Debate-Una nación con más empatía y menos mezquindad, por Facundo Manes

The following information is used for educational purposes only.

Debate

Una nación con más empatía y menos mezquindad

El bien común y la empatía resultan fundamentales. Y lejos de las grietas que algunos fomentan como especulación electoral.

Cuando juega Argentina estamos todos unidos, más allá de la grieta. Foto: Cezaro De Luca/dpa


FACUNDO MANES

14/09/2018

Una nación puede pensarse de mil maneras. Por ejemplo, como símbolo en medio de la efervescencia de un mundial o limitarla a la idea de un territorio al observar un planisferio. Otra manera de pensarla es como comunidad.

Si fuese así, no podría convivir la idea de nación cuando existe una fragmentación producida por abismos sociales o por odios de unos contra otros. No puede haber nación cuando las partes que las conforman están enfrentadas todo el tiempo.

Algunos dicen que, en términos electorales, la pelea es buena e, incluso, puede llegar a ser una estrategia astuta. Quién puede saberlo a ciencia cierta. Pero sí que en ningún caso sirve para mejorar la situación de miles de personas, sobre todo de quienes más necesitan atención, acompañamiento, comprensión de los demás; por el contrario, la empeora. No hay comunidad sin tener en cuenta el bien común.

Existe un término científico que hoy se utiliza también en las conversaciones cotidianas y en los medios de comunicación: la empatía. Que suceda esto es una virtud social, ya que acabamos por darnos cuenta de su imprescindible valor individual y social. La empatía requiere al menos de una distinción mínima entre uno mismo y los demás. Se trata de una respuesta afectiva hacia otras personas que puede requerir compartir su estado emocional o no.

Lucir con orgullo la bandera nacional. Una nación con menos grietas y más unidos. Foto Lucia Merle Enviada Especial

Por eso, implica la capacidad cognitiva de comprender el estado de los otros y regular la propia respuesta emocional. Para que una comunidad se entienda como tal y se desarrolle es necesario estimular la empatía, porque los seres humanos somos básicamente sociales. No se trata de que todos deban pensar y opinar de igual modo. Se trata de saber que el otro puede pensar distinto, comprenderlo y hasta sentirlo. Cuanto más se desarrolle esta capacidad, más se podrá respetar las creencias de los otros cuando no coinciden con las propias y hasta aprender de ellas. La cualidad empática está en hacer de la diferencia una virtud.

Como cada una de las personas, las comunidades también necesitan de propósitos. Propósitos que los estimulen a actuar en armonía y con un destino común, que no pueden estar guiados ni por la mezquindad ni por el miedo.

La mezquindad es el fruto privilegiado de la inmoralidad, pero también es la semilla de la condena futura. No vale la pena abundar en ejemplos históricos ni de nuestro país ni del mundo para darnos cuenta de eso. El miedo tampoco puede ser la guía.

El miedo es una emoción muy efectiva para el control social: el miedo a quedarse sin trabajo hace agachar la cabeza al trabajador; el miedo a ser perseguido hace al ciudadano resignarse frente al atropello del poderoso; el miedo a perder lo poco que se tiene no hace a uno ir por más; el miedo al “otro” hace a uno incomprensivo y torpe, poco sagaz, poco desafiante.

Frente a la estrategia de la mezquindad y del miedo está la política de la cooperación. En las grandes sociedades como las que nos toca vivir, la cooperación puede ser directa, como aquel que ayuda dándole pan al que tiene hambre, o mediada, a través de las instituciones. Sobre todo para esta última cuestión, también a la cooperación hay que ayudarla organizando el Estado eficazmente, generando infraestructura y empleo, promoviendo la educación pública y el desarrollo científico y tecnológico para el presente y el futuro de todos.

Justamente, cuando a alguien se le ocurre hablar del presente y del futuro, muchas veces existen críticos que los plantean como falsa dicotomía. Sostienen que se piensa el porvenir solo cuando se encuentra resuelto el presente o viceversa. Tantos unos como otros deben darse cuenta de que el presente está preñado de futuro.

Porque no tiene futuro una comunidad que no cuenta con un sistema de salud público eficiente. Tampoco si no protege a sus ancianos. No tiene futuro si condena a la indigencia a familias enteras que crecieron sin conocer lo que es el trabajo digno, ni un salario en blanco y que le alcance todo el mes.

Porque cuando la comunidad desprotege a un niño, lo que está haciendo es vedándole el presente y arrebatándole el futuro a quien necesita como nadie de los demás. Desde la medicina se sabe que en un cerebro desnutrido o subnutrido se halla menor cantidad de neuronas que en uno nutrido. Lo sabe la ciencia pero lo resuelven las políticas públicas. Depende de la comunidad pensarlas, decidirlas, llevarlas adelante.

Cuando miramos la historia de las naciones, nos damos cuenta de que aquellos proyectos más provechosos son los que supieron ver más allá de su puñadito de intereses personales y de su tiempo inmediato, y así trascender. Y si hablamos de nosotros, no podemos darnos el lujo de tirar por la borda tantos proyectos y tanto esfuerzo de tantos argentinos que fueron solidarios y no tuvieron miopía de futuro. Somos una nación que se reconoce en sus símbolos y en sus fronteras. Ojalá que también logremos reconocernos como comunidad.

Facundo Manes es doctor en ciencias de la Universidad de Cambridge. Neurólogo, neurocientífico, presidente de la Fundación INECO e investigador del CONICET





Fuente:www.clarin.com

TED TALKS-¿Qué tienen los pobres en la cabeza? por Mayra Arena/Texto: El beneficio de ser pobres

The following information is used for educational purposes only.


TEDxBahiaBlanca



¿Qué tienen los pobres en la cabeza?

 | Mayra Arena |



Published on Aug 22, 2018


Con esta charla, Mayra Arena nos propone una profunda reflexión sobre aquellos prejuicios desde los que suele mirarse a la pobreza. Lo narra en primera persona, compartiendo su propia experiencia de nacer y crecer en uno de los barrios más pobres de Bahía Blanca, en Argentina. Una charla apasionante y movilizadora, para reflexionar sobre nuestras propias miradas. Mayra Arena nació en Bahía Blanca y es estudiante de Ciencias Políticas de la Universidad Nacional de Tres de Febrero. Se hizo conocida en el ámbito local a raíz de su profunda carta titulada “Los beneficios de ser pobre”, donde relata, con crudeza y en primera persona, vivencias propias de la vida en la villa, generando el contrapunto entre la pobreza y la marginalidad.

Esa nota se viralizó rápidamente y abrió la puerta a conocer otras reflexiones de Mayra en torno a problemáticas sociales y económicas.

Busca, según dice, hacer que el análisis y la discusión política esté al alcance de la gente de los barrios.









SOCIEDAD

"Lo que te salva de la marginalidad es creer": conmovedora historia de superación personal

Mayra Arena, una joven de Bahía Blanca, publicó en las redes un extenso escrito en el que narra detalles de su vida y de su familia. Traza la diferencia entre ser pobre y ser marginal e intenta luchar contra la ignorancia y la discriminación

15 de Marzo de 2018

Mayra Arena tiene 25 años y estudia Ciencias Políticas

Dónde está la diferencia entre ser marginal y ser pobre. Seguramente se trate de una dicotomía que solo aquellos que protagonizaron ese estado social puedan discernir. Tal es el caso de Mayra Arena, una joven de 25 años de Bahía Blanca que publicó un emotivo y extenso texto y conmovió a todos con sus palabras.

El escrito, titulado "El beneficio de ser pobre", describe casi al detalle la vida personal de la joven, hoy estudiante de Ciencias Políticas. Arena habló de la historia de su madre y relató cómo tuvieron que hacer ella y sus hermanos para poder sobrevivir ante las enormes adversidades del sistema.

"De piba, cuando sos pobre, lo que te salva de la marginalidad es creer. Creer que algún día vas a tener todo eso que querés tener. Cuando conocés grandes que no son pobres y que te preguntan qué vas a ser cuando seas grande, empezás a soñar un poco", escribió la joven bahiense en su texto.

Arena narró la historia de su madre, quien asegura que, después de un problema de salud en su infancia, de su falta de educación sexual y una enorme cantidad de hijos paridos de muy joven no tuvo la oportunidad de poder terminar su escolaridad.

Así, indicó que su madre, Andrea, "no entiende" la mayoría de las cosas que se le dicen y que, por ende, quedó condenada a una vida en la marginalidad. Sin la posibilidad de poder mejorar su calidad de vida.

