Part of the reason for this is that much of America’s inequality is the result of market distortions, with incentives directed not at creating new wealth but at taking it from others.
Loose money and light regulation were a toxic mixture. It exploded.
Just as Guantánamo and Abu Ghraib have eroded America’s moral authority, so the Bush administration’s fiscal housekeeping has eroded our economic authority.
Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country
Today, China alone holds more than $1 trillion in public and private American IOUs. Cumulative borrowing from abroad during the six years of the Bush administration amounts to some $5 trillion. Most l...
Privatization, of course, is based on yet another myth: that government-run programs must be inefficient, and privatization accordingly must be better. In fact, as we noted in chapter 6, the transacti...
It may seem to readers that I talk too much about the bankers and corporate CEOs, too much about the financial crisis of 2008 and its aftermath, especially (as I’ll explain) since the problems of ineq...
Individuals can often be better motivated by intrinsic rewards—by the satisfaction of doing a job well—than by extrinsic rewards (money).
Growing inequality, combined with a flawed system of campaign finance, risks turning America’s legal system into a travesty of justice. Some may still call it the rule of law, but in today’s America t...
For now, we simply note that the marked reduction in inequality in the period between 1950 and 1970, was due partly to developments in the markets but even more to government policies, such as the inc...
For most people, wages are the most important source of income. Macroeconomic and monetary policies that result in higher unemployment—and lower wages for ordinary citizens—are a major source of inequ...
Europe’s reaction to the UK’s referendum was dominated by the same harsh response that greeted Greece’s June 2015 ballot-box rejection of its bailout package. Herman Van Rompuy, former European Counci...
Cigarette companies succeeded in using these methods to cast doubt on scientific findings that smoking was bad for health; and firms of all kinds succeed in persuading individuals to buy products that...
A lot of things went wrong in the nineties, and the footprints of the banks can be found at the scene of one suspicious deed after another. Investment banks are supposed to provide information that le...
Over the last three decades those with low wages (in the bottom 90 percent) have seen a growth of only around 15 percent in their wages, while those in the top 1 percent have seen an increase of almos...
Learning—we have learned how to increase productivity, the outputs that can be produced with any inputs. There are two aspects of learning that we can distinguish: an improvement in best practices, re...
During the 2008 crisis, corporate welfare reached new heights. In the great bailout of the Great Recession, one corporation alone, AIG, got more than $180 billion—more than was spent on welfare to the...
Suppose someone were to describe a small country that provided free education through university for all of its citizens, transportation for schoolchildren, and free health care - including heart surg...
Oxfam found that the top 1 percent of the world now owned nearly half the world’s wealth— and are on track to own as much of the rest of the 99 percent combined by 2016.
On every criterion by which performance is usually measured, the eurozone has been failing. Its performance has been poor relative to the United States, from which the crisis originated, and relative...