’s stewardship had been nothing short of miraculous.

A relaxed Chancellor attempted jokes throughout his speech.

The Prime Minister shoulders shook with amusement.

Many members opposite chuckled away.

Some of the more experienced Members opposite were watching cautiously, as the nose dive gained velocity.

The Chancellor got it wrong – big time.

Within hours he was attacked by many of his own backbenchers.

He was left hung out to dry by the Prime Minister.

Unsurprisingly, he has faced universal criticism over his plans to raise national insurance to 11 per cent for millions of people who are self-employed.

As Sir Michael Caine, playing the character of Charlie Crooker in the iconic Italian Job movie said to his bumbling side kick.

“You’re only supposed to blow the doors off!”

Well, the debris from the explosion is still in descending.

A manifesto pledge broken - pure and simple.

And since last Wednesday No.10 and No. 11 have been in a briefing war with each trying to blame the other for the fine mess.

Ostensibly, No.10 suggests the Chancellor sneaked the NI rise into the Budget.

Apparently, other shocked Cabinet colleagues have indicated that he failed to mention, that it would break their manifesto pledge.

It’s worrying, Mr Speaker, that Cabinet Ministers don’t know what manifesto commitments they made or perhaps they don’t care?

Then again the Government has an insouciant attitude towards its manifesto commitments.

First, the Government committed to getting rid of the deficit by 2015 – a promise broken.

Second, they said it would be pushed back to 2019/20 - another broken promise.

Third, they vowed the debt would start to come down after 2015 – another broken promise.

The Government will have virtually doubled the debt and doubled the time they’ll have taken to get it down.

And this is what they call success and fiscal credibility?

They seem to think that they can simply press the reset button when it comes to meeting their own fiscal rules and no one will notice.

The flip side of John Maynard Keynes’ approach, namely when I change my mind the facts change with it.

When the Government’s misses a deadline it's modus operandi is to set a new one and brazenly move on.

The immutable Tory law of economics – make it up as you go along.

What happened to the long term economic plan?

Well, it didn’t last very long? Mr Speaker

The Prime Minister and the Chancellor have their finger prints all over every single financial decision that has been made during the last seven years.

It’s no surprise that they have come under criticism from many in their own party including the former Member for Witney.

Or the former Chancellor, Lord Lamont, who called the NI debacle a “rookie error”.

Otherwise known, in the real world, as gross incompetence.

But regrettably it’s other people who will pay the price for that incompetence.

Mr Speaker, turning to Brexit, I’ll mention it even if the Chancellor doesn’t, it’s the tenth anniversary since the production of

“Freeing Britain to Compete: Equipping the UK for Globalisation”

This publication was a wide ranging policy document authored by the right honourable Member for Wokingham and friends.

It was endorsed by the then Shadow Cabinet which included the current incumbents at numbers 10 and 11 Downing Street.

The publication was hard to track down as it has been removed from the Conservative Party website and for good reason.

But I found a copy.

Its contents were toxic and all the more so in the wake of the subsequent global financial crisis and remain so.

But in the light of Brexit, and the resurgence of the honourable member for Wokingham’s influence, it will soon be getting a second run out.

Mr Speaker, it is worth appraising the House of a few of the nuggets contained in its pages.

It includes policies such as the abolition of inheritance tax.

Charging foreign lorries to use British roads.

The potential abolition of the BBC licence fee, which it refers to as a poll tax.

The watering down of money laundering regulations.

The deregulation of mortgage finance.

Because it’s the:

“lending institutions rather than the client taking the risk.”

Try telling that to someone whose house has been repossessed.

It goes on:

“we need to make it more difficult for ministers to regulate, and we need to give the critics of regulation more opportunity to make their case against specific new proposals.”

Remember this document, dated August 2007, was rubber stamped by the current Prime Minister and Chancellor at the same time Northern Rock was about to go under.

It continues:

“the Government (the Labour Government) claims that this regulation is all necessary. They seem to believe that without it banks could steal our money.”

That is not quite the case but the taxpayer, at its peak, had liabilities for the banking crisis of £1.2 trillion.

But, Mr Speaker, many people did believe the banks were stealing their money.

It refers to wanting:

“reliably low inflation, taking no risks by turning fiscal rules into flexible friends.”

As for Europe, in search of jobs and prosperity, it says:

“An incoming Conservative Government should go to Brussels with proposals to deregulate the whole EU…”

No wonder they wanted to bury the evidence.

It’s the autobiography of the hard line Brexiteers.

It’s the Tory blue print for a post Brexit deregulated Britain.

It’s a race to the bottom.

These policies are a telling narrative of the views of the fundamentalist wing of the Conservative Party.

The Prime Minister is a hostage to the far right of the Tory Party.

She is on the hook.

The stage directions are coming from Wokingham, Haltemprice and Howden, North Somerset and Chingford and Wood Green with occasional guest appearances by the Foreign Secretary.

The forlorn, melancholic Chancellor is briefed against because he may just have a less hard-line outlook as far as Brexit is concerned.

These are the dusted off policies of the hard Brexiteers who will stop at nothing until Britain becomes a low wage, low tax, low regulation economy.

They want to turn our country into the bargain basement of the western world.

They have the Prime Minister in tow.

Parliamentary scrutiny is a hindrance.

Meanwhile, the Prime Minister has put Kamikaze pilots in the cockpit.

The Chancellor knows this too well and that is why reportedly he is putting aside £60 billion, equivalent to a year’s worth of borrowing on the national debt to cope with the trauma.

It’s not Brexit proofing the economy but rather proofing the economy from the toxic ideology of the hard Brexiteers.

Mr Speaker, ultimately, it comes down to choices and values.

The Government’s choices in this Budget are informed by their values and they are not the same as the vast majority of people in this country.

The Government propose to increase Insurance Premium Tax from 10 per cent to 12 per cent, a regressive measure which will be a further hit on household finances and act as a deterrent to families wanting to obtain proper insurance cover.

It was a surprise to see this measure in the Autumn Statement, coming as it did from a government which constantly uses the high cost of insurance premiums as an excuse for curbs on victims’ right to claim compensation for their losses, with particularly damaging effects for those injured in accidents at work.

We will oppose this rise.

And while the Government drives up insurance price for millions of families, it has chosen to forego £73 billion of revenue to give corporations and the wealthy few tax handouts between now and 2021.

A choice we would not make.

Their choice is informed by the value they put on elites and corporations, many of whom readily avoid paying their fair share of tax.

They plan to loosen the rules on the Business Investment Relief, increasing the scope for non-doms to avoid tax when they bring funds into the UK.

This is straightforwardly a giveaway to non-doms, which we will oppose.

There is little evidence that this relief has had a significant impact on inward investment since it was first introduced in 2012.

And there is little genuine reason to believe that expanding the relief now will do anything but give non-doms even more advantages over millions of UK taxpayers.

These and other tax cuts for elites and corporations come off the backs of public sector employees who have foregone pay rises for years.

Or those in the private sector whose wages and salaries remain in the doldrums and will for another decade or more.

Or the self-employed who are increasingly driving our economy who will see an increase to 11 per cent in National Insurance contributions.

We would make a different choice. We reject the kick in the teeth to self-employed people.

Not only does it hit many on low to middle income but will it raise anywhere near the £2 billion the Treasury projects?

It may also deter many people from setting up their own businesses, from innovating and excelling.

It’s a moratorium on aspiration.

We would choose not to give tax breaks to those who do not need them.

Mr Speaker, in this Budget the Government claims it’s giving lower and middle earners, the NHS, social care agencies, the self-employed, schools, businesses, pubs, the strivers, the entrepreneurs the thumbs up.

Mr Speaker, in practice, this Budget is not giving a thumbs up to all those people.

On the contrary, it’s two other digits being put up to those people.

That’s another choice that Labour would not make.

