by Pranab Bardhan

In coping with the dire economic crisis in the wake of the pandemic many developing countries have resorted to cash assistance to the poor for immediate relief. Beyond the relief aspect, many macro-economists have also pointed to the need for such programs to boost mass consumer demand in a period of one of the deepest slumps of general economic activity in many decades. As I have been an advocate for universal basic income (UBI) in poor countries for more than a decade now—my first published paper on the subject came out in India in March 2011 in the Economic and Political Weekly— I have often been asked if the widespread adoption of such cash assistance programs indicates that it is now a propitious time for UBI. While I have supported the cash relief programs in the context of the crisis (most of these programs have not been universal, mainly targeted to the poor) and consider the experience gained in this as generally useful, I think those who like me have supported UBI have usually thought about it in a longer-time framework and in the context of a more ‘normal’ state of the economy with appropriate institutions, political support base, and administrative structures in place. Of course, I’ll not object if in a post-pandemic world attempts are made to help the temporary crisis programs ultimately extend or evolve into a more general UBI program in poor countries.

A Bit of History

By now it is well-known that the idea of UBI or that of a guaranteed minimum income enabled by a public assistance program has a long history in western thought, going back about 500 years to Thomas More and his friend, Johannes Vives, or that over the years the idea has been supported (and also attacked) by people in the whole range of the political spectrum, by libertarians and socialists alike. On a practical level it has been tried on a large enough scale briefly in the beginning of the last decade in two countries, Iran and Mongolia, and for the last 4 decades in one US state, Alaska. In all these 3 cases the funding source has been the bounty from some natural resource (oil for Iran and Alaska, copper for Mongolia). For rich countries in general, many economists, even in cases when they are otherwise supportive, think that it is much too expensive for the Government to fund a UBI at a decent level. In recent years, however, additional support has come from people (including some from the techno-utopian entrepreneurs of Silicon Valley) who are worried about the work-displacement effects of automation and artificial intelligence in the near future. Inducements for automation may be reinforced if we have to live with the virus for quite some time, as there will then be attempts to avoid production conditions where lots of workers have to congregate.

In this essay I shall primarily talk about developing countries, where more than looming automation there may be some other special factors why UBI may be imperative, and also show that finding resources for a reasonable UBI supplement may be within the realm of fiscal feasibility. Read more »

by Eric J. Weiner

D: Well my name is Dick Doolittle and I’m a reporter from Grime magazine and we would like you to comment on the tragic riots—

B: Not a riot, it’s a rebellion

D: Well the tragic rebellion?

B: Man, tragic for who?

D: Well there’s havoc in the streets, the police have lost control over the People, criminals are running free from jail, and people are actually taking property from big businesses, it’s full of complete chaos

B: That’s not chaos, that’s progress

“The Coup,” from the album Kill My Landlord, The Coup

What does it mean to be white in America in 2020?[1]  As Boots Riley points out to Dick Doolittle in the opening exchange to the song The Coup, one of the things it means to be white in America is you have the power to define the terms of the debate. In this exchange, the rebellion is cast first as a riot and then a “tragic” rebellion until Boots checks the journalist. As people from across the racial spectrum rebel against police violence and systemic racism, the question, “What does it mean to be white?” is more than a question about unpacking the backpack of white privilege[2]; it requires a detour through the educational, cultural, and political apparatuses of our culture.

I am white and was educated from K-12 to never question the norms, values, and goals of white supremacy. I am being more than just provocative when I use the term “white supremacy” to describe my education. White supremacy should not be reduced to describing the most extreme forms of hatred and violence leveled against people of color. More inclusively, it is an ideological world view that makes whiteness a universal marker of innocence, excellence, power, beauty, intelligence, and progress. I think it’s important to reclaim the term from the referent of the Ku Klux Klan and other extreme right-wing terrorist groups because it gives us a way to think about the formative historical structures and systems that seed the soil for the emergence of white identity and consciousness in the United States. The construction of white identity is inseparable from its intimate association to the forces of colonization and the domination and exploitation of people of color. Read more »

Sughra Raza. A Murder …. Rwanda, January, 2016.

Digital photograph.

Editor’s Note: This is a letter sent by Dr. Audeh to my sister about her recent book, The First Cell: And the Human Costs of Pursuing Cancer to the Last, and I am publishing it here as a review with his permission.

by M. William Audeh

May 26, 2020

Dear Azra,

I am happy to inform you that upon the end our phone conversation, I opened your book, which had been on my Kindle since its publication, and read it over the long weekend.

My apologies for not having read it earlier, but I had my reasons, which I will explain below. However, let me begin by saying that I thoroughly enjoyed your book, not least because your passionate voice comes through the pages so clearly in your writing. I feel as if I have had the privilege of spending several evenings in your lucid company, discussing these fundamental scientific ideas and sharing the heartfelt sorrows. It is eloquent and wonderfully written; a deeply passionate yet sharply rationale argument and memoir. Congratulations!

