शुक्रवार, 16 अगस्त 2013

Quotes - Rajani Bakshi

ECONOMY

(Muhammad) Yunus (Bnagladesh) ………in the world’s freest market, The US, one-fifth of the people lack health-care and almost forty-five million Americans have only limited access to financial institutions.
-          Rajani Bakshi
-          Bazaars, Conversations  and Freedom (45)
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In 2007 Bill Gates made an interesting confession while addressing Harvard University’s graduating class. Some twenty five years earlier gates had dropped out of the same University to go start Microsoft. Now he was back to say that the years at Harvard had left him ignorant about the appalling disparities of health, wealth and opportunity that condemned millions of people to lives of despair. “It took me decades to find out,” said gates, and this raised further question in his mind. “Why are millions of children dying of hunger and disease when they could be saved?” The answer, gates told Harvard Graduates, was simple, and harsh : “The market did not reward saving the lives of these children, and governments did not subsidize it. So children died because their mothers and their fathers had no power in themarket and no voive in the system.”
-          Rajani Bakshi
-          Bazaars, Conversations  and Freedom (45)

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In all fairness the concept on GNP was only ever meant to be a ‘brute measure’ of total economic activity. It was not designed, or intended, to reflect people’s well-being.
-            Rajani Bakshi
-          Bazaars, Conversations  and Freedom (92)

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Senator Robert Kennedy lamented that America’s GNP was also growing because of the sales of rifles and knives and television programmes which glorify violence in order to sell toys to our children.
-            Rajani Bakshi
-          Bazaars, Conversations  and Freedom (93)

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The GPI ( Genuine Progress Indicators ) analysis shows that the quality of American life has been declining steadily since 1970s. The GPI looks beyond money and goods exchanged and focuses in time spent with family, fresh air, crime rates, prevalence of depression among others. ……   Ever since the early 1970s most of Americans have been working harder and longer to stay in the same place. …..    Childhood obesity has been officially declared to be an epidemic.
-            Rajani Bakshi
-          Bazaars, Conversations  and Freedom (95)

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A ‘new’ American dream would not be about denial or deprivation. It would be about ‘getting more of what really matters – more time, more nature, more fairness, and more fun’. Such initiatives are a creative response to some stark realities. If each of the planet’s six billion inhabitants consumed resources at the level of the average American, we would need four additional earths.
-            Rajani Bakshi
-          Bazaars, Conversations  and Freedom (100)


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It followed that progress in world would now be measures by the ability to accumulate material goods and money, even if some of the wealth is later given away through philanthropy. This partly explains why Bill Gates as a billionaire philanthropist is treated as a folk hero and Tim Berners-Lee, who gifted us the World Wide Web, is not a house hold name.
-            Rajani Bakshi
-          Bazaars, Conversations  and Freedom (175)

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In the US the wealth gap is now (2009) at its widest since 1929. The wealthiest 10% of households are estimated to hold about 90% of financial assets. In 2005 it was estimated that 21.2% of US national income accrued to 1% of the population. For instance, in 1968, the CEO of General Motots took home, in pay and benefits, about 66 times the amount paid to the average GM worker. In 2005, the CEO of Wal-Mart earned 900 times the pay of his average employee.
-            Rajani Bakshi
-          Bazaars, Conversations  and Freedom (287)


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