by Karl Widerquist | Jun 25, 2012 | Opinion, The Indepentarian
The Eleventh North American Basic Income Guarantee (NA-BIG) Congress took place at the University of Toronto on May 3-5, 2012. I had the privilege of attending this conference. It provided an unusual opportunity for me to go to a NA-BIG Congress purely as a participant, because I had almost nothing to do with the organization of it this year.
The theme of the Congress was “Putting Equality Back on The Agenda: Basic Income and Other Approaches to Economic Security for All.” It began—unusually for a conference primarily dedicated to examining basic income—with two skeptics explaining what was wrong with the basic income as a solution to current problems in the United States and Canada. I applaud these participants for speaking their mind in an auditorium full of basic income supporters. It was kind of strange to begin with the skeptics—rebutting an idea that hadn’t yet been presented at the conference—but it worked very well to keep the basic income supporters on their toes throughout the conference.
The organizers invited two speakers to focus on the problems of poverty and inequality rather than specifically on basic income as a proposed solution: Charles Karelis (Research Professor of Philosophy at The George Washington University and author of The Persistence of Poverty: Why the Economics of the Well-Off Can’t Help the Poor) and Richard Wilkinson (Professor Emeritus of Social Epidemiology at the University of Nottingham Medical School and co-author of The Spirit Level: Why More Equal Societies Almost Always Do Better). Even though these speakers’ remarks were not directly about basic income, they were valuable to the conference, because they show the need to do something about poverty and inequality in the world today. It’s the work of a conference like this to see if basic income can help solve the problems researchers like these have identified.
One featured speaker, Erik Olin Wright (of the Department of Sociology, University of Wisconsin – Madison, author of Envisioning Real Utopias, and American Society: How it Actually Works), brought the congress back to focus on basic income, but he did not support the common version of the basic income proposal—a basically unregulated economy with basic income as its one central progressive reform. He argued that basic income would only succeed if it were part of a major reform of the economic system.
One of the most pertinent presentations was given by Evelyn Forget (Professor, University of Manitoba Faculty of Medicine, author of a major forthcoming study on Mincome: the Manitoba minimum income experiment). She has been working for several years to recover and analyze data from the Canadian Negative Income Tax experiment, known as Mincome. The experiment was conducted by the Canadian Federal government in the late 1970s, but it was cancelled before the data was analyzed. Only now, thanks mostly to Evelyn Forget, are the findings of the experiment becoming fully available. She finds that the experiment had many benefits for recipients including, for example, improved school attainment among children and improved health outcomes for all family members.
Senator Art Eggleton, former mayor of Toronto, concluded the conference with a practical discussion of how to put BIG on the political agenda in North America.
The parallel sessions provided a wide range of discussion about BIG. These sessions were especially valuable for me because I was able to attend two sessions and a dinner dedicated to providing feedback to me on chapters of the book that I am currently polishing for publication. The book makes a freedom-based argument for an unconditional income from the perspective that the imposition of rules, including the rules of property, make the poor unfree in very important ways. Basic income is both compensation for the imposition of these rules and a necessary institution (in modern industrial society) to maintain each individual’s status as a free person with the power to accept or reject active cooperation with other willing individuals. The sessions I participated in helped me formulate this argument and to present the book as a work of political philosophy.
For me, the Congress was also an opportunity to reconnect with friends, colleagues, and acquaintances. I have now been to six BIEN Congresses and all eleven NA-BIG Congresses. I believe there are only three of us who have been to all eleven Congresses (the other two being Jeff Smith and Al Sheahen). Every Congress is a little different. Some themes recur every time, but I’m always confronted with new ideas.
One welcome addition to this Congress was the presence of a significant number of people who are on disability or other forms of public assistance. This group brought the discussion back to practical issues every time, providing a skeptical view of nearly all the ideas presented. I hope we can get someone from this group to be a featured speaker at an upcoming NA-BIG or BIEN Congress.
The North American Basic Income Guarantee Congress is a joint project of the USBIG Network and the Canadian Basic Income Guarantee. It takes place in Canada and the United States on alternating years. Next year’s Congress will be in New York City in February (see announcement above).
