No, poverty is not an accident or a immutable fact of life.
That’s according to Joe Brewer, the hyper-articulate mind from Seattle-based Cognitive Policy Works behind The Rules campaign. “Pick your issue, and you can see how the rules were constructed to make it so… Poverty doesn’t exist by accident,” Brewer says.
In this extended podcast, Tom and I discuss the headlines this week: why the World Health Organization still matters, progress and setbacks in the campaign against polio, humanitarian groups’ opposition to food aid reform, and tax-dodging corporate giants like Apple and Starbucks.
Then we talk to Joe for the hour. Whether its trillions of dollars stashed in tax havens, the Gates Foundation’s apolitical approach to poverty reduction, the rise of the Tea Party, or how the definition of a corporation ought to change, Joe seems to have pinpointed the problems we’re facing, their root causes, and how to to solve them.
Like a previous podcast guest, Kentaro Toyama, Joe is bringing big-picture intellectual innovation to bear on widely-held, but deeply ossified, approaches to aid and development.
Listen below – once you start you won’t want to stop. (Or download the mp3.)
