Download or read book Inequality in Capitalist Societies written by Surinder S. Jodhka and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2017-07-14 with total page 152 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Inequality is one of the most discussed topics of our times. Yet, we still do not know how to tackle the issue effectively. The book argues that this is due to the lack of understanding the structures responsible for the persistence of social inequality. It enquires into the mechanisms that produce and reproduce invisible dividing lines in society. Based on original case studies of Brazil, Germany, India and Laos comprising thousands of interviews, the authors argue that invisible classes emerge in capitalist societies, both reproducing and transforming precapitalist hierarchies. At the same time, locally particular forms of inequality persist. Social inequality in the contemporary world has to be understood as a specific combination of precapitalist inequalities, capitalist transformation and a particular class structure, which seems to emerge in all capitalist societies. The book links the configurations to an interpretation of global domination as well as to symbolic classification.

Download or read book Inequality in Capitalist Societies written by Surinder S. Jodhka and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-07-14 with total page 163 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Inequality is one of the most discussed topics of our times. Yet, we still do not know how to tackle the issue effectively. The book argues that this is due to the lack of understanding the structures responsible for the persistence of social inequality. It enquires into the mechanisms that produce and reproduce invisible dividing lines in society. Based on original case studies of Brazil, Germany, India and Laos comprising thousands of interviews, the authors argue that invisible classes emerge in capitalist societies, both reproducing and transforming precapitalist hierarchies. At the same time, locally particular forms of inequality persist. Social inequality in the contemporary world has to be understood as a specific combination of precapitalist inequalities, capitalist transformation and a particular class structure, which seems to emerge in all capitalist societies. The book links the configurations to an interpretation of global domination as well as to symbolic classification.

Download or read book How Much Inequality Is Fair written by Venkat Venkatasubramanian and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2017-08-08 with total page 410 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Many in the United States feel that the nation’s current level of economic inequality is unfair and that capitalism is not working for 90% of the population. Yet some inequality is inevitable. The question is: What level of inequality is fair? Mainstream economics has offered little guidance on fairness and the ideal distribution of income. Political philosophy, meanwhile, has much to say about fairness yet relies on qualitative theories that cannot be verified by empirical data. To address inequality, we need to know what the goal is—and for this, we need a quantitative, testable theory of fairness for free-market capitalism. How Much Inequality Is Fair? synthesizes concepts from economics, political philosophy, game theory, information theory, statistical mechanics, and systems engineering into a mathematical framework for a fair free-market society. The key to this framework is the insight that maximizing fairness means maximizing entropy, which makes it possible to determine the fairest possible level of pay inequality. The framework therefore provides a moral justification for capitalism in mathematical terms. Venkat Venkatasubramanian also compares his theory’s predictions to actual inequality data from various countries—showing, for instance, that Scandinavia has near-ideal fairness, while the United States is markedly unfair—and discusses the theory’s implications for tax policy, social programs, and executive compensation.

Download or read book Inequality Boom and Bust written by Howard J. Sherman and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-02-19 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: There is enormous inequality between the income and wealth of the richest 1 percent and all other Americans. While the top 1 percent own 42 percent of all wealth in America, the lower half on the income ladder has only 2 percent of all of the wealth. This book develops a viewpoint contrary to the prevailing conservative paradigm, setting out both reasons for this inequality and the impact of this. To explain inequality, conservative economists focus on individual characteristics such as intelligence and hard work. This book puts forward new evidence to show that changes in economic inequality are primarily due to characteristics inherent in the standard operation of capitalist institutions. Furthermore, the authors seek to explain the cycle of boom and bust by considering political and social factors often overlooked by conservative economists. This book also explores how wealth influences political policies in a way that increases economic inequality even more than its present level. Through analysis of American political and economic institutions, Inequality, Boom, and Bust presents concrete steps for an activist, progressive policy to greatly reduce inequality through free healthcare, free higher education, and reduced unemployment.

Download or read book Income Inequality in Capitalist Democracies written by Vicki L. Birchfield and published by Penn State Press. This book was released on 2010-11 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Examines patterns of income inequality among 16 advanced democracies from the mid 1970s to the early 2000s and explains why some societies have a large and growing divide between the rich and the poor while others, facing similar global economic pressures, maintain more egalitarian income distributions"--Provided by publisher.

Download or read book Capitalism and Inequality written by G.P. Manish and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-12-30 with total page 223 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Capitalism and Inequality rejects the popular view that attributes the recent surge in inequality to a failure of market institutions. Bringing together new and original research from established scholars, it analyzes the inequality inherent in a free market from an economic and historical perspective. In the process, the question of whether the recent increase in inequality is the result of crony capitalism and government intervention is explored in depth. The book features sections on theoretical perspectives on inequality, the political economy of inequality, and the measurement of inequality. Chapters explore several key questions such as the difference between the effects of market-driven inequality and the inequality caused by government intervention; how the inequality created by regulation affects those who are less well-off; and whether the economic growth that accompanies market-driven inequality always benefits an elite minority while leaving the vast majority behind. The main policy conclusions that emerge from this analysis depart from those that are currently popular. The authors in this book argue that increasing the role of markets and reducing the extent of regulation is the best way to lower inequality while ensuring greater material well-being for all sections of society. This key text makes an invaluable contribution to the literature on inequality and markets and is essential reading for students, scholars, and policymakers.