"Cuando sos marginal, como mi vieja, aceptás que tu único futuro es la pobreza. No te interesa tener nada porque estás segurísimo de que nunca vas a poder tener nada. A los ricos los mirás con bronca, son unos miserables que no te dan nada, ni trabajo. A mi vieja nunca le dieron ni trabajo. En cambio, cuando sos pobre, lo que te salva de caer en la marginalidad, es la esperanza de salir de esa pobreza", dijo.

Mayra Arena, junto a su hijo

La joven de 25 años, que trabaja como depiladora y tiene un hijo de 11 años, intentó presentar una realidad sobre la pobreza y la marginalidad que muchísima gente desconoce. Esa realidad que pocos se atreven a ver y analizar y demasiados se animan a juzgar.

"Cuando los leo odiando a ciertos pibes porque sus padres o ustedes mismos fueron pobres y salieron adelante, no puedo ponerme a explicarles esto de que ser pobre es infinitamente menos malo que ser marginal (…) Por eso estudio ciencia política y por eso estoy segura de que mi hermana estudia para maestra. Para poder explicarles mejor a los marginales, a los pobres y a los que no entienden por qué los pobres siguen siendo pobres. Igual sabemos que estudiemos lo que estudiemos hay gente que no nos va a querer escuchar. Hay gente que no es marginal, pero igual le explicás, y no entiende", sentenció.

El texto completo de Mayra Arena:

El beneficio de ser pobres

Mi vieja es una mina marginal. Toda la vida vivió fuera del sistema y ahí quedará. Por un problema que tuvo al nacer, es muy pequeña: no llegó nunca al metro cincuenta, y por los muchos embarazos que tuvo ya se le cayeron varios dientes. Tiene 41, pero la falta de dientes sumada a su escasa estatura y marcada delgadez, hacen que aparente mil años más.

Mi vieja dejó la escuela porque era al pedo. Vos le explicás algo y no lo entiende. Incluso las cosas más simples, se las tenés que explicar despacio, varias veces. Si querés enseñarle a ir al chino de la vuelta lo mejor es acompañarla y que vaya, porque si le explicás el camino, no entiende. Mi vieja nunca prendió una computadora, ni la va a prender. Apenas sabe leer y escribir, y cuando digo "apenas" quiero decir, escribe como el orto y cuando lee no le queda nada. Tiene que leer algo simple varias veces para que le quede. A veces nos pide ayuda a las hijas grandes, y hay que explicarle despacio y con palabras claras, sino no entiende.

Mi vieja no laburó nunca, no se desenvuelve. Siempre que intentó tuvo laburos muy malos, porque a los buenos, no pudo ni podrá acceder nunca. Siempre limpiando, cada vez que le conseguíamos un trabajo la echaban al poco tiempo: la gente no le tiene paciencia porque vos le explicás y no entiende. Mi vieja nunca aspiró a tener nada, siempre sintió que hay cosas que simplemente no eran para ella. Siempre sintió que ciertas cosas "son cosas de ricos" incluso cosas mucho más sencillas de las que piensan. Mi vieja tuvo varios hijos, todos de distintos hombres. En el hospital le explicaban que no tuviera más, que tenía que cuidarse, pero ella no entiende. Nosotros llevamos el apellido de ella y salvo el más chico, ninguno conoció a su respectivo padre.

Mi hermana Gisella Marisol y yo, tuvimos el beneficio de ser pobres. De pibas, mi vieja marginal nos mandaba a pedir todos los días. Íbamos a las panaderías porque son los que mejores cosas dan, y con lo que volvíamos se cenaba. Mate cocido con lo que hubiera. Cuando no nos daban las del barrio, nos íbamos abriendo cada vez más hasta llegar a las del centro. Por eso nunca compartí la filosofía de no darle monedita al nene que pide: lo único que lográs es que tenga que caminar más, porque ese pibe no va a volver a la casa con las manos vacías. Teníamos hermanos más chicos, pero no quedaban en casa, salíamos todos juntos porque a los más chicos siempre les dan más. Entonces salía mi vieja con nosotros y mi vieja se quedaba afuera y nosotros íbamos al negocio y pedíamos. Cuando íbamos con mi hermanito, la cosa era bastante rápida porque era muy chiquito y la gente siempre te da lo que puede. Mi vieja no entraba porque a los grandes no les dan casi nunca nada. Hay lugares que igual nunca dan nada y lugares que siempre te dan aunque sea un pancito. La cosa es que siempre volvíamos con algo para acompañar el mate cocido.

Mi abuela estaba apenitas mejor que nosotros porque laburaba limpiando. No teníamos a nadie que trabaje excepto ella, entonces lo poco que sabíamos de trabajo era que era horrible: las patronas eran malas y siempre le hacían cosas horribles, le pagaban menos de lo que le prometían y se hacían las desentendidas. A veces se iban un mes a Europa y ese mes la dejaban totalmente en banda. Cuando trabajaba, no le pagaban casi nada, incluso nosotras pidiendo en la panadería, a veces conseguíamos cosas que ella no podía comprar ni ahorrando.

Nuestra casa era un cuadrado con un baño en la época que mi abuela podía pagar alquiler, pero cuando mi vieja se peleó con mi abuela nos mudamos a una piecita sin baño en Pampa Central. Las necesidades se hacían en un balde y la comida del mediodía nos la daba un comedor que daba comidas riquísimas, polenta, guiso, tallarines. A veces hasta había postre, una naranja o un flancito. A la tarde tomábamos la leche en una iglesia en frente de casa y en esa época mi vieja empezó a cobrar una cosa que se llamaba jefes y jefas y eran 150 pesos por mes. Siempre que cobraba, los veintipico de cada mes, comíamos un yogur cada uno y para nosotros era la gloria.

De piba, cuando sos pobre, lo que te salva de la marginalidad es creer. Creer que algún día vas a tener todo eso que querés tener. Cuando conocés grandes que no son pobres y que te preguntan qué vas a ser cuando seas grande, empezás a soñar un poco. Todos los grandes te dicen todo el tiempo que no dejes la escuela, que estudies mucho. Nosotras, mi hermana y yo, conocimos un grande en particular que fue significativamente importante para nosotras: Marcelo General. Seguramente no lo conozcan, no era más que un vecino nuestro. Él y su adorada esposa siempre nos invitaban a su casa a jugar con su hijita, a pesar de que nosotras no teníamos juguetes ni nada para llevar. Ellos tenían cosas que nosotras no habíamos tenido ni visto jamás. La casa de ellos era una mansión, aunque ahora que lo pienso no era más que una casa con comedor y un par de dormitorios. Pero nosotras ahí adentro estábamos en nuestra salsa. Mi hermanita jugaba con todos los juguetes de la nena, yo siempre pedía pasar al baño porque era espectacular: tenía un espejo gigante y papel higiénico de esos con dibujitos y los puntitos para cortarlo derechito. Cuando sos pobre, la riqueza se mide en esas cositas. Ellos eran ricos. Todos los días la acompañábamos a la cooperativa y ella nos dejaba elegir el yogur que quisiéramos. Todos los días le preguntábamos de hasta qué precio podíamos agarrar, y ella nos decía que de cualquier precio, que agarráramos el que más nos guste. Definitivamente eran ricos.

La mamá de la nena nos contaba que el marido a veces se levantaba a las 4, o sea, trabajaba desde muy temprano. El hombre era muy bueno, siempre hacía chistes y miraba la tele. A veces nos daban hielo para tomar agua fresca en casa, porque nosotras no teníamos heladera, pero solo a veces porque otra vecina de la esquina, Silvia, también nos daba hielo siempre. Hay vecinos que te ayudan muchísimo.
Marcelo y Claudia, su esposa, siempre nos decían que fuéramos a la escuela. Una Navidad nos dijeron que había venido Papá Noel pero nosotras ya sabíamos que habían sido ellos. Los regalos, mi hermana todavía los tiene guardados. Así de valioso es todo cuando sos pobre.

En la escuela, también éramos pobres, no marginales. No teníamos las cosas que tenían todos, a mi hermana incluso una maestra no le corregía las tareas porque no llevaba cuaderno tapa dura. Siempre la retaban por no llevar las cosas que pedían y ella siempre lloraba. Pero éramos muy estudiosas, teníamos esa ventaja. Era una escuela pública, los pobres éramos nosotros y los ricos eran los que se compraban alfajores en el recreo, tenían mochila con carrito y cartucheras de dos pisos. Todos los grandes que conocíamos nos decían que si estudiábamos nos iba a ir bien, y nosotras lo creíamos de verdad. Mi hermana no tenía la cartulina que pedían, pero jamás se olvidaba de hacer los deberes. Hubo una asistente social que nos ayudó muchísimo y que siempre nos daba mercadería, lo hacía delante de todos y eso nos daba vergüenza, por eso mi hermana era medio tímida. No lo hacía de mala porque era buenísima, yo creo que no se daba cuenta que es feo que te den mercadería cuando a nadie le dan, en el aula todos te quedan mirando además. Hubo un invierno en que teníamos una sola campera buena, la violeta, asi que iba unos días mi hermana y unos días yo. Yo decía que nunca tenía frío e iba igual pero después me recagaba enfermando entonces era mejor así. Mi hermana odiaba faltar porque después no entendía las cosas. Asi que yo faltaba mucho. Mucho. Pero en casa había varios libros y los leía, una y otra vez. Yo sabía que estudiando me iba a ir mejor, eso me decían todos.

