scholarly journals Pogge, poverty, and war

2017 ◽  
Vol 16 (4) ◽  
pp. 446-469
Author(s):  
Kasper Lippert-Rasmussen

According to Thomas Pogge, rich people do not simply violate a positive duty of assistance to help the global poor; rather, they violate a negative duty not to harm them. They do so by imposing an unjust global economic structure on poor people. Assuming that these claims are correct, it follows that, ceteris paribus, wars waged by the poor against the rich to resist this imposition are morally equivalent to wars waged in self-defense against military aggression. Hence, if self-defense against military aggression is just, then, ceteris paribus, so are defensive wars against the imposition of economic injustice. While I do not think Pogge’s analysis of the causes of global poverty is correct, I defend these inferences against various challenges.

2005 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 39-45 ◽  
Author(s):  
Norbert Anwander

Contrasting his own position with that of those who conceive the moral challenge of global poverty in terms of a positive duty to help, Thomas Pogge suggests that “we may be failing to fulfill our stringent negative duty not to uphold injustice, not to contribute to or profit from [emphasis added] the unjust impoverishment of others” (p. 197). We should conceive of our individual donations and of possible institutionalized initiatives to eradicate poverty not as helping the poor but “as protecting them from the effects of global rules whose injustice benefits us and is our responsibility” (p. 23, emphasis added). Pogge also claims that such activities should be understood in terms of compensation: “The word ‘compensate’ is meant to indicate that how much one should be willing to contribute toward reforming unjust institutions and toward mitigating the harms they cause depends on how much one is contributing to, and benefiting from, their maintenance” (p. 50, emphasis added).In characterizing wrongful involvement in an unjust social order and the compensatory duties that arise from it, Pogge refers to the terms contribution/responsibility as well as to benefit/profit (the latter are used interchangeably). The first of these factors is unobjectionable: we can take it for granted that there is a negative duty not to contribute to injustice and that those who are responsible for harmful institutions should compensate their victims. I want to raise doubts, however, about the role that Pogge assigns to benefiting from injustice in the determination of our duties toward the victims of injustice. I shall do so by challenging his claim that there is a negative duty not to benefit from injustice, and that the role that benefiting from injustice plays in determining our duties to work toward reforming unjust practices and mitigating their harmful effects is best understood in terms of compensation.


2018 ◽  
Vol 120 (7) ◽  
pp. 1-44
Author(s):  
Adam Howard ◽  
Katy Swalwell ◽  
Karlyn Adler

Background/Context Though there has been attention to how class differences impact children's experiences in schools and how young people perceive racial and gender differences, very little research to date has examined how young people make sense of social class differences. Purpose In this article, the authors examine young children's conceptualizations of differences between the rich and the poor to better understand children's process of classmaking. Research Design To access young children's ideas about social class, the authors examined kindergartners’, third graders’, and sixth graders’ (N = 133) drawings depicting differences between rich and poor people and their corresponding explanations of their drawings. These children attended two schools, one public serving a majority working- class population, and one private serving a majority affluent population. Findings/Results Children understand social class to be inclusive emotions, social distinctions, and social status. Children's drawings and explanations show that perpetuated ideology-justifying status quo of poverty and economic inequality. Children have complex sociocultural insights into how social class operates that manifest themselves through four domains: material, intersectional, emotional, and spatial. Conclusions/Recommendations Educators should provide more opportunities for teaching about social class, and can do so in ways that engages students in processes of classmaking that do not reinforce stereotypes and that interrupts inequality.


2013 ◽  
Vol 43 (4) ◽  
pp. 889-914 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Corstange

Are voting rights a class or an ethnic issue? They are both in the diverse societies of the developing world, yet the salience of ethnicity in public discourse frequently compels people to articulate identity demands that may be inconsistent with their material interests, particularly among the rich. This article examines these ideas with an augmented list experiment about illiterate voting rights in Lebanon. Consistent with received wisdom, direct questions yield identity-based answers in which Shiites are more supportive of voting rights than are Sunnis or Christians. Unobtrusive questions, in contrast, yield answers about material deprivation in which poor people are more supportive of illiterate voting than are rich people. The divergence between public statements and private preferences helps to reconcile theoretical predictions that people respond to material incentives with empirical findings that they pursue identity interests.


