Tag Archives: distribution

There is no problem with scarcity — there is a problem with humanity’s social organization and with its institutions. There is no failure in our production of economic values — even now they are being produced to abundance (maybe even over-abundance). The math above shows that, if it could be allowed, this country can afford to pay a wage just shy of $100 to every human being who is willing to work. It is only the obscenely wealthy whom we stretch and strain to afford… Economic rent.John...

Workers’ wages have been stagnant for the past decade across the 36 countries that make up the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development. But the problem has been particularly acute in the United States, where the “low-income rate” is high (only surpassed by two countries, Greece and Spain) and “income inequality” even worse (following only Israel). The causes are clear: workers suffer when many of the new jobs they’re forced to have the freedom to take are on the low end of...

Perception about immigration.Marginal RevolutionTrump understands this, perhaps you do notTyler Cowen | Holbert C. Harris Chair of Economics at George Mason University and serves as chairman and general director of the Mercatus Center

When the poorest gain, the lower bound, or ‘floor’, of the distribution of living standards rises. Using microdata spanning the last 30 years, this column argues that the floor in the US has been sinking, alongside rising top incomes. The floor would have fallen further without public spending on food stamps, which helped protect the poorest in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis. vox.euAlongside rising top incomes, the level of living of America’s poorest has fallen Martin...

The rising scholar of taxation and inequality talks to ProMarket about the problems excessive economic power poses for open political systems, how states can tackle profit-shifting, and critics who have dismissed his work on distributional issues as “a French economics.” ProMarket — The blog of the Stigler Center at the University of Chicago Booth School of BusinessGabriel Zucman: “Some People in Economics Feel That Talking About Inequality Is Not What Economists Should Be Doing”Samantha...

What "they" don't want you to see unless you are one of the "them." Short. It estimates that already in 2006 in the US the richest 5% possessed greater net worth than the bottom 95% combined. Real-World Economics Review BlogCitigroup Plutonomy Reports update Edward Fullbrook

Conventional economics prioritizes "growth" measured chiefly by per capita real GDP, assuming that increasing per capita real GDP increases the standard of living of a society. However, per capita real GDP is not a metric of the standard of living since it does not include distribution. They becomes crucial as inequality of income and net worth increases. A small segment of the population can be getting better off, while most of the society either languishes or declines. The typical...

In discussions of global inequality, there is general agreement that, whatever else may have happened, within-country inequality has increased in most cases, even as between-country inequality has come down. But overall, because of the recent emergence of countries with large populations like China and India, there has actually been some reduction in global inequality, because of increasing incomes in the “middle” of the global distribution.... This is what gave rise to the famous...

I’m about to start writing about the new proposal from Stephanie Kelton and her colleagues at the Levy Institute on the guaranteed jobs program, a proposal, by the way, that’s starting to get some serious notice. But ahead of that work I want to consider an extreme case, but not an unlikely one. What if, in the future, there simply aren’t enough jobs for everyone? What then? Put more simply, what’s the underlying assumption behind the world of the Jetsons? The late Stephen Hawking, in his...

Globalization has led to a rise in global income inequality, not a reduction.Income doesn’t trickle down.Policy – not trade or technology – is most responsible for inequality. Demand lagging capability to supply due to hoarding at the top end. Contrary to the assumptions of neoclassical economics, distribution counts. This should be obvious since in a capitalistic system distribution is through markets where goods are rationed by price and ability to pay. But the "laws of economics" seem to...