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19 results

  • 11 - Fair Wages and a Decent Living: Paths to Greater Vertical Equality

  • from Part III - Socioeconomic Rights and Economic Inequalities
  • Edited by Gillian MacNaughton, University of Massachusetts, Boston, Diane Frey, San Francisco State University, Catherine Porter, Lancaster University
  • Book:
    Human Rights and Economic Inequalities
    Published online:
    29 September 2021
    Print publication:
    02 September 2021, pp 271-294

  • Summary

    Since the 1980s much of the world has experienced sharp and steadily rising economic inequality (Berg 2015, 3). The cause of economic inequality’s ascendance is not a mystery. Rising inequality is a result of specific policies that enable top income earners and the wealthy to capture greater and greater shares of income and wealth (Atkinson 2015, 76; Chancel, Hough and Voituriez 2018, 8). Inequality enhancing policies include regressive income, inheritance and capital gains taxes that effectively help high income and wealthy individuals and families to preserve and build their high incomes and wealth. Rising inequality also results from policies to prevent lower wealth and income individuals and families from claiming a greater portion of income, wealth and power. These inequality enhancing policies include laws that make it more difficult for workers to organize labor unions, to engage in collective bargaining and to influence policies (Alquist 2017).

  • 1 - Introduction

  • Edited by Gillian MacNaughton, University of Massachusetts, Boston, Diane Frey, San Francisco State University, Catherine Porter, Lancaster University
  • Book:
    Human Rights and Economic Inequalities
    Published online:
    29 September 2021
    Print publication:
    02 September 2021, pp 1-30

  • Summary

    Economic inequalities are among the greatest human rights challenges the world faces today. Over the past four decades of neoliberal policy dominance, economic inequalities have risen drastically in the vast majority of countries in the world (Alvaredo et al. 2018, 9; Harvey 2005). Over the same period, international human rights have risen to the become the primary ethical language and legal framework for justice. This Upendra Baxi labels the “Age of Human Rights” (Baxi 2012, 1). The trend of rising economic inequalities in the age of human rights is not, however, inevitable. In 1948, when the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) was adopted, the human rights agenda encompassed the ideal of equality, which coincided with the growing welfare state and the decolonization and “modernization” of low- and middle-income countries (Marshall 1992 Moyn 2018; Dehm 2019). Today, extreme economic inequalities and their myriad negative impacts on human wellbeing provide compelling reasons to consider the potential of human rights to once again contribute to bring about a more economically equal and just world. This volume takes up that challenge.

Economic and Social Rights in a Neoliberal World
  • Edited by Gillian MacNaughton, Diane F. Frey
  • Published online:
    13 July 2018
    Print publication:
    28 June 2018
  • The rise of neoliberal policy and practice simultaneous to the growing recognition of economic and social rights presents a puzzle. Can the rights to food, water, health education, decent work, social security and the benefits of science prevail against market fundamentalism? Economic and Social Rights in a Neoliberal World is about the potential of these rights to contest the adverse impacts of neoliberal policy and practice on human wellbeing. Cutting across several lines of human rights literature, the chapters address norm development, court decision making, policymaking, advocacy, measurement and social mobilization. The analyses reveal that neoliberalism infiltrates management practices, changes international policy goals, flattens public school curriculum and distorts the outputs of UN human rights treaty bodies. Are economic and social rights successful in challenging neoliberalism, are they simply marginalized or are they co-opted and incorporated into neoliberal frameworks? This multidisciplinary work by a geographically diverse group of scholars and practitioners begins to address these questions.