tagged w/ Stigma
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One thing I have never understood in America is the way that people who lose their jobs become pariahs in the job market. We’ve now had a spate of commentary on the fact that official unemployment figures are looking a tad less dreadful by dint of the fact that increasing numbers of the long term unemployed have dropped out of the job market entirely. Even the conservative Washington Post woke up last week, Rip Van Winkle like, to take note of the growing number of long-term unemployed. Bizarrely, or perhaps as a fit illustration of the spirit of the day, the article was titled: “Hidden workforce challenges domestic economic recovery.” In other words, they are Bad People because if the economy ever picks up, they might come out of the woodwork and start looking for jobs!
Many pundits, such as Paul Krugman in his latest New York Times op-ed, have decried the lack of anything remotely resembling adequate responses to the unemployment problem, particularly that of the long-term unemployed. Ronald Reagan, hero of the right, was concerned when unemployment rose over 8% and took a series of corrective measures, including the Plaza Accord, which was a G-5 currency intervention to drive up the value of the yen. So why do we have a nominally Democratic president sitting on his hands in the face of much worse unemployment?
I’d argue that the roots lie in a fundamental change in policy that took place around 1980. The lesson that economists drew from the stagflation of the 1970s was that labor had too much bargaining power. The excessive fiscal stimulus of the later 1960s and the oil price shocks of the 1970s had been amplified by the fact that workers had enough clout to demand and get wage increases when they faces sustained price increases. That of course led to more price increases since higher wages led to higher production costs which led business owners to increase prices of their goods and servicer, thus accelerating the inflation already under way.
The solution, per neoclassical economists, was to use unemployment to keep wage demands in check. Thus having a lower level of employment even in good times and taking other measures, like weakening unions, was key to keeping those pesky workers from ever serving to create a reinforcing inflationary dynamic.
As an aside, there were other convenient (to the capital-owning classes) side effects of this policy. Before, there had been an explicit agreement between unions and employers embodied in the so-called Treaty of Detroit, which was that workers were to share in productivity gains. President Kennedy even warned major corporations that if they did not adhere to this understanding, he’d push through legislation to make sure they did. Since wage growth and productivity growth marched in near lockstep from 1950 to just after 1980, it appears white collar worker benefited from blue collar bargaining successes.
Mike Konczal points to a recent paper by Daniel J.B. Mitchell and Christopher L. Erickson that goes through twenty years of Fed transcripts. The Fed was clearly obsessed with unions; it saw them as actively bargaining for higher wages, which in a central bank that kept fighting the last war of runaway inflation, was to be discouraged. And let us not forget that that viewpoint turned traditional growth models on their head: rising worked incomes had been seen as the driver of prosperity.
Yet as much as I’d love to take a few more notches out of Greenspan’s reputation, I’m not a believer that the non-existent growth in real worker wages can be laid at this feet. Both the wage stagnation and the cessation of workers sharing in productivity gains dates started before Greenspan took the helm. As much as he has been sanctified for breaking the back of inflation (and putting banks through a lot of pain to do so), he was also explicit about seeing weaker worker wages as a sign of success (he carried a card in his pocket in which he was logging construction worker wages; he wanted to see them fall before he was prepared to declare victory). The Volcker Fed was no friend to the ordinary worker; Volcker was simply willing to put the banks through a lot of short term pain for their own long-term benefit.
Konczal asks for falsifiable hypotheses on this idea that the Fed was a big culprit in the fallen standing of labor. I don’t think they can be constructed, since monetary policy is a blunt instrument, and even though Greenspan began to break with the Fed’s traditional stance re independence, he was not an active player in the Administration’s policy setting. Moreover, the Greenspan put, which took hold in the 1990s (starting with the derivatives wipeout of 1994-5) meant if anything that Fed policy was overly loose.