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judefan839-blog · 4 years

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supervidyavinay · 4 years

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"Sarkar agar humare liye kuchh nahi bhi karega, toh Sonu Sood toh humara madad karega (Even if the government does not help us, Sonu Sood will),” said 24-year-old Sahidul Barbhuiya, who was at the time stranded in Mumbai as the train he was supposed to board for his home in Assam was cancelled due to Cyclone Nisarga on Wednesday. Barbhuiya lost his job when the canteen he worked for in Pune shut down during the Covid-19 lockdown. His small savings soon ran out and he had to surrender his accommodation. The only refuge he could think of was “home”. He managed to reach Mumbai on a bus but could not go any further as the train got cancelled. Taking refuge under a bridge at the Lokmanya Tilak Terminus in Kurla, he and his co-passengers reached out to Sood for help, and they were not disappointed. Sood and his team arranged accommodation for them at a school nearby and have assured that they would be home soon. Barbhuiya said they were well taken care of and he and the other 150 people with him had “bharosa” (faith) that Sood would deliver on his promise. Sood, who was known as an actor in 21st century BC (Before Covid-19), has emerged as the most unlikely superhero during the pandemic. For thousands of migrants, he is the man who helped them at a time when they were gripped with fear and were walking an uncertain path with no support or even an assurance that all would be well. For the more privileged people, who felt helpless at the plight of the men, women and children walking across the country with little food in their belly and dwindling hope in their heart, Sood was doing what they could not. “I had no formula on how to help them, but there was this intention that I will not let these migrants walk home. We started by sending some hundreds home but now I am determined not to stop until the last mi-grant on the road has reached home,” Sood told ET Magazine in between calls from migrants asking for help. 76242142Sood has been involved in charitable work through his trust, Professor Saroj Sood Trust, named after his mother. He grew up in Punjab watching his mother tutor underprivileged children for free and his father offer langar from his cloth shop in Moga. “They drilled into me that you are truly successful only if you help others.”Sood opened the doors of his hotel in Juhu to healthcare workers of nearby hospitals who were treating Covid-19 patients.He, along with his friend Neeti Goel, a Mumbai-based restaurateur, and their team has so far sent around 20,000 people home by buses, trains and even flights. They have sent people on two Shramik trains so far. They now have a list of 70,000 people who they are trying to send home over the next two weeks through trains. They are talking to the government to allow four more Shramik trains as the number is too big to be transported by buses. Actor Boman Irani, who has worked with Sood in the past, says he is not surprised that Sood rose to the occasion during the crisis. “He is the sort of guy who slams his big fist on his chest and says ‘don’t worry I am with you’. Many people have the intention to do things but he has acted on it. Just being jazbaati (emotional) is not enough. He is an intelligent man who is capable of planning and is resourceful enough to execute it.”Irani said that while the film industry has always helped in times of crisis, this often goes unnoticed or gets criticised. “Sonu’s work will motivate film and even non-film people to do more. Everyone has to do whatever one can do best, in one’s capacity.” Soon after Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced a nationwide lockdown in March, thousands of migrant workers lost their livelihoods. With no source of income, fear of starvation, panic about Covid-19 and suspension of trains and buses, these people decided to walk hundreds of kilometres in the scorching heat to reach their villages, the only safe haven where they felt they belonged.Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman announced a stimulus package for around 80 million migrants. Critics said it was too little, too late and estimated the number of migrants to be significantly higher.Many non-government organisations and individuals like Sood and Goel have been feeding these people since the beginning of the lockdown. Sood and Goel started small but soon they were providing 45,000 meals a day on their own and in association with an NGO, Khaana Chahiye Organization, apart from feeding 1,000 stray cats and dogs, and supplying ration kits. They provided 25,000 iftar kits a day during Ramzan.On a routine food distribution trip on May 3, they realised this was not enough. “We sensed a huge change in the behaviour of migrants. They had lost hope, they were dejected, there was desperation to go back home and there was a lot of aggression. We were talking to one group walking back home and they said — humein bas ghar jaana hai, humein aapka khana bhi nahi chahiye (We don’t need your food, we want to go home). That’s when we decided to send them home,” Goel said. In the next few days, they booked 10 buses and sent people home. Soon, Sood and Goel’s numbers were circulating among migrants and pictures and videos of buses went viral on social media. They were flooded with requests for help. They set up a toll-free number that crashed after it was flooded with calls. “Sonu sir help kar raha hai ye toh viral ho gaya tha, unko Odisha se log ne bola humare bare mein. Sonu sir sara kharcha kiya aur pura madad kiya humko ghar pahuchane mein (Sonu’s work has gone viral and some people from Odisha asked him to help us. He bore all our expenses and ensured we reached home),” said Prasanta Kumar Pradhan. Pradhan, who was working in Kerala as a plumber, along with 147 women and 20 other men, was flown back home to Odisha by Sood.Sood and Goel financed the initiative themselves initially, but soon help started to pour in from friends who wanted to be part of it. A crowdfunding initiative, named Ghar Bhejo, raised over Rs 52 lakh, which included donations of Rs 10 and above. Many others donated directly to Lala Bhagwandas Trust, a 35-year-old trust set up by Goel’s family, towards the cause. Friends, family, people from the film industry, cricketers and businessmen were among the donors, giving anywhere between Rs 5 lakh and Rs 30 lakh, Goel said. 76237974Cricketer Harbhajan Singh took to social media to promote the campaign and is believed to have roped in other cricketers too.The more challenging part was getting approval from different states, managing all the paper-work for everyone, even for those who didn’ have relevant documents, and working out the logistics of transport.Sood roped in his chartered accountant Pankaj Jalisatgi and his colleague Harsh Sikariya to manage the paperwork. Around 40 volunteers are dedicated to feeding people, while a group of 18-20 people is managing travel-related work.Sood’s experience of working in the movies in Hyderabad and Chennai came in handy as friends, and associates there helped him get clearances for the movement of the migrants. “The government has done its bit. But when it realised that the migrants are not going to stop, that they are walking on highways, it should have acted soon by allowing buses at least within the state. They could have taken multiple buses to get home and that would have reduced their pain and even the accidents. Immediate action would have helped because they were an unstoppable force,” Sood said. While sending these people home, Sood and Goel ensured the buses are packed with meals, crates of fruit, dry snacks and enough water to ensure people have nourishment. “I have done long journeys in buses and trains, sometimes even unreserved. I know how tough it can get,” Sood said.Sonu and Goel have received photos from almost every migrant after reaching home and reuniting with their family. Goel was overwhelmed sharing stories of the pictures she has received. “There have been days we have spent 18-20 hours on this, but it has been worth it. I now know that real happiness comes from uplifting others, not from splurging on designer shoes and bags,” Goel said. Sood even heard from a migrant who told him that she has named her son Sonu Sood Srivastav. “I told her your son can be Sonu Srivastav but she insisted that the name would be Sonu Sood Srivastav!” 76238125The team now feels they have a streamlined system in place and can handle the transport of people better. They are now moving people on new circuits like Jammu to Ranchi. But Sood is also aware of the fact that this is not the end of challenges for these people. “They have gone home due to strong emotions but they need to do something to survive. As a country, we have to generate work for them, whether it is in construction or something else, to ensure they have a source of income,” said Sood.Sood said he has tried to keep his initiative away from politics. He also dismissed rumours that he may join a political party soon, adding that he has never planned his life decisions. But he is sure that helping people will become more integral to his life, going ahead. Sood said, “When someone gets a role that they are good at, they excel. That’s what has happened to me. This is the role of my lifetime. It feels like I came to Mumbai for this and everything I did has led to this. The mission of making every person on the road reach home will be my biggest blockbuster.”76168859 from Economic Times https://ift.tt/3eRTp5w

#News #Economy #COVID19

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warninggraphiccontent · 5 years

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8 November 2019

Ministry of sound

What do civil service staff numbers sound like? How about government defeats in the House of Commons?

Yes, as heavily trailed last week, I ventured into data sonification for the new IfG podcast, Inside Briefing, setting our charts on the change in civil service staff numbers since 2010 and on Commons defeats by prime ministers since 1945 to music. There seems to be a lot of interest in sonification as a way of bringing data to life - if you know of any relevant links, please send them my way (and I'm looking forward to seeing what The Economist are going to press play on sometime soon).

The sonifications (do we need a better phrase? Sound chart? Son-chart-a? Con-chart-o?) got this week's Data Bites off to a rousing, musical start. Four more fantastic presentations - from Miranda at Ordnance Survey, Nic at the Oil & Gas Authority, David at 360Giving and Miranda at the ODI - that are well worth your time. Pencil 4 December into your diary - if we don't have an event (we're still looking for funding, the pre-election period makes it difficult to get civil servants on stage), we'll probably go for a drink or two instead.

