Abstract
It is undoubted that inequality has come back with a bang in the wake of the global crises of the past decade. This is true with respect to advanced capitalist countries and to developing and underdeveloped countries alike. In the former, this renewed attention is perhaps best highlighted by Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century (2014) becoming a widely read and discussed bestseller. In the latter, the role of real and perceived inequalities is best exemplified by the calls for social justice at the heart of the revolutionary and protest movements in various corners of the Global South, from Egypt to Brazil to Turkey (Mason 2012). Indeed, those very international economic organizations (IEOs) that had been relentlessly promoting liberalizing policies have come to appreciate the potentially damaging effects of high levels of inequality (Ostry et al. 2014; Dabla-Norris et al. 2015).
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- 1.
This contribution speaks of global crises in the plural as in my view it is possible to distinguish between: (i) a global food crisis, with particularly severe repercussions for developing and underdeveloped countries (McMichael 2009); (ii) a North Atlantic financial crisis (Jessop 2015), sending ripples throughout the globe but with varying intensity and pace in different regions; (iii) a Great Recession, which was short-lived globally but appears to have mired Europe and arguably North America in stagnation (Teulings and Baldwin 2014).
- 2.
Please refer to the constantly updated “The World Top Incomes Database”: http://goo.gl/EZj7RM
- 3.
For a discussion of the pros and cons of measuring GDP per capita at PPP or at market exchange rates, see Wade (2014: 317–8).
- 4.
This is perhaps best embodied in the Bank’s motto: “our dream is a world free of poverty”, which has been sarcastically turned by Liam Clegg into “our dream is a world full of poverty indicators” (2010).
- 5.
The main outlier is Sweden, which incidentally is also the traditionally social democratic country that has gone further towards neoliberalising its own economy through its own version of the Third Way (Ryner 2002).
- 6.
One should also note that this fall in within-country inequality happened in a region traditionally characterised by extremely high levels of inequality.
- 7.
“Goal 1: Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger”, available online at: http://www.un.org/millenniumgoals/poverty.shtml
- 8.
For an excellent summary of such discussion, see Wade (2014: 328–32).
- 9.
In a slightly different but not unrelated direction, Hopkin and Blyth (2012) argued for the possibility of a “trade-in”, and thus a mutually reinforcing relationship, between equity and efficiency.
- 10.
Milanovic (2011: 160–3) calls these ethical reasons, but he then goes on to make the very same points and discusses the very same theories of social justice.
- 11.
According to a Pew Research Center report (2014), 47% of UK and 46% of US citizens consider the gap between rich and poor to be a “very big problem”, against a 56% median for advanced economies and much higher rates for countries like Italy (73%), Spain (74%) and Greece (85%).
- 12.
- 13.
- 14.
- 15.
On both “critical economics” and mercato determinato, see Krätke (2011).
- 16.
- 17.
Katie Morley, “How ‘middle class’ inflation is threatening your standard of living”, The Telegraph, 23 May 2015, available online at: http://goo.gl/9wj0F0
- 18.
Zoe Williams, “The middle-class malaise that dare not speak its name”, The Guardian, 24 May 2015, available online at: http://goo.gl/KVvdRV.
- 19.
Ibid.
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Roccu, R. (2016). Inequality and Poverty in the Neoliberal Era. In: Cafruny, A., Talani, L., Pozo Martin, G. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Critical International Political Economy. Palgrave Handbooks in IPE. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-50018-2_11
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