This is your world.

We have to see the world through issues and action.

It does not belong to me or you or any Generation, to any Religion, any Terrorist, any Government, any algorithms, any Holograms, any World Monopoly whether its called Google, Face Book or Twitter, or any Sovereign Wealth Fund ( see previous Posts)

It belongs to Wall Street.

There’s a strange relationship between the city and the city dweller. We love it and still recognize that it’s a monster. All that emotion, all the combined suffering and indifference, glory and greatness, bypass the brain and go straight into the heart.

The city cuts straight to the core. Look into some people’s eyes, and their sadness, their pain, is almost palpable.

The city inspires us to see glory beneath the grime and wonder within the wasteland.

But the truth is, the world cannot be organized. To let the world in, you have to let in a world where nobody has the answers.

I think there’s a fundamentalism about technology. Technology itself isn’t going to save us. Technology is wonderful, but it’s a tool.

The world is complex and we all know what is wrong.

What is wrong comes in many forms, shapes, sizes, and it is effecting all of us.

There are a million things going on that are all signs that the people who are the most educated and capable of enlightened action are stunningly unengaged.

Its called Inequality.  Created by us which is destroying the world we live in.

It is the root of most of the problems facing the world. 

You might have read recently that Finland’s government is drawing up plans to give every one of its citizens a basic income of 800 euros (£576) a month and scrap benefits altogether, which according to Bloomberg, would cost the government 52.2 billion euros a year.

During the Banking Crisis I advocated that it would have been cheaper for Ireland to have given every voting citizen a Million. It could have been placed in a Government controlled account. Made available to the citizen over a period of 30 years to avoid inflation.  Irish Citizens would have been required to cleared all his or hers debts, look after their own health, education, while scrapping all benefits.

It would have stimulated the economy in a controlled manner rather than bailing out worthless banks.

The National Audit Office in the UK said that the Uk spent £850 billion on the bank crises in 2009. That would equate to a £26,562 and fifty pence spend by every taxpayer in the UK.

THE EUROPEAN CENTRAL BANK will begin its €1.1 trillion quantitative easing programme today, the last big weapon in its armoury to get the euro zone going and fend off deflation. None of the newly invented cash will actually be headed to the pockets of EU citizens.

The reality of how money is created today differs from the description found in some economics textbooks:

Quantitative Easing for the People’ is one of the cornerstones of Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership platform in the UK.

The basic idea is simple: A hypothetical Corbyn government would instruct the Bank of England to create new electronic money (the modern equivalent of printing it) to fund public investment projects. The vehicle for doing this would be the ‘National Investment Bank’, which would be charged with funding public investment. The NIB would issue bonds that the BoE would be commanded to buy.

Compared this to the living wage an informal benchmark, set at £9.15 an hour in London and £7.85 an hour in the rest of the UK. It is not a legally enforceable minimum level of pay, like the national minimum wage. ( 48 hours a week on average = 439 euros.)

An ‘inner voice’ tells me  that this idea is a step in the right direction to spread the wealth of a nation. Perhaps he should call it regional quantitative easing, but it wont address the bigger world problems.

Realistically we must think of some imaginative ways to create liquidity in the world economy other than secret Trade Deals.

Sometimes it takes just one human being to tip the scales and change the course of history.

In this series of posts we will look into its heart beat of Inequality.

My aim is to stimulate serious academic interest and to inform the developing world. My ambition is to stimulate serious academic interest and to inform public debate on the essential issues. We can’t just wait for the tipping point to be reached so we see clarity as we stare into the abyss.

In no particular order let,s start our Journey to a better world.

The year 2016 I hope will mark a turning point in human history: Helped by climate change because Capitalism will start to be forces to pay for raping the world.

 So let’s start Not with Climate Change but WHERE WE LIVE.

IT MATTERS:

The scale of environmental impact of meta cities and mega cities on their hinterlands is significant and is likely to be a cause for concern in coming decades.

