jim luke 9:15 pm on March 11, 2017  

Topic 6 Readings

I thought I had posted this, but apparently I forgot to hit the publish button, so catching up.

For Topic 6, let’s take an introduction into Income Inequality.  It’s a topic that for many decades in the late 20th century and early 21st century wasn’t given much attention in either academic economics literature OR in discussions by politicians.  This was for several related reasons. First, there was a carry-over from the cold war. Starting in the 1940’s and 1950’s, communism was demonized both academically and politically, that any research or political talk of income inequality risked associating the author with communism too. Then, starting in the 1970’s and growing in the 1980’s and onward the economic-political system was taken with what we call “neo-liberalism”.  Neoliberalism is a very pro-market, pro-corporate approach to capitalism that seeks to minimize government involvement in any aspects of the economy as well as promote globalism.  Essentially, all US presidents from Reagan through Obama have been neoliberal. It remains to be seen how neoliberal Trump will be.

This lack of attention to income inequality began to change ten years ago. First, we had the global financial crisis and resulting worst recession/depression since the Great Depression in the 1930’s and it seems clear that rising income inequality is partly a cause.  Second, and this brings me to our readings, was the publication of ground-breaking research of a French economist, Thomas Piketty, who assembled and analyzed a massive historical database of incomes to show that neoliberal capitalism appears likely to increase income inequality with quite negative results.

So, for this topic I would like you to take a look at the following three readings.  The first, is a long one – but quite readable – from Piketty himself.  The second, by me, is a short one that really only highlights a simple graph of the changing sources of US government tax money over the years.  The last one is also a blog post I wrote in the past but the key part is really an embedded video about research on how income inequality is actually quite unhealthy.  I think you’ll find it interesting.

I ask you to participate in the conversation on this topic by either:  writing a post on your own blog and categorizing it as ECON260 so it posts here automatically, create a front page post here, or use the reply to comment on this post.

The Readings: