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PREPARATION
Objectives of Module 1:
- To understand how poverty impacts people and affects their right to live a full life.
- To realize the power of guaranteeing the basics of life to everyone.
- To understand the strengths and weaknesses of Karl Marx’s work.
- To learn how to tell your story in a clear, compelling and inspiring way.
- To understand the power of journaling and to begin a journal.
Check Your Understanding:
At the end of this module, you should be able to explain the following concepts:
- What is extreme poverty and relative poverty?
- What are the five minimum necessities of life?
- What should be the first priority of an economy?
- What role, if any, should the government have in helping citizens find meaningful employment with fair wages?
- How does Prout measure economic advancement?
- What should be done with surplus wealth?
- What are the strengths and weaknesses of Karl Marx’s ideas?
- What are the three elements of a good story?
- Why is it important to tell your personal story?
- What are three benefits of journaling?
Readings to Prepare for Module 1:
The Social Reality: Poverty
Prout’s Vision: Guarantee the Minimum Necessities of Life to All
Activist Tool Exercise: Practicing Your Story of Self
CIRCLE-TIME
Excitement Sharing:
“What is something good that has happened in your life since we last met? Or would anyone like to read from your journal or share your recent activities?”
Cooperative Game – Interviews
Sit with someone you don’t know. Imagine you are an activist journalist. Ask your partner the following four questions and remember their answers. Then your partner will ask you the same questions: 1.) What is your name? 2.) Where are you from? 3.) What in your opinion is the biggest problem in your country? 4.) What is your personal motto? In other words, if you were to print something on a T-shirt, what would it say? You have 10 minutes. At the end you will each introduce your partner to the group, telling the group their answers to the questions. (15 minutes.)
The Social Reality: Poverty
Poverty is defined differently by different organizations. The United Nations defines extreme poverty as people living on $1.25 or less per day, and calculates that 1.2 billion people in the world suffered extreme poverty in 2015, one out of every six people (UNDP 2014). According to UNICEF, poverty kills more than 15,000 children each day (UNICEF 2017).
In addition, each country determines “relative poverty,” a standard of living at which one cannot purchase the basic necessities in that society. For example, the 2018 poverty level in the United States is $12,140 per year for a single individual, or $33 per day (HHS 2018). According to the Census Bureau, 40.6 million Americans, or 12.7 percent of the population, are at that level (Semega, Fontenot, and Kollar 2017). On any given night, over 550,000 people in the United States experience homelessness (HUD Exchange 2017). Nine percent of Americans have no health care insurance and many more have only limited coverage, causing millions to fall into poverty when their family is hit by a medical emergency (Barnett and Berchick 2017). And 43 million Americans are receiving food stamps (Kutner 2018). All this in one of the richest countries of the world.
Around the world, women and children, refugees, and all oppressed peoples suffer poverty in much greater proportions than the rest of the population. The majority of the world’s poor are women, because they are lower-paid, unpaid, and undervalued. Globally, women earn 23 percent less than men. At the current rate of progress, it will take 170 years to close the gap. Seven hundred million fewer women than men are in paid work (OXFAM 2018).
The Social Reality Discussion Question: Poverty
Our question now is: Can you share a personal experience of poverty? Are you or have you ever been poor? How does seeing poverty make you feel?
We will go around the room, and ask everyone to say their name, briefly what your experience with poverty was, and how it made you feel. Please speak for just one minute each.
[After everyone has spoken, 10-15 minutes] Excuse me, please, but we’re going to end this discussion now, only because, as usual in this course, we want to focus on the solutions.
Prout’s Vision: Guarantee the Minimum Necessities of Life to All
It is important to understand that poverty is completely unnecessary. In his book, The End of Poverty, Jeffrey Sachs made some careful estimates about the cost to end extreme poverty. To end extreme poverty worldwide in 20 years, the total cost per year would be about $175 billion (Munk 2013). This represents only ten percent of the $1.7 trillion that the world spends on military and arms (Musaddique 2017). The world has enough resources to end poverty everywhere. Unfortunately, that is not one of the goals of global capitalism.
The Progressive Utilization Theory or Prout asserts that guaranteeing the right to live for everyone has to be the first priority of every country. “The minimum necessities of all should be guaranteed in any particular age” (Sarkar 1992, 4).
