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The well-being of Europe’s citizens depends less on individual consumption and more on their social consumption of essential goods and services – from water and retail banking to schools and care homes – in what we call the foundational economy. Individual consumption depends on market income, while foundational consumption depends on social infrastructure and delivery systems of networks and branches, which are neither created nor renewed automatically, even as incomes increase. This historically created foundational economy has been wrecked in the last generation by privatisation, outsourcing, franchising and the widespread penetration of opportunistic and predatory business models. The distinctive, primary role of public policy should therefore be to secure the supply of basic services for all citizens (not a quantum of economic growth and jobs). Reconstructing the foundational has to start with a vision of citizenship that identifies foundational entitlements as the conditions for dignified human development, and likewise has to depend on treating the business enterprises central to the foundational economy as juridical persons with claims to entitlements but also with responsibilities and duties. If the aim is citizen well-being and flourishing for the many not the few, then European politics at regional, national and EU level needs to be refocused on foundational consumption and securing universal minimum access and quality. If/when government is unresponsive, the impetus for change has to come from engaging citizens locally and regionally in actions which break with the top down politics of ‘vote for us and we will do this for you’.
time, because there are no ethnic role models in the industry, other ethnic people might want to get into that industry so they can be role models for other people. While breaking through a glass ceiling can be a motivating factor to succeed in economics, as we
act according to their subjective knowledge and preferences exhibit changeable behaviour have group identities (race, ethnicity, gender, caste, sexuality, religion) exhibit gendered behaviour
differentiated the late 1980s and 1990s was Suharto’s unwillingness to make prudent economic decisions when his children’s and cronies’ business interests were at stake. Indonesia’s “national car” policy is illustrative. In February 1996, Suharto announced a national car policy designed to provide competition in the automotive industry, especially to the monopoly held by the Astra Group, led by an ethnic-Chinese Indonesian entrepreneur, William Soeryadjaya, and its Japanese partners, Toyota, Daihatsu and Isuzu. The program gave a three-year exemption from import duties and
identity interweave to disadvantage women in the labour market. Indigenous women and those of African origin, for example, are more likely than men from their ethnic group or men and women in the general population to earn $1 an hour or less in Bolivia, Brazil, Guatemala and Peru. 13 The structural inequalities women face are further illustrated by the gender pay gap. UN Women reports
ignorance and lack of education. One of the strongest findings in this research is that knowledge of mainstream academic economics varies by demographics such as age, ethnicity, gender, socioeconomic class and education. Women, younger, less educated and lower income people are shown to have less economic knowledge. This top-down approach has been criticised as offering a restricted
film's release showed that many people found its imagined African country more inspiring than the visions proposed by local politicians. Individualism vs family and ethnic grouping Neoliberal free markets in telecoms and internet created millions of new consumers and conveyed the idea of individual choice as opposed to something determined by family or ethnicity. The one did not remotely supersede the other, 57 but created tensions that, among other things
, and indeed capitalism more generally. As Wilk argues, moral debate about consumption is an essential and ancient part of human politics, and an inevitable consequence of the unique way human relationships with the material world have developed. Therefore, ‘there is no question that moralizing about consumption can be strategically deployed during class conflict, inter-ethnic strife, nationalist or fundamentalist agitation, religious anti-secularism, and even trade negotiations’ (2001:246). As McKendrick et al. point out, academics are all too easily unwitting
some of its operations outside London. The proportion of women and ethnic minorities in senior roles in the Exchequer has grown steadily, although we are still waiting for the Treasury's first female permanent secretary and chancellor. Another change has been the growing political power of the Treasury over the period. Its influence has waxed and waned historically. But from the 1970s it most definitely consolidated its authority across Whitehall. Influence over senior civil service appointments and new financial controls have helped it impose
the partition of ethnic groups as colonial powers were dividing Africa up between them. 4 This is positive, but importantly it only focuses on the harm done to people who were enslaved and the countries that were colonised, not the economic benefits for the slave owners and colonisers. In this way, it misses a crucial part of the picture. Similarly, economics education is