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 RSA President’s Lecture: Why Creativity is the New Economy, (10th Sep 2012)
We are living in a time of "Great Reset" - when economic crisis provides an opportunity to rethink virtually every aspect of our lives - from how and where we live, to how we work, to how we invest in individuals and infrastructure, to how we shape our cities and regions.
Taking a deeper look at the forces reshaping our economy, and giving us a provocative new way to think about why we live as we do - and where we might be headed, Richard Florida shows how these forces, when combined, will spur a fresh era of growth and prosperity, define a new geography of progress, and create surprising opportunities for all of us.
Using lessons from the last ten years to show how Creative Class theory has grown from a prediction to a prescription for an economy in turmoil, Florida argues the need for a new social compact to put us back on the path to economic growth. Florida’s Creative Compact commits to developing the full human potential and creative capabilities of every person, and suggests a new set of institutional supports to ensure a more robust and sustainable social system around the new world of work.
Speaker: Dr Richard Florida, director, the Martin Prosperity Institute and Professor of Business and Creativity at the University of Toronto and NYU; senior editor, The Atlantic and is the author of several influential global best sellers, including the award-winning ‘The Rise of the Creative Class’.
Introduced by: HRH The Princess Royal, RSA President.
Chair: Luke Johnson, RSA Chair.
http://www.thersa.org/events/audio-and-past-events/2012/why-creativity-is-the-new-economy
Tagged with rsa book:author=richard florida economics creativity society growth work
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
Speaker(s): Dr Daniel Stedman Jones, Professor Mark Pennington, Professor Lord Skidelsky Chair: Professor Stuart Corbridge
Recorded on 16 January 2013 in Old Theatre, Old Building.
How did American and British policymakers become so enamoured with free markets, deregulation, and limited government? Based on archival research and interviews with leading participants in the movement, Daniel Stedman Jones has traced the ascendancy of neoliberalism from the academy of interwar Europe to supremacy under Reagan and Thatcher and in the decades since. He contends that there was nothing inevitable about the victory of free-market politics. Far from being the story of the simple triumph of right-wing ideas, the neoliberal breakthrough was contingent on the economic crises of the 1970s and the acceptance of the need for new policies by the political left. In his lecture he will describe neoliberalism’s road to power, beginning in interwar Europe, then shifting its centre of gravity after 1945 to the United States, especially to Chicago and Virginia, where it was developed into an uncompromising political message, communicated through a transatlantic network of think tanks, businessmen, politicians, and journalists held together by Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman. A discussion for anyone who wants to understand the history behind the Anglo-American love affair with the free market, as well as the origins of the current economic crisis.
Daniel Stedman Jones is a barrister in London. He was educated at the University of Oxford and at the University of Pennsylvania, where he earned a PhD in history. He has worked as a policy adviser for the New Opportunities Fund and as a researcher for Demos. His latest book is Masters of the Universe: Hayek, Friedman, and the Birth of Neoliberal Politics.
Mark Pennington is Professor of Public Policy and Political Economy, King’s College, University of London, prior to which he spent eleven years at Queen Mary, University of London. He holds a PhD from the London School of Economics. Mark’s work lies at the intersection of politics, philosophy and economics with a particular emphasis on the classical liberal tradition. His latest book, Robust Political Economy (2011: Cheltenham, Edward Elgar) examines challenges to classical liberalism derived from neo-classical economics, communitarian political theory and egalitarian ethics. From January 2013 Mark will be the European Editor of the Review of Austrian Economics.
Robert Skidelsky is Emeritus Professor of Political Economy at the University of Warwick. His three-volume biography of the economist John Maynard Keynes (1983, 1992, 2000) received numerous prizes, and he recently published Keynes: The Return of the Master.
Welfare benefits have been in the news a lot lately – in Europe as governments struggle with debt, in the US with Mitt Romney’s comments about the ‘47 percent dependent on government entitlements’ and here in Australia as the federal government cuts back the baby bonus. This week on Rear Vision the story of welfare in Australia.