Éramos pobres, no marginales. No queríamos dejar la escuela. Conocíamos gente que no era pobre y era gente que trabajaba y había estudiado, entonces por ahí venía la mano.
Pasaban los años, mi vieja seguía sin laburar. A veces se afanaba queso de un supermercado, lo sacaba entre la ropa o debajo de la axila. Una vez me afané un alfajor de un kiosko y me dijo que si lo volvía a hacer me iba a hacer pasar la vergüenza de mi vida: nunca más toqué nada. La vergüenza es a lo que más miedo le tenés cuando sos chico, ni que te caguen a palos es tan fulero. No sé cómo explicarles lo que deseás un alfajor o una milanesa. Los que pueden comerlo cuando quieren, para uno son ricos. Yo ya tenía como 12 años y no quería salir más a pedir: me daba vergüenza. Y ahí ocurrió algo que casi nos empuja a la marginalidad, pero con el tiempo zafamos.

Mi vieja había tenido un marido golpeador, un alcohólico hasta los huesos que había vivido con ella cuando éramos mocosas. De nuestros padrastros y otros horrores, no voy a hablar. Este tipo estaba preso hacía varios años, era el papá de mi hermanito, el único que tuvo padre. Estaba por salir de la cárcel y nosotras sabíamos que mi vieja iba a volver con él. Mi hermana, ante el terror de volver a sufrirlo, se fue a vivir con mi abuela y no volvió. Ella tenía 9 años cuando lo decidió, todo para no volver a ver a mi padrastro. Yo me quedé, porque quién iba a cuidar a mi vieja y a mi hermanito, si no yo. Salió mi padrastro de la cárcel y me di cuenta de la triste realidad: yo no podía contra él. Entonces me metí de novia con un tipo 30 años mayor que yo y me pasaba todo el día en la casa de él. Lo importante era no volver a mi casa. Hasta que me tuve que ir definitivamente, a los 13. Confié que a mi hermanito no le iba a pasar nada porque era hijo, no hijastro.

Dejé la escuela porque si se descubría mi relación, mi pareja iba a terminar en la cárcel y yo iba a ir a un colegio o con mi padrastro. No me hubiera arriesgado a eso por nada del mundo asi que dejé de estudiar y me alejé de todo el que me conociera. Por supuesto, quedé embarazada. Y como nadie te da laburo siendo una cría de 14 años embarazada, yo me volví, por un tiempo, marginal, no pobre. Ya no podía estudiar porque eso era un peligro para el papá de mi hijo, y nadie me daba trabajo porque… era menor y tenía un hijo. De nuevo y siempre, los vecinos me ayudaron mucho. Ya no eran los mismos vecinos porque yo vivía más abajo, pero acá también me ayudaron, y no saben cuánto. Mi hermana seguía siendo pobre, siempre estudiando, siempre esperanzada de salir adelante.

Pasaba el tiempo, vivíamos como podíamos y yo accedía a los laburos que te dan cuando sos menor. Vendía perfumes en la calle, puerta a puerta o hacía campaña de socios para algún hogar, esos que te pagan el 10 por ciento de lo que recaudás. No existía la asignación y para todos los planes existentes, yo era menor. Todo me empujaba a ser marginal, porque ni siquiera podía acceder a los laburos o planes de pobres. A los 15 hice un curso de peluquería, pero en esa época no existía internet y era muy difícil ir haciéndote conocido en un oficio. Además yo tenía 15 y se me notaba en la cara, nadie se iba a dejar cortar el pelo por mí. A los 16 mentí diciendo que tenía 19 y accedí a mi primer laburo con sueldo mensual: tenía que cuidar a un abuelo hemipléjico. ¡De nuevo pobre! Ya no marginal. Es abismal la diferencia. Cobraba un sueldo por mes que no era más que un sueldito, pero podía comprar comida y cositas para mi hijito. Mi abuela me había regalado un lavarropas automático que le regaló una patrona, ese lavarropas lo vendimos y lo cambiamos por unas garrafas, y esas garrafas las vendimos y juntamos dos mil pesos. Con eso compramos el ranchito que se ve en la foto. Dos mil pesos nos costó, un rancho de chapa con piso de tierra, y estábamos en la gloria. Tiempo después las cosas no anduvieron con el papá de mi hijo, la verdad es que yo hacía rato no lo quería más. Entonces me fui con mi nene y de ahí en más cuidamos viejitos siendo cama adentro, o cuidábamos alguna abuela de noche y yo de día trabajaba de otras cosas. Entonces teníamos casa, comida y un pequeño sueldo. A los 21 años aprendí un oficio y gracias a internet y la facilidad de promocionar tu laburo gratis, pude laburar menos horas durante el día y empezar a estudiar. Pobres, no marginales.

Los años de laburo siendo joven, estudiante y pobre, son durísimos. No es nada fácil este ambiente, se vive siempre al día, y muchas veces te gastás los últimos veinte pesos que tenés en fotocopias del currículum, vas al centro caminando para no gastar en boleto y uno tras otro te dicen que lo dejés, que después te llaman. Los días se hacen eternos cuando nadie llama. Pero la diferencia crucial entre nosotras y mi vieja es que, nosotras teníamos la esperanza de que alguien iba a llamar. Todos los días salís a patear esperanzada, deseando que alguien te diga "venite el lunes a primera hora". Y tarde o temprano ese día llega.

Mi hermana empezó laburando a los 16 para un tipo que le pagaba "según como trabajara ese día" o sea, le pagaba lo que se le cantaban las pelotas. Como es mucho más desenvuelta que mi vieja no sólo no pierde los laburos, sino que tiene cada vez más. Alquila un departamentito y labura todo el día para poder pagar su alquiler y comer. Yo la he visto llorar de cansancio y frustración, pero como todo pobre, al otro día se levanta y sale a ganarse el mango igual. Además estudia, cuando sos pobre siempre te dicen que estudiar es la salida y vos lo creés. Ya le falta poco para ser maestra, cagate de risa. Capaz hasta se cruza con la que no le corregía las cosas por llevar esos cuadernos que te daba el gobierno que si borrabas dos veces se transparentaba la hoja. Andá a saber.

Mi vieja sigue siendo marginal. Tiene un solo laburo de limpieza hace algo de un año y nunca sabemos cuánto le va a durar. Ya pasó los 40 y es muy joven como para jubilarse, pero grande como para encontrar un laburo fijo. Gracias a la asignación que cobra de los dos más chicos, sumada al laburito, la miseria no es tan espantosa como la de mi infancia en los 90. Las hermanas más grandes nos independizamos hace ya mucho, entonces ayudamos a los más chicos. Ellos no tienen la vida que nosotros, no salen a pedir y pueden ir al colegio con útiles comprados, no esos lápices de porquería que a nosotros nos daba el gobierno y que los pasabas por la hoja y no pintaban. Siempre hay que darle una mano a mi vieja con los trámites de la asignación, porque a ella le explican, pero no entiende.

Cuando sos marginal, como mi vieja, aceptás que tu único futuro es la pobreza. No te interesa tener nada porque estás segurísimo de que nunca vas a poder tener nada. A los ricos los mirás con bronca, son unos miserables que no te dan nada, ni trabajo. A mi vieja nunca le dieron ni trabajo. En cambio, cuando sos pobre, lo que te salva de caer en la marginalidad, es la esperanza de salir de esa pobreza. Es muy dificultoso, porque labures de lo que labures, empezás ganando muy poco, y tenés muchas, pero muchas necesidades para cubrir. Además, siempre tenés en la familia alguien que está peor, y ayudás. En lo poco que podés ayudás. Entonces todo crecimiento se hace más lento, porque le comprás zapatillas a tu nene, pero no podés dejar de comprarle a tu hermanita. Y mi hermana vuelve a cenar el mate cocido con un mignoncito, para comprarle una campera buena a la más chica. Entonces sos sostén tuyo y de tu familia, porque sos pobre, pero tu vieja es marginal y sabés que no va a conseguir laburo. Ni siquiera uno de limpieza como el de mi hermana, o en geriatría, como yo.

