Salon.com > Income inequality http://www.salon.com Fri, 03 May 2013 17:28:22 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.2.1 Is income inequality beyond fixing? http://www.salon.com/2013/04/24/is_income_inequality_beyond_fixing_partner/ http://www.salon.com/2013/04/24/is_income_inequality_beyond_fixing_partner/#comments Wed, 24 Apr 2013 20:22:00 +0000 http://www.railrode.net/?p=13281158 A critical concern of our time is not simply our high levels of income inequality and their negative impact on opportunity and mobility.  It’s how inequality and immobility become entrenched in the system—how they replicate.

In a nation like ours, where the flow of money into politics keeps getting stronger, one way this occurs is through the political preferences of the wealthy.  Of course, at any point in our history, the disproportionate policy influence of the wealthy has been a serious problem for our democracy.  But in today’s America, two factors intensify this threat: the increased concentration of economic resources, and the increased access those resources have to the political system.

There’s yet another piece to this puzzle, however, kind of a riff off the old F. Scott Fitzgerald line about the rich being different from the rest of us (i.e., besides “they’ve got more money”).  What are the political preferences of the wealth and how do they differ from those of the rest of us?

Continue Reading...

]]> http://www.salon.com/2013/04/24/is_income_inequality_beyond_fixing_partner/feed/ 29 Incomes of bottom 90 percent grew $59 in 40 years http://www.salon.com/2013/03/25/incomes_of_bottom_90_percent_grew_59_in_40_years/ http://www.salon.com/2013/03/25/incomes_of_bottom_90_percent_grew_59_in_40_years/#comments Mon, 25 Mar 2013 21:12:00 +0000 http://www.railrode.net/?p=13251611 Pulitzer Prize-winner David Cay Johnston has highlighted yet more statistics that illuminate the spike in income inequality in the U.S. in recent decades. Flagging Johnston's analysis, HuffPo noted Monday, "Incomes for the bottom 90 percent of Americans only grew by $59 on average between 1966 and 2011 (when you adjust those incomes for inflation)... During the same period, the average income for the top 10 percent of Americans rose by $116,071."

Johnston offered a visual analogy for the disparity in a column for Tax Analysts last month:

Continue Reading...

]]> http://www.salon.com/2013/03/25/incomes_of_bottom_90_percent_grew_59_in_40_years/feed/ 43 Homeless in Silicon Valley http://www.salon.com/2013/03/10/homeless_in_the_silicon_valley_partner/ http://www.salon.com/2013/03/10/homeless_in_the_silicon_valley_partner/#comments Sun, 10 Mar 2013 17:00:00 +0000 http://www.railrode.net/?p=13223603 New America media In San Jose, the heart of Silicon Valley, economic inequality can be seen from the sky. Dozens of tents and flimsy structures dot a grassy open field near the San Jose airport, which is home to more than 100 homeless people. There are an estimated 60 encampments throughout Santa Clara County, according to news reports. City officials have announced a "clean up" of the San Jose camp on Friday, March 8, where they will push people out and confiscate their possessions. Silicon Valley De-Bug, a community and youth media organization based in San Jose, interviewed the camp's residents about how they got there and where they are headed.

 

Continue Reading...

]]> http://www.salon.com/2013/03/10/homeless_in_the_silicon_valley_partner/feed/ 8 Income inequality in the U.S. rivals that of developing nations http://www.salon.com/2013/01/17/income_inequality_in_the_u_s_rivals_that_of_developing_nations/ http://www.salon.com/2013/01/17/income_inequality_in_the_u_s_rivals_that_of_developing_nations/#comments Thu, 17 Jan 2013 23:10:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=13174035 Global Post

The distance from Bridgeport, Connecticut to  Bangkok, Thailand is 8,639 miles. But then, it depends what one means by the word “distance.”As we discovered in the first installment of this GlobalPost Special Report, by some measures there is not much distance at all.

Take the Gini Index, the scale that economists use to measure income equality, with zero equaling perfect equality and 1 representing absolute inequality in which one person owns everything. Thailand, where Bangkok is the bustling capital city of one of Southeast Asia’s fast growing “Tiger economies,” comes in at .536. The Bridgeport area — Fairfield County — is slightly worse at .539. The two places fall very close in their ranking on the Gini Index as highly unequal.

