Consider one of the many awesome things that we have accomplished--thanks to every government in the world advancing literacy and spending money on education, children from any background can now attend school. (Sadly, there are countries where girls are not educated.)
What a fantastic cause for celebration!. It is phenomenal an achievement that of all the humans who are 15 years or older, only about 13% is illiterate.. We humans deserve credit for making such a world happen.
However, to look at that kind of progress and to merely engage in self-congratulations is, well, not what I do. To begin with, that is not my job--I am a critic, by choice and by profession.
But, the change for the better does not mean that we can rest easy; after all, there are a gazillion ways in which we ought to work towards improving the state of the world, for humans and non-humans alike. In this context, if we were to merely engage in rah-rah about literacy even for the disadvantaged, we begin to overlook the serious troubles there.
Does one imagine, for instance, that a government school in rural Uttar Pradesh is anywhere near the quality of the school that I (and the commenter) went to? Why are the kids in rural Uttar Pradesh condemned to those godawful schools where teachers might not even come to class, leave alone being horrible teachers in the classroom, while kids in Neyveli get much better education? Not the kids' fault that they were accidentally born to their parents who live in a certain area, right?
Now, think about how education is merely one out of the gazillion ways in which the accidental birth makes a huge difference in one's life.
Most of us in the political left-of-center always worry ourselves to death that such inequality that arises for no fault ought to be addressed via public policies. Even while celebrating the fantastic reductions in extreme and absolute poverty, we worry about the uneven competition that exists only because of the accident of birth.
My go-to-expert on these topics, Branko Milanovic, has written in plenty about these issues. One of his recent empirical analysis showed how "the entire world’s economy is lifted by the open exchange of goods, but this growth is unevenly distributed. The “global upper middle class” — that is, working class individuals in wealthy nations — take it on the chin as less skilled jobs move to poorer nations. Meanwhile, the global middle class and the very wealthy benefit tremendously."
Some of us--yes, I have conveniently inserted myself into an excellent company!--have argued for years that this calls for a new social contract in which we can appropriately compensate the people and communities who lose in this global win. I yell about this at other places too ;)
"The sensible solution for a wealthy nation is to open its borders to as much trade as possible, but to tax the beneficiaries of free trade to lift up those who lose out." It is so obvious. But, apparently obvious only to a few of us who have no political power to make this happen :(
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