This is the question Isabel Sawhill of the Brookings Institution asks in a tightly written discussion of the factors relating inequality with opportunity.
Sawhill’s answer: “at current levels of inequality in the U.S. it likely does. However, this answer is qualified in several ways.”
Continue reading ““Are We Headed toward a Permanently Divided Society?””
On a warm evening last spring I found myself at a dinner party in the lush suburbs of a small Ivy League town not far from New York City.
The main concern of a fellow economist was the trouble his son was having raising his new family: that would be the son living in Manhattan, the one making $10 million a year.
It appears there is a bidding war for spaces in good kindergartens and, as we all know, prices skyrocket when demand outstrips supply.
And demand has been rising. We also know that.
So the most striking claim in the Economic Report of the President for 2012 is not that the share of earnings accruing to the top 1%—a share that was about 8% during the early 1980s—stands at close to 20%. After all, this is old news, the stuff of Occupy Wall Street.
Continue reading “Inequality begets inequality, according to the Economic Report of the President”
There is nothing wrong with inequality … until it starts limiting opportunity.
Well that might be a bit too strongly put, but it is certainly one thing to live in an unequal society where the chances of changing places with the rich, of seeing your children move on and upward, are high. Indeed, if this is the case we may even want a certain degree of inequality: people would have both the incentive and the possibility to better their situation.
But it is another thing altogether to live in an unequal society where there is little chance of moving on, where there are barriers preventing our talents and energies from being rewarded, where the accident of birth determines a child’s life chances.
This type of inequality should worry Occupiers and the 99% because it cuts sharply against what we commonly understand to be the American Dream.
Continue reading “Inequality and Occupy Wall Street 5: decline of the American Dream”
Economics for public policy 