It was a joy, as ever, to make Open Data Camp (#odcamp) this Sunday - a huge thank you to Giuseppe, Angharad and all the campmakers for their hard work, the fruits of which are recorded here. Ian roped me into helping with a session on data visualisation, which did indeed take in musical data, spaceships and Star Wars (and I stand by my claim that Episode III: Revenge of the Sith is a great example of terrible dataviz ). A strong thought, prompted by excellent sessions from Mor (on 'data literacy for whom?'), Tim and Simon: as a community, we have a memory problem - lots of good stuff has been achieved and there are great resources out there but too often we're not making the most of them, we're not making them as easy to find/sharing learning as well as we could and (as Miranda M also touched on at Data Bites) we're still quoting CityMapper as the alpha and omega of open data impact.

I also enjoyed the first Office for Statistics Regulation conference - follow their new Twitter account here. And some more changing of the civil society data guard - congratulations to Hetan on moving from the Royal Statistical Society to become the new chief exec of the British Academy!

Finally, I'll be speaking at the #ODISummit on Tuesday - hopefully see some of you there!

Have a great weekend

Gavin

Today's links:

Graphic content

#GE2019

MPs standing down - here, here, here and here (Ketaki and me for IfG - more to come...)

Spreadsheet (IfG)

Standing down and length of service (Andrew Gray)

State of the parties, defeats, ministerial resignations, December elections and much more (IfG)

2017 vs 2019 (Matt Chorley)

The largest voter movements are... (Chris Curtis)

A British election and other uncertainties* (The Economist)

UK general election: Can Boris Johnson break Labour’s ‘red wall’?* (FT)

Step-by-step scatter (FT)

Brexit has lowered the bar for election victory, study finds* (FT)

The 2019 general election battleground constituencies* (FT)

Three anti-Brexit parties launch election pact in 60 seats* (FT)

The potential power of non-voters to change the face of UK politics overnight, in three maps. (David Ottewell)

Signal and noise

Inside Briefing (IfG)

SONIFICATION: Civil service staff numbers (me for IfG)

SONIFICATION: Government defeats in the House of Commons (me for IfG)

US politics

Live election results* (New York Times)

Election results* (Washington Post)

Doug Jones Thinks He’s Supposed To Be Here (FiveThirtyEight)

What’s next in the Trump impeachment inquiry, and will Trump cooperate with it?* (Washington Post)

Maps

#30DayMapChallenge

All of New York's roads, arranged by length (Dylan Moriarty)

India’s toxic smog is a common affliction in middle-income countries* (The Economist)

A demolition of the traditional county election map (Alberto Cairo via Simon Rogers)

Victorian London’s Wealth and Poverty, Mapped Block by Block (CityLab)

‘GOD’S ACRES’: THE LAND OWNED BY THE CHURCH COMMISSIONERS (Who Owns England?)

How Would Elizabeth Warren Pay for Her Sweeping Policy Plans?* (New York Times, via Marcus)

London Underground: the dirtiest place in the city* (FT)

Constituency by deprivation charts: England, whole UK, GIF, more (Alasdair Rae)

And more (Carl Baker)

The shape of things to come: Charting the changing size and shape of the UK state (Resolution Foundation)

Help to Buy Equity Loan scheme Data Visualisation (NAO, via Benoit)

Parties’ spending plans signal the return of ‘1970s-sized state’* (FT)

Everything else

Lewis Hamilton's sixth F1 world title: the stats (BBC Sport)

Greta Thunberg accuses rich countries of “creative carbon accounting”* (The Economist)

Power play: How Chinese money damned Myanmar’s economic transition (Frontier Myanmar)

Who are the NextGen? A portrait in data* (FT)

Visualizing KEXP: 18 years of playlist data that shaped Seattle music history (Tableau)

A year in Graphic detail (Alex Selby-Boothroyd)

Meta data

Politics

Big Tech has moved from offering utopia to selling dystopia* (FT)

Letter to leaders of major political parties in advance of the December 2019 general election (UK Statistics Authority)

Statements about public funding: what to look out for (Office for Statistics Regulation)

We need laws for the digital age to keep elections fair* (Amber Rudd in The Times)

Why Twitter’s ban on political ads isn't as good as it sounds (The Guardian)

How memes got weaponized: A short history (MIT Technology Review)

Future tech

Tech Buzzwords (via Lewis)

Cyber Security Incentives & Regulation Review: Call for Evidence (DCMS)

It’s seriously strange how we choose to dehumanize data but anthropomorphize AI systems (Deb Raji)

Uber’s Self-Driving Car Didn’t Know Pedestrians Could Jaywalk* (Wired, via Marcus)

Everything else

Digital Public Assets: Rethinking value, access and control of public sector data in the platform age (Common Wealth)

Transforming GOV.UK: the future of digital public services (Government Digital Service)

National Data Strategy 2030 Vision: the public conversation begins (DCMS)

Dough! Jobs microsite for UK's data watchdog set hundreds of cookies without visitors' consent (The Register)

When open government becomes a matter of life and death* (Apolitical)

The British Academy appoints new Chief Executive Hetan Shah (The British Academy)

Events and opportunities

Data Bites #7 (Institute for Government)

#IFGDataBites

#odcamp

Open Data Camp

EVENT: W.E.B. Du Bois: Charting Black Lives (House of Illustration)

PUBLIC APPOINTMENTS: Non-Executive Directors, UK Statistics Authority

JOBS: including Head of Data Science Capability (ONS Data Science Campus)

And finally...

Politics

Lib Dem bar charts (Ridge on Sunday)

Westminster voting intentions, stitched (Heidi)

"it looks like you're overstating a difference that's within margin of error" (Ariel Edwards-Levy - topical...)

Everything else

The other race that stops the nation: watch contenders jostle for a top 10 spot in bird of the year (The Guardian)

“Data is the new oil” - the origin (via @imperica)

Hoovering up your data (Carl Miller)

Forbidden love: the changing attitudes to office romance* (FT)

Thanksgiving (YouGov)

Help, our train home is making 9 quintillion stops. (Neil Codling)

Wow you know I was really worried about WeWork's future, but... (@zebulgar, via Alice)

Pie chart of the week (via everybody - given the percentages add up to 360, I think someone may have got percentages and degrees confused...)

0 notes

vincentvelour · 5 years

Text

Wine, tariffs and France's new digital tax at the G7 summit

8/27/2019

By John Bostwick, Head of Content Management

Leaders from the G7 countries concluded their annual three-day summit in Biarritz, France yesterday. One of the most closely followed storylines of the event involved French President Emmanuel Macron and U.S. President Donald Trump.

This year, France held the G7 presidency, which rotates annually between the member countries of Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the U.K and the U.S. As summit host, President Macron decided to overhaul the summit’s format to emphasise transparency and open-door meetings. He also did away with the traditional publishing of a final communique, which he said would be “pointless” in light of longstanding disagreements between member countries on issues such as climate change. (At last year’s summit, President Trump refused to endorse the final communique and didn’t attend any climate change meetings.) Finally, Macron’s summit agenda was broadly designed to “[tackle] the roots of inequality,” in part by promoting African development and gender equality.

In short, Macron was both acknowledging the fact that the U.S. and France (not to mention the other G7 countries) are too far apart on certain issues to reasonably expect publishing a substantive document after three days. At the same time, he wanted to direct the summit conversation, and his agenda clearly reflected his values, which are often at odds with those of the White House.

U.S. officials responded to Macron’s agenda with what The New York Times calls an “orchestrated message,” some of it delivered anonymously. Trump’s administration accused Macron of ignoring U.S. calls to focus the summit on “national security and a looming economic slowdown” in favour of “niche” issues that appealed to Macron’s political base.

In an unusual gambit, Macron invited Trump to an unscheduled lunch shortly after Trump touched down in France. According to The Wall Street Journal, President Macron “used the lunch to explain his position on contentious issues, such as global trade tensions, France’s … digital services [tax] and his push to de-escalate tensions between the U.S. and Iran,” along with the ongoing fires that are damaging the Amazon.

