Jacobin Magazine: Should We Care About Inequality?

On closer scrutiny, however, it’s not entirely clear how well our current interest in inequality (especially income inequality) rhymes with Marx’s own theory, or the ideas that dominated social-policy debates in decades following the Second World War. In fact, one could even argue that our current focus on income and wealth inequality, while crucial to any progressive agenda, also misses some of the most important aspects of the nineteenth-century critique of capitalism. At that time, “income inequality” was an elusive and at best ancillary term. In fact, the “monetization” of inequality is actually a relatively recent way of seeing the world — and, aside from its obvious strengths, it is also a way of seeing that, as the historian Pedro Ramos Pinto noted, has considerably “narrowed” the way we think about social justice.[...]

Even here, however, Marx still thought of inequality in terms of classes that were produced by capitalism, rather than in individual terms. For Marx, it seems, the problem was not exactly how income was distributed among people but how capitalism itself tended inherently toward the immiseration of workers and the production of “a relatively redundant population of laborers.” In that sense, as Samuel Moyn has observed, it is quite clear that Marx never really embraced any conception of “distributional equality” because, within capitalism, it would always be “hostage to class rule.” Rather, he tried to imagine a post-market society. Of course, Marx’s ideal never fully came into existence in Western Europe or the United States, but his analysis of the causes of inequality, rooted in a rich literature of nineteenth-century thinkers and economists like Eugène Buret or Charles Fourier, would prove an enduring influence on how to think about inequality, well beyond the circle of self-proclaimed Marxists.[...]

Of course, the labor-centered orientation of these new institutions relied essentially on the unpaid labor of women as domestic workers in households sustained by the “Fordist family wage.” Consequently, to various degrees depending on the country, it shaped a model of citizenship with significant exclusionary features for women or the immigrant labor force. However, in contrast to nineteenth-century poor relief systems, this new categorical architecture was, importantly, to be organized against the market rather than acting upon its margins. More importantly, demands and struggles for its effective universalization intensified in the decades following the war, slowly extending its benefits to a larger part of the population.[...]

By the early 1970s, in both the US and Europe, the spectacular emergence of the “poverty issue” would strongly encourage a vision of social justice focused on a monetary conception of poverty. Indeed, the focus on the establishment of a “floor” below which nobody could fall rapidly pushed aside any discussion of building ceilings or reducing market dependency. Guaranteed income proposals and negative-income-tax programs became widely popular among policymakers and political parties across the political spectrum, as a way to finally fight poverty while shedding any emphasis on large macroeconomic interventionism and complicated welfare schemes.

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Vox: The Bible says to welcome immigrants. So why don’t white evangelicals?

In the wake of that violence, it’s worth asking a wider point: How did white evangelicals come to so fully embrace the Trumpian rhetoric on immigration? How did a religious group whose foundational sacred text explicitly mandates care for the poor, the sick, and the stranger become a reliable anti-refugee, anti-immigrant voting bloc?

In January, a Washington Post/ABC poll found that a staggering 75 percent of white evangelicals in the US described “the federal crackdown on undocumented immigrants” as a positive thing, compared to just 46 percent of Americans overall. And according to a Pew Research Center poll in May, 68 percent of white evangelicals say that America has no responsibility to house refugees, a full 25 points over the national average.

White evangelicals are the only Christian group to express this level of hostility toward refugees. While just 25 percent of them say they think Americans should house refugees, white mainline Protestants, black Protestants, and Catholics all express support for refugees by between 43 and 65 points. Meanwhile, according to another July poll by the Public Religion Research Initiative (PRRI), more than half of white evangelicals report feeling concerned about America’s declining white population. [...]

Over the past few years, she’s noticed what she called “a very slow theological turn within the evangelical community to redefine what seemed like very basic ... verses about the care of the poor and caring for the outcast. On one hand, they might say, ‘Oh, you know, Jesus was born of a literal virgin’ ... but when it comes to these verses about the poor and about refugees, in particular, all of a sudden, literalism disappears.”

