Inequality: So Hot Right Now

The risk and inequality perspectives are complementary, not antagonistic.

"So Hot Right Now"

What's that in reference to? I've seen it a lot and I fear that I'm getting old. :(

The risk and inequality perspectives are complementary, not antagonistic.

In principle, yes, but not in Hacker's formulation.

Damn, that was a good article. Almost a throwback to the classic TNR of the late-80s/early-90s - well written, on an important subject, fleshes out all the players, provides the historical context, leads to a credible conclusion, and leaves the reader feeling smarter and better informed for having read it. It's even a little contrarian (being contrary to the TNR house policy on economics and labor over the last 15 years), but the good kind of contrarian. I thought only John Judis was still writing like this. More like this, please.

I found the debate over at Tapped interesting, but somewhat frustrating. There was very little discussion of actual policy, and it was more a debate over rhetorical themes. However the debate about rhetoric was so abstract that it was largely irrelevant to political debate as it happens in the real world of political speeches and campaigns.

I also think Petey’s point is correct. For example, Bill Clinton ran on a platform of family and medical leave (insecurity), middle class tax cuts combined with tax increases for the rich (inequality), welfare reform (poverty), and health care (insecurity). It was the combination of themes that made his message appealing to both liberals and moderates.

Blah, blah, blah, here's a really great article to read. Which, if I were a subscriber, I would have noticed anyway.

Thanks!

Inequality isn't a problem where there's some kind of floor. The fact of preposterous wealth is considerably less offensive when there's no way for the lives of the less well-off to implode completely. Right now, we have oriented our policies both toward creating still-more preposterous wealth and yanking out whatever meager floor our society had. I'm not sure it's critical which of the two elements one begins with, but something obviously needs to be done. My personal choice would be a workers' revolution, but I'm open to suggestions.

Follow MY's link to the Prospect debate. Mark Schmitt brings the risk and inequality perspectives together in a way I found very compelling. Risk is something completely different to someone on the winner's side of the income gap.

"so hot right now" = zoolander (hansel (owen wilson), in fact)

I tend to agree with Hacker. Mitigating inequality only appeals to you if you are either at the top (I must help others) or at the bottom. If you're in the middle, it sounds like it is either going to benefit somebody else or that you are being called a loser.

Risk-mitigation, though, is something we can imagine as a joint product. Government more conveniently and more fairly provides certain types of insurance.

It's also more useful conceptually because the problems that can occur with social programs (moral hazard, lack of cost control) mirror problems that private insurers have to deal with.

Chait's one of the absolute best political writers in the country on everything but the war.

Big but though.

Good article, one quibble though

. Until recently, the ideological fissure between the economic left and the center left has always been over the question of at what point the government should step in to redress inequality. Moderates--that is, policy types associated with the Clinton administration, the Brookings Institution, or most university economics departments--believe that the market is generally the most efficient mechanism for distributing wealth. Government should redress inequality, but it should usually do so only after the fact--let the market work, then tax the rich and use some of the proceeds to help the poor........ the liberals have always argued, government must foster greater levels of equality before the fact, not merely after.

The only functional way of reducing inequality is to alter the relativities by economic redistribution through taxes. Sweden, that beacon of Social Democratic excellence, has seen it's pre-tax income inequality grow by 25% over the last 10 years, but their after-tax income inequality is virtually nil because of their extensive taxation and redistribution.

Things like the minimum wage, strong labor movements, even checks on corporate power are neccessary, but minus extensive after-tax redistribution they'd barely make a dent in income inequality.

The rapid tilt to inequality, income and especially asset distribution skewing to the top, is mostly the result of policies which encourage the inflation of assets, mostly financial, and the defacto embrace of wage deflation. All is intertwined with the total intellectual victory of so called 'market fundamentalism' which has finalized the marrage between the financial elites and Uncle Sam.

