Keith, I wasn't referring to the 19th Century or medieval times, but to what
has happened since WWII, especially to America, where there has been a growing
gap between the income of the very rich and the rest of the population. Jacob
Hacker and Paul Pierson, two political scientists, write about this in "Winner
Take All Politics" as does journalist Chris Hedges in "Death of the Liberal
Class". A table in Hacker and Pierson (published 2010) shows a very large
increase in the income share of the wealthiest 1% of the American population.
Its share of total income moved from about 8% to about 16% between 1975 and
2000. Similar surges have taken place in Canada and the UK, though they were
not nearly as large as the US surges. Income shares of the wealthiest in
Germany, France and Japan have generally remained static or have fallen a
little.
Several factors would account for the very rich getting very much richer. One
would be the growth of the FIRE (finance, insurance and real estate) sector, in
which a great deal of money has been made. Another would be the rising control
of politicians by the very wealthy. For example, in the US there is currently
no limit in the amount individuals or corporations can contribute to political
campaigns, a thing that could mean the conversion of democratic representatives
into corporate lobbyists: Obama currently wants to raise the inequitably low
taxes of the wealthiest American individuals and corporations, but there's no
way the Republicans will let him. Yet another factor is the demise of unions,
a very strong force in the maintenance of the middle class in the 1950s to 70s,
but now virtually hardly on the scene at all. And of course the fact that a
significant proportion of production for the US market has been moved abroad is
not helpful in providing ordinary Americans with jobs and a living.
I'm not arguing that super-rich Americans aren't good people, and I know that
people like Bill Gates, Warren Buffet and others have done some very good
things with their money. Nevertheless the situation of the US and probably
Canada too is one of hollowing out, with the wealthy getting wealthier, the
middle class fading and the poor sinking into ever deeper poverty.
Ed
----- Original Message -----
From: Keith Hudson
To: RE-DESIGNING WORK, INCOME DISTRIBUTION, EDUCATION ; Ed Weick
Sent: Wednesday, September 21, 2011 10:55 AM
Subject: Re: [Futurework] Professional Ethics (of economists)
Ed,
But the relative gap between the rich and the poor (in the advanced
countries) is nowhere near the relative gap between the rich and the poor a
century ago. J.P. Morgan was as rich as Warren Buffet, Bill Gates and several
more combined. So was Carnegie, so was Rockefeller. In modern day terms each of
them was probably a trillionaire. Going back further, Morgan and Co were not as
rich in relative terms to the poor as the great landowners of the Middle Ages.
Henry VIII (with 49 palaces) and about a dozen more owned half of England.
It's true that there has been a recent surge in the gap, but come the double
dip the rich are more than likely going to take a relatively larger bashing,
too. The gap has only become really outrageous since the credit surge of the
last 30 years. It's more than likely that the present gap will be greatly
reduced to the long-term historical trend once the present currency catastrophe
finally sorts itself out. All in all, the main difference today is a perceptual
one. We know a great deal more about the rich than ever before, nor do we have
scruples about being envious these days. Previously it was considered a sin to
be envious in order to keep us in our place. Today, probably proportionately
more money is being left by the rich to foundations and charities -- hundreds
of them in recent decades -- than to families. Most of the medical innovations
of the last 50 years have been due to research paid for by private foundations,
not government-backed science. Just the Rockefeller Foundation and the Howard
Hughes Medical Institute alone have probably produced as many new therapies
than all US government research spending. Think of the Gate's and Buffet's
present and future contributions to medical research and future eradication of
some diseases such as malaria all round the world.
Meanwhile we in the advanced countries devote less than 1% of our GDPs to the
Third World.
Keith
At 14:11 21/09/2011, you wrote:
Economics could still be considered a "moral science", given the prominance
of concepts like "growth" in economic analysis. Where it fails as a moral
science is in not having much to say on the morality of things like the rich
getting richer and the poor getting poorer, leaving that to politicians and
other social sciences.
