Neoliberal Policy

Ever since I was born culture has played an important role in just about every aspect of my life. One important aspect of my life which has specifically been influenced by culture is food, especially having grown up in a predominantly Hispanic family where food is at the center of life. Yet, it was not until my English class focused on food injustice that I began to realize the magnitude of culture 's impact on food. Without even meaning to I began to draw comparisons between food access and quality in the United States versus in Mexico due to the discussions in class revolving around that subject. While I could note many key differences between access to quality food in the two countries I was unsure of the importance of these differences to the larger discussion at hand. Eventually, I was able to see by comparing the lifestyles of Mexican towns against U.S. cities one can clearly see that American conversations about food justice and access are missing a key socio-cultural element.

When asked about the hunger problems in America one would imagine a homeless person asking and begging for food in the streets. However, what we fail to understand is that hunger is closer to us than what we think. A fellow co-worker or perhaps even the next door neighbor may be an example of someone who suffers from food insecurity. Food insecurity is when a person does not know when or where the next meal will come from. Food insecurity is most likely to develop in food deserts, a place where there is little to no fruits, vegetables and whole healthy foods. The documentary, A Place At The Table, is attempting to shed light on the argument that many Americans suffer from food insecurity because of low income and as result those individuals face various complications.

In Janet Poppendieck's “Want Amid Plenty: From Hunger To Inequality” she argues that America puts excessive focus upon hunger issues among the poor when there are many other important issues that go unnoticed. Poppendieck believes that it is time to find a way to shift the discourse from undernutrition to unfairness, from hunger to inequality. In today's society, there are many food banks, food drives, soup kitchens, etc. Food is extremely abundant in America, therefore Poppendieck's statement is proven true when she states that there is too much focus on hunger. Throughout this text, she strongly supports her claims about hunger, equality, and poverty in general.

The welfare system of the United States of America is viewed as one of the more frugal systems when compared to other worldwide industrial economies. When asking why the United States displays such drastic differences in the way it handles poverty it is important to take into account the history of the systems’ development among other aspects including how the United States differs culturally from those nations and the impacts of its’ operations within its’ political institutions. In the United States, the cause of a weak welfare state whose redistributive policies neglect the poor cannot be pinned on one factor in particular, but the main fault may lie in the

both argue that food issues should be addressed by public policy. To combat hunger, malnutrition, and growth deficiencies in children, Frank argues that public policy relating to food has to be changed. Poor families should be supplemented with federal grants such as WIC vouchers to care for their young ones. Robertson et al. take a slightly different approach in their article “Food is a Political Issue” by not only holding the government accountable for reducing issues associated with food, but also the food producers and suppliers. Who should decrease the health disparities and care for the disadvantaged members of society? Robertson et al. advocate that although health disparities caused by food have to be primarily tackled through government policies, the health disparities are everyone’s problem and have to be addressed by everyone— from government officials, to religious groups, to the farmers and food suppliers

In light of the most recent election results I find myself worrying about the countless social and economic injustices that will perpetuate to occur in our country. I dwell on our history, of how our social welfare system created and continues to reinforce discrimination, privilege and oppression. How did we end up like this and where is that “American dream” promised to those within our boarders? In our country, “an obsession with free-market logic and culture has led to the political class to craft policies that promote private interests over the public good” explains Marc Lamont Hill, a political contributor for CNN and author to the thought provoking book, Nobody: Casualties of America’s War on the Vulnerable, from Ferguson to Flint and Beyond. In ‘Nobody,’ published earlier this year, Hill sets the scene of social injustice through his analysis of the vulnerable, providing a snapshot of social upheaval. Two other literary works, $2.00 a Day: Living on Almost Nothing in America by Kathryn Edin and Luke Shaefer, and Bryan Stevenson’s book, Just Mercy: A story of justice and redemption, additionally seek to describe how social injustices and economic issues manifest in America. Together, all three texts use shocking personal accounts from people, community members and onlookers to craft together the narrative of America’s devastating reality. ‘Nobody’, ‘Just Mercy’, and ‘$2.00 a Day’ exposes our society’s shortcomings through their themes of poverty,

Why is it that whenever humanitarian aid is the topic of discussion amongst members of the American middle class, the peoples deemed most deserving of the United States’ efforts never reside within our borders? The United States Census Bureau reports that, in 2012, the official poverty rate was 15.0 percent. There were 46.5 million people in poverty. The only feasible path to accepting this staggering statistic as the reality of such a proud nation is by first acknowledging the accuracy of Barbara Ehrenreich’s (2001) premise as it is asserted in the final chapter of Nickel and Dimed: “Some odd optical property of our highly polarized and unequal society makes the poor almost invisible to their economic superiors” (p. 216). After we accept this as a truth, we must then move to analyze the methods by which this system is perpetuated. The exploitation and injustice against the American working class is seen starkly in the treatment of waitresses and practice of systematically forcing the poor to congregate in substandard living conditions.

