Few American economists want anything to do with social movements. Then there’s Robert Pollin, who has embraced his role as a progressive with a prolific output of books, studies and articles that make the economic case for greater equality.
Pollin, who will be honored at the L.A. Alliance for a New Economy’s (LAANE) City of Justice Awards Dinner next month, rose to prominence in the late 1990s as the most ardent academic defender of living wage laws. In recent years he has advanced the case for a new green economy based on good jobs and environmentally sensible policies.
Pollin, a professor of economics at the University of Massachusetts – Amherst and co-director of the Political Economy Research Institute, may be left of center but he is no business-bashing liberal. To the contrary, he learned from his father – the late Abe Pollin,
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Suppose the growth of the U.S. economy slows to a trickle. I don’t mean in the next quarter or next year or even over the next decade. I mean from this time forth.
That’s the prediction of Northwestern University economist Robert Gordon in a new paper that’s become the subject of widespread commentary.
Gordon writes that three industrial revolutions have taken place over the past 250 years: the first centered on the steam engine and railroads; the second based on electric power, the internal combustion engine and indoor plumbing; and the third rooted in computers and the Internet. By substituting mechanical power for human power in the production process and by greatly speeding up transportation and communication, Gordon asserts, the second revolution raised productivity and wealth far more than did the other two.
Indeed, U.S. productivity gains and the concomitant increase in wealth have slowed in recent decades from the levels the United States historically enjoyed.
A recent story in The New York Times, back in its business section, had important news about inequality: “Income Inequality May Take Toll on Growth.” A couple of economists at the IMF reported research (here) showing that, across many countries, periods of greater income inequality tend to be followed by slow-downs in economic growth.
This is, actually, old news. About 20 years ago the research literature already showed that inequality probably damped the economy (see pp. 126ff here). But this remains important to repeat – not just because reporting the baleful effects of inequality now has the imprimatur of the IMF, but also because so many people still resist the news; they insist instead on believing the opposite, that inequality stimulates the economy, to the benefit of everyone. And, of course, this insistence has political implications right now.
» Read more about: Growth Is the Price of Income Inequality »