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Forida, who earns about 35 cents (AUD) an hour as a garment worker, subsists on watery rice when her family’s money runs out so her son may eat better.
GMB Akash/Panos/OxfamAUS
We wear the evidence of extreme inequality – clothing made by workers in Bangladesh for 35 cents an hour. But we know how to reduce inequality – we just have to do it.
Governments have made a difference to inequality in the past, as Roosevelt’s New Deal did in the 1930s, and could do so again if citizens acted to ensure their voices are heard.
Wikimedia
Governments’ lack of response to rising inequality is not a problem of knowledge or public support. The problem is that those whose needs are being ignored must find a way to make themselves heard.
Workers’ falling share of national income is helping to fuel the trade union campaign to ‘change the rules’.
Dan Himbrechts/AAP
While government payments and programs go some way to reducing inequality, the transformation of the labour market and its institutions has cut workers’ share of the pie to historic lows.
Unions, which traditionally protected wages at the bottom end, are starting to tap into community anger at the wealth flowing to the top end of town.
Mick Tsikas/AAP
This is the first article in a series, Reclaiming the Fair Go, to mark the awarding of the 2018 Sydney Peace Prize to Nobel laureate and economist Joseph Stiglitz.
White nationalists at the Unite The Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia on August 12, 2017.
Robert Dunning/flickr
White Americans have been in denial about the fact that police go after Black men and other men of colour. But the research and statistics kept by state and federal agencies show this happens.
‘The call for Black lives to matter is fundamentally a call for peace. And peace must not be confused with the momentary quiet of submission.’
Annette Bernhardt/flickr
While both parties may have set out to modernise and renew their ideologies, the ALP’s and Labour’s attempts to marry the old and new instead precipitated two separate identity crises.
Global media systems cannot effectively contribute to social progress until opportunities are more widely shared.
Internet.org by Facebook/Facebook
Global media systems cannot effectively contribute to social progress until opportunities not just for access, but also for active participation, are more widely shared.
A disempowering judgment by the Special Court for Sierra Leone should not blind us to how local activists still made use of its symbolic power.
Steve Evans/flickr
How are we to understand why people in different parts of the world continue to demand and participate in transitional justice institutions and processes in spite of the shortcomings?
What do you call a democracy that depends on the exclusion of whole groups from political participation?
Gaia/Wikipedia Commons
Democracy today contains within itself impulses towards both inclusion and exclusion. Spinoza’s thinking on aristocracy should alert us to how democratic rule by the people can be hollowed out.
Egyptian refugees fleeing Libya with the help of the US Air Force.
US Department of Defence
Surely it isn’t too far-fetched to claim that if migrants are to promote democracy back home, it is beneficial for them to experience democratic values and principles in the countries hosting them.
When our political institutions are market-driven, they risk becoming a democratic shell that no longer serves the people, as the European Union experience is showing.
Theophilos Papadopoulos/flickr
Democracy’s problem is not the crisis but the triumph of capitalism. Democracy has become market-conforming, resulting in whole sections of society lacking meaningful representation.
Did the Roman arenas of political conflict support the common good?
Trey Ratcliff/flickr
History offers countless examples of social change that is now consolidated and popularly supported, but which was only achieved through protests that were judged at the time to be extreme.
Who IS in the middle class?
Stephen Melkisethian/Flickr via CC BY-ND
One of President Barack Obama’s main goals this year, as laid out in both his 2015 budget and State of the Union address, is to provide relief to the middle class. The divergent responses to two of his…
The mansion tax could be good for you.
David Howes
When the great and the good met at last year’s Davos event to discuss the major global challenges to prosperity and well-being, it was clear that one theme dominated all others – inequality. But has anything…
The world’s rich and powerful are gathering for the World Economic Forum at the Swiss ski resort of Davos to discuss, and hopefully find solutions to, the world’s economic and social problems. The 45th…
Social, economic inequality is on the rise - and represents a threat to our nation’s fabric. The notion of a fair go and the concept of social mobility are both central to the Australian psyche and culture…
Higher-income Americans are much more likely to vote than the poor, which reduces political parties’ incentive to tackle inequality.
EPA/Michael Reynolds
Recent weeks have been all about elections and broken promises: from early April to mid-May, half-a-billion Indians went to the polls in what many described an astonishing display of democratic prowess…
Once universally thought of as an egalitarian country, what’s happened to wealth and income inequality in Australia in recent decades?
AAP/Dan Peled
The Conversation is running a series, Class in Australia, to identify, illuminate and debate its many manifestations. Here, Peter Whiteford investigates what has happened to income and wealth inequality…
Professor of Comparative Political Science and Democracy Research at the Humboldt University Berlin; Associate of the Sydney Democracy Network, University of Sydney; Director of Research Unit Democracy: Structures, Performance, Challenges, WZB Berlin Social Science Center.