Social Insurance

Ted Barlow of Crooked Timber hosts a personal mela, that he calls Speakers' Corner. The latest edition can be found here. I greatly recommend this "terrific basic-principles primer" on the need for social insurance by Mark Thoma, who has a blog called Economist's view.

While we are on the topic of social insurance, do take a look at Cosma Shalizi's views on what he calls the Great American Risk Shift, here and here.

The New York Times did a potentially Pulitzer winning series on 'Class in America' (sorry, no links! they are now behind NYTimes' paywall). There has been much blog commentary on this series; you might want to start with this post by Brad DeLong, and work your way up and down.

While all these posts are US-centric, many things said in them are fairly universal, and so, they should be relevant to issues such as class, inequality -- and yes, poverty -- in India.