{"id":32568,"date":"2016-01-25T15:01:44","date_gmt":"2016-01-25T14:01:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.w-t-w.org\/en\/?p=32568"},"modified":"2016-01-26T05:26:27","modified_gmt":"2016-01-26T04:26:27","slug":"32568","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.w-t-w.org\/en\/32568\/","title":{"rendered":"Inequality: Are Haves and Have Nots Predestined?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Yanis Varoufakis writes:\u00a0The \u2018haves\u2019 of the world are always convinced that they deserve their wealth. That their gargantuan income reflects their ingenuity, \u2018human capital\u2019, the risks they (or their parents) took, their work ethic, their acumen, their application, their good luck even. The economists (especially members of the so-called Chicago School. e.g. Gary Becker) aid and abet the self-serving beliefs of the powerful by arguing that arbitrary\u00a0discrimination in the distribution of wealth and social roles cannot survive for long the pressures of competition (i.e. that, sooner or later, people will be rewarded in proportion to their contribution to society). Most of the rest of us suspect that this is plainly false. That the distribution of power and wealth can be, and usually is, highly arbitrary and independent of \u2018marginal productivity\u2019, \u2018risk taking\u2019 or, indeed, any personal characteristic of those who rise to the top. In this post I present a body of experimental work that argues the latter point: Arbitrary distributions of roles and wealth are not only sustainable in competitive environments but, indeed, they are unavoidable until and unless there are political interventions to keep them in check. \u00a0Haves and Have Nots<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

\"Inequality\"<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Yanis Varoufakis writes:\u00a0The \u2018haves\u2019 of the world are always convinced that they deserve their wealth. That their gargantuan income reflects their ingenuity, \u2018human capital\u2019, the risks they (or their parents) took, their work ethic, their acumen, their application, their good … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-32568","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-finance"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t