Tag: inequality

Germany: Surprise on the left

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Berlin Bulletin No. 186 March 2, 2021 — MRonline

Surprise, surprise! Things worked out quite differently than expected at the congress of the LINKE, the left-wing party. The surprise was not that it took place at all, after the pandemic forced postponements from June to October and from October to last weekend, with most of the 580 delegates at home in front of a screen, microphone and camera; only the socially-distanced, masked leaders sat in a sparsely occupied hall in Berlin. But other parties are meeting that way too.

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The top 1% own 45% of all global personal wealth; 10% own 82%; the bottom 50% own less than 1%

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25 October 2019 — Michael Roberts Blog

blogging from a marxist economist

The annual Credit Suisse report on global wealth has just been released. This report remains the most comprehensive and explanatory analysis of global wealth (not income) and inequality of wealth. Every year the CS global wealth report analyses the household wealth of 5.1 billion people across the globe. Household wealth is made up of the financial assets (stocks, bonds, cash, pension funds) and property (houses etc) owned.  And the report measures this net of debt. The report’s authors are James Davies, Rodrigo Lluberas and Anthony Shorrocks.  Professor Anthony Shorrocks was my university flatmate, where we both graduated in economics (although he has the much better mathematical skills!).

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UK: The 2018 State of the Nation Report

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12 January 2019 — True Publica

By TruePublica: Britain does produce an annual state of the nation report other than one referring to social mobility. The Social Mobility Commission’s 2017 report (see link below) starts with the words: “Britain is a deeply divided nation.” Their report is interesting this year as it ventures more broadly into areas such as education, employability and housing prospects of people living in each of England’s 324 local authority areas. The index highlights where people from disadvantaged backgrounds are most and least likely to make social progress.

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Jeff Bezos’ Paper Tells You Not to Worry About Those Billionaires by Dean Baker

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26 July 2018 — FAIR

WaPo: In the age of inequality, Goldman’s CEO offers an unexpected lesson

Washington Post

Just when you thought economic commentary in the Washington Post couldn’t get any more insipid, Roger Lowenstein proves otherwise. In a business section “perspective” (7/20/18), he tells readers:

But what if inequality is the wrong metric. Herewith a modest proposition: economic inequality is not the best yardstick. What we should be paying attention to is social mobility.

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The Finance Curse: Introduction By Dan Hind

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4 June 2013 — Dan Hind

It is now well known that many countries which depend on earnings from natural resources like oil have failed to harness them for national development. In many cases it seems even worse than that: for all the hundreds of billions of dollars sloshing into countries like oil-rich Nigeria, for instance, such places seem to suffer more conflict, lower economic growth, greater corruption, higher inequality, less political freedom and often more absolute poverty than their resource-poor peers. This paradox of poverty from plenty has been extensively studied and is known as the Resource Curse.

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“Let us glory in our inequality.” By Michael Hudson

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8 April, 2013 —

Failed Privatizations – the Thatcher Legacy

By Michael Hudson, a research professor of Economics at University of Missouri, Kansas City, and a research associate at the Levy Economics Institute of Bard College. His latest book is “The Bubble and Beyond”.

This is from my book on privatization, written some 15 years ago, never published.

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