Well, actually bulk of reading was done yesterday evening. But notes weren't taken.
Pages 20-30
Return to Inequality is the major theme. The chart showing the proportion of national income that is shared by the top decile of the population was revealing. India it is about 55% and greater than China. Europe, USA and Russia are also compared.This proportion has sharply risen from 1980s to 2018. At the other end, the proportion of national income shared by the lower 50% has fallen to as low as 10%. Huge disparity exists in Middle East and South Africa.
The Elephant Curve which shows the distribution of income among the population is brilliant. The trunk is the sharply rising 27% of the growth owned by the top 1% of the population. The slightly rising mount of the head is the 12% growth captured by 10-40%.The dip in the trunk is the middle class (45-90 )which got hollowed out in the growth sharing. This is what Susskind also points out in the End of Work. He attributes it to automation and machinations coming up rapidly into the relatively high paying tasks. The Russian oligarch, Wealthy American, Indian industrialists etc disproportionately benefitted.
Justifications arise for entrepreneurs but not for oligarchs and oil billionaires. Justifications bring in property rights, inefficient state compared to private enterprise etc which have time and again been used to justify the inequality. Would billionaires have benefitted without the public money in education, research, legal system and tax codes? Inequality is also justified as necessary for political stability. Surely we should reward individual effort, enterprising and risk taking but reducing the share of growth of top 1% by 10-20% to benefit the middle and lower strata, would not be damaging to the top 1% in any way.
Picketty defines trifunctional or ternary societies as those that can be seen to have broadly three divisions: clergy, nobility and third estate i.e. religious, warrior/ruling/owning, common man/labor.
Page 30-40
Managed to cover this also as the topics were interesting.
The basic argument is that while in early 20th century, the class difference along any of axes of education, income, wealth was correlated. Now, that has disappeared. So the political parties are being preferred by different groups of people. Egalitarian ideologies strongly evolved across nations during the beginning of last century since the threat of communism was visible. Progressive taxation as high as 80% existed and this was frowned upon only in the 1980s when Regan and Thatcher came along. They argued that Sweden Japan etc got ahead because the progressive tax had ruined innovative and entrepreneurial spirit. But we have no evidence that cutting those taxes led to productivity.
Education system is highly unequal. In US, the bottom 10% income parents have only 20% chance of their child making it to university while it is 90% when it comes to the top decile.
The pivot in the 1980s...led to the crash in 2010 and now it is time to rethink capitalism with free market combination.
Even in a socially progressive highly educated society like Kerala, divine justification for inequality still has traction as is evident from the reactions to the Padmanabhaswamy Temple ruling by the Supreme Court.
Educated/Intellectual class, Wealthy/Managerial Class and Labor seem to be the new social divisions which kind of mirror the religious, royal and commoner categories.
Pages 20-30
Return to Inequality is the major theme. The chart showing the proportion of national income that is shared by the top decile of the population was revealing. India it is about 55% and greater than China. Europe, USA and Russia are also compared.This proportion has sharply risen from 1980s to 2018. At the other end, the proportion of national income shared by the lower 50% has fallen to as low as 10%. Huge disparity exists in Middle East and South Africa.
The Elephant Curve which shows the distribution of income among the population is brilliant. The trunk is the sharply rising 27% of the growth owned by the top 1% of the population. The slightly rising mount of the head is the 12% growth captured by 10-40%.The dip in the trunk is the middle class (45-90 )which got hollowed out in the growth sharing. This is what Susskind also points out in the End of Work. He attributes it to automation and machinations coming up rapidly into the relatively high paying tasks. The Russian oligarch, Wealthy American, Indian industrialists etc disproportionately benefitted.
Justifications arise for entrepreneurs but not for oligarchs and oil billionaires. Justifications bring in property rights, inefficient state compared to private enterprise etc which have time and again been used to justify the inequality. Would billionaires have benefitted without the public money in education, research, legal system and tax codes? Inequality is also justified as necessary for political stability. Surely we should reward individual effort, enterprising and risk taking but reducing the share of growth of top 1% by 10-20% to benefit the middle and lower strata, would not be damaging to the top 1% in any way.
Picketty defines trifunctional or ternary societies as those that can be seen to have broadly three divisions: clergy, nobility and third estate i.e. religious, warrior/ruling/owning, common man/labor.
Page 30-40
Managed to cover this also as the topics were interesting.
The basic argument is that while in early 20th century, the class difference along any of axes of education, income, wealth was correlated. Now, that has disappeared. So the political parties are being preferred by different groups of people. Egalitarian ideologies strongly evolved across nations during the beginning of last century since the threat of communism was visible. Progressive taxation as high as 80% existed and this was frowned upon only in the 1980s when Regan and Thatcher came along. They argued that Sweden Japan etc got ahead because the progressive tax had ruined innovative and entrepreneurial spirit. But we have no evidence that cutting those taxes led to productivity.
Education system is highly unequal. In US, the bottom 10% income parents have only 20% chance of their child making it to university while it is 90% when it comes to the top decile.
The pivot in the 1980s...led to the crash in 2010 and now it is time to rethink capitalism with free market combination.
Even in a socially progressive highly educated society like Kerala, divine justification for inequality still has traction as is evident from the reactions to the Padmanabhaswamy Temple ruling by the Supreme Court.
Educated/Intellectual class, Wealthy/Managerial Class and Labor seem to be the new social divisions which kind of mirror the religious, royal and commoner categories.
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