The Hidden Prosperity of the Poor A concept promulgated by the right — the notion of the hidden prosperity of the poor — underpins the conservative take on the ongoing debate over rising inequality. The political right uses this concept to undermine the argument made by liberals that the increasingly unequal distribution of income poses a danger to the social fabric as well as to the American economy. President Obama forcefully articulated the case from the left in an address on Dec. 6, 2011 at Osawatomie High School in Kansas: This kind of gaping inequality gives lie to the promise that’s at the very heart of America: that this is a place where you can make it if you try. We tell people — we tell our kids — that in this country, even if you’re born with nothing, work hard and you can get into the middle class. In its definition of consumption, the Bureau of Labor Statistics includes “expenditures for food, housing, transportation, apparel, medical care, entertainment, and miscellaneous items.” Economic Policy Institute
#OWS, The Other 98%, US Uncut & Rebuild the Dream: A Look at the Shoes That Didn't Drop Times Square, Occupy Wall Street rally, Saturday, October 15, 2011. Photo by Micah L. Sifry Here's a question to ponder: Did Occupy Wall Street succeed simply because it was non-hierarchical in method, had smart framing in tune with public anger about the economy and Wall Street, and made really effective use of social media? If that was all it took to ignite a self-organizing movement for economic justice, then why didn't a very similar effort, called "The Other 98%," take off last year? Why didn't the US Uncut movement, a spin-off of an ongoing street protest movement in England, take off here this past winter? The question of where Occupy Wall Street came from, in actual organizational terms, can be definitively answered by consulting a number of excellent write-ups that have appeared in recent days. It's fun to go back and look at what these groups were doing over the last year and a half, since so much of it appears, on the surface, to be just like Occupy Wall Street. Too negative?
We’re More Unequal Than You Think by Andrew Hacker The Spirit Level: Why Greater Equality Makes Societies Stronger by Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett Bloomsbury, 331 pp., $28.00; $18.00 (paper) The Darwin Economy: Liberty, Competition, and the Common Good by Robert H. Princeton University Press, 240 pp., $26.95 The Age of Austerity: How Scarcity Will Remake American Politics by Thomas Byrne Edsall Doubleday, 272 pp., $24.95 Why Some Politicians Are More Dangerous Than Others by James Gilligan Polity, 229 pp., $19.95 Imagine a giant vacuum cleaner looming over America’s economy, drawing dollars from its bottom to its upper tiers. All four of the books under review reject Hamilton and Madison’s premises. The Spirit Level is a prodigious empirical effort directed to a moral purpose. As income gaps grow, they write, it’s not only the poor who suffer. The authors don’t go so far as to say that people with above-average incomes would end up better off were they to take home less money, and if greater numbers of their poor compatriots had more.
China, technology and the U.S. middle class President Barack Obama’s State of the Union speech this week confirmed it: The pre-eminent political and economic challenge in the industrialized democracies is how to make capitalism work for the middle class. There is nothing mysterious about that. The most important fact about the United States in this century is that middle-class incomes are stagnating. The financial crisis has revealed an equally stark structural problem in much of Europe. Even in a relatively prosperous age — for all of today’s woes, we have left behind the dark, satanic mills and workhouses of the 19th century — this decline of the middle class is more than an economic issue. All of which is why understanding what is happening to the middle class is urgently important. But when I asked him this week what had gone wrong for the U.S. middle class, he gave a different answer: “The main problem is we’ve just had a decade of incredibly anemic employment growth. It was a winningly modest reply. “U.S.
Interview: Economist Who Co-discovered "the 99%" On The Occupy Wall Street Movement That Followed His Research | Business News Q: What do you make of the Occupy Wall Street protesters' claims that they "are the 99 percent." Do you feel they are connecting – deliberately or not – with the bottom 99 percent that you have studied and written about? A: As you mentioned above, one of the most striking developments of the U.S. economy is how the top 1 percent has pulled away from the bottom 99 percent. How is it possible that in a democracy the bottom 99 percent gets only half of economic growth? Q: Why do you think the Occupy Wall Street protests are happening now? A: The 2008 economic crisis was largely the consequence of deregulated finance running amok. the bottom 99 percent had not been that great. Q: What are the key causes for the substantial income gaps in the United States today? This implies that institutions, government policies and regulations, and social norms play a central role in shaping income gaps. Q: You're Center for Equitable Growth at UC Berkeley. Q: Do you support the protests?
Civilians Killed and Wounded | Costs of War Civilians Killed and Wounded The ongoing conflicts in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan have taken a tremendous toll on the people of those countries. At the very least, 162,000 civilians have been determined to have died violent deaths as a result of the war as of March 2014. The actual number of deaths, direct and indirect, as a result of the wars are many times higher than this figure. The decade long war in Afghanistan has continued to take lives with each passing year. As of October 2013, at least 18,000 civilians are estimated to have died violent deaths as a result of the war. People have been killed in their homes at night and in markets and on roadways during the day. And death can happen some time — weeks or months — after a battle. And the effects of war death and injury linger. Civilians also die when war damages infrastructure. It is almost always difficult to record and count the dead and wounded in war.
