{"id":4333,"date":"2010-09-09T07:46:13","date_gmt":"2010-09-09T11:46:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/?p=4333"},"modified":"2010-09-09T08:21:26","modified_gmt":"2010-09-09T12:21:26","slug":"wealth-inequity-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/2010\/09\/09\/wealth-inequity-1\/","title":{"rendered":"&#8220;the most significant change in American society in your lifetime&#8221;&#8230;"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p align=\"center\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.slate.com\/id\/2266025\/entry\/2266026\" target=\"_blank\"><\/a><a href=\"http:\/\/www.slate.com\/id\/2266025\/entry\/2266026\" target=\"_blank\"><\/a><a href=\"http:\/\/www.slate.com\/id\/2266025\/entry\/2266026\" target=\"_blank\"><\/a><a href=\"http:\/\/www.slate.com\/id\/2266025\/entry\/2266026\" target=\"_blank\"><\/a><a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/img.slate.com\/media\/1\/123125\/2265681\/2266033\/100902_GD_Part1_PikettySaez-fig1.gif\"><img decoding=\"async\" border=\"0\" src=\"http:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/images\/top_ten.gif\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<div align=\"justify\">This is not right! This kind of wealth inequity&nbsp; isn&#8217;t acceptable in the USA &#8211; it&#8217;s the kind of thing you see in Latin America where the &quot;haves&quot; live in houses behind walls topped with barbed wire and broken glass. <strong><font color=\"#200020\">Why has the wealth inequity increased so dramatically?<\/font><\/strong> It&#8217;s easy to say it&#8217;s a bad thing, but why has it happened? The series <strong><font color=\"#200020\">The United States of Inequality<\/font><\/strong> currently running in <strong><font color=\"#660033\">Slate<\/font><\/strong> proposes to address that question. So far, four episodes of Timothy Noah&#8217;s series have been shooting down popular theories:<\/div>\n<blockquote>\n<div align=\"justify\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.slate.com\/id\/2266025\/entry\/2266026\/\" target=\"_blank\"><strong><font color=\"#200020\">1. Introducing the Great Divergence<\/font><\/strong><\/a><\/div>\n<ul>\n<div align=\"justify\"><sup>&quot;&#8230; almost no one can agree about what&#8217;s causing it. This week and  next, I will detail and weigh the strengths and weaknesses of various  prominent theories as to what has brought about the income inequality  boom of the last three decades. At the same time, I&#8217;ll try to convey the  magnitude of its effects on American life. The Great Divergence may  represent the most significant change in American society in your  lifetime&mdash;and it&#8217;s not a change for the better. Let&#8217;s see if we can  figure out what got us here.&quot;<\/sup><\/div>\n<\/ul>\n<div align=\"justify\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.slate.com\/id\/2266025\/entry\/2266027\/\" target=\"_blank\"><strong><font color=\"#200020\">2. The Usual Suspects Are Innocent<\/font><\/strong><\/a><\/div>\n<ul>\n<div align=\"justify\"><sup>&quot;But we need not delve into that debate, because the Great Divergence  can&#8217;t be blamed on either race or gender. To contribute to the growth in  income inequality over the past three decades, the income gaps between  women and men, and between blacks and whites, would have to have grown.  They didn&#8217;t.&quot;<\/sup><\/div>\n<\/ul>\n<div align=\"justify\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.slate.com\/id\/2266025\/entry\/2266506\/\" target=\"_blank\"><strong><font color=\"#200020\">3. Importing Inequality<\/font><\/strong><\/a><\/div>\n<ul>\n<div align=\"justify\"><sup>&quot;The conclusion here is as overwhelming as it is unsatisfying. Immigration has probably helped create income inequality. But it isn&#8217;t the star of the show. &#8216;If you were to list the five or six main things&#8217; that caused the Great Divergence, Borjas told me, &#8216;what I would say is [immigration is] a contributor. Is it the most important contributor? No.&#8217;&quot;<\/sup><\/div>\n<\/ul>\n<div align=\"justify\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.slate.com\/id\/2266025\/entry\/2266508\/\" target=\"_blank\"><strong><font color=\"#200020\">4. Computer Exceptionalism<\/font><\/strong><\/a><\/div>\n<ul>\n<div align=\"justify\"><sup>&quot;&#8230; before computers we witnessed technological revolutions brought on by the advent of the automobile, the airplane, radio, television, the washing machine, the Xerox machine, and too many other devices to name. Most of these earlier inventions had much the same effect as the computer&mdash;that is, they increased demand for progressively higher-skilled workers. But (with the possible exception of radio) none of these consumer innovations coincided with an increase in inequality&quot;.<\/sup><\/div>\n<\/ul>\n<\/blockquote>\n<div>[There&#8217;s even a <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/www.slate.com\/id\/2266174\/\"><strong><font color=\"#200020\">visual guide<\/font><\/strong><\/a> with graphs.]<\/div>\n<div align=\"center\"><sup><em>&lt;to be continued&gt; <\/em><\/sup><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This is not right! This kind of wealth inequity&nbsp; isn&#8217;t acceptable in the USA &#8211; it&#8217;s the kind of thing you see in Latin America where the &quot;haves&quot; live in houses behind walls topped with barbed wire and broken glass. Why has the wealth inequity increased so dramatically? It&#8217;s easy to say it&#8217;s a bad [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4333","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4333","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4333"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4333\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4333"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4333"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4333"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}