The inflation of assets isn't an accident. It was and is the very purpose of 'investment' tax cutting era which started in 1978. Alan Greenspan could appear before congress and take orgasmic pleasure in reporting wages were stagnent and even Democratics would lick his boots as financial assets would multiply and soar.

The actual final nail in the coffin of the affluent middle class majority was set with the bankruptsy bill. Now that millions have been sucked into the residential real estate miracle, that bubble has burst and the asset inflation can turn again to where it will do the most good to those at the top, stocks. Meanwhile millions can look forward to a life of debt slavery. A dream realized.

Not a subscriber, so I can't read the article. I do want to note, though, how ironic it is that, as Matthew says, "increasing numbers of center-left economists to develop a renewed interest in inequality".

As we all know, inequality has DECREASED during the Bush years. Inequality massively increased during the Clinton years.

The conclusion one draws is that "increasing numbers of center-left economists" are political hacks, who focus on inequality during Republican administrtions simply to attack Republicans (even if inequality decreases). And they ignore inequality during Democrat administration in order support Democrats (even if inequality increases).

The conclusion one draws is that "increasing numbers of center-left economists" are political hacks

Next up: Al angrily accuses "increasing numbers of center-left economists" of being named Al.

Excellent comments!

I would echo the first comment: "The risk and inequality perspectives are complementary, not antagonistic."

But, with a slight modification: the distribution of income, wealth and risk, as a matter of economic policy, are the same thing. The same thing.

In the 1930's and 1940's, in the New Deal and WWII (with wartime control of the economy and in the aftermath, with the GI Bill), FDR radically redistributed risk, wealth and income. Some of this was straight-forward insurance: FDIC, for example. A central part of New Deal policy focused on using economic rents to attenuate risk. An attempt was made to cartelize the economy to multiply available rents, and unions were strengthened, in leading industries with rents, like autos, steel, coal, supermarkets, as well as the transportation sectors where cartelization survived Supreme Court review.

Academic economists in the 1950's and 1960's promptly forgot all about rents and risk, and reduced liberal economic policy to income transfers. In the textbooks, inequality was addressed by taxing the rich and giving the money to the poor. Nixon, of all people, proposed a negative income tax, which has since been embodied in the EITC. It was a reconceptualization, which favored the conservative narrative that insists any policy to address inequality is motivated by envy, and seeks to undo the judgment of the market.

It also blinded a lot of liberal economists to the implications of the conservative policy program for redistributing income and wealth upward. The conservative program has used the rhetoric of the rugged individualist, but the policy mechanism of imposing increased risk and reducing available insurance.

Addressing inequality thru the policy mechanism of providing cheap insurance thru government cuts off the reactionary narrative. Insurance, as a properly drawn policy, can actually improve incentives for the individual in an economy of decentralized decision-making, by reducing inefficient desperate or risk-averse decision-making. (We all benefit from the insurance program of public education; we all benefit if the smart but poor kid can confidently invest in university education, instead of robbing convenience stores.) For all sorts of well-understood "technical" reasons, government is a superior provider of insurance in many circumstances, so that providing insurance is a efficient role for government -- a stake driven thru the heart of the libertarian vampire.

To take one recent example: Debate on various Republican Social Security privatization proposals eventually seems to have focused liberals on what those proposals are "really" about, which is to siphon off income and wealth from the poor and middle class to the very wealthy. Reactionary economists and politicians know exactly what they are doing, when they make proposals that they know will have the effect of leaving a larger percentage of the poor, even poorer in old age, and the rich, a bit richer. Now the liberals are waking up to the same thing.

