@MaxRashbrooke The top 1% in New Zealand are lazy and incompetent as a ruling class
24 Jun 2015 1 Comment
in applied price theory, applied welfare economics, economic history, entrepreneurship, health and safety, human capital, industrial organisation, liberalism, Marxist economics, poverty and inequality, Rawls and Nozick, unions Tags: capitalism and freedom, Class war, Joan Robinson, Joseph Schumpeter, social insurance, The Great Enrichment, top 1%, welfare state, withering away in the proletariat
New work by Chris Ball and John Creedy shows substantial *declines* in NZ inequality.
initiativeblog.com/2015/06/24/ine… http://t.co/f94fw4Bhae—
Eric Crampton (@EricCrampton) June 24, 2015
The top 1% in New Zealand really have been dropping the class war ball for at least a generation.
Source: The World Top Incomes Database.
Not only have the New Zealand top 1% been pretty miserable at increasing their share of incomes, hardly any change since 1990 and not much before that, the top 1% allowed inequality in both consumption and disposable income to actually fall since 1990 as shown by Treasury analysis published today.
Joan Robinson was on to this in the 1940s when she said the battle cry of Marxists would have to change from the 1848 version “rise up ye workers, rise up for you have nothing to lose but your chains” to “rise up ye workers, rise up for you have nothing to lose but the prospect of a suburban home and a motorcar”.
Today that battle cry of the Marxist revolution would have to be “rise up ye workers rise up for you have nothing to lose but your iPhone and your air points”. As Joan Robinson observed in the 1940s, that’s not much of a basis for a revolutionary movement.
Tony Atkinson’s ‘Inequality – What Can Be Done?’
24 Apr 2015 Leave a comment
in applied welfare economics, labour economics, minimum wage, Public Choice, Rawls and Nozick, welfare reform Tags: guaranteed minimum income, Leftover Left
I find proposal number 3 to target reducing unemployment rather perplexing because Atkinson in proposal number 5 wants to increase the minimum wage to the living wage, which will increase unemployment. He proposes a guaranteed child income, but he doesn’t appear to make proposals for a guaranteed family minimum income. A guaranteed family minimum income or an increase in the earned income tax credit, to use the American terminology, would increase the incomes of the low paid without threatening their job through a minimum wage increase.
Out Today: Tony Atkinson's new book 'Inequality – What Can Be Done?'
Here are his 14 proposals to reduce inequality: http://t.co/RPXmEBBFCR—
Max Roser (@MaxCRoser) April 23, 2015
Hollywood’s highest paid star Leonardo DiCaprio earns three times average FTSE 100 boss | City A.M.
15 Apr 2015 Leave a comment
in applied welfare economics, entrepreneurship, Marxist economics, politics - USA, Public Choice, Rawls and Nozick, rentseeking Tags: Occupy Wall Street, top 1%
This top 1% gets a pass from the Occupy activists
Australian top 1% has dropped the ball in the class struggle
10 Mar 2015 Leave a comment
in applied welfare economics, economic growth, economic history, labour economics, liberalism, poverty and inequality, Rawls and Nozick Tags: class struggle, immiseration of the proletariat, Leftover Left, top 1%
How is the immiseration of the proletariat going to occur any time soon, and with it, the workers will rise up because they have nothing to lose but their chains, if the Australian top 1% doesn’t lift its game.
There is a serious lack of greed and expropriation of labour surplus by the top 1% in Australia. Their share of income has been falling for many decades and only increased in the last few years and then only slightly.
The top 1% is supposed to be grinding the working class down, and causing crisis after financial crisis but there’s hardly any of evidence of that in Australian income inequality data.
The $10 experiment
27 Feb 2015 Leave a comment
in experimental economics, liberalism, Rawls and Nozick Tags: distributive justice
Utopia, you are standing in it! 
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