This in many ways validates common sense. Unclear how relevant it would be to a South African context though.
"When it comes to the chronically homeless, you don't need to fix everything to improve their lives. You don't even really need new public money. What you need to do is target those resources at the core of the problem — a lack of housing — and deliver the housing, rather than spending twice as much on sporadic legal and medical interventions." Vox
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Sometimes you've just gotta love the directness with which an economist will approach a problem.
"Ta-Nehisi Coates' essay on "The Case for Reparations" is much more a call for a moral reckoning with the legacy of white supremacy in America than it is a detailed accounting of what a reparations policy would look like. The more wonkishly inclined might prefer a specific proposal, so here's a place to start: we could close the wealth gap between black households and white households by directing the Federal Reserve to print $55 billion a month for 25 months and divide the proceeds evenly among every African-American." Vox
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"Studies show that my experience of sex trafficking isn’t uncommon. In a research project called the Bad Encounter Line, the Young Women’s Empowerment Project tracked violence in the lives of girls in the sex trade. The results showed that 30 percent of violent encounters were with police, 6 percent with DCFS, and 1 percent with shelters. Pimps accounted for only 4 percent of violent encounters. Sexual violence by police officers made up 11 percent of the total reports—almost three times as much as pimps, and overall there was seven and a half times more violence from police than pimps." Vice
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Golden Dawn in Greece is both a) unabashedly fascist; and b) steadily increasing it's support. This is very bad. Guardian
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A great piece by my friend Simone about the ongoing Khayelitsha policing enquiry. M&G
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An interesting snapshot of the workings of a magistrate's court. What is striking is a) how petty the various crimes being prosecuted are - often a few pounds worth of goods that have been shoplifted; b) how many state resources are expended to punish these crimes (the concept of "guard labour" is useful here - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guard_labor); and c) the gap between the amount of harm actually inflicted by the perpretators compared to the harm meted out to them. Simply increasing incomes at the lower end would probably eliminate a lot of the shoplifting, at least, and would avert all the social harms that come with the criminal process. Guardian
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A useful provocation.
"The only way to deal with the housing crisis is to desegregate Cape Town completely, expropriating land and mansions from Bishopscourt to Camps Bay and building public housing on large areas of unused land such as the Mowbray Golf Course (owned by the city) and the presidential estate in Rondebosch (national land)." M&G
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The irrationality of UK law around sex work, as viewed from the perspective of taxation. New Statesman
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A well-deserved and scathing attack on the British government's support for faith schools. The state should not by supporting religious indoctrination, whatever particular flavour it comes in. Guardian
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"This is the problem with cultural-appropriation critiques. They depend on reductive binaries—“high culture” and “low culture,” and oftentimes, “first world” and “third world”—that preserve the hierarchical relations between the fashion industry and the cultures being appropriated. This is related to the problem with cultural-appreciation defenses. Producers and consumers of culturally appropriated objects often present them as examples of healthy cosmopolitanism, of an openness to diverse global sources of inspiration. But the Indonesian plaid example shows that such production and consumption of “diversity” can often—intentionally or accidentally—obscure the actual diversity and complexity of the cultural object being copied." The Atlantic
"When it comes to the chronically homeless, you don't need to fix everything to improve their lives. You don't even really need new public money. What you need to do is target those resources at the core of the problem — a lack of housing — and deliver the housing, rather than spending twice as much on sporadic legal and medical interventions." Vox
>>><<<
Sometimes you've just gotta love the directness with which an economist will approach a problem.
"Ta-Nehisi Coates' essay on "The Case for Reparations" is much more a call for a moral reckoning with the legacy of white supremacy in America than it is a detailed accounting of what a reparations policy would look like. The more wonkishly inclined might prefer a specific proposal, so here's a place to start: we could close the wealth gap between black households and white households by directing the Federal Reserve to print $55 billion a month for 25 months and divide the proceeds evenly among every African-American." Vox
>>><<<
"Studies show that my experience of sex trafficking isn’t uncommon. In a research project called the Bad Encounter Line, the Young Women’s Empowerment Project tracked violence in the lives of girls in the sex trade. The results showed that 30 percent of violent encounters were with police, 6 percent with DCFS, and 1 percent with shelters. Pimps accounted for only 4 percent of violent encounters. Sexual violence by police officers made up 11 percent of the total reports—almost three times as much as pimps, and overall there was seven and a half times more violence from police than pimps." Vice
>>><<<
Golden Dawn in Greece is both a) unabashedly fascist; and b) steadily increasing it's support. This is very bad. Guardian
>>><<<
A great piece by my friend Simone about the ongoing Khayelitsha policing enquiry. M&G
>>><<<
An interesting snapshot of the workings of a magistrate's court. What is striking is a) how petty the various crimes being prosecuted are - often a few pounds worth of goods that have been shoplifted; b) how many state resources are expended to punish these crimes (the concept of "guard labour" is useful here - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guard_labor); and c) the gap between the amount of harm actually inflicted by the perpretators compared to the harm meted out to them. Simply increasing incomes at the lower end would probably eliminate a lot of the shoplifting, at least, and would avert all the social harms that come with the criminal process. Guardian
>>><<<
A useful provocation.
"The only way to deal with the housing crisis is to desegregate Cape Town completely, expropriating land and mansions from Bishopscourt to Camps Bay and building public housing on large areas of unused land such as the Mowbray Golf Course (owned by the city) and the presidential estate in Rondebosch (national land)." M&G
>>><<<
The irrationality of UK law around sex work, as viewed from the perspective of taxation. New Statesman
>>><<<
A well-deserved and scathing attack on the British government's support for faith schools. The state should not by supporting religious indoctrination, whatever particular flavour it comes in. Guardian
>>><<<
"This is the problem with cultural-appropriation critiques. They depend on reductive binaries—“high culture” and “low culture,” and oftentimes, “first world” and “third world”—that preserve the hierarchical relations between the fashion industry and the cultures being appropriated. This is related to the problem with cultural-appreciation defenses. Producers and consumers of culturally appropriated objects often present them as examples of healthy cosmopolitanism, of an openness to diverse global sources of inspiration. But the Indonesian plaid example shows that such production and consumption of “diversity” can often—intentionally or accidentally—obscure the actual diversity and complexity of the cultural object being copied." The Atlantic
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