Prout recognizes five basic necessities of life: food (including pure drinking water), clothing, housing (including sanitation and energy), medical care, and education. Other requirements are local transportation and communication. This birthright transcends citizenship—meaning that every human being, whether native or visitor to a country, must be guaranteed these necessities.
Providing the basic necessities should be the primary function and duty of any economy. Human beings require these in order to realize their true human potential, to develop culturally, and to achieve inner fulfillment. Without necessities, the “pursuit of happiness” remains beyond the reach of the world’s poor.
Most governments provide a safety net to help ensure that the poor and most vulnerable do not fall below a minimally accepted level of poverty and destitution. Unfortunately, except for Scandinavian countries, most government safety nets provide a very low bar that prevents only the worst suffering. Millions of citizens worldwide face great hardship with insufficient housing, health care, and food.
The right to have meaningful employment with fair wages is also a basic human right. Rather than relying on hand-outs from government agencies (as in the welfare systems of liberal democratic countries), people need jobs. It is the responsibility of all levels of government to foster full employment, with jobs that utilize each worker’s skills and capabilities.
A just minimum wage, often called a “living wage,” must be set high enough so that people can buy the necessities. At present, in many countries, there is neither a guarantee of work nor a living wage. Without the guarantee of a living wage, work loses its appeal; without jobs, the promise of good wages is empty. Guarantees of work and a living wage go together.
Some welfare systems actually motivate people not to work. In the United States, for example, those who receive welfare must immediately report any dollar they earn, which is usually deducted from their next welfare check. They are not allowed to borrow money to start a small business without immediately sacrificing their monthly assistance. In this way, welfare recipients sometimes become emotionally dependent, prisoners of both poverty and the welfare system which seeks to alleviate it. Thus a whole class of people who should be employed remains jobless, or becomes part of the underground informal economy.
Prout, on the other hand, by guaranteeing jobs that provide a livable minimum wage, would limit welfare as a special contingency for those who are physically or mentally unable to work. Efforts will be made to find appropriate jobs for people with all types of disabilities, so that they, too, can feel fulfillment that they are earning a living wage and contributing to society.
Deciding what are the minimum necessities must be done in a realistic and progressive way; there must be continual adjustment of the basic requirements, depending upon available resources and local standards. Standards for minimum necessities will change with time and place.
For example, staple foods are different in different cultures, yet they must all meet adequate nutritional standards. Clothing varies according to climate and culture. Minimum housing standards appropriate to the local climate and culture must also be determined. The availability of better housing is an incentive to be built into the system. Everyone, however, will be guaranteed a roof over their head, regardless of their social standing.
We are describing a post-capitalist Prout economy, where increasing profits and lowering costs and wages are not the goal. Improving the quality of life for every human being is our goal. In the following modules, we will learn more about how checks and safeguards will ensure that this happens.
In a Proutist framework, the people’s purchasing capacity will be taken as the measure of economic progress. A number of factors are required to increase purchasing capacity. These include basic goods and services, stable prices, appropriate wage increases, and increasing collective wealth and productivity.
Imagine a world in which no one need worry about getting enough money to buy food, clothes, housing, education, and medical care for his or her family!
Rational Incentives: “The surplus wealth should be distributed among meritorious people according to the degree of their merit” (Sarkar 1992, 5).
This surplus is known in Proutist economics by the Sanskrit word, atiriktam’, and addresses the problems of equal distribution found in communist approaches. It is used as an incentive to motivate people to give greater service to society. Atiriktam’ can, for instance, be given as increased salary or as other benefits. Its purpose is to encourage people to develop their skills and increase their capacity to assist society. Atiriktam’ can take the form of task-related privileges. For example, a talented researcher may be given access to expensive laboratory facilities, while an effective and selfless social worker may be offered more support staff.
In an article published shortly before his death in 1990, entitled “Minimum Requirements and Maximum Amenities,” Sarkar expanded on the relationship between minimum salary and atiriktam’. He stressed that while providing the minimum necessities, people should not be left with a bare-bones existence. Higher salaries should be provided to the meritorious, yet continuous and collective effort will be needed to raise the economic standard of the common people to an appropriate level for that time and place (Sarkar 1992, 58).
