COVID-19 has brought to the fore the interdependency of business and society. It’s time for amendments to the social contract that underlies societal support for business.
Automated algorithms – not humans – are increasingly making decisions about who’s eligible for welfare benefits.
gorodenkoff/Getty Images
States are increasingly turning to machine learning and algorithms to detect fraud in food stamps, Medicaid and other welfare programs – despite little evidence of actual fraud.
Sophonisba Breckinridge and Edith Abbott.
University of Chicago Photographic Archive, apf1-00008, Special Collections Research Center, University of Chicago Library/Bernard Hoffman, photographer
Long before Chasten Buttigieg became a ‘not-so-secret weapon’ in his husband Pete Buttigieg’s presidential campaign, another same-sex couple profoundly reshaped American social policy.
There’s a hue and cry about Doug Ford’s scrapping of Ontario’s basic income project. But the project was a failing experiment with a dearth of high-quality data.
Flickr
Ontario’s basic income project was deeply flawed and cursed by a lack of quality data. It needs a major overhaul.
Lisa MacLeod, Ontario’s minister of children, community and social services, announces an end to the province’s basic income pilot project on July 31, 2018.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Chris Young
Research shows that guaranteed basic income programs spur economies and improve mental and physical health. That’s why Ontario’s decision to scrap the province’s pilot project is such a bad idea.
Almost 1,500 immigrant boys, aged 10 to 17, were separated from their parents and brought to stay at Casa Padre in Brownsville, Texas.
Department of Health and Human Services
There are strong parallels between the Trump administration’s policy on immigrant families and the 19th century’s ‘New’ Poor Laws of England, whose cruelty was illuminated by writer Charles Dickens.
Struggling to make ends meet.
John Stillwell/PA Wire
We need to ask on what basis the government is making its budget savings a ‘moral’ issue, and how the opposition can possibly support it.
The financial safety net for South African children is better than in most countries. But other vulnerabilities aren’t taken care of adequately.
Reuters
The lack of service integration and the paucity of welfare services make poor people’s task of caring for their familes much harder. A small monthly cash transfer can’t solve all their challenges.
Labor’s strategy is to portray Bill Shorten as a caring politician, in contrast to an out-of-touch Malcolm Turnbull.
AAP/Mick Tsikas
History suggests Labor should be more concerned than it currently appears to be about the effects of its populist rhetoric in mobilising opposition from business.
Joe Hockey’s approach to reform would be to treat voters as consumers, with promises of lower taxes and more wealth.
AAP/Dan Himbrechts
Good societies with secure public systems will increase investment much faster than company or personal tax cuts.
Since the NT Intervention a large body of evidence has built up showing that income management does not achieve its stated goals. So why does it continue?
AAP/Dean Lewins
Various studies, culminating in the final evaluation report of income management in the Northern Territory, have found such programs don’t achieve the claimed benefits. Why did the budget extend them?
Rising imprisonment rates are the result of political responses to media and public agitation for tougher sentences.
AAP/David Crosling
Some claim rising crime rates justify jailing more people, others that such policies cut crime. Evidence from around the world shows those claims are wrong and that we should be looking at inequality.
Social workers can successfully work with most families that find themselves in trouble without taking their children away.
Nadezhda1906/Flickr
After a long period of expansion in the number of children living in out-of-home care, most modern child protection systems around the world have been labouring to prevent such placements. Instead, they’re…
Many Indigenous families fear the welfare system.
AAP Image/Neda Vanovac
In some jurisdictions of Australia, the rate of Indigenous children in foster, kinship and residential care on any one night has reached almost one in ten. This rate is almost ten times higher than non-Aboriginal…
Foster parents often receive inadequate emotional and financial support.
prudkov/Shutterstock
When children are deemed at risk of abuse or neglect and are removed from the family home, they are placed in out-of-home care, either with foster parents, relatives or in residential facilities. The latter…
Tensions are running high in Rotherham.
Lynne Cameron/PA Wire/Press Association Images
The revelations from a year-long inquiry into the sexual exploitation of children in Rotherham serve to highlight issues that are both distressing and important. At the same time, they also emphasise the…
The ideology of the market struggles with the society-focused work of community volunteers.
AAP/Julian Smith
Some community welfare sector commentators point to a new order for welfare where the private sector practises social responsibility, states seek to be more entrepreneurial and voluntary community organisations…
Buying power doesn’t always stack up as the best measurement for who we are and how far we’ve come.
Shutterstock/ MaleWitch
In the verbal volley between Gillard and Abbott, Swan and Hockey, there is a conversation that we are not hearing. It bubbles below the consciousness of mainstream Australia, a conversation that is old…