Ed
----- Original Message -----
From: Sandwichman
To: RE-DESIGNING WORK, INCOME DISTRIBUTION,EDUCATION
Sent: Tuesday, September 20, 2011 10:05 PM
Subject: Re: [Futurework] Professional Ethics (of economists)
Either that or you're both obsessed with bedbugs... But, hey, to bring
this discussion back to where it started, I just want to mention that
"economics" sprung from "moral sciences": "The emergence of economics as a
separate subject (or Tripos, in Cambridge terminology) created intense debate
over its relationship with the existing organization of teaching through the
'Moral Sciences' Tripos. John Neville Keynes, the father of John Maynard
Keynes, faced considerable mental and emotional anxiety in his attempt to
reconcile economic science with ethics and religion." (Martin Daunton,
"Welfare, Taxation and Social Justice")
On Tue, Sep 20, 2011 at 6:37 PM, Ray Harrell <[email protected]> wrote:
I should start reading from the top. I come in after teaching a class
until nine and find that Ed commented on bedbugs first. Either he's an artist
or I'm an economist.
REH
From: [email protected] [
mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Ed Weick
Sent: Tuesday, September 20, 2011 3:18 PM
To: [email protected]; RE-DESIGNING WORK, INCOME DISTRIBUTION,
EDUCATION
Subject: Re: [Futurework] Professional Ethics (of economists)
Rat farming? How about bedbugs? They're making a comeback.
Ed
----- Original Message -----
From: "Mike Spencer" <[email protected] >
To: < [email protected]>
Sent: Tuesday, September 20, 2011 2:30 PM
Subject: [Futurework] Re: Professional Ethics (of economists)
>
> Last night, I commented on Tom's reference:
>
>>>
http://ecologicalheadstand.blogspot.com/2011/09/professional-ethics.html
>>
>> Over the past 30 years, the economics discipline has been
>> systematically subverted....Many of the most prominent economists
>> in America are now paid to testify in Congress, to serve on boards
>> of directors, testify in antitrust cases and regulatory
>> proceedings, and to give speeches to the companies and industries
>> they study and write about with supposed objectivity. This is not
>> a marginal activity; it is now an industry, run by a half dozen
>> large companies.
>>
>> I didn't know that. Why does that remind me somehow of the
privatized
>> prison industry?
>
> Saw this on Slash/dot:
>
> How Bug Bounties Are Like Rat Farming 104
>
> Posted by timothy on Tuesday September 20, @11:00AM
> from the first-we-hypothesize-a-problem dept.
>
> Gunkerty Jeb writes "In a keynote speech at the United Security
> Summit, Stephen Dubner, co-author of Freakonomics, drew parallels
> between the increasingly popular (and successful) practice of
> software vendors offering bug bounties and a new industry
> springing up in Johannesburg, South Africa, where the population
> has recently found itself beset with a growing rat problem. In
> order to help mitigate their rodent problem, officials in
> Johannesburg began offering a small monetary rewards for each dead
> rat turned in. It was wildly successful, and it didn't take long
> for fresh batch of entrepreneurs to pop up and exploit the
> situation. Of course, I'm talking about rat farming. Evidently,
> business minded individuals have taken to breeding rats, only to
> kill them and turn them in for rewards. Obviously, rat farming is
> somewhat unscrupulous, but security researchers are doing the same
> thing: breeding bugs in the lab, then leading them to the
> slaughter for a nice payday. And it's a good thing."
>
> Which probably isn't a totally new thing [1] but a reminder about how
> that works with prisons, weapon systems and (allegedly) economists.
>
> The way it works out for (software-) bug hunting -- the relevance for
> Slash-dotters -- seems to be free of the malignancy/fraudulence of
rat
> farming:
>
>
http://threatpost.com/en_us/blogs/how-bug-bounties-are-rat-farming-092011
>
> as one commenter there (somewhat intemperately) observes.
>
> So the question is: how do you structure privatization of prisons,
> corporatized for-fee economics consulting or any such activity so
that
> it works like bug-hunting and not like rat-farming? Do we need to
> somehow extract or sequester such activities completely from
> capitalist incentives?
>
>
> - Mike
>
>
> [1] The Paris rat-catcher of circa 1689 in Stephenson's _Quicksilver_
> was already (and quite entertainingly) into rat farming.
>
> --
> Michael Spencer Nova Scotia, Canada .~.
> /V\
> [email protected] /( )\
> http://home.tallships.ca/mspencer/ ^^-^^
>
> _______________________________________________
> Futurework mailing list
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>
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Keith Hudson, Saltford, England http://allisstatus.wordpress.com/2012/08/
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