Inequality

From dKosopedia

Categories: Conservative Blind Spots | Capitalist Harms

Conservatives have five dismissals for problems of extreme inequality: it is market-based just dessert, it is needed for incentives, it is freedom, it is the fault of government, and it is unimportant. All five are wrong.

While inequality can be market-based, it may not be justly so. It obviously has other bases as well, as any study of income mobility will show.

The greatest lessening of inequality ever was the creation of the middle class by government policy.

Inequality is extremely important: it greatly affects health and productivity.

Links

How to visualize wealth inequality:

Comparing the wealth of billionaires to the dragon hoard from The Hobbit, which is a great unit of measurement.

Greg Mankiw and the Gatsby Curve

While Greg Mankiw is a conservative, his economics position is often repeated by libertarians. Three lines of critique against justification of the one percent plus Paul Krugman's take on historical change.

How Intellectual Property Reinforces Inequality

"Economic power often speaks louder, though, than moral values; and in the many instances in which American corporate interests prevail in intellectual property rights, our policies help increase inequality abroad. In most countries, it’s much the same as in the United States: the lives of the poor are sacrificed at the altar of corporate profits. "

It is Not a School Problem

Diane Ravitch used to be a supporter of school reform. But now she is the author of Reign of Error: The Hoax of the Privatization Movement and the Danger to America's Public Schools. The problem is poverty and segregation.

Life Spans Shrink for Least-Educated Whites in the U.S.

Educational inequality correlates strongly with decreases in life expectancy in whites, and especially among white women. High inequality isn’t just unfair, it kills. Libertarians generally suggest market solutions: but equality is not something the market provides.

Of the 1%, by the 1%, for the 1%

Nobelist Joseph Stiglitz describes where our inequality comes from, how bad it is, and the likely consequences.

The End of Loser Liberalism: Making Markets Progressive

Dean Baker's online book describing how upwards distribution through markets is a result of government policy (due to capture by the rich), and how to change to more equitable polices.

The importance of redistribution

"democratic egalitarianism"--the idea that individuals flourish best in a free society that allows them to choose democratically the rules that govern their lives, with the understanding that the institutions must be sustainable and must allow all individuals to flourish, not just a select few.

Union decline and rising inequality in two charts

"By most estimates, declining unionization accounted for about a third of the increase in inequality in the 1980s and 1990s." Union decline is a result of conservative policy.

Attribution

Contains content from Critiques of Libertarianism