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INTERVIEW
Martin Ravallion: “We have to get rid of the idea that wanting to reduce inequality makes you a communist”
[elpais.com]

Petter 9 Aug 9
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I couldn't read it without disabling AdBlocker. I've always thought of it as either communist or Christian but maybe that's just being Eurocentric. Europeans seem to be comfortable with social democracy as a compromise between capitalism and socialism. It's not working so well now, what with mass immigration and the neoliberal market system. We've come a long way from the Keynesian model. They say it wouldn't work in today's economy but I don't know why.

A couple of extracts:-
"People have to be shown how costly inequality is. It’s not just ethically and morally repulsive, it’s also bad news for economic growth. If you don’t manage inequality well, you won’t have much growth nor will you be able to take advantage of the benefits of growth. It’s all connected."

'Many people play up the idea that there would be no incentive in a world without inequality and, as I said, there is some truth in this statement. But the goal should not be zero inequality or zero poverty. The goal should be a manageable and acceptable level of inequality that doesn’t perpetuate itself. There are still economists who don’t take income distribution into account. You are never going to get everyone to agree. But I think that no one can look at the literature that is available today and disagree that inequality is putting the brakes on growth. Fifteen or 20 years ago, most economists only focused on efficiency and said that inequality was positive for growth. Again, this depends on the levels of inequality of those we are talking about. Now these [economists] are few and far between. The fact that the best-selling book ever on economy is Capital in the 21st Century by Thomas Piketty, which addresses inequality, is telling."

"Today’s capitalism is not the same as the one Adam Smith was talking about. It has become far less competitive and far more dominated by monopolies. And that should worry us. How can competition thrive in the technology industry, for example? The kinds of thing that a truly competitive capitalism can achieve are incredible, but for this to happen, we have to make sure that competitiveness is maintained and that inequality is managed well. And that requires good policies."

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