How we make poverty

March-April 2020, Issue 524

Poverty requires a system change against the undervaluing of everything that poor people do only to expand the fortunes of the already wealthy – a form of thievery that this edition lays bare. This argument for change is not new, but it acquires urgency because today there is no reason whatsoever why poverty should still exist and why inequality should be spiralling out of control.

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Protesters against Argentina’s hunger crisis gather for a brew, 5 September 2019. They had camped out overnight in front of the Ministry of Social Development in Buenos Aires. CAROL SMILJAN/NURPHOTO/PA

Argentina’s big squeeze

Why is hunger growing in a country known as an agricultural powerhouse? Amy Booth reports from Buenos Aires.

The Ashaninka are an indigenous people living in the State of Acre, Brazil. © Pedro França/MinC

View from Brazil

Leonardo Sakamoto on the war against indigenous people.

We can’t grow our way out of poverty

In an era of planet-wide ecological breakdown, the conventional wisdom of the growth model is crashing to an end. Jason Hickel...

For a few cents more

The globalized garment industry is as ruthless as they come, creaming off huge profits while paying workers a pittance. Trade...

For the world to witness: weary and homeless, this woman rests by a busy thoroughfare in São Paulo. Davidsonluna/Unsplash

Can cash hand-outs cure poverty?

Vanessa Martina Silva considers the track record of Brazil’s flagship Bolsa Família, the world’s largest conditional cash...

Offshore secrecy is a long-established phenomenon; bankers in Geneva and Zurich were catering to wealthy French and German elites long before the creation of the Swiss federal state in 1848. Delaware started to function as a tax haven in the late 19th century.

Who’s the thief?

Tax havens in the Global North enable the systematic looting of the Global South. John Christensen explains how their...

President Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana, a critic of Western influence over his country, meets with US President John F Kennedy. There may have been smiles all around but Nkrumah’s cards were marked. ABBIE ROWE/WIKIMEDIA COMMONS

A brief history of impoverishment

Poverty between – and within – nations doesn’t just exist. It is created and needs constant maintenance.

Wary looks: Ntombekhaya Sobuza and little sister Asanele outside their shack constructed from packaging materials from a Volkswagen plant, on the outskirts of Port Elizabeth, South Africa. JAMES OATWAY/PANOS

Poverty: shut out

Poverty is not down to chance or bad choices. It’s hard wired into a deeply unequal economic system. But it doesn’t have to be...

Mixed media: music

Louise Gray and Malcolm Lewis weigh up the eclectic sounds of Wild Wild East and the Karen Dalton Archives.

Mixed media: film

Malcolm Lewis on the latest in alternative cinema.

The radical book review

Jo Lateu, Peter Whittaker, and JP O’Malley on the latest releases in Left publishing.

What if we got our attention back?

Vanessa Baird makes the case for being true to our brains.

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