The Economist - Special report: The world economy
For richer, for poorer
….Growing inequality is one of the biggest social, economic and political challenges of our time. But it is not inevitable….
The Economist Oct 13th 2012 http://econ.st/QNGakg
“…..Although inequality has been on the rise for three decades, its political prominence is newer. During the go-go years before the financial crisis, growing disparities were hardly at the top of politicians’ to-do list. One reason was that asset bubbles and cheap credit eased life for everyone. Financiers were growing fabulously wealthy in the early 2000s, but others could also borrow ever more against the value of their home.
That changed after the crash. The bank rescues shone a spotlight on the unfairness of a system in which affluent bankers were bailed out whereas ordinary folk lost their houses and jobs. And in today’s sluggish economies, more inequality often means that people at the bottom and even in the middle of the income distribution are falling behind not just in relative but also in absolute terms.
The Occupy Wall Street campaign proved incoherent and ephemeral, but inequality and fairness have moved right up the political agenda…”
An unequal continent is becoming less so
The Economist Oct 13th 2012 at: http://econ.st/Usi591
“……According to Nora Lustig, an economist at the University of Tulane and one of the first to document the narrowing of the region’s income gaps, two things have made a big difference.
First, the premium for skilled workers has been falling: a surge in secondary education has increased the supply of literate, reasonably well-schooled workers, and years of steady growth have raised relative demand for the less skilled in the formal workforce, whether as construction workers or cleaners.
Second, governments around
The most striking change has been in education….”
In this special report
· Crony tigers, divided dragons
· Gini back in the bottle
KMC/2012/KMC
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