No es lo mismo ser marginal que ser pobre: el mundo es de un color distinto. Cuando sos pobre sentís, sabés, la gente te dice constantemente que si te esforzás mucho vas a salir adelante. Mi vieja es marginal, no espera nada del mundo. Sabe, siente, percibe que el mundo es de los otros. Tiene una capacidad cognitiva bajísima y tiene mal aspecto: la gente no le dice nada y si le dijeran, no entiende.

Cuando sos pobre y venís de familia pobre, no marginal, aunque no lo creas ya tenés un montón de ventajas. Tenés otra forma de ver la vida de entrada: son tus propios padres los que te dicen que con esfuerzo vas a lograrlo. Y salís, por supuesto con muchísimo esfuerzo, pero tarde o temprano salís adelante. Con ganar un buen sueldo ya vivís mejor, cubrís tus necesidades y vas mejorando, poco a poco, tus posibilidades.

Una vez leí, en esta carrera que estudio con la esperanza de descubrir cómo hacer que los marginales puedan llegar a ser pobres y que los pobres dejen de serlo, una frase que me voló la cabeza. La frase dice "la diferencia entre un marginal y un pobre es que el pobre tiene claro su lugar en el mundo". El que lo escribió lo hizo, claro, analizando desde afuera. Pero no le erra. El beneficio de ser pobres es que entendés rápido que tenés que adaptarte al medio para sobrevivir. A un marginal como mi vieja, le expliques como le expliques, no lo entiende.

Cuando los leo odiando a ciertos pibes porque sus padres o ustedes mismos fueron pobres y salieron adelante, no puedo ponerme a explicarles esto de que ser pobre es infinitamente menos malo que ser marginal. Es muy largo, es muy complejo, y además no sé si me van a querer escuchar. Por eso estudio ciencia política y por eso estoy segura de que mi hermana estudia para maestra. Para poder explicarles mejor a los marginales, a los pobres y a los que no entienden por qué los pobres siguen siendo pobres. Igual sabemos que estudiemos lo que estudiemos hay gente que no nos va a querer escuchar. Hay gente que no es marginal, pero igual le explicás, y no entiende.




Fuente:www.youtube.com/https://www.infobae.com/sociedad/2018/03/15/el-beneficio-de-ser-pobres-emotivo-relato-en-primera-persona-sobre-la-marginalidad/

SEC-Securities And Exchange Commission : General Information

The following information is used for educational purposes only.


Securities And Exchange Commission - SEC

What is the 'Securities And Exchange Commission - SEC'

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is an independent federal government agency responsible for protecting investors, maintaining fair and orderly functioning of securities markets and facilitating capital formation. It was created by Congress in 1934 as the first federal regulator of securities markets. The SEC promotes full public disclosure, protects investors against fraudulent and manipulative practices in the market, and monitors corporate takeover actions in the United States.
Generally, issues of securities offered in interstate commerce, through the mail or on the Internet, must be registered with the SEC before they can be sold to investors. Financial services firms, such as broker-dealers, advisory firms and asset managers, as well as their professional representatives, must also register with the SEC to conduct business.

BREAKING DOWN 'Securities And Exchange Commission - SEC'

The SEC's primary function is to oversee organizations and individuals in the securities markets, including securities exchanges, brokerage firms, dealers, investment advisors and various investment funds. Through established securities rules and regulations, the SEC promotes disclosure and sharing of market-related information, fair dealing and protection against fraud. It provides investors with access to registration statements, periodic financial reports and other securities forms through its comprehensive electronic, data gathering, analysis and retrieval (EDGAR) database.

There are various laws that are at the SEC's disposal for accomplishing its objectives. They are:


• Securities Act of 1933
• Securities Exchange Act of 1934
• Trust Indenture Act of 1939
• Investment Company Act of 1940
• Investment Advisers Act of 1940
• Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002
• Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2010
• Jumpstart Our Business Startups (JOBS) Act of 2012


Founding of the SEC

When the U.S. stock market crashed in 1929, securities issued by numerous companies became worthless as a result of previously stated false or misleading information. Public faith in securities markets plunged. To restore confidence, Congress passed the Securities Act of 1933 and the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, which created the SEC. The SEC's primary tasks were to monitor that companies made truthful statements about their businesses and to ensure that securities institutions, such as brokers, dealers and exchanges, treated investors in an honest and fair manner.
Organization of the SEC

The SEC is headed by five commissioners who are appointed by the president, one of which is designated as chairman of the SEC. Each commissioner's term lasts five years, but they may serve for an additional 18 months before a replacement is found. The law requires that no more than three of the five commissioners be from the same political party to promote nonpartisanship.

The SEC consists of five divisions and 23 offices. Their goals are to interpret and take enforcement actions on securities laws; issue new rules; provide oversight over securities institutions; and coordinate regulation among different levels of government. 
The five divisions are:

• Division of Corporate Finance: Ensures investors are provided with material information in order to make informed investment decisions
• Division of Enforcement: In charge of enforcing SEC regulations by investigating cases and prosecuting civil suits and administrative proceedings
• Division of Investment Management: Regulates investment companies, variable insurance products and federally registered investment advisors
• Division of Economic and Risk Analysis: Integrates financial economics and data analytics into the core mission of the SEC
• Division of Trading and Markets: Establishes and maintains standards for fair, orderly and efficient markets


Authority of the SEC

The division of enforcement of the SEC is the primary department in charge of assisting the Commission with executing its law enforcement function. It does so by recommending the commencement of investigations of securities law violations and prosecuting such cases on behalf of the Commission. The SEC is only allowed to bring civil actions, both in federal court or before an administrative judge. Criminal cases are under the jurisdiction of law enforcement agencies within the Department of Justice; however, the SEC often works closely with such agencies to provide evidence and assist with court proceedings.

In civil suits, the SEC seeks two main sanctions:
 1) injunctions, which are orders that prohibit future violations; a person who ignores an injunction is subject to fines or imprisonment for contempt; and 2) civil money penalties and the disgorgement of illegal profits. In certain cases, the Commission may also seek a court order barring or suspending individuals from acting as corporate officers or directors. The SEC may also bring a variety of administrative proceedings, which are heard by internal officers and the Commission. Common proceedings include cease and desist orders, revoking or suspending registration, and imposing bars or suspensions of employment.

The SEC also serves as the first level of appeal for actions sought by self-regulatory organizations, such as FINRA or the New York Stock Exchange.

The SEC Office of the Whistleblower

Among all the SEC's offices, the office of the whistleblower stands out as one of the most potent means of securities laws enforcement. Created as a result of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2010, the SEC's whistleblower program rewards eligible individuals for sharing original information that leads to successful law enforcement actions with monetary sanctions in excess of $1 million. Eligible individuals can receive 10% to 30% of the total sanctions' proceeds.

Enforcement Record of the SEC

The SEC brings numerous civil enforcement actions against firms and individuals that violate securities laws every year. It is involved in every major case of financial misdemeanor, either directly or in aid of the Justice Department. Typical offenses prosecuted by the SEC include accounting fraud, dissemination of misleading or false information, and insider trading.

After the Great Recession of 2008, the SEC was instrumental in prosecuting the financial institutions that caused the crisis and returning billions of dollars to investors. In total, it charged 204 entities or individuals, and collected close to $4 billion in penalties, disgorgement and other monetary relief. Goldman Sachs for example paid $550 million, the largest penalty for a Wall Street firm and the second largest in SEC history, second only to the $750 million paid by WorldCom. Still, many criticized the SEC for not doing enough to prosecute the brokers and senior managers who were involved, almost all of whom were never found guilty of significant wrongdoing. So far, only one Wall Street executive has been jailed for crimes related to the crisis: Kareem Serageldin, a former investment banker at Credit Suisse. The rest either settled for a monetary penalty or accepted administrative punishments.



Understanding the SEC

By Elvis Picardo

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is often referred to as the Watchdog of Wall Street, but it wouldn’t be too much of a stretch to think of it as the “Capital Markets Cop.” Two of the SEC’s main objectives are to protect investors and maintain fair, orderly and efficient markets, similar to a regular police force’s primary goals of protecting the public and maintaining law and order. The SEC also has a third key objective in its three-pronged mission – facilitating the capital formation that is necessary to sustain economic growth. These diverse goals necessitate the involvement of the SEC in many areas of the capital markets, as discussed below.