Author(s):  
Kingsly Awang Ollong

This paper explores business strategies and policies put in place by multinational corporations to alleviate poverty in Africa with specific examples from Cameroon. The world's population is rapidly increasing and the rich people are getting richer, whereas the poor people are becoming even more marginalized. During the era of economic liberalization the belief was that the opening up of economies to multinational corporations could lead to economic growth and, subsequently, economic development. The activities of multinational corporations have witnessed a tremendous boom since the advent of the twenty first century, that is characterized with advances in information communication technology, and the flow of capital have been the main proxy for MNC activity. MNCs are mainly motivated by opportunities that increase their profits, and the most important factors for MNCs are market size and access to resources. Nevertheless, as markets are getting saturated and MNCs are looking for new opportunities, innovative business strategies have been developed to provide dividends to their shareholders while making sure the stakeholders and communities in which they operate also benefit. This paper explores some business models that MNCs have used to make their products available, affordable and accepted in poor markets that are mostly found in Africa on the one hand and corporate social responsibility initiatives implemented by MNCs to alleviate poverty in the continent on the other. The paper concludes that though the principal goal of MNCs is profit maximization, corporations are making an effort to see that the poor benefit from the activities of these giant companies. To get to this conclusion the paper relied on both primary sources and the exploitation of the already existing literature in books and journals. Given that the sector of activities of MNCs is vast, the paper laid emphasis on fast moving consumer goods companies (FMCGs) in Cameroon.


2018 ◽  
Vol 7 (3) ◽  
pp. 80-85
Author(s):  
Mudaser Ahad Bhat ◽  
Binish Qadri

In modern public-finance literature, many canons or principles have been followed for tax policies, ‘ability principle’ (Pigou, 1933), ‘benefit principle’ (Lindahl as cited by Roberts, J, 1989). Under the benefit theory, tax levels are automatically determined and therefore self-loaded, because taxpayers pay proportionately for the government benefits they receive. In other words, the individuals who benefit the most from public services pay most of the taxes (Lindahl model,). The present paper highlights that conspicuous compassion and taxation go hand in hand especially in case of rich people but not in case of poor people and as result in modern societies tax levels are not self-loaded, a claim made by benefit principle. Along with proportionate benefit principle ‘conspicuous compassion in favour of rich people’ is also in operation in most countries of the world. This paper argues that under proportionate benefit principle with conspicuous compassion in favour of rich, the rich people are gainers as compared to the poor people. Under this principle with compassion in favour of rich, benefits of rich outweigh their costs because rich sections of the society are usually provided with large invisible services by the government such as large tax incentives and rebates. On the other hand, the costs of poor people usually outweigh their benefits because poor sections of the society are usually provided with low or no invisible services, although, they are provided with large visible benefits. But these visible benefits provided to the poor people by the government get distributed among vast section of the population.In this process, the societies end with a highly inequitable distribution of income and a paradox emerges which may rightly called as paradox of evasion-to-evasion. To improve income distribution and to control evasion-to-evasion paradox, the present study advices governments to implement progressive taxation with conspicuous compassion in favour of poor and downtrodden sections of the society. By doing this, those who will benefit more (i.e. poor) will have to pay less taxes as it ensures that large invisible services are to be provided to the poor as compared to the rich and hence the principle can be called as proportionate principle with compassion or simply conspicuous compassion taxation principle.


2018 ◽  
Vol 74 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Iuliu-Marius Morariu

It has been often said nowadays that since the fall of Constantinople, the Eastern-Orthodox Church has not been concerned with political theology. In this research, we will try to show that aspects of the aforementioned topic can be found even in works like the spiritual autobiographies from that space. Therefore, our analysis will focus on the diaries of an important Russian Orthodox priest, Saint John of Kronstadt, who lived in the second half of the 19th century and in the first decade of the 20th century. An important personality of his time, he was a great priest who developed the Eucharistic life, highlighting the relevance of the Holy Liturgy in the Christian life, the social life, offering accommodation, food, money and a place to work for the poor people from his parish and abroad. At the same time, he had a political and intellectual life, being in a good relationship with the tsar and his family, and wrote in his diaries, published during his lifetime and translated into English, his spiritual experiences, his daily life ones and his teaching and opinions on different topics and so on. By highlighting and investigating here episodes like his attitude towards the failed attempt for revolution that took place in Kronstadt in 1905, his relationship with the poor ones and his critique directed to the unfairly attitude of the rich people of his time towards the less fortunate ones or even his preaches against the famous contemporary writer Lev Tolstoy, we will try to show how political theology was understood by such a great father as John of Kronstadt and to emphasise the actuality of some of his ideas related to this topic.