The two leaders have been particularly at odds over France’s digital services tax, or DST. The French DST was passed in July and is effective retroactive to January 1 of this year. It was unilaterally implemented by France at a time when OECD countries are struggling achieve a consensus on how to effectively and fairly tax the digital economy.

Looked at one way, France’s DST seeks to address the major issue of this year’s G7 summit — inequality. The DST holds large tech companies like Amazon and Google accountable for paying taxes to French authorities for revenues generated in France. Traditionally, those companies pay taxes only to the low-tax jurisdictions (such as Ireland and Luxembourg) where they’re based. According to Reuters, this isn’t just a tax issue for Macron, who “says taxing big tech more is a matter of social justice.”

France’s DST imposes a 3 percent tax on revenue (not profits) generated from digital services. It only applies to companies with annual revenues of more than 750 million euros worldwide and more than 25 million euros in France. It should be said that France is not alone among EU countries in taking such action, and that “Britain, Spain, Italy and Austria have also announced plans for their own digital levies.” (An EU-wide DST is unlikely at this point, since jurisdictions with low corporate taxes that attract large multinationals have a major interest in maintaining the status quo.)

While French officials have maintained that the country’s DST does not specifically target U.S. companies, the law’s revenue thresholds are currently met by only 30 companies, most of which are American. Not surprisingly, many U.S. tech companies believe they are being unfairly targeted, and the U.S. administration agrees. Shortly after the French law was passed in July, Trump responded by Twitter, writing: “France just put a digital tax on our great American technology companies. If anybody taxes them, it should be their home Country, the USA. We will announce a substantial reciprocal action on Macron’s foolishness shortly. I’ve always said American wine is better than French wine!”

Trump’s tweet wasn’t the first time he’d threatened to retaliate against France by targeting its most famous export: wine. In November 2018, he attacked Macron through the usual medium, tweeting: “On Trade, France makes excellent wine, but so does the U.S. The problem is that France makes it very hard for the U.S. to sell its wines into France, and charges big Tariffs, whereas the U.S. makes it easy for French wines, and charges very small Tariffs. Not fair, must change!”

There’s some humour in this, not least because in the above two tweets, Trump — who doesn’t drink alcohol — is rendering judgement on the quality of French and American wines. When pressed to explain why he prefers American wines to French ones, he responded, “I just like the way they look.”

Humour aside, Trump’s threats of a trade war involving wine have been taken seriously inside France. The Guardian explains that wine is France’s second most valuable export (after aerospace exports) and that the U.S. is its biggest market. French producers of modestly-priced wines would be particularly vulnerable to U.S. tariffs. One such producer told the Guardian that in response to Trump’s comments he’s diversifying into new Asian markets and that his U.S. importer has increased orders. “I’m worried,” he said.

Fortunately for French wine producers and U.S. consumers, Trump and Macron appear to have come to an agreement over France’s new DST, which may avert the tariffs. Reuters reported yesterday that French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire reached a compromise with U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow. In the agreement, “France would repay to companies the difference between a French tax and a planned mechanism being drawn up by the OECD.”

Later in the day, Trump and Macron held a joint press conference announcing the agreement. The Hill reports that at the conference, Macron vowed France would scrap its national digital tax when an international digital tax is established. In that event, he clarified, “companies that have paid the French DST ‘will be reimbursed.’” He added: “The idea is that we need to find a joint agreement in order to address joint international problems. … the international tax system definitely needs to be modernized, and I think we will work together in a spirit of cooperation on this.”

For the moment, then, the G7 summit storyline involving France and the U.S., digital taxation and wine tariffs appears to have a happy ending. It also illuminates some of the most important economic issues of our time. Perhaps most important, it shows how elected leaders and their economic designees continue to grapple with the complex issue of how to effectively and fairly tax digital services in a globally connected world. Given the amount of money involved — and the tax revenues that could be generated in countries throughout the world under a new paradigm — the importance of solving this complex problem can’t be overstated.

At the same time, the Trump-Macron storyline at the G7 summit makes clear that many of the forces shaping the global economy haven’t changed much. Some leaders, for example, are still using the centuries-old strategy of imposing or threatening tariffs to protect national interests. (And in that light it seems fitting that Trump’s target in this case was wine, a product that’s been traded across borders for centuries, if not millennia.) Trump’s wine-tariff threat may strike some as anachronistic in the context of taxing tech behemoths in 2019, but it certainly got Macron’s (and his country’s) attention.

Along these lines, the Trump-Macron story also reveals how much of our global economy can still be shaped by the decisions (or whims) of a select few leaders. A dashed-off tweet threatening tariffs can throw an entire industry into concern, if not panic. And an unscheduled lunch between two presidents can, perhaps, help facilitate an agreement that may in turn hasten the development of international tax legislation that’s fit for the digital age.

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In the 1930s, the poet Langston Hughes published what remains one of the most honest descriptions of that dream:

"A dream so strong, so brave, so true

That even yet its mighty daring sings

In every brick and stone, in every furrow turned

That’s made America the land it has become"

The poem, though, is laced with a counterpoint of protest: “America was never America to me”—not to the “man who never got ahead”; “the poorest worker bartered through the years”; or “the Negro, servant to you all.” Still, for all its outrage, the poem ends with a paradoxical yearning: “O, let America be America again,” Hughes wrote. “The land that never has been yet.”

"Hearing stories of the American dream as a boy in New Delhi, Chetty adopted the faith. When he became a scientist, he discerned the truth. What remains is contradiction: We must believe in the dream and we must accept that it is false—then, perhaps, we will be capable of building a land where it will yet be true." PLEASE READ 📖 Or LISTEN 👂ON AUDUM AND SHARE TY🙏🙏🏽🙏🏾🙏🏿

The Economist Who Would Fix the American Dream.... No one has done more to dispel the myth of social mobility than Raj Chetty. But he has a plan to make equality of opportunity a reality.

GARETH COOK | AUGUST 2019 ISSUE, Updated at 3:47 p.m. ET on July 17, 2019. | The Atlantic Magazine | Posted July 21, 2019 |

RAJ CHETTY GOT his biggest break before his life began. His mother, Anbu, grew up in Tamil Nadu, a tropical state at the southern tip of the Indian subcontinent. Anbu showed the greatest academic potential of her five siblings, but her future was constrained by custom. Although Anbu’s father encouraged her scholarly inclinations, there were no colleges in the area, and sending his daughter away for an education would have been unseemly.

But as Anbu approached the end of high school, a minor miracle redirected her life. A local tycoon, himself the father of a bright daughter, decided to open a women’s college, housed in his elegant residence. Anbu was admitted to the inaugural class of 30 young women, learning English in the spacious courtyard under a thatched roof and traveling in the early mornings by bus to a nearby college to run chemistry experiments or dissect frogs’ hearts before the men arrived. Anbu excelled, and so began a rapid upward trajectory. She enrolled in medical school. “Why,” her father was asked, “do you send her there?” Among their Chettiar caste, husbands commonly worked abroad for years at a time, sending back money, while wives were left to raise the children. What use would a medical degree be to a stay-at-home mother?

In 1962, Anbu married Veerappa Chetty, a brilliant man from Tamil Nadu whose mother and grandmother had sometimes eaten less food so there would be more for him. Anbu became a doctor and supported her husband while he earned a doctorate in economics. By 1979, when Raj was born in New Delhi, his mother was a pediatrics professor and his father was an economics professor who had served as an adviser to Prime Minister Indira Gandhi.

When Chetty was 9, his family moved to the United States, and he began a climb nearly as dramatic as that of his parents. He was the valedictorian of his high-school class, then graduated in just three years from Harvard University, where he went on to earn a doctorate in economics and, at age 28, was among the youngest faculty members in the university’s history to be offered tenure. In 2012, he was awarded the MacArthur genius grant. The following year, he was given the John Bates Clark Medal, awarded to the most promising economist under 40. (He was 33 at the time.) In 2015, Stanford University hired him away. Last summer, Harvard lured him back to launch his own research and policy institute, with funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative.

Chetty turns 40 this month, and is widely considered to be one of the most influential social scientists of his generation. “The question with Raj,” says Harvard’s Edward Glaeser, one of the country’s leading urban economists, “is not if he will win a Nobel Prize, but when.”

