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Kay Bradley

The Conversation: We've been measuring inequality wrong - here's the real story - 1 views

theconversation.com/ong-heres-the-real-story-56179

wealth inequality taxes inequality economy

shared by Kay Bradley on 21 Jan 21 - No Cached
  • Democrats claim higher taxes on the rich and more benefits for the poor are the best ways to reduce inequality
  • Republicans argue what we really need is more growth, accomplished by lowering taxes to spur work and investment with, it seems, benefit cuts to make up lost revenue.
  • Each party is dead certain about how to address inequality, yet neither knows what it is.
  • Kay Bradley on 21 Jan 21
     
    "Democrats claim higher taxes on the rich and more benefits for the poor are the best ways to reduce inequality"
Kay Bradley

Don't Tax the Rich. Tax Inequality Itself. - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...ich-tax-inequality-itself.html

wealth inequality taxes inequality tax

shared by Kay Bradley on 21 Jan 21 - No Cached
  • at some point the concentration of economic power could undermine the democratic requisite of dispersed political power.
  • It would be bad for our democracy if 1-percenters started making 40 or 50 times as much as the median American.
  • a tax that would limit the after-tax incomes of this club to 36 times the median household income.
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • Importantly, our Brandeis tax does not target excessive income per se; it only caps inequality. Billionaires could double their current income without the tax kicking in — as long as the median income also doubles. The sky is the limit for the rich as long as the “rising tide lifts all boats.” Indeed, the tax gives job creators an extra reason to make sure that corporate wealth does in fact trickle down.
  • Our Brandeis tax is conservative in that it doesn’t attempt to reverse the gains of the wealthy in the last 30 years. It is not a “claw back” tax. It merely assures that things don’t get worse.
  • Ian Ayres, a professor of law at Yale, is the author of “Carrots and Sticks: Unlock the Power of Incentives to Get Things Done.” Aaron S. Edlin, a professor of law and of economics at the University of California, Berkeley, is co-editor of “The Economists’ Voice: Top Economists Take On Today’s Problems.”
Annie Wanless

Protest Spurs Online Dialogue on Inequity - 2 views

All the movements over the past year really demonstrate the place social media now holds in our world. It has become an important organizational role that, contrary to what some originally predicte...

Occupy Wall Street Social Networking Internet Inequity

started by alevi123 on 09 Oct 11 2 follow-ups, last by Annie Wanless on 10 Oct 11
Kay Bradley

Moaning Moguls | The New Yorker - 0 views

www.newyorker.com/...moaning-moguls

wealth inequality taxes inequality tax

shared by Kay Bradley on 21 Jan 21 - No Cached
  • In the past year, the venture capitalist Tom Perkins and Kenneth Langone, the co-founder of Home Depot, both compared populist attacks on the wealthy to the Nazis’ attacks on the Jews.
  • recent work by the economists Emmanuel Saez and Thomas Piketty showed that ninety-five per cent of income gains in the first three years of the recovery went to the top one per cent—a lot of them believe that they’re a persecuted minority.
  • Business leaders were upset at the criticism that followed the financial crisis and, for many of them, it’s an article of faith that people succeed or fail because that’s what they deserve.
  • ...11 more annotations...
  • If you believe that net worth is a reflection of merit, then any attempt to curb inequality looks unfair.
  • as a classic analysis by the historian James Weinstein showed, the reforms were intended to co-opt public pressure and avert more radical measures
  • they sprang from a pragmatic belief that the robustness of capitalism as a whole depended on wide distribution of the fruits of the system.
  • Committee for Economic Development, which played a central role in the forging of postwar consensus politics, accepting strong unions, bigger government, and the rise of the welfare state.
  • The C.E.D. called for tax increases to pay for the Korean War and it supported some of L.B.J.’s Great Society
  • As Mizruchi put it, “They believed that in order to maintain their privileges, they had to insure that ordinary Americans were having their needs met
  • That all changed beginning in the seventies, when the business community, wrestling with shrinking profits and tougher foreign competition, lurched to the right
  • Today, there are no centrist business organizations with any real political clout, and the only business lobbies that matter in Washington are those pushing an agenda of lower taxes and less regulation. Corporate profits and C.E.O. salaries have in recent years reached record levels, but there’s no sign of a return to the corporate statesmanship of the past (the occasional outlier like Warren Buffett notwithstanding)
  • In the postwar years, American companies depended largely on American consumers. Globalization has changed that—foreign sales account for almost half the revenue of the S&P 500—as has the rise of financial services (where the most important clients are the wealthy and other corporations). The well-being of the American middle class just doesn’t matter as much to companies’ bottom lines
  • Early in the past century, there was a true socialist movement in the United States, and in the postwar years the Soviet Union seemed to offer the possibility of a meaningful alternative to capitalism. Small wonder that the tycoons of those days were so eager to channel populist agitation into reform
  • Today, by contrast, corporate chieftains have little to fear, other than mildly higher taxes and the complaints of people who have read Thomas Piketty. Moguls complain about their feelings because that’s all anyone can really threaten
davidvr

