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)
~~~~~~~~~~
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)
~~~~~~~~~~
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)
~~~~~~~~~~
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)
~~~~~~~~~~
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)
~~~~~~~~~~
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)
~~~~~~~~~~
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)
~~~~~~~~~~
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)
~~~~~~~~~~
