The Pragmatic Metaphysics of Belief

On an intellectualist approach to belief, the intellectual endorsement of a proposition (such as ‘The working poor deserve as much respect as the handsomely paid’) is sufficient or nearly sufficient for believing it. On a pragmatic approach to belief, intellectual endorsement is not enough. Belief is behaviorally demanding. To really, fully believe, you must also ‘walk the walk.’ This chapter argues that the pragmatic approach is preferable on pragmatic grounds: It rightly directs our attention to what matters most in thinking about belief. A pragmatic, walk-the-walk approach to belief better expresses our values, keeps our disciplinary focus in the right place, and encourages salutary self-examination.

Nigeria’s Working Poor Households: Characterizing Factors and Proposals for Social Welfare Programs

The paper focuses on the increasing incidence of working poor families in Nigeria. Data from the ILO and NBS suggest that, not only is the number of working poor families in Nigeria increasing, despite governments efforts at increasing the number of jobs created. This point to the assertion that, removing working poor families out of poverty will not solely depend on their being employed. The paper uses data from Nigeria’s General Household Survey to characterize inducing factors of working poor families in Nigeria. The findings suggest that female – headed households, polygamous and divorced households, individuals who have never been married, size of employment establishment, and household expenditures, are determining factors of working poor families in Nigeria. We recommend the supplementing of working poor families incomes through Living wage and contributory savings, establishment of State Health Insurance Schemes, and affordable housing through a state guaranteed Mortgage Schemes.

Juárez, Maximilian, and the French Occupation of Mexico

A tumultuous period in Mexican history began with the Reform Movement of President Benito Juárez, followed by the French invasion and installation of Maximillian as emperor, the defeat of his troops by the liberal army, and the restoration of the Mexican Republic in 1877. Although most of the basic facts of these events are not in dispute, the narrowness of the lens used to examine them is. Some data have been systematically ignored by national historians, and there are also contradictory interpretations of the published historical data. One common reflection on this period is the depiction of Maximilian as liberal whom some argue contributed in a positive way to Mexico. However, some Mexican scholars dispute this. The other widely held belief is that Benito Juárez can be credited with the restoration of the republic and the betterment of the working poor and indigenous. Although criticism of Juárez is uncommon in official circles, where he is idolized, some Mexican scholars are more skeptical of these claims. The missing or generally ignored data concern the contribution of the United States to the defeat of the French and Austrian armies, which is not mentioned in any survey texts and is minimized in most articles. The fuller inclusion of these data coupled with a closer look at the contributions and failures of both the Maximilian and Juárez regimes provides a clearer picture of the epoch and generates new insights.

L’assurance vie : un atout pour lutter contre la pauvreté monétaire des travailleurs dans la CEMAC

The objective of this study is to determine the effect of life insurance on the monetary poverty of workers in the CEMAC. To do this, data from the World Bank (2019), the United Nations Program (UNDP, 2018) and the Global Financial Development Database (2019) justified a study period which goes from 2007 to 2017. The estimation of the model used in this work was done, using least squares with indicator variables then corrected for problems of heteroskedasticity and autocorrelation of error terms by panel corrected standard error (PCSE) and the least squares achievable (FGLS), then by the generalized moments method. As a result, it first appears that life insurance can significantly reduce the percentage of working poor in CEMAC. And secondly, it appears that education is an important lever to combat the precariousness of workers in this sub-region. Finally, the results show that political stability and an increase in the growth rate of the gross domestic product (GDP) per capita also reduce the percentage of working poor in the CEMAC.

Youngstown

Over a long career, New Jersey’s Bruce Springsteen became the poet of the working poor, just as Indiana’s John Mellencamp became the voice of embattled farm families and Bob Seger the rock ‘n’ roll bard of the Midwest. Springsteen’s stature became such that, against his own intentions, his appeal was invoked by Republican conservatives during the transformative Reagan era. The success of these artists, singing about the hopes and fears of ordinary citizens whose communities and livelihoods were besieged by globalization, was directly tied to the sweeping shifts of labor and governance that affected the industrialized world in the 1980s.