Tag Archives: inequality

Productivity growth (the rate at which technology is displacing workers) had slowed to roughly 1.0 percent annually in the years since 2005. This compares to a 3.0 percent growth rate in the decade from 1995 to 2005 and the long Golden Age from 1947 to 1973. Most economists expect the rate of productivity growth to remain near 1.0 percent as opposed to returning back to something close to its 3.0 percent rate in more prosperous times.…  It is also worth noting that the high productivity...

Income disparity in India has become even more stark, showing that efforts to alleviate poverty and achieve more inclusive growth have had little success. A survey carried out recently by international rights group Oxfam revealed that the richest 1% in India cornered 73% of wealth generated in the country last year, Press Trust of India has reported. A similar survey last year showed that India’s richest 1% held 58% of the country’s total wealth — higher than the global figure of about...

The UK Guardian Editorial ran a sub-header yesterday (January 21, 2018) “Democracies will fall under the spell of populists like Donald Trump if they fail to deal with the fallout of globalisation?”, which I thought reflected the misunderstandings that so-called progressive have about ‘globalisation’ and its impacts on the capacities of the sovereign state. The UK Guardian Editorial was responding to the release of the latest Oxfam report (released January 16, 2018) – An Economy for the...

Four out of every five dollars of wealth generated in 2017 ended up in the pockets of the richest 1%, while the poorest half of humanity got nothing, a report published by Oxfam found on Monday. As global political and business leaders gather for this week’s World Economic Forum annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland, the charity’s report highlights a global system that rewards the super-rich and neglects the poor.... “The economic model is not working at all,” Oxfam report co-author, Iñigo...

Eugenics has a bad reputation. Even the word "eugenics" is repugnant to many people, associated as it is with atrocities - forced sterilization programmes in America, for example, and of course the horrors of Nazi Germany. We like to see eugenics as discredited pseudo-science that has been consigned to the dust of history. Never again will we treat people as expendable simply because of their inherited characteristics. But ideas that we discard because of their horrible consequences have...

Branko Milanovic on his new paper with Thomas Hauner and Suresh Naidu exploring inequality prior to World War I and providing empirical support for the classical theory of imperialism. ProMarket — The blog of the Stigler Center at the University of Chicago Booth School of BusinessInequality, Imperialism, and the First World WarBranko Milanovic | Visiting Presidential Professor at City University of New York Graduate Center and senior scholar at the Luxembourg Income Study (LIS), and...

Important.  Marshall Steinbaum catches us up on what's happened since the publication of Piketty's Capital in the 21st Century three years ago. Actually, lots.  But the economics profession has largely ignored it since it involves distribution and the economics profession doesn't consider distribution irrelevant.Boston ReviewWhy Are Economists Giving Piketty the Cold Shoulder?Marshall Steinbaum | Fellow and Research Director at the Roosevelt Institute

I would phrase it somewhat differently: "It's the distribution, stupid."The social and political problems arise from grossly asymmetrical distribution and the ensuing distributional effects economically through highly asymmetrical income and wealth.Occasional Links & CommentaryIt’s the profits, stupid!David F. Ruccio | Professor of Economics, University of Notre Dame

It is customary to contrast Trump and Macron: on one hand the vulgar American businessman with his xenophobic tweets and global warming scepticism; and on the other, the well-educated, enlightened European with his concern for dialogue between different cultures and sustainable development. All this is not entirely false and rather pleasing to French ears. But if we take a closer look at the policies being implemented, one is struck by the similarities. In particular, Trump, like Macron,...

British Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn addressed United Nations officials in Geneva this Friday in a speech outlining his vision for a twenty-first century internationalism. The speech, scheduled to mark International Human Rights Day, examined the roots of global economic inequality, the developing climate crisis and the impact of war across the world. These “threats to our common humanity,” it argues, can only be overcome with “a global rules-based system that applies to all and works...