Tony Judt's new book is a sobering look at the consequences of income inequality for the United States and the United Kingdom. An excerpt was published recently by The New York Review of Books. Here's the gist:
The consequences are clear. There has been a collapse in intergenerational mobility: in contrast to their parents and grandparents, children today in the UK as in the US have very little expectation of improving upon the condition into which they were born. The poor stay poor. (See Figures 1 and 2.) Economic disadvantage for the overwhelming majority translates into ill health, missed educational opportunity, and—increasingly—the familiar symptoms of depression: alcoholism, obesity, gambling, and minor criminality. The unemployed or underemployed lose such skills as they have acquired and become chronically superfluous to the economy. Anxiety and stress, not to mention illness and early death, frequently follow.
Another interesting book on this subject is Mickey Kaus's "The End of Equality." It is heavy on the theory but that's not overly surprising considering Kaus's background in political philosophy.
ReplyDelete-Mike Pawlows
A very interesting read I am sure. Many people dont realize that income inequality in the developed world is as much of a problem as it is in the developing world. The United States has a Gini index score (a measurement of income disbursement amongst population) near equal to that of China. I am interested to read what "ill fares of the land" this creates right here at home.
ReplyDeleteMike M