I will confess, that although I was quite interested to read your book, having spoken with you about its inception, development and impending publication, I was ultimately hesitant. My reluctance stemmed from two regrettable impulses, about which I am not proud, but will readily admit to you, as a dear friend. One was simple jealousy, that you had written and published a book which expressed your long-held beliefs, and anger at myself, for not having found the time and energy to do so myself. Perhaps reading your book will now inspire me to write my own. The other source of my hesitancy was the belief, not entirely unfounded, that I would find myself disagreeing with you on many points of your discourse and did not want to experience that discomfort in relation to you as a friend and colleague. In truth, I am in agreement with you on so very many aspects of your book, that I feel foolish in having held that concern. However, now that I have read your work, and understand the manner in which you have chosen to lay out your argument, I would like to express my thoughts on what you have written. Read more »

by Brooks Riley

by Maniza Naqvi

Have a look at the New York City Budget for the fiscal year 2020 and you will very quickly note the priorities (policing) for public expenditures and for cuts (social services of health, education and youth services). A quick back of the envelope public expenditure review reveals and illustrates the fiscal story for the fault-lines nourishing and giving free rein to the virility of both viruses of anti blackness and of the pandemic. And this is the story of masked interventions for maintaining inequity and cruelty in one of the great cities of the world, one of the so called most ‘progressive’ cities of the world.

About six years ago a colleague of mine and I visited the Human Services of New York City to learn about its Social Safety Net. As the presentation was made to us at City Hall, we found ourselves marveling at and impressed by the size of the City budget of nearly US$ 100 billion. As Development specialists, we were used to working in countries whose entire budgets were dwarfed compared to the New York City budget. However, we found ourselves exchanging glances of how the entire budget including the Human Services and benefits in the city seemed to be of a mindset that the resident beneficiaries have an existing or an expected record of criminality. Therefore a review and reallocation of funding must de-criminalize the orientation of the budget from policing both in percentage and absolute amounts. And every single line item of the budget should be expunged of its relationship to policing. Read more »

Mother Writes to the Turkish Ambassador in Karachi

17 April 1958

Your Excellency,
thank you for the portrait
of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk who yanked
women of Turkey kicking and screaming
into the 20th century.

Please accept this modest shawl I promised.
Every stitch has been hand-embroidered
by the blessed women artisans
of Kashmir who have spilled their sadness
with threads and barbed wire, weaving
the wrath of history.

An iron necklace frames the square shawl.
Four doves with broken wings sit in corners.
Himalaya gallops the wind.
A river rises to discover clouds.
A moon in the center grins
back at a helmeted head
shooting at her, as you will see.

The blessed women artisans
of Kashmir convey best wishes
to the brave daughters of Turkey.
I hope Ankara undoubtedly supports
our right to self-determination. We

have been fighting long for freedom.
We thank you and your country
for the goodwill you have shown.

Yours faithfully, Mrs. Maryam Jan,
Katrina Bungalow, Pindi Point,
Murree, West Pakistan.

by Rafiq Kathwari / @brownpundit

by Charlie Huenemann

In thinking about knowledge and consciousness, it is just about irresistible to distinguish between the basic facts of what we observe and interpretations or beliefs about those facts. You and I see the same glass of water – maybe our perceptions of the glass are nearly identical – and yet you see it has half full while I see it as half empty. We look at the same economic reports, and you find reason to celebrate while I find cause to worry. We see an artificial satellite in orbit, and you see it an incursion of government and industry into space while I see it as a glory of science and engineering. And so on – it seems obvious that there is a divide between what everyone can plainly see and what’s a matter of interpretation.

Descartes was scrupulous about this distinction as he inched his way through the Meditations, continually asking himself what he was really experiencing, as opposed to the judgments he was making about the experience. Do I experience my hands? Or do I only experience the visual and tactile data suggesting that I have hands? Can I infer the existence of the material world from what I experience, or are there other ways of interpreting the sensations that do not suppose there is an external world? Evil genius, anyone? Brain in a vat?

It’s this line of thought that led some philosophers to postulate sense data, or private mental packets of experience whose esse is their percipi, meaning that they don’t exist as anything other than sensations. You see the flower in the vase; I do too, but since I’m across the table from you, my sensations are different in some ways. The colors are the same, or close to the same, but the arrangement is different because of our different perspectives. Different perspectives yield different sets of sense data; that’s what makes them different perspectives. Read more »

The Sanctuary of Madonna della Corona near the village of Spiazzi in Veneto, Italy, in June of 2020.

Sughra Raza. The People, They Speak. Graffiti, Valparaiso, Chile, November, 2017.

Digital photograph.

by Ruchira Paul

“In New York City there lived a Nickel Boy who went by the name of Elwood Curtis…

When they found the secret graveyard, he knew he’d have to return. The clutch of cedars over the TV reporter’s shoulder brought back the heat on his skin, the screech of dry flies. It wasn’t far off at all. Never will be.”

