Jamie presented some of his work while I was in Finland last summer.
It is interesting work and raised lot of discussion but there were lot of
holes in the data he was using to measure the "gap". His argument was that it
was
a window with which you could see the outside. The question remained
how wide the window was open and what could be seen that was the outside.
cheers, anthony
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Anthony P. D'Costa, Professor
Comparative International Development
South Asian and International Studies Programs
University of Washington Campus Box 358436
1900 Commerce Street
Tacoma, WA 98402, USA
Phone: (253) 692-4462
Fax : (253) 692-5718
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On Tue, 30 Nov 2004, Paul wrote:
Thanks to JD for posting this; Jamie Galbraith's project does good work,
particularly their critique of the World Bank's claims regarding rising
equality under neo-liberalism and his desire to get away from Gini
coefficients (Jamie favors a Theil statistic). (Pen-l's own recent
discussion of measurement in the context of PPP is also relevant.)
But people shouldn't feel that there is no other space left for their own
research :-) Galbraith's project *mostly* focuses on inequality in "pay"
or salary. The data it uses (like the US Census Bureau) exclude profit
income (income from stocks, bonds, capital gains, etc). This is usually
true even when the studies misleadingly refer to "income inequality" -
profit income is excluded. Likewise, perhaps by necessity, the project
doesn't include work on wealth inequality (and so also misses some key
recent changes like pensions, assets, etc).
As a result, a lot of what JKG often captures is the rising inequality
*within* the "working class", very broadly defined. This sort of rising
inequality has often been a serious factor in the early stages of a
neo-liberal opening (leading to a fragmented political response) such as
the US in the 1980's, but it is less a factor as the changes proceed (eg
the US in the '90s). In the "mature" phases of a neo-liberal process, the
big changes, seem to be between salary income and profit income (or asset
wealth). These changes really dominate the numbers as neo-liberalism
proceeds and are left out in many studies (to be fair to JKG, these changes
between classes are very hard to capture cleanly). And of course, some
would argue, it is precisely this rising inequality between wages and
profits that has driven the neo-liberal process to begin with. So, leaving
it out, leaves out a lot. There is a lot left to be done.
[I hope to catch Jamie on this, perhaps at upcoming conferences and hear
his perspective. Since I imagine he is not on the list, let me point out
that it is hard to find and work with the more complete data - governments
have not exactly made this sort of data a priority.]
Paul
Jim D. writes:
This web site may be of interest.
-----Original Message-----
From: James K. Galbraith [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Dear Friends,
The web-site of the University of Texas Inequality Project (UTIP) has an
entirely new look, with a much-streamlined approach to the presentation
of our twenty-eight working papers, six data sets, and measurement
tools. The site also now features a "tutorials" section, with
introductory and advanced guides to inequality measures and especially
to the Theil statistic............