FDR did an amazing thing. Economic deflation, combined with a cruel laissez-faire, gold-worship in 1870-1896 created the Gilded Age of extreme economic inequality. One panic or depression after another destroyed unions and deprived vast numbers of the wealth created during the development of the West and the Second Industrial Revolution of oil, steel and electricity. The Great Depression of 1893 capped that period, and ruined the Democratic Party, just as it allowed a few extremely wealthy individuals to skim off all the wealth created from developing the West, as 10,000 western Banks failed and the western Railroads bankrupted and independent oil producers and steelmakers died. Deflation artificially magnified the risk in the economy, and the resulting abrasion redistributed wealth upward, to the lucky few and those, whose wealth was already so vast, that they could provide "insurance" on usurious terms. But, FDR pushed back in 1932, and reversed the usual course of deflation, by building institutions that provided insurance, and in doing so, built a secure, middle-class, which in the 1950's and 1960's was able to realize the American Dream in a great many ways.

Tying income/wealth distribution to the government policy of providing cheap insurance and risk attenuation may well be the key to persuading a political majority to give up their libertarian commitments to a new Gilded Age.

I'll make one simple comment for now. I think this issue is more important than transfers from the very rich to the very poor. The important issue in the new economy is that for some inexplicable reason (and I have yet to hear a reason that is even remotely satisfying), the top 1% is getting very rich.

So the issue is no longer, say, redistribution from college graduates to those without degrees. If redistribution is to happen (driven by Chait's center-left economists (myself included, apparently, which is news to me)) it will have to happen to different groups than before. Before, redistribution would go from the white collar management class, middle managers, etc, to the working class. Now, that's not the path to take. redistribution has got to be from those with professional degrees to those without.

Now, it's possible that professional degrees actually confer massive productivity benefits (Bob and I didn't study that, and neither have most economists). But I'd be willing to bet that even if we controlled for higher degrees, there would be a lot left unexplained.

What I would be interested to know is how many economists, even chait's center-left economists, supposrt redistribution from the upper middle, say 90th to 99th percentiles (which would include professors) to the lower classes.

Re: So the issue is no longer, say, redistribution from college graduates to those without degrees.

I don't know about redistribution between these groups, but I do think we need to remember that the professional middle class isn't doing all that badly-- not as well as they did in the 90s, but all in all, they're holding their own. The people who are really screwed these days are the non-college working folks.

in response to Al, inequality was increasing from the early 1980s onward until the bursting of the stock market bubble, so it obviously wasn't a Clinton-era phenomena. and inequality has risen sharply in the last two to three years of the Bush administration.

i think the issue is that inequality got "played-out" as a research focus because from the 1980s through the 1990s, every social science researcher was doing something on inequality. now that it is rising again, and that we essentially saw a plateau post-bubble (a slight decrease, but the long-term trend was essentially permanent), people have come back around to wanting to study the issue. it was passe for a while though.

Thanks
Best regards
mirc
mirç
mırc
mırç
mircturk
turkmirc
mirc indir
mirc yukle
mirch
mırch
mirc turk
turk mirc
mırcturk
turkmırc
mırc turk
turk mırc
turkiyemirc
türkiyemirc
turkiye mirc
türkiye mirc
mircturkiye
mirctürkiye
mirc turkiye
mircturk
turkmırc
muhabbet
mirc sohbet
mırc sohbet
mirc chat
mırc chat
mırc ındır
mirc ındır
Türkçe mirc
Türkce mirc
Turkçe mirc
Türkce mirc
Türkçe mırc
Türkce mırc
Turkçe mırc
Turkce mırc
mirc
mirc
forum
forum
turkforum
turkiyeforum
mirc
turkmirc
toplist
site ekle
pagerank
turkmirc
turkforum
sohbet
chat
sohbet odaları
bedava sohbet
bedava chat
türk
karar

