David F. Ruccio — Poverty and inequality—on a global scale

More numbers sleight of hand.

It should perhaps come as no surprise that, as capitalism has been called into question and socialism generated increasing interest during the past decade, capitalism’s defenders have resorted to a long historical view. Look, they say, how capitalist growth has decreased poverty and led to improvements in people’s lives around the globe. Just stick with it and all will eventually be well.

That’s why, as Jason Hickel points out, the above infographic, based on sketchiest of data going back to 1820, is one of Bill Gates’s favorites. Or why Deirdre McCloskey never tires in scolding the critics of capitalism that “the Great Fact of modern life, the most surprising secular news since the domestication of plants and animals, is the rise of real income per head.”...

The masses people who were bulldozed into the capitalist labor system now produce and consume the immense accumulation of commodities that represents the growing wealth of nations around the world.

But even as the percentage of workers living in extreme poverty has declined, especially in recent decades, they’re falling further and further behind the tiny group at the top. That’s because the incomes generated by economic growth on a global scale have been unevenly distributed....

In other words, extreme poverty may have fallen but relative immiseration has proceeded apace—the result of a growing gap between those who have a lot and those who now have a little....

Occasional Links & Commentary

Poverty and inequality—on a global scale
David F. Ruccio | Professor of Economics, University of Notre Dame

Patriotic elite.

Daily Mail
Britain’s richest man quits the UK: Billionaire Brexiteer Sir James Ratcliffe ‘relocates to Monaco in a bid to save £4bn in tax’

David F. Ruccio — Inequality and immiseration

"Immiseration" has a nice quality to it and is less emotionally loaded than "exploitation," which is now associated with "Marxism" in the pejorative sense in capitalist countries like the US.

It’s clear that, for decades now, American workers have been falling further and further behind. And there’s simply no justification for this sorry state of affairs—nothing that can rationalize or excuse the growing gap between the majority of people who work for a living and the tiny group at the top.

But that doesn’t stop mainstream economists from trying...

Are mainstream economists capitalist shills or are they just clueless about reality? Or maybe both.

American workers are getting relatively less of what they produce, which means more is available to distribute to those at the top of the distribution of income.

That’s what mainstream economists can’t or won’t understand: that workers may be worse off even as their wages and incomes rise. That problem flies in the face of every attempt to celebrate the existing order by claiming “just deserts.”

There’s nothing just about the relative immiseration and growing inequality faced by American workers. And nothing that can’t be changed by imagining and creating a radically different set of economic institutions.

Economists operate in terms of the institutional status quo and those stepping out of line are marginalized a "heterodox," or "Marxist." The economics department at Notre Dame, where David Ruccio taught for many years, was recently reorganized to diminish if not entirely excluded heterodox teaching. This is also an institutional problem and it is closely connected with the larger institutional issues in which contemporary capitalism is embedded and imposed on workers (labor) and the environment (land).

The economics profession needs to be address these issues to remain credible.

 

Occasional Links & Commentary
Inequality and immiseration
David F. Ruccio | Professor of Economics, University of Notre Dame

Bill Mitchell — Same old story – poor getting poorer and more indebted and the rich …

I have started to research the idea of the disappearing or shrinking middle class as part of a book project (for 2015) I am amassing materials for. The idea is simple but the conceptualisation and demarcation of the idea is rather complex. The hypothesis is that Capitalism is now striking at the income and wealth segment that has helped give it stability (which in this sense relates to not having a revolution rather than eliminating major economic cycles and mass unemployment). Marx said that religion was the opiate of the masses that kept them in line whereas in modern times it is mass consumption and credit that seems to keep the middle class in line. The rise in income and wealth inequality over the last 3 decades under the watch of neo-liberalism is obvious and initially showed up as a widening 90/10 gap (the numbers being deciles in the relevant distribution). But as the lowest income groups were marginalised, the dynamic moved on and started hollowing out the middle deciles. Real wages have lagged well behind productivity growth and mass unemployment is infiltrating the middle-income cohorts who typically have superior education, which has insulated them from job loss. The US Census Bureau provides excellent data on – Wealth and Asset Ownership, which allows us to trace the trends in household net worth and debt in the US in some detail. This blog just documents some of the characteristics of those distributions – it is preliminary work for me but of interest nonetheless.

Bill Mitchell – billy blog
Same old story – poor getting poorer and more indebted and the rich …
Bill Mitchell | Professor in Economics and Director of the Centre of Full Employment and Equity (CofFEE), at the Charles Darwin University, Northern Territory, Australia