"You've hit on it. Seemed counterintuitive to me as well considering that the GDP disparities between Blue and Red states are the mirror image of the income inequality. Gotta be wealth for there to be inequality."
Including all members of society is vital to achieve quality results from economic growth – indeed, without inclusion sustained growth won't be possible in the future
People shop at an open air vegetable and fruit market in Ahmedabad, India. The spike in food prices has pushed millions of people into poverty worldwide. Photograph: Amit Dave/Reuters
Vinod Thomas Fri 11 Mar 2011 00.35 AEDT
The global financial crisis and the spike in food prices have pushed millions of people into poverty worldwide. By the end of 2010, the financial crisis is estimated to have added around 64 million people to the ranks of the poor who live under $1.25 a day. Meanwhile, social unrest and popular demands for better and fairer societies are echoing across the world.
The concern for inclusive growth, or a growth pattern that includes all income strata, is not new. What is different is the urgency for achieving greater inclusiveness – and a nascent realisation that without it sustained growth will not be possible in the future.
People stress different dimensions of inclusive growth. First, there is the crucial connection between income inequality and poverty. Where growth was more inclusive, poverty was reduced more sharply. The east Asia and Pacific region reduced poverty from 78% to 17% in the quarter of a century since 1980. Globally, a one percentage point growth in income is associated broadly with a decline in poverty by about 2.4 percentage points. If India could raise its response of reduction to growth to this level, a one percentage point growth could lift roughly 10 million people out of poverty.
Second, many see the value of inclusive growth in the stability and peace it can promote. Sociopolitical instability and violence have been seen to follow episodes of highly uneven growth, either from absolute deprivation for some people or from a sense of unfairness when economic gains are shared very unequally.
[insert: The wealthiest 1% has taken $50 trillion from working Americans and redistributed it, a new study finds. Here's what that means. Beware, fellow plutocrats, the pitchforks are coming | Nick Hanauer "It’s Time to Stop Living the American Scam""" https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=169922918]
Interestingly, highly unequal societies such as Brazil and Mexico have become more equal in the past two decades, while relatively more equal ones such as China and India have become more unequal – signalling a degree of convergence in inequality across Asia and Latin America.
Third, some see greater inclusion as an aid to growth itself. Highly unequal countries see additional constraints to growth compared with more equal ones. As former UN secretary general Kofi Annan once noted: "If we cannot make globalisation work for all, in the end it will work for none." Several governments have put inclusive growth high on their policy agenda, notably the world's most populous and fastest growing countries, China and India.
Finally, I'd go further and say that without greater inclusion, countries will not be able to grow in a sustained way in the coming years. The main reason is that as the world is coming up against increasing resource constraints to growth – it will be increasingly difficult to raise economic growth without a larger share of the population participating in that process.
However, there is an important caveat to all this. The objective of inclusive growth ought not to be equal outcomes regardless of the efforts, an approach that can hurt the incentives for growth. Instead, inclusiveness means levelling the playing field, getting rid of special enticement for lopsided development, and making the effort to engage every segment of the population.
There seem to be four steps countries can pursue for greater inclusion. First, building on the impressive record in many places for expanding access to basic education, we need actions to increase access for secondary and tertiary education. The focus should not be solely on the access to education, but also on the relevance and quality of education, and its link to skill formation. The high rates of unemployment among educated populations, be it in the Middle East or other places, need to be addressed as well.
Second, areas with high labour intensity deserve special attention, especially when we have seen the harmful effect of their neglect, as in the case of agriculture. This is a particularly important issue given that this year food prices have risen to near 2008 levels, driving around 44 million people into poverty. Improving agricultural productivity can help not only the rural poor by increasing their income, but also the urban poor by lowering food prices. There are efforts under way to reverse the decline in agricultural investments, for example in Africa. To see a rise in employment and productivity as a result, we will need to capitalise on the key linkages with agribusiness and small and medium enterprises.
Third, remittances present a yet to be capitalised area for development. The inflows of remittances into developing countries from abroad have been relatively robust even in the midst of the financial crisis. Better incentives and stronger financial infrastructure for channelling a greater proportion of remittances for productive investment can help small businesses to flourish and stimulate job creation, leading to more inclusive growth.
Fourth,a state that is accountable to its citizens, with checks and balances that help to minimise capture by particular groups, is essential. Establishing an effective organisational structure to deliver results in service provision, especially for the poor, is a key component of an accountable government. Well-targeted and well-functioning programmes for social protection can make a timely difference.
Inclusion is vital for getting quality results from economic growth. What's more, inclusion is necessary to ensure that growth can indeed be sustained in the future.
Flashback to Tornado Alley 2011. While on another mission i bumped into one, easily as relevant today as 12 years ago.
"You've hit on it. Seemed counterintuitive to me as well considering that the GDP disparities between Blue and Red states are the mirror image of the income inequality. Gotta be wealth for there to be inequality. "
This of the late F6's (Mark's) headed: America’s idiot rich [in full. Also, emphasis is mine. Today.]
The 1 percent is complaining louder than ever. There can be no reasoning with people this irrational
By Alex Pareene Monday, May 7, 2012 06:45 AM CDT
Some unknown but alarming number of ultra-rich Americans are now basically totally delusional and completely divorced from reality. This is now an inescapable fact, confirmed by multiple media accounts of billionaire thought and an entire special issue of the New York Times Magazine.