Download or read book Capitalism Alone written by Branko Milanovic and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2019-09-24 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For the first time in history, the globe is dominated by one economic system. Capitalism prevails because it delivers prosperity and meets desires for autonomy. But it also is unstable and morally defective. Surveying the varieties and futures of capitalism, Branko Milanovic offers creative solutions to improve a system that isn’t going anywhere.

Download or read book Twenty First Century Inequality Capitalism Piketty Marx and Beyond written by and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2018-01-03 with total page 412 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Twenty-First Century Inequality & Capitalism: Piketty, Marx and Beyond is a collection of critical essays on the economist’s iconic 2014 book, from the perspective of critical theory, global political economy or public sociology, mostly drawn from the Marxist tradition.

Download or read book The Inequality Trap written by William Watson and published by University of Toronto Press. This book was released on 2015-09-15 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.

Download or read book Class Inequality and Political Order written by Frank Parkin and published by . This book was released on 1972 with total page 212 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Teaching Economic Inequality and Capitalism in Contemporary America written by Kristin Haltinner and published by Springer. This book was released on 2018-01-02 with total page 380 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book discusses pedagogical solutions that enable students to see how capitalist processes and economic inequalities intersect and shape our assumptions and behaviours. The contributors provide thoughtful reflections on the struggles and opportunities instructors face in teaching about these topics while competing against the invisibility of capitalist forces and prevalent social myths, such as “anyone who works hard can achieve”. This book will not only help instructors empower students to recognize economic injustice and its interaction with capitalist organization, but also develops and acts on transformative solutions. Through analysis of the classed dimensions of the current political, economics, and cultural climate, as well as presenting novel lesson plans and classroom activities, this book is of great value for college and university professors.

Download or read book Capital in the Twenty First Century written by Thomas Piketty and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2017-08-14 with total page 817 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What are the grand dynamics that drive the accumulation and distribution of capital? Questions about the long-term evolution of inequality, the concentration of wealth, and the prospects for economic growth lie at the heart of political economy. But satisfactory answers have been hard to find for lack of adequate data and clear guiding theories. In this work the author analyzes a unique collection of data from twenty countries, ranging as far back as the eighteenth century, to uncover key economic and social patterns. His findings transform debate and set the agenda for the next generation of thought about wealth and inequality. He shows that modern economic growth and the diffusion of knowledge have allowed us to avoid inequalities on the apocalyptic scale predicted by Karl Marx. But we have not modified the deep structures of capital and inequality as much as we thought in the optimistic decades following World War II. The main driver of inequality--the tendency of returns on capital to exceed the rate of economic growth--today threatens to generate extreme inequalities that stir discontent and undermine democratic values if political action is not taken. But economic trends are not acts of God. Political action has curbed dangerous inequalities in the past, the author says, and may do so again. This original work reorients our understanding of economic history and confronts us with sobering lessons for today.

Download or read book Capitalists Arise written by Peter Georgescu and published by Berrett-Koehler Publishers. This book was released on 2017-05 with total page 145 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Showing how the short-term thinking spawned by shareholder primacy lies at the root of our current economic malaise and social breakdown, this sobering depiction offers concrete actions that capitalists themselves can take to create a better future. --

Download or read book Post Industrial Capitalism written by Joel I. Nelson and published by SAGE Publications. This book was released on 1995-07-05 with total page 201 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The work is provocative and ambitious and the writing is clear. --Choice "It is a topic in need of systematic analysis. . . . Joel I. Nelson understands and, in fact, has mastered the issues. . . . It will undoubtedly be a major contribution. . . . His approach is fresh and refreshing. . . . He has the appropriate conceptual tools to complete his synthesis. . . . I believe not only scholars--sociologists, economists, political scientists, and historians, would find Post-Industrial Capitalism useful but policymakers might also find it of interest. . . . The book can also be used as a text in an advanced undergraduate class and in a graduate seminar. . . . Nelson′s thesis is coherent and logically developed. . . . I imagine this book as a college text or on a desk in Washington, DC. . . . Nelson′s last book Economic Inequality was a huge success. . . . Certainly the many who relied on it in their teaching and research will welcome and use Post-Industrial Capitalism." --Lionel L. Lewis, State University of New York at Buffalo "Too often authors focus only on the positive aspects or on the downside of postindustrialism. Joel I. Nelson is proposing something that fits neatly between the two camps. . . . Nelson′s strategy of building a new explanation based on a synthesis of these older approaches is very attractive. . . . There are no other books that attempt this. . . . Post-Industrial Capitalism might also be used in an advanced undergraduate course on economic sociology or social change. . . . [It] will be also acquired by professionals in sociology, social work, political science, and economics. . . . The sequence of the topics are clear and concise. . . . Each chapter pulls together arguments that--heretofore--have been scattered across numerous books and articles (and across disciplines for that matter)." --Charles M. Tolbert II, Professor of Sociology and Rural Sociology, Louisiana State University The social and economic well-being of many Americans is increasingly at risk. Disparities in earnings and wealth are escalating, reversing a century of declining inequality. Excesses of the free market are growing-and growing more difficult to contain. Politics are increasingly conservative across the ideological spectrum, with economic competitiveness considered more important than equality and humanitarian aid. Post-Industrial Capitalism offers an alternative to the dominant and unsuccessful Marxist and industrialist views by providing a framework for explaining the widening polarization within American society. This work demonstrates a more comprehensive explanation of inequality and locates its source in the transformation of American business. It provides a fresh illustration of Schumpeter′s insistence on the ability of capitalism to develop by creatively destroying its past. It not only describes the shifts in corporate resources, illustrates their use by the corporate sector, and traces their implications for inequality across the institutional spectrum, but also demonstrates how these strategies have been used by companies to intensify competition, effect greater political control, and widen the economic gap in America. Scholars interested in the question of modernity and post-industrialization, theorists of multiple theoretical persuasions, and students interested in social stratification, inequality, and social change will find Postindustrial Capitalism to be extremely valuable.