The Price of Inequality - Video and audio - News and media Speaker(s): Professor Joseph E Stiglitz Chair: Professor Stephen P. Jenkins Recorded on 29 June 2012 in Old Theatre, Old Building. In his new book, The Price of Inequality, which he will discuss in this lecture Joseph Stiglitz considers the causes of inequality, why is it growing so rapidly and what are its economic impacts? Joseph Stiglitz was Chief Economist at the World Bank until January 2000. Professor Stiglitz will also be in discussion with Professor Amartya Sen on Thursday 28 June at 6.30pm. Event posting David J. Dunn, PhD: "It's the Democracy, Stupid!": The "Vague" Goals of the Other 99% Some conservative punditry has claimed to be flummoxed by the "vague" goals of the "Occupy" protests happening across the country. I will grant that there is some truth to this complaint. In their early days, "patchwork" protests often lack a clear and unified voice. Still, no one with a basic understanding of history or an ounce of empathy should be surprised or confused by the outrage of "The Other 99%." Perhaps an example will make things clearer. I do it this way because in many ways life is "rigged." People are not protesting because the economy is bad. "The Other 99%" are backed into a corner, and that is a dangerous place to be. Most of us are familiar with the cycles of "boom" and "bust," but the economic sociologist, Karl Polanyi, noticed another kind of "double movement" at work in market-driven societies like ours. It seems to work. They answer back with, "We die." Libertarians usually leave that part out of their brochures. Some might object that I am denying "free will."
Economic Cost Summary | Costs of War Economic Costs Summary: $3.1 Trillion and Counting There are at least three ways to think about the economic costs of these wars: what has been spent already, what could or must be spent in the future, and the comparative economic effects of spending money on war instead of something else. Spending to Date: How much have the wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan since 9/11 cost? The Costs of War economics research team used the most up-to-date publicly available figures at the time of their writing to calculate the spending on the wars from 2001 through fiscal year 2013. What was the Department of Defense allocated? War related spending is also found in the foreign assistance budget, known on Capitol Hill as "International Assistance" spending. How has the U.S. paid for the wars so far? The U.S. also increased spending on homeland security by more than $455 billion beyond the levels already in place. Obligations for Future Spending: The costs of war don't end when the fighting stops.
POVERTY, CORRUPTION AND THE CHANGING WORLD, 1950-2050 Robert H. Wade On May 29 2013 James Wolfensohn, president of the World Bank from 1995 to 2005, gave the Amartya Sen lecture at the London School of Economics, on the subject, “Reflections on a changing world, 1950-2050”. His reflections on the changing world were mainly reflections on what he achieved as World Bank president. He emphasised five. Here I comment on the first two: poverty reduction as the central goal of development, and corruption as an explicitly stated problem. Poverty reduction and inequality Wolfensohn’s elevation of poverty reduction as the central goal echoes then World Bank president Robert McNamara in 1973, forty years ago, who solemnly proposed in a speech in Nairobi, Kenya, a “new strategy”. But McNamara showed awareness of a closely related issue that remained eclipsed in the Wolfensohn era: income and related inequalities. Why this asymmetry of attention? Corruption On corruption, I begin with my own engagement with the Bank. Fast forward to Wolfensohn on 29 May.
We Are The 98% I feel little more than contempt for those who have ridiculed the "We Are The 99%" slogan of the occupy protesters. Some of these apologists for the status quo are more despicable than others. Those who have a reservation in Dante's inner circles of Hell tell us that only 13% of the 1% work on Wall Street (in finance). They thus feel entitled to conclude that the protests are misplaced and misinformed. Others who may live out eternity in Dante's upper circles say that the wealthiest Americans lost a lot of income after the meltdown, so the income equality problem is not as bad it was in 2007. I'll quote from Ms. Unsurprisingly, Occupy Wall Street have pushed income inequality to the center of the national conversation. I have no argument with any of this. But as it happens, I was back at the University of Chicago this weekend for my tenth business school reunion. And here is where Ms. On the very day Ms. The larger question is "how much does it matter"? And so on.
What Did the Iraq War Cost? More Than You Think. By its very definition, war spending—indeed, any government spending—improves GDP, as anyone who has ever taken an economics 101 course knows. Spending on World War II is credited with helping the U.S. decisively climb out of its depression slump. Likewise, the Iraq War helped the economy in some ways. But to many experts, the costs will far outweigh and outlast the benefits. As U.S. operations in Iraq end, tallying up the costs and benefits of a nine-year ordeal is a daunting task. Estimates on Iraq War spending vary. But the long-term costs will well exceed this total, and the budgetary consequences are far-reaching. On the positive side, the Iraq War did bolster the economy in some ways. [Debate Club: Was the Iraq War Worth It?] "It reduced unemployment compared to what it otherwise would have been" both with military and contractor jobs, says Stan Collender, a senior partner at Qorvis Communications who has also worked on both the House and Senate Budget Committees.