The reason that that didn’t lead to firmer employment, as former Fed economist Richard Alford argues, was inattention to persistent trade deficits, and that was due to policy measures outside the Fed’s purview. The Fed failed to factor that in fully due to its reliance on macro models that assumed any trade deficits were transitory and hence could be ignored. But older-school economists would have recognized that sustained trade deficits meant that US stimulus, including monetary policy measures, would leak into foreign demand.
I think there have been significant second-order effects as a result of a restructuring of the American workplace by employer who like to claim that “employees are our most important asset”: but really treat them as expenses to be minimized, ruthlessly. One is the way unemployment quickly becomes a barrier to getting a job again. There has always been bit of a stigma surrounding unemployment, since the concern is that the individual lost his job for performance reasons, as opposed to bad luck (his company being acquired, say).
But I’ve seen the bias become far more ingrained over time, reinforced and rationalized by the bizarre way that companies now spec jobs. Whereas in the stone ages they’d hire a competent-seeming individual with some relevant experience, they now look for people who have done exactly the same job at a similar company. This overly narrow hiring spec then leads to absurd, widespread complaint that companies can’t find people with the right skills. That’s bunk. As Dean Baker has pointed out repeatedly, it means they need to pay more, or as I’d suggest, they need to broaden their horizon a tad. The idea that people need a lot of costly training is in most cases grossly exaggerated, a convenient “whocoulddanode” for manager who are quick to fire people and then discover when they want to gear back up that there are costs of brining new workers on, no matter how hard they try to minimize them.
This bias against those out of work is long-standing, although it has gotten worse over time. Talented people over 40 who have lost a corporate perch are pretty much unemployable; I cannot tell you over the last 15 years how many people I’ve seen retire early (and at a modest standard of living) who’d much rather be working. They are the high class version of this problem. And from what I can tell, a significant portion of new business formation is out of necessity: people who cannot find a job setting up their own single instead.
So this “skills” meme is basically an excuse for bad policy and lazy management. It allows for the rationalization of outcomes that would have been seen as unacceptable in the Reagan era. And it’s hard to pin this development on the Fed. This weakening of the position of workers is the result of both deliberate action and misguided economics frameworks. It’s time to take aim at the ideology, not just some of its key followers(more at link &sources)One thing I have never understood in America is the way that people who lose their... more
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1. In what ways can fashion and beauty (in the sense of the term limited by the topic of this forum) be satisfying, gratifying and enjoyable as a focus, either professionally or personally (or both)?
2. In what ways can it be the opposite – ie. in what ways can it be trying, difficult and arduous?
3. What drives people to focus on these topics, both as producers and as consumers?
http://thedemoiselles.com/archives/what-exactly-is-fashion1. In what ways can fashion and beauty (in the sense of the term limited by the topic... more
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Amnesty International has urged the Slovak government to immediately end the segregation of Romani children in the country's education system.
This practice leaves thousands of Romani pupils in substandard education in schools and classes for pupils with "mild mental disabilities" or ethnically segregated mainstream schools and classes.
In a briefing to the Slovak government, Steps to end segregation in education, Amnesty International points to serious gaps in the enforcement and monitoring of the ban on discrimination and segregation in the Slovak educational system.Amnesty International has urged the Slovak government to immediately end the... more
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Armed Groups Raped More Than 150 Women
Added On August 25, 2010
Journalist Josh Kron reports from Goma, DRC, about the mass rape of women over four days in North Kiva last month.Armed Groups Raped More Than 150 Women
Added On August 25, 2010
Journalist Josh... more
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HIV/AIDS-related stigma is not a straightforward phenomenon as attitudes towards the epidemic and those affected vary massively. Even within one country reactions to HIV/AIDS will vary between individuals and groups of people. Religion, gender, sexuality, age and levels of AIDS education can all affect how somebody feels about the disease. AIDS-related stigma is not static. It changes over time as infection levels, knowledge of the disease and treatment availability vary. http://www.makeahistory.com/index.php/recent-news/426-stigma-related-to-hivHIV/AIDS-related stigma is not a straightforward phenomenon as attitudes towards the... more
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worrg
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1 year ago
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People are looking at me funny. Funnier than usual. Some sneer or laugh derisively. Some have a kind smile. Most just stare.
