The rollback of the state and the redistribution initiated during the Reagan-Thatcher period in the US and Britain has resulted in these countries being the least egalitarian in the OECD, with wages increasingly de-coupled from productivity growth and gains accruing to top CEOs. The view that inequality is attributable solely to the new premium on human capital is challenged; it is argued that inequality has resulted from mainly from personal tax breaks and the corporate drive for ‘shareholder value’. The social costs are evident from the sociological and epidemiological evidence. Equally, inequality has helped fuel US consumer spending, facilitated by low interest rates, holding gains and credit deregulation. The result is a ‘triple deficit’. The risk is that by relying exclusively on market-led devaluation, a crisis of confidence will result; righting financial imbalances requires not merely a Plaza-type solution, but a major reversal in the growth of inequality.
Download Info
To download:
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the
proper application to
view it first. Information about this may be contained
in the File-Format links below. In case of further problems read
the IDEAS help
page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS
site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
Publisher Info
Paper provided by ICER - International Centre for Economic Research in its series ICER Working Papers with number
26-2007.
Length: 34 pages Date of creation: Mar 2007 Date of revision: Handle: RePEc:icr:wpicer:26-2007
Contact details of provider: Postal: Viale Settimio Severo, 63 - 10133 Torino - Italy Phone: +39 011 6604828 Fax: +39 011 6600082 Email: Web page: http://www.icer.it More information through EDIRC
For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its listing, contact: (Alessandra Calosso).
Related research
Keywords:
References listed on IDEAS Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.: