Nobel Prizewinning Economist Robert Solow, Who Linked Technology and Growth, Dies at 99 – TIME
“Solow contributed a chapter to the 2017 book, After Piketty: The Agenda for Economics and Inequality, a follow-up to Thomas Piketty’s much-discussed 2014 treatise on wealth inequality, Capital in the Twenty-First Century.
“In his chapter, titled ‘Thomas Piketty Is Right,’ Solow called the widening gap between the rich and the non-rich an ‘ominous anti-democratic trend.’ He endorsed Piketty’s call for an annual progressive tax on wealth but added the caveat that such a tax stood little chance of being enacted in the U.S., where ‘we are politically unable to preserve even an estate tax with real bite.'”
The productive career of Robert Solow – MIT Technology Review
“Inequality is one area where his thinking has changed. In 1962, when Solow was a staff economist for the White House’s Council of Economic Advisers, the top 1% of earners in the US accounted for 12.6% of national income, while the bottom 50% of earners had 19.5%. That has reversed: in 2014, the bottom 50% accounted for 12.6% of income while the top 1% had 20.2%—the highest percentage since the crash of 1929, when Solow was five.
“The disparity in net assets is even greater. In 2014, the top 1% of households had 38.6% of the nation’s wealth, compared with −0.1% (that’s right) for the bottom 50%. Talk to Solow about the economy today, and it’s likely inequality will come up sooner rather than later…
“Indeed, Solow emphasizes, inequality has created a self-reinforcing loop in which money shapes government policies that favor the rich, and thus begets more inequality. ‘This great inequality of wealth should concern everybody, because it can’t help but influence or control politics,’ he says. ‘One of the things you can buy with vast wealth is votes in Congress.’ He adds: ‘It’s going to affect legislation that affects the labor market and property, not to the advantage of wage earners.'”
THINKING ABOUT INEQUALITY: review of Branko Milanovic’s new book – Zia Qureshi/IMF
“Rising economic inequality in many countries, especially the rich ones, in recent decades has emerged as an important topic of political debate and a major public policy concern. Widening economic disparities and related anxieties are stoking social discontent and are a major driver of the increased skepticism about public institutions, political polarization, and populist nationalism that are so evident today. Visions of Inequality, a new book by Branko Milanovic, a leading scholar of inequality, places today’s concerns and debate in context. It is an absorbing account of how thinking about inequality has evolved.”