Equality – Things Are Good

Women Changing Cities

A new book has come out to celebrate Women Changing Cities for the better. Cities around the world are dealing with climate change, inequality, and an assortment of local issues and often we forget that these cities can do more than react – they can lead. This book takes a look at 19 women who are leading our urban fabrics into the future to ensure a better locally life and, in some cases, shaping the globe.

The book spans 11 geographies, profiling 19 women in leadership: mayors, civil servants, entrepreneurs and advocates who, through their work, are fundamentally reimagining how cities can and should function. A brief preview of some of their stories are below. What unites these women across wildly different cultural and political contexts are five recurring themes: a commitment to listening and empathy; an intersectional, long-term vision; care as a social value; the power of coalition-building; and the courage to prioritize having an impact over holding on to power and pushing through the opposition.

Denmark is the Best Place for Women

Denmark has earned the title as the best place for women to live based on the Women, Peace and Security Index. It uses 13 indicators that span women’s inclusion from education to justice in order to generate scores. Denmark continues to lead the rankings, while Afghanistan performs the worst. Notable the USA dropped in the rankings as they are removing healthcare and attempting to remove voting rights from women. Hopefully for those living in the USA the shame of falling down the rankings will help change things there for the better. Many developed counties are in the top 20 and we can also hope that they all do as well as Denmark next year, after all the wellbeing of women is directly connected to the wellbeing of nations.

Denmark
Iceland
Norway
Sweden
Finland
Luxembourg
Belgium
Netherlands
Austria
New Zealand
Australian
Estonia
Ireland
Slovenia
Lithuania
Canada
Latvia
Singapore
Switzerland
United Arab Emirates

When Taxes Go Up, Millionaires Stay Where They Are

A table showing countries’ reported migrating millionaires represented less than 1% of their millionaires, and was closer to 0% for most countries, including the UK. — Source: The millionaire exodus myth, Tax Justice Network, June 2025

In 2024 the UK government modified their tax system and as a result lobbyists and millionaires all claimed that increasing taxes would lead to millionaires fleeing the country. This did no happen. In fact, millionaires don’t move all that much. In this context millionaire means a person with over $1 million in liquid assets, which means that people who have an expensive property don’t get counted because their wealth is tied down. With his information in mind we should all be ok with increasing taxes on the ultra wealthy so that their contributions back to society are comparable to the wealth that they extract.

The Tax Justice Network’s review – co-published with Patriotic Millionaires UK and Tax Justice UK – of the Henley report finds that the number of millionaires claimed by Henley & Partners to be leaving countries in “exodus” in 2024 represented near-0% of those countries’ millionaire populations. For example, the 9500 millionaires widely reported to be leaving the UK in 2024 represented 0.3% of the UK’s 3.06 million millionaires.

Media reporting widely blamed the alleged millionaire exodus on tax policies in the same year that calls for a wealth tax on the superrich gained unprecedented momentum globally. The media reporting was equivalent to 30 news pieces a day on the non-existent millionaire exodus across 2024.

To Increase Equality Tell People the Rich Don’t Have to Work

The rich keep getting richer because we think they work for it. The thing is, they don’t work for their wealth that separates the wealthy from everyone else. What allows the rich to keep increasing their wealth is capital gains instead of money earned though labour. Most of us have to work to ensure we can pay rent and buy food; however, people born into wealth don’t need to work nearly as much since they can earn money from money. If we want a more equitable society where everyone needs to work to get wealthy then we need to tell people that the rich don’t need to work.

In this paper, Oscar Barrera-Rodriguez and Emmanuel Chávez examine the impact of providing information on the source of income of the top 1% earners on attitudes towards this group. Based on a randomized online survey of 2000 French respondents, they find that:

Simply presenting information about the amount of money the rich make is insufficient to change attitudes toward top earners.

Information about other aspects of income at the top, especially the sources of income (capital versus labor), does produce a shift.

Individuals most responsive to the treatments vote for left-wing candidates and have egalitarian notions of justice.

Transit Hub Addiction Clinics Benefit Everyone

When social services are difficult to get to then their services are used less, it sounds obvious but in too many places social services are very difficult to get to. Car centric urban designs further exacerbate inequality by limiting mobility options, or to put it another way: cars limit freedom of access and opportunities.

In order to best help everyone in our communities we should ensure that social services are accessible and what better way than at transit hubs? Many people suffering from addiction also suffer from economic problems so ensuring that they can easily get to treatment centres can help them recover. Early research is proving that accessible treatment centres help everyone.

“What we’re finding is that there’s this significant relationship between being close to these new transit start ups … and costs, operating costs are significantly less,” said Cohen.

“The other thing that we’re finding is that there’s a relationship between equity and access to treatment.”

The research looked at addiction and mental-health clinics that were within half-a-mile, or approximately 800 metres, of a new transit route. Cohen considered that basically walking distance, and compared results with those from clinics further afield.