GDI Lecture Series - Putting People First
| Dates: | 9 February 2022 |
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| Times: | 16:00 - 17:30 |
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| What is it: | Webinar |
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| Organiser: | Global Development Institute |
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| Who is it for: | University staff, External researchers, Adults, Alumni, Current University students, General public, Post 16, Secondary schools |
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| Speaker: | Khalid Malik, Jean-Paul Fitoussi, Jill Rubery, Robert Skidelsky |
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The global pandemic is bringing all the issues that torment the modern world to boiling-point: inequality, job scarcity, ecological transformation, mass migration, artificial intelligence and the uncontrolled development of public goods and culture. This paper advances the simple idea that all policies must be driven by the notion of ‘putting people first’. And, who benefits and who loses from state actions has to become an essential part of societal dialogue and policymaking.
The emergency of Covid-19 has forced the state into a commanding economic position. This presents an opportunity to recast economic and social policy in a form suitable for our times, specifically to reinstate the state’s duty to protect the health, security, and well-being of its citizens and enhance their capabilities and human agency.
The paper advances the notion that markets are a social construct and that their efficacy and social value depend in large part on the purposes of the states themselves. Markets are necessarily embedded in a system of political economy; exclusive attention to market efficiency omits the requirements of morality and justice that bind society: the equal right of all citizens to health, education, decent jobs, political voice, personal and economic security; an approach to well-being rooted in human development and in Amartya Sen’s notion of capability.
Post Covid-19 economic and social policy must focus on both recovery and reform to secure the sustainability of the recovered economy, including social sustainability. So, the state’s role has to be transformative. Ideas for what this may mean for policy agendas including macroeconomic, social, employment and technology polices are discussed from the standpoint of promoting human flourishing.
Register to attend here - https://zoom.us/meeting/register/tJcldO2qqjwpH9DKcJuHhmNYVg2yT1cX6CPo
Speakers
Khalid Malik
Role: Former Director of UNDP Human Development Report Office
Jean-Paul Fitoussi
Role: Professor Emeritus
Organisation: Institut d'Etudes Politiques de Paris (SciencesPo)
Jill Rubery
Role: Professor of Comparative Employment Systems and Director of the Work and Equalities Institute
Organisation: Alliance Manchester Business School
Robert Skidelsky
Role: Emeritus Professor
Organisation: Warwick University
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