Guests:
Professor Francis Castles, Emeritus Professor - School of Politics and International Relations, Australian National University
Professor Peter Whiteford, Crawford School of Public Policy , Australian National University
http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/rearvision/australia27s-welfare-state/4379252
Has environmentalism lost its way? What does sustainability really have to do with a healthy planet?
Paul Kingsnorth’s essay from the first Dark Mountain book ‘Confessions of a Recovering Environmentalist’ caused quite a stir, and has helped stimulate, or egg on, a wider discussion about the future of green politics, and if it has one. This audio discussion, organised by Orion magazine, sees Paul discussing the essay and what flows from it with American writers David Abram and Lierre Keith, in January 2012.
The Dark Mountain Project is a network of writers, artists and thinkers who have stopped believing the stories our civilisation tells itself.
http://dark-mountain.net/other-media/audio/confessions-of-a-recovering-environmentalist%E2%80%A8/
Orion is a bimonthly, advertising-free magazine devoted to creating a stronger bond between people and nature.
Tagged with environment sustainability economics society future green politics
Ireland is being held up as the poster child for austerity measures, they’ve cut public services wages, raised taxes and cut government spending. Yet Ireland’s economy is still in decline. So is austerity working in Ireland?
Guests:
Terry McDonough,Professor of Economics at the National University of Ireland Galway
David Duffy, Economist at the Economic and Social Research Institute in Dublin.
Sean Kay, Professor of politics at Ohio Wesleyan University.
Constantin Gurdgiev, Professor of Finance at Trinity College, Dublin.
Publications:
Title: Celtic Revival? The Rise, Fall, and Renewal of Global Ireland
Author: Sean Kay
Publisher: Rowan & Littlefield
Released: 01 Dec 2011
http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/rearvision/ireland27s-austerity/4135598
Europe correspondent Stephen Beard begins a five-part series from bars in Europe. He gets the opinions of ordinary Europeans on the ongoing debt crisis, starting with the Irish.
http://www.marketplace.org/topics/world/pub-crawl/man-walks-bar…-ireland
Speaker(s): Professor Lord Robert Skidelsky, Dr Maurice Glasman
Chair: Dr Jonathan Leape
Recorded on 4 July 2012 in Old Theatre, Old Building.
Why do we work almost as hard as we did 40 years ago, despite being on average twice as rich? Robert Skidelsky suggests an escape from the work and consumption treadmill.
This event marks the publication of Robert and Edward Skidelsky’s new book How Much is Enough? The Economics of the Good Life.
Dr Maurice Glasman is a reader in political theory at London Metropolitan University, author of Unnecessary Suffering and a Labour Peer.
Robert Skidelsky is Emeritus Professor of Political Economy at the University of Warwick. His three-volume biography of the economist John Maynard Keynes (1983, 1992, 2000) received numerous prizes, and he recently published Keynes: The Return of the Master.
Speaker(s): Professor Luigi Zingales
Chair: Professor David Webb
Recorded on 21 June 2012 in Old Theatre, Old Building.
When the Italian-born economist Luigi Zingales first arrived in the United States in the 1980s, he embraced the American dream: the belief that what brings you success is hard work, not luck or who you know. But the economic events of the past decade, combined with the actions of politicians from both sides, have undermined capitalism’s reputation. In A Capitalism for the People, which he will discuss in this lecture, Zingales warns that the US economy risks deteriorating into a Berlusconi-style crony-capitalist system – pro-business rather than pro-market, and run by corrupt politicians who are more concerned with lining the pockets of the connected elite than with improving opportunity for the people. If it continues to lose popular support, can capitalism survive? Zingales’ real-world recommendations for restoring true competition to the economic system give hope that the US can not only avoid the fate of Italy and Greece, but rebound to greatness.
Luigi Zingales is the Robert C McCormack Professor of Entrepreneurship and Finance, and the David G Booth Faculty Fellow at the University of Chicago’s Graduate School of Business. He serves as the director of the American Finance Association, a faculty research fellow for the National Bureau of Economic Research, a research fellow for the Center for Economic Policy research and a fellow for the European Governance Institute.
Page 1 of 5Older