For more information on this past conference go to:
https://biencanada.ca/
Papers from the Congress will be online as part of the USBIG Discussion Paper Series at:
https://www.usbig.net/papers.php
by Karl Widerquist | Jun 4, 2012 | Opinion, The Indepentarian
Alaska’s basic income is cursed with interesting times. The Permanent Fund Dividend (PFD) is a small, variable basic income given yearly to every Alaskan who meets the state’s residency requirement. The size of the dividend is determined by several different factors, all of which are facing increased uncertainty and possibly moving in different directions.
The PFD is financed not by current oil revenue, but by past oil revenues that have been saved and invested in the Alaska Permanent Fund (APF). The size of the dividend depends on the returns to the fund’s investments and on the size of the fund, and the size of the fund in turn depends on the international market price of oil, the amount of Alaskan oil sold on the international market, and the tax rate on oil companies selling Alaska’s oil. Those four factors (among others) affect the size of the dividend, and all of them seem to be moving in different directions and facing increasing uncertainty right now.
Oil prices and returns to the fund’s investments have been high recently, helping bring the APF’s principal to record high levels. According to Amanda Coyne of the Alaska Dispatch, the fund ended March with $41.5 billion-the highest month-end figure to date. The state is expected to deposit nearly $1 billion into the APF this year. But while oil prices are high, oil exports from Alaska are declining; the governor of Alaska is pushing for lower taxes on oil exports, making it easier and more lucrative for countries around the world to import and export oil to and from Alaska from overseas using shipping services similar to Plexus Freight (www.plexusfreight.com). However, the rate of return on the APF’s investments is facing increased uncertainty in the next few years.
To begin, consider the APF’s rate of return. According to Pat Forgey, of the Juneau Empire, executives of the Alaska Permanent Fund Corporation (APFC) expect lower earnings for the rest of this year, and perhaps for several years, thanks to the outlook for stocks, bonds, and real estate. Alaskans have come to expect a very healthy return of 8 percent or more, but Forgey quoted Greg Allen, of the advisory firm Callan Associates, “Getting a 5 percent (real) return is going to require people to take more risk than they’re used to.” The APFC has a strong responsibility to avoid unnecessary risks with the people’s APF, and so they are likely to stick with a more conservative investment strategy. Lower returns will translate into lower dividends over the coming years even if oil revenues remain constant.
And oil revenues are not likely to remain constant. Alaska’s oil exports (measured in barrels of oil) have been gradually declining for 20 years, but rising oil prices have kept the state’s oil revenues up. The increase in oil prices in the first months of 2012 have been an enormous help to the state’s fiscal position. Oil revenues have also been increased by higher tax rates on oil companies, enacted in 2008. But the gradual decrease in the number of barrels exported each year will sooner or later outstrip the effect of higher revenues per barrel of oil, and the effects of the decline might be felt sooner rather than later.
According to the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner state projections indicate that declining revenues could put the budget into deficit within the next three years. For most states a budget surplus with a possible deficit three years off would be a great fiscal position. But Alaska is used to budget surpluses, and because oil is by far its main source of revenue, any decline in oil output is worrying.
Alaska governor Sean Parnell has responded to the prospect of declining oil exports by asking the legislature to decrease oil taxes. The idea is that lower taxes will encourage greater oil exports. The difficulty with this strategy is that to increase oil revenue lower taxes would not only have to increase oil exports but increase them so much that the greater number of barrels exported makes up for the smaller revenue on each barrel. It’s a questionable strategy that has certain benefits only for oil companies. Other oil exporters with high oil taxes find oil companies willing to drill and sell it. There are other things the state could do to encourage greater oil exports, such as introducing use-it-or-lose-it leases. Current law allows oil companies to lease the right to drill for oil in a certain area and then choose not to do so. Many leases today are simply sitting unused.
In sum, at the moment we have: oil prices up; returns on investments up (for now); oil taxes probably going down; and oil exports down. All that could change, in the short and medium term. The only certainty is that oil exports will eventually decline over the long term, because there is only so much oil in Alaska. It seems that the downsides are looking larger than the upsides at the moment, but I make no prediction of whether the APF and PFD will be up or down in the next few years.
