Credit: Digital Muse
Once you look at the issue this way, it’s hard to think of it any other way
We all know that inequality has grown in America over the last several years. But the conventional wisdom among conservatives and even many liberals has always been that inequality was the price of growth–in order to get more of it, we needed to tolerate a bigger wealth gap. Today, Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz, the Columbia professor and former economic advisor to Bill Clinton, blew a hole in that truism with a new report for the Roosevelt Institute entitled “Rewriting the Rules,” which is basically a roadmap for what many progressives would like to see happen policy wise over the next four years.
There are a number of provocative insights but the key takeaway–inequality isn’t inevitable, and it’s not just a social issue, but also an economic one, because it’s largely responsible for the fact that every economic “recovery” since the 1990s has been slower and longer than the one before. Inequality isn’t the trade-off for economic growth; rather, it’s both the cause […]
It’s not just the past few years, although it is just recently that the issue has gained traction. All this started in the 1970’s with the attack on the unions. There has been an ongoing process of rigging the system in favor of a few for a long time. Off-shoring, Social Security “reform,” carried interest for hedge funds, pressure on wages and benefits have all contributed to a shift of income from the many to the few that you can see in the census data on income distribution. It’s really a negative feedback loop- the few store their money in the stock market, but businesses are worthless if people can’t buy their goods and services. Obamacare was the last nail in the coffin because it is soaking up what used to be the disposable income for many people.