Nelson Mandela once said that “As long as poverty, injustice and gross inequality persist in our world, none of us can truly rest” (Mandela). Mandela quote personifies the attitudes that the author Sherman Alexie, and Paul Krugman have towards the rift of poverty in the United States. The state of social unrest between economic classes in the United States has been a major issue for generations, and continues to be a problem to this day. This separation between economic classes in America has caused a rift to be formed, and throughout the history of the United States, this rift is yet to be repaired. It is this rift that causes those individuals that are trapped in poverty to face problems trying to escape it.

Over the last four decades Neoliberal policies have generated issues such as social inequalities, discrimination, and an increase in poverty, that have affected the lives of many individuals on a global scale. These repercussions were the result of a Neoliberal agenda that aimed to maintain economic growth with social reproduction. After World War II, a welfare state was established which contributed to the growth of the GDP in the United States until the economic recession in the 1970’s. In response to the economic crisis in the 20th century, Neoliberal elites aimed to stimulate economic growth by limiting welfare and lowering labor costs which increased poverty, precipitated discrimination towards people of color, and created an unfair justice

On March 24th, 2017, over sixty students and faculty members occupied the administrative building of Mount Allison University, a small liberal arts college on the New Brunswick-Nova Scotia border. After having spent four years navigating the university’s complex governance structure, the students were demanding an open meeting with top administrators to discuss the institution’s investments in the fossil fuel industry. The administration promptly retreated to their offices and locked their doors. After two hours of negotiating with assistants, two student organizers were permitted to meet with President Robert Campbell and the university’s vice-presidents of Student Life and Finance and Administration. After passionately voicing their frustration

According to Wilson, Neoliberalism presents itself as an organic tradition, but her book argues against such an idea. Neoliberalism is not ground-breaking, but it rather adopted previous ideas of freedom. Our society remains ingrained in the principle of competition as a fuel of capitalism which has created spaces of "self-enclosed individualism." All popular schools of thought ascribe to the support of competition as Wilson references the Democratic and Republican alignments. Her description assigns four phases to the acceptance of neoliberalism, eventually leading to a fight to privatize all sects of life, diminishing the line between public and private.

This chapter deals with the impact of neoliberalist and globalization. Neoliberalist are group of people whose main political view is economic growth and believes that the peace in society can be obtained from minimal government and free markets. By having this mindset, sweatshops are one of the number one idea to help improve and take a stand in global poverty. The chapter is mainly about the spread of sweatshops and the rise of the anti-sweatshop movement within the world. In the beginning, it talks about the movement in our American history when our economy was low developed and people were in desperate need of jobs. That in our desperate need of a job to feed our families, the best option was to get a job at an agricultural and manufacturing

The neo-liberal experiment was the policy that transferred the economic controls from the public sector to the private sector by the fourth labour department. During 1980s there were four categories imposed by the neoliberals for the welfare state to follow were: containment of costs- to cut the welfare benefits, changing of entitlement and eligibility rules of getting benefits which increased the rate of poverty and hardships. Taxation was another form of pressure when GST was introduced. Prioritisation was given to health and education by the government while less priority was given to the benefit sector. Privatisation was based on home mortgages and Housing New Zealand was formed to control the state properties. The role of the welfare

promoted a half way approach to liberal ideas while they incorporated parts of a social

(B. Kamiński 225). However, the package was met with a flurry of criticism from prominent economists and journalists. Echoing the key principles of neoliberalism, the economist Tomasz Jeziorański argued that the principal weakness of the package consisted in granting the full responsibility for economic performance to the central administration. The free enterprise characterized by responsibility and autonomy, he insisted, was incompatible with economic coercion by the state (B. Kamiński 226). As a consequence of protests of similar nature, the government eventually withdrew the package in question from further consideration.