Maybe it's because a red T-shirt makes me look pallid. More pallid than usual.
Or maybe it's the bold, black-and-white lettering on the shirt:
HIV POSITIVE
My shirt identifies me as having the human immunodeficiency virus, the sneaky bug that can reverse-transcribe itself into my DNA and cause AIDS, which has infected 65 million worldwide and killed at least 25 million since the late 1970s.
On Friday, several hundred other people in Greater Cleveland -- where 4,000 people live with AIDS -- will do the same thing, coming out of the closet about HIV.
It's a "stunt" by the AIDS Taskforce of Greater Cleveland, a bit of street-theater activism aimed at defusing HIV stigmas.
On Friday, we won't block intersections or yell. We'll just wear the shirt as we go about our routines -- doing our jobs, grocery shopping, hitting a sports bar for March Madness.
And we'll document it all in real time with words, photos and videos on Facebook and Twitter.
The plan is to get everybody -- ourselves included -- thinking about all the things we think of when we think about HIV/AIDS.
http://www.cleveland.com/living/index.ssf/2010/03/aids_taskforce_t-shirt_aims_to.htmlPeople are looking at me funny. Funnier than usual. Some sneer or laugh derisively.... more
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Nurses were training women in rural Mexico to examine their breasts for cancer when one raised her hand to object. If she lost her breast, Harvard public health specialist Felicia Knaul recalls the woman saying, "My man would leave me" - and with him, the family's income.
International cancer specialists meet this week to plan an assault on a troubling increase of breast cancer in developing countries, where nearly two-thirds of women aren't diagnosed until it has spread through their bodies.
Adding to the problem, some worrisome data suggests that breast cancer seems to strike women, on average, about 10 years younger in poor countries than it does in the U.S. No one knows why.
"Today in most developing countries you see a huge bulge of young, premenopausal women with breast cancer," says Knaul, who heads Harvard's Global Equity Initiative and was herself diagnosed at age 41 while living in Mexico.
"We should help them to know what they have and to fight for their treatment."
But from Mexico to Malawi, stigma like Knaul witnessed a few weeks ago may prove as big a barrier as poverty.
"One of the trainers said, 'If he'd leave you for that, he's not worth having,'" says Knaul. But she acknowledged that will be a hard message for some women's economic realities.
"It's not a trivial consideration," agrees Dr. Lawrence Shulman of the Dana Farber Cancer Institute, who is part of a team working to begin cancer care in parts of Africa where "the women are often seen as really either vessels for producing children or as sex slaves."
But some success in treating HIV and tuberculosis in those areas has him "hopeful we can make a difference. I don't think it's a pipe dream."
Tuesday, Knaul and Shulman bring together international task force of health specialists and prominent charities to begin planning a two-pronged approach.
First, train midwives and other rural health providers to perform regular breast exams, using the power of touch in places where mammography machines simply are too expensive. That won't catch the very smallest tumors, but specialists agree it could improve diagnosis dramatically in some areas.
Second, the task force will start negotiating lower prices for generic chemotherapy for poor countries, following the same model that has helped transform AIDS care in parts of Africa.
You don't need in-country cancer specialists to administer that chemo, says Shulman - just a network of oncologists who can provide help or instruction to local health officials by e-mail or phone, as he has advised colleagues in Malawi.
Breast cancer long has been considered a cancer mostly of wealthier countries. Indeed, about 192,000 new cases are expected in the U.S. this year, where long-term survival is high thanks in part to good screening.
The true prevalence in most developing countries is unknown, because of poor diagnosis and bad record-keeping. But new Harvard research estimates they'll be home to 55 percent of the world's 450,000 expected breast cancer deaths this year.
