LAFF Society

NEWSLETTER

President's Message, Winter 2016

 

We live in a world marked by inequality, the encompassing theme of the Foundation’s new grant-making program. The issue has been with us for some time, decried on the left as systemic to capitalism and debunked on the right as mutable with the rising tide of growth. What is inescapable is the untenable face of inequality, notable primarily in dramatic increases in the wealth gap but also in the distribution of power and influence that continues to make inequality a disturbing fact of our societal structure. 
 
What gets obscured in the political rhetoric that thankfully calls public attention to the damaging effects of inequality is its pervasiveness, for inequality is not solely a feature of a widening chasm between a very few very rich and the rest. It appears at every level of society between those who manage some access to power and those who are excluded from it.
 
I live in one of the most unequal societies in the world, in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, where the gap in income and power is part of the visual of everyday life, between the hillside slums and the glittering seaside condominiums, between the state capital and less-well situated surrounding suburbs, between the struggling middle class and the ever-present homeless, between the privately insured and those dependent on dysfunctional public hospitals, between law-abiding citizens and drug cartels and roving bands of unemployed adolescents, and between everyone else and the alarming population of drug addicts. 
 
So ubiquitous is the reality of inequality and the threats it poses to global stability that Foreign Affairs, the journal of the Council on Foreign Relations, has devoted its January/February 2016 cover and a broad-ranging set of articles to the subject. One features Brazil’s famed income transfer program, the Bolsa Família, or Family Grant, which the author, Jonathan Tepperman, touts as a “surprising success”. By providing small cash payments to impoverished households, Bolsa Família has seen more than 12 million families leave the poverty rolls since its formal inception in 2003. 
 
But Bolsa Família is hardly the panacea that its Brazilian advocates and global emulators will have you believe. By not addressing the structural bases for inequality, Brazil’s fledgling middle class remains highly vulnerable, already succumbing to the country’s severe economic and political crisis, marked by rampant corruption, growing unemployment, rapid inflation, heavy consumer debt, and broken education and health institutions. If there is a ray of optimism on this bleak horizon, it is found not in government programs but in the myriad local experiments by thoughtful social entrepreneurs innovating for the good of their communities.
 
It is in this context that I welcome the Foundation’s new thematic focus, described by Darren Walker as tackling the diverse drivers of inequality—“not just wealth disparities, but injustices in politics, culture and society that compound inequality and limit opportunity.” 
 
And I look forward eagerly to the May 17 celebration at the Foundation of the LAFF Society’s 25th anniversary, noted elsewhere in this newsletter, at which time we will have an opportunity for former and current Foundation staff to get to know each other in a series of workshops on subjects that are of keen interest to us all. It will be great to see you all there!
 
All best, Shep Forman

 

 

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