GLOBALISATION, ECONOMICS & POVERTY

GLOBALISATION, ECONOMICS & POVERTY

1. more than 60 million children are growing up in the Chinese countryside while their parents live and work elsewhere (dark facet of China’s shining economic development.)

   • it has more left-behind children than the rest of the world put together—and largely self-inflicted, the result of restrictions on migration within the country.
     • A survey this year for a charity called Growing Home found that left-behind children were more likely than their peers to be depressed or emotionally unstable. // Researchers in Shanghai found that left-behind children underperform at school, and that their emotional and social development lags behind. // are more at risk of turning to crime.
       • training “barefoot social workers” to find children who have been not so much left behind as abandoned. But this programme is to reach only 250,000 children, which hardly scratches the surface.
   • hukou—a kind of internal passport that gives people and their children subsidised schooling and health care, but only in the place where they are registered // those living in the countryside do not enjoy the same property rights as urban residents.

2. Brexit

   • uninformed decision making
     • The British are frantically Googling what the E.U. is, hours after voting to leave it, according to the Washington Post
     • More than 2.5 million people have signed a petition calling for a second EU referendum, after the vote to leave.

3. Poverty still widespread despite the Philippines’ economic success : Growth expanded at an average 6.2% over the past six years. According to the National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA), there is still 26.3% of the population living in poverty during the first half of 2015, having no means of feeding themselves.

   • it is a trader-dominated sub-economy. The gains in rice production does not go to the poor farmer, it goes to those who buy and sell rice.
     • difficult to eliminate poverty
   • getting financial services to low-income communities
     • The MasterCard Aid Network 2015 distributes a version of the company's plastic cards that came loaded with points redeemable for groceries, medcines and shelter.... ---- adopted by organisations such as Save the Children, World Vision have distributed the cards to more than 75,000 to earthquake victims in Nepal to war-torn Yemen. Profitable as the charge the charities fees for the services
       • MasterCard named as the leader of an initiative to improve the distribution of humanitarian aid in emergencies

4. WORKPLACE

   • Google has ranked first on Fortune's 100 Best Companies to Work For 2016 and the 25 World’s Best Multinational Workplaces by the Great Place to Work Trust Index survey (title for several consecutive years)
     • more than 95% of the employees feel that the management and business practices are honest ethical; are motivated and willing to put in the extra effort
     • hiring policy: cares about a lot of soft skills — leadership, humility, collaboration, adaptability and loving to learn and re-learn. This will be true no matter where you go to work. least important attribute they look for is “expertise.”
   • More than 150 million of public sector workers have gone on a day-long strike across India, protesting against Inda's Prime Minister Narendra Modi's economic policies, particularly his plans to push for greater privatisation.
   • sweatshops
     • Nike, undisputed leader of athletic brands, shed its sweatshop image to dominate the shoe industry. was internally condemned for harsh working conditions and exploitation of workers in the outsourced factories
     • China Foxconn (world's largest electronics manufacturer)
       • Around 150 Chinese workers threatened to commit suicide by leaping from their factory roof in protest at their working conditions. A suicide cluster in 2010 saw 18 workers throw themselves from the tops of the company's buildings, with 14 deaths.)
   • protests
     • About 100 SMRT bus drivers recruited from China have agreed to go back to work today, after day-long talks with the bus operator over salary, and work and living issues in 2012
     • Tens of thousands of Americans are protesting at 1,600 Walmart stores across the country in 2014, calling on the company to pay associates a minimum of $15 an hour and provide full-time work. While the majority of Walmart workers are paid less than $25,000 a year, Walmart brings in more the $16 billion in annual profits

5. deliver healthcare to the underserved

   • British Company GlaxoSmithKline, world's sixth largest pharmaceutical company, drop drug patents in the lowest-income region of the world
     • succeeded in accelerating access to treatments such as HIV, tuberculosis... > improve SOL in poor areas > boost economy & expand business
     • GSK's global revenue grew by 4% in 2016 as new product sales crossed the $1.5b threshold for the first time
   • Johnson & Johnson
     • developed MDR-TB Sirturo, a drug resistant to tuberculosis, so far used to treat more than 10,000 patients
   • EPIDEMIC
     • A single "super-spreader" patient in a busy hospital emergency department spread Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) to 82 people in just three days during a big outbreak of the virus in South Korea, according to the Lancet medical journal. (largest outbreak outside Saudi Arabia)
       • lack of preparation by S. Korea government, condemned globally, lack of quarantine measures ...
         • World Health Organisation (WHO) said Singapore represents a role model for countries in its handling of Zika cases, and praised the level of transparency shown here. such as epidemiological work, lab work, public health work, including vector control, detailed follow-up including retroactive analysis of cases

6. social causes

   • More people are setting up social enterprises, and awareness of the sector has grown, according to the Singapore Centre for Social Enterprise's (raiSE) (Its membership base has grown by 43%) Social enterprises generally channel their profits towards furthering social causes. awareness of social enterprises has "more than tripled" since 2010.
     • Funding of $8.6 million from raiSE has also supported social enterprises in creating 205 jobs and helping close to 3,000 disadvantaged people.