Poverty in Medellin, Colombia. Luis P\u00e9rez\/Wikimedia Commons. Some rights reserved.<\/i><\/p>\n
Inequality
\nis the worst kind of poverty, because inequality is precisely what causes it.
\nMeasuring poverty and allocating budget lines in the absence of public policies
\nagainst inequality is like applying a tourniquet below the wound. According to
\nthe OECD, $ 134 billion in official aid were spent in 2013 to fight poverty. The
\nnumber of poor people in the world, however, is not diminishing.<\/p>\n
Poverty for an individual is the
\nlack of what he or she needs to live. Inequality in a society is the structural
\nlack that generates poverty, which is due to five causes:<\/p>\n
–\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0
\nlack of quality public goods;<\/p>\n
–\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0
\nabsence of public
\ninstitutions;<\/p>\n
–\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0
\nlack of social fabric;<\/p>\n
–\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0
\ninability to
\norganize collectively;<\/p>\n
–\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0
\nno access to
\nopportunities.<\/p>\n
When, in a context of inequality – Latin America is the most unequal
\nregion in the world -, government programs are restricted to implementing
\nassistance plans and public policies are not structured to address the five
\ncauses mentioned above, the end result is poverty being managed in a way that perpetuates
\nit rather than management aimed at putting an end to the inequality that
\ngenerates it.<\/p>\n
<\/i><\/p>\n
The first factor of inequality is when a sector of the population lives
\nin a context lacking quality public goods, because a society that lacks these
\ngoods and services – which should be available to all equally, both in quantity
\nand quality – is actually denying large-scale social inclusion. A hospital is a
\npublic good not because the state manages it, but because both the person with
\nthe largest resources and the person in most need in a community get the same
\nquality of service, regardless of who manages it. If the health system provides
\npoor attention to the vulnerable segments of society and directs people to the
\nprivate system for quality care, then only the most affluent sectors will be
\nable to afford it and healthcare will no longer be a public good, in so far as
\nit no longer guarantees the same living standard quality to the population as a
\nwhole. A government's first policy measure should thus be the setting up of a
\ncollaboration agreement with both civil society and the business sector to
\nproduce, manage, distribute, and safeguard quality public goods. All three
\nactors contribute distinctive elements to the generation of these goods: the
\nstate adds scale, the business sector quality, and social organizations
\nspecificity.<\/p>\n
The lack of public
\ninstitutions is another decisive factor of inequality,
\nsince those who suffer most from it are the sectors who live in poverty and
\nhave no way of preventing the impact of discretion in the allocation of public
\nresources, of concentration of power and institutional abuse, of welfare
\nprovision (a blend of assistance and cynicism), cronyism, structural corruption
\nand organized crime from damaging their living conditions. There cannot be zero
\npoverty if there is no zero corruption and zero discretion. If we are to deal
\nwith, and solve, institutional weakness, tools of participatory democracy should
\nbe introduced and citizens empowered to demand full enforcement of the rule of
\nlaw, while businessmen should actively assume their role as citizens.<\/p>\n
Another characteristic of inequality is the lack of social fabric. The
\npoor sectors\u2019 social links are restricted to a reduced environment, they engage
\nin isolated socio-economic relationships, and they have limited or even non-existent
\ncontacts with those who facilitate access to the social ladder. The lack of
\nquality links undermines the consolidation of upward social mobility and leaves
\npeople exposed, lacking buffer spaces and containment areas, facing the abuse of
\npower of both public institutions and the powers that be. The state should
\ncreate the necessary conditions for public spaces and public goods and services
\nto be the place where cross-cutting social and economic links are made – as used
\nto be the case with the Latin American public education system which shaped, for
\nexample, the Argentine middle class.<\/p>\n
The
\ninability of vulnerable sectors to organize collectively is another inequality
\nfactor that contributes to their being in poverty. Fragmented populations, which
\nare the victims of pork-barrel politics, which are incapable of creating the
\nsocial conditions for organizing to defend their rights, control the discretion
\nof those in charge and influence the quality of collective life, are doomed to
\nbeing defined as objects of assistance by the people in charge who break the
\nsocial fabric. The state should promote civic education aiming at providing the
\ncommunity with the capacity to organize collectively as a subject for change,
\ncapable of defining its own quality of life, of influencing the quality of
\ncollective life, and of setting limits to the discretionary power of the people
\nin charge. In addition, the state should facilitate the formalization of social
\norganizations through changes in the current legal, fiscal and labour regulations,
\nwhich are responsible for keeping 90% of these organizations in the informal
\nsector, thus preventing them from acquiring legal status and meeting the
\nrequirements for receiving donations.<\/p>\n
The
\nfifth aspect of inequality has to do with the
\ndenial of access to opportunities. Public policies should provide the means for
\nthe members of a community to access equitably the capacities which ensure high
\nstandards of human dignity, guaranteed respect for human rights, and quality
\npublic services. Restoring the quality of the public education system is
\nessential, because education is the primary source of equitable access to
\nopportunities.<\/p>\n
The situation requires that fight against poverty should take the form
\nof disarmament of the system of inequality: offering quality public goods,
\nestablishing democratic institutions, promoting the building of social
\nnetworks, ensuring the capacity to organize collectively, and guaranteeing
\naccess to opportunities.<\/p>\n
In 1965 the world population was 3.3 billion. Today, it is 7.3 billion,
\nand the population living below the poverty line is nearly 4 billion. That is
\nto say, the number of poor people in the world amounts to the population
\nincrease of the last fifty years – the figure shows that despite the millions
\nof dollars invested in fighting poverty, we have actually been unable to
\nincrease the number of people enjoying quality living standards. So, it is
\nclear that poverty will only be properly fought when governments stop
\naddressing it as a problem of the poor, and start defining public policies from
\nthe perspective of inequality \u2013 which, in turn, should be addressed as a state
\nproblem.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Poverty in Medellin, Colombia. Luis P\u00e9rez\/Wikimedia Commons. Some rights reserved. Inequality is the worst kind of poverty, because inequality is precisely what causes it. Measuring poverty and allocating budget lines in the absence of public policies against inequality is like applying a tourniquet below the wound. According to the OECD, $ 134 billion in official…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1339","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1339","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1339"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1339\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1339"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1339"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1339"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}