-Karl Widerquist Tel Aviv, May 2012
Recent articles on the APF & PFD include:
Forgey, Pat (Feb. 24, 2012) Juneau Empire, “Permanent fund warned of lower earnings”
https://juneauempire.com/state/2012-02-24/permanent-fund-warned-lower-earnings
Pat Forgey (February 23, 2012) Juneau Empire, “Permanent Fund to continue securities lending: Alaska protected from risks, advisers tell fund trustees”
https://juneauempire.com/state/2012-02-23/permanent-fund-continue-securities-lending
Pat Forgey (February 23, 2012) Juneau Empire, “CIO suggests new permanent fund options: Investment chief Jay Willoughby says state should capitalize on fund’s strengths”
https://juneauempire.com/state/2012-02-23/cio-suggests-new-permanent-fund-options
Maureen Farrell (February 29, 2012) CNN Money Markets, “Alaska’s oil windfall”
https://money.cnn.com/2012/02/29/markets/alaska_oil/
Amanda Coyne (Apr 20, 2012) “Alaska Permanent Fund makes a comeback as markets rebound,” Alaska Dispatch.
https://www.alaskadispatch.com/article/alaska-permanent-fund-makes-comeback-markets-rebound
Kevin Olsen (April 23, 2012) “Alaska Permanent Fund nets 1.9% return over 9 months”
Pensions & Investments (PI online):
https://www.pionline.com/article/20120423/DAILYREG/120429976/alaska-permanent-fund-nets-19-return-over-9-months
Lisa Demer (February 27, 2012) “Alaska Legislature: Senate panel tackles multiple amendments to oil tax bill”
Anchorage Daily News: https://www.thenewstribune.com/2012/02/24/2040560/senate-panel-tackles-oil-tax-bill.html
Fairbanks Daily News-Miner Editorial Board (March 4, 2012) “Deficits loom: Alaska’s cash will erode quickly in coming years,” Fairbanks Daily News-Miner
https://newsminer.com/view/full_story/17726357/article-Deficits-loom–Alaska%E2%80%99s-cash-will-erode-quickly-in-coming-years?instance=home_opinion_editorial
by Karl Widerquist | Mar 31, 2012 | Research, The Indepentarian
Palgrave Macmillan, part of the Macmillan Group of publishers, is a global academic publisher of textbooks, journals, monographs, professional, and reference works. For several years now, the publisher been putting together a book series on the basic income guarantee. The new series, “Exploring the Basic Income Guarantee,” has released its first two books, Basic Income Reconsidered: Social Justice, Liberalism, and the Demands of Equality by Simon Birnbaum and Alaska’s Permanent Fund Dividend: Examining its Suitability as a Model, edited By Karl Widerquist and Michael Howard (see the Recent Publications section below). Birnbaum’s book makes a social justice argument for basic income. Widerquist and Howard’s book considers the Alaska Dividend as model for basic income policies.
The series editors are Karl Widerquist, Associate Professor in philosophy at SFS-Qatar, Georgetown University; James Bryan, Professor of Economics, Manhattanville College; and Michael A. Lewis, Associate Professor, Hunter College School of Social Work. They aim to publish two-to-three books per year initially.
Upcoming books in the series include: The Political Feasibility of the Basic Income Guarnatee edited by Richard Caputo; Basic Income in Latin America, edited by Rubén Lo Vuolo; Exporting the Alaska Model: Adapting the Permanent Fund Dividend for Reform Around the World, edited by Karl Widerquist and Michael Howard; Basic Income Guarantee: The Right to Economic Security, by Allan Sheahen; and Basic Income and the Free Market: Austrian Economics and the Potential for Efficient Redistribution, edited by Guinevere Nell.
For information about books available in the series go to: https://us.macmillan.com/series/ExploringtheBasicIncomeGuarantee
If you might be interested in writing or editing a book for the series, contact Karl Widerquist <Karl@Widerquist.com>.
by Karl Widerquist | Dec 13, 2011 | News, The Indepentarian
Libya has been a classic case of the resource curse: enormous resource wealth (even on a per-person basis), but instead of prosperity, the windfall has coincided with poverty and political oppression. The new government now has the job of finding a way to lift the curse on Libya. A recent editorial by Kevin Voigt of CNN suggests that one of the best ways to do so would be to embrace, what he calls, the “Alaska solution:” distribute some of the oil revenue directly to the people. The article examines other cases such as Norway, Mongolia, and Bolivia to find lessons for how to avoid the resource curse and to bolster the case for the Alaska solution.
