Inequalities

Month: January 2012

  • Is Economic Fairness a Winning Message in 2012?

    In the 2012 reelection campaign, President Obama is defining himself in terms of economic fairness. The word “fair” was used nine times in the State of the Union Address, and symbols of economic inequality were on full display (including Warren Buffett’s secretary, an invited guest). Is the public receptive to the inequality message? A recent…

  • The declining generosity of the benefits system

    A quick research-based post today (following by a similarly quick research-based post tomorrow). As I’ve said before, the Resolution Foundation are the UK think-tank to watch – their work is research-heavy, politically-potent, and is setting the agenda about declining living standards. But it’s a graph about the benefits system that recently caught my eye.

  • Doctors as Agents of Public Health Promotion

    In Britain, the NHS Future Forum issued a report calling on the medical establishment to carry the banner of public health: “every contact must count as an opportunity to maintain and, where possible, improve their mental and physical health and wellbeing.” To realize this goal conversations about preventive health may need to extend into new…

  • Blog Infidelity: Labour’s failings on disability

    This article was posted on Left Foot Forward last Friday, and I thought I’d re-post it to the Inequalities community this week. [As this more political than usually, I’ll also put up a separate, research-based post tomorrow on the blog]. Thoughts appreciated… In a climate of austerity where bad news is normal, the occasional rays…

  • Bad Kids or Bad Environments?

    Consider a ten-year-old child. He is being raised by a single mother who drinks at night and shouts frequently at her three children. They live in a bad neighborhood, and the kids attend a tough school. In the classroom, the boy does not concentrate very well and is often disruptive in class. At recess he…

  • The criminal benefit-claiming class?

    I know I’ve already talked about ‘deservingness’ among benefit claimants – but if UK newspaper and lobby groups keep making claims about it, then I’m just going to have to keep writing about it. Just after Christmas there was a rush of newspaper stories about the numbers of benefit claimants with criminal records, led by…

  • America the Segregated

    Of all the forms of inequality in American society, residential segregation may be the most pernicious. Where you live determines where you go to school, what social networks you can join, what jobs you can access, and whether your voice is likely to be heard in the electoral politics. That is why a new report…

  • The perfect tax system

    You might think that the days of the glorious, all-knowing economist are behind us, in the midst of savagely bleak times at least partly caused by economistic hubris. But clearly there’s still a space in our hearts to hear economists reaching truths unseen by others, at least for the salvation of baseball in the film…