Richard D. Wolff — Capitalism as Obstacle to Equality and Democracy: the US Story

The Cold War displaced the legacies of the New Deal. Time and Trump are now displacing Cold War legacies. Where capitalism was questioned and challenged in the 1930s and into the 1940s, doing that became taboo after 1948. Yet in the wake of the 2008 crash, critical thought about capitalism resumed. In particular one argument is gaining traction: capitalism is not the means to realize economic equality and democracy, it is rather the great obstacle to their realization....

Economic liberalism (capitalism) and political liberalism (democracy) are antithetical.

Counterpunch
Capitalism as Obstacle to Equality and Democracy: the US Story

Richard D. Wolff, Marxian economist and founder of Democracy At Work

Branko Milanovic — In defense of equality (without welfare economics)

Important in the current debate about policy, political economy and politics with respect to the rising significance of economic (income and wealth) distribution.

Global Inequality
In defense of equality (without welfare economics)
Branko Milanovic | Visiting Presidential Professor at City University of New York Graduate Center and senior scholar at the Luxembourg Income Study (LIS), and formerly lead economist in the World Bank's research department and senior associate at Carnegie Endowment for International Peace

Steve Randy Waldman — Difference

Interfluidity
Difference
Steve Randy Waldman

Chris Dillow — The problem of greater equality

Like GDP, Gini is only one indicator. Neither tells the full story of income and wealth distribution.

Inequality has fallen in the UK - which might be worrying.

This sounds like an odd thing to say. But it's the natural implication of what Ben Chu rightly says. He notes that whilst the Gini coefficient hasn't changed much since the early 90s, the share of income going to the top 1% has risen.

However, we can think of the Gini coefficient as a single measure of all inequalities: the gap between the top 1% and the second percentile, plus the gap between the second and third percentiles, and so on. For this reason, the same Gini coefficient can describe very different societies.

The Gini coefficient can therefore be stable if one inequality increases and another diminishes. As Ben says, inequality has risen in the sense that the top 1% has gotten relatively better off. But it follows, therefore, that some other inequality has fallen.

Stumbling and Mumbling
The problem of greater equality
Chris Dillow | Investors Chronicle

Lawrence Ezrow — Do economic inequality and political inequality go together?

Yep. The way I would put it that social asymmetry (class), political asymmetry (power) and economic asymmetry (wealth) are interdependent, and that this is based on institutional arrangements in a society. The focal point is institutional arrangements.

The Washington Post
Do economic inequality and political inequality go together?
Lawrence Ezrow | Professor of Government at the University of Essex in the United Kingdom
ht Mark Thoma at Economist's View

See also

Much wiser and more pervasive than the post suggests, with a very fine line between crime and sharp dealing.

Bloomberg View
How Criminals Built Capitalism
Clive Crook

David F. Ruccio — Mainstream economics, heterodox economics, and the Left

So, what distinguishes liberal mainstream economists from left-wing heterodox economists? To my mind, it comes down to focusing on market imperfections (which can, at least in principle, be fixed within capitalism) versus focusing on the problems with capitalism as a system (which require, for a solution, the creation of noncapitalist practices and institutions). 

Here’s the definition of heterodox economics I gave back in 2010:

Heterodox economics comprises all those theories that academic economists and others use to criticize and develop alternatives to mainstream (neoclassical and Keynesian) approaches. Heterodox and mainstream theories differ in terms of their starting points, methodologies, and conclusions. Thus, for example, Marxian economists start with class and use Marxian value theory to criticize capitalism, whereas neoclassical economists start with a set of given preferences, technology, and resource endowments and use a framework of supply and demand to celebrate capitalism. The problems of capitalism and mainstream economic theories, now as throughout their history, create the space for and interest in heterodox approaches.

To practice that kind of left-wing heterodox economics means one does have to know something about Marx, Kalecki, Sraffa, and Minsky—because their work (and that of many others) constitutes the foundations (or at least some of the foundations) of nonmainstream, heterodox analysis. 

Heterodox economists reject economic orthodoxy not, as Dillow believes, because they’re ignorant of what the orthodoxy is or because of some kind of halo effect, but because, when they look at the world through the lens of Marx, Kalecki, Sraffa, and Minsky, they see an economic and social system that continues to discipline and punish the vast majority of people in order to benefit a tiny minority at the top. They see, in other words, an economy that is inherently unstable, fundamentally unequal, and profoundly unjust. 

Hence, heterodox economists see that another economics—another economic theory as well as another economic system—is both necessary and possible. Mainstream economists, for their part, don’t.

Occasional Links & Commentary
Mainstream economics, heterodox economics, and the Left
David F. Ruccio | Professor of Economics University of Notre Dame Notre Dame

Increasing Labor Productivity Is Not A Problem - It's A Benefit To Be Leveraged

(Commentary posted by Roger Erickson)

Looking Closer At More Causes of Current Economic Inequality

Mitchell's context-specific points echo my own systemic conclusion.

Historically, any improvements in productivity only freed distributed populations to explore even more distributed innovations.

(No one person domesticated crops, circumnavigated the globe, created nuclear power or sent people to the moon. Persistent teamwork did. And that return-on-coordination always completely swamps all other returns. There's no competition.)

Traditionally, we accepted all productivity improvements and just immediately set our sights higher - or at least that's what we used to do. Now our biggest failure seems to be a failure to set worthy challenges for ourselves. Face it. We're bored, and resorting to hoarding existing assets instead of going after bigger and insanely greater assets.

In social species, more distributed innovations just allow us to immediately set bigger/better/leaner aggregate goals & achievements. Why aren't we doing that?

As aggregate production steadily rises, it's amazing that we're again seeing the rise of unprecedented personal hoarding.

Ye Olde Analogy is generals hoarding all the advanced weapons from the distributed soldiers, and still thinking that they are securely protected by a functioning army. History has always shown that to be a losing strategy, and one long past pointless.

A social species either distributes all available tools, teachings & responsibilities ASAP ... or it wastes it's greatest leverage, unused.

David F. Ruccio — Class Dismissed

Just the fact that a special issue of such a prestigious journal [Science] is devoted to inequality tells us something about how the problem of inequality has risen to the top of our agenda....

Here’s what I find interesting about the debate, not only between the economists but throughout the entire special issue: it’s all about economic inequality—what it is, how it can be measured, what its causes and consequences are, and so on—but there’s not a single mention of class.

Not literally. The word class simply doesn’t appear in any of the articles or reviews. But that’s the specter that, in my view, haunts this entire debate: the return of class.

If the powers that be can’t solve the problem of inequality, then soon it will be all class all the time.

Occasional Links & Commentary
All inequality all the time
David F. Ruccio | Professor of Economics University of Notre Dame Notre Dame