The editorial, “The ‘resource curse’: An Alaskan solution for Libya?” by Kevin Voigt of CNN
September 6, 2011, is online at:
https://edition.cnn.com/2011/BUSINESS/09/05/libya.oil.resource.curse/index.html
by Karl Widerquist | Sep 16, 2011 | News, The Indepentarian
The Alaska Permanent Fund (APF) ended its fiscal year on June 30, 2011 with a total value of over $40 billion. The APF is the Sovereign Wealth fund that finances Alaska’s partial basic income, known as the Permanent Fund Dividend (PFD). The fund made back all its loses since the 2008 financial meltdown and realized a gain of more than 20 percent for the year. This was the highest yearly percentage increase for the APF since 1986. The high, year-end value of the fund ensures that a healthy PFD will be distributed this fall. Experts predict it will be slightly lower than last year’s dividend of $1,281.
Unfortunately, following the end of the APF’s fiscal year, stock markets around the world suffered major losses, and many of the APF’s assets suffered as a result. The total value of the APF has fallen from a high of over $41 billion in July to $37.5 as of August 26, 2011. Fund managers credit the APF’s overall success to long-term investment strategy, and so they would be likely to say that a large short-term downturn, like this one, are not as important as long-term trends. Mike Burns, CEO of the Alaska Permanent Fund Corporation, has spent a great deal of time lately telling the media just that. If investors read the motley fool review, they would know it’s an advisory tool that helps determine when is a good time to invest. By using this tool, investors may have been able to save themselves losses.
In the midst of the financial downturns this August, Burns was interviewed by National Public Radio’s Melissa Block about Wall Street volatility. Block asked, “So you’re coming at this from a position of strength, … but still, if you lose a billion dollars in one day, that’s gotta hurt.”
Burns replied, “Well, it certainly does hurt, and obviously it gets your attention. But the most important words that you just said were one day. I mean, the greatest strength of this fund is our ability to take a very long term view of the markets. These days are difficult. Tuesday was a nice day. Wednesday was another bad day. The markets are up strong today. But it’s the long view and it is the very long view that we like to take.”
Burns went on to say that in light of that long view, the APF was buying stocks when they were down in early August. Whilst this sounds like a strange method, it can actually help investors to make more money. It’s probably more likely that people will make more of a return when the market is down than when it is increasing sharply. When a specific market is booming, more and more people will jump onto it, making it less profitable. For those who trade these stocks, they would be looking for the market to increase so they could trade for higher prices. They would probably use something like these share trading platforms south africa, if they lived in that area, to help them get the best return on their investment. Hopefully, APF will be able to do this. He also told the Anchorage Daily News, “The discipline of rebalancing your assets is, and this is hard to do, but you take money out of what’s working and put it where it isn’t working. That forces you to buy when things are down.”
Recent stories about the APF and PFD can be found online at:
Editorial Board, “Permanent value: Fund’s long-term view pays off for Alaskans,” Fairbanks Daily News Miner, Aug 3, 2011
https://newsminer.com/view/full_story/14944356/article-Permanent-value–Fund%E2%80%99s-long-term-view-pays-off-for-Alaskans?instance=home_opinion_editorial
Becky Bohrer, “Alaska oil wealth fund reports close of $40.1,” Associated Press – Aug 2, 2011
https://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5g5RGQGyXH1CEbgx3U79y7bEIobYQ?docId=c62a980e21114c58b0552832b02de733
Alaska Dispatch, “Alaska Permanent Fund tops $40 billion, but PFD yield is down,” Alaska Dispatch, Aug 03, 2011
https://www.alaskadispatch.com/article/alaska-permanent-fund-tops-40-billion-pfd-yield-down
Pat Forgey, “Permanent Fund finishes rebound,” Juneau Empire, August 2, 2011 (Contact Pat Forgey at patrick.forgey@juenauempire.com.)