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Social Europe: Basic Income ‘Made In Italy’ And Unpaid Work

Indeed, it may indeed take much courage to introduce a measure of basic income (the so-called ‘reddito di cittadinanza’) which is conditional upon undertaking ‘unpaid work’ in community-based services. The reform states that to get the subsidy, the ‘poor’ will have to work eight hours a week for ‘free’ (unpaid) ‘for the state’ and accept a job proposal out of three, perhaps in three years (and not more than 18 or 24 months as previously thought) under threat of expulsion from the system.[...]

The effects of the Italy’s recent reform on the most vulnerable social groups, the ones at the highest risk of poverty (i.e. in temporary and low-paid jobs), and those likely to be women, young, older (+45) or minorities, can be perverse, in the sense that conditionality can progressively exclude them by boosting social segregation via further labour market inequality. According to the Italian national institute for statistics (ISTAT) in 2016, 30 percent of people residing in Italy were at risk of poverty or social exclusion. The risk of poverty multiplies for foreigners, women, those living in the south, within households with dependent children.[...]

Sociological and economic theories tell us that access to economic and social rights and legal status – and not ‘work at any price’ – are the fundamental conditions for fostering social inclusion and labour market integration, and therefore they can be expected to reduce poverty in the medium- to long term. Thinking that an inclusive society is one where people ‘work’ only for money may be distractive (Levitas, 1996 ). On the other hand, in Europe we have relevant examples (e.g. the ‘mini jobs’ and ‘one-euro jobs’ in Germany under the Hartz II reforms in 2003) of how precarious individual lives have become through the ‘commodification’ of employment and minimum income schemes as an income accompanying low-paid and/or unpaid work.

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Bloomberg: Murder Puts Brake on Saudi Prince’s Meteoric Rise

One Arab diplomat said Prince Mohammed is beginning to look “dangerous” for western leaders who are now rethinking doing business with a 33-year-old ruler whose loose-cannon foreign policy has surprised allies and enemies alike.

Even his supporters say privately there will now have to be a period of change as Saudi Arabia tries to rebuild the confidence of allies burned by the kind of unpredictability that had been alien to its foreign policy. And, as one senior Arab official put it, the only pressure that counts is American pressure.[...]

“Khashoggi’s murder has given the U.S. greater leverage over Saudi Arabia,” said Kamran Bokhari, senior lecturer on Middle Eastern geopolitics at the University of Ottawa’s Professional Development Institute. “Therefore they are now more receptive than ever before to outside influence over their policies. To what extent the Trump administration will use this opportunity to shape behavioral change remains to be seen.”[...]

“After the Khashoggi case, the task of selling Vision 2030 has become even harder,” Soltvedt said. For investors, the balance between risks and rewards has shifted, he said. “In other words, the risk of reputational damage and negative PR now weighs more heavily.”

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IFLScience: New Discovery Finally Explains How The Egyptians Built Their Great Pyramids

Just north of modern-day Luxor, an important clue has been stumbled upon. For the first time, archeologists have discovered evidence of a sloped ramp with two sets of steps and numerous postholes on either side that was clearly used to help hoist blocks from a quarry via a sled. With the help of manpower and ropes, the wooden posts were used to leverage the sled uphill.[...]

An equally interesting feature of the discovery includes at least 100 engravings along the slopes that depict the organization of workers and their construction campaigns from the time.[...]

As previous studies have shown, it’s likely that the ancient Egyptians used large sleds and ropes to pull the pyramid’s 2.5-ton building blocks and statues across the desert. It’s then likely that they poured a small amount of water across the sand to significantly reduces the sliding friction, a neat little trick that allowed the Egyptians to cut the number of workers needed by half.

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IFLScience: Do Dogs Have Feelings?

Research has shown time and time again the positive impact pet ownership can have on our lives. Indeed, a study of 975 dog-owning adults, found that in times of emotional distress most people were more likely to turn to their dogs than their mothers, fathers, siblings, best friends, or children.[...]

Sigmund Freud is generally acknowledged as the accidental pioneer of canine-assisted therapy. During his psychotherapy sessions in the 1930s, a chow chow called Jofi stayed alongside him in the office. Freud noticed that patients became more relaxed and open when Jofi was present, and it helped him to build a rapport.

But the official beginning of animal-assisted therapy is generally linked to World War II, when a Yorkshire terrier called Smoky accompanied corporal William Lynne when visiting service hospitals in New Guinea. Her presence lifted the spirits of wounded soldiers.

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