Here’s a brief list of insane things that are apparently common knowledge among the billionaire class:
- That President Obama and the Democratic Party have treated wealthy finance industry titans maliciously and unfairly.
- That the fact that they are perversely wealthy and growing richer during a period of mass unemployment and staggering debt is a sign that the economy is functioning correctly.
- That poor people, and not the finance industry, are responsible for the financial crisis and subsequent recession.
- That the ultra-wealthy are wealthy because they are smarter and work harder than everybody else, and that they are resented for their success.
- That the ultra-wealthy in general, and finance industry executives in particular, are the victims of widespread prejudice akin to that faced by ethnic minorities.
There can be no reasoning with people this irrational. Any attempt to do so will fail, as Barack Obama, whose main goal is to maintain, not upend, the system that made these people so disgustingly wealthy, is learning. It’s growing harder and harder to pretend that the fantastically wealthy have a sophisticated understanding of politics — or math, or economics, or cause-and-effect.
One of the guests raised his hand; he knew how to solve the problem. The president had won plaudits for his speech on race during the last campaign, the guest noted. It was a soaring address that acknowledged white resentment and urged national unity. What if Obama gave a similarly healing speech about class and inequality? What if he urged an end to attacks on the rich? Around the table, some people shook their heads in disbelief.
Conard also detests charitable giving and has developed a statistical method for finding a spouse, because he is a sociopath. Because he is very wealthy, he is very used to his ideas being taken seriously — even economists offer him (qualified) praise. He is utterly convinced that his book will convince every serious person that wealthy finance industry titans not only deserve their wealth, but make society a better place for all. He has basically taken what is a gut feeling among his class and turned it into a philosophy and an argument [ http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2012/05/02/how-the-1-think-about-their-wealth/ ].
Perhaps the most persuasive argument — for Republicans — for nominating Mitt Romney was that he is of this class. The fact that he is more comfortable in a boardroom than a Pizza Ranch is actually a major asset, because the Democrats had, since the Clinton years, gradually won over much of Wall Street,helping them to erode the GOP’s massive Reagan-era fundraising advantages. Romney can win that money back.
[Insert: So there B402, as we have been saying to you, is the reason Democrats, to have any chance at all of halting the Reagan-Bush run, had to go after Wall Street money. See, again - B402, You don't seem to understand [...] Forever? Garbage. The Clinton's did not change the Democrat Party forever. And the thought occurs, if they had not gone for the big money could they have broken the Reagan - HW Bush procession. https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=170948190]
They are one of those industries that is used to getting exactly what it always wants from Washington, because they essentially own both parties. (As opposed to say, oil and gas, ally of Republicans, or the entertainment industry, ally of Democrats.) So Dodd-Frank made them very, very mad. But not just mad: Confused, hurt, betrayed. There is a psychosocial element to the response, clearly on display in the story of the rich people who wish for a speech about how they are not evil. They are essentially spoiled children who have just been lightly reprimanded for the first time that they can remember.
Obama has not been remotely unkind to Wall Street, even as he’s grudgingly adopted a slightly more leftist tone. The grotesque nature of our campaign finance system has effectively made economic populism impossible. Even populist rhetoric not backed up by any sort of action is apparently hurtful to these masters of the universe.
But Conard is wrong. The rich are not intrinsically more virtuous or hardworking than the masses. They are also, decidedly, not any smarter. And they receive their news, and their political opinions, from the exact same organs as everyone else. They may be more likely to read the Wall Street Journal than the New York Post, but both of those Murdoch-owned newspapers carry similar lies on their editorial pages. In other words, they actually believe their bullshit. They honestly believe that mean Democrats invented “Occupy Wall Street” in order to make them scapegoats for a crisis that they feel no responsibility for. People who are in the business of extracting fees and interest from consumers, or moving rich people’s money around, unironically think of themselves as “job creators.”
[Add today also - See "Hanauer's pitchforks, below "]
The result of their last few decades of job creation has been the decoupling of productivity grown from wage growth
But appeals to logic, history and common sense will not get you far with a roomful of very rich guys who feel paranoid and victimized. The Wall Street types asked to become Obama donors wanted assurances that the president would not criticize his opponent’s finance industry record. It’s not enough that they’re ridiculously wealthy: They wish to be utterly above criticism. That’s the most important thing to remember: These people, the .01 percent, are mostly childish idiots. Idiot children have now accumulated all of the nation’s wealth and they are terrified that someone might try to take some of it away.
Sandy Weill, Builder Of Too Big To Fail, No Longer Accepts Blame For Crisis [...] Lehman E-Mails Show Wall Street Arrogance Led to the Fall [...] Look Who’s Pushing Homeowners Off the Foreclosure Cliff [...] History Repeats Itself in New Gilded Age Ted Frier APRIL 20, 2012 3:29PM Just 55 well-to-do white guys wrote the US Constitution during that Philadelphia summer of 1787. And to hear the conservatives of the current Roberts Court tell it, the Founding Father's "original intent" was for small groups of wealthy white guys to rule America ever since.
Aside: Had my six-monthly haircut yesterday. Others reckon it's a gain of 10 years look. Back to the future haha. Toss this more recent inequality post in as gravy. Hanauer knows full well who the real job creators are:
Beware, fellow plutocrats, the pitchforks are coming | Nick Hanauer "It’s Time to Stop Living the American Scam" Reposted to fix the video
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