Tuesday, January 21, 2014

Oxfam report on politics and inequality

Here 'Working for the few' by Ricardo Fluentes and Nick Galasso. Summary by Duncan Green here. From the summary "After the 2008 global meltdown, we have not seen anything like the New Deal, in terms of redistribution or reform. The paper argues that this is because political capture by a small economic elite is much more complete this time around.
The numbers take your breath away – my favourite new killer fact from the report (and there’s a lot of competition): The bottom half of the world’s population owns the same as the richest 85 people in the world."
Another summary in The Guardian. I wonder how a few either 85 people or the top one percent can accure so much without the cooperation of at least a considerable percentage of the rest. An earlier study by Gabriel Palma reported by Duncan Green says that the fifty percent below the top ten percent take away fifty percent of the income in most countries. So it seems to between the top 10 percent and bottom 40 percent. How alliances are formed between various groups in the middle fifty percent with the rest seem worth analysing. From Palma's study there seems to be variation in the alliances in different countries.

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