The Census Bureau announced that 15 percent of Americans lived in poverty in 2011 – a slight drop from the year before. But income disparities continue to grow. Host Michel Martin talks with Harvard Professor William Julius Wilson, author of the 1987 book The Truly Disadvantaged: The Inner City, the Underclass, and Public Policy.
http://www.npr.org/2012/09/13/161082306/william-julius-wilson-ending-poverty-is-possible?ft=1&f=1003
The Inequality Crisis - RSA Comment - (21st Feb 2013)
Read Stewart Lansley article, The Inequality Crisis (http://comment.rsablogs.org.uk/2013/02/19/inequality-crisis/)
For the last 30 years, the economy of the UK (and much of the rich world ) has been managed on the basis of a doctrine that holds that inequality is a necessary condition for economic progress. Author and economist Stewart Lansley visits the RSA to argue that this theory is wrong. Rather, the surging income gap of recent decades has not just been socially corrosive, it lies at the roots of the current prolonged national and global crisis.
Allowing the fruits of growth to be colonised by the few has, contrary to the current orthodoxy, simply brought more turbulent and more fragile economies. We now need to abandon this theory and adopt a new approach to economic management built around the growing evidence that more equal societies are the route, not just to social harmony, but also to economic health.
Speaker: Stewart Lansley is a visiting fellow at Bristol University and the author of ‘The Cost of Inequality’, runner-up in Spear’s 2012 business book of the year awards
Chair: Matthew Taylor, chief executive, RSA
http://www.thersa.org/events/audio-and-past-events/2013/the-inequality-crisis
In a lecture entitled "Fighting Poverty", Senator Hugh Segal explains why we need a new national approach to tackling poverty arguing that the costs and consequences of poverty are much larger than direct spending on social programs. Segal has been a long-time proponent of establishing a Guaranteed Annual Income. This lecture was produced in collaboration with the Literary Review of Canada.
An impressive view of how technology can address poverty.
http://www.ted.com/talks/vinay_venkatraman_technology_crafts_for_the_digitally_underserved.html
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An amazing window into how bad poverty can be.
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The University of the People says it’s the "world’s first, tuition-free, online university," designed for poor students who would otherwise lack access to higher education. The institution has 1,300 students in 129 countries, but it’s also struggling to maintain its "free" mission.
An advertising agency sparked controversy at the South by Southwest technology conference when it hired homeless people in Austin to act as "Homeless Hotspots." Critics charge that it exploits the homeless. But Megan Garber, a staff writer for The Atlantic, sees some good in the project.
http://www.npr.org/2012/03/13/148528071/homeless-hotspots-exploitation-or-innovation
Tagged with homeless sxsw technology wifi poverty inequality npr
China’s economy depends on a system regulating workers from around China and beyond. In Guangzhou, the migrant metropolis, Mukul Devichand hears stories of anger and reform.
For Broadcasting House, Emma Jane Kirby retraces George Orwell’s classic journey into poverty. She meets a woman crammed into a boarding house room with her two adult children; a kitchen hand who grabs only a few hours sleep each night; a homeless Pole who has forgotten what it was to be sober; and the teen couple who sleep hidden in the long grass of a park for fear of attackers.
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