https://juneauempire.com/local/2011-08-02/permanent-fund-finishes-rebound
Dermot Cole, “Volatility costs Alaska Permanent Fund $2 billion,” Fairbanks Dailey News-Miner, Aug 09, 2011
https://newsminer.com/pages/full_story/push?blog-entry-Volatility+costs+Alaska+Permanent+Fund+-2+billion%20&id=14986456&instance=blogs_editors_desk
Alex Ferreras, “Permanent Fund Loses $1 Billion in One Day,” LoanSafe.org, August 10, 2011
https://www.loansafe.org/permanent-fund-loses-1-billion-in-one-day
Barry B. Burr, Timothy Inklebarger, and Rob Kozlowski, “Returns at 25-year highs for Alaska, Illinois, Idaho funds,” August 3, 2011
https://www.pionline.com/article/20110803/DAILYREG/110809953
Ted Land, “Permanent Fund Can Wait Out Market Plunge,” KTUU-TV, August 5, 2011
https://www.ktuu.com/news/ktuu-permanent-fund-can-wait-out-market-plunge-20110805,0,3596448.story
Sovereign Wealth Fund Institute. “The Alaska Permanent Fund Gains 20.6% in FY 2011,” Sovereign Wealth Fund Institute Aug 3, 2011
https://www.swfinstitute.org/swf-article/the-alaska-permanent-fund-gains-20-6-in-fy-2011/
by Karl Widerquist | Sep 12, 2011 | Opinion, The Indepentarian
I write a lot about the Basic Income Guarantee (BIG)—about its labor-market effects, its use as cushion against instability, and so. In this essay I want to explain in simple terms why I believe it is so worth talking about.
The main reason I support BIG is that it is time to get serious about the elimination poverty. Most, if not all, the countries of the world today have the technical capacity to eliminate poverty and economic destitution. The more industrialized countries of the world have had this capacity for decades, and I believe it is now possible on a worldwide basis. In a world with so much wealth we must no longer force people to live with poverty, fear, destitution, and extreme economic uncertainty. We need to reach a state of economic maturity in which any poverty in our midst is unacceptable.
If we’re ready to talk about the elimination of poverty, BIG is the policy that can do it best, and it may be the only policy that can do it comprehensively. Because BIG is universal and unconditional, it has no cracks to fall through. It puts a floor beneath everyone’s income. If that floor is above the poverty line, poverty is eliminated universally.
Although BIG might have radical effects, it is not such a radical move. It streamlines and strengthens the welfare system to make it more effective and more comprehensive. Most nations of the world are already spending a substantial amount of money on poverty relief, but too much of that money is going to overhead costs, supervision of the poor, the creation of hoops for the poor to jump through to prove they are worthy, and so on.
Economic destitution is the biggest threat to freedom in the democratic nations of the world today. To be destitute is to be unfree. Economically destitute people are unfree to sleep undisturbed, unfree to urinate, unfree to wash themselves, and unfree to use the resources of the world to meet their own needs. (Jeremy Waldron has an excellent essay on this issue, “Homelessness and the Issue of Freedom,” in this book, Liberal Rights.) The destitute are unfree in the most liberal, negative sense of the word: the destitute are not unable to wash themselves or unable to use the resources of the world to meet their needs, they are unfree to do these things. Because our government enforces a property rights regime that says some people control natural resources and other people do not, someone will interfere with them if they try to do these things that they are very capable of doing.
Poverty is not a fact of nature. Poverty is the result of the way our societies have chosen to distribute property rights to natural resources. For millions of years no one interfered with our ancestors as they used the resources of the world to meet their needs. No one failed to wash because they were too lazy to find a stream. No one urinated in a common thoroughfare because they were too lazy to find a secluded place to do so. Everyone was free to hunt and gather and make their camp for the night as they pleased. No one had to follow the orders of a boss to earn the right to make their living. Our hunter-gatherer ancestors were not rich, but they were not poor as we know it today. Our laws today make it illegal for people to satisfy the most natural and simple bodily needs, and our laws make homelessness such a fact of life that we can believably pretend that it’s all their own fault. There are billions of people today who are more poorly nourished than their hunter-gatherer ancestors. It cannot be simply their own fault. We have chosen one way to distribute rights to natural resources; we can just as easily choose a system that does not create poverty as a side-effect.
Many writers have argued BIG has a very good work incentive built into its structure, but the most common objection to BIG is not so much about work incentives as it is about a moral obligation to work. The argument I have in mind goes as follows. BIG is something-for-nothing, and something-for-nothing is unacceptable. People have a moral obligation to work. Lazy people who will not work should not be rewarded with anything. Therefore, any social benefits should be conditional on at least the willingness to accept employment. Even if BIG has better work incentives than conditional welfare programs, we must reject it because it allows some able people to receive something for nothing and shirk their obligation to work. I believe this is a common argument in everyday political discourse, and versions of it have appeared in the philosophical criticism of BIG.