The work that has brought Chetty such fame is an echo of his family’s history. He has pioneered an approach that uses newly available sources of government data to show how American families fare across generations, revealing striking patterns of upward mobility and stagnation. In one early study, he showed that children born in 1940 had a 90 percent chance of earning more than their parents, but for children born four decades later, that chance had fallen to 50 percent, a toss of a coin.

In 2013, Chetty released a colorful map of the United States, showing the surprising degree to which people’s financial prospects depend on where they happen to grow up. In Salt Lake City, a person born to a family in the bottom fifth of household income had a 10.8 percent chance of reaching the top fifth. In Milwaukee, the odds were less than half that.

Since then, each of his studies has become a front-page media event (“Chetty bombs,” one collaborator calls them) that combines awe—millions of data points, vivid infographics, a countrywide lens—with shock. This may not be the America you’d like to imagine, the statistics testify, but it’s what we’ve allowed America to become. Dozens of the nation’s elite colleges have more children of the 1 percent than from families in the bottom 60 percent of family income. A black boy born to a wealthy family is more than twice as likely to end up poor as a white boy from a wealthy family. Chetty has established Big Data as a moral force in the American debate.

Now he wants to do more than change our understanding of America—he wants to change America itself. His new Harvard-based institute, called Opportunity Insights, is explicitly aimed at applying his findings in cities around the country and demonstrating that social scientists, despite a discouraging track record, are able to fix the problems they articulate in journals. His staff includes an eight-person policy team, which is building partnerships with Charlotte, Seattle, Detroit, Minneapolis, and other cities.

For a man who has done so much to document the country’s failings, Chetty is curiously optimistic. He has the confidence of a scientist: If a phenomenon like upward mobility can be measured with enough precision, then it can be understood; if it can be understood, then it can be manipulated. “The big-picture goal,” Chetty told me, “is to revive the American dream.”

Last summer, I visited Opportunity Insights on its opening day. The offices are housed on the second floor of a brick building, above a café and across Massachusetts Avenue from Harvard’s columned Widener Library. Chetty arrived in econ-casual: a lilac dress shirt, no jacket, black slacks. He is tall and trim, with an untroubled air; he smiled as he greeted two of his longtime collaborators—the Brown University economist John Friedman and Harvard’s Nathaniel Hendren. They walked him around, showing off the finished space, done in a modern palette of white, wood, and aluminum with accent walls of yellow and sage.

Later, after Chetty and his colleagues had finished giving a day of seminars to their new staff, I caught up with him in his office, which was outfitted with a pristine whiteboard, an adjustable-height desk, and a Herman Miller chair that still had the tags attached. The first time I’d met him, at an economics conference, he had told me he was one of several cousins on his mother’s side who go by Raj, all named after their grandfather, Nadarajan, all with sharp minds and the same long legs and easy gait. Yet of Nadarajan’s children, only Chetty’s mother graduated from college, and he’s certain that this fact shaped his generation’s possibilities. He was able to come to the United States as a child and attend an elite private school, the University School of Milwaukee. New York Raj—the family appends a location to keep them straight—came to the U.S. later in life, at age 28, worked in drugstores, and then took a series of jobs with the City of New York. Singapore Raj found a job in a temple there that allows him to support his family back in India, but means they must live apart. Karaikudi Raj, named for the town where his mother grew up, committed suicide as a teenager.

“We are not trying to do something that is unimaginable or has never happened,” Chetty told me. “It happens just down the road.”

I asked Boston Raj to consider what might have become of him if that wealthy Indian businessman had not decided, in the precise year his mother was finishing high school, to create a college for the talented women of southeastern Tamil Nadu. “I would likely not be here,” he said, thinking for a moment. “To put it another way: Who are all the people who are not here, who would have been here if they’d had the opportunities? That is a really good question.”

Charlotte is one of America’s great urban success stories. In the 1970s, it was a modest-size city left behind as the textile industry that had defined North Carolina moved overseas. But in the 1980s, the “Queen City” began to lift itself up. US Airways established a hub at the Charlotte Douglas International Airport, and the region became a major transportation and distribution center. Bank of America built its headquarters there, and today Charlotte is in a dead heat with San Francisco to be the nation’s second-largest banking center, after New York. New skyscrapers have sprouted downtown, and the city boundary has been expanding, replacing farmland with spacious homes and Whole Foods stores. In the past four decades, Charlotte’s population has nearly tripled.

Charlotte has also stood out in Chetty’s research, though not in a good way. In a 2014 analysis of the country’s 50 largest metropolitan areas, Charlotte ranked last in ability to lift up poor children. Only 4.4 percent of Charlotte’s kids moved from the bottom quintile of household income to the top. Kids born into low-income families earned just $26,000 a year, on average, as adults—perched on the poverty line. “It was shocking,” says Brian Collier, an executive vice president of the Foundation for the Carolinas, which is working with Opportunity Insights. “The Charlotte story is that we are a meritocracy, that if you come here and are smart and motivated, you will have every opportunity to achieve greatness.” The city’s true story, Chetty’s data showed, is of selective opportunity: All the data-scientist and business-development-analyst jobs in the thriving banking sector are a boon for out-of-towners and the progeny of the well-to-do, but to grow up poor in Charlotte is largely to remain poor.

To help cities like Charlotte, Chetty takes inspiration from medicine. For thousands of years, he explained, little progress was made in understanding disease, until technologies like the microscope gave scientists novel ways to understand biology, and thus the pathologies that make people ill. In October, Chetty’s institute released an interactive map of the United States called the Opportunity Atlas, revealing the terrain of opportunity down to the level of individual neighborhoods. This, he says, will be his microscope.

Drawing on anonymized government data over a three-decade span, the researchers linked children to the parents who claimed them as dependents. The atlas then followed poor kids from every census tract in the country, showing how much they went on to earn as adults. The colors on the atlas reveal a generation’s prospects: red for areas where kids fared the worst; shades of orange, yellow, and green for middling locales; and blue for spots like Salt Lake City’s Foothill neighborhood, where upward mobility is strongest. It can also track children born into higher income brackets, compare results by race and gender, and zoom out to show states, regions, or the country as a whole.

The Opportunity Atlas has a fractal quality. Some regions of the United States look better than high-mobility countries such as Denmark, while others look more like a developing country. The Great Plains unfurl as a sea of blue, and then the eye is caught by an island of red—a mark of the miseries inflicted on the Oglala Lakota by European settlers. These stark differences recapitulate themselves on smaller and smaller scales as you zoom in. It’s common to see opposite extremes of opportunity within easy walking distance of each other, even in two neighborhoods that long-term residents would consider quite similar.

To find a cure for what ails America, Chetty will need to understand all of this wild variation. Which factors foster opportunity, and which impede it? The next step will be to find local interventions that can address these factors—and to prove, with experimental trials, that the interventions work. The end goal is the social equivalent of precision medicine: a method for diagnosing the particular weaknesses of a place and prescribing a set of treatments. This could transform neighborhoods, and restore the American dream from the ground up.

If all of this seems impossibly ambitious, Chetty’s counterargument is to point to how the blue is marbled in with the red. “We are not trying to do something that is unimaginable or has never happened,” he told me over lunch one day. “It happens just down the road.”

Yet in Charlotte, where Opportunity Insights hopes to build its proof of concept, the atlas reveals swaths of bleak uniformity. Looking at the city, you first see a large bluish wedge south of downtown, with Providence Road on one side and South Boulevard on the other, encompassing the mostly white, mostly affluent areas where children generally grow up to do well. Surrounding the wedge is a broad expanse in hues of red that locals call “the crescent,” made up of predominantly black neighborhoods where the prospects for poor children are pretty miserable. Hunger and homelessness are common, and in some places only one in five high-school students scores “proficient” on standardized tests. In many parts of the crescent, the question isn’t What’s holding kids back? so much as What isn’t holding them back? It’s hard to know where to start.

The most significant challenge Chetty faces is the force of history. In the 1930s, redlining prevented black families from buying homes in Charlotte’s more desirable neighbor- hoods. In the 1940s, the city built Independence Boulevard, a four-lane highway that cut through the heart of its Brooklyn neighborhood, dividing and displacing a thriving working-class black community. The damage continued in the ’60s and ’70s with new interstates. It’s common to hear that something has gone wrong in parts of Charlotte, but the more honest reading is that Charlotte is working as it was designed to. American cities are the way they are, and remain the way they are, because of choices they have made and continue to make.