Download or read book Possessive Individualism written by Daniel W. Bromley and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2019-11 with total page 309 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Anxiety and alienation threaten modern democracies. Political anger runs rampant in the United States, Britain voted to leave the European Union, authoritarian governments control several European countries, and millions of desperate migrants are streaming north out of the Middle East, Africa, and Latin America. Many people blame stagnant household incomes and economic inequality. However, Possessive Individualism argues that the origins of world disorder are in the failure of the Enlightenment to anticipate the acquisitive individual as a creature of global capitalism. Daniel Bromley provides a fundamental critique of contemporary capitalism to explain why the world now finds itself in widespread disorder. Capitalism's basic flaw, he argues, is "possessive individualism." Glorification of the rational individual motivated by acquisitiveness prevents the adoption of necessary government programs that would ease the economic burden on beleaguered households. Meanwhile, possessive individualism enables managerial capitalism-controlled by the "one percent"-to suppress wages and salaries, embrace automation, and move jobs overseas. Capitalism is no longer an engine of improved livelihoods and social hope. Drawing on evolutionary institutional economics and political theory this book offers two remedies to the crisis of modern capitalism. Escape from the crisis requires that the isolated acquisitive individual rediscovers a sense of loyalty to others-as neighbors, as colleagues, and as participants in the shared social process of living. Escape also requires that the private firm be reimagined as a public trust in which the economic well-being of employees becomes a central part of its purpose. In the absence of these dual transformations, capitalism as we know it cannot endure.

Download or read book Inequality and Evolution written by Charles L. Ladner and published by Xlibris Corporation. This book was released on 2020-12-01 with total page 134 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1976, there were 38 countries, comprising nearly 50% of the world’s population that self-identified as socialist states, yet by 1991, only one remained. In 1976, the annual GDP per capita of the 38 socialist countries (in inflation adjusted dollars) averaged approximately $5 thousand. By 1990 it had grown to about $8 thousand. During that same period, the GDP per capita, in comparable numbers, for the United States grew from $24 thousand to $36 thousand. The socialist countries never grew their per capita income to more than 22% of the United States. Even China, which today has an economy almost as large as the United States, never saw its per capita GDP grow beyond $2 thousand per year during the twenty-eight year period as a socialist state under Mao Zedong. But, after the death of Mao, China converted its economy to the capitalist model with spectacular success, lifting a billion people out of poverty and challenging the United States for worldwide economic supremacy-an outcome that would have been unthinkable under socialism. Why has capitalism proven to be such an extraordinary success and socialism such a miserable failure? Charles Ladner argues that the success or failure of economic systems can be traced to the degree to which such systems are congruent with the primal force of evolutionary natural selection. This is the most fundamental need of every living thing to survive and reproduce. He encapsulate these forces into the term: selfishness. Capitalism, he finds, is grounded in such selfishness or self-interest, and therefore is fully congruent with the biological needs which provide the aspirational motivation that cause capitalism at all times and in every place, to be successful. Socialism, on other hand, requires and cannot function without, authoritarian rule to suppress expressions of self-interest. Its operation at the level of the state, serves to frustrate the biological needs and thereby will always produce poverty and failure. The historical record, he says, categorically demonstrates this. Capitalism, however, has a fatal flaw, and that is its inability to restrain the expression of selfishness, which ultimately leads to such extremes of wealth and income inequality that the system can self-destruct. In the final chapters, Ladner offers possible remedies for the United States, which he believes is already in the very early stages of such self-destruction.

Download or read book Analyzing Oppression written by Ann E. Cudd and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2006 with total page 293 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This text presents an integrated theory of social oppression, which tackles the fundamental question: if there is no natural hierarchy among humans, why are some cases of oppression so persistent? It argues that the explanation lies in the coercive co-opting of the oppressed to join in their own oppression.