Put more simply, these are cities where you can move, often within minutes, between the wrenching poverty of the dispossessed and the opulence of the super-rich. The physical distance between rich and poor in these places is small. But for the people who live in Bangkok and Bridgeport, traveling from the lower economic rungs to the higher ones is extremely difficult.

That has long been true in the developing world. And in America, which has long lived with the idea of mobility and a belief that all have a shot at the American Dream, it is increasingly difficult, as new economic research reveals.

To explore these issues of global income inequality and its cost, GlobalPost begins today a series of reports by more than 20 reporters, photographers and videographers from every corner of the world. The result of more than six months of reporting and data analysis, the Special Report seeks to match and compare American metropolitan areas with foreign countries that have similar levels of income inequality.

For me, the assignment was to return home to Fairfield Country, Connecticut, where I grew up, and explore how the death of industry in Bridgeport has cost good jobs and how US government tax policy over at least two decades has favored the rich, particularly hedge fund managers in the tony town of Greenwich. The result has been vast income inequality.

On the other side of the world, GlobalPost senior correspondent Patrick Winn explored Bangkok with its similar level of income inequality in the Gini Index. Winn has lived and worked in Bangkok for the last four years, and his reporting for this project takes readers from the city’s infamous slums to its equally infamous glitzy shopping district where the rich search out world-class bargains on Gucci and Prada.

The journey between Bridgeport and Bangkok was captured in a GlobalPost Special Report video segment titled “The Distance Between Rich and Poor.” It was shot by the award-winning photojournalist Ed Kashi who followed Winn and me through the cities we consider our own.

In both of these places, the top 5 percent of the population controls over 60 percent of income. That translates, in Bridgeport’s case, to a median income for that top 5 percent of over $685,000 a year, while the bottom 20 percent, clustered primarily in dismal slums like Bridgeport’s East End, take home about $15,000, US Census bureau figures show.

For those who live on either side of this divide — in either country — there is a profound lack of identification with the other world. A profound distance. “I don’t think of it [Bridgeport] at all,” said Karen Schiff, a well-dressed young woman heading home from Greenwich train station from her job in New York. “I don’t think I’ve ever even met someone from there — maybe I drove through, I don’t know.”

Clara Bing, a Bridgeport native who commutes to affluent Greenwich each day to work at a dry cleaning business, said she is not surprised people feel little responsibility for their poorer neighbors. “As long as we go home at night, I guess, it’s okay. It’s like we’re invisible,” she said.

Vast economic disparity is often associated with developing nations sacrificing social goals in order to emphasize growth and move up in global rankings. In Thailand, the boom years of the 1980s and 1990s saw Thailand’s per capita income — the average annual pay a person takes home — soar from $680 to nearly $5,000, making it an “upper middle income” country in the parlance of global development experts.

Thailand has 47,000 millionaires today, many of them holding the reigns of political power. The concentration of wealth in the hands of a few has touched off a backlash. The so-called “Red Shirt” movement has clashed violently with government forces, contending that the poor are deliberately exploited by a corrupt elite. Its rallies have calmed of late, but outrage over song matratan — i.e. “double standards” — is now a feature of the Thai political debate.

In America, such disparities evoke memories of the so-called “Gilded Age,” the period between the 1880s and 1920s of westward expansion, massive immigration and tycoons like Andrew Carnegie, J.P. Morgan and John D. Rockefeller. The great divide of that age, with its strikebreaking massacres, slum epidemics and child labor, launched the career of Republican Teddy Roosevelt’s progressive reform movement and, after the Great Depression a generation later, his Democratic cousin Franklin Delano’s New Deal.

Income disparity dropped markedly during the years that followed World War II, only to begin widening again about 1968. Until the 2008 financial crisis, the stagnation of middle and lower class incomes in the US were masked by asset bubbles and cheap credit. Only recently, as the housing collapse and banking crisis pulled back the curtains, has income disparity become a topic for polite conversation in US political campaigns.