'We know terrible things can happen:' Cuba opposition leader vows national march - 1 views

www.nbcnews.com/...-leader-vows-national-rcna3604

shared by davidvr on 26 Oct 21 - No Cached
  • davidvr on 26 Oct 21
     
    Despite the government's imprisonment of protesters, there are plans for a protest on November 15th in Cuba. They are protesting the inequality that exists in Cuba despite its government supposedly being communist. They are led by Yunior García, an artist.
  • arjunk2022 on 26 Oct 21
     
    I'd be interested in seeing how other nations react to this protest. Do we know how many of them are neutral, declaring support, and/or actively impacting this movement?
  • Kay Bradley on 26 Oct 21
     
    Thanks for posting this, David. Arjun, I wonder as well. I also wonder what degree of economic inequality there is in Cuba compared to other countries. When I traveled there in . . . 2018? it seemed to me that the greatest inequality was between the urban areas (doing okay, nothing fancy except the Chinese buses and the fancy hotels for tourists, renovated from before the Castro era). . and the rural areas, that were really poor.
samoshay

Why Britain is not so unequal after all - 15 views

www.economist.com/...redistribution-britain

shared by samoshay on 26 Sep 15 - No Cached
samoshay liked it
  • samoshay on 26 Sep 15
     
    Super interesting article; ties in to the week's big themes; I highly recommend a read.
  • ...5 more comments...
  • anishakaul on 29 Sep 15
     
    This article was interesting because it was analyzing many of the aspects of political economy that we have read/discussed this past week. I also was very interested by the graph about a single person's welfare benefits over a life span because I had never seen information about this topic displayed in a graphic like this one.
  • jacquelinec56 on 29 Sep 15
     
    This article brought really counter intuitive points up - though backed by data, specifically how inequality at an instance is often lower than over a lifetime because people do not remain incredibly poor for most of their lives.
  • quinnlewis on 29 Sep 15
     
    This article points out how much an income can vary over a lifetime which is super important because it illegitimizes a lot of data collected on a yearly basis in that id does not incorporate the full picture or provide context. This question of legitimacy could serve as an argument for people pro and against welfare because they can disregard data collected based on the idea that income can vary, making it unable to represent current conditions accurately without considering other variables.
  • olivialum on 29 Sep 15
     
    This article was really informative and I really liked the visual components. The article was easy to read and very clear about the how the British taxation system redistributes income downwards.
  • kylerussell on 29 Sep 15
     
    As simple as it seems, the idea of government taxation in your youth and "getting back" in your retirement seems to have lost attention on many political platforms. In addition, it is quite interesting too look at not just the inequality gap, but who actually is a part of the top middle and bottom.
  • alexamikataga on 29 Sep 15
     
    I found it very interesting that the poorest in a given year, are not necessarily the poorest for their entire lives. As well as the point that income is distributed over one's lifetime, versus given in one particular moment--> which helps redistribute wealth, instead of letting it go stagnant.
  • sawyerthompson on 29 Sep 15
     
    Super interesting how little effect cutting or expanding government benefits has on long term poverty.
Kako Ito

