Headline, January 02 2022/ ''' '' THE POORS' TAP '' '''

 

''' '' THE POORS' 

TAP '' '''

THERE'S A WIDESPREAD NEED TO reconnect to all the things that make life worth living, and what better moment than right now. And what better place to discuss this than The World Students Society.

THERE'S A LONG TRADITION AMONG SOCIAL thinkers and policymakers of treating workers / students as walking, talking machines that turn calories into work and work into commodities that get sold in the market.

Under capitalism, food is important because it provides fuel to the workforce. In this line of thinking, enjoyment of food is at best a distraction and often a dangerous invitation to indolence.

The scolding of American lawmakers who want to forbid the use of food stamps to purchase junk food are a part of long lineage that goes back to the Victorian workhouses, which made sure that the food was never inviting enough to encourage sloth.

It is the continuing obsession with treating working-class people as efficient machines for turning nutrients into output that explains why so many governments insist on giving bags of grain to the poor instead of money that they might waste. This infantilizes the poor and, except in very special circumstances, it does nothing to improve nutrition.

The pleasure of eating, to say nothing of cooking, has no place in this narrative. And the idea that if working people knew what was good for them, they'd simply seek out more food as fuel is a woefully limited view of the eating experience of most of the world.

As anybody who has been poor or has spent time with poor people knows, eating something special is a source of great excitement.

As it is for everyone. Standing at the end of his very dark and disappointing year, almost two years into pandemic, we all know the joy of a feast - whether actual or metaphorical.

Every village has its feast days and its special festal foods. Somewhere goats will be slaughtered, somewhere ceremonial coconuts cracked. Perhaps fresh dates will be piled on special plates that come out once a year. Maybe mothers will pop sweetened balls of rice into the mouths of their children.

Friends and relatives will come over to help roast an entire camel for Eid; to share scoops of feijoada, that wonderful Brazilian stew beans simmered with off-cuts, from pig's ears to cow's tongue; to pinch the dumplings for the Lunar New Year; to fold the delicate edges of sweet coconut-stuffed Maharashtrian Karanji, to be fried under the watchful eye of the matriarch.

The feast's inspiration might be religious, but it could as well be a wedding, a birth, a funeral or a harvest.

People across the socioeconomic spectrum have adapted these celebrations as opportunities to feast, too : My family in Kolkata, many, many generations away from farming, still celebrates the winter harvest. Rice, coconuts, date sugar, sweet potatoes, milk, sesame seeds and more are turned into countless varieties of mishti, delicious Bengali desserts - and those warned off eating too much sugar have to suffer the sight of them piled high on tables.

FEAST. It's only human.

The Honor and Serving of the Latest Global Operational Research on some great writings and the reality of life and living, continues. The World Students Society thanks author Professor Abhijt Banerjee who teaches economics at M.I.T.

He was a recipient of the 2019 Nobel in economic science for work on an experimental approach to alleviating global poverty. He is a co-author of '' Poor Economics '' : A Radical Rethinking of the Way to Fight Global Poverty.''

With most respectful dedication to Mankind, to Global Poverty, The Poor of the World, and then Students, Professors and Teachers of the world. See Ya all prepare and register for Great Global Elections on The World Students Society : wssciw.blogspot.com and Twitter - !E-WOW! - The Ecosystem 2011 :

Good Night and God Bless

SAM Daily Times - the Voice of the Voiceless