Karl Marx and his Marxist and Communist Legacy
Karl Marx (1818–1883) was a German economist, historian, and political philosopher whose theories revolutionized the world. He wrote a brilliant three-volume analysis of capitalism, Das Kapital, which is approximately 3,000 pages long. He showed that capitalism, by its very nature, inevitably exploits people. Its excesses, contradictions, and weaknesses contribute to its decay. Marx’s compassion for the oppressed and his compelling call to end exploitation are the hallmarks of his work.
His theories are taught around the world. All Marxists believe that the minimum necessities of life should be guaranteed to all. Marxists have led many of the social and economic advances in this direction over the last hundred years. The founder of Prout, P.R. Sarkar, respected Marx, saying he was “a good person, a thoughtful person, and a prophet for the poor” (Devashish 2010).
However, Marx was not very clear about what should replace capitalism. He called for “an association of free men, working with the means of production held in common, and expending their many different forms of labor power in full self-awareness as one single social labor force” (Marx 1887). That vague statement, along with a few others, is all we have to define Marx’s economic alternative.
There are also internal inconsistencies in his work. For example, Marx’s “labor theory of value” stated that the value of an object equals the cost of the labor required to produce or extract it. But in the 21st century, we have become painfully aware that all natural resources are limited, and many are non-renewable. Scarcity increases value. Each natural resource has an intrinsic and constantly increasing value and should be utilized in the best way possible.
The Marxist axiom, “from each according to his ability, to each according to his need,” sounds good in theory. However, most people need some incentive to motivate them. To distribute surplus wealth equally is not reasonable. “Diversity, not identity, is the law of nature… Those who want to make everything equal are sure to fail because they are going against the innate characteristic of [nature]” (Sarkar 1992). Leaders who tried to apply Marx’s ideas in different countries faced many practical problems, because incentives are an important factor in economics.
Marx spoke of the “materialist conception of history,” and later his colleague Friedrich Engels and others coined the term “dialectical materialism” to describe the Marxist perspective. Materialism holds that the only thing that exists is matter, and everything, including consciousness, is the result of material interactions. The Russian Soviet leader Vladimir Lenin repeated throughout his life that “the concrete analysis of the concrete situation” was the very soul of Marxism (Burlatsky 1963).
The problem is that when all spiritual experience is denied, people’s mental longings focus on material pleasures. When one always thinks on material reality, the mind becomes materialistic and the baser instincts are aroused. Sarkar, on the other hand, emphasized: “as you think, so you become.” By thinking noble and uplifting thoughts, we become better people.
Like Marx, Sarkar promoted social equality, calling Prout “progressive socialism”(Sarkar 1988). Prout advocates public or common ownership and cooperative management of the means of production and the allocation of resources, which is a common definition of socialism. Yet it differs markedly from Marxism in many ways. (Marx’s class analysis is compared with Prout’s in Module 9.)
Marx and Engels published The Communist Manifesto in 1848, calling for a revolutionary Communist Party to lead the working class in revolt against capitalist exploitation. It reviewed the history of class struggle and the problems of capitalism, but said very little about how Communist Parties should rule.
In fact, communist governments have frequently alienated most of their people (Tong 1995). Fifty years after leading the communist revolution in Cuba, Fidel Castro was asked if their economic system was still worth exporting to other countries. He replied, “The Cuban model doesn’t even work for us anymore” (Goldberg 2010).
In centralizing both political and economic power in the hands of the state, many communist leaders fell victim to a shortsighted belief that they could not fail. This arrogance, combined with a materialist philosophy and the belief that the ends justified the means, has resulted in Communist Party tyranny.
Communist regimes throughout the world have oppressed their own people. Political repression, imprisonment, forced labor camps, executions, and famines caused by the forced takeovers of land and centralized economic policies, were the worst crimes. The estimated combined death toll in Stalin’s Soviet Union, Mao’s China, and Pol Pot’s Cambodia range from 21 million to 70 million (Valentino 2005).
Communist Party dictators have ordered their military to imprison or kill people if they tried to protest or escape. They censored artistic expression, banned private enterprise, stifled personal initiative, and prohibited religious and spiritual freedom. In Eastern Europe and Russia, their own people have overthrown these dictatorships in popular revolts. However, five nations are still controlled by communist parties: China, Cuba, Vietnam, Laos, and North Korea.
