{"id":4348,"date":"2010-09-17T08:01:08","date_gmt":"2010-09-17T12:01:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/?p=4348"},"modified":"2010-09-17T18:34:17","modified_gmt":"2010-09-17T22:34:17","slug":"the-great-divergence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/2010\/09\/17\/the-great-divergence\/","title":{"rendered":"the &#8220;Great Divergence&#8221;&#8230;"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p align=\"justify\">I&#8217;ve been following the series in <strong><font color=\"#663333\">Slate<\/font><\/strong> called <strong>The United States of Inequality<\/strong>. There are 10 installments and I&#8217;ve already tried to pull out representative quotes from the first 6.  The whole series is based on this graph showing the growing wealth inequity in the US in the last thirty years:<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"520\" height=\"459\" border=\"0\" src=\"http:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/images\/top_ten.gif\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Here are my previous comments [in <strong><font color=\"#990000\">red<\/font><\/strong>] and the original installments [in <strong><font color=\"#200020\">dark<\/font><\/strong>]:              <\/p>\n<div><a href=\"http:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/wp-admin\/..\/index.php\/2010\/09\/09\/wealth-inequity-1\/\" target=\"_blank\"><strong><font color=\"#990000\">&ldquo;the most significant change in American society in your lifetime&rdquo;&hellip;<\/font><\/strong>        <\/a><\/div>\n<ul>\n<div><a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/www.slate.com\/id\/2266025\/entry\/2266026\/\"><strong><font color=\"#200020\">1. Introducing the Great Divergence<\/font><\/strong><\/a><\/div>\n<div><a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/www.slate.com\/id\/2266025\/entry\/2266027\/\"><strong><font color=\"#200020\">2. The Usual Suspects Are Innocent<\/font><\/strong><\/a><\/div>\n<div><a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/www.slate.com\/id\/2266025\/entry\/2266506\/\"><strong><font color=\"#200020\">3. Importing Inequality<\/font><\/strong><\/a><\/div>\n<div><a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/www.slate.com\/id\/2266025\/entry\/2266508\/\"><strong><font color=\"#200020\">4. Computer Exceptionalism<\/font><\/strong><\/a><\/div>\n<ol>\n<div><a href=\"http:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/2010\/09\/13\/wealth-inequity-revisited\"><strong><font color=\"#990000\">wealth inequity revisited&hellip;<\/font><\/strong><\/a><\/div>\n<\/ol>\n<\/ul>\n<div><a href=\"http:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/2010\/09\/11\/more-about-wealth-inequity\"><strong><font color=\"#990000\">more about <em>wealth inequity<\/em>&hellip;<\/font><\/strong><\/a><\/div>\n<ul>\n<div><a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/www.slate.com\/id\/2266025\/\"><strong><font color=\"#200020\">5. Too Many Republicans<\/font><\/strong><\/a><\/div>\n<\/ul>\n<div><a href=\"http:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/2010\/09\/13\/wealth-inequity-big-labor-got-small\"><strong><font color=\"#990000\">wealth inequity: big labor got small&hellip;<\/font><\/strong> <\/a><\/div>\n<ul>\n<div><a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/www.slate.com\/id\/2266025\/\"><strong><font color=\"#200020\">6. The Great Divergence and the Death of Organized Labor<\/font><\/strong><\/a><\/div>\n<\/ul>\n<div>Rather than give quotes for the next three installments, I&#8217;ll just briefly summarize his conclusions [they&#8217;re more complex than the earlier ones]:<\/div>\n<ul>\n<div><a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/www.slate.com\/id\/2266025\/entry\/2266512\/\"><strong><font color=\"#200020\">7. Trade Didn&#8217;t Create Inequality, and Then It Did<\/font><\/strong><\/a><\/div>\n<div align=\"justify\"><sup>In this installment, he looks at the galance of trade and the &#8216;outsourcing&#8217; of manufacturing to other countries, particularly China. He quotes economists who have studied this and concludes that it&#8217;s not so big a factor as most of us think, but it is in the mix.<\/sup><\/div>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<div><a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/www.slate.com\/id\/2266025\/entry\/2266513\/\"><strong><font color=\"#200020\">8. The Stinking Rich and the Great Divergence<\/font><\/strong><\/a><\/div>\n<div align=\"justify\"><sup>.Noah points to the work of Emmanual Saez at Berkley who has shown that the bulk of the concentration of wealth has been among the Super-Rich [top 0.1%] &#8211; the Corporate CEO&#8217;s and top Financial poeople &#8211; the Corporatocracy.<\/sup><sup>..<\/sup><\/div>\n<div align=\"center\"><img decoding=\"async\" width=\"400\" vspace=\"5\" border=\"0\" src=\"http:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/images\/income_shares_1.gif\" \/>&nbsp;<\/div>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<div><a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/www.slate.com\/id\/2266025\/entry\/2267384\/\"><strong><font color=\"#200020\">9. How the Decline in K-12 Education Enriches College Graduates<\/font><\/strong><\/a><\/div>\n<div align=\"justify\"><sup>&quot;The abrupt halt and subsequent slowdown of gains in educational  attainment began at about the same time as the Great Divergence. Before  the Great Divergence, the country enjoyed at least three decades of  growing income equality, an epoch that Goldin and Boston University  economist Robert Margo have termed &quot;The Great Compression.