Class Under Neoliberalism - Esme Choonara

[nadimmahjoub]

In ‘Global Inequality: from class to location, from proletarians to migrants’, Branko Milanovic of the University of Maryland, examines the differences in income between countries and concludes that a key priority for policy makers should be aid and support for poorer countries.

[nadimmahjoub]

Location, not class, is now the key driver of global inequality. Some countries have gained great wealth, while others have not seen their average incomes rise in around 500 years. This is one of the findings of an article published in Global Policy, a journal of the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE)
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[nadimmahjoub]

At the time of Marx and Engels were developing The Communist Manifesto, the economic position of workers across the world was roughly similar. The bulk of workers who lived at less than their countries’ average income could not have incomes that difference by more than 2 to 1. Today the gap in mean incomes often differs by a factor of 10 to 1.

[nadimmahjoub]

Inequality between world citizens used to be determined in equal measures by class and location [1]. New research, however, reveals that people’s fortunes are being dictated primarily by where they live. As a result, economic migration has become the key way for poor individuals from poor countries to improve their economic standing, and governments will not be able to alleviate the pressure of migration on their societies until global inequality is reduced.

[cameronmichaelkeys]

@nadimmahjoub -- what sort of aid and support? policy priorities or strategies are different from considerations of specific programs or tactics. Dumping new wine into old bottles (i.e. the same institutional styles of offering aid) seems unlikely to establish equality. "Location, not class" doesn't make a deep impression on me. Can you address the location issue without structuring aid programs in light of class considerations? What gets built in those places, by whom, under what management?