The report predicts the poorest countries will experience a 36 percent jump in breast cancer by 2020.
One problem: In wealthy countries, earlier diagnosis can lead to breast-saving surgery instead of breast removal. Even countries like Rwanda and Malawi have clinics that perform mastectomies if patients can travel to the capitals, Shulman says. But few have radiation equipment, making breast-conserving surgery there not an option yet. (He is hunting a radiation unit for Rwanda but says that's in the very earliest stages of planning.)
Mexico is a mixed situation, with radiation, other treatments and diagnostic mammography available in some places. That's how Knaul - whose husband is a former health minister of Mexico - was diagnosed, early enough that mastectomy and chemotherapy give her good odds.
But she fumes that while Mexico's poor and rural women often get Pap smears to check for cervical cancer, "no one even suggests they check your breasts" at the same visit. She founded an advocacy group - Cancer de Mama - to help, noting that Mexico's insurance program for the poor covers breast cancer care but they must get diagnosed first.
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_MED_HEALTHBEAT_BREAST_CANCER?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2009-11-02-12-53-26
Image source: http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2008/10/06/article-1070547-02EC1D1E00000578-68_468x476.jpgNurses were training women in rural Mexico to examine their breasts for cancer when... more
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xiola
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2 years ago
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1 in 6 adults and almost 1 in 10 children suffer from a diagnosable mental illness. Yet, for many, the stigma associated with the illness, can be as great a challenge as the disease itself. This is where the misconceptions stop. This is where bias comes to an end. This is where we change lives. Because this is where we Bring Change 2 Mind.
More than 48 million people in this country have some form of mental illness. Yet only around half of those people get treatment.
Why?
For many, the stigma associated with mental illness creates and/or compounds feelings of shame, isolation and fear of exposure.
You see, stigma is caused by either the wrong information (misperception), or no information at all (ignorance). Either one of which can cause a tremendous amount of fear, which is really what stigma is. Stigma = fear.
The good news is - stigma can be conquered. How? By those with a mental illness sharing their stories. And by those without an illness - listening and learning.1 in 6 adults and almost 1 in 10 children suffer from a diagnosable mental illness.... more
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Divorce in any society is never easy. But in Yemen as in the rest of the Arab world, it's a real stigma and a divorced woman is considered to be damaged goods.
Sumayya Rajaa, a divorced mother of two, was the first woman to run for presidential election in Yemen despite the huge obstacle of her marital status.
The film debates the issue of divorce in Yemen - what the law states, what people can actually do - and examines how being divorced affects women in positions of power.
* VIDEO *
I will post the YouTube videos Part 1 & 2 in the 'Comments' section belowDivorce in any society is never easy. But in Yemen as in the rest of the Arab world,... more
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Girls living in a small province of Sierra Leone called northern Biriwa are being offered scholarships to college -- but only if they can prove they are virgins, an African news website has reported. A community nurse will perform the test, and if the girls pass, they may receive “a lucrative scholarship … for girls between 12 years to 16 years and they could even go to universities with all expenses paid,” said Samuel Kamara, administrative secretary of the Biriwa Youth Alliance for Development Organisation.Girls living in a small province of Sierra Leone called northern Biriwa are being... more
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For years, Jesus Christ had kept quiet while his “followers” had killed and committed horrendous acts of intolerance in his name. They were the “birth pangs” of a new religion, his surrogates would say. One day he would be accepted by all as a liberator.
But in an announcement that has left his followers shaken, the Christ himself has come forward to announce that he is leaving Christianity, effective immediately. The reasoning: The 2008 Republican Platform. Reached for comment at a West Hollywood coffee shop, Christ said that he couldn’t deal with a world that so misinterpreted his words and actions.
“They mention the word ‘faith’ 12 times in their platform,” said Christ. “Do they think we’re idiots or something?”
