I never thought that I would be someone who would benefit from poverty but taking this research on I have discovered this uncomfortable truth. I have struggled with facing the reality of it therefore was procrastinating to write this reflection. Practicing gratitude and knowing that I have had an advantage other some others as far as quality of parents and education in the time that grew up in has made me what I am today but what I have in raw materials such as food, clothing and products results from benefitting from poverty. In turn one can now also argue that everything in my life is me benefitting from poverty.
I have always felt that I have a choice in my resources but now I question that as well as trends in what I am interested may not necessarily be of my own free mind and will but of persuasion by media and of course price set by the invisible hand. In South Africa we are only starting to feel the convenience of online shopping and I distinctly remember feeling such adrenaline when I received my first item delivered from Taoboa in China… I also remember the distinct feeling of disappointment that I could not have the same convenience of it in South Africa after our return. Now that I am an international teacher as opposed to a local one back in SA I now have more means to purchase better quality of food, clothes and products. Once I go back I will no longer have the means or the status to continue being the consumer that I currently am.

• Nina Wakefield

@Lu Chen, Thank you for your comment! It is interesting how with the development of the free market a number of challenges pop-up along so instead of enjoying a perfect allocation of resources, the demand and supply are permanently imbalanced. I liked you mentioned the globalisation as one of the benefits, which gives the consumers a wider range of products to choose from. On the other hand the access to a greater variety of goods and services drives the human wants further, leading to the increase in the competition for the 'money' to keep up with the new social 'norms'.

• Kristina Pilgueva

@Tammy Cheng, I found your comment interesting with your reference to the same condition but in different countries. It is interesting to compare how the same amount of resources ( income ) gives you the access to completely different range of services / goods. My Australian friend happily relocated to the South America because with the similar level of income she receives in China ( or even lower) she is able to afford many more services from the low-skilled labour than she could purchase in Asutralia even with higher wage.

• Kristina Pilgueva

On the personal level, I consider myself an active participant of this mechanism. If price sets the balance in resources allocation, according to this model, therefore money is the resource I have been using in obtaining a variety of goods / services. In my understanding scarcity comes from the lack of this resource ( or from the personal unlimited wants). Having entered the job market many years ago , my salary was quite low in the beginning - sufficient to meet basic needs, but insufficient for savings. Only at a certain level of pay, together with the basic needs being met, some long-term financial planning has become feasible. My skills have fit the demand of the certain labour market and therefore I can benefit from this model. The question I would like to address is what about those who could not fit the labour market well as the result did not get the resources to support themselves? Is it a ''win-or-lose' economic game or is the social safety buffer still to be provided by the government? Where is this balance between the invisible hand and government involvement in regulating such cases?

• Kristina Pilgueva

@Kristina Pilgueva,
Indeed, Kristina, that seems to be one of the key issues - what is the balance between the invisible hand and government involvement. I think in the last 40 years, the skew towards Neoliberalism means governments intervened less and less in markets believing firms do a better job at allocating resources efficiently. In fact, this is something so many of us believe too - that the private sector is more efficient than the public one. But maybe the lens to look at this cannot only be through efficiency or profitability? And yes, what happens to those whose skills are no longer valued by the market, which is a growing reality with automation and AI. I think your challenge of the win or lose paradigm is a powerful one...how can we view Economics so that it can be a win-win? Is Economics in serve of human flourishing? Or are humans the means to serve Economics?

• Cat Ho

As a person who spend most of the time living in a big city, I feel that I have benefited a lot from the price mechanism. For example, high-quality educational resources, high-quality medical resources, and higher income compared to those people who live in the small cities. The places I travel to are mostly less economically developed than the city where I live. Although travelers like me can bring more job opportunities to the local people and promote the local economic development, it is undeniable that this may also lead to a rise in local prices.