ff

cc

dd

sddc

gmd

ddvcxcxcx

porno
sex
hikaye
sex
hikaye
porno
sex
sex shop
seks shop
güzel sözler
mirc
porno
güzel sözler
hikaye
mirc
hikayeler
mirc
kelebek
elektronik sigara
elektronik sigara
elektronik sigara
sex
porno
hikaye
sex
porno
mirc
seks shop
hikayeler
hikaye
sex
hikayetube
sex |
porno |
hikaye |
sex hikayeleri |
sex hikaye |
sex porno |
seks shop |
geciktirici |
penis büyütücü |
hikaye |
hikaye |
sex |
videohikaye.com |
sex |
porno |
hikayetube.com |
porno |
mirc |
yüzük |
güzel sözler |
elektronik sigara |
pilli sigara |
elektronik sigara |
elektronik sigara |
elektronik sigara

perde

temizlik

stor perde

ip perde

jaluzi perde

dikey perde

ofis temizliği

ilaçlama

açılış organizasyon

perdeci

perde modelleri

organizasyon

http://www.ekmekmusafcarpsin.com/

Thanks Best Regards
mirc
mırc
mırç
mircturk
mirctürk
turkmirc
mirc indir
mırc indir
mirç indir
mirc yükle
mırc yükle
mirc yukle
mırc yukle
mirch
mırch
mirc turk
turk mirc
mırc turk
mircada
mircturkiye
muhabbet
mirc sohbet
mırc sohbet
mirc chat
mırc chat
mırc ındır
mirc ındır
türkçe mirc
turkce mirc
turkçe mırc
turkce mırc
oper mirc
sohbet
forum
chat
online sinema
catlak
türk forum
turk forum
kafkas
kafkasya
ders
siyaset
izmir
karşiyaka
karsiyaka
forum
karsıyaka
sohbet

harbiarkadas.com
harbiarkadas.net
harbiarkadas.org
itirafet.org
ebedava.net
elektronikmarket.net
ameribress.com
clitoriacream.net
superspenisbuyutucu.com
megabress.com
rednightperformans.com
performansartirici.com
penisplus.tv
penispluspenisbuyutucu.com
penispluspenisbuyutucu.net
cinselmerkez.com
aseks.net
erotikcamasirlar.com
vajinatr.com
bakirevajina.com
cinselkozmetik.com
kozmetikmedikel.com
eturknet.com
tecavuz.net
yutuvideo.com
ponotubesex.com
laraperuk.com
sackanagimerkezi.com
peruksa.com
perukmarket.com
aseks.com
aloveshop.com
erotikgiyim.com
geciktiricispreyler.com
geciktiricihap.com
geciktiriciler.com
azdirici.com
bayanuyarici.com
fntazialemi.com
fantaziservisi.om
cinselmazemeler.com
cinselfantaziurunleri.com
erotikdakikalar.com
erotikmarketiniz.com
seksmarketiniz.com
sekshatlari.com
erotikdergiler.com
erotikderginiz.com
penisbuyutucuviprx.com
penisbuyutucuvigrx.com
penisbuyutuculer.com
vigrxpenisbuyutucu.com
sismebebekler.com
sismebebekshop.com
yemekeviniz.com
sanalmarketiniz.com
elektronikmarket.net
ebedava.net
kontortr.com
elaydin23.com
turkcellkontorcu.com
aveakontoral.com
vodafonekontoral.com
toptankontorcu.com
cinselkozmetik.com
bayanpartnerler.com
erkekpartnerler.com
kizarkadaslar.com
yonjaarkadas.com
siberalem-siberalem.com
sexpartnerler.com
sekspartnerler.com
erotikpartnerler.com
gencyuz.com
erkekarkadaslar.com
bayanarkadaslar.com
yemekeviniz.com
sanalmarketiniz.com
baskahaber.com
medikalkozmetik.net
kozmetikmedikal.com
zayiflamavediyet.net
zayiflamahapii.com
zayiflamabandii.com
kilovertr.com
zayiflamatr.net
diyettr.com
toksinbandi.net
botoxtr.com
botokstr.com
selulittedavii.com
selulitgiderici.net
selulitkremii.com
catlaktedavisii.com
catlakgiderici.net
catlakkremii.com

penis büyütücü