The Inequality Trap

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The Inequality Trap

Author : William Watson
Publisher : University of Toronto Press
Page : 240 pages
File Size : 49,5 Mb
Release : 2015-09-15
Category : Business & Economics
ISBN : 9781442624955

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The Inequality Trap by William Watson Pdf

US President Barack Obama has called economic inequality the “defining issue of our time.” It has inspired the “Occupy” movements, made a French economist into a global celebrity, and given us a new expression – the “one percent.” But is our preoccupation with inequality really justified? Or wise? In his new book, William Watson argues that focusing on inequality is both an error and a trap. It is an error because much inequality is “good,” the reward for thrift, industry, and invention. It is a trap because it leads us to fixate on the top end of the income distribution, rather than on those at the bottom who need help most. In fact, if we respond to growing inequality by fighting capitalism rather than poverty, we may end up both poorer and less equal. Explaining the complexities of modern economics in a clear, accessible style, The Inequality Trap is the must-read rejoinder to the idea that fighting inequality should be our top policy priority.

The Inequality Trap

Author : William G Watson
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 128 pages
File Size : 49,8 Mb
Release : 2015
Category : SOCIAL SCIENCE
ISBN : 1442624949

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The Inequality Trap by William G Watson Pdf

"US President Barack Obama has called economic inequality the "defining issue of our time." It has inspired the "Occupy" movements, made a French economist into a global celebrity, and given us a new expression--the "one percent." But is our preoccupation with inequality really justified? Or wise? In his new book, William Watson argues that focusing on inequality is both an error and a trap. It is an error because much inequality is "good," the reward for thrift, industry, and invention. It is a trap because it leads us to fixate on the top end of the income distribution, rather than on those at the bottom who need help most. In fact, if we respond to growing inequality by fighting capitalism rather than poverty, we may end up both poorer and less equal. Explaining the complexities of modern economics in a clear, accessible style, The Inequality Trap is the must-read rejoinder to the idea that fighting inequality should be our top policy priority."--

America's Inequality Trap

Author : Nathan J. Kelly
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
Page : 215 pages
File Size : 45,6 Mb
Release : 2020-02-11
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 9780226665641

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America's Inequality Trap by Nathan J. Kelly Pdf

The gap between the rich and the poor has grown dramatically in the United States and is now at its widest since at least the early 1900s. While by most measures the economy has been improving, soaring cost of living and stagnant wages have done little to assuage economic anxieties. Conditions like these seem designed to produce a generation-defining intervention to balance the economic scales and enhance opportunities for those at the middle and bottom of the country’s economic ladder—but we have seen nothing of the sort. Nathan J. Kelly argues that a key reason for this is that rising concentrations of wealth create a politics that makes reducing economic inequality more difficult. Kelly convincingly shows that, when a small fraction of the people control most of the economic resources, they also hold a disproportionate amount of political power, hurtling us toward a self-perpetuating plutocracy, or an “inequality trap.” Among other things, the rich support a broad political campaign that convinces voters that policies to reduce inequality are unwise and not in the average voter’s interest, regardless of the real economic impact. They also take advantage of interest groups they generously support to influence Congress and the president, as well as state governments, in ways that stop or slow down reform. One of the key implications of this book is that social policies designed to combat inequality should work hand-in-hand with political reforms that enhance democratic governance and efforts to fight racism, and a coordinated effort on all of these fronts will be needed to reverse the decades-long trend.

The Meritocracy Trap

Author : Daniel Markovits
Publisher : Penguin
Page : 450 pages
File Size : 54,6 Mb
Release : 2019-09-10
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9780735222007

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The Meritocracy Trap by Daniel Markovits Pdf

A revolutionary new argument from eminent Yale Law professor Daniel Markovits attacking the false promise of meritocracy It is an axiom of American life that advantage should be earned through ability and effort. Even as the country divides itself at every turn, the meritocratic ideal – that social and economic rewards should follow achievement rather than breeding – reigns supreme. Both Democrats and Republicans insistently repeat meritocratic notions. Meritocracy cuts to the heart of who we are. It sustains the American dream. But what if, both up and down the social ladder, meritocracy is a sham? Today, meritocracy has become exactly what it was conceived to resist: a mechanism for the concentration and dynastic transmission of wealth and privilege across generations. Upward mobility has become a fantasy, and the embattled middle classes are now more likely to sink into the working poor than to rise into the professional elite. At the same time, meritocracy now ensnares even those who manage to claw their way to the top, requiring rich adults to work with crushing intensity, exploiting their expensive educations in order to extract a return. All this is not the result of deviations or retreats from meritocracy but rather stems directly from meritocracy’s successes. This is the radical argument that Daniel Markovits prosecutes with rare force. Markovits is well placed to expose the sham of meritocracy. Having spent his life at elite universities, he knows from the inside the corrosive system we are trapped within. Markovits also knows that, if we understand that meritocratic inequality produces near-universal harm, we can cure it. When The Meritocracy Trap reveals the inner workings of the meritocratic machine, it also illuminates the first steps outward, towards a new world that might once again afford dignity and prosperity to the American people.

