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How can we square decades of emphasis on 'poverty eradication' with skyrocketing inequality, widespread precarity and now rising global poverty? Covid-19 has merely lifted the lid off a pre-existing pandemic of poverty.

@PhilipGAlston in the @guardian: theguardian.com/global-develop…
Some highlights*: Until just a few months ago, many were celebrating the imminent end of poverty; now it’s everywhere. How could the poverty narrative have turned on a dime? The explanation is simple. The success story was always highly misleading. 2/11
The World Bank’s flawed and misunderstood poverty benchmark has led to a deceptively positive picture and dangerous complacency with the status quo. The consequences of this highly unrealistic picture of progress against poverty have been devastating. 3/11
'Progress' is attributed to economic growth, justifying a 'pro-growth' agenda characterised by deregulation, privatisation, lower taxes for corporations and the wealthy, easy movement of money across borders and excessive legal protections for capital. 4/11
Everything from tax breaks for the super-rich to destructive mega-projects that extract wealth from the global south, lauded as efforts to reduce poverty. In 6 yrs investigating anti-poverty efforts for the UN, @PhilipGAlston encountered this convenient alibi time & again. 5/11
.@PhilipGAlston: "Presenting the agenda of the wealthy as the best road to poverty alleviation has entirely upended the social contract and redefined the public good as helping the rich get richer." 6/11
The story of 'progress' has been used to drown out appalling results. Many countries have experienced major GDP growth at the same time as rising inequality & hunger, increasing health & housing costs, persistent racial wealth gaps, precarious jobs & ecological devastation. 7/11
The reality is, billions face few opportunities, preventable death and remain too poor to enjoy basic human rights. About half the world, 3.4 billion people, lives on less than $5.50 a day, and that number has barely declined since 1990. 8/11
Covid-19 arrived in a world where poverty, extreme inequality and disregard for human life are thriving, and in which legal and economic policies are designed to create and sustain wealth for the powerful, but not end poverty. This is the political choice that has been made. 9/11
Deeper social and economic transformation is imperative, to avert a climate catastrophe, provide universal social protection, achieve redistribution through tax justice and ultimately to really get on track to ending poverty. 10/11
*Some edits for brevity. The oped is here: theguardian.com/global-develop…. You can read @PhilipGAlston's final report as UN Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights here: chrgj.org/wp-content/upl…
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