Christ went on to say that he had grown tired of being portrayed as a “marauding archangel of vengeance,” and that he held out little hope that the world would ever accept his message of peace.
“There’s a new breed of Christian out there that seems to think I represent free-for-all capitalism and slaying my enemies,” said Christ, munching on an arugula quiche. “I mean, they made Isaiah into a Cold War-era strategist, for Dad’s sake. Did they even read the New Testament?”
With the 2008 U.S. Presidential election coming up in short order, many have expressed skepticism over the timing of Christ’s announcement. Reached for comment, John McCain’s campaign lobbyist Rick Davis said that his candidate would not be responding to the “obvious liberal smear.”
“John McCain has made it clear that he will not speak to or about Jesus Christ until Christ shows him the respect he deserves,” said Davis. “John McCain was a POW and deserves respect. Jesus obviously can’t understand the kind of sacrifice John McCain made.”
For his part, Democratic Presidential nominee Barack Obama has said he plans to stay above the fray.
“This is above my pay grade,” said Obama during a campaign stop in Canton, Kansas. “Way, way, way above my pay grade.”
The reaction from many political entertainers was swift. Sean Hannity of Fox News made clear his disappointment in Christ.
“Seriously, let him go,” said Hannity to co-host Sean Colmes on the popular show “Hannity & Colmes” on Fox News. “If he doesn’t have the courage to face up to the Republican platform, how can he ever stand up to Osama bin Laden. This is a partisan attack, plain and simple.”
In response, Colmes vehemently disagreed with Hannity.
“But, but, but … , ” said Colmes.
The major religious corporations of the world have yet to comment on Christ’s decision. At the Vatican Web site, a simple message appeared: “Thank you for allowing us time to reflect on this matter. Pray for us, and know that we need your tithing now more than ever.”
Many devout Christians have stated that Christ’s abandonment will not affect their faith.
“Jesus Christ is the one true savior and those who don’t accept him into their heart will perish in eternal damnation,” said religious entertainer Joel Osteen. “That is the truth, regardless of Christ’s actual involvement.”
A thoughtful Christ said he had yet to decide what would be next for him, but expressed pride in his philosophy and accomplishments.
“We had a good run,” said Christ. “It really far exceeded anything I had hoped for, but humanity was supposed to become more evolved over time, not less.
“It’s just time to pull the plug.”
Christ said he would likely dedicate his time to working on an autobiography that will focus on his philosophies and work with people from all walks of life.
“I figure after 2,000 years it’s about time there was a book about me,” said Christ. “You know, from someone who was actually there.”
When pressed for details, Christ said he wasn’t allowed to reveal anything about the upcoming tome due to a contractual commitment with But Christ did allow for one tidbit to be released - what the “H” stood for in “Jesus H. Christ.”
“Hector,” said Christ, walking out the door.
–WKWFor years, Jesus Christ had kept quiet while his “followers” had killed... more
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HIV-positive couples are being paired up for marriage by a northern Nigerian state in an attempt to reduce the spread of the disease.
But international Aids experts have voiced concern at the plan. Warren Naamara from UNAids said the two people could have different strains of the virus, which could interact. He said the couples should use condoms.
Around 70 couples have been matched up in the last few weeks, Bauchi state authorities told the BBC. Authorities in the state say they are trying to stop HIV spreading and battle the "isolation and stigma" of the disease.
Some 3% of Nigeria's adult population - 2.4 million people - is estimated to be HIV-positive
HIV-positive couples are being paired up for marriage by a northern Nigerian state in... more
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Do you think HIV/AIDS is real? Could it all be a conspiracy theory by the developed nations to curb the population of Africa? Greg Crompton investigates why many Sierra Leoneans are questioning the validity of HIV/AIDS and how this has allowed the virus to spread at an alarming rate. Do you think HIV/AIDS is real? Could it all be a conspiracy theory by the developed... more
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