The Education Trap

Author : Cristina Viviana Groeger
Publisher : Harvard University Press
Page : 385 pages
File Size : 45,9 Mb
Release : 2021-03-09
Category : Education
ISBN : 9780674259157

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The Education Trap by Cristina Viviana Groeger Pdf

Why—contrary to much expert and popular opinion—more education may not be the answer to skyrocketing inequality. For generations, Americans have looked to education as the solution to economic disadvantage. Yet, although more people are earning degrees, the gap between rich and poor is widening. Cristina Groeger delves into the history of this seeming contradiction, explaining how education came to be seen as a panacea even as it paved the way for deepening inequality. The Education Trap returns to the first decades of the twentieth century, when Americans were grappling with the unprecedented inequities of the Gilded Age. Groeger’s test case is the city of Boston, which spent heavily on public schools. She examines how workplaces came to depend on an army of white-collar staff, largely women and second-generation immigrants, trained in secondary schools. But Groeger finds that the shift to more educated labor had negative consequences—both intended and unintended—for many workers. Employers supported training in schools in order to undermine the influence of craft unions, and so shift workplace power toward management. And advanced educational credentials became a means of controlling access to high-paying professional and business jobs, concentrating power and wealth. Formal education thus became a central force in maintaining inequality. The idea that more education should be the primary means of reducing inequality may be appealing to politicians and voters, but Groeger warns that it may be a dangerous policy trap. If we want a more equitable society, we should not just prescribe more time in the classroom, but fight for justice in the workplace.

America's Inequality Trap

Author : Nathan J. Kelly
Publisher : Chicago Studies in American Politics
Page : 215 pages
File Size : 40,5 Mb
Release : 2020-02-11
Category : BUSINESS & ECONOMICS
ISBN : 9780226665504

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America's Inequality Trap by Nathan J. Kelly Pdf

"In this book Nate Kelly argues that rising concentrations of wealth creates a politics that makes reducing economic inequality more difficult. Kelly convincingly demonstrates that the concentration of economic resources in a small group leads to a concentration of economic and political power that in turn creates a self-perpetuating plutocracy or an "inequality trap." As economic resources become concentrated, those who control them engage in a variety of political activities that seek to perpetuate their advantages. Among other things, the rich support a broad public campaign that convinces voters that policies to reduce inequality are unwise and not in the average voter's interest, notwithstanding the real economic impact. They also manipulate the formal division of our government into separate branches and a federal system to their advantage"--

Poverty Traps

Author : Samuel Bowles,Steven N. Durlauf,Karla Hoff
Publisher : Princeton University Press
Page : 251 pages
File Size : 40,6 Mb
Release : 2016-05-31
Category : Business & Economics
ISBN : 9780691170930

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Poverty Traps by Samuel Bowles,Steven N. Durlauf,Karla Hoff Pdf

Much popular belief--and public policy--rests on the idea that those born into poverty have it in their power to escape. But the persistence of poverty and ever-growing economic inequality around the world have led many economists to seriously question the model of individual economic self-determination when it comes to the poor. In Poverty Traps, Samuel Bowles, Steven Durlauf, Karla Hoff, and the book's other contributors argue that there are many conditions that may trap individuals, groups, and whole economies in intractable poverty. For the first time the editors have brought together the perspectives of economics, economic history, and sociology to assess what we know--and don't know--about such traps. Among the sources of the poverty of nations, the authors assign a primary role to social and political institutions, ranging from corruption to seemingly benign social customs such as kin systems. Many of the institutions that keep nations poor have deep roots in colonial history and persist long after their initial causes are gone. Neighborhood effects--influences such as networks, role models, and aspirations--can create hard-to-escape pockets of poverty even in rich countries. Similar individuals in dissimilar socioeconomic environments develop different preferences and beliefs that can transmit poverty or affluence from generation to generation. The book presents evidence of harmful neighborhood effects and discusses policies to overcome them, with attention to the uncertainty that exists in evaluating such policies.

