******************** POSTING RULES & NOTES ******************** #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. *****************************************************************
Q: You wrote in your book that a full half of the increase in US personal income inequality can be explained by New York, the San Francisco Bay Area, and Washington State. Historically, are the winners usually aware of their privilege sitting at the top of the pyramid, or is myopia common?
Branko Milanovic: I think that myopia is very common, especially when you believe that what you have is fully deserved and that you are not only richer but morally superior.
It was Hayek of all people who many years ago noticed that one of the possibly fatal weaknesses of capitalism as actually practiced is that it tends to ascribe moral virtue to economic success. Let me quote him: “It bodes ill for the future of the market order that [identifying success with virtue] seems to have become the only defense of it which is understood by the general public.”
If you believe this then you cannot understand anyone who questions the existing order; he must appear to you either as a brute or a villain.
full: https://newrepublic.com/article/139432/understand-2016s-politics-look-winners-losers-globalization
-- Support Louis Proyect biography project https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/publish-the-biography-of-socialist-louis-proyect#/ _________________________________________________________ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