Colson Whitehead won his second Pulitzer Prize for The Nickel Boys in 2020, joining the ranks of three other writers recognized for the rare honor. His first was for another historical fiction The Underground Railroad in 2017. What are the odds of winning the Pulitzer for two books that deal with the same subject – the troubled race relations in America? Pretty good, I would say, if your second book is as brilliant as The Nickel Boys.

The Nickel Boys is a searing account of life in a boys’ reform school, the Nickel Academy, in Jim Crow era Florida where the book’s protagonist Elwood Curtis spent some time in the early 1960s. Based on a real life institution, the Dozier School for Boys (now closed) where an unmarked graveyard was unearthed in 2012, the book begins with a reference to that gruesome discovery. The skeletons and bone fragments of young adolescent boys that emerged pointed to violent deaths due to broken bones, caved in skulls, bullet wounds and severe malnutrition. Whitehead’s novel takes us on a journey beginning with Elwood’s early days of a mostly happy, placid and hardscrabble life under his grandmother’s watchful loving care. (His parents had abandoned him when they decided to escape the oppressive racism of Florida to seek a brighter future in California). A bookish, earnest and ambitious boy, he spent his days studying diligently in school and his spare time reading whatever books, magazines and newspapers he could lay his hands on. As a teenager he eschewed the pranks and pastimes of his peers and held down a part time job in a cigar shop owned by a kindly Italian American man whom he impressed with his meticulous work ethics.

When he was not reading, working or doing household chores, Elwood listened to a scratched up LP of MLK Jr’s speeches – “Martin Luther King At Zion Hill,” whose contents both inspired and mesmerized.  Around him the great ferment of the civil rights movement was unfolding and he hoped to be a part of it. Read more »

by Abigail Akavia

“I was surprised you didn’t start with Philoctetes,” my advisor tells me after my dissertation defense. In our institution, in the crowning moment of a student’s academic career, she is expected not only to publicly display sufficient knowledge in her research field, but also to narrate the ‘making of’ the dissertation topic. Indeed, Sophocles’ Philoctetes could be considered the play that brought me to graduate school to begin with. The dynamics of compassion, suffering, and language in this play are paradigmatic to the questions that shaped my research; a few years out of school, I still can’t (nor want to) get away from this play (and I even wrote about it here once before).

And yet, when presenting the retrospectively made-up timeline of how my research came together, the point where I claimed “it all started” was not Philoctetes, but Sophocles’ most famous play, Oedipus Tyrannus. I did so because I had the opportunity, while in grad school, to direct the play (we’ll call it OT henceforth), an experience that was quite unlike anything else I did as a student, and which was crucial for shaping my academic project. I knew I was interested in the Sophoclean chorus, but only through having to solve for myself the dramaturgical and choreographic ‘problem’ of putting a bunch of seemingly extra bodies onstage who lament Oedipus’ fate did I truly realize how dramatically pregnant this community of vocal witness-bearers is. Working on transforming the script into a performance was a turning point in my engagement with Sophocles, coalescing what I’d learned about his plays and my own interests and hunches about them into a tangible, clear perspective. I came to view the exploration of people’s (in)capacity to be with another person’s pain—or, in other terms, the community’s involvement and reaction to an individual’s tragedy—as one of the driving forces of Sophoclean drama. Read more »

by Brooks Riley

by Joseph Shieber

Recently I was reading one of Scott Alexander’s posts about fake news and conspiracist thinking. In that post he introduces what he dubs the “North Dakota Constant”.

Alexander references a survey conducted by researchers at Chapman University, and mentioned a “control question” that the researchers included in the survey.

Here’s how the pollsters at Chapman describe that question and the responses it prompted:

Perhaps most indicative of the conspiratorial nature of Americans is the …one which, to our knowledge, we created.

Respondents to the Chapman University Survey of American Fears were asked if “The government is concealing what they know about…the North Dakota crash.” A third of Americans (33%) think the government is concealing information about this invented event.

Were the North Dakota crash added to the ranked list of conspiracies (see above), this invention would rank as number six, just under plans for a one world government.

What Alexander concludes from this is that there is a large minority of the country — the 33% willing to buy in to a conspiracy about a “North Dakota crash” that never existed — who are disposed to believe in ANY conspiracy.

Alexander suggests that the existence of the “North Dakota Constant” should make us more cautious in overemphasizing the role of “fake news” in causing conspiracist thinking. His idea is that if there is a floor of over 30% of the population disposed to believe in a made-up conspiracy, the fact that 30% of the public believe that President Obama wasn’t born in the United States is not in fact evidence of a very strong “fake news” effect. That is because, if the “North Dakota Constant” is compelling, we would expect around 30% of the public to believe ANY conspiracy about which pollsters questioned them. Read more »