The Parent Trap

Author : Nate G. Hilger
Publisher : MIT Press
Page : 306 pages
File Size : 46,8 Mb
Release : 2023-04-04
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 9780262545945

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The Parent Trap by Nate G. Hilger Pdf

How parents have been set up to fail, and why helping them succeed is the key to achieving a fair and prosperous society. A next Big Idea Club nominee. Few people realize that raising children is the single largest industry in the United States. Yet this vital work receives little political support, and its primary workers—parents—labor in isolation. If they ask for help, they are made to feel inadequate; there is no centralized organization to represent their interests; and there is virtually nothing spent on research and development to help them achieve their goals. It’s almost as if parents are set up to fail—and the result is lost opportunities that limit children’s success and make us all worse off. In The Parent Trap, Nate Hilger combines cutting-edge social science research, revealing historical case studies, and on-the-ground investigation to recast parenting as the hidden crucible of inequality. Parents are expected not only to care for their children but to help them develop the skills they will need to thrive in today’s socioeconomic reality—but most parents, including even the most caring parents on the planet, are not trained in skill development and lack the resources to get help. How do we fix this? The solution, Hilger argues, is to ask less of parents, not more. America should consider child development a public investment with a monumental payoff. We need a program like Medicare—call it Familycare—to drive this investment. To make it happen, parents need to organize to wield their political power on behalf of children—who will always be the largest bloc of disenfranchised people in this country. The Parent Trap exposes the true costs of our society’s unrealistic expectations around parenting and lays out a profoundly hopeful blueprint for reform.

The Inequality Trap

Author : William Watson
Publisher : University of Toronto Press
Page : 239 pages
File Size : 53,5 Mb
Release : 2015-01-01
Category : Business & Economics
ISBN : 9781442637245

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The Inequality Trap by William Watson Pdf

Argues that focusing on inequality is an error because much inequality is "good," the reward for thrift, industry, and invention, and also a trap because it leads us to fixate on the top end of the income distribution rather than on those at the bottom who need help most. Asserts that responding to growing inequality by fighting capitalism rather than poverty may lead to both more poverty and less equality.

The Rent Trap

Author : Rosie Walker,Samir Jeraj
Publisher : Pluto Press (UK)
Page : 0 pages
File Size : 43,8 Mb
Release : 2016
Category : Apartment dwellers
ISBN : 0745336469

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The Rent Trap by Rosie Walker,Samir Jeraj Pdf

Deregulation, revenge evictions, corruption, and day-to-day instability: these are realities becoming ever more familiar for those of us who rent our homes or apartments. At the same time, house prices are skyrocketing and the promise of homeownership is now an impossible dream for many. This is the rent-trap, an inescapable consequence of market-induced inequality. Samir Jeraj and Rosie Walker offer the first in-depth case study of the private rental sector in the United Kingdom, exploring the rent-trap injustices in a first-world economy and exposing the powers that conspire to oppose regulation. A quarter of British MPs are landlords; rent strike is almost impossible; and sudden evictions are growing. Nevertheless, drawing on inspiration from movements in the United Kingdom, continental Europe, and elsewhere, The Rent Trap shows how people are starting to fight back against the financial burdens, health risks, and vicious behavior of landlords, working to create a world of fairer, safer housing for all--lessons that extend well beyond the borders of the UK.

The Technology Trap

Author : Carl Benedikt Frey
Publisher : Princeton University Press
Page : 488 pages
File Size : 47,6 Mb
Release : 2020-09-22
Category : Business & Economics
ISBN : 9780691210797

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The Technology Trap by Carl Benedikt Frey Pdf

From the Industrial Revolution to the age of artificial intelligence, Carl Benedikt Frey offers a sweeping account of the history of technological progress and how it has radically shifted the distribution of economic and political power among society's members. As the author shows, the Industrial Revolution created unprecedented wealth and prosperity over the long run, but the immediate consequences of mechanization were devastating for large swaths of the population.These trends broadly mirror those in our current age of automation. But, just as the Industrial Revolution eventually brought about extraordinary benefits for society, artificial intelligence systems have the potential to do the same. Benedikt Frey demonstrates that in the midst of another technological revolution, the lessons of the past can help us to more effectively face the present. --From publisher description.

The Development Trap

Author : Adam D. Kiš
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 172 pages
File Size : 54,9 Mb
Release : 2018-03-05
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9781351273787

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The Development Trap by Adam D. Kiš Pdf

A wave of optimism is sweeping through the international aid and development industry, championed by leaders such as Jeffrey Sachs and Jim Yong Kim, who believe that poverty eradication could be within our grasp. Yet in stark opposition come those who believe that all international development intervention is hegemonic, paternalistic, and neocolonialist and must be done away with. In this book, Adam D. Kiš argues for a middle ground. Poverty is an entrenched, intractable problem that will never be entirely eradicated. However, if we reorientate our objectives in line with realistic goals that improve the way that poverty is confronted on a smaller scale, we can still continue the fight for meaningful change. Using rigorous scholarship illustrated with vivid storytelling and personal anecdotes from fighting against poverty in the field, The Development Trap argues that we need to make progress against poverty on the micro, rather than the macro scale. Instead of shooting for a single overarching end of poverty, our goals must be modest and reachable. Poverty still won’t go away, on a macro scale, but it can go away for specific individuals - in fact, it already happens all the time. The Development Trap is a compelling account of the challenges of eradicating poverty, and the possibilities for meaningful change at a smaller scale. It will be perfect for international development professionals, students and scholars, and for those with a general interest in the future of aid and development.