2007 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
pp. 527-543
Author(s):  
Robert E. Rodes

But let the brother of low degree glory in his high estate: and the rich, in that he is made low.—James 1:9-10I am starting this paper after looking at the latest of a series of e-mails regarding people who cannot scrape up the security deposits required by the local gas company to turn their heat back on. They keep shivering in the corners of their bedrooms or burning their houses down with defective space heaters. The public agency that is supposed to relieve the poor refuses to pay security deposits, and the private charities that pay deposits are out of money. A bill that might improve matters has passed one House of the Legislature, and is about to die in a committee of the other House. I have a card on my desk from a former student I ran into the other day. She works in the field of utility regulation, and has promised to send me more e-mails on the subject. I also have a pile of student papers on whether a lawyer can encourage a client illegally in the country to marry her boyfriend in order not to be deported.What I am trying to do with all this material is exercise a preferential option for the poor. I am working at it in a large, comfortable chair in a large, comfortable office filled with large, comfortable books, and a large—but not so comfortable—collection of loose papers. At the end of the day, I will take some of the papers home with me to my large, comfortable, and well heated house.


2021 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-18
Author(s):  
Zarul Arifin

This research is based on an initial survey of the distribution of subsidized 3-kg LPG which I think is not right on target because it is full of fraudulent practices. In distributing LPG, it was found that many rich people still buy subsidized 3-kg LPG. In fact, according to government regulations, 3-kg LPG is intended for the poor economic community or small business owners. The problem that is the focus of this research is how the mechanism for distributing 3-kg LPG is in Sajad Regency, and how is the law on selling 3-kg LPG for the rich when viewed according to Islamic law. To answer these questions, data collection techniques were carried out through observation and interviews. The results of this study are 1) the distribution of 3-kg LPG is not in accordance with government regulations, namely the distribution of LPG prioritizes people who can afford it above the official price, while the poor can only get a small part of the official government price/national subsidy price, so there are more stock for sale at more expensive than the official price. 2) If viewed from Islamic law, the distribution of 3-kg LPG is not in accordance with the sharia business method because it is carried out by ignoring government regulations, namely traders are considered to have broken an agreement with the government regarding price determination. In addition, this buying and selling practice also lacks supervision, no sanctions and no law enforcement to maintain subsidy prices so that many sellers dare to violate contracts with the government and violate government regulations.


2009 ◽  
pp. 123-137
Author(s):  
Tess Ridge ◽  
Jane Millar

- Analysis of poverty dynamics based on large-scale survey data shows that there is limited mobility across the income distribution for most individuals and families. Some people may get better-off over the lifecourse, as their careers develop and wages rise, but overall most poor people do not become very rich and most rich people do not become very poor. Lone parents are at high risk of poverty in the UK, but this poverty risk is reduced for those who are in employment and who receive state financial support through Tax Credits to supplement their wages. This article reports on longitudinal qualitative research which has involved repeat interviews with lone mothers and their children over a period of three to four years. The analysis here explores the experiences of sustaining employment while living on a low, but complex, income and highlights the challenges faced in seeking financial security in this context.


2014 ◽  
Vol 108 (2) ◽  
pp. 454-477 ◽  
Author(s):  
TARIQ THACHIL

Why do poor people often vote against their material interests? This article extends the study of this global paradox to the non-Western world by considering how it manifests within India, the world's biggest democracy. Arguments derived from studies of advanced democracies (such as values voting) or of poor polities (such as patronage and ethnic appeals) fail to explain this important phenomenon. Instead, I outline a novel strategy predicated on an electoral division of labor enabling elite parties to recruit the poor while retaining the rich. Recruitment is outsourced to nonparty affiliates that provide basic services to appeal to poor communities. Such outsourcing permits the party to maintain programmatic linkages to its elite core. Empirically, I test this argument with qualitative and quantitative evidence, including a survey of more than 9,000 voters. Theoretically, I argue that this approach is best suited to elite parties with thick organizations, typically those linked to religious social movements.


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