Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Anne Manne discusses how extreme wealth leads to narcissism and a lack of empathy, while pointing out that to merely recognizing the problem…
inequality
Supermanagers and the social psychology of wealth
By now, Thomas Piketty’s U-shaped graphs of wealth and income concentration are well known. What has received less attention are the differences between the last, early-20th-century inequality peak and today.…
Tuesday Morning Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading. – Katrina vanden Heuvel criticizes the U.S. Democrats’ move away from discussing inequality by in favour of platitudes about opportunity for the middle…
Friday Morning Links
Assorted content to end your week. – Robert Reich discusses how a reasonable balance of economic and political power is necessary to any protection of meaningful personal freedom: In reality,…
Thursday Morning Links
This and that for your Thursday reading. – Ann Robertson and Bill Leumer respond to Joseph Stiglitz by pointing out that some of the inequality arising out of capitalism has…
Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – David Atkins highlights Gallup’s latest polling showing that U.S. trust in public institutions continues to erode. And Paul Krugman notes that there’s reason…
Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your Monday reading. – Benjamin Shingler reports on the push for a basic annual income in Canada. And Christopher Blattman notes that cash serves as a valuable…
Sunday Morning Links
This and that for your Sunday reading. – Thomas Frank interviews Barry Lynn about the U.S.’ alarming concentration of wealth and power. Henry Blodget thoroughly rebuts the myth that “rich…
Saturday Morning Links
This and that for your weekend reading. – Joseph Stiglitz wraps up the New York Times’ series on inequality by summarizing how the gap between the rich and the rest…
Friday Morning Links
Assorted content to end your week. – Paul Krugman offers a response to the assertion that accumulated wealth should be considered as costless capital: (I)f there’s one thing I thought…
Slides on Piketty’s Capital
I spoke at an event dedicated to Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century last night in Vancouver. It was great to have a conversation about inequality, economics and politics with…
Thursday Morning Links
This and that for your Thursday reading. – Harry Stein discusses how government policy is currently designed to exacerbate inequality by subsidizing the concentration of wealth: This issue brief puts…
Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Gar Alperovitz suggests in the wake of Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century that it’s long past time to reconsider who controls…
Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material to start your week. – Thomas Frank discusses the corporate takeover of U.S. politics – and how even nominally left-oriented parties are willing to go along with the…
Saturday Morning Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Andrew Jackson reviews the OECD’s economic recommendations for Canada – featuring a much-needed call for fair taxes on stock options: Special tax breaks…
Friday Morning Links
Assorted content to end your week. – Rick Salutin discusses how corruption has become endemic in the global economy as an inevitable consequence of me-first values: You wouldn’t have those…
Can capitalists save capitalism?
Prominent Harvard economist Lawrence Katz illustrates the American economy with an amusing analogy. He depicts it as an apartment block in which the penthouses have increased in size, the middle…
Tuesday Morning Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading. – Following up on this morning’s post, George Monbiot discusses the need for a progressive movement which goes beyond pointing out dangers to…
Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material to start your week. – Katie Allen discusses the Equality Trust’s research into tax rates in the UK – which shows that the poor actually pay the highest…
Sunday Morning Links
This and that for your Sunday reading. – Margaret Somers and Fred Block write about Karl Polanyi’s critique of the free-market myth and its increased relevance today: (F)ree-market rhetoric is…