Prout rejects indiscriminate violence and terrorism. The Proutist approach is to change consciousness through mass education, inspiration, and a cultural renaissance—not through fear. Political revolution can never create a just society unless the tendency to exploit others is overcome in the minds of the leaders and people.
Sarkar wrote, “The concepts of dialectical materialism, the materialist conception of history, the withering away of the state, proletariat dictatorship, classless society, etc., are defective ideas which can never be implemented. That is why the post-revolutionary stage in every communist country has suffered from turmoil and oppression” (Sarkar 1969).
Prout’s Vision Discussion Questions
What would be the benefits if no one in the world worried about getting enough money to buy food, clothes, housing, education, and medical care for his or her family? What do you think it would it be like?
Do you think it is possible to find work for everyone? Consider child care, mentoring young people, caring for the elderly, teaching preventive health care to everyone, installing wind and solar energy everywhere, building electric vehicles and better public transport to replace all gasoline-driven vehicles, improving infrastructure, environmental cleanup and reforestation, and growing food for local markets.
“From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.” What do you think about this concept?
What are the strengths and weaknesses of Karl Marx’s ideas?
Activist Tools: Narratives: Telling your Story
Some of this material is taken from the successful climate change organization, 350.org.
We all dream of telling our stories, of expressing what we think, feel, and see before we die. Everyone has a compelling story that can move others. But few people know how to do this well. We’ve all heard people talk on and on, telling irrelevant details, leaving us bored instead of inspired. Have you ever listened to a story like that?
This is not okay. Because you have a story to tell, and it must be told well.
Influential individuals and organizations tell a story that is so compelling others can’t help but want to join it. Listeners should feel “Me, too!” Telling your story is an essential recruiting tool for community organizers and movement builders.
You need to practice. You need to become an expert at telling your own story. Consider some of the basic elements of any good story and how they apply to your story:
What’s the conflict?
Who’s the hero?
Where is the suspense?
How will the conflict resolve?
What’s the point?
Why does it matter?
Classic stories, myths, and fairy tales follow this archetype. The conflict gets worse and the protagonist experiences a major problem at some point—all seems lost before it gets better and redemption happens. Apply these same elements to your own tale.
Telling your story helps you make sense of your life—why certain events happened the way they did. You can see what has happened to you and through you. You begin to make sense of who you are. Telling your story can be healing, and the practice leads to greater confidence and understanding.
In this workshop we will not only learn how to tell our story, we will also learn how to coach others to tell a good story.
Story-Telling Key: values inspire action through emotion. We must learn how to engage both the head and the heart to inspire people to act.
Much of the news makes people feel alienated, helpless, and afraid. Inertia, fear, self-doubt, isolation, and apathy paralyze people. Have you ever felt that way?
To overcome these negative feelings, we need to inspire people with positive emotions that urge us to take action: urgency, hope, solidarity, righteous anger, and YCMAD, which stands for “You can make a difference!” The stories that we learn to tell will stir emotions that urge people to take action and to overcome emotions that keep them from action.
“Hook”: A hook is your opening line, an attention-getter, the question or quote that immediately hooks your listener. The more off-the-wall or mysterious, the better. Dare your audience to get excited.
Three Elements of a Story
Introduction – The Challenge: Perhaps your challenge was to climb a mountain, or perhaps it was a deep hole like addiction that you managed to climb out of. Overcoming traumas inspires us. What was so hard about this challenge? Why was it your challenge?
The Choice: Why did you make the choice you did? Where did you get the courage (or not)? Where did you find the hope (or not)? How did it feel?
Conclusion – The Outcome: How did the outcome feel? Why did it feel that way? What did it teach you? What do you want it to teach us? How do you want us to feel?
Activist Tool Exercise: Practicing Your Story of Self
The first goal of this exercise is to begin learning how to tell your personal story of why you feel called to help build a better world. The second goal is to begin learning how to coach others by listening carefully, offering feedback, asking questions, etc. In this way you can develop leadership in others, as well as in yourself. Be prepared to take some risks, and support your team members as they take risks, too. Divide into groups of four to seven. Select a timekeeper for each group. Spend five minutes for everyone to silently develop your “story of self.” Choose one event, one place, or one important relationship. Take some time to think about the challenge, your choice, and the outcome in your story. Ideally your story reflects the values that brought you here. The outcome might also be something you learned. Experiences to consider: your parents, childhood, adolescence, school, community, role models, career, partner, family, hobbies, interests, talents, experiences, finding passion, overcoming challenges, your first organizing experience, your first awareness about social justice or the environment, or a key moment in nature.
