Session 4: Hot Topics

Income, Taxes, Regulations, Trade

Goals

  • To introduce participants to each other and to get a sense of their histories and concerns.
  • For participants to get a broad overview, and to reflect on, the facts of current inequality and its many facets.
  • For participants to get a glimpse of recent scholarship on the fundamental role of inequality in the sweep of history and of global differences in inequality and its impacts
  • To generate a range of possible actions, both short term and long term, and of possible collaborations.
  • For participants to get a preview of the moral and social powers, as well as economic strengths, of a more egalitarian society.
  • “Introduction to Inequality”, pp. xi to xv, from Divided: The Perils of our Growing Inequality by David Cay Johnston. Or Inequality 101.
  • Very short videos: Distribution of Wealth and What Happens When We Raise the Minimum Wage.
  •  “Introduction”, pp. 5-11, from War and Peace and War – A Radical New Theory of History with Implications for Nations Today by Peter Turchin. Or the 16 minute video Turchin on History.
  • “The End of an Era”, pp 2-14, from The Spirit Level – Why Greater Equality Makes Societies Stronger by Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett. Or the 17 minute video Wilkinson on Inequality.
  • “A Land of Promise”, pp. 5-12, from Land of Promise – An Economic History of the United States by Michael Lind, or the 6-minute video Lind on US Economic History.
  • “Bold Rule Changes to Break Up Concentrated Wealth”, pp. 97-118, from 99 to 1 – How Wealth Inequality Is Wrecking the World and What We Can Do about It by Chuck Collins, or the 8-minute animation Why Tax the Rich.
  • “Introduction”, pp. xi-xviii, from How Much Do We Deserve – An Inquiry into Distributive Justice by Richard Gilbert.

Activities

“The man of great wealth owes a peculiar obligation to the state because he derives special advantages from the mere existence of government.”

Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919)