Why the SEC was created

The SEC was formed in 1934, when the U.S. economy was in the iron grip of the Great Depression that had been partly precipitated by the market crash of 1929. Federal regulation of the securities markets was not a burning topic in the free-wheeling days of the 1920s. While securities activity soared in the post-World War I period, proposed regulations aimed at financial disclosure and the prevention of stock fraud were neither actively pursued nor implemented. As an estimated 20 million U.S. investors flocked to the stock market during the “Roaring 20s,” the combination of an intensely speculative environment and little regulation resulted in rampant stock fraud.

The speculative frenzy ended with the stock market crash of October 1929, which took a tremendous toll on public confidence in the markets. Half of the $50-billion in new securities issued in the 1920s became worthless, and by 1932, U.S. stocks were worth only one-fifth of their values in the summer of 1929. With investors and banks losing colossal sums of money, as many as 5,000 U.S. banks had failed by 1933, while the unemployment rate approached 30%.

In this dismal period, there was a growing consensus among U.S. lawmakers that an economic recovery could only take hold if the public’s faith and confidence in capital markets were restored.

The U.S. Congress held hearings to identify the root cause of the economic problems and search for solutions, and based on its findings, passed the Securities Act of 1933. The following year, the SEC was created by the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. The Act aimed at restoring public confidence in the capital markets by providing investors and markets with more reliable information, and transparent, clear rules to foster honest dealing. President Franklin D. Roosevelt subsequently appointed Joseph P. Kennedy – President John F. Kennedy’s father – as the first Chairman of the SEC.

Founding Principles

The SEC interprets and enforces the federal laws that govern the U.S. securities industry, which are based on two basic principles –

• Investors should have access to all pertinent information about a security prior to making an investment decision. Companies offering securities to the public must therefore disclose comprehensive and accurate information about their businesses, the securities offered for sale, and the risks involved in investing in them.

• People engaged in securities sales and trading must put investors’ interests first and treat them fairly and honestly. The SEC ensures this by overseeing the key players in the securities industry, including exchanges, broker/dealers, advisers, funds and rating agencies.

As the SEC notes on its website, it is first and a foremost a law enforcement agency. Arguably the SEC’s most feared unit, the Division of Enforcement has brought civil enforcement actions against innumerable individuals and companies for securities law violations such as insider trading, accounting fraud and providing misleading information about securities offered to the public.

Organization of the SEC

The SEC has five Commissioners appointed by the President of the United States, with the advice and consent of the Senate.
The President designates one of the five Commissioners as Chair of the Commission; the current Chair, Mary Jo White, was sworn in on April 10, 2013, and will be in office until 2019.

The Commissioners serve staggered five-year terms, with one Commissioner’s term ending on June 5 of each year. In order to ensure that the SEC remains non-partisan, a maximum of three Commissioners may belong to the same political party.
The SEC has its headquarters in Washington, DC. It is organized into five Divisions and 23 Offices, with about 3,500 staff located in Washington and 11 regional offices across the U.S.

The SEC’s five Divisions have the following responsibilities:

• Division of Corporation Finance – oversees corporate disclosure of important information to the investing public. It reviews documents that public companies are required to file with the SEC, such as registration statements, annual and quarterly filings, proxy materials and annual reports. The Division also provides interpretation of securities acts, monitors activities of the accounting profession that result in formulation of generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP), and provides guidance and counseling to registrants and the public to help them comply with securities law.

• Division of Trading and Markets – assists the SEC is executing its responsibility to maintain fair, orderly and efficient markets. It provides day-to-day oversight of major securities market participants and also oversees the Securities Investor Protection Corporation. Additional responsibilities include reviewing proposed new rules and proposed changes to existing rules, and market surveillance.

• Division of Investment Management – is responsible for investor protection, and for promoting capital formation through oversight and regulation of the U.S. investment management industry, which includes mutual funds and professional fund managers, research analysts, and investment advisers to retail customers. A focus of this Division is ensuring that disclosures about popular retail investments like mutual funds and exchange-traded funds are useful to retail investors, and that the regulatory costs such consumers have to bear are not excessive. Additional responsibilities include assisting the SEC in interpreting laws and regulations for the public, and providing assistance in enforcement matters involving investment companies and advisers.

• Division of Enforcement – assists the SEC in executing its law enforcement function by (a) recommending commencement of investigations into securities law violations, (b) recommending that the SEC bring civil actions in federal court or as administrative proceedings before an administrative law judge, and (c) by prosecuting these cases on behalf of the SEC. It also works closely with law enforcement agencies to file criminal cases when warranted.

• Division of Economic and Risk Analysis – the Division’s two main functions are providing economic analyses to support SEC rulemaking and policy development; and providing research, analysis, risk assessment and data analytics to support the SEC on matters presenting the biggest perceived risks in litigations, examinations, and registrant reviews.

Recent Developments

The SEC’s stellar reputation has been a bit tarnished in recent years by its failure to detect the massive Bernie Madoff and Allen Stanford Ponzi schemes, as well as its lack of success in booking one of the really big players who contributed to the 2008-09 financial crisis. However, it has scored a couple of major wins in its ongoing crusade against white-collar crime.

• Raj Rajaratnam – In 2011, billionaire hedge fund manager Rajaratnam was sentenced to 11 years in prison for insider trading, the longest jail term imposed in such a case. Founder and manager of the Galleon hedge fund, Rajaratnam was convicted for orchestrating a wide-ranging insider trading ring that included Rajat Gupta, former McKinsey CEO and Goldman Sachs board member.

• SAC Capital – In November 2013, SAC Capital – founded by Steve Cohen, one of the 150 wealthiest people in the world – agreed to a record $1.8 billion fine for insider trading. The SEC alleged that insider trading was widespread at SAC Capital, and involved stocks of more than 20 public companies from 1999 to 2010. As many as eight traders or analysts who worked for SAC have either been convicted or have pleaded guilty to charges of insider trading.

The Bottom Line

The SEC’s triple mandate of investor protection, maintenance of orderly markets and facilitation of capital formation makes it one of the most important entities in capital and financial markets. The increasing complexity of these markets will continue to give the SEC a prominent role in ensuring that they function smoothly and offer all investors a level playing field.


Source: https://www.investopedia.com/terms/s/sec.asp (*)


(*) https://www.sec.gov/edgar/searchedgar/companysearch.html

(Link to search for corporations´ 10-K-Form filing)

11 DE SEPTIEMBRE: DÍA DEL MAESTRO

The following information is used for educational purposes only.



                                                             11 DE SEPTIEMBRE


                            ¡FELIZ DÍA DEL MAESTRO!

Mensaje alentador,manos que contienen,

Abrazos que animan,amor vocacional

Esmero constante,esfuerzo cotidiano

Satisfacción expectante, sensaciones gratas

Trato igualitario, temas abiertos,

Riqueza educativa, recompensas inesperadas

Observaciones acertadas,objetivos superadores

Fuente:Google Images/Acróstico por Clara Moras.

TED TALKS-Keith Chen: Could your language affect your ability to save money?

The following information is used for educational purposes only.


TEDGlobal 2012 | June 2012


Keith Chen: Could your language affect your ability to save money?


What can economists learn from linguists? Behavioral economist Keith Chen introduces a fascinating pattern from his research: that languages without a concept for the future -- "It rain tomorrow," instead of "It will rain tomorrow" -- correlate strongly with high savings rates.


ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Keith Chen · Behavioral economist

Keith Chen's research suggests that the language you speak may impact the way you think about your future.