The emerging human settlements of the 21st century are Slums also known as shantytowns, squatter cities, and informal settlements.

These places can teach us about where, for better or worse, urban life appears to be headed. “Squatters are the world’s dominant builders,”

They are the Emblems of profound inequality.

When one appreciates this fact one is forced to ponder whether these slums were designed to supplant, integrate or ignore human rights concerns of the world’s poor.

Are they maintained solely as a source of cheap labor or just transitory phenomenon characteristic of fast growing economies — it is impossible to mitigate the expansion of slums in the developing world.

Even if urban poverty is preferable to rural poverty life in the slum constitute a form of poverty trap for a majority of their residents.

In 2005, there were 998 million slum dwellers in the world.  If current trends continue, the slum population will reach 1.4 billion by 2020.

It will for the first time equal the world’s rural population.

Although it is difficult to predict on which day or month this radical transformation will occur, what is certain is that this milestone will herald the advent of a new urban millennium: a time when one out of every two people on the planet will be a “city-zen”

At the moment more than 53 per cent of the world’s urban population lives in cities of fewer than 500,000 inhabitants. One out every three city dwellers – nearly one billion people – lives in a slum. Slums are emerging as a dominant and distinct type of settlement in cities of the developing world.

By 2020, all but 4 of the world’s largest cities will be in developing regions, 12 of them in Asia alone. While still few in number, these metacities point to new forms of urban planning and management, leading to the growth of city regions and “metropolitanization”.

Inequality has a direct bearing on patterns of urbanization.

The rich in most countries live a world apart from the poor, with homes in protected urban enclaves and access to the latest technology, the best services and the most comfort. The rest, especially slum dwellers, live in the most deprived neighborhoods, struggling to gain access to adequate shelter and basic services, such as water and sanitation. Many slum dwellers also live under the constant threat of eviction.

Such stark differences and divisions can be found among regions and countries, but also within countries and cities. Especially in the developing world, urban zones of poverty and despair commonly skirt modern cosmopolitan zones of plenty.

If current trends are not reversed, cities will become more and more spatially divided, with high and middle-income residents living in the better-serviced parts of the city

Cities are, and will continue to be, sites of extreme inequality.

China’s recent gains in economic growth and industrialization have in many cases exacerbated environmental problems in its cities. Economic growth has increased consumer purchasing power, with the result that Chinese cities, such as Beijing – once the bicycle capital of the world – are now teeming with motor vehicles, a leading cause of air pollution. There are 1.3 million private cars in Beijing alone, an increase of 140 per cent since 1997.

Since the attacks on New York and Washington on 11 September 2001, cities of the developed world have become increasingly concerned about their vulnerability to acts of terrorism but this is not the reasons that cities are going to have to change.

Various dimensions of urban poverty is the main treat.

Inadequate and often unstable income, which impacts people’s ability to pay for non-food items, such as transport, housing and school fees. Poor quality, hazardous, overcrowded, and often insecure housing Inadequate provision of basic services (piped water, sanitation, drainage, roads, footpaths, etc.) which increases the health burden and often the work burden.

Inadequate, unstable or risky asset base (non-material and material) including lack of assets that can help low-income groups cope with fluctuating prices or incomes, such as lack of access to land or credit facilities. Inadequate public infrastructure, such as schools and hospitals.

Limited or no safety nets to ensure basic consumption can be maintained when incomes fall and which can be easily accessed when basic necessities are no longer affordable, such as public housing and free medical services.

Inadequate protection of rights through the operation of the law, including regulations and procedures regarding civil and political rights, occupational health and safety, pollution control, environmental health, protection from violence and forced evictions and, protection from discrimination and exploitation.

Voicelessness and powerlessness within non-responsive political systems and bureaucratic structures, leading to little or no possibility of receiving entitlements to goods and services; of organizing, making demands and getting a fair response; and of receiving support for developing initiatives. Also, no means of ensuring accountability from aid agencies, NGOs, public agencies and private utilities, and of being able to participate in the definition and implementation of urban poverty programmes.

