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Introduction:

Since the American declaration of independency, and later the French revolution, 
people in general was introduced to have some importance when it comes to 
governance of a country, or even their own lives. Democracy was not established, 
but it was expressed that people have some rights, because they are humans, and not 
just because they have received some rights from a king or another kind of leader. 
The French revolution introduced &ldquo;libert&eacute;, egalit&eacute; et fraternit&eacute;&rdquo;, and the American 
declaration introduced the right to &ldquo;pursue own happiness&rdquo;. These developments led 
later on to the establishing of the parliamentary democracy in Europe and later on other 
places. 
 
Freedom is generally accepted, though in various forms, as a human right, and it has 
several derivatives like freedom of speech, religion, the right to gather etc. freedom as an &nbsp; 
indisputalble right has been challenged in the recent years, often with reference to threats from terror. 
Many movements, organizations, demonstrations and protests have had this as their objective - 
to protect the various rights of freedom. 
 
Equality and community, or solidarity are more disputed &ldquo;rights&rdquo;. In fact they have 
only been practiced partly throughout the years, often in relation to socialist or social 
democratic governance. It seems that it is difficult, maybe impossible, to use these 
concepts in a governance context. The vast majority of countries today are 
capitalistic economies, and a capitalistic economy does not include equality or 
solidarity as a measurement for success. Success is profitable investments and growth. 
When the industrial societies developed in the last period of the 19 th century and 
most of the 20 th century, the concept of the welfare state was introduced, mainly to avoid 
social conflicts, because people protested against inhuman conditions and low wages put 
upon them by the businesses. 
 
Later on it was widely accepted that the welfare state had a moral task to keep the societies 
together by supporting relatively fair conditions for all citizens. From the 1930s, with the big 
economic crisis, it also showed that public economic support to people in need could 
have a positive influence on the national economy. The Scandinavian welfare model 
is the most known example of this &ldquo;thinking in welfare&rdquo;, and is still used today as a 
concept to get ideas from. 
 
Various welfare systems and especially the Scandinavian, are the most prominent 
examples of introducing the concepts of equality and solidarity into real politics. Not 
that they were carried fully, but it was, and is, discussed as values important for a 
society. The welfare systems, common solutions on social and economic matters, are 
under strong pressure today. The global market, liberalization, deregulation 
challenge any attempt to people or societies trying to organize to solve societal 
matters. The global market wants direct access to individual consumers, without 
specific social or economic contracts. That this will create inequalities and contradict 
a solidary thinking in the society is inevitably, or even good, for market. 
 
At the moment the public sectors in e.g. the industrialized world is lacking money for 
their policies. At the same time it is obvious that especially big business pay a 
minimum of taxes, if any. The current economic system makes it difficult, if possible 
at all, to have solidarity and equality as part of the fundament for a society. There are 
many reactions against this, especially amongst young people, but not only. The 
English professor Richard Wilkinson shows in his book on the issue that it is an 
advantage for a society to build on equality and solidarity. In the recent years there is a 
long list of pepople reacting from a perspective of freedom and solidarity: The 15th of May 
movement in Spain, the Occupy Wall Street movement, the protesters in Greece, 
parts of the Arab Spring, dictators displaced in Sudan and Mali, the movements 
fighting climate changes. The list is long showing that many people not just adapt to 
dictates from the global, capitalistic market forces, or random political non-democratic 
powers, without protesting. The people or/and the systems of Power - how will this 
political encounter turn out?

Directive:

Read the introduction and the questions and make clear the overall aim of the task. 
Read the files. Use additional sources if you find it beneficial. The origin of 
additional sources must be noted for control. 
Comment: Files and data can be compared to the data from Eurostat.org 
 
Product: 
Discuss the question posed in the wording of the task in a group of three. 
Use the issues in the directives as background for the discussion. 
Conclude on the discussion, 2 pages 
 
The issues to work with: 
NB: Read the files tagged &ldquo;a&rdquo; thoroughly and be inspired by the others. 
 
1. Files F1: The concept of equality
<div style="margin-left: 40px;">a) What is the qualities of equality and what could be the price of inequality? 
Read the other articles and sum up the arguments for: 
b) Why the necessity or the benefit of equality according to the articles? 
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Use the given examples and data.</div>
 
2. Files F2: The concept of solidarity as a pillar in nation building
<div style="margin-left: 40px;">a) Discuss the threats towards the European welfare state and what could be 
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; done? 
Read the articles and sum up the arguments for: 
b) What is the importance or necessity of solidarity as a nation-building 
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; concept? Refer to the given examples and data.</div>
3. Files F3: Policies promoting equality and solidarity

<div style="margin-left: 40px;">a) What are the main arguments of Richard Wilkinson for a solidary society? 
Read the other articles and sum up the arguments: 
b) What is the situation for democracy and solidarity in todays Europe? 
c) How are the people impoverished/oppressed? Examples? 
d) What can we do about it, and what is done? Arguments. 
&nbsp;</div>
4. Files F4: Policies questioning/opposing equality and solidarity

<div style="margin-left: 40px;">Read the articles and sum up: 
a) What are the main forces opposing equality and solidarity? How and why? 
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Give examples and data from the articles. 
b) Are there examples/policies fighting these forces, eventually how?</div>