"We can either settle for a country where a shrinking number of people do really well, while a growing number of Americans barely get by,” said President Obama in his 2012 State of the Union address. “Or we can restore an economy where everyone gets a fair shot, everyone does their fair share, and everyone plays by the same set of rules."

It’s not always so polite, of course. Two very different political movements, the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street, both sprung up, in part, out of anger over the stagnating prospects of the US middle class. The Tea Party stresses “inequality of opportunity” and believes pro-growth policies and an unbridled free markets will lift all boats. The left sees that as discredited and wants a tax code that reverses the inequality gap.

The focus on growth has come under new pressure from studies showing that America’s vaunted ability to create pathways to success may be flagging. Multiple studies, most recently by the Pew Center for the States, show that those born poor or in the lower middle class in America are far less likely than popularly imagined to “make it.” “Only 4 percent of those raised in the bottom quintile make it all the way to the top as adults, confirming that the ‘rags-to-riches’ story is more often found in Hollywood than in reality,” the report said.

The study found that richer people have a greater chance of moving up in American society, but that the vast majority will remain in the same income category. With studies challenging such a central component of the American Dream as social mobility, experts say, it should not be surprising that people are angry.

“Workers’ share of the pie is falling with inequality reaching levels similar to 100 years ago,” said Harvard economist Kenneth Rogoff, co-author of what many believe to be the definitive book on the 2008 crisis. “The status quo has to be vulnerable.”

 

Continue Reading...

]]> http://www.salon.com/2013/01/17/income_inequality_in_the_u_s_rivals_that_of_developing_nations/feed/ 10 Apple CEO: Board says $510 million in stock is enough http://www.salon.com/2012/12/27/apple_ceo_board_says_510_million_in_stock_is_enough/ http://www.salon.com/2012/12/27/apple_ceo_board_says_510_million_in_stock_is_enough/#comments Thu, 27 Dec 2012 17:37:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=13155799 Apple CEO Tim Cook got a relatively modest $4.2 million in pay for the latest fiscal year, after the company's board set him up with stock now worth $510 million for taking the reins in 2011.

Cook's pay for fiscal 2012, which ended in September, consisted of $1.4 million in salary, a bonus of $2.8 million, and $17,000 in company contributions to his 401(k) account and life insurance premiums, according to a filing.

Apple Inc.'s board saw no need to give Cook additional shares in 2012 after the sign-on grant of 1 million shares in 2011. Half of those shares vest in 2016 and the other half in 2021. A lot could happen to the value of the shares before Cook can cash them out, but the sign-on grant made him -at least on paper- the highest-paid U.S. CEO in 2011.

Cook did vest into shares worth $140 million in 2012. Those shares were granted earlier, when he was chief operating officer. He had been acting CEO for a while before the death of company co-founder Steve Jobs in October of 2011.

Continue Reading...

]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/12/27/apple_ceo_board_says_510_million_in_stock_is_enough/feed/ 1 Tax cuts steal from future http://www.salon.com/2012/12/14/tax_cuts_steal_from_future/ http://www.salon.com/2012/12/14/tax_cuts_steal_from_future/#comments Fri, 14 Dec 2012 17:00:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=13125060 The central political problem of our time is finding some way to stop the present from stealing from the future. Whether the issue is global warming, cutting taxes or funding higher education, we apparently find it impossible to resist the temptation to spend today what our children will have to pay for (at much increased expense) in some conveniently distant tomorrow.

In each of these cases, we are passing on the costs of our behavior to future generations, in a way that is both economically inefficient and deeply unfair. For example, it would be much cheaper in the long run to take serious steps to cut back on carbon emissions now, but in the long run, as John Maynard Keynes famously observed, “we are all dead.”

So we continue to live ecologically destructive lives because most of the consequences of our irresponsible behavior will be visited on our descendants, who at present have little or no say in the matter.

Similarly, when we vote ourselves tax cuts today we are in effect voting for tax increases -- and/or spending cuts -- for our children. Combining tax cuts with increased spending is the social equivalent of running up a multi-trillion dollar credit card balance and then mailing the payment notices to the future.

