This is your brain on social justice

[missroserose]

Two facts:

1.) This morning, I spent about 80% of my yoga class mentally considering the problem of human trafficking in middle-class America, the socioeconomic inequalities that give rise to it, and what (barring the unlikely elimination of worldwide poverty) we can do to mitigate it.

2.) My performance in said class, as measured by sense of focus, alignment, and flow, was probably in the 90th percentile of my (many) past classes.

I'm not really sure what this says about me. But if it's a subject that interests you, there are far worse places to start than this article.

Comments

[jamesd]

Socioeconomic tip: you read about fewer local trafficking victims in the UK, a country with a fairly comprehensive welfare state that provides money for food, housing and medical care to those who can't work or are unable to find work. Also health care to children regardless of parental situation and a child allowance to parents of all children who have household income less than about the top 5-10% of household incomes.

In the UK the most mentioned victims tend to be imported humans to do jobs more cheaply than the locals, whether in a factory or a brothel. That supply will be there so long as there's a demand and inequality between the poorest countries and others of higher income levels.

This doesn't mean that there are no local victims. The system fails sometimes, particularly for abuse victims, and there's always the group who want more money or power over people to provide both supply and demand. For some, sufficient just isn't enough to satisfy them.

So I don't fully agree that trafficking is caused by socioeconomic inequalities, even though I do agree that quite a lot has low income as a cause, particularly in the US. Same for much of crime, some low income, some just want more at a reasonable income level.

After dealing with the lowest incomes, dealing with drugs would be a good next step, since funding illegal drug purchases and supplying them is a significant driver for crime of all sorts. Dealing with does not mean a war on drugs, which becomes a war on drug users and the more disadvantaged of the low level suppliers.