Wealth and Income Inequality
You'll need to answer the questions in what I will write here from the book "Money" by Kenneth M. Gillam Pg 85. |Invent|Stiglitz, having worked for the Clinton and Obama administrations, is probably somewhere left of the political center in his ideology. His critical stance toward globalization and free-market fundamentalism gives this characterization even more credence. Assuming that he is writing from a politically interested position, what might a conservative or neo-liberal economist take away from the same statistics regarding inequalities in wealth and income distribution? |Explore|Although not expressly stated by Stiglitz, other economists have asserted that severe inequality in income distribution is reminiscent of the feudal states of medieval Europe. Research the economies of feudal societies and critique this statement as either a true or false proposition. |Compose|This is a difficult topic. In a journal entry or blog post work through your ideas about income and wealth distribution inequality especially as your thinking has been supplemented by the invention and exploration activities. For this last part in the compose section, please disregard the part where they talk about a journal entry or blog post.
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Wealth and Income Inequality
Left leaning scholars and politicians, highlight on the inadequacies of capitalism in causing growing income and wealth inequality. For fiscal conservatives, growing inequality in income and wealth distribution is inconsequential, because income levels rise eventually over people’s life time. In essence, the school of thought states that capitalism motivates people to invest and work, and inequality is simply a manifestation of market forces where those with more wealth invest and grow their wealth. The gap has widened because wealthy people have had a higher growth in their income and wealth through higher productivity and hence growth is more important than its distribution. Thus, the issue to conservatives is that growth needs to occur with minimal government interference through redistributive programs as this discourages investment, and government redistribution programs are akin to class warfare (Hiltzik). This notion also extends to the belief that those who are poor need to work hard and smart in a free market system to improve their economic well- being and not dependency on government aid as this would foster dependency.
Feudalism refers to a social, political and economic system that existed in medieval Europe, where Lords owned land and vassals would grant services to the lord in exchange for using the land (Burger 161)....