Paul Krugman- Rich Man's Recovery

[n2doc]

By PAUL KRUGMAN

A few days ago, The Times published a report on a society that is being undermined by extreme inequality. This society claims to reward the best and brightest regardless of family background. In practice, however, the children of the wealthy benefit from opportunities and connections unavailable to children of the middle and working classes. And it was clear from the article that the gap between the society’s meritocratic ideology and its increasingly oligarchic reality is having a deeply demoralizing effect.

The report illustrated in a nutshell why extreme inequality is destructive, why claims ring hollow that inequality of outcomes doesn’t matter as long as there is equality of opportunity. If the rich are so much richer than the rest that they live in a different social and material universe, that fact in itself makes nonsense of any notion of equal opportunity.

By the way, which society are we talking about? The answer is: the Harvard Business School — an elite institution, but one that is now characterized by a sharp internal division between ordinary students and a sub-elite of students from wealthy families.

The point, of course, is that as the business school goes, so goes America, only even more so — a point driven home by the latest data on taxpayer incomes.

more

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/13/opinion/krugman-rich-mans-recovery.html?_r=0

[daleanime]

1. Duh....

K&R.

[pampango]

2. "... the effect of that concentration is to undermine all the values that define America."

... whatever is causing the growing concentration of income at the top, the effect of that concentration is to undermine all the values that define America. Year by year, we’re diverging from our ideals. Inherited privilege is crowding out equality of opportunity; the power of money is crowding out effective democracy.

So what can be done? For the moment, the kind of transformation that took place under the New Deal — a transformation that created a middle-class society, not just through government programs, but by greatly increasing workers’ bargaining power — seems politically out of reach. But that doesn’t mean we should give up on smaller steps, initiatives that do at least a bit to level the playing field.

Take, for example, the proposal by Bill de Blasio, who finished in first place in Tuesday’s Democratic primary and is the probable next mayor of New York, to provide universal prekindergarten education, paid for with a small tax surcharge on those with incomes over $500,000. The usual suspects are, of course, screaming and talking about their hurt feelings; they’ve been doing a lot of that these past few years, even while making out like bandits. But surely this is exactly the sort of thing we should be doing: Taxing the ever-richer rich, at least a bit, to expand opportunity for the children of the less fortunate.

Some pundits are already suggesting that Mr. de Blasio’s unexpected rise is the leading edge of a new economic populism that will shake up our whole political system. That seems premature, but I hope they’re right. For extreme inequality is still on the rise — and it’s poisoning our society.

Great piece again by Krugman. Thanks for posting it, n2doc.

[fasttense]

5. Did Krugman really write

"Whatever is causing the growing concentration of income at the top"??????

He knows what is causing it - Capitalism. Capitalism was on its death bed when FDR saved it by instituting some socialist ideas like Social Security, unemployment benefits and FDIC (Notice RepubliCONS want to take away the 1st 2 that help people, but not the last that helps banks).

Capitalism is back to work now, destroying equality and concentrating all wealth at the very tip top of the social system. It is how capitalism is designed to work. It's how it has always worked or NOT worked.

[pampango]

7. His preceding paragraphs dealt with several causes of

increasing inequality.

Just as FDR 'saved' capitalism in the 1930's, Europeans are saving it today. With their 'socialist' (from a republican prrspective) brand of capitalism they have the most equitable distributions of income in the world.

A country (or a group of countries like the EU) can control capitalism if people have the will to do it. Every developed country does a better job at this than the US does.

[Major Nikon]

9. How they are doing it is they either have high minimum wages or high union representation

Your neighbor's spending is your income. When those at the bottom aren't that far from those in the middle, everyone prospers. Compare that to here where idiots still are fixated on the trickle down even thought it never works and never will.

[pampango]

10. Trickle down has been, predictably, a disaster. Shared prosperity has been proven to work. n/t

[Buns_of_Fire]

3. And now the President is apparently going to appoint Larry Summers as Fed chairman.

Somehow, I don't think that's going to help matters any.

I know how Dennis the Menace's parents must've felt.

[cantbeserious]

4. The Oligarchs And Corporations Own And Control The Politicians That Own And Control Us

eom

[The Wizard]

6. Ishmael Reed's

The Terrible Twos and The Terrible Threes should be required reading in every MBA program. There's much more to economic development than a bonus based on the last quarter's bottom line.

[abelenkpe]

8. K&R

[n2doc]

11. Today's relevant toon:

[Johonny]

12. children of the wealthy benefit from opportunities I.E. Meghan McCain has a new show

[ProSense]

13. This jumped out at me:

<...>

Take, for example, the proposal by Bill de Blasio, who finished in first place in Tuesday’s Democratic primary and is the probable next mayor of New York, to provide universal prekindergarten education, paid for with a small tax surcharge on those with incomes over $500,000. The usual suspects are, of course, screaming and talking about their hurt feelings; they’ve been doing a lot of that these past few years, even while making out like bandits. But surely this is exactly the sort of thing we should be doing: Taxing the ever-richer rich, at least a bit, to expand opportunity for the children of the less fortunate.

Some pundits are already suggesting that Mr. de Blasio’s unexpected rise is the leading edge of a new economic populism that will shake up our whole political system. That seems premature, but I hope they’re right. For extreme inequality is still on the rise — and it’s poisoning our society.

Good to see this being raised again.

READ: Obama’s pre-K plan

By Dylan Matthews

President Obama used his State of the Union address to launch a push for massively expanding pre-K and other early childhood education programs. But he was pretty vague about it. Not anymore. At 6 a.m. today, the administration released its detailed plan for early childhood education. Its three main components are:

• A state-federal partnership to guarantee pre-K to all 4-year-olds in families at or below 200 percent of the poverty line, to be provided by school districts and other local partners, and to use instructors with the same level of education and training as K-12 instructions.
  
  
• A massively expanded Early Head Start program — building on the existing program, which has proven very effective in randomized controlled trials — which provides early education, child care, parental education, and health services to vulnerable children ages 0 to 3.
  
  
• Also expanding Nurse Family Partnerships, a program that has also earned top marks in randomized trials, and which provides regular home visits from nurses to families from pregnancy through the child's second birthday, intended to promote good health and parenting practices. update - it appears that the White House program is broader than just NFPs but the general practice is the same, if less well-evaluated. Sorry for the confusion

Upon opening the plan for the first time (while on the phone with me) Nobel laureate and early childhood education expert James Heckman exclaimed "Holy smokes!" in approval. Your mileage may vary — see the full plan outline, courtesy of the White House, below.

- more -

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/02/14/read-obamas-pre-k-plan/

"Holy smokes!" President Obama Releases Full Pre-K Plan
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10022372550