Category: Analysis
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What the GDP Hides
From Prabhat Patnaik, in People’s Democracy, 4 Feb 2024 THERE are well-known problems associated with the concept of gross domestic product as well as with its measurement. The inclusion of the service sector within GDP is something that Adam Smith would have objected to on the conceptual grounds that those employed in this sector constituted…
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Corporate greed and rich countries cowardice lead WTO to abandon proposed sharing of Covid treatment technologies
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Last night, news broke that the World Trade Organization (WTO) is preparing to reject a proposal that would have relaxed pharmaceutical monopolies and supported global sharing of COVID-19 therapeutic and diagnostic technologies. In response, Global Trade Watch director Melinda St. Louis issued the following statement: “In a pandemic, among the most precious…
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Settler Colonialism under a Shroud of Victimhood
Analysis by Prabhat Patnaik, 20 November 2023, published originally in People’s Democracy and re-posted in the IDEAS Blog. /// The eighteenth and nineteenth centuries had witnessed the emergence of two different paradigms of colonialism: the first, of which India was the classic example, involved the conquest of countries which had had a history of established…
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When economists shut off your water
Research report by Adrian Wilson, Irene Nduta, and Somo Abdi; published on Africasacountry.com in November 2023, based on research conducted in 2022. /// Access to water in Nairobi is horribly unequal. The World Bank, Nairobi Water Company, and development economists exploited this unjust context to treat poor Kenyans like guinea pigs. In August 2020, people…
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Implications for developing countries/LDCs of the JSI E-commerce text (Revision 5)
By Jane Kelsey December 2023; published on bilaterals.org. /// Developing countries and least developed countries (LDCs) facegrowing pressure to participate in and adopt the outcomes ofplurilateral negotiations on electronic commerce, known as theElectronic Commerce Joint Statement Initiative (JSI), that are beingconducted by a sub-group of WTO Members outside the WTO’smandated procedures and bodies. As the…
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The Political Determinants of Health Inequity – Another End of the World is Possible
By Remco van de Pas Ten years ago, The Lancet-University of Oslo Commission on Global Governance for Health released a report on the political origins of health inequity. (Ottersen et, al., 2014) The independent academic commission was formed in 2011. It was initiated by The Lancet and the Ministry of Health in Norway to examine…
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Health differentials associated with social inequality: description, explanation and strategy
The focus of this post is on the different uses of ‘social determinants’ and ‘social determination’ in describing, explaining and responding to the health differentials associated with social inequality. Background The level of health that a population can achieve is a function of their exposure to risk, their access to resources, and the distribution of…
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Class
Usage The term ‘class’ is used for widely different purposes. Researchers whose purpose is primarily descriptive (eg demographers or statisticians) tend to treat ‘class’ as a descriptive variable, often closely linked to household income or wealth. A spectrum from very rich to very poor is defined and the numbers and circumstances of households at different…
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Alienation
Usage This post explores the usefulness of alienation theory in bridging between the insights of political economy and the concerns of public health (Crinson and Yuill 2008). Alienation is not a real thing, out there; it is a conceptual framework for making sense of human experience. The term comes to contemporary usage from Roman law…
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Neoliberalism
Usages The term, ‘neoliberalism’, is required to carry a wide range of meanings; variously an ideological project, a political program, or an institutional configuration of governance (England and Ward 2007) Bell and Green (2016) comment that “When a concept can be used to describe such an extraordinary – and even downright contradictory – array of…