Transcript:

The global economic financial crisis has reignited public interest in something that's actually one of the oldest questions in economics, dating back to at least before Adam Smith. And that is, why is it that countries with seemingly similar economies and institutions can display radically different savings behavior?
Now, many brilliant economists have spent their entire lives working on this question, and as a field we've made a tremendous amount of headway and we understand a lot about this. What I'm here to talk with you about today is an intriguing new hypothesis and some surprisingly powerful new findings that I've been working on about the link between the structure of the language you speak and how you find yourself with the propensity to save. Let me tell you a little bit about savings rates, a little bit about language, and then I'll draw that connection.
Let's start by thinking about the member countries of the OECD, or the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development. OECD countries, by and large, you should think about these as the richest, most industrialized countries in the world. And by joining the OECD, they were affirming a common commitment to democracy, open markets and free trade. Despite all of these similarities, we see huge differences in savings behavior.
So all the way over on the left of this graph, what you see is many OECD countries saving over a quarter of their GDP every year, and some OECD countries saving over a third of their GDP per year. Holding down the right flank of the OECD, all the way on the other side, is Greece. And what you can see is that over the last 25 years, Greece has barely managed to save more than 10 percent of their GDP. It should be noted, of course, that the United States and the U.K. are the next in line.
Now that we see these huge differences in savings rates, how is it possible that language might have something to do with these differences? Let me tell you a little bit about how languages fundamentally differ. Linguists and cognitive scientists have been exploring this question for many years now. And then I'll draw the connection between these two behaviors.
Many of you have probably already noticed that I'm Chinese. I grew up in the Midwest of the United States. And something I realized quite early on was that the Chinese language forced me to speak about and -- in fact, more fundamentally than that -- ever so slightly forced me to think about family in very different ways.
Now, how might that be? Let me give you an example. Suppose I were talking with you and I was introducing you to my uncle. You understood exactly what I just said in English. If we were speaking Mandarin Chinese with each other, though, I wouldn't have that luxury. I wouldn't have been able to convey so little information. What my language would have forced me to do, instead of just telling you, "This is my uncle," is to tell you a tremendous amount of additional information. My language would force me to tell you whether or not this was an uncle on my mother's side or my father's side, whether this was an uncle by marriage or by birth, and if this man was my father's brother, whether he was older than or younger than my father. All of this information is obligatory. Chinese doesn't let me ignore it. And in fact, if I want to speak correctly, Chinese forces me to constantly think about it.
Now, that fascinated me endlessly as a child, but what fascinates me even more today as an economist is that some of these same differences carry through to how languages speak about time. So for example, if I'm speaking in English, I have to speak grammatically differently if I'm talking about past rain, "It rained yesterday," current rain, "It is raining now," or future rain, "It will rain tomorrow." Notice that English requires a lot more information with respect to the timing of events. Why? Because I have to consider that and I have to modify what I'm saying to say, "It will rain," or "It's going to rain." It's simply not permissible in English to say, "It rain tomorrow."
In contrast to that, that's almost exactly what you would say in Chinese. A Chinese speaker can basically say something that sounds very strange to an English speaker's ears. They can say, "Yesterday it rain," "Now it rain," "Tomorrow it rain." In some deep sense, Chinese doesn't divide up the time spectrum in the same way that English forces us to constantly do in order to speak correctly.
Is this difference in languages only between very, very distantly related languages, like English and Chinese? Actually, no. So many of you know, in this room, that English is a Germanic language. What you may not have realized is that English is actually an outlier. It is the only Germanic language that requires this. For example, most other Germanic language speakers feel completely comfortable talking about rain tomorrow by saying, "Morgen regnet es," quite literally to an English ear, "It rain tomorrow."
This led me, as a behavioral economist, to an intriguing hypothesis. Could how you speak about time, could how your language forces you to think about time, affect your propensity to behave across time? You speak English, a futured language. And what that means is that every time you discuss the future, or any kind of a future event, grammatically you're forced to cleave that from the present and treat it as if it's something viscerally different. Now suppose that that visceral difference makes you subtly dissociate the future from the present every time you speak. If that's true and it makes the future feel like something more distant and more different from the present, that's going to make it harder to save. If, on the other hand, you speak a futureless language, the present and the future, you speak about them identically. If that subtly nudges you to feel about them identically, that's going to make it easier to save.
Now this is a fanciful theory. I'm a professor, I get paid to have fanciful theories. But how would you actually go about testing such a theory? Well, what I did with that was to access the linguistics literature. And interestingly enough, there are pockets of futureless language speakers situated all over the world. This is a pocket of futureless language speakers in Northern Europe. Interestingly enough, when you start to crank the data, these pockets of futureless language speakers all around the world turn out to be, by and large, some of the world's best savers.
Just to give you a hint of that, let's look back at that OECD graph that we were talking about. What you see is that these bars are systematically taller and systematically shifted to the left compared to these bars which are the members of the OECD that speak futured languages. What is the average difference here? Five percentage points of your GDP saved per year. Over 25 years that has huge long-run effects on the wealth of your nation.
Now while these findings are suggestive, countries can be different in so many different ways that it's very, very difficult sometimes to account for all of these possible differences. What I'm going to show you, though, is something that I've been engaging in for a year, which is trying to gather all of the largest datasets that we have access to as economists, and I'm going to try and strip away all of those possible differences, hoping to get this relationship to break. And just in summary, no matter how far I push this, I can't get it to break. Let me show you how far you can do that.
One way to imagine that is I gather large datasets from around the world. So for example, there is the Survey of Health, [Aging] and Retirement in Europe. From this dataset you actually learn that retired European families are extremely patient with survey takers. (Laughter) So imagine that you're a retired household in Belgium and someone comes to your front door. "Excuse me, would you mind if I peruse your stock portfolio? Do you happen to know how much your house is worth? Do you mind telling me? Would you happen to have a hallway that's more than 10 meters long? If you do, would you mind if I timed how long it took you to walk down that hallway? Would you mind squeezing as hard as you can, in your dominant hand, this device so I can measure your grip strength? How about blowing into this tube so I can measure your lung capacity?" The survey takes over a day. (Laughter) Combine that with a Demographic and Health Survey collected by USAID in developing countries in Africa, for example, which that survey actually can go so far as to directly measure the HIV status of families living in, for example, rural Nigeria. Combine that with a world value survey, which measures the political opinions and, fortunately for me, the savings behaviors of millions of families in hundreds of countries around the world.
Take all of that data, combine it, and this map is what you get. What you find is nine countries around the world that have significant native populations which speak both futureless and futured languages. And what I'm going to do is form statistical matched pairs between families that are nearly identical on every dimension that I can measure, and then I'm going to explore whether or not the link between language and savings holds even after controlling for all of these levels.
What are the characteristics we can control for? Well I'm going to match families on country of birth and residence, the demographics -- what sex, their age -- their income level within their own country, their educational achievement, a lot about their family structure. It turns out there are six different ways to be married in Europe. And most granularly, I break them down by religion where there are 72 categories of religions in the world -- so an extreme level of granularity. There are 1.4 billion different ways that a family can find itself.
Now effectively everything I'm going to tell you from now on is only comparing these basically nearly identical families. It's getting as close as possible to the thought experiment of finding two families both of whom live in Brussels who are identical on every single one of these dimensions, but one of whom speaks Flemish and one of whom speaks French; or two families that live in a rural district in Nigeria, one of whom speaks Hausa and one of whom speaks Igbo.
Now even after all of this granular level of control, do futureless language speakers seem to save more? Yes, futureless language speakers, even after this level of control, are 30 percent more likely to report having saved in any given year. Does this have cumulative effects? Yes, by the time they retire, futureless language speakers, holding constant their income, are going to retire with 25 percent more in savings.
Can we push this data even further? Yes, because I just told you, we actually collect a lot of health data as economists. Now how can we think about health behaviors to think about savings? Well, think about smoking, for example. Smoking is in some deep sense negative savings. If savings is current pain in exchange for future pleasure, smoking is just the opposite. It's current pleasure in exchange for future pain. What we should expect then is the opposite effect. And that's exactly what we find. Futureless language speakers are 20 to 24 percent less likely to be smoking at any given point in time compared to identical families, and they're going to be 13 to 17 percent less likely to be obese by the time they retire, and they're going to report being 21 percent more likely to have used a condom in their last sexual encounter. I could go on and on with the list of differences that you can find. It's almost impossible not to find a savings behavior for which this strong effect isn't present.
My linguistics and economics colleagues at Yale and I are just starting to do this work and really explore and understand the ways that these subtle nudges cause us to think more or less about the future every single time we speak. Ultimately, the goal, once we understand how these subtle effects can change our decision making, we want to be able to provide people tools so that they can consciously make themselves better savers and more conscious investors in their own future.
Thank you very much.




Source:www.ted.com

TED TALKS-Nikki Clifton: 3 ways businesses can fight sex trafficking

The following information is used for educational purposes only.


TED@UPS | July 2018


Nikki Clifton: 3 ways businesses can fight sex trafficking


Sex buying doesn't just happen late at night on street corners in the shady part of town -- it also happens online, in the middle of the workday, using company equipment and resources. With this problem comes an opportunity, says attorney Nikki Clifton, because it means that the business community is in a unique position to educate and mobilize their employees to fight sex trafficking. In an honest talk, Clifton outlines how businesses can help, from setting clear policies to hiring survivors.


ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Nikki Clifton · Attorney, government affairs professional

Nikki Clifton represents UPS's interests before Members of US Congress, federal agencies and the states’ Attorneys General.