Tell your story to your team members for two to three minutes. The timekeeper needs to hold up three fingers during the first minute, two fingers all during the second minute, one finger during the last minute, and then a “zero” to indicate time is up. This is important to help the speakers pace themselves. Make sure your timekeeper cuts you off. This encourages focus and ensures that everyone has a chance.
After each speaker, the group has three minutes to offer feedback. As before, the timekeeper enforces the limit. Finally the group should choose one speaker to share their story with everyone.
How to Coach and Evaluate Other Stories:
First say what works in the story, focusing on specifics.
Identify the challenge, the choice, and the outcome in the story.
Identify what hope the story can give us.
Clarify key moments when one thing happened instead of another.
Connect the dots in the narrative, showing how someone got from here to there.
Look for themes.
Ask questions about who the intended audience would be and what action or response the speaker wants the audience to do.
Don’t offer vague, abstract “feel good” comments. A story teller who is told, “You did a great job”, won’t know how to improve. Instead try to be very specific about how different parts of the story made you feel.
Don’t make value judgments about the storyteller’s manner or whether the point they want to make is valid. The key here is that people find ways to express themselves in their own voice—word choice, humor, metaphor, etc. They need to know if the choices they’ve made communicate their message.
Don’t think about what you’re going to say in your story while someone else is telling theirs. Listen to the stories of others so you can help them with their efforts; then you can expect the same help from them when it’s your turn.
Don’t underestimate the power of someone’s story. If it doesn’t “work” for you, think about why it doesn’t, and more importantly, why it might work for someone else.
Activist Tools: Journaling
To be an effective activist, to change the world, we must awaken our consciousness and consider many radical ideas and perspectives. This course is designed to challenge you at every step, so it is natural that you will experience profound emotions, too.
Journaling is a powerful way to track your personal journey of head and heart. How do you feel about each new idea you encounter? Each story you hear? Each cooperative activity? Each action?
Journaling can help you overcome your fears and spur personal growth. Journaling is just the writing down of your thoughts and feelings at any given moment in as much detail, and with as little inhibition or censorship as possible. This is sometimes called “free writing,” “automatic writing,” or “stream-of-consciousness” writing. It’s less about detailing the events in your life, and more about your thoughts, and especially your feelings, surrounding them.
Many of history’s most famous revolutionaries, scholars, and scientists, among others, kept a journal or maintained extensive self-reflective correspondence, considering it to be an essential part of their quest to lead a meaningful life. You should, too. Journaling may, in fact, be the single most efficient route to the Socratic goal: to live an examined life.
In Writing Down the Bones, Natalie Goldberg suggests to set aside at least 30 minutes a day for writing. Setting a timer is helpful. If you are upset or angry, write like a demon. Your sentences may be short. (Your journal is a window into your emotional state.) After this half hour, sometimes called The Journaling Arc, you will probably feel calmer and more focused, and maybe you will feel more compassion, too, toward the concerning people and situation. If you observe The Journaling Arc in your journal entries, you can use it to track your emotional growth throughout your activism and life.
When the time is up, you can either stop writing or continue. In this way, you can start a positive habit of setting down your thoughts and feelings every day. Goldberg suggests not being afraid to lose control, and to keep the hand moving (Goldberg 1986).
The goal is to move past our internal censors and get to a place of writing what we actually see and feel, not what we think we should see and feel. Especially, when we first start writing, we may feel swept away by our emotions. “Don’t stop at the tears; go through to truth” (Goldberg 1986, 10).
Here are some tips to help you journal:
- Write fast when you are excited. Just get your feelings and thoughts down on paper, and don’t stop to think or ponder for more than a few seconds. Don’t worry about spelling or grammar. Listen for the quiet voice inside you that you may often ignore, and get it down on paper. Don’t cross out anything. Honesty is the most important thing in journaling.
