A friend recently posted a meme about rising income inequality to Facebook. One of the comments was a link to a piece from Economics Explained with the provocative title " How The Dutch Economy Shows We Can't Reduce Wealth Inequality With Taxes " I'm starting to see a pattern in these sorts of economics articles: 1. Make a pointed and contrarian claim about the power of economics to address a major issue in contemporary society (taxes won't fix inequality). 2. Compare related economics concepts that have much narrower definitions than the ones that drew in the reader (GINI vs income & wealth inequality vs a few specific aspects of Dutch taxes and culture). 3. Add some artfully selected facts to keep people interested (Heineken family info). 4. Also artfully avoid saying explicitly that the narrow comparison proves or disproves anything specific about the broader societal problem. 5. Make a generally agreeable statement about the world: Inequality doesn't
It's 2020, and unless things really truly go to literal hell, everyone will recognize what that means for a long time. I've been trying to find a way of tying these many struggles together, COVID-19, racism, violence, climate change. I wish I could remember where this idea came from, because it isn't mine. The Golden Rule, to do unto others as they would have them do unto you, isn't enough. Not by itself. It lets us rest on a sense that we can get by being polite, that we can rely on reacting to circumstances as we encounter them in a positive way. These challenges stem from an entire society's dysfunctions. An LED lightbulb and a meme or two isn't remotely enough. I understand this to be the core belief of the progressive movement: what we want for ourselves, we must work to provide for others, for everyone else. Every decision about our collective welfare has to start there. Choosing not to is the core of bigotry, of environmental destruction, the genesis of