Dear h/l friends
In view of this request, I am adding at the end an article recently
submitted to NewStart magazine.
I hope it helps.
john
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>From: "David Lloyd" <[log in to unmask]>
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: [HLNET] FW: New OHE publication on health inequality
>Date: Thu, Jan 25, 2001, 1:11 PM
>
> Hi everyone,
>
> See below for forwarded reference from the HEN discussion list - this is a
> useful summary of the health inequalities debate and a new publication.
>
> If other people are discovering relevant material please let the list know.
>
> David
>
> David LLoyd
> HLNET Moderator
>
>
<snip>
Dear Julian and Newstartmag friends
Happy new year!
Might you consider the following as a Letter to the Editor or a Newstart
article?
Thanks!
STARTS
Sustainable development not only involves raising the wealth and well-being
of a community, but also ensuring that well-being processes sustain over
time.
There are four ways in which wealth leaks away from a community. Each needs
a sustainable-wealth strategy.
* 'The Fat Cattery Issue'. If external workers come into an area and
extract high wages, salaries and perks from the work of that area, then
immediate resentment and long-term impoverishment follows. Such exploitation
can be by non-resident employers, non-resident community workers and so on.
One strategy for this is to measure the spread of local incomes and make
sure that non-resident workers receive local wages (perhaps supplemented by
their travel costs to and from work).
* 'The Land-owner Issue'. Local people are impoverished when land-based
resources are in the hands of external owners. Such land resources are,
both, within the local area (external land-lords charging rents for local
residential and business accommodation) and, also, external to the locality
(external landlords selling food, energy and raw materials into the
locality). These factors clearly need multiple strategies if wealth is not
to be leached away from the area.
Of the many such strategies, one action is the gradual transfer of local
land-ownership into the local stewardship of local land trusts, which would
then lease local land resources to local co-operative businesses. In their
turn, these local co-operatives would then pay local co-operatives' taxation
and rent to the local community trusts and/or Community Banks, to make local
community work possible and, also, to make grants to more those in need
elsewhere.
Local food growing is also worthy of local action: recent developments in
'urban agriculture' in places like Cuba merit investigation, as do local
recycling schemes for materials' and energy recovery.
Likewise, local co-operative housing and co-housing strategies would retain
local housing rents, along with the benefits of local stewardship of the
local environment.
* 'The External Employer Issue'. Local employment by non-local employers
is a prime route to local impoverishment. External investment only lasts as
long as local profits are possible, and when these evaporate, the jobs go.
This suggests that local investment by the community, for the whole
community's benefit, is the antidote. Local worker- and stakeholder-
co-operatives are clearly the answer for work in the market-sector and the
monopoly-sector respectively. If these co-operatives carry out Annual
Co-operative Audits, to show their fidelity to the Seven Co-operative
Principles of the International Co-operative Alliance, community well-being
(through ICA Principle Seven) will be ensured.
* 'The Money-Lender Issue'. The Jubillee2000 activities have shown the
astonishing effect of the debt-plus-interest spiral. This acts both upon and
within communities: creating wealth- and well-being inequalities.
Local credit-creation through local, public-service Community Banks are
clearly called for. At the individual level, interest-free credit unions are
inclusive structures (interest-based variants are not available to certain
ethical and religious groups), while not-for-profit commercial credit for
co-operative businesses (and local public services) can be delivered through
the not-for-profit Community Banks referred to above.
In conclusion, income inequality, the payments of rents, dividends and
interest are all corrosive of community well-being, since they all lead to
the inequality that is of benefit to no-one (Richard Wilkinson's 'Unhealthy
Societies' Routledge, London 1997 contains the relevant epidemiological and
sociological evidence).
Inclusive, co-operative structures maximise local wealth creation and ensure
that prosperity is not only created, but is evenly spread: within and
between generations.
Without strategies to ensure 'prosperity, fairly spread', social and
environmental poverty will always be with us. However, with work to
'build-in' wealth-retention structures, sustainable development becomes
truly sustainable: a world of locally-created and locally-determined
co-operation.
John Courtneidge
The Fair World Project
13 North Road
Hertford
Hertfordshire SG14 1LN
<[log in to unmask]>
01992 501854
ENDS
More thanks and e-hugs
j
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