&quot;  Between 1900 and the mid-1970s, U.S. incomes became dramatically more  equal while educational attainment climbed. But starting in the  mid-1970s and continuing to today, incomes became dramatically <em>less<\/em> equal while educational attainment stagnated. Katz and Goldin believe this is not a coincidence.&quot; He sees failings in the educational system as a much bigger contributor than I would have thought.<\/sup><\/div>\n<\/ul>\n<div align=\"justify\">In this 9<sup>th<\/sup> installment, author <strong>Timothy Noah<\/strong> takes a stab at the relative weighting of the factors in causing &quot;The Great Divergence&quot;:<\/div>\n<blockquote>\n<div align=\"justify\">We have now reviewed all possible causes of  the Great Divergence&mdash;all, at least, that have thus far attracted most  experts&#8217; attention. What are their relative contributions? Here is a  back-of-the-envelope calculation, an admittedly crude composite of my  discussions with and reading of the various economists and political  scientists cited thus far:<\/div>\n<ol>\n<li>\n<div align=\"justify\">Race and gender are responsible for none of it, and single parenthood is responsible for virtually none of it.<\/div>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<div align=\"justify\">Immigration is responsible for 5 percent.<\/div>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<div align=\"justify\">The imagined uniqueness of computers as a transformative technology is responsible for none of it.<\/div>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<div align=\"justify\">Tax policy is responsible for 5 percent.<\/div>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<div align=\"justify\"><strong><font color=\"#200020\">The decline of labor is responsible for 20 percent.<\/font><\/strong><\/div>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<div align=\"justify\">Trade is responsible for 10 percent.<\/div>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<div align=\"justify\"><strong><font color=\"#200020\">Wall Street and corporate boards&#8217; pampering of the Stinking Rich is responsible for 30 percent.<\/font><\/strong><\/div>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<div align=\"justify\"><strong><font color=\"#200020\">Various failures in our education system are responsible for 30 percent.<\/font><\/strong><\/div>\n<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<div align=\"justify\">Most  of these factors reflect at least in part things the federal government  did or failed to do. Immigration is regulated, at least in theory, by  the federal government. Tax policy is determined by the federal  government. The decline of labor is in large part the doing of the  federal government. Trade levels are regulated by the federal  government. Government rules concerning finance and executive  compensation help determine the quantity of cash that the Stinking Rich  take home. Education is affected by government at the local, state, and  (increasingly) federal levels. In a broad sense, then, we all created  the Great Divergence, because in a democracy, the government is us. <\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n<div align=\"justify\">At first, this list seemed arrogant to me since it&#8217;s so subjective. But in rereading his installments, I changed my mind, deciding it was a useful benchmark for partitioning the factors, albeit just an estimate from his interviews with a sea of economists.And his speculations fit the data. There&#8217;s a tenth installment [<a href=\"http:\/\/www.slate.com\/id\/2266025\/entry\/2266816\/\" target=\"_blank\"><strong><font color=\"#200020\">10. Why We Can&#8217;t Ignore Growing Income Inequality<\/font><\/strong><\/a>] where Noah takes on the Conservative arguments that we shouldn&#8217;t worry about income equity. But that&#8217;s enough for now. Taking on Conservatives deserved a post of its own&#8230;  <\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve been following the series in Slate called The United States of Inequality. There are 10 installments and I&#8217;ve already tried to pull out representative quotes from the first 6. The whole series is based on this graph showing the growing wealth inequity in the US in the last thirty years: Here are my previous [&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-4348","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4348","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=4348"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4348\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4348"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4348"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4348"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}