A Global Social Support System: What the International Community Could Learn From the United States' National Basketball Association's Scheme for Redistribution of New Talent

Abstract

If global trade were fair, it is argued, then international aid would be unnecessary and inequalities inherent to the economic system would be justifiable. Here, we argue that while global trade is unfair, in part because richer countries set the rules, we believe that additional interventions must go beyond trade regulation and short-term aid to redress inequalities among countries that will persist and possibly worsen in spite of such measures. Drawing on an example of measures taken to redress the characteristics of a system that inherently increases inequality, the ability of dominant teams in the National Basketball Association (NBA) to recruit the most talented players, we argue that market-based competition even in the context of fair rules will create and amplify economic inequalities. We argue that, just as the NBA created a draft to reduce the emergence of severe inequalities among teams, systems of social support within richer countries should be paralleled by a global system to counterbalance persisting inequalities among countries that are produced by market forces. We explain how such a mechanism might operate among integrated market economies, and identify the Global

From the Myth of Level Playing Fields to the Reality of a Finite Planet Comment on "A Global Social Support System: What the International Community Could Learn From the United States' National Basketball Association' Scheme for Redistribution of New Talent"

“…Increasing the income of the bottom 40% of the world's population (one of the key targets for the inequality goal) cannot be done without deep structural reforms to both market pre-distribution and post-market redistribution, if the numerous environmental protection goals and targets that are now central to the global policy agenda are to have more than hortatory meaning. These four problems do not reduce the inventiveness of the scheme proposed by Ooms et al, 1 which could even be enhanced by urging the equally improbable imposition of financial transaction taxes capable of generating redistributive global revenues an order of a magnitude greater than those estimated for the Global Social Protection Fund. Their idea is necessary, even if insufficient.…”

“…T he insightful article by Ooms et al 1 invoking the redistributive competitiveness of the National Basketball Association (NBA) drafting rules immediately evokes for me two other images. The first one I encountered in the early 1990s in Aotearoa/New Zealand during that country's full embrace of neoliberal economics and its rubrics of privatization, liberalization, and labour market deregulation.…”

Global social redistribution in the context of the refugee crisis

“…If not fairer trade conditions, decent work, and other structural improvements, development aid may still stand in place of some more advanced mechanisms of global redistribution. Or, as Ooms et al (2015) put it,while the persistence of inequalities among countries can, at least in part, be blamed on unfair regulation of the global market (rich countries setting the rules), the lack of a redistributive mechanism at an international level is also a factor. (p. 716)…”

“…. ] put in a portion of their winnings (a tax) each year, while the losing countries would have a sustainable, domestic-welfare-like system of social support’ (Ooms et al, 2015: 716–717). Similarly, in an International Health Policies (IHP) article, Jean-Paul Dossou (2015) demands a ‘New Global Social Contract’, explaining that it cannot stop at national social contracts and security systems:Perhaps the time has come to start a real debate on a borderless social insurance scheme?…”

How Can a Global Social Support System Hope to Achieve Fairer Competiveness? Comment on "A Global Social Support System: What the International Community Could Learn From the United States' National Basketball Association"

“…T he paper by Ooms et al 1 sets out some good general principles for a global social support system. They argue that global trade is unfair, in part because richer countries set the rules.…”