China's economic development began in 1980 and gradually moved towards a market mechanism. Due to the large population and limited material resources, the earliest market supply was through the government unified distribution. I remember that in the past, citizens would have limited purchase for food and cooking oil each month. So, when I was young, I preferred to eat fried foods. With the reform and opening up, the development of a market economy, the government no longer plays the role of “an invisible hand”. People are engaging more in free trade, for example, there are increasing numbers of private companies, and the variety of goods available to citizens is becoming more and more abundant. I enjoy the convenience brought by the highly developed logistics. However, the potential problems it may cause, for example, in order to survive, use lowering prices as a means of competition, which leads to issues such as product quality, suppressing employee wages, and artificially creating environmental pollution.

• Lu Chen

@Lu Chen

I appreciate your concern for the potential problems that may be caused particularly that of survival. In SA people are struggling to survive and making ends meet is becoming increasingly difficult. Higher taxes, higher crime rate, higher housing rentals, competitive prices for goods and lowered wages despite increasing cost of living. However, people are using credit cards and somehow have more than one and are consuming at a higher rate than ever... I suppose this is due to a mindset of living in lack.

• Nina Wakefield

@Lu Chen,
Dear Lu Chen, you brought up some really good points!
That is good economic literacy to see how sometimes we can be bringing some good to others, but it can come with adverse effects. In your example, our tourist dollars could help provide jobs for certain people, but as you correctly pointed out, this could also drive up prices for local people. This is indeed happening in Japan as more tourists flock there, yet the locals are actually being hurt.

Here is an article I shared with my students recently about US$25 Ramen.

https://www.channelnewsasia.com/commentary/japan-ski-town-niseko-prices-expensive-tourism-weak-yen-economy-4128811

I appreciated how you also brought in globalization and international trade in this discussion. Yes, like the previous example, they are all double-edged, and unfortunately, the benefits tend to accrue to those who have the means, while the costs such as suppressed wages and environmental degradation tend to be borne by those lower in the socio-economic ladder.

This is indeed a complex and unfair system that has been created and perpetuated.

• Cat Ho

I must comment on my perspective on being a global citizen from a passport point of view. I'm white and privileged but I have a 3rd world, 3rd class passport which denies me a number of global privileges. As a result, I understand the power of the passport and empathise with South Africans who have had their passports and ID's removed or denied historically. Accessing a more 'powerful' passport costs a fortune. At the end of the day, a healthy, affordable, comfortable, life with freedom of movement costs more and the cost seems to escalate. When I think of refugees on a boat trying to escape a life of no means into a safe country with basic survival prospects, I see that this scarcity is not met with a price point or product because the people have no buying power. There is something very wrong with this. On a side note when trying to answer who benefits from poverty, other than global supply chains, the business of war.

• Joanne Anderson

@Jo
Thanks Jo for bringing this up - in fact, beyond the price of a passport, this makes me think about what citizenship means today.
I agree with you that passports are valued differently, for some, a passport means easy access while for others, the opposite. For some, they are able to hold multiple passports or even buy passports. Indeed, it is hard to believe, but there is a market even for passports.

Previously, passports are a lot more rare, as people may not even see the need to travel out of their own borders; but with globalization, this has radically changed.

I return to the question of what does a passport mean today? Previously, it would mean a national identity - with that its attendant privileges but also responsibilities. I wonder if this is part of the problem with the concept of Global Citizenship - everyone (and here it would mean the privileged ones) want to enjoy its privileges but what about the responsibilities? Also what does responsibilities of a GC mean?

Thanks for bringing this up, and yes, your point about the business of war - it is big business and probably the most powerful creator of scarcity and gross inequity in our world.

Here is a statistic from World Economic Forum -
https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2021/02/war-violence-costs-each-human-5-a-day/

If our world would take what war costs, we can completely eradicate hunger and poverty straight away. Yes, good Critical Economic Literacy hopefully will lead to better policies and government interventions, which hopefully will lead to less violence.

