Tag Archives: inequality

First, we have to understand, the U.S. trade deficit has risen and U.S. manufacturing output has fallen not because of the “blind forces” of international trade. For decades now, U.S. corporations have decided to increase their profits by a combination of shifting production to other countries and automating many of the production processes that remain in the United States. And they’ve left the American working-class behind. Second, there’s no guarantee that increasing manufacturing output...

The two US economies — the haves (upper 40%) and the have-nots (bottom 60%).Zero HedgeRay Dalio: "This Is The Most Important Economic, Political And Social Issue Of Our Time" Tyler Durden

I'm sitting in a coffee shop opposite Haymarket Station in Edinburgh. Just up the road, the Institute for New Economic Thinking (INET) is holding its conference. I'm supposed to be there, as I was yesterday and the day before. But I am not at all sure I want to go. The last two days have left a very bitter taste.This conference, grandly entitled "Reawakening", is supposed to be a showcase for the "new economic thinking" of INET's name. I hoped to hear new voices and exciting ideas. At...

Maldistribution. Symptom or cause? A market ideology that causes widespread misery has no future. The Automatic EarthIs Capitalism Dead or Merely Dying? Raúl Ilargi Meijer The transition from the age of hunting-gathering to the agricultural age wrought a drastic social, political l and economic transformation, as did the transition from the agricultural age to the industrial age. So it can be safely assumed that the transition from the industrial age to the information age will also...

Hat tip Lambert Strether at Naked Capitalism. Bruce Boghosian runs the numbers and shows that without redistribution of wealth, the rich get richer and everyone else gets poorer… Using a mathematical model devised to mimic a simplified version of the free market, he and colleagues are finding that, without redistribution, wealth becomes increasingly more concentrated, and inequality grows until almost all assets are held by an extremely small percent of people. “Our work refutes the idea...

The latest IMF Fiscal Monitor, “Tackling Inequality,” is out and it represents a direct challenge to the United States. Occasional Links & CommentaryTackle this!David F. Ruccio | Professor of Economics, University of Notre Dame

Apparently, measuring the levels of two molecules—an individual’s C-reactive protein and fibrinogen (as in the charts above)—and matching them against their socioeconomic position starts to reveal the hidden mechanisms connecting social inequality and health. And the missing link turns out to be stress. Debt is a major cause of stress, and a rent-based economy is based on debt. Poverty is another major cause of stress, as is financial and economic precariousness. As more people join the...

CCPA recommendations for a better North American trade model October 6, 2017The all-party House of Commons trade committee is consulting Canadians on their priorities for bilateral and trilateral North American trade in light of the current renegotiation of NAFTA. In the CCPA’s submission to this process, Scott Sinclair, Stuart Trew, and Hadrian Mertins-Kirkwood argue for a different kind of trading relationship that is inclusive, transformative, and […] Canadian Centre for Policy...

The rules of the global economy are rigged against those who have to work to earn a living, and in favour of multinational corporations and the ultra-rich. It is no accident that, as Oxfam has revealed, the richest 1% own more wealth than the rest of humanity combined. This is inequality by design. The world is facing a huge decent work deficit, and the rules of the global economy need to change. The just-so story of economic liberalism is that economics is a natural science and economics...

"Immiseration" has a nice quality to it and is less emotionally loaded than "exploitation," which is now associated with "Marxism" in the pejorative sense in capitalist countries like the US. It’s clear that, for decades now, American workers have been falling further and further behind. And there’s simply no justification for this sorry state of affairs—nothing that can rationalize or excuse the growing gap between the majority of people who work for a living and the tiny group at the...