Continue Reading...

]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/12/14/tax_cuts_steal_from_future/feed/ 6 McDonald’s pay chasm: $8.25/hour to $8.75 million/year http://www.salon.com/2012/12/12/mcdonalds_pay_chasm_8_25hour_to_8_75_millionyear/ http://www.salon.com/2012/12/12/mcdonalds_pay_chasm_8_25hour_to_8_75_millionyear/#comments Wed, 12 Dec 2012 19:17:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=13122931 Bloomberg has an article today highlighting the pay gap at McDonald's. The whole piece is worth a read but the beginning is particularly striking. It highlights Chicago man Tyree Johnson, who holds positions at two different McDonald's. Between shifts he has to give himself a quick scrubbing in one of the restaurant's bathrooms because he can't even show up for work at a McDonald's smelling like a McDonald's.

“I hate when my boss tells me she won’t give me a raise because she can smell me,” he said.

Johnson, 44, needs the two paychecks to pay rent for his apartment at a single-room occupancy hotel on the city’s north side. While he’s worked at McDonald’s stores for two decades, he still doesn’t get 40 hours a week and makes $8.25 an hour, minimum wage in Illinois.

This is life in one of America’s premier growth industries. Fast-food restaurants have added positions more than twice as fast as the U.S. average during the recovery that began in June 2009.

Continue Reading...

]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/12/12/mcdonalds_pay_chasm_8_25hour_to_8_75_millionyear/feed/ 57 Victory for strangers, heathens, wastrels! http://www.salon.com/2012/11/18/victory_for_strangers_heathens_wastrels/ http://www.salon.com/2012/11/18/victory_for_strangers_heathens_wastrels/#comments Sun, 18 Nov 2012 17:00:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=13101030 Before we get to the persistence of class warfare in our politics, let’s talk about Skinch Painter. In 1900, when the San Francisco Examiner tracked him down, he was 78, “hale, hearty, and contented.” He hadn’t inherited a penny, but neither had he worked a day in his life. “He has never borrowed a dollar, nor stolen one,” the column read. “He has never been a tramp nor a beggar. He has never done a day’s work in exchange for money ... Yet he has lived.”

One day, when he was in his teens, he said to himself, “Look here, Skinch Painter, this old world owes you a living, and all you’ve got to do is collect it.” Wandering the Ozarks of Missouri, he inhabited a cave and relied on nature for his food and clothing. He hunted, fished and gathered nuts and berries, wearing only animal skins and going barefoot.

“Labor is a useless sin,” said Skinch. “The time a man spends working is just so much time lost from living.”

We can just about see Fox News sending a camera crew out to interview Skinch, and one of its handsomely paid straight men wrapping up the piece with an offhand, “See, you don’t need government handouts. If you don’t want to work, you can do what this guy does. At least he’s not a taker. The rest of us in this country, we’ll continue to work for a living.”

Continue Reading...

]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/11/18/victory_for_strangers_heathens_wastrels/feed/ 54 Stop income inequality! http://www.salon.com/2012/11/15/stop_income_inequality/ http://www.salon.com/2012/11/15/stop_income_inequality/#comments Thu, 15 Nov 2012 23:57:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=13100301 Don’t be distracted by January’s fiscal cliff or looming budget deficits. The central problem of our economy is widening inequality.

It’s reducing the purchasing power of the vast middle class on which job growth depends, and turning the economy into a speculative casino for multimillionaires and billionaires.

It’s also undermining our ability to turn the economy around, as those millionaires and billionaires subsidize politicians who refuse to raise taxes on the wealthy and seek to cut spending critical to the middle class and the poor.

We can reverse this trend.

The first step is to make sure Americans understand what’s occurred, why it’s occurred, and what must be done.

And one of the best means of doing so is through film.

That’s why I’ve joined a team of talented filmmakers to produce a new documentary called “Inequality for All.”

We need your help. Please watch the following short video, and do whatever you can.

Continue Reading...

