Tag - inequality

 
 

INEQUALITY

COMMENTARY / World
Mar 4, 2015
Impose a land tax to fight inequality in the U.S.
Henry George advocated forcefully for a land tax in his 1879 book, 'Progress and Poverty.' More than 135 years later, perhaps its time is ripe.
COMMENTARY / Japan
Mar 3, 2015
Thomas Piketty's Japanese tour
Like so many other Western exports, Thomas Piketty's economic argument has taken on unique characteristics in Japan.
COMMENTARY / World
Mar 3, 2015
Whips, chains and capitalism: what 'Fifty Shades of Grey' is really about
'Fifty Shades of Grey' is a romance for a particular kind of age — a time of growing inequality.
Japan Times
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Feb 14, 2015
The economics book everyone is talking about, but has anyone read it?
French economist Thomas Piketty's "Capital in the Twenty-First Century" was the surprise bestseller of 2014 in the United States, and it has also become a hit in Japan.
COMMENTARY / World
Jan 26, 2015
Are the poor better off than King Louis XIV?
To argue that common folk live better now than royalty did in earlier times is a fatuous and politically inspired attempt to minimize the issue of income inequality.
COMMENTARY / World
Dec 29, 2014
Business Book of the Year is timely but way off target
The economics in Thomas Piketty's 'Capital in the Twenty-First Century,' chosen the Business Book of the Year by the Financial Times, leaves a lot to be desired. But its timing was fantastic.
COMMENTARY / World
Nov 10, 2014
A world beset by divisions
Whether once divided by physical walls or currently split by political ones, today's leaders in Asia, the U.S. and Europe — including newly elected members of the U.S. Congress — should think about how much has been and can be achieved when the barriers of economic inequality come down.
COMMENTARY / World
Oct 25, 2014
World's rapidly expanding millionaire club
Time was that 'being a millionaire' was a mark of unimaginable success. Not anymore.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
Oct 20, 2014
Women joining the top '1 percent'
A study by three economists concludes that economic inequality in America is becoming more gender neutral. In the early 1980s, women comprised at least 3 percent of the top 1 percent of wage earners. Now they're approaching 20 percent.
COMMENTARY / World
Aug 27, 2014
The difference between good and bad equality
The 'old' theory about inequality was that redistribution via the tax system weakened incentives and undermined economic growth. But the relationship between inequality and growth is far more complex and multi-dimensional than this simple trade-off suggests.
COMMENTARY
May 17, 2014
Democrats can't get traction on inequality
President Barack Obama has made any number of speeches about the rich who don't pay their fair share, but nationwide this has not translated into big gains for the Democrats who are pushing it.
COMMENTARY / World
May 10, 2014
Frenchman stopped the trickle-down theory
A book by a Frenchman known for his now infamous chart of income inequality in the U.S. dominates the media like no other work of economics since the writings of Milton Friedman or even John Maynard Keynes.
COMMENTARY
Apr 12, 2014
U.S. Democrats have an inequality problem
America's Democratic Party might want to shift its tack of making income inequality the centerpiece of this year's election campaign in the face of census data showing that income inequality is higher in Democratic districts.
COMMENTARY / World
Apr 7, 2014
How inequality curtails a nation's creativity
Given the rarity of really good economic ideas, those who have already achieved success may be the least likely to find them — to be the 'job creators' of the future.
COMMENTARY / World
Mar 28, 2014
Suicide kills more Americans than gun violence
Being poor doesn't bum people out. Being poorer than other people — people whose relative wealth you personally witness — does.
COMMENTARY / World
Feb 10, 2014
Myths about economic inequality
True, the gap between the rich and the poor is enormous, wider than most Americans would wish, but this reality has made economic inequality a misleading intellectual fad, blamed for many of our problems.
COMMENTARY / World
Jan 14, 2014
Economic inequality by the click
Free markets are expected to distribute the fruits of some new technologies in dramatically unequal ways. Will the relative losers, satiated by computer games and Internet entertainment, and provided with the basics of a minimally acceptable life, be too docile to revolt?
COMMENTARY / World
Jan 13, 2014
Inequality nightmare continues to plague world
While demand for private jets is booming, 60 percent of the population lives on less than $1.25 a day. As the world overall grows richer, the benefits continue to flow overwhelmingly to a tiny elite.
COMMENTARY / World
Jan 13, 2014
Why Pope Francis is right to call inequality unjust
To say that Pope Francis' preoccupation with inequality promotes the sin of envy and that inequality in itself is of no great account doesn't make much sense to Harvard lecturer on ethics and public policy.
EDITORIALS
Jan 5, 2014
Rising tides and drowning citizens
What does it portend for democratic government when half of the polled respondents in 35 of 39 countries say their economic system favors the wealthy and that the gap between rich and poor is intensifying?

Longform

Rows of irises resemble a rice field at the Peter Walker-designed Toyota Municipal Museum of Art.
The 'outsiders' creating some of Japan's greenest spaces