January was all about wealth inequality, all the time. The 50th anniversary of President Johnson’s War on Poverty was an appropriate backdrop to growing unease about the fact that the rich are getting exceedingly richer.
But there is much debate about what the solution is and even how to frame the problem. And where do nonprofits fit in, and what does it all mean for the future? It is an enormous, far-reaching and complex problem.
Below are my picks of the 10 best reads in the world of social innovation in January. But please add to the list in the comments. And if you want more, follow me on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, or Google+.
You can also find the list of past months’ 10 Great Reads here.
- This year marks the 50th anniversary of the launch of President Johnson’s War on Poverty. Despite the long attack, wealth inequality is getting worse, not better, and is becoming a very hot topic. But Mark Schmitt, writing in New Republic, takes issue with how the inequality conversation is being framed. He argues that “we need a way to talk and think about inequality that presents it as a system, and then finds the points of intervention that might actually change the system.”
- Thomas Piketty’s new book, Capital in the Twenty-First Century, due out in March and reviewed this month by Thomas Edsall in the New York Times, takes reframing the inequality conversation even further. Piketty makes a rather depressing argument that when viewed over history wealth inequality is the rule rather than an anomaly and without huge systemic change (like a global wealth tax) will only get worse.
- And where does the nonprofit sector fit in? Mark Rosenman argues that nonprofits should play a pivotal role in advocating for change: “If the United States is again to be a nation where upward mobility applies to more than those already near the top, nonprofits must exercise their moral authority and advocate for economic policies that give a hand up to the poor and advance a vision of the common good that includes all Americans.”
- The often employed method to combat poverty – education – may not be the answer anymore. Clay Shirky takes higher education to task for “preserving an arrangement that works well for elites—tenured professors, rich students, endowed institutions—but increasingly badly for everyone else.”
- But for David Bornstein, appropriately from the world of solutions journalism, there are still some bright spots to point to in the War on Poverty.
- Maybe part of the solution lies in changing our measures of success. This video suggests we move from Gross Domestic Product to a Social Progress Index to measure a country’s success.
- They say long-form journalism is coming back and let’s hope so if Drew Philp’s piece “Why I Bought A House In Detroit For $500” is an example of the trend. He beautifully describes the process of investing his heart and soul in a house and neighborhood in crumbling Detroit.
- And, on a related note, it turns out that “gentrification” may not be a dirty word anymore, according to NPR.
- In other news, writing in the Nonprofit Quarterly Eileen Cunniffe provides some interesting examples of how arts nonprofits are reinventing themselves and their relationship to money.
- Finally, the Nonprofit Tech For Good blog rounds up 19 really interesting social media and fundraising infographics for nonprofits.
Photo Credit: University of Iowa Libraries, 1960
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