HarvardUniversityPress - Thomas Piketty: "The distribution of wealth is one of today’s most widely discussed and controversial issues. But what do we really know about its evolution over the long term? Do the dynamics of private capital accumulation inevitably lead to the concentration of wealth in ever fewer hands, as Karl Marx believed in the nineteenth century? Or do the balancing forces of growth, competition, and technological progress lead in later stages of development to reduced inequality and greater harmony among the classes, as Simon Kuznets thought in the twentieth century? What do we really know about how wealth and income have evolved since the eighteenth century, and what lessons can we derive from that knowledge for the century now under way?
Indeed, the distribution of wealth is too important an issue to be left to economists, sociologists, historians, and philosophers. It is of interest to everyone, and that is a good thing. The concrete, physical reality of inequality is visible to the naked eye and naturally inspires sharp but contradictory political judgments. Peasant and noble, worker and factory owner, waiter and banker: each has his or her own unique vantage point and sees important aspects of how other people live and what relations of power and domination exist between social groups, and these observations shape each person’s judgment of what is and is not just. Hence there will always be a fundamentally subjective and psychological dimension to inequality, which inevitably gives rise to political conflict that no purportedly scientific analysis can alleviate. Democracy will never be supplanted by a republic of experts—and that is a very good thing.
The question is important, and not just for historical reasons. Since the 1970s, income inequality has increased significantly in the rich countries, especially the United States, where the concentration of income in the first decade of the twenty-first century regained—indeed, slightly exceeded—the level attained in the second decade of the previous century. It is therefore crucial to understand clearly why and how inequality decreased in the interim. To be sure, the very rapid growth of poor and emerging countries, especially China, may well prove to be a potent force for reducing inequalities at the global level, just as the growth of the rich countries did during the period 1945–1975. But this process has generated deep anxiety in the emerging countries and even deeper anxiety in the rich countries. Furthermore, the impressive disequilibria observed in recent decades in the financial, oil, and real estate markets have naturally aroused doubts as to the inevitability of the “balanced growth path” described by Solow and Kuznets, according to whom all key economic variables are supposed to move at the same pace. Will the world in 2050 or 2100 be owned by traders, top managers, and the superrich, or will it belong to the oil-producing countries or the Bank of China? Or perhaps it will be owned by the tax havens in which many of these actors will have sought refuge. It would be absurd not to raise the question of who will own what and simply to assume from the outset that growth is naturally “balanced” in the long run.
If the question of inequality is again to become central, we must begin by gathering as extensive as possible a set of historical data for the purpose of understanding past and present trends. For it is by patiently establishing facts and patterns and then comparing different countries that we can hope to identify the mechanisms at work and gain a clearer idea of the future."
Dit boek verscheen verleden jaar in het Frans. De Engelse vertaling is al een bestseller en momenteel volledig uitverkocht. De Kindle-versie is natuurlijk nog volop beschikbaar. Het boek leest makkelijk ook voor niet-economen. Het is een must voor ieder die inzicht wil krijgen in de groeiende ongelijkheid en de mogelijke oplossingen.
Er wordt veel gepraat en geschreven over oligarchen in het buitenland, maar de oligarchen zijn overal, ook in het westen, met name in Amerika. Amerikaanse presidenten zijn miljonairs; ook al heeft Obama zijn mond vol over het slechten van ongelijkheid, er verandert niets.
CommonDreams: "A study, to appear in the Fall 2014 issue of the academic journal Perspectives on Politics, finds that the U.S. is no democracy, but instead an oligarchy, meaning profoundly corrupt, so that the answer to the study’s opening question, "Who governs? Who really rules?" in this country, is:
"Despite the seemingly strong empirical support in previous studies for theories of majoritarian democracy, our analyses suggest that majorities of the American public actually have little influence over the policies our government adopts. Americans do enjoy many features central to democratic governance, such as regular elections, freedom of speech and association, and a widespread (if still contested) franchise. But, ..." and then they go on to say, it's not true, and that, "America's claims to being a democratic society are seriously threatened" by the findings in this, the first-ever comprehensive scientific study of the subject, which shows that there is instead "the nearly total failure of 'median voter' and other Majoritarian Electoral Democracy theories [of America]. When the preferences of economic elites and the stands of organized interest groups are controlled for, the preferences of the average American appear to have only a minuscule, near-zero, statistically non-significant impact upon public policy.""
En wat we nooit zien in onze mainstream media zijn de betogingen voor een rechtvaardige en duurzame economie voor iedereen.
CommonDreams: "Demanding 'Just and Sustainable' Economy For All, Thousands March on Congress
Protesters rally at Capitol building to call for increase to minimum wage and an end to corporate giveaways"
WelingelichteKringen: "Een bescheiden groep van rijken en rijke organisaties maken de dienst uit in de Verenigde Staten. Een lijvige studie van onderzoekers van de Universiteit van Princeton ging van een groot aantal wetsontwerpen en besluiten na hoe ze waren genomen, wie er druk op hadden uitgeoefend en in wiens belang ze waren. Conclusie: de rijken maken de dienst uit. De onderzoekers namen 1800 wetten eb besluiten onder de loep, genomen in de afgelopen 15 jaar. In een groot aantal daarvan was rechstreeks de hand te herkennen van lobbygroepen uit de rangen van de rijkste Amerikanen. De besluiten kwamen tot stand zonder dat de mening van de meerderheid van de Amerikaanse bevolking er enig invloed op heeft.
Het Hooggerechtshof heeft onlangs besloten dat belangengroepen vrijwel onbeperkt mogen bijdragen aan campagnes van politic. Dat zal de democratie verder uithollen."