Transcript:

A few years ago, I got a call from the highest ranking legal official in the state of Georgia: the attorney general. That moment was a wake-up call. It was 2013, and the city of Atlanta was hosting the Final Four basketball tournament. The AG called to ask if the company that I worked for could help sponsor billboards that would be put up around the city as part of an anti-human trafficking campaign. He said this was important because sex trafficking spikes with big sporting events and with conventions. And the billboards would help to raise awareness.
Now, if I'm being honest with you, my first inclination was to politely decline.
Let's face it -- there are thousands of things that corporate America could get involved in. Sex trafficking seemed a little messy. Little bit too difficult, something that is better left for someone else.
But then I started to understand and learn how big the problem really is. And that it's rampant in my company's home town.
I lived and worked in Atlanta for years. I practice law here. And yet, I had no idea that the birthplace of my children is among the most prevalent cities for sex trafficking in the US. At last report, Atlanta's illegal sex trade has generated up to 290 million dollars a year. That's more money that the city's illegal gun and drug trade combined.
So we stepped up and we helped with the billboards. But I couldn't help feeling like it wasn't enough. The parent in me, the mother in me needed to do more.
I started talking to people about this and inevitably, I was surprised, because the conversation would turn from curiosity: "Really? This happens here?" to empathy: "Wow, we've got to do something about that." To blame: "You're not telling me that every prostitute is a victim, are you? I mean, don't they know what they're getting into?"
I get it, I understand why people are confused. So, to be clear, the people that I'm talking about do not choose this life. They're forced, defrauded or coerced. That's actually the legal definition for human trafficking under federal law, for adults. Now, when it comes to kids, any minor under 18 that's transported, facilitated or used for commercial sex, is automatically a victim. Regardless of whether force, fraud or coercion is used. This crime knows no age, gender or socioeconomic barrier.
I'm talking about the 16-year-old girl that I met in Washington, DC. She had been trafficked from the time she was 14 until she was 16. She was a victim of the foster care system. And she told me she'd been sold up to five times a day. She didn't even know the term "human trafficking;" she thought that it was just a part of her life as a foster care kid.
Sex trafficking also shows up in affluent areas and gated communities. And men lure young girls into sex trafficking situations with promises of modeling contracts, cell phones. Sometimes they're just kidnapped right off the street. In the US, an estimated 200,000 to 300,000 girls and boys are anticipated to be used for commercial sex trafficking every year. You heard that right -- girls and boys. Worldwide, the International Labor Organization estimates that up to one million children a year are vulnerable for sex trafficking. Those numbers are huge. And so while the billboards are great for raising awareness generally, they're just not enough to put an end to this problem. I believe that if we're going to be serious about sex trafficking, we can't legislate or arrest our way out of modern-day slavery. If we really want to end sex trafficking in the US, we have to systematically educate and target demand. And I think the business community is in the perfect position to do just that.
So, sex trafficking is big business. And I'm proposing a business plan that starts with the customer. And in the sex trade, the customer is referred to as a John. He is the man that fuels the demand for sex trafficking. Johns do not fit into neat stereotypes. But there is one universal truth: no John, no buyer, no victim. So if we want to start to put a dent in sex trafficking, we have to get to John. And businesses can do that while he's at work.
There's an organization called Businesses Ending Slavery and Trafficking, or BEST for short. And when they launched in 2012, they did a study of Seattle-based Johns. And you know what they found out? Johns are everyday guys, employed at local businesses. They range in age from 18 to 84. Johns are dads. Johns have admitted that they buy sex when they are traveling for business, when they're going to sporting events or when they're in the military. But here's the kicker. BEST study determined that web-based sex buying spikes at 2pm in the afternoon. Which means that these Johns are likely buying sex in the middle of the workday.
I believe that there is a way to stop Johns in the middle of the workday from buying sex. And businesses can do it in three simple ways.
The first is with a policy. A policy that clearly says, the company prohibits sex-buying during work, with company resources or on company time. That's right. I'm saying that your handbook has to specifically give an example that says no sex-buying while you're traveling, at the international trade show, because that's where it's happening. Now, a policy is only as good as its enforcement and its communication. Several studies have indicated from Johns that the best way to deter them is public humiliation and embarrassment. So, businesses who catch Johns buying sex, using company-based equipment or company resources, but cut them a break or sweep it under the rug and don't fire them, are complicit in fueling demand.
Now, a policy is one of the best ways to start. The second way is educating the workforce. Businesses can go a long way in simply training their workforce about the signs and the red flags of human trafficking. This was my "aha!" moment for how our company could make a big difference. Our nation's highways, airports and truck stops are literally used as modern-day slave routes. Our company has more than 100,000 drivers all over the country, all over the world. And so it made perfect sense to train them to see the red flags. We don't want them jumping out there and doing things on their own, so we want them to call a phone number, the hotline, and let law enforcement intervene.
So to do this, we teamed up with an organization called Truckers Against Trafficking. This Colorado-based organization had web-based support and materials that we gave to our truck drivers that gave them exactly what they needed to spot the red flags. Like, hearing CB chatter on their radios about girls at nearby exits. Or, seeing underaged women emerging from vehicles in the truck stop parking lots. When we rolled out this training, a few brave drivers admitted they had seen these women, knocking on the cabs in the truck stops, looking for customers. Now, they said that they weren't buying. But they also didn't know enough to make a call. And that's what we want them to do.
TAT's organization -- Truckers Against Trafficking -- also emphasizes the need for men to talk to other men about web-based sex buying and not buying commercial sex. They feature men in uniform, proudly proclaiming why they don't buy. If we're going to see a cultural shift in this atrocity, we need men talking to other men about the underlying issues fueling demand. Because sometimes, Johns don't even know that they're purchasing girls who are enslaved.
Which brings me to my final way that businesses can help. Every business has a special resource or a secret sauce or resource that they can bring to fight human trafficking. For example, Visa, Master Card and American Express refuse to process transactions from backpage.com, an online sex site that sold commercial sex to the tune of nine million dollars a month. In April of 2018, backpage.com and affiliated websites were shut down, and the FBI seized all their assets.
Hiring survivors is another way that any company can help. Randstad, an organization that works with companies to find survivors who need good jobs, has an excellent program, called Hire Hope. We've used this program; we know that it works. In addition to training their flight attendants and their airline crew, Delta Air Lines also offers SkyMiles, through a program called SkyWish, to survivors to help them escape their traffickers and reunite with their families. There are thousands of things that businesses can do. They just have to decide what to do to join the fight.
No one can justify slavery today. But I believe it remains one of the greatest civil rights atrocities of our time. Fortunately, the business community is uniquely positioned to help train their employees, to enforce policies and to help use their special resources to fight human trafficking.
And what about you? What if you decided to learn the red flags? What if you decided to look at the signs that are all around you and make a call? There is no penalty for calling law enforcement when you see something that doesn't sit right. Together, we can all protect our children, we can educate the workforces around us and improve society, where we all live and work with John.Thank you.



Source:www.ted.com

TED TALKS-Ben Cort:What commercialization is doing to cannabis

The following information is used for educational purposes only.


TEDxMileHigh | November 2017


Ben Cort:What commercialization is doing to cannabis



In 2012, Colorado legalized cannabis and added to what has fast become a multibillion-dollar global industry for all things weed-related: from vape pens to brownies and beyond. But to say that we've legalized marijuana is subtly misleading -- what we've really done is commercialized THC, says educator Ben Cort, and that's led to products that are unnaturally potent. In an eye-opening talk, Cort examines the often unseen impacts of the commercial cannabis industry -- and calls on us to question those who are getting rich off of it.



ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Ben Cort · Author, addiction treatment specialist

Ben Cort focuses on marijuana education and consulting in the substance use disorder treatment field.

