The eurozone was flawed at birth.
The United States was the most unequal of the advanced industrial countries in the mid-1980s, and it has maintained that position.92 In fact, the gap between it and many other countries has increased:...
The head of Goldman Sachs, Lloyd Blankfein, made it perfectly clear: sophisticated investors don’t, or at least shouldn’t, rely on trust. Those who bought the products the banks sold were consenting a...
The failures in politics and economics are related, and they reinforce each other. A political system that amplifies the voice of the wealthy provides ample opportunity for laws and regulations—and th...
The six heirs to the Wal-Mart empire command wealth of $69.7 billion, which is equivalent to the wealth of the entire bottom 30 percent of U.S. society.
We know through advances in behavioral economics and marketing that one can manipulate perceptions and beliefs.
Development is about transforming the lives of people, not just transforming economies.
Countries around the world provide frightening examples of what happens to societies when they reach the level of inequality toward which we are moving. It is not a pretty picture: countries where the...
It’s easy to get rich by getting a state asset at a deep discount.
The top 1 percent have the best houses, the best educations, the best doctors, and the best lifestyles, but there is one thing that money doesn’t seem to have bought: an understanding that their fate...
The rule of law is supposed to protect the weak against the strong and ensure fair treatment for all.
The more divided a society becomes in terms of wealth, the more reluctant the wealthy are to spend money on common needs. The rich don’t need to rely on government for parks or education or medical ca...
Curbing the financial sector. Since so much of the increase in inequality is associated with the excesses of the financial sector, it is a natural place to begin a reform program. Dodd-Frank is a star...
But unlike naïve Marxians, we do not believe that economic interests alone drive change. Change is often affected by the evolution of ideas, and particularly of overarching beliefs.54 Once the Enlight...
Already, data showed that the American dream of rags to riches, the Horatio Alger story, was largely a myth. Economic mobility was extremely limited. The abolition of the estate tax could solidify the...
We have a system that has been working overtime to move money from the bottom and middle to the top, but the system is so inefficient that the gains to the top are far less than the losses to the midd...
There are two ways to become wealthy: to create wealth or to take wealth away from others.
Especially in the United States, it seems that the political system is more akin to one dollar one vote than to one person one vote.
While GDP is the standard measure of economic performance,2 there are other indicators, and in virtually every one, the eurozone’s overall performance is dismal, and that of the crisis countries, disa...
To put it baldly, there are two ways to become wealthy: to create wealth or to take wealth away from others.