]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/11/15/stop_income_inequality/feed/ 14 China’s economy will surpass US within 4 years http://www.salon.com/2012/11/09/chinas_economy_will_surpass_us_within_4_years/ http://www.salon.com/2012/11/09/chinas_economy_will_surpass_us_within_4_years/#comments Fri, 09 Nov 2012 13:33:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=13067151 China's economy will overtake the U.S. as the biggest in the world by as soon as 2016, according to leading think tank, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). GDP growth forecasts, released by the OECD in Paris Friday, suggest an economic power shift away from the west in the next few years (via the Guardian):

Global GDP will grow by 3% a year over the next 50 years, it says, but there will be large variations between countries and regions. By 2025, it says the combined GDP of China and India will be bigger than that of France, Germany, Italy, Japan, UK, US and Canada put together. Asa Johansson, senior economist at the OECD, said: "It is quite a shift in the balance of economic power we are going to see in the future."

Continue Reading...

]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/11/09/chinas_economy_will_surpass_us_within_4_years/feed/ 4 What a second-term Obama can — and can’t — accomplish http://www.salon.com/2012/11/04/what_a_second_term_obama_can_and_cant_accomplish/ http://www.salon.com/2012/11/04/what_a_second_term_obama_can_and_cant_accomplish/#comments Sun, 04 Nov 2012 12:00:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=13055106 No matter which candidate wins on Election Day, both liberalism and conservatism will have lost.  This was supposed to be a moment of choice: Voters would be presented with two contrasting visions of the future and would give one or the other a mandate to move forward.  But somewhere along the way clarity, as it so often does during presidential campaigns, gave way to horse race strategies, and we are left with a mess.

The Republicans, symbolized by Romney’s decision during the debates to offer an echo, bear a major share of the blame for the muddle.  We nonetheless have a fairly good sense that if Romney were to win, and if he were to bring the Senate along with him, he would etch a new sketch and make a sharp turn to the right.  If Obama, by contrast, hammers out an Electoral College victory, we have little idea what he will do.  Because the Republicans opted not to display their conservatism during the election, Obama was under no obligation to defend his liberalism.

Continue Reading...

]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/11/04/what_a_second_term_obama_can_and_cant_accomplish/feed/ 34 Global inequality highest in 20 years http://www.salon.com/2012/11/01/global_inequality_highest_in_20_years/ http://www.salon.com/2012/11/01/global_inequality_highest_in_20_years/#comments Thu, 01 Nov 2012 15:28:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=13059516 According to a new report from international NGO Save the Children, income inequality is at a 20-year high worldwide. In 32 economically developing countries surveyed, the report found that "children born into the richest households have access to 35 times the resources [including healthcare, food and schooling] of the poorest."

Save the Children notes that in recent decades, "the world has made dramatic progress in cutting child deaths and improving opportunities for children; we are now reaching a tipping point where preventable child deaths could be eradicated in our lifetime." However, the report stresses that income inequality between the rich and the poor serves to undermine metrics of progress. While overall statistics on global poverty are promising (the number of people in extreme poverty fell from almost 2 billion people to less than 1.3 billion people), the report found that in a fifth of countries reviewed, the incomes of the poorest had fallen since the 1990s, while the the rich had increased their share of national income in almost all nations assessed. The report states:

Continue Reading...

]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/11/01/global_inequality_highest_in_20_years/feed/ 1 Kevin Hassett: Mitt’s dumbest economist http://www.salon.com/2012/10/26/income_inequality_not_what_the_doctor_ordered/ http://www.salon.com/2012/10/26/income_inequality_not_what_the_doctor_ordered/#comments Fri, 26 Oct 2012 11:45:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=13052133 Income inequality? Don’t get worked up about it, wrote two American Enterprise Institute scholars in the Wall Street Journal this week. The gap between the rich and everybody else in the United States is not getting bigger, they argue, and those who are telling you that it is (like President Obama) are "seeking political gain by inflaming class hatreds with misleading statistics."

