The Tiny Tips column from the July 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard
The gap between rich and poor has widened particularly in countries that have become more integrated into the global economy, such as China, Russia and some Eastern European countries…. ‘The influence of globalization on income inequalities worldwide was greater than we had expected’, summarizes Valentin Lang, junior professor of International Political Economy at the University of Mannheim and author of the study. ’We were particularly surprised that these differences were mainly due to the gains of the richest and that the lower income groups benefited little or not at all’.
Still, over the years the men have been re-considering many of the customs they took for granted in their youth. This includes even female genital mutilation – which is practiced on daughters as a rite of passage. ‘We’ve noticed that it makes our girls weak’, says Lengees. With hindsight, Lengees says he wishes he could have traded his past Moran life for an education. ‘Look at this phone my children gave me’, says Lengees, holding it out. ‘I only know how to press this button to answer it if someone is calling me. I can’t even call out.’ Being illiterate, he says, ‘is like being a deaf person. You don’t understand the language people are using. It’s like you’re not even fully in the world’.
….Topham noted how the Smurfs live in a Kibbutz-like farming community and rely on self-sufficient methods of means and production. Moreover, the Smurfs coexist happily without using money, sacrificing themselves for the greater good of the community.
‘New study in Nature confirms that if we want to avoid the next pandemic—we should stop destroying biodiversity, heating, and polluting the planet’, Diarmid Campbell-Lendrum, who leads the World Health Organization’s climate change unit and was not involved with the study, wrote on social media. ‘Just one more reason to go for a greener, healthier future’.
Salman Rushdie says free Palestinian state would be ‘Taliban-like'.
‘Millions of children across the country do not have anywhere safe and decent to call home. These children are living without space to study, play or even have a good night’s sleep; while their parents struggle to afford essentials like food and clothes’.
It is a system driven not by human needs and wants, but by the pursuit of profit that has no end. This system has only been around for a few hundred years. But in that short time it has reshaped the world with new technologies, infrastructures and innovations. This has given us the potential to truly meet the needs of everyone, to give everyone a life of freedom and fulfilment.
The US government is currently considering a reclassification of Vietnam under the US Tariff Law as a “market economy,” which would provide Vietnam major economic benefits, even though Vietnam does not satisfy basic labor rights standards.
(These links are provided for information and don’t necessarily represent our point of view.)
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