This week in class, we talked about the urban divide in city infrastructure. One of the main points that I took from the lectures was that high powered individuals own a larger proportion of total income compared to slum dwellers who only own a small percentage individually.
This article, written by the Unhabitat organization, title "The Rich Get Richer", explains why the rich get richer. It first explains that the urban reform that takes place in cities benefits the "interests of the rich." This mainly occurs in Latin American, Asian, and African nations, with benefits of reform mostly effecting African nations, because they have more corrupt governments. According to the article, reform includes; beautification of riverfronts, infrastructure projects dealing with sanitation and water, and building facilities for major sports teams.
The article then explains that interests groups also interfere with urban policies that are supposed to favour all residents in a community. These groups interfere with anything from claiming public land and erecting religous temples, to rezoning land for monetary gains.
Finally, article explains that cities lack the basic instutional infrastructure to even help the poor. Most cities infrastructure include poor resources for schools, lack of skilled staff, and poor budgeting.
http://www.unhabitat.org/documents/SOWC10/R9.pdf
This second website, http://www.ashbrook.org/publicat/onprin/v1n3/thompson.html, points out the difference between socialism and capitalism. This ties in with why the rich continue to get rich and poor continue to be poor. The main point or socialism is you have to sacrifice for the overall good of the community, but also producing slow growth in the economy. The main point of capitalism is that you can move "up" out of current social/economic status, and that the economy rapidly changes and grows, rewarding those with merit and achievement, regardless of their social/ecomonic upbringings.
I am a capitalist.
The fact that many nations have corrupt governments is definitely a huge issue. Like you said, the few rich aristocrats that have most of the money, only use their money to better the rich areas of cities and completely overlook the majority of their citizens. Although this is an issue mostly in third wold countries, many people believe that this is an issue in America to some extent. Many poor urban public schools don't get as much of a budget as richer school districts do.
ReplyDelete-Michael Tortoriello
Good comments.
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