One of the Op-Ed's co-authors is Kevin Hassett, a man who has been much mocked for making the worst economic prediction since Irving Fisher declared stocks to be at a "permanently high plateau" ... in 1929. A Hassett-bylined column on the WSJ opinion page is not where most economists tend to look for solid, peer-reviewed analysis, so we'll leave the painstakingly researched disembowelment of his argument to others. But the mere appearance of such an argument with less than two weeks to go before Election Day is still worth appraising. Kevin Hassett is an adviser to Mitt Romney -- he's someone who will have real influence on economic policy if Romney wins. So the real question here is not how wrong his argument might be, but why he is making the argument at all. Why does Kevin Hassett want us to believe that income inequality is not getting worse?

Continue Reading...

]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/10/26/income_inequality_not_what_the_doctor_ordered/feed/ 29 Iowa’s 1 percent problem http://www.salon.com/2012/10/19/iowas_1_percent_problem/ http://www.salon.com/2012/10/19/iowas_1_percent_problem/#comments Fri, 19 Oct 2012 17:30:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=13046046 Since 2009, report Bloomberg's Tim Jones and Elizabeth Campbell, "the top 1 percent of Americans captured 93 percent of real income growth, compared with 65 percent during the recovery from the 2001 recession, according to an analysis by Emmanuel Saez, an economist at the University of California at Berkeley."

If you care about growing income inequality in the United States, you may already be familiar with that statistic. But the citation in Bloomberg comes in the context of a fascinating, in-depth investigation into the rising gap between the rich and poor in Iowa. We're not talking Wall Street versus Main Street. We're talking farmers lucky enough to benefit from vastly appreciating land values, versus everybody else.

That's a big deal. Iowa is traditionally considered one of the less-stratified states in the country. Not anymore:

Continue Reading...

]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/10/19/iowas_1_percent_problem/feed/ 1 Romney fact-checked on “binders full of women” http://www.salon.com/2012/10/17/romney_fact_checked_on_binders_full_of_women/ http://www.salon.com/2012/10/17/romney_fact_checked_on_binders_full_of_women/#comments Wed, 17 Oct 2012 13:26:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=13043041 Last night's "Big Bird" moment turned out to be Mitt Romney's answer to a question about income and workplace inequality, when he described how he requested "binders full of women" as Massachusetts governor because he didn't want to appoint only men to his cabinet posts.

“And I said, ‘Well, gosh, can’t we — can’t we find some — some women that are also qualified?” Romney said in the debate. “I went to a number of women’s groups and said, ‘Can you help us find folks,’ and they brought us whole binders full of women.”

But, as it turns out, this might not be entirely true. Romney did get binders, but they were not at his request, according to David Berstein of the Phoenix in Boston:

Continue Reading...

]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/10/17/romney_fact_checked_on_binders_full_of_women/feed/ 2 GOP Congress really does make the rich richer http://www.salon.com/2012/10/02/gop_congress_really_does_make_the_rich_richer/ http://www.salon.com/2012/10/02/gop_congress_really_does_make_the_rich_richer/#comments Tue, 02 Oct 2012 14:00:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=13027294 Are you rich and want to get richer? Vote Republican! The stronger the GOP is in Congress, the larger the share of wealth the top 1 percent controls, according to a new study in the October issue of American Sociological Review, which confirms what we figured all along -- there's a direct connection between the rightward shift of Congress and the upward advance of the richest Americans’ net worths.

From 1949 through 2008, the impact of a 1 percentage point increase in the share of seats held by Republicans in the House (a little over five seats) raised the top 1 percent’s income share by about .08 percentage points. “At first glance, this might seem negligible," said Thomas Volscho, a sociologist at CUNY-College of Staten Island who co-authored the study. But it's not. "Given that the estimated national income in 2008 was more than $7.8 trillion, an increase of only 1 percent in Republican seat share would raise the income of the top 1 percent by nearly $6.6 billion. That equates to about $6,600 per family in the top 1 percent."

Continue Reading...

]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/10/02/gop_congress_really_does_make_the_rich_richer/feed/ 7 Does inequality prevent economic growth? http://www.salon.com/2012/10/01/does_inequality_prevent_economic_growth/ http://www.salon.com/2012/10/01/does_inequality_prevent_economic_growth/#comments Mon, 01 Oct 2012 15:28:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=13026828 As part of an event celebrating the National Employment Law Project, I participated in a panel moderated by Bob Herbert, former oped writer for the NYT (an extremely compelling one at that, whose themes were race, poverty, inequality, and justice) and now a senior fellow at Demos (the other panelists were Dorian Warren and Lynn Rhinehart).

