Krugman:
...Which he proceeds to do, and they are persuasive. Please read them in their original context.
The key point, however, is that the case for regarding inequality as a major, indeed defining challenge — and as something that should be at the center of progressive concerns — rests on multiple pillars. Taken together, the reasons to focus on inequality are overwhelmingly convincing, even if you can be skeptical about particular arguments.
Let me make four points.
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This may all sound very abstract and econo‑philosophical, but it is hard as nails for people who are unemployed or otherwise shunted to the low end of economic inequality, and ultimately inequality is what must be fixed, in some measure, if we want to congratulate ourselves on running a fair and just society. Ceaselessly pointing out unjust inequality and ways it can be addressed is not class warfare: it is the path to our society's survival.
Capitalism is about transfer of wealth. Fundamentally capitalism transfers wealth from those who have less market power, to those who have more market power. As Marx pointed out, capitalism thus includes the seeds of its own destruction -- eventually the wealth becomes concentrated in the hands of the few with the most market power, and there is insufficient circulating capital to conduct routine economic activities. The last time this happened was in 1932, and what happened there scared the shit out of enough people that they elected FDR and let him conduct massive government interventions to get sufficient wealth back to the lower classes to allow economic activities to resume. Then WW2 put that on steroids, and capitalism was saved from itself.
ReplyDeleteThe fundamental hypocrisy of the right, then, is that it is progressives who have saved capitalism from itself and allowed capitalism to thrive and spread worldwide, yet it is also progressives who are accused by the right of being "anti-capitalist" because progressives advocate policies that transfer wealth from the more powerful to the less powerful. What progressives advocate is necessary in order to keep a capitalist economy working -- otherwise all capital becomes lumps of currency under the mattresses of a wealthy few -- but apparently saving capitalism from itself is "anti-capitalist". It is to laugh...
- Badtux the Power Penguin