• Cat Ho

Based on our conversation yesterday, I was reminded of humanity's tendency to search for others to blame for our problems rather than reflecting on our own role and contribution to our global problems. In light of this realisation, the first way I benefit from price mechanisms daily is at work and in my use of EdTech.

Due to my socioeconomic status, as a teacher in an international school, I have the means to purchase technological goods that will contribute to my teaching and me personally. Thanks to competitive markets, the prices of these goods may have been driven down, and as such, I am able to purchase them without hesitation. This is in sharp contrast to educators worldwide who are not even close to being able to contemplate the prospect of purchasing such goods, even if it would benefit their students' learning or enhance their teaching.

I must acknowledge that my ability to leverage lower prices for critical educational resources can perpetuate my socioeconomic advantage by enhancing my professional capabilities and securing my current favourable position.

• Robin Ford Coron

@Robin
I appreciate your comment on your ability to leverage lower prices... Our status as international teachers affords us opportunities that other teachers especially local ones earning far less may never see in their lives, professional or otherwise. I feel the privilege that comes with being able to buy as I want does not hold the same feeling as before.

• Nina Wakefield

@Robin
Thanks for bringing this topic up, Robin. This is so true and reminds me of the term digital divide. Here is a link i came across with a simple google search and there are a lot written about this area. But interestingly, this particular article links the causes for this divide to Economics - according to the Pew Report, “Digital Differences,” only 62% of people in households making less than $30,000 a year used the internet, while in those making $50,000-74,999 that percentage jumped to 90. Smartphones have helped bridge the divide, as they provide internet access to populations previously at a digital disadvantage (Brown, 2020; p.).

I appreciated your point that not only does such access to technological goods provide us with advantage, and this advantage then continues to be magnified and reinforced over time, possibly causing the gap of inequity to widen even. What do you think could be the implications with AI in the mix?

References
Brown, W. (2020, August 28). The digital divide. Oklahoma State University Libraries. https://open.library.okstate.edu/learninginthedigitalage/chapter/the-digital-divide/

• Cat Ho

The price mechanism seems to be the answer to a most pressing economic issue of scarcity of unlimited wants/needs in the face of limited resources, except that it creates problems even as it is touted to solve them. One example is when the market out prices people, since the market is only representing people who are able and willing to pay for goods and services at various prices. On the other hand, being part of the top 1% in this world, the price mechanism has worked in my favor and the proverbial the rich gets richer is the pervasive economic reality today.

Coming from Singapore, land is definitely a scarce resource and consequently, property prices are some of the highest in the world. The government of Singapore has tried its best to intervene in the housing markets, however, with the increasing population size (from immigration, not fertility) there is ever increasing demand for housing. I am fortunate in that i had bought my apartment more than 20 years ago, at that time, considered high, but nothing compared to what it is valued today - it has basically doubled. But more crazily is the rental income I can get. Over the Covid period, there has been a lack of supply of new housing being built by the government (most apartments in Singapore are public housing), while there was an increase in demand for housing with new immigrants and newly married couples. These twin factors of decreased supply and increased demand drove rental prices up by as much as 50% within 3 years.

I am cognizant that I am a beneficiary of this unfair system, and this is probably why it is so hard to challenge an inequitable system when one derives good from it. Andreotti's Socially Sanctioned Ignorance captures this idea incisively - we feel both a powerlessness to change or challenge the status quo, but we may also really not want to since we gain from such a system, so we absolve ourselves from it.

Today we pondered over Jo's wondering on who benefits from poverty?, or maybe more accurately, who benefits from inequity? To me, the answer is not just the ultra high net worth individuals, I am also implicated. This is sobering and I hope I will have the courage and the imagination to be part of the solution to this inequitable system based on the price mechanism.

