COVID-19 Impact on Inequality: What does the Latest Analysis Show Us?
By Max Lawson Coronavirus and inequality; what is the latest? Last year at the Annual Meetings of the World Bank and IMF there was a lot of talk about the impact of Coronavirus on inequality levels; in short a widespread agreement that the likelihood was…
The Class Ceiling
By Max Lawson Years ago when I had just joined Oxfam as a young policy adviser, I had written a policy paper on the subject of World Bank Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSPs) which were at the time plans that all developing countries had to…
The Revolutionary Threat of the Public Park
By Max Lawson Every day I take my dog, Marx, for a walk in our local park and around the sports fields behind it. Large lime trees, planted a century ago by far-sighed Victorians, tower above you forming a sort of natural cathedral in places….
Racism, Class, Football and Prisms of Prejudice
By Max Lawson Dear Friends, I hope this finds you well. Here in England, it has been all about the football these past few weeks as you can imagine. Many have commented rightly on the huge diversity of the England team, and their stance on…
G7 Farce and Failure; Jeff Bezos Staying in Space
By Max Lawson Dear Friends, I hope this finds you well. G7 Farce and Failure It was a summers day in Rostock, a small, rather dilapidated town on the Baltic coast north of Berlin, and all hell was breaking loose. The march had started peacefully,…
India and the Inequality of Measuring and Remembering
By Max Lawson The first wave of the 1918-19 influenza pandemic did not have much impact in India; it was the second wave that was the most devastating. It is now thought that 12 million people died in India during the flu pandemic, the equivalent…
Doreen Ligomeka, My Friend
By Max Lawson Head of Inequality Policy at Oxfam International & EQUALS Podcast co-host Over twenty years ago, I went to live in Malawi. I ended up there because I formed a strong friendship with a Malawian called Stuart Ligomeka during my postgraduate studies. We were about the…
Patriarchy and Plutocracy
By Max Lawson Head of Inequality Policy at Oxfam International & EQUALS Podcast co-host Recent decades have seen millions of women participating in formal employment for the first time, which can often be an empowering and liberating experience. Yet all too often it seems to…
Kenya, Colonialism and British Brutality
By Max Lawson Head of Inequality Policy at Oxfam International & EQUALS Podcast co-host Together with slavery, colonialism was in many ways the original sin of today’s modern inequality, forcibly creating huge disparities of wealth across the world. Country after country lives with this legacy…
Fuelling or Fighting? Aid and Inequality
Aid does not have many friends. The right hate it as a wasteful giveaway to corrupt foreigners. The right-wing press in the never calls it ‘aid’ alone, but only ever ‘foreign aid’, with all the racist and pejorative implications that the word ‘foreign’ has. Those…