One simple metric of inequality in the UK:
in 1980 the ration of median FTSE100 CEO pay to median UK wages was: £1 - £11;
In 2022 it had become £1 - £118.
I think it's safe to say that is not commensurate with the improvement in the conduct & success of the top management of UK corporations; nor, should it be said, a fall in the contribution to the UK economy of the work of the general population.
The rentiers (as we know) have stolen our wages.
#inequality #economics #corporations
h/t FT
When even Angus Deaton concludes that this current iteration of capitalism can't last much longer...
https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/fandd/issues/2024/03/Symposium-Rethinking-Economics-Angus-Deaton
Picketty & David Graeber used to be mocked; not anymore...
apologies, I boosted without checking (as I could guess what it covered) - link is also broken for me!
I just checked the link twice and it has worked both times.
Here's the article :
https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/fandd/issues/2024/03/Symposium-Rethinking-Economics-Angus-Deaton
Rethinking My Economics
ANGUS DEATON March 2024
Questioning one’s views as circumstances evolve can be a good thing
Economics has achieved much; there are large bodies of often nonobvious theoretical understandings and of careful and sometimes compelling empirical evidence. The profession knows and understands many things.
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Yet today we are in some disarray. We did not collectively predict the financial crisis and, worse still, we may have contributed to it through an overenthusiastic belief in the efficacy of markets, especially financial markets whose structure and implications we understood less well than we thought. Recent macroeconomic events, admittedly unusual, have seen quarrelling experts whose main point of agreement is the incorrectness of others. Economics Nobel Prize winners have been known to...
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....denounce each other’s work at the ceremonies in Stockholm, much to the consternation of those laureates in the sciences who believe that prizes are given for getting things right.
Like many others, I have recently found myself changing my mind, a discomfiting process for someone who has been a practicing economist for more than half a century. I will come to some of the substantive topics, but I start with some general failings. I do not include the corruption allegations that have...
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....become common in some debates. Even so, economists, who have prospered mightily over the past half century, might fairly be accused of having a vested interest in capitalism as it currently operates. I should also say that I am writing about a (perhaps nebulous) mainstream, and that there are many nonmainstream economists.
● Power: Our emphasis on the virtues of free, competitive markets and exogenous technical change can distract us from the importance of power in setting prices ...
There are no free competitive markets, all of them are forced and monopolized, and coercive. This is the first reason for billionaire's, anti monopoly laws are unenforced, markets controlled.
That Apple paid google billions a year because search is a monopoly, is just a tech bro example.
Emeritus Prof Christopher May
Nicole Parsons
Between Machines
Kevin Russell