So what? What's the point? What does she want to do about it? More socialism? Give me a case in which that has worked and produced booming economies!
Libs just don't seem to realize that if everyone in the world were to suddenly achieve the lifestyle the average American enjoys, the world's resources would quickly evaporate and there would be choking pollution.
But that doesn't matter. There are poor people in the world. As a lib non-economically educated journalist, I have to sound the siren.
And people scream about Fox News' bias.
"highlights growing inequality in the distribution of wealth"
Maybe the poor countries should make products or perform services that other people want and sell them.
Just an idea.
Stupid communists.
You could take all the monet from the rich and give it to the poor. In less that 10 years the rich would have it back.
I thought this was extremely basic economics: The pie doesn't get cut in more ways -- the pie grows. Buffet helps make the pie bigger. Those poor people in Bangladesh who are using Grameen Bank's microcredit to escape from poverty are making the pie bigger.
Capitalists always want the pie to grow, the increasing slice size going to those who made it grow. Socialists want to keep the pie the same size and cut all sizes equally.
Estate tax protection. Buffett is such an advocate of massive estate taxes so why doesn't he just allow the government to confiscate 55% of his wealth when he kicks the bucket?
Yeah, that's for sure. Katrina was particularly hard on welfare moochers and stupid people who did not listen to orders to evacuate New Orleans, for example. They were just like people who stand on the train tracks and ignore the oncoming train because they're waiting for somebody to send a limo for them.
I think of it as social Darwinism in action. Nature can be very harsh with stupid, useless career social dependants with no sense of responsibility for their own self-preservation. That's how God culls the herd.
Same old communist claptrap. If the commies want to make a positive contribution to mankind, they should render themselves into biodiesel for the rest of us!
This is a "zero sum" argument and is as extinct as the dodo.
In America, the rich get richer and the poor get richer too.
Today's poor in America live as well or better than the middle class did during the '50's when I was growing up. That's why half the world is trying to crash our borders.
No flat screen TV, only one car per family, no health club membership, got to shop at Walmart not Prada . . . Oh, the humanity!
"Labor" is not a lumpen, indistinguishable mass negotiating with an equally indivisible "capital." Individuals workers bargain with individual employers, unless aided by collective-bargaining laws, which artificially forces together their otherwise dissimilar interests. The variation within "labor" is much greater than the differences between Mr. Stiglitz's imaginary categories of "labor" and "capital," which is Marx's language.
Joseph Stiglitz, one of whose most popular books is called Whither Socialism?, is a very smart man in the ways of academic economists, but a socialist through and through.
Wealth isn't "distributed" it's earned. those who have more don't get it because of some cosmic roulette wheel , they get it by earning it. Those who have less get less because they either don't work as hard or don't do things as valuable.
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." -Manuel II Paleologus
Let's play "liberal hypotheticals" with this wild pronouncement.
Our society recognizes both intelligence and "emotional" intelligence, right? What would happen to the calculations of wealth if we figure "emotional" wealth in the equation?
Liberal minds want to know in order to be proud of their own emotional generosity.
...and did so precisely because there was the incentive of profit.
Better there should be huge concentrations of wealth in the hands of individuals than in the hands of government, and the latter is the only alternative.
Socialism is not the answer, though.
Two points ..
They don't want everyone to achieve the average American lifestyle. They want the average American lifestyle to disappear.
If all the wealth was magically divided equally across the globe ... in a generation the "gross inequalities" would be right back in place.
"The poor you will always have with you" .. Jesus
No, it's the advanced economy which enables parts of their population to be vulnerable to external shocks and natural disasters - and survive!
Old maps of New Orleans showed nobody living in the flood zone - precisely because it would flood and destroy homes (surely found out the hard way). It was the advanced economy which built levees between the river/ocean and the flood zone, allowing the disadvantaged access to cheap, previously-unused, and wealth-enabling land. It was the advanced economy which was able to evacuate most of the city in time, and provided food & shelter to those who would/could not care for themselves. It is also the advanced economy (gov't flood insurance) which, upon devestating failure of those levees and destruction of homes in that flood zone, will rebuild those homes at little/no cost to owners & occupants.
The bottom "inequals" of an advanced economy are, on the whole, better off than the bottom "equals" of a less-advanced economy.
BTW: It was also an advanced economy which sent a floating city to Indonesia to help the less-advanced economy deal with the pervasive devestation of a huge tsunami.
Would the author prefer a less-advanced economy? The bottom is fixed; the top is boundless. Lowering the top does not raise the bottom.
I find it extremely interesting that Reuters has an economics reporter in London, supposedly writing "objective" news stories, who is an avowed Marxist.
He ought to ask some farmers in India or Indonesia if they'd rather continue in grinding rural poverty or make twice the wage in a Nike "sweatshop." Nike wins every time.