Public insurance and the least well-off | Lane Kenworthy - 6 views

lanekenworthy.net/surance-and-the-least-well-off

public insurance economics welfare poor nordic model universalism targeting redistribution income inequality

shared by Kako Ito on 27 Sep 15 - No Cached
  • Public insurance also boosts the living standards of the poor. It increases their income, and it provides them with services for which they bear relatively little of the cost.
  • Critics charge that public social programs tend to hurt the poor in the long run by reducing employment and economic growth. Are they correct?
  • Does public insurance erode self-reliance? Is a large private safety net as helpful to the least well-off as a large public one? Are universal programs more effective than targeted ones? Are income transfers the key, or are services important too?
  • ...17 more annotations...
  • Once again we see no indication that public insurance generosity has had a damaging effect
  • Note also that the employment rate increased in nearly all of the countries during this period. On average, it rose by nine percentage points between 1979 and 2013. That’s not what we would expect to see if generous public insurance programs were inducing large numbers of able adults to withdraw from the labor market
  • What we see in the chart is that countries with more generous public insurance programs tend to have less material deprivation.
  • With globalization, the advance of computers and robots, increased pressure from shareholders for short-run profit maximization, union weakening, and other shifts, wages have been under pressure. Couple this with the fact that many people at the low end of the income ladder have labor market disadvantages — disability, family constraint, geographic vulnerability to structural unemployment — and we have a recipe for stagnation in the market incomes of the poor.
  • here’s a good reason for these shifts: government provision offers economies of scale and scope, which reduces the cost of a good or service and thereby makes it available to many people who couldn’t or wouldn’t get it on their own.
  • Government provides more insurance now than it used to. All of us, not just some, are dependent on it. And life for almost everyone is better because of it
  • hese expenditures are encouraged by government tax advantages.22 But they do little to help people on the bottom of the ladder, who often work for employers that don’t provide retirement or health benefits.
  • To make them more affordable, the government claws back some of the benefit by taxing it as though it were regular income. All countries do this, including the United States, but the Nordic countries do it more extensively. Does that hurt their poor? Not much. The tax rates increase with household income, so much of the tax clawback hits middle- and upper-income households.
  • Another difference is that public services such as schooling, childcare, medical care, housing, and transportation are more plentiful and of better quality for the poor in the Nordic countries. Public services reduce deprivation and free up income to be spent on other needs. It’s difficult to measure the impact of services on living standards, but one indirect way is to look at indicators of material deprivation,
  • Targeted transfers are directed (sometimes disproportionately, sometimes exclusively) to those with low incomes and assets, whereas universal transfers are provided to most or all citizens.
  • Targeted programs are more efficient at reducing poverty; each dollar or euro or kroner transferred is more likely to go to the least well-off. Increased targeting therefore could be an effective way to maintain or enhance public insurance in the face of diminished resources.
  • “the more we target benefits to the poor … the less likely we are to reduce poverty and inequality.”
  • Korpi and Palme found that the pattern across eleven affluent nations supported the hypothesis that greater use of targeting in transfers yields less redistribution
  • The hypothesis that targeting in social policy reduces political support and thereby lessens redistributive effort is a sensible one. Yet the experience of the rich countries in recent decades suggests reason to question it. Targeting has drawbacks relative to universalism: more stigma for recipients, lower take-up rates, and possibly less social trust.44 But targeting is less expensive. As pressures to contain government expenditures mount, policy makers may therefore turn to greater use of targeting. That may not be a bad thing.
  • Public insurance programs boost the incomes of the least well-off and improve their material well-being. If such programs are too generous, this benefit could be offset by reduced employment or economic growth, but the comparative evidence suggests that the world’s rich nations haven’t reached or exceeded the tipping point.
  • Spending lots of money on social protection is not in and of itself helpful to the poor. Total social expenditures in the United States are greater than in Denmark and Sweden, because the US has a large private welfare state. But relatively little of America’s private social spending reaches the poor.
  • Public services are an important antipoverty tool. Their benefit doesn’t show up in income data, but they appear to play a key role in reducing material hardship. Services expand the sphere of consumption for which the cost is zero or minimal. And they help to boost the earnings and capabilities of the poor by enhancing human capital, assisting with job search and placement, and facilitating work-family balance.
  • Kako Ito on 27 Sep 15
     