Economic Woman

Author : Frances Raday
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 262 pages
File Size : 51,6 Mb
Release : 2019-05-14
Category : Business & Economics
ISBN : 9781317281320

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Economic Woman by Frances Raday Pdf

The author introduces the concept of economic woman and makes her visible in duality with and opposition to the exclusive model of economic man. Economic man has epitomized neo-liberal capitalism, which embraces competition and maximization of profit, resulting in a steep increase in economic inequality. The book demonstrates that women’s inequality is a crucial factor in economic inequality, which cannot be fully understood without relating to women’s situation, and that economic woman cannot thrive in the conditions of economic inequality created under global neo-liberalism. Emphasising the international human rights guarantees of women’s right to equality in all fields of life, the author documents woman’s increased participation in political, public, financial and corporate institutions, employment and entrepreneurship, with some women reaching high profile positions. Nevertheless, using global data, she reveals that economic woman lags behind, with a severe economic power deficit, an unfulfilled promise of equal employment opportunity, a gendered impact of poverty and barriers to gender equality in the family. The book analyses the trap of women’s increased burden of breadwinning in the context of discriminatory laws and practices, infrastructural failures and policy gaps, which preempt achievement of gender equality in economic life. The book is intended for the general reader, academics, students, policy makers and NGOs. It shows economic woman at a global crossroads between a universal paradigm of gender equality and pervasive barriers to equal economic opportunity. The author demonstrates that tackling gender inequality, restoring welfare priorities and reducing economic inequality are inextricably linked. Human rights and governments have a vital role to play in addressing them all, to create a sustainable economic infrastructure for the lives of women and men.

China: Surpassing the “Middle Income Trap”

Author : Shaojie Zhou,Angang Hu
Publisher : Palgrave Macmillan
Page : 218 pages
File Size : 51,5 Mb
Release : 2020-10-06
Category : Business & Economics
ISBN : 9811565392

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China: Surpassing the “Middle Income Trap” by Shaojie Zhou,Angang Hu Pdf

This open access book explores one of the most fiercely debated issues in China: if and how China will surpass the middle income trap that has plagued many developing countries for years. This book gives readers a clear picture of China today and acts as a reference for other developing countries. China is facing many setbacks and experiencing an economic slowdown in recent years due to some serious issues, and income inequality is one such issue deferring China’s development potential by creating a middle income trap. This book thoroughly investigates both the unpromising factors and favorable conditions for China to overcome the trap. It illustrates that traps may be encountered at any stage of development and argues that political stability is the prerequisite to creating a favorable environment for economic development and addressing this “middle income trap”. Written by one of China's central planners, this book offers precious insights into the industrial policies that are transforming China and the world and will be of interest to China scholars, economists and political scientists.

Corruption, Inequality, and the Rule of Law

Author : Eric M. Uslaner
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Page : 360 pages
File Size : 55,7 Mb
Release : 2010-04-12
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 0521145643

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Corruption, Inequality, and the Rule of Law by Eric M. Uslaner Pdf

Corruption flouts rules of fairness and gives some people advantages that others don't have. Corruption is persistent; there is little evidence that countries can escape the curse of corruption easily-or at all. Instead of focusing on institutional reform, Uslaner suggests that the roots of corruption lie in economic and legal inequality and low levels of generalized trust (which are not readily changed) and poor policy choices (which may be more likely to change). Economic inequality provides a fertile breeding ground for corruption-and, in turn, it leads to further inequalities. Just as corruption is persistent, inequality and trust do not change much over time in my cross-national aggregate analyses. Uslaner argues that high inequality leads to low trust and high corruption, and then to more inequality-an inequality trap and identifies direct linkages between inequality and trust in surveys of the mass public and elites in transition countries. Eric M. Uslaner is Professor of Government and Politics at the University of Maryland-College Park, where he has taught since 1975. He has written seven books including The Moral Foundations of Trust (Cambridge University Press, 2002), and The Decline of Comity in Congress (University of Michigan Press, 1993). In 1981-82 he was Fulbright Professor of American Studies and Political Science at the Hebrew University, Jerusalem, Israel and in 2005, he was a Fulbright Senior Specialist Lecturer at Novosibirsk State Technical University, Novosibirsk, Siberia, Russia. In 2006 he was appointed the first Senior Research Fellow at the Center for American Law and Political Science at the Southwest University of Political Science and Law, Chongqing, China.