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Inequality Without Class
To grasp where inequality is headed—much less to reduce it—we will need to look beyond the economic.
Simon Torracinta▪ Spring 2024 Engraving of Adam Smith, based on a portrait by James Tassie from 1787 (Wikimedia Commons) Visions of Inequality: From the French Revolution to the End of the Cold War by Branko Milanovic Belknap Press, 2023, 368 pp. While it is hard to imagine the Biden administration’s announcement of a “new Washington consensus” centered on the “challenge of inequality” and its push for a global minimum tax without the shock wave of the 2016 election, Piketty’s high-profile work supplied a ready explanation for what had gone wrong. Over time, the same processes would work to moderate inequality by reducing rural employment, narrowing differences in the productivity of agricultural and non-agricultural sectors, lowering the rate of return due to greater capital abundance, and increasing the use of social surpluses to fund redistributive programs.
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