Does a professor from Harvard, even one as influential and well funded as Chetty, truly stand any chance of bending the American story line? On his national atlas, the most obvious feature is an ugly red gash that starts in Virginia, curls down through the Southeast’s coastal states—North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, and Alabama—then marches west toward the Mississippi River, where it turns northward before petering out in western Tennessee. When I saw this, I was reminded of another map: one President Abraham Lincoln consulted in 1861, demarcating the counties with the most slaves. The two maps are remarkably similar. Set the documents side by side, and it may be hard to believe that they are separated in time by more than a century and a half, or that one is a rough census of men and women kept in bondage at the time of the Civil War, and the other is a computer-generated glimpse of our children’s future.

In 2014, Chetty, Hendren, and the Harvard economist Lawrence Katz asked the IRS and the Department of Housing and Urban Development, which had overseen the program, for permission to take another look at what had happened to the children. When the earlier follow-up had been done, the youngest kids, who had moved before they were teenagers, had not yet reached their earning years, and this turned out to make all the difference. This young group of movers, the economists found, had gone on to earn 31 percent more than those who hadn’t moved, and 4 percent more of them attended college. They calculated that for an 8-year-old child, the value of the extra future earnings over a lifetime was almost $100,000, a substantial sum for a poor family. For a family with two children, the taxes paid on the extra income more than covered the costs of the program. “The big insight,” Kathryn Edin, a sociology professor at Princeton, told me, “is that it took a generation for the effects to manifest.”

Last july, I took a tour of Charlotte with David Williams, the 34-year-old policy director of Opportunity Insights and the man responsible for translating Chetty’s research into action on the ground. Williams and members of his team crammed into the back of a white Ford Explorer with color printouts of various Charlotte neighborhoods as they appear on the atlas. Brian Collier, of the Foundation for the Carolinas, sat in the front seat, serving as a guide.

As the driver headed northeast, the high-rises of “Uptown” shifted abruptly to low-slung buildings and chain-link fences. Collier pointed out a men’s shelter in the rapidly gentrifying neighborhood of Lockwood, where he’d recently seen a drug deal go down a block away from a house that had sold for half a million dollars.

We continued on to Brightwalk, a new mixed-income development with long rows of townhomes, before turning west for a loop around West Charlotte High School, a once-lauded model of successful integration. In the 1990s, though, support for busing waned, and in 1999, a judge declared that race could not be used as a factor in school assignment. Now the student population is virtually all minority and overwhelmingly poor, and the surrounding neighborhood is deep red on the atlas. The homes are neat, one-story single families, a tad rough around the edges but nothing like the burnt-out buildings in Detroit, where Williams previously worked on economic development for the mayor. “It reminds you how hard it is to tell where real opportunity is,” Williams said. “You can’t just see it.”

Opportunity is not the same as affluence. Consider a kid who grows up in a household earning about $27,000 annually, right at the 25th percentile nationally. In Beverly Woods, a relatively wealthy, mostly white enclave in South Charlotte with spacious, well-kept yards, he could expect his household income to be $42,900 by age 35. Yet in Huntersville, an attractive northern suburb with nearly the same average household income as Beverly Woods, a similar kid could expect only $24,800—a stark difference, invisible to a passing driver.

This dynamic also functions in poorer areas. For a child in Reid Park, an African American neighborhood on the west side of Charlotte, near the airport—a place that has struggled to recover from a crime epidemic in the 1980s—the expected household income at age 35 is a dismal $17,800, on average. But in East Forest, a white, working-class neighborhood in southeast Charlotte, the expected future income jumps to $32,600.

There are places like East Forest in cities around the country. Chetty and his team have taken to calling them “opportunity bargains”: places with relatively affordable rents that punch above their weight with respect to opportunity. He doesn’t yet know why some places are opportunity bargains, but he considers the discovery of these neighborhoods to be a breakthrough. John Friedman told me that if the government had been able to move families to opportunity-bargain neighborhoods in the original Moving to Opportunity experiment—places selected for higher opportunity, not lower poverty—the children’s earnings improvements would have been more than twice as great.

In the crimson sectors of Chetty’s atlas, the problem is both the absence of opportunity and the presence of its opposite: swift currents that can drag a person down.

Chetty’s team has already begun to apply this concept in another of its partner cities, Seattle, working with two local housing authorities to navigate the thorny process of translating research into measurable social change. It’s hard for poor families to manage an expansive housing search, which requires time, transportation, and decent credit. The group created a program with “housing navigators,” who point participants toward areas with relatively high opportunity, help with credit-related issues, and even give neighborhood tours. Landlords need encouragement as well. They can be wary of tenants bearing vouchers, which mean government oversight and paperwork. The Seattle program has streamlined this process, and offers free damage insurance to sweeten the deal.

Tenants have just started moving, but the program is already successful: The majority of families who received assistance moved to high-opportunity areas, compared with one-fifth for the control group, which was not provided with the extra services. Chetty estimates that the program will increase each child’s lifetime earnings by $88,000. In February, President Donald Trump signed into law a bill that provides $28 million to try similar experimental programs in other locations. The bill enjoyed over- whelming bipartisan support, and this spring Chetty was invited to brief the Department of Housing and Urban Development. He told me he’s hopeful that the program can be expanded to the 2.2 million families that receive HUD housing vouchers every year. “Then you’d actually be doing something about poverty in the American city,” he said. “What I like about this is it’s not some pie-in-the-sky thing. We have something that works.”

Charlotte is among the cities interested in implementing the Seattle strategy, but officials also want to use the atlas to select better building sites for affordable housing. In the past, much of the city’s affordable housing was constructed in what Chetty’s data reveal to be high-poverty, low-opportunity areas. “Let’s not just think about building X units of new affordable housing,” Williams said. “Let’s really leverage housing policy as part of a larger economic-mobility agenda for the community.”

Opportunity bargains, however, are not an inexhaustible resource. The crucial question, says the Berkeley economist Enrico Moretti, is whether the opportunity in these places derives from “rival goods”—institutions, such as schools, with limited capacity—or “non-rival goods,” such as local culture, which are harder to deplete. When new people move in, what happens to opportunity? And even if an influx of families doesn’t disrupt the opportunity magic, people aren’t always eager to pick up and leave their homes. Moving breaks ties with family, friends, schools, churches, and other organizations. “The real conundrum is how to address the larger structural realities of inequality,” says the Harvard sociologist Robert Sampson, “and not just try to move people around.”

For all he’s learned about where opportunity resides in America, Chetty knows surprisingly little about what makes one place better than another. He and Hendren have gathered a range of social-science data sets and looked for correlations to the atlas. The high-opportunity places, they’ve found, tend to share five qualities: good schools, greater levels of social cohesion, many two-parent families, low levels of income inequality, and little residential segregation, by either class or race. The list is suggestive, but hard to interpret.

For example, the strongest correlation is the number of intact families. The explanation seems obvious: A second parent usually means higher family income as well as more stability, a broader social network, additional emotional support, and many other intangibles. Yet children’s upward mobility was strongly correlated with two-parent families only in the neighborhood, not necessarily in their home. There are so many things the data might be trying to say. Maybe fathers in a neighborhood serve as mentors and role models? Or maybe there is no causal connection at all. Perhaps, for example, places with strong church communities help kids while also fostering strong marriages. The same kinds of questions flow from every correlation; each one may mean many things. What is cause, what is effect, and what are we missing? Chetty’s microscope has revealed a new world, but not what animates it—or how to change it.

Chetty has found that opportunity does not correlate with many traditional economic measures, such as employment or wage growth. In the search for opportunity’s cause, he is instead focusing on an idea borrowed from sociology: social capital. The term refers broadly to the set of connections that ease a person’s way through the world, providing support and inspiration and opening doors.

