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Title: Created Unequal: The Crisis in American Pay by James K. Galbraith ISBN: 0-226-27879-4 Publisher: University of Chicago Press Pub. Date: 01 December, 2000 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $17.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.5 (12 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Outstanding..filled with technical analysis, insights, data.
Comment: Editor, Stern's Management Review online, [email protected] Argues that America's wage gap was driven up by public policies shaped by and for the wealthy. Explains the relationship between economic policy and the structure of pay. Shows why knowledge workers have done well and why service worker have not; why consumer industries have lost ground. Shows that differential power, rather than a theory of differential skills, explains inequality in pay. Includes technical notes and bibliography. For those who want to gain insight into inequality in pay this work, by a leading economist, This book is outstanding and filled with technical analysis, insights and supporting data.
Rating: 5
Summary: A Great Antidote for Greenspan Worshippers
Comment: Jamie has all of his father's flair for writing plus James K. Galbraith, like his idol John Maynard Keynes, seems to be defying the law of regression. Jamie has all of his father's flair for writing plus the modern statistical tools of his trade. Many economists consider the market as the chief producer of inequality, a major pillar of his father's thinking and the need for state expenditures to reverse this tendency. Jamie blames policy-makers after 1970 since this seems to be the dividing line between stability in the distribution of U.S. wages and the subsequent increase in wage inequality. Students of economic doctrines tend to emphasize Alfred Marshall's belief that the evolution of capitalist markets would produce greater equality in income (and presumably wage) distribution. This idea was reinforced by Nobel prize-winner Simon Kuznets' work in the early fifties in the U.S. which claimed that recent statistics showed increased equality in income distribution. What Kuznets was measuring, however, was the temporary influence of full employment during World War II on U.S. income distribution, something that Jamie argues was reproduced by "New Economics" policy-makers in the 60s and for a couple of years under Reaganomics in the mid-80s. The ultimate source of this power to create less-than-full employment and increased inequality lies at the door of Paul Volcker and his successor Alan Greenspan, Chairmen of the Fed from 1979 until today..Jamie, in contrast to the conventional wisdom, is relentless in his criticism of Greenspan feeling that we might have to go back to the drawing board in changing the thrust of our macroeconomic policy. Having opted for balanced budgets and neutral fiscal policy, monetary policy has become the only game in town under President Clinton. Whereas Greenspan cut the federal funds rate in half in early 1992 in a futile attempt to reelect President Bush, he reversed course under Clinton by almost doubling the rate beginning in February 1994 ina totally unnecessary attempt to control phantom inflation. With the continued disinflation under Clinton, real (inflation-adjusted) interest rates have risen and produced what Jamie feels is an overvalued dollar especially with respect to Japan and Germany. But the dollar is undervalued with respect to Latin America. This dichotomy reflects the dirty float of the past three decades and helps explain the relative stagnation of Latin America. I am totally in agreement with Galbraith's conclusions on the need to return to the low real interest rates before Volcker's biting of the proverbial bullet and tend to subscribe to the casual attitude towards controlling inflation. If we ever get back to a demand-pull inflationary situation, there would be time to act. As it is, the principal problem of the millenium would appear to be the deflation and deflationary expectations . As Galbraith admits,"the extreme proto-Keynesian position, that the risk of inflation ought simply to be ignored, should not be dismissed entirely out-of-hand."
Rating: 4
Summary: Technically solid, but weaker on policy arguments
Comment: "Created Unequal" is an impressive work of economic analysis of wage and wealth inequality. Although the book occasionally gets into some relatively rigorous economics, it should be accessible to the determined lay reader.
Professor Galbraith's central thesis is that the amount of wage inequality (the difference between what the wealthiest make and what the poorest make) is tied directly to a number of key factors: the unemployment rate, the interest rate, the strength of the dollar, and so on. Essentially, the lower the unemployment rate, the less the degree of wage inequality. I am simplifying his thesis considerably here, but this is the essence of it. There is a considerable amount of technical research presented that supports the thesis and demonstrating a strong correlation between wage inequality and unemployment.
So, Professor Galbraith makes a persuasive case that the government can affect wage inequality by making certain policy decisions, such as lowering unemployment, raising the minimum wage, weakening the dollar against international currencies, and so on.
But, what is missing from the book is a serious justification of why the free market should not dictate the value of labor. In other words, from a normative standpoint, why should workers be paid two or three or more times the value of their labor? There are egalitarian arguments to be made, of course, but at the same time, if the value of Bill Gates' labor is, say, 100 times more valuable than the work of a custodian, why should Gates' wages be limited to, say, 30 times that of custodian? (At one point, Professor Galbraith suggests a 30-1 limitation.)
In the end, this is an impressive and valuable work. You may or may not agree with the policy decisions that Professor Galbraith supports, but his analysis must be reckoned with.
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Title: The New Inequality: Creating Solutions for Poor America by Richard B. Freeman, Joshua Cohen, Joel Rogers ISBN: 0807044350 Publisher: Beacon Press Pub. Date: 01 January, 1999 List Price(USD): $11.00 |
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Title: Top Heavy: The Increasing Inequality of Wealth in America and What Can Be Done About It, Second Edition by Edward N. Wolff, Richard C. Leone ISBN: 1565846656 Publisher: New Press Pub. Date: February, 2002 List Price(USD): $12.95 |
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Title: The State of Working America, 2002/2003 by Lawrence Mishel, Jared Bernstein, Heather Boushey ISBN: 0801488036 Publisher: Cornell University Press Pub. Date: 01 January, 2003 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
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Title: Contours of Descent: US Economic Fractures and the Landscape of Global Austerity by Robert Pollin ISBN: 1859846734 Publisher: Verso Pub. Date: September, 2003 List Price(USD): $21.00 |
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Title: The Great Unraveling: Losing Our Way in the New Century by Paul Krugman ISBN: 0393058506 Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company Pub. Date: September, 2003 List Price(USD): $25.95 |
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