The wealth given to the elites and to the bankers seemed to arise out of their ability and willingness to take advantage of others. One
The growth in asset management income accounts for roughly 35 percent of the growth of the financial sector as a percent of GDP, driven by the opaque fee structures, especially when it comes to altern...
Globalization is the field on which some of our major societal conflicts—including those over basic values—play out. Among the most important of those conflicts is that over the role of government and...
Economists have a name for these activities: they call them rent seeking, getting income not as a reward to creating wealth but by grabbing a larger share of the wealth that would otherwise have been...
But Dutch and other European milk producers would like to increase sales by having their milk, transported over long distances, appear to be as fresh as the local product. In 2014 the Troika forced Gr...
Truth-telling, truth-discovering, and truth-verification institutions evolved, and we owe to them much of the success of our economy and our democracy.21 Central among them is an active media. Like al...
Misshapen economy creates misshapen individuals and a misshapen society
Why do investors fail to realize that money placed in a mutual fund that tries to pick out-performing stocks is unlikely to yield a better return than money invested in the S&P 500? If fund managers a...
We are now approaching the level of inequality that marks dysfunctional societies—it is a club that we would distinctly not want to join, including Iran, Jamaica, Uganda, and the Philippines.93
There are two visions of America a half century from now. One is of a society more divided between the haves and the have-nots, a country in which the rich live in gated communities, send their childr...
Some thirty years ago, the top 1 percent of income earners received only 12 percent of the nation’s income.13
Power—often military power—was at the origin of these inequities.
Overborrowing or overlending? Lenders encourage indebtedness because it is profitable. Developing country governments are sometimes even pressured to overborrow ... Even without corruption, it is easy...
There is always a worry that voters will be attracted to populists and extremists who attack the establishment that has created this unfair system21 and who make unrealistic promises of change. Distru...
The newly elected government was told in effect that they had no choice: accept the conditions or your banking system will be destroyed, your economy will be devastated, and you will have to leave the...
Recent research has shown that by far the largest fraction of personal bankruptcies involve the illness of a family member.38
In today’s America the proud claim of justice for all is being replaced by the more modest claim of justice for those who can afford it.
Trickle-up economics can work, even when trickle-down economics doesn’t. Even
We should remember why those programs were started: before the arrival of Medicare and Social Security, the private sector left most elderly bereft of support, the market for annuities essentially did...
The financial sector provides ample rewards for those who agree with them: lucrative consultancies, research grants, and the like. The documentary raises a question: Could this have influenced some ec...