The Good Society-How important is social justice?

The Occupy Wall Street movement has many supporters and of course, many detractors. What I find interesting is that there are so many well-educated young people involved. Clearly, this demonstrates a deep structural problem that is not being addressed, why are so many young well educated people under or unemployed in today's society? Another disturbing trend is the chart below showing that even though GDP has increased, so has inequality. What does this mean for the good society and what questions should we be asking? For example, is social justice still important to Canadian society, and equitable accessibility to the good life? What is the good life and how can we measure it more accurately than simply GDP? Are we overemphasizing post-secondary education at the expense of losing crafts, the essential trades? Another interesting article on expanding what we measure is the 'near poor' and a new measure of poverty that more accurately describes how well people are doing.

Gini co-efficient:
Statistics Canada (2011). Table 202-0705; Gini coefficients of market, total and after-tax income, by economic family type, annual. Retrieved May 15, 2011 from Statistics Canada: http://www5.statcan.gc.ca/cansim/a05?id=2020705&pattern=&stByVal=1&paSer=&lang=eng

GDP/capita:
World Bank. (2011). World dataBank: World Development Indicators & Global Development Finance. Retrieved May 10, 2011, from the World Bank: http://databank.worldbank.org/ddp/home.do

 

CRC Comments