Economics has long played the role of sociology’s annoying older brother—conventionally accomplished and wholeheartedly confident, unaware of what he doesn’t know, while still commanding everyone’s attention. Chetty, though, is part of a younger generation of scholars who have embraced a style of quantitative social science that crosses old disciplinary lines. There are strong hints in his research that social capital and mobility are intimately connected; even a crude measure of social capital, such as the number of bowling alleys in a neighborhood, seems to track with opportunity. His data also suggest that who you know growing up can have lasting effects. A paper on patents he co-authored found that young women were more likely to become inventors if they’d moved as children to places where many female inventors lived. (The number of male inventors had little effect.) Even which fields inventors worked in was heavily influenced by what was being invented around them as children. Those who grew up in the Bay Area had some of the highest rates of patenting in computers and related fields, while those who spent their childhood in Minneapolis, home of many medical-device manufacturers, tended to invent drugs and medical devices.* Chetty is currently working with data from Facebook and other social-media platforms to quantify the links between opportunity and our social networks.

Sociologists embrace many ways of understanding the world. They shadow people and move into communities, wondering what they might find out. They collect data and do quantitative analysis and read economics papers, but their work is also informed by psychology and cultural studies. “When you are released from the harsh demands of experiment, you are allowed to make new discoveries and think more freely about what is going on,” says David Grusky, a Stanford sociology professor who collaborates with Chetty. I asked Princeton’s Edin what she thought would end up being the one thing that best explains the peaks and valleys of American opportunity. She said her best guess is “some kind of social glue”—the ties that bind people, fostered by well-functioning institutions, whether they are mosques or neighborhood soccer leagues. The staff at Opportunity Insights has learned: When an economist gets lost, a sociologist can touch his elbow and say, You know, I’ve been noticing some things.

In charlotte, Chetty still aspires to practice “precision medicine,” but he told me his initial goal is more modest: to see whether he and his team can find anything that helps. Opportunity Insights is planning housing and higher-education initiatives, but social capital is at the center of its approach. It is working with a local organization called Leading on Opportunity, and looking at nonprofits that are already operating successfully, including Communities in Schools, a national group that provides comprehensive student support, as well as a job-training program called Year Up. Chetty is also using tax data to measure the long-term impacts of dozens of place-based interventions, such as enterprise zones, which use tax and other incentives to draw businesses into economically depressed areas. (He expects to see initial results from these analyses later this year.) Chetty may not have many answers yet, but he is convinced that this combination of data, collaboration, and fieldwork will make it possible to move from educated guesses to tailored prescriptions. “There are points when the pieces come together,” Chetty told me. “My instinct is that in social science, this generation is when that is going to happen.”

Chetty’s pitch to the nation is that our problems have technocratic solutions, but at times I sense that he is avoiding an argument. Surely our neighborhoods can be improved, and those improvements can help the next generation achieve better outcomes. But what of the larger forces driving the enormous disparities in American wealth? Poor people would be better off if their children had better prospects, but also if they had more money—if the fruits of our society were shared more broadly. “I can take money from you and give it to me, and maybe that is good and maybe it is not,” he said. “I feel like there are a lot of people working on redistribution, and it is hard to figure out the right answer there.” To focus on the question of who gets what is also, of course, politically incendiary.

Chetty believes there is more progress to be made through a moral framing that is less partisan. “There are so many kids out there who could be doing so many great things, both for themselves and for the world,” he said. Chetty’s challenge to the system is measured and empirical; it’s one that billionaires and corporations can happily endorse. But his stance is also a simple matter of personality: Chetty is no agitator. He told me, “I like to find solutions that please everyone in the room, and this definitely has that feel.”

In Charlotte, even the circumscribed version of social change that Chetty is attempting looks daunting. Last summer, before the Opportunity Insights team came to town, I drove around to the back of West Charlotte High School, to a hamlet of pale-yellow temporary-classroom buildings, each set on concrete blocks. One building has been given over to Eliminate the Digital Divide, known as E2D, a nonprofit that takes donations of old laptops, then refurbishes and distributes them for $60 apiece to students who have no computer of their own. According to E2D, half of the county’s public-school students have been unable to complete a homework assignment because they don’t have access to a computer or the internet.

Inside the E2D building is a bright room ringed by a series of workstations where West Charlotte student employees inspect laptops, set up hard drives, and test the final products. Whiteboards, photos, and posters with inspirational phrases like college bound! cover the walls. By the door, a pair of yellow couches serve as a waiting area. When the boys get their computers, they work hard to suppress a smile, whereas the girls are prone to let loose. Sometimes they jump up and down, and sometimes they cry.

I met Kalijah Jones, a young black woman in a pale-pink sleeveless blouse and matching skirt. She had started working at E2D during her senior year, in 2017. Not long into our conversation, she said, “I love my life!”—this despite the fact that she was living in a homeless shelter at the time.

For Jones, the biggest benefit brought by E2D was not the computer or the job, but the social capital the program provided. Last year, she said, E2D’s West Charlotte lab was recognized with a local technology award, and the founder invited Jones and some of her co-workers to join him for the awards ceremony at the Knight Theater, where the Charlotte Ballet performs. One of the other honorees was Road to Hire, a program that pays high-school graduates as it trains them for jobs in sales and tech. The head of Road to Hire was at the ceremony, and he gave Jones a business card, which led to a paid spot in the program’s training program.

But in the crimson sectors of Chetty’s atlas, the problem is both the absence of opportunity and the presence of its opposite: swift currents that can drag a person down. There are, in these places, a few narrow paths to success, and 99 ways to falter. Jones made it through high school despite living in a shelter, and was accepted to Western Carolina University with financial aid. But she decided not to go, in part because she couldn’t imagine leaving her struggling mother and sister behind to live on a campus three hours away. Last winter, the three of them left Charlotte, and the prospects that were beginning to open up for Jones there, and moved to New Jersey, where she grew up. When I last spoke with her, she’d found work at an Amazon warehouse.

One friday evening, I was in Chetty’s Stanford office when a ballerina arrived. Sanvi, Chetty’s 3-year-old daughter, wore a pink tutu with matching hair ribbons and tights. She declined—vigorously—the white sweater offered to ward off the evening chill. Chetty and I had spent hours discussing his research, but when the nanny dropped Sanvi off, it marked the end of the day. Chetty gathered his things and whisked her up in his arms. “Hold me properly, Appa,” Sanvi admonished. Outside, we got into Chetty’s aging silver Acura and headed to an Indonesian restaurant for takeout. Sanvi bubbled with enthusiasm. “I want to be a fairy princess,” she announced from the back seat. “Can I be a fairy princess?” Chetty glanced in the rearview mirror and assured Sanvi that when she grows up, she can be whatever she wants.

After stopping for the food, we pulled up to a light-brown ranch house, with beautiful plantings out front. Inside, the house was clearly Sanvi’s. Taking a seat in the open kitchen, I was surrounded by a tapestry of exuberant finger paintings taped to the walls, interspersed with pages neatly torn from coloring books (penguins, parrots, bunnies, each splashed with color). A pair of persimmon trees were fruiting out back.

Chetty told me that his interest in poverty dates back to the horrifying want he observed on the streets of New Delhi. But only when he built the first version of his atlas did he see what he should do about it. “I realized,” he said, “we could have the biggest impact on poverty by focusing on children.”

Chetty thinks about revolution like an economist does: as a compounding accumulation of marginal changes. Bump the interest rate on your savings account by one notch, and 30 years later, your balance is much improved. Move a family to a better zip code, or foster the right conditions in that family’s current neighborhood, and their children will do better; do that a thousand times, or ten thousand, and the American dream can be more possible, for more people, than it is today.

In the 1930s, the poet Langston Hughes published what remains one of the most honest descriptions of that dream:

"A dream so strong, so brave, so true

That even yet its mighty daring sings

In every brick and stone, in every furrow turned

That’s made America the land it has become"

Hearing stories of the American dream as a boy in New Delhi, Chetty adopted the faith. When he became a scientist, he discerned the truth. What remains is contradiction: We must believe in the dream and we must accept that it is false—then, perhaps, we will be capable of building a land where it will yet be true.

This article appears in the August 2019 print edition with the headline “Raj Chetty’s American Dream.”

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whittlebaggett8 · 5 years

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Is Pakistan Headed for Political Crisis?

It’s deja vu all about again. At a time when Pakistan is going by means of a serious economic crisis, the all-impressive armed forces institution has done anything that could create even further political instability and even derail the Imran Khan authorities. Soon after focusing on politicians in the title of anti-corruption or accountability by means of Khan, the army establishment has turned its notice to judges who are not in the excellent books of GHQ.