• Cat Ho

@Robin Ford Coron,
Robin, I agree, in the end it is not enough to just acknowledge and talk about such pressing issues in abstraction. Transformation cannot happen just by talking theoretically. However, my caution is that it is also dangerous to turn too quickly towards action when sometimes we do not understand the nature and complexity of the issue. In Andreotti's HEADSUP model, this is the U called Uncomplicated Solutions. One of the failings of many good intentions is to think there is a silver bullet that can solve problems - maybe as humans, it is hard for us to sit with pain and the complexities, we tend to want a quick fix - i think the heart behind it is wonderful, but slowing down and staying curious and seeking understanding may in the longer run prove a more healing and fruitful pathway.

You asked if there are models out there - as far as teaching for Critical GCE is concerned, very little. HEADSUP is one such model but as you can tell, even that is not widely known. This is also why we are in this PAR as we want to see if we can trace the contours of possible models of teaching for Critical GCE in our subject fields as we gain CEL.

I think back of a quote from Andreotti that Kristina wrote in her pre-PAR survey - Thus, while soft GCE seeks to strengthen existing relationships between people and countries by promoting individual efforts to solve global issues through market-driven solutions or social justice initiatives, critical GCE seeks to challenge and transform these relationships by examining underlying assumptions and addressing systemic problems.

And in the first article of Soft versus Critical GCE, Andreotti wrote that critical literacy is not about ‘unveiling’ the ‘truth’ for the learners, but about providing the space for them to reflect on their context and their own and others’ epistemological and ontological assumptions: how we came to think/be/feel/act the way we do and the implications of our systems of belief in local/global terms in relation to power, social relationships and the distribution of labour and resources. (p.49) These aspects are all very much framed by the Economics of our day.

Let us see as we explore further if we can uncover more of such underlying assumptions and gain greater clarity on how to translate them into the creation of space for learners to question them too.


References
Andreotti, V. (2006).Soft versus critical global citizenship education. Policy & Practice: A Development Education Review, 3, 40-51.

• Cat Ho

@Cat Ho,

Your reflection on Andreotti’s concept of Socially Sanctioned Ignorance highlights the complex interplay between recognition of one's privileges within an inequitable system and the subsequent moral paralysis that might ensue. Indeed, the crux of the problem extends beyond merely acknowledging our advantageous positions; it compels us to question the alternatives. What models should we aspire to emulate if we decide to challenge the status quo? This question underscores a critical gap between theoretical critique and practical application.

While I commend the initiative to educate teachers, and subsequently students, through CEL as a means to shift paradigms, I must highlight my concerns regarding the need for clear, actionable strategies. The transformation of mindset you speak of requires not just ideological, but structural changes, which in turn demand concrete blueprints for action.

I am keen to explore existing pathways that promise an escape from the current status quo. It is essential that as we embark into this transformative journey, we equip ourselves with robust frameworks that not only challenge but also offer viable alternatives to the present system. Where do we find these models, and more importantly, how can we test their efficacy and adaptability to our unique contexts?

• Robin Ford Coron

I have been able to buy affordable clothing since I was at university; from Mr Price to H 'n M to Woolworths to Zara as my earnings have increased. I am able to afford to buy organic food which is usually more expensive and so had the luxury of being strictly vegan for 2 years in Shenzhen. When I was a child my parents could afford to buy food that was produced for supermarket shelves, they could afford housing that was safe and hygenic. If I want a comfortable, quiet place to eat I can choose a foreign restaurant instead of street food. At home I had private medical aid which I worked harder/extra to afford or sacrificed to afford but I could still afford it.

• Joanne Anderson

I paid the cleaner and delivery fees/hour of work because an hour of work is worth more than what I pay for this. I have benefited from this. Therefore, there is an invisible drive from most professional workers in the cities, a demand is created, and supply could be met easily by workers who are happy to be paid on an hourly basis. I like this mechanism because I can use the time I have to enjoy other activities and also earn more doing what I specialize in. However, is there a problem in this supply and demand Model because the cleaners' wages might never rise in China. I am fully aware that this is not sustainable if I am not living in China. I would never be able to afford this on a weekly basis in UK for example. I am benefiting not but perhaps not later….

• Tammy Cheng