Ethersnap
Interests:
Current events, yoga, economics, food, travel, and all things cute.
Interests:
Current events, yoga, economics, food, travel, and all things cute.
Some experts say these new findings raise questions about the effectiveness of efforts to combat the obesity epidemic simply by improving access to healthy foods. Despite campaigns to get Americans to exercise more and eat healthier foods, obesity rates have not budged over the past decade, according to recently released federal data.
Studies Question the Pairing of Food Deserts and Obesity - NYTimes.com
The conceit that poverty is a problem suffered by other — often less deserving — people was an essential part of suburban self-identity that was reflected in its politics. Better-heeled suburban schools, sports teams and private recreation contributed to an ethos that emphasized family residential security, individual meritocracy and private life. Its inhabitants conveniently forgot that their cherished neighborhoods were in fact dependent on the programs of the New Deal state, not to mention the federal residential security maps that privileged white Americans.
But it is at our peril that we ignore the overwhelming evidence that disadvantage in education costs lives, undermines economic growth, fuels youth unemployment, and reinforces national and global inequalities. The bottom line is that education holds the key to the development of more dynamic economies, greater social mobility, and poverty reduction. Education is the key that unlocks human potential and prepares future generations to participate in an increasingly knowledge-based global economy.
In the end, however, one has to ask a more basic question. Why do we care about inequality at all?
We should all seek a prosperous, growing economy, with less poverty, and where everyone can rise as far as their talent and drive will take them. Equality? Who needs it?
The Income-Inequality Myth - Michael Tanner - National Review Online
…so many things to say in response to this that it’s not even funny. I’m consistently surprised by the nerve of ostensibly well-educated people to totally ignore the relevant issues and hand-wave their way around answering tough questions or formulating real solutions.
The zooming wealth of the top 1 percent is a problem, but it’s not nearly as big a problem as the tens of millions of Americans who have dropped out of high school or college. It’s not nearly as big a problem as the 40 percent of children who are born out of wedlock. It’s not nearly as big a problem as the nation’s stagnant human capital, its stagnant social mobility and the disorganized social fabric for the bottom 50 percent.
If your ultimate goal is to reduce inequality, then you should be furious at the doctors, bankers and C.E.O.’s. If your goal is to expand opportunity, then you have a much bigger and different agenda.
Henceforth we need to measure our growth in prosperity: not by the sheer number of people who inhabit the earth, and not by flawed measurements like G.D.P., but by how well we satisfy basic human needs; by how well we foster dignity, creativity, community and cooperation; by how well we care for our biological and physical environment, our only home.