The Imran Khan governing administration has moved reference or a situation versus Justice Qazi Faez Isa of the Supreme Court and Sindh Higher Court judge KK Agha to the Supreme Judicial Council, proclaiming that they have not declared their abroad homes in their tax returns. Curiously, a reference can be filed by a private person but in this circumstance it was submitted by Pakistani President Arif Alvi, to display that the Khan government is carrying out its anti-corruption drive across the board. To make this impact extra authentic, the military for the initial time publicly sentenced a retired brigadier to death and a retired general to existence imprisonment.

On the encounter of it, it appears a nicely-believed out approach — but it went incorrect since the military has picked the improper judge to focus on. The case is reminiscent of when Pakistani President Typical Pervez Musharaff sacked and then arrested the then-chief justice of Pakistan Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, which galvanized into a lawyers’ motion, just one of the biggest civil protests in the history of Pakistan, and in the long run led to the downfall of Musharaff. The Justice Isa scenario far too has related portents. Incidentally, both of those Chaudhry and Isa hail from insurgency-ridden Balochistan province and sent verdicts that have not sat very well with the army.

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Lots of believe that that the genuine motive for filing reference in opposition to Isa is that in two situations he has not only pulled up the military services establishment but has also requested it to remain within its constitutional confines.

The first circumstance concerned the Quetta blast in August 2016, in which quite a few distinguished legal professionals killed. Isa, who headed a single fee to look into the blast, in his report passed severe strictures against the Interior Ministry and Inter-Expert services Intelligence (ISI) for not using motion from terror outfits overtly functioning in Pakistan. But his much more damning verdict was on the notorious “Faizabad dharna,” a sit-in protest led by an army-backed militant and fundamentalist outfit identified as Tehreek-i-Labbaik Pakistan (TLP). In 2017, the TLP, protesting a modify in electoral legislation, blocked the countrywide highways and indulged in rioting and avenue violence, keeping Pakistani towns to ransom for times. The dharna was choreographed by the ISI to weaken the then-Nawaz Sharif authorities lots of ISI officers ended up viewed distributing funds to protesters.

A two-member Supreme Courtroom bench headed by Justice Isa and Mushir Alam took suo motu see and in its verdict, delivered in 2019, significantly indicted the position of the army, specially the ISI. Just one of the observations built in the verdict mentioned:

Pursuant to the judgment in Air Marshal Asghar Khan’s circumstance the involvement of ISI and of the users of the armed forces in politics, media and other “unlawful activities” need to have stopped. Alternatively when TLP’s dharna members been given hard cash handouts from adult males in uniform, the perception of their involvement attained traction.

The Director Normal of the Inter-Solutions Community Relations (ISPR) has also taken to commenting on political matters. The armed forces, and all companies manned by the staff of the armed forces, such as ISI, Army Intelligence (MI) and ISPR provide Pakistan, and consequently all its citizens.

They should never ever be perceived to guidance a unique political bash, faction or politician. If any staff of the armed forces indulges in any kind of politicking or attempts to manipulate the media he undermines the integrity and professionalism of the armed forces.

The verdict concluded by stating that the governing administration of Pakistan via the Ministry of Defense and the respective chiefs of the military, the navy, and the air drive are directed to initiate motion from the personnel below their command who are identified to have violated their oath.

This obviously raised eyebrows at GHQ in Rawalpindi, as for the initial time in the record of Pakistan this sort of language was made use of from the armed forces, especially the ISI.

Zahid Mukhtar, a senior journalist based in Lahore, instructed India Legal that the language utilized in the verdict has set the armed forces in a serious bind and they ended up pressured to file a assessment petition towards it.

“But as for every regulation the evaluation petition will be read by the same bench,” he defined, “and if it rejects the critique petition, then it can generate a significant constitutional crisis.”

Mukhtar stated most authorized gurus are of the perspective that the military would like to get Isa out of its way before the evaluation petition will come up for a hearing and therefore intelligently moved a reference from him through the Khan governing administration.

Though the transfer looked well-choreographed, it did not go as per the script simply because selective leaks about the reference by the military snowballed into key controversy. Isa himself wrote to President Alvi asking him to clarify the reference towards him. Isa added that “selective leaks amount to character assassination, jeopardize his appropriate to owing approach and truthful demo, and undermine the establishment of the judiciary.”

Mohammed Rizwan, a senior Pakistani journalist and a fellow at the Pragmora Institute, Canada, thinks that “This is one particular of the largest blunders committed by the Pakistani Army at a time when the state is going by means of a major economic and governance crisis.”

“The economic climate is in a shambles,” Rizwan discussed. “The community is reeling below a day-to-working day survival struggle simply because of a sharp hike in selling prices of critical commodities the IMF bailout software will further more irritate these miseries. In such occasions, Pakistan hardly wants another crisis.”

Rizwan explained even though contents of the reference have not been manufactured general public, it is considered that they are about Isa’s wife’s houses in Spain, which the governing administration claims have not been declared in tax returns. Isa’s wife holds twin Spanish and Pakistani citizenship.

“The problem that arises is why now? Justice Isa as a lawyer and then as a decide experienced been submitting his tax returns for many years. If there was any discrepancy he should really have been questioned before. Why now? This genuinely smacks of vendetta,” Rizwan mentioned, adding the military has before attempted a campaign against him when a number of members of the Punjab Bar Council passed a resolution in opposition to him for mocking the Pakistan Military. But that resolution was turned down by many condition bar councils, which includes Punjab’s, which explained these associates do not represent full bar council.

Mukhtar claims targeting Isa can be counter-productive as he is acknowledged in Pakistan for his honesty and integrity. In addition, Isa’s father was a near associate of Pakistan’s founder, Mohammad Ali Jinnah.

The to start with signs of discontent emerged when Added Legal professional Standard Zahid F Ebrahim, son of renowned lawyer and former Supreme Courtroom choose Fakhruddin G Ebrahim, resigned, calling the reference “ a reckless try to tar the track record of unbiased people and … browbeating the judiciary of Pakistan.”

The Pakistan Muslin League (Nawaz), Pakistan Peoples’ Bash, and several bar associations have presently arrive out in the assistance of Isa and threatened to launch a motion against the govt. The Supreme Court Bar Affiliation (SCBA) has even demanded President Arif Alvi’s impeachment for submitting the reference towards Isa. SCBA President Amanullah Kanrani stated that the grievance filed towards Justice Isa was “condemnable.” Recounting Justice Isa’s products and services to the country, the SCBA president said that the SC decide had “exposed” terrorism and additional that “people who do not speak from terrorists are facilitators of terrorism.”

Lawyers’ consultant bodies across the country prepared meetings for following Eid to devise a future strategy. They see the transfer as an exertion to undermine the independence of the judiciary.

The opposition-dominated Senate previous week adopted a resolution demanding the withdrawal of the references filed from the two judges.

Rizwan says the major fallout of this disastrous transfer will be on Prime Minister Imran Khan. “The military services, which was before pulling the strings from the at the rear of, has now appear out in the entrance,” he discussed. “This is the motive why Imran is totally silent on this problem.”

The military services, not happy with Khan’s effectiveness, has imposed its adult men on him in the condition of “advisers,” which has designed a serious rift in the get together. As of now, out of 48 ministers and advisers, only five belong to Imran’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), Rizwan explained.

Mukhtar states the accountability or anti-corruption generate has also brought Nawaz Sharif and Asif Ali Zardari collectively and they are not allowing parliament to operate. Khan’s coalition govt has a wafer-skinny the greater part in the nationwide assembly and two of his big allies — MQM and Balochistan Nationwide Social gathering (Akhtar Mengal team) — are so disappointed with the authorities that they are threatening to give up the coalition.

“Will Justice Isa’s reference culminate into an additional lawyers’ motion, which we saw in the circumstance of Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry? Only time will notify but the class of Pakistan politics may substantially modify following Eid. The following two months will pretty critical for Imran’s survival, which solely relies upon on the 3rd umpire [the military],” Rizwan claimed.

Asif Ullah Khan is a extended-time journalist who has worked for The Periods of India, Khaleej Occasions, and The Brunei Times.

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