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AGNE SIVICKYTE DNS2018

Where Europe is heading? What is the future? Is it possible to say that solidarity and equality (is and) will be our main foundation, the basic concepts in the governance? What are equality and solidarity?
These are some examples of the questions from our team discussion, where we tried to analyze and predict where Europe is heading. Our discussion started by defining what is the meaning of concepts of equality and solidarity. According to Oxford's dictionary, equality is a state of being equal, especially in status, rights or opportunities. Solidarity is unity or agreement of feeling or action, especially among individuals with a common interest or mutual support within a group. But what does it mean practically? Is it possible to reach it?
 I think it is a very big question, that is quite hard to answer because the idea of equality or solidarity is very broad and hardly tangible. For example - equality. What is the ultimate level that we are striving for? I see equality as a concept of utopia. A utopia that we can all try to keep as our ultimate goal and strike towards it. At the same time, keeping it as ideology, or something that should be as our foundation while ruling and governing the countries. Nowadays, we talk quite a lot about different minorities and their right starting from feminists movements, homosexuals, immigrants and other cultural, social minorities. Theoretically, the concepts that I mentioned before we can find in many different political agendas all around Europe, but from the other side, we can see many different oppositions coming out, with the names of nationalists or radicals.
… And as always, our discussion turns to the point of education and how different forces shape us as individuals and how it affects our future choices. The environment in which young individual is growing up will set some values in him or her, which in the future will affect which ideology he or she will support with their votes. That is why, we always come back to the base of teaching and schooling with an intention of creating a broad spectrum of values that could empower people to embrace equality, solidarity, tolerance, peace and many more beautiful concepts. And maybe it is naive, but I would like to believe that we shape our governmental systems with our stands and choices. So the future is now, in our hands. Of course, we should be realistic and more critical, look at the facts and try to find reasoning why we are not satisfied and what is wrong. The added files and the directives were giving quite a nice perspective upon the nowadays situation. For example, one of the biggest problems that we are facing is a huge gap that separates people from the two radical sides, between super-rich, who can afford luxury life for themselves and their families and between people who suffer from extreme poverty and can not afford basic things. That creates a very big disbalance in society. And in that sense, I was very much inspired by the first file “concept of equality” because there I read a bit different perspective towards the topic of rich and poor. We all agree that poverty is one of the biggest problems in nowadays world. We talk quite often about how we should help the poor and how we should together fight with it. But there is another side of this topic – the super-rich. In the first file, it was written about how we should encounter that the extreme richness is also a problem and that this is the main reason why the gap is getting bigger and bigger. Together with the growing gap, we can see that super-rich people are just 0,01% of the whole population, but to compare, that 0,01% of the rich people could end the bigger part of the world poverty. The problem is that the lack is reflecting many different aspects such as economic, political or social. Starting from the fact that not everybody can afford basic needs ( shelter, clean water, nutritious food, clothes that could fit the weather). Not everybody can access the schooling system, have a proper education or reach higher, university-level education. At the same time, taking an example from South Africa, which is a country which accordingly to the world bank data, is considered as a country with the biggest gap between rich and poor, faces a lot of social problems. First of all racism and inequality between people. As the situation between the people is so different, it is probably very difficult to relate, stay solidary and understand each other. Which is also, happening because of a big lack in the educational system. That is also one of the reasons why South Africa has one of the highest crime levels in the country which creates big distraction and fear between the people.
Another aspect that was presented in the files and I found it quite interesting to bring is how hard is to break the patterns. It is very hard to get out of poverty if your family doesn’t have money it will be very difficult to access higher education, which can block the possibilities to have well-paid jobs. And that creates a trap, or we can call it a circle of life in poverty.
But then maybe, the answer should be “ rich should share with the poor”? And here comes another side, that everybody has different needs and understandings of wealth. How Gandhi was saying “Earth provides enough to satisfy every man's need, but not every man's greed “ And from that point of view it is very difficult to judge and to decide what if good or bad. In my opinion, it would be also wrong to just say, that they need to donate all their goods and money to someone that needs more. I think it is more about their values and their morals which is hard to debate upon and criticize. 
One of the ways, that was presented in the files was how we could try to balance it out the huge gap between rich and poor is through the tax system. According to the income of the individual ( bigger salary/ income- bigger taxes), there is a certain amount of money that he or she needs to pay back to the state. The state invests this money into the good of everybody, for example, free health care, cheaper public transport, education and other different kinds of spheres. The system is already working, just not perfect. For example, the invested money in the public sector is not always accessible to all the parts of society, as the society itself is so diverse and the gap between people is big. For example, higher, university-level education in Lithuania is not accessible for everybody, that is one of the reasons why people migrate to other countries such as Denmark, Sweden where higher education is for free. Then in my head, I hear the sentence money equals power, money equals possibilities which leads us to the capitalistic, individualistic society where the gap between the rich and poor is getting better.
It is a fact, that it is very difficult to please everybody's wishes, needs and probably there will always be someone not satisfied enough. But most importantly, is our fundaments and what kind of values stands behind them. This is how we create something that is more for everybody.

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