Given the scale of poverty and inequality in contemporary Britain (and indeed in the United States), no right-thinking person can presumably be fully happy with the organization of a system of rewards that leaves so many people under daily and severe financial pressure, keeping the millennial generation struggling to enjoy in their 20s even the […]
Standard Dilemmas Of Centre-Left Politics
On a day-to-day basis, it is hard to break free of a mindset dominated in the UK by the details of the Brexit negotiations or in the United States by the tweeting of an emotionally volatile president. But in both political systems, the normal rhythm of elections fortunately persists – and because it does, mid-term […]
Democratic Primaries In The Shadow Of Neoliberalism
The Democratic Party primary battle between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders is being fought in the shadow of “neoliberalism” – in the shadow, that is, of the economic policies and general economic philosophy successfully espoused by Ronald Reagan in the United States and by Margaret Thatcher in the United Kingdom. Neoliberalism is that economic philosophy […]
America’s War On Poverty, America’s War On The Poor
January 2014 marks the fiftieth anniversary of the State of the Union Address in which Lyndon Johnson launched the War on Poverty. This anniversary is leading to much soul-searching here in the United States. Partly that soul-searching reflects the high levels of poverty that persist in contemporary America. The US does not define the poverty […]