- Use whatever medium or format you prefer. A computer, a pad of paper, a smart phone, whatever. If you don’t like to write, record your voice. Feel free to make lists or mind maps, as long as you write honestly and quickly.
- Any time is OK. You should start journaling whenever you catch yourself procrastinating because that will help you understand the nature of the problem and overcome it. Some people like to journal first thing every morning, while others prefer to do it as a form of reflection at the end of each night. Others journal whenever the mood strikes them. But try to write some words every day.
- All your emotions are OK. Sometimes journaling can uncover painful memories or tap into feelings of sadness, hurt, or shame. These can be scary to experience, but doing so is one step toward healing. Don’t think or get logical. Give yourself permission to experience these memories and emotions.
- Write until you are finished. This may take a few minutes, a few hours, or an entire day or weekend. However long it takes, don’t rush it: if you’ve got a lot to write, it means you’ve got a lot to say.
Closure
The facilitator should remind everyone about further viewings, readings, and Activities – Do as many as you can. Ask everyone to read the next module in the manual before the next meeting. Confirm the date, time, and place of the next meeting. Show the following roles for the next module and ask people to volunteer to lead a part.
MODULE 2 PLAN: A HOLISTIC PERSPECTIVE
Facilitator: _____
Timekeeper: _____
Excitement Sharing: _____ (10 min.) 0:00
Cooperative Game: “Shouting Your Dream” _____ (10 min.) 0:10
The Social Reality: Depression, Chronic Stress, and Poor Health – review and lead discussion question: _____ (20 min.) 0:20
Prout’s Vision: Dharma, An Ecological and Spiritual Perspective, The Problems with Materialism, Spiritual Activism – review and lead discussion questions: _____ (25 min.) 0:40
Prout’s Vision: Holistic Health – review and lead discussion question: _____ (20 min.) 1:05
Activist Tools: Meditation: _____ (20 min.) 1:25
Closure, Feedback, Role Assignments for Next Week: _____ (15 min.) 1:45
Ask participants to write anonymous feedback about the session before they leave. They can use the Feedback Form at the end of Module 1, or write whatever they like.
Activities—Do as many as you can:
Practice your personal story on at least three friends or strangers this week.
The Moth is a non-profit group based in New York City dedicated to the art and craft of storytelling. Watch some of The Moth speeches on YouTube.
Find out what the level of poverty is in your country, state, and community.
Are some demographic groups in your country hit harder by poverty? Find out what the statistics are and why that is.
Determine what the minimum wage is in your country. Then, calculate what a worker earning that much per hour could make in a year working fulltime. Will it raise that individual above the poverty level? In a single-parent family of three? If so, will it require one person working more than one job to rise above the poverty line?
Talk to a social worker in your community who knows about poverty first hand and ask them what the needs are in your community.
Design a list of interview questions that you would like to ask homeless or poor members of your community about their life and struggles. Consider some elderly people who have experienced poverty. Make sure all the questions are respectful and not intrusive or belittling. Plan a respectful way to approach the people you wish to interview and be sure to identify yourselves and ask them if they would be willing to answer a few questions and be recorded.
Make a creative work about what your country would look like if the five minimum necessities were guaranteed to everyone: a story, a play, a song, a painting, a poem, or a video, etc., and share it.
What organizations are working to alleviate poverty in your community? Visit them and learn what their experience is.
Education is very important in overcoming poverty. According to the World Bank, for every 100 boys out of school, there are 122 girls (Meleis, Birch, and Wachter 2011, 35). Maritza Ascencios of UNICEF, said, “Educating girls is a surefire way to raise economic productivity, lower infant and maternal mortality, improve nutritional status and health, reduce poverty, and wipe out HIV/AIDS and other diseases” (UNGEI). How many school-age children are not attending school in your country? How many are girls? What are some of the obstacles and barriers to girls’ education? How can these barriers be overcome?
Write in your journal what you are learning and how it makes you feel.
Feedback on Module 1
Please rate each part:
1- excellent, 2- very good, 3- OK, 4- needs much improvement
The venue
Introduction
Social Reality Discussion
Prout’s Vision Presentation
Prout’s Vision Discussion
Activist Skills Presentation
Activist Skills Exercise
Closure
What did you like best?
What was hardest for you?
Suggestions?
Would you recommend this course to a friend? Why or why not?
