wealth inequality
How do you avoid violent redistribution of wealth?: Structural reformers
The original extraction In 1879, Henry George published Progress and Poverty and asked a question mainstream economics has spent 145 years not answering: why does poverty persist alongside growth? His answer was land.... How do you avoid violent redistribution of wealth?: Redistributionists
The napkin Piketty published the number that mattered on a napkin: r > g. The rate of return on capital exceeds the rate of economic growth. It has exceeded it in every century for which we have data except 1914 to 1975, when two world wars and sixty million dead temporarily... Why do racial disparities persist?: Institutional path dependency
The compound interest problem Take $24,000 and $188,000. Go back to 1960. Apply the S&P 500’s historical average return to both figures. Compound for sixty-five years. You land within striking distance of the current gap. We are economists.... Why do racial disparities persist?: The Story
$24,000 and $188,000 That is the median wealth of the Black and white families the Federal Reserve has been tracking since 1989. The ratio has not meaningfully changed. The number is not in dispute.... Why does wealth keep concentrating?: Technologists
Thirteen to 145,000 In 2012, Instagram had thirteen employees and was acquired for $1 billion. Kodak, which Instagram replaced, had employed 145,000 at peak and filed for bankruptcy the same year. Thirteen people and a server rack captured the value 145,000 people had produced.... Why does wealth keep concentrating?: Democratic socialists
The steelworker’s math In 1970, a steelworker in Youngstown earned enough to buy a house, send two kids to college, and retire with a pension. He needed a union card and forty hours....