This argument has several problems. I’ll discuss two of them. The first problem with it is that BIG cannot be accurately characterized as something for nothing. All societies impose many rules on every individual. Consider the discussion of homelessness above. Why can’t homeless people build their own shelter and their own latrine? Why can’t they drink out of a clean river? Why can’t they hunt, gather, or plant and harvest their own food? They cannot do these things because the state has made rules saying they don’t have the right to do these things. The state has imposed rules saying that almost all the resources of the Earth belong to someone else. Those of us who benefit from the rules by which our society distributes ownership of the Earth’s natural resources benefit every day from the state’s interference with the propertyless, and we pay them no compensation. A state without BIG is the state that has something for nothing.
BIG is (and should be seen) not as something for nothing but as the just compensation for all the rules of property and property regulations society imposes on individuals. Democracies, hopefully, make these rules with the consent of the majority. But even the best democracies cannot obtain everyone’s consent. No government can function unless it imposes its rules on the willing and unwilling alike. Governments, therefore, have a responsibility to make sure that their rules are not an undue burden on anyone.
Governments can live up to this responsibility by applying a simple principle in which each person pays for the parts of the Earth they use and receives a share of the payment for the parts other people use. One person’s assertion of ownership of some of the Earth’s resources necessarily involves interference with anything anyone else might want to do with those resources. Under a resource-tax-financed BIG, those who (directly or indirectly) pay more in resource taxes than they receive in the BIG are paying for the privilege of enjoying more resources than the average person. They are paying compensation for the interference they impose on everyone else. Those who receive more in BIG than they pay in resource taxes are being compensated for having less access to the Earth’s natural resources than everyone else. BIG is most distinctly not something for nothing. Furthermore, those who pay more than they receive do so voluntarily and willingly. They obviously think it is worthwhile to pay what they do for resources they hold or they would choose to hold fewer resources and become a net recipient.
The second problem with the work-obligation argument against BIG is that it conflates two different senses of the word “work”—one that means toil and one that means employment or time spent making money. In the toil sense, work simply means to apply effort whether it is for one’s own or for someone else’s benefit. In the employment sense work means to work for someone else—such as a client or a boss. Anyone with access to resources can meet their needs by working only for themselves or with others of their choosing. But people without access to resources have no other choice but to work for someone else, and they have to work for the same group of people whose control over resources makes it impossible for the propertyless to work only for themselves.
Working for someone else entails the acceptance of rules, terms, and subordination, all of which are things that a reasonable person might object to. There is nothing wrong with working for someone else and accepting the conditions of work as long as the individual chooses to do so. But because we deny people access to resources they need to stay alive until they work for someone who has some control over resources, we deny their natural ability to refuse. We force them, not to work, but to work for at least one member of a particular group of people.
We can create an economy based on truly voluntary trade and voluntary participation by applying the principle described above in which each person pays for the parts of the Earth they use and receives a share of the payment for the parts other people use. With a sufficient BIG to draw on, each person has the power to decide for themselves whether the offers in the job market are good enough to deserve their participation. Nothing protects a person better than the power to refuse. This power will protect not only the poor and marginal but all of us.
-Karl Widerquist, written mostly in Morehead City, North Carolina, August 2011
I discuss most of the arguments in this essay in greater detail in the following articles:
Widerquist, Karl. 1999. “Reciprocity and the Guaranteed Income,” Politics and Society 33: 386-401. https://works.bepress.com/widerquist/12.
Widerquist, Karl 2006. Property and the Power to Say No: A Freedom-Based Argument for Basic Income. Doctoral Dissertation. The University of Oxford.
Widerquist, Karl. 2010. “The Physical Basis of Voluntary Trade,” Human Rights Review 11: 83-103. https://works.bepress.com/widerquist/12.
Widerquist, Karl. 2010. “What Does Prehistoric Anthropology have to do with Modern Political Philosophy? Evidence of Five False Claims.” USBIG Discussion Paper no. 206. https://works.bepress.com/widerquist/19.
Widerquist, Karl. Forthcoming. “Is Universal Basic Income Still Worth Talking About?” The Economics of Inequality, Poverty and Discrimination in the 21st Century. Robert S Rycroft (ed.)