Transcript:

Hey look, if you guys are anything like me, you have found it harder and harder to turn around recently without seeing words like "free-range," "farm-to-table," "organically produced," especially here in Colorado. Now, as we've become more conscientious of the way that we eat in recent years, these once unfamiliar words have worked their way into our daily lexicon. When we started to pay more attention to the way that the food we were eating interacted with our bodies and with the earth, the food industry had to listen. And the results have been really powerful. Now, those of you out there from states like Washington and Oregon and, of course, my fellow Coloradans --
y'all know what I'm talking about. Because this is not ... Words like "all-natural" and "homegrown" are not just being used in our diets. There's this whole new industry using this language now. You guys know. It's weed, an industry that taxed a sale of about six billion dollars worth of product in 2016. So what if I were to propose to you that some of what you think you know about this legalized marijuana thing could be wrong?
Listen, I get it -- talking about issues with legal weed is a pretty quick way to get uninvited from the cool kids' table. I know that better than most, but I intend to do it anyway. First, before I get started, let me be perfectly clear about one thing: my fight is not against the casual adult use of marijuana -- I don't care about that. What I care deeply about is this new industry that is working to convince us that we are consuming something natural while fixing social ills, when we aren't.
So let's start with a little bit of Weed 101. Cannabis is a plant that grows naturally and has been used within textiles and even traditional Chinese medicine for thousands of years. Genesis 1:12 even tells us: "I have given you all of the seed-bearing plants and herbs to use." It's the microphone -- it's got a TV preacher sort of thing.
Now, cannabis is made up of hundreds of different chemicals, but two of those chemicals are by far the most interesting. That's CBD and THC. CBD is where almost all of the medicinal properties lie. It's an incredibly fascinating part of the plant with real potential to help people. It also is totally nonintoxicating. You could take a bath in the stuff while vaping pure CBD and drinking a CBD smoothie, and you still couldn't get high.
I've tried.
I haven't, I haven't. That'd cost a lot of money.
Now, for as interesting and remarkable a part of the plant as CBD is, it actually makes up a really tiny portion of the commercial market. The real money is being made in that other chemical -- in THC. THC is the natural part of the plant that gets you high. And before the 1970s, cannabis contained less than half of a percent of THC. That's what's naturally occurring. Over the last 40 years, as we became better gardeners, that --
that percentage of THC started to slowly but steadily rise, until recently, when the chemists started to get involved.
So these guys moved grow cycles -- sorry -- these guys moved cultivation exclusively indoors, and they made grow cycles extremely and unnaturally short. They also started to use pesticides and fertilizers in some ways that we should be concerned with. In fact, I was recently talking to a buddy who had just left a job at a commercial grow operation because he was so concerned with the chemicals that he was being asked to interact with. Some of his fellow employees were actually encouraged to wear hazmat suits while they were spraying the chemical cocktails on the plants. With that kind of manipulation, the products that are being sold today can contain above 30 percent THC. And our concentrates -- our concentrates can actually contain above 95 percent THC -- a far cry from the natural plant. Listen, this isn't your grandpa's weed.
This isn't your dad's weed. Like, this isn't even my weed.
If you've ever set foot inside one of the thousands of dispensaries that have sprung up in recent years, you know that what we're really selling in them is THC. All of the weed that you buy commercially lists exactly how much THC it contains, as do our other, much more popular products like vape pens, coffee, ice cream, condiments, granola, gum, candy, baked goods, suppositories.
And, of course, lube. Pretty much -- no, for real --
pretty much anything that you can imagine introducing into the human body. The vast majority of cannabis that's being sold today -- it isn't really cannabis. It's THC in either a pure form or in an extremely high and unnatural concentration. To say that we have legalized weed is subtly misleading. We have commercialized THC. And it's happened really quickly.
Now, the reason why the commercial market has so rapidly exploded is because there is a hell of a lot of money to be made in satisfying and increasing our desire to get high. And that money is no longer really being made by the mom-and-pop shops. So industry groups and corporations -- groups like the Drug Policy Alliance, the Marijuana Policy Project, Arcview Investment, the Cannabis Industry Association -- they've chased out and helped to chase out a lot of the small-time growers. So these cats know that the best way to continue to profit off of us is if they follow the alcohol industry's 80/20 rule. It's simple -- it's where 80 percent of the product is consumed by 20 percent of the consumers -- the problemed users. The wealthy, white, weed lobbyists -- and seriously, they are almost all rich, white men -- they know that we will consume more of what they're selling if they jack up the potency. They also know that we are more than twice as likely to consume THC regularly if we earn under 20,000 dollars a year than those who earn over 50,000 dollars a year. In other words, the poorer you are, the more likely you are to spend your money on their products. And in this country, income and race are highly correlated.
One of the reasons we often hear cited for the legalization of marijuana is that it will help to stop the disproportionate incarceration rates among minorities, which is something everybody in this room should be extremely concerned with. Unfortunately, we don't have to look any further than arrest rates for juveniles here in Colorado to counter that argument. According to the Colorado Department of Public Safety, since we opened retail in 2014 -- almost all of which are in poor, minority neighborhoods -- we saw an eight percent reduction in the arrest of white kids for all weed-related activity. Good on 'em. During that same time period, there was a 29 percent increase in the arrest of Hispanic kids for weed-related activity and a 58 percent increase in the arrest of black kids for weed-related crimes. You guys heard that, right? We are actually arresting more people of color in Colorado than we were prior to commercialization. And you're not reading that in the Post. Colorado Department of Safety. Legal marijuana coming into focus.
Another big issue that we have is in school suspension rates. So, schools that are predominantly white -- that is, they have a minority population of 25 percent or fewer -- in the first full year of data collection following commercialization, these schools had a grand total of 190 drug-related suspensions, almost all of which are for THC. At the same time, schools with a minority population of 75 to 100 percent had 801 drug-related suspensions, almost all of which were for THC.
When discussing minority populations, one that unfortunately often gets left out of the conversation is the LGBTQ community. Members of this community are more than twice as likely to consume THC than those who identify as heterosexual or cisgender. They also, unfortunately, have higher rates of mental illness and suicide. According to a study published in 2014 called "Going to Pot," we see that the unnaturally high levels of THC found in today's products actually compound those issues. They make them worse. Unfortunately, that seems to matter very little to the folks who are selling these products, because as you just saw, clearly, this is a good consumer base.
Listen, man -- I get it. In many circles, legalized marijuana is too much of a sacred cow to question. But we need to start this conversation, because what's being sold today is not natural, and lobbyists and industry are using social justice as a smoke screen so that they can get richer.
It's been my own journey to sobriety that led me to begin questioning a lot of what I was seeing; that's kind of one of the things that we're taught to do. When I left Boulder for the Washington, DC, area at 12 years old, I was transported into a world where the kind of shoes you wore mattered more than just about anything else. And my family was just too poor to help me play that game. So I was faced with a pretty real crisis of identity. In this new scene where there's more blacktop than treetops, man, I just didn't know who I was. So I smoked weed for the first time when I was 13. And I loved it.
I instantly found this social group, and I also just really liked being high. I finally found a way to shut this up. I quickly turned to other drugs and alcohol, and something just woke up inside of my brain. I was a daily user within a couple of months. My addictive use mirrors many of the stories that I'm sure you've heard before. It started out as fun, it got scary, and then it was just necessary. Enough said. I got wasted for the last time on June 15 of 1996. And I --
Thank you.
And I've spent the last 21 years trying to both put my life back in order as well as trying to find some peace in this world. And one of the ways I've done that is by working inside of nonprofit drug and alcohol treatment for the last 10 years, with groups like Phoenix Multisport, the University of Colorado Hospital and NALGAP -- the National Association for Lesbian, Gay, Transgender, Bisexual Treatment Providers and their Allies. Even after all of my work on the front lines and as a former consumer myself, I was shocked and pissed when I started to see what commercialization was doing to cannabis, because, you see, our hope for something pure and natural is making it hard for us to see what's really going on, and that is that the rich are getting richer on the backs of the poor and lying to our faces the entire time.
Thank you.
My friends, once again I fear that we are allowing industry to take advantage of the most challenged among us in order to turn a profit, much like we saw with tobacco and food in years past.
So when we told the food industry that we understood the impact our choices were having, and that we demanded better for ourselves and our families, that industry got into line. So is there any reason why we couldn't demand the same thing from this and from future industries who are trying to get a piece of our paychecks? What if we made these guys answer some hard questions? What if we held them to a higher standard than we are right now? Because as it stands, for many in our community, the grass isn't greener on this side of commercialization. They've just been sold a bag of goods.Thank you.
Jeremy Duhon: I know this is a sensitive topic but a very important one, so thank you for bringing this up and helping us explore it. You know, a lot of folks are experiencing health benefits from marijuana and cannabis. What would you say to that part of the community?
Ben Cort: I'm actually glad you brought that up. I think one of the most important things that we can do right now is to separate out medicinal, and especially what's happening and some of the advances that are being made using parts of this plant and even some whole-plant medicines, from the commercial market for THC. That's, I think, crucial. We've got to stop putting them together, and we've got to say, "OK, here's the part about getting high, and here's the part about the medicine."
JD: So it sounds like your talk is less about being anti-cannabis and more about raising awareness about aspects of commercialization. Is that a fair way to put it?
BC: Yes. So, I am not the anti-weed guy.
I'm the pro-logic guy. For me to cast stones -- listen, I'm a drug addict. I don't get to do that, and I don't want to do that. But what's bothering me and what's so hard for me is to see the way that we are just embracing without asking the hard questions, when if this was another industry, we'd be holding their feet to the fire on some stuff. And no, I'm not the anti-weed guy, I'm the pro-thought guy. So: think. I don't even care if you're smoking when you do it, just so long as you're an adult. So long as you're an adult, just think.





Source:www.ted.com