The question of the impact of inequality on growth came up and that made me want to work out my thoughts on that relationship.  These issues are very usefully addressed in this recent paper by Boushey and Hersh (more on that below; see their page 8 for a short summary of the ineq/growth lit), but here, in an extended post, are some of my thoughts about it.

The classic theory on how growth affects inequality maintains that there’s an inverted U-shaped relationship over long periods of economic development.  As emerging economies grow they initially become less equal as the few with high financial endowments profit off of their ownership of key productive resources, like land.  Then, as industrialization evolves, much more of the population has the chance to participate in higher value-added work which reduces inequality.

Continue Reading...

]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/10/01/does_inequality_prevent_economic_growth/feed/ 3 Mitt’s campaign-killing snobbery http://www.salon.com/2012/09/28/mitt_romney_adrift/ http://www.salon.com/2012/09/28/mitt_romney_adrift/#comments Fri, 28 Sep 2012 20:36:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=13024914 At a recent fundraiser, Bill Marriott, chairman of the international hotel conglomerate, introduced Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney by noting that they both have summer houses on Lake Winnipesaukee in New Hampshire.  Marriott told a story of taking his boat into town with his grandkids to get ice cream:

And we got into the docks and they were all full and I looked around, there was no place to park, so we stopped at the end of a dock. They all jumped off and ran up the dock. And I realized there was nobody in the boat to help me dock the boat, handle the ropes, do anything - they just left me out there at sea. So I finally found a place to park after about 20 minutes, and I pulled in, I said, 'Who's going to grab the rope?,' and I looked up and there was Mitt Romney. So he pulled me in, he tied up the boat for me. He rescued me just as he's going to rescue this great country.'

No doubt all of the big donors in the room who have boats so big it takes more than one person to dock them were nodding along and thinking, “Yeah, Mitt Romney understands us rich people and is here to help.”  Of course, for the 99 percent of other voters, that is precisely the problem.

Continue Reading...

]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/09/28/mitt_romney_adrift/feed/ 14 Rise of the lockout: another sign of labor’s slide http://www.salon.com/2012/09/28/rise_of_lockouts_another_sign_of_labors_slide/ http://www.salon.com/2012/09/28/rise_of_lockouts_another_sign_of_labors_slide/#comments Fri, 28 Sep 2012 17:24:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=13023933 Last night, three days after a blown call that had even Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker pleading to “#Returntherealrefs,” football’s union referees were back on the field. Just before midnight, management announced a deal had been reached on a new contract, ending a lockout marked by questionable calls and -- worse -- unsafe but unpunished hits. As the “replacement” refs depart the field, talk of lockouts will fade from the news -- but they'll remain a growing trend in labor struggles across the country.

Continue Reading...

]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/09/28/rise_of_lockouts_another_sign_of_labors_slide/feed/ 2 Why Mitt Romney is the perfect GOP candidate http://www.salon.com/2012/09/28/why_mitt_romney_is_the_perfect_gop_candidate/ http://www.salon.com/2012/09/28/why_mitt_romney_is_the_perfect_gop_candidate/#comments Fri, 28 Sep 2012 11:45:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=13023790 Ever since Mitt Romney began running for president pundits have marveled and conservatives have moaned at the contradiction embodied by the former governor of Massachusetts. A moderate Republican who passed universal healthcare and tried to run to the left of Ted Kennedy on abortion sought -- and won! -- the nomination of a party that had been moving hard right for decades. The result of the primary campaign of 2012 posed a marvelous mystery. How could such a bad mismatch for the Republican base successfully become their standard bearer?

Romney's competition -- a cavalcade of loons and crazies the likes of which hadn't been gathered together since the movie "Freaks" -- offers a partial explanation. Romney got lucky.

Continue Reading...

]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/09/28/why_mitt_romney_is_the_perfect_gop_candidate/feed/ 17