jetpack domain was triggered too early. This is usually an indicator for some code in the plugin or theme running too early. Translations should be loaded at the init action or later. Please see Debugging in WordPress for more information. (This message was added in version 6.7.0.) in /mnt/stor08-wc1-ord1/694335/916773/www.tvhe.co.nz/web/content/wp-includes/functions.php on line 6131updraftplus domain was triggered too early. This is usually an indicator for some code in the plugin or theme running too early. Translations should be loaded at the init action or later. Please see Debugging in WordPress for more information. (This message was added in version 6.7.0.) in /mnt/stor08-wc1-ord1/694335/916773/www.tvhe.co.nz/web/content/wp-includes/functions.php on line 6131avia_framework domain was triggered too early. This is usually an indicator for some code in the plugin or theme running too early. Translations should be loaded at the init action or later. Please see Debugging in WordPress for more information. (This message was added in version 6.7.0.) in /mnt/stor08-wc1-ord1/694335/916773/www.tvhe.co.nz/web/content/wp-includes/functions.php on line 6131“But deprivation, including relative deprivation, does not defy measurement, and this is where I believe our efforts should be directed. Deprivation can be measured and, generally, even those economists whose stated priors I can’t identify with will agree with the need to alleviate deprivation.”
Indeed – that is where I was going with:
“However, we can at least have a modicum of certainty about the costs and benefits of giving people who are facing a hard time resources, or the value in terms of someones quality of life from giving someone with a disability or someone facing discrimination a hand up.”
Another pointer I have to make here – I am writing for a NZ audience. So it isn’t just that I find some of the arguments in the US a touch weak (I am not convinced their institutional failings come from inequality), but that the NZ situation is completely different!
You are not doing this, but often people will throw US data at me like that proves something here – it doesn’t. We need to figure out what is going on in NZ, and then be transparent about policy with regards to that. Focusing on the same rhetoric and issues that the US does fails to do this – and ignores actual poverty and disadvantage which we should be interested in.
]]>I have a few thoughts.
One is that where Sen said “…well being and inequality are broad and partly opaque concepts…” he could have have gone further and labelled them just as abstract, as in The War on Terror, where the terror is hard to describe but, like pornography, we know it when we see it. Inequality, in particular, defies concrete definition. Like the rich, inequality will always be with us, and this is not unjust, it’s life. And from a justice point of view, it’s a matter of degree.
But deprivation, including relative deprivation, does not defy measurement, and this is where I believe our efforts should be directed. Deprivation can be measured and, generally, even those economists whose stated priors I can’t identify with will agree with the need to alleviate deprivation.
It’s a shame our successive governments can’t bring themselves to agree to a standard of poverty in Aotearoa, for example. Hopefully, a Labour/Greens coalition may make progress on this, but I can’t see a Labour/NZF coalition or any other combination doing so. National will resist it to the death!
In the meantime, you may find this link interesting…
http://www.democracynow.org/2013/9/13/inequality_for_all_robert_reich_warns
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