    Through this article I have gained a deeper insight in how public expenditures and public goods promote wealth equality in a society. "Public services are an important antipoverty tool."
  • ...2 more comments...
  • olivialum on 29 Sep 15
     
    This article really helped me deepen my understanding of redistributing wealth downwards. I never thought about it, but things like social security, affirmative action programs, and public education are actually insurances that attempt to provide everybody with more equality when it comes to living standards as well as basic human rights.
  • samoshay on 29 Sep 15
     
    Yeah, it is a very common argument to say that social expenditures disincentives workers; interesting analysis on how wealthy countries haven't reached the "tipping point." I am curious to see what happens to labor force participation and employment in the next decades as robots further divorce economic growth from labor supply/demand.
  • charlesleesohn on 29 Sep 15
     
    Cool theory in regards to "the tipping point". Interesting, and solid criticism of large social expenditures. Wonder how socialists view this, as opposed to free-market economists.
  • smowat on 29 Sep 15
     
    "Public services are an important antipoverty tool. Their benefit doesn't show up in income data, but they appear to play a key role in reducing material hardship." INteresting to see the statistics and how social expenditures help reduce poverty and the wealth gap.
Kay Bradley

As Scorn for Vote Grows, Protests Surge Around Globe - NYTimes.com - 12 views

www.nytimes.com/...otests-surge-around-globe.html

NYTimes.com wealth inequality WTO globalization protests vote surge

shared by Kay Bradley on 30 Sep 11 - No Cached
  • income inequality
  • these protesters share something else: wariness, even contempt, toward traditional politicians and the democratic political process they preside over.
  • they have little faith in the ballot box.
  • ...11 more annotations...
  • high unemployment
  • social spending
  • cuts in social spendin
  • protesters say they so distrust their country’s political class and its pandering to established interest groups
  • their political leaders, regardless of party, had been so thoroughly captured by security concerns, ultra-Orthodox groups and other special interests
  • could no longer respond to the country’s middle class.
  • anticorruption measure
  • less hierarchical, more participatory
  • the political system has abandoned its citizens.”
  • That consensus, championed by scholars like Francis Fukuyama in his book “The End of History and the Last Man,” has been shaken if not broken by a seemingly endless succession of crises
  • continuing European and American debt crisis —
colewogan

Colombian Protests and the Future - 1 views

www.jacobinmag.com/...-paro-nacional-ivan-duque-farc

shared by colewogan on 09 Dec 19 - No Cached
  • lisak2021 on 09 Dec 19
     
    It's important to notice that many Latin American countries are currently facing and protesting economic inequality and abusive governments as a result of our policies with those countries. I wonder what it will take to battle that inequality, and how climate change plays into new struggles in Colombia.
Kay Bradley

Opinion | Liberal Hypocrisy Is Fueling Inequality - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...s-blue-states-legislation.html

economics political economy inequality systemic

shared by Kay Bradley on 09 Nov 21 - No Cached
  • Kay Bradley on 09 Nov 21
     
    Very provocative 14 minute watch about political economy in Blue states in the US. Let's discuss!
Kay Bradley

The Debate Over Critical Race Theory - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...itical-race-theory-debate.html

race critical race theory inequality structural inequality

shared by Kay Bradley on 16 Nov 21 - No Cached
  • In a culture-war brawl that has spilled into the country’s education system, Republicans at the local, state and national levels are trying to block curriculums that emphasize systemic racism.More than 20 states have introduced legislation restricting lessons on racism and other so-called divisive concepts.
Michelle Ito

Everyone's Fight: The New Plan to Defeat Big Money - 1 views

www.democracyjournal.org/...everyones-fight.php

shared by Michelle Ito on 17 Jan 13 - No Cached
  • Michelle Ito on 17 Jan 13
     
    I pretty much agree with this article. I, too, get annoyed with politicians who practically decide our fates constantly being swayed by super PACS. But I think that in order for us to stop this, both sides need to acknowledge this inequality and stop succumbing to this influence simultaneously. And I do not think this will ever happen. As good as it may be to write an article about it and ask eleven people what the problem is, how this problem effects others, how to solve it, etc, I just don't think that we will ever see real political reform that "defeats big money". But maybe I'm just being too pessimistic. What do you think?
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