In light of recent evidence, even if governments collectively manage to improve the lives of 100 million slum dwellers by 2020 – as per the Millennium Development Goals and targets – this achievement will be insignificant in relation to creating “cities without slums”, a stated objective of the Millennium Declaration.

Assuming that the leaders who developed the slum target were aiming to address a major development issue, policymakers should adjust the benchmark to reflect the reality of slums of today and tomorrow.

Viewed  through a human rights prism,  All fair-minded people, of course, would hope for  improving the lives of slum dwellers. Unfortunately, looking closely as far as housing rights are concerned, any improvements far out-number their benefits.

These are a few things we can no longer afford to ignore.

Which practices and policies will steer us in the right direction?

How do we effect change within and beyond the halls of government?

Both formal and informal systems of property rights may be necessary to curb the rapid growth and informal systems of property rights may be necessary to curb the rapid growth of slum areas worldwide.

Slum dwellers should be given title deeds for their plots, in order to liberate the “dead capital” they are sitting on – to enable them to get loans from banks.

Overall, there has been very little theoretical and empirical economic research about how the public policy challenges posed by slums in low-income economies should be addressed.

It appears the United Nations Goals’ are flaws.

The question is how to address them.

Three shortcomings stand out as particularly.

The organisation is out of date, skint, and totally infiltrated by Capitalist values.

The United Nations have strong incentives to maintain the status quo. Unless radically brought up to date and reformed it has no alternative but to maintain the status quo.

Without changes to the United Nations or any other World Institutions the reversal of the lack of governance to represent the people of the world, it is unlikely that any attempts at any form of big push or coordinated investment will have the desired effects.

This is a hidden threats to sustainability.

All changes need financing. 

Whether it be Climate Change or giving dignity of a respectful if not equitably life to all, there is little hope of addressing the world problems when so many look at so few. Inequality is incurable.

The only way to lessen its effects is to tap into Greed itself. (See previous Posts)

I believe in the power of ideas to change attitudes, lives and ultimately, the world.

You can’t settle for drops in the bucket. It won’t do to wrap up your garbage, it won’t do to send the contribution. Those are all fine, but it’s not going to make a huge change. It’s just not. It’s going to take all you’ve got too really understand that the stakes are very high.

If you don’t believe me the Sunday Time this week in letters and e mails reported that an organised party of about 60 from the Uk visited the European Parliament in Strasbourg. At the end of the tour each visitor was handed an envelope containing 200 Euros. Apparently each EU MEP is allowed 110 visitors a year, which equates to 22,000 Euros per MEP. With 73 UK MEP,s that in turn adds up to 1.6 million euros.

More than 11m homes lie empty across Europe – enough to house all of the continent’s homeless twice over – hundreds of thousands of half-built homes have been bulldozed in an attempt to shore up the prices of existing properties. There are 4.1 million homeless across Europe, according to the European Union.

Its no wonder that millions turn to daft fantasy – turning the Star Wars films into digitally enchanted Manichaean belief systems. There is a sleazy materialistic, shallowness about it all.  We hear much more from them all in 2016.

Let’s address the elephant in the room first.

Profit for the sake of profit has to pay whether its climate change, inequality of opportunity or terrorism.

Education plays a uniquely critical role in addressing the challenges we face.

What we’ve really lost sight of is an education system that teaches how to ethically, effectively and intelligently engage with the world which we will address in the next post.

Each of us, it seems, believe that we are above average. People want to believe the present is different than the past. But while we humans passionately believe that our own current circumstances are somehow unique, not much has really changed since the inarguably brilliant Isaac Newton lost a fortune in the South Sea Trading Company bubble of 1720.

“What ails the truth is that it is mainly uncomfortable, and often dull. The human mind seeks something more amusing, and more caressing.” ~H. L. Mencken

Because history suggests that we are going down for the count.

http://go.ted.com/Ce3D