FOLLOW-UP
Further Readings:
Deaton, Angus. 2018. “The U.S. Can No Longer Hide From Its Deep Poverty Problem.” The New York Times, Jan. 24, 2018.
Gor, Claire. 2018. “The Truth About the Feminization of Poverty.” Women’s Media Center FBOMB, August 6, 2018.
Gross, John. 2016. “Purchasing Capacity: A Key Prout Economic Concept.” Rising Sun, Summer 2016.
World Poverty Clock by country. 2018.
Further Viewings:
Batra, Ravi. 2016. “American Economy and its Revival: Part 1.” Mar 22, 2016. 17 minutes.
Birdsong, Mia. 2015. “The Story We Tell About Poverty Isn’t True.” TEDWomen. May 2015. 15 minutes.
Bregman, Rutger. 2014. “Why We Should Give Everyone a Basic Income.” TEDx Maastricht. Oct 21, 2014. 16 minutes.
Colenso, Dominic. 2017. “The Power of Telling Your Story.” TEDxVitoriaGasteiz. Apr 19, 2017. 11 minutes.
Ojomo, Efosa. 2017. “The Poverty Paradox: Why Most Poverty Programs Fail And How To Fix Them.” TEDx Gaborone. Aug 14, 2017. 15 minutes.
Tearfund. 2013. “What is Poverty?” 3 minutes.
References
Barnett, Jessica C. and Edward R. Berchick. 2017. “Health Insurance Coverage in the United States: 2016.” U.S. Census Bureau.
Burlatsky, F. 1963. “Concrete Analysis is a Major Requirement of Leninism,” The Current Digest of the Post-Soviet Press, No. 30, Vol. 15, August 21, 1963, pp. 7-8.
Devashish. 2010. Anandamurti: The Jamalpur Years. San Germán, Puerto Rico: InnerWorld Publications, p. 295.
Goldberg, Jeffrey. 2010. “Fidel: ‘Cuban Model Doesn’t Even Work For Us Anymore’,” The Atlantic, September 8, 2010.
Goldberg, Natalie. 1986. Writing Down the Bones. Boston: Shambhala Publications.
Kutner, Max. 2018. “The Number of People on Food Stamps is Falling. Here’s Why.” Newsweek, July 29, 2018.
Marx, Karl. 1887. Capital: Volume 1, Chapter 1, Section 4, “The Fetishism of the Commodity and its Secret.”
Meleis, Afaf Ibrahim, Eugenie L. Birch, and Susan M. Wachter, eds. 2011. Women’s Health and the World’s Cities. Pennsylvania: University of Pennsylvania Press.
Munk, Nina. 2013. The Idealist: Jeffrey Sachs and the Quest to End Poverty. Sioux City, IA: Anchor.
Musaddique, Shafi. 2018. “Global Spend on Weapons and Military Increased to $1.7 Trillion in 2017, Arms Watchdog Says.” CNBC, May 2, 2018.
OXFAM International. 2018. “Why the Majority of the World’s Poor Are Women.”
Sarkar, P.R. 1969. “Nuclear Revolution” in Prout in a Nutshell Part 21. Calcutta: Ananda Marga Publications.
— 1988. “Dialectical Materialism and Democracy,” A Few Problems Solved, Part 2. Calcutta: Ananda Marga Publications.
— 1992. “The Principles of Prout,” Proutist Economics. Calcutta: Ananda Marga Publications, p. 4.
Semega, Jessica L., Kayla R. Fontenot, and Melissa A. Kollar. 2017. “Income and Poverty in the United States: 2016.” U.S. Census Bureau.
Tong, Yanqi. 1995. “Mass Alienation Under State Socialism and After.” Communist and Post-Communist Studies, Volume 28, Issue 2, June, pp. 215-237.
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. 2018. “Poverty Guidelines.”
U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development Exchange. 2017. “AHAR: Part 1 – PIT Estimates of Homelessness in the U.S.”
UNICEF. 2017. “Levels & Trends in Child Mortality Report 2014.”
United Nations Development Programme. 2014. “Sustaining Human Progress: Reducing Vulnerabilities and Building Resilience.” Human Development Report.
United Nations Girls’ Education Initiative (UNGEI). “Girls’ Education Plays a Large Part in Global Development.”
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