K21

Good piece by Porter.

The Politics of Income Inequality by Eduardo Porter

The Great Recession helped make a case for redistribution. Jason Furman, President Obama’s chief economic adviser, says that the administration’s initiatives — like higher income tax rates, subsidies to buy health insurance under the Affordable Care Act and expanded tax breaks for poor families with children — have produced “the most significant policy-induced reduction in inequality in at least 40 years.” Just the tax measures, Mr. Furman estimated, take off about half a decade’s worth of increasing inequality, as measured by the so-called Gini coefficient. 

Is this as good as it gets? For all the struggle on the part of the White House, the income gap keeps growing. Maybe this means that, in the absence of war, democracy can’t do much more.

Piketty:

I am not as pessimistic as a number of observers and reviewers seem to be after reading my book, and so I am sorry if my book made them pessimistic. The development of information technology and the internet also opens up new ways of spreading information, and new ways of mobilisation. I also believe in the power of ideas and books – and this can also contribute to the diffusion of information, and can try to contribute to a wider political mobilization.