2021/11/27
2021/11/24
The Elephant Chart in the EU Room
From the Harvard University Press Blog
The Elephant Chart in the EU Room
"For several years now, economists have remarked on the simple yet striking representation of world income growth in a chart by Branko Milanovic. The chart plots relative gain in household per capita income between 1988 and 2008 at different points of the global income distribution, showing that the gains from globalization are very unevenly distributed. Known as the “elephant chart” because it resembles an elephant with a raised trunk, the chart indicates that the lower middle classes of the rich world made the weakest relative gains during the most intense phase of globalization to date. So while those of modest means in wealthy countries may still have more to their names than even well-to-do citizens of developing nations, it’s those lower income Americans, Japanese, and Western Europeans who’ve seen their global standing degrade—this while watching their wealthiest countrymen make gains commensurate with those in economically emerging parts of the world."
| The Elephant Chart in the EU Room |
2021/11/23
6 strategies to expand your flexibility in the presence of discomfort
Why Choosing Pain May Be a Key to a Meaningful Life
Key points
- Focus on the power of choice.
- Turn up the meaning dial.
- Stay grounded in the present.
- Physicalize your discomfort.
2021/11/19
To Understand Inequality, Look to the 9.9 Percent
"In
“The 9.9 Percent,” Stewart notes that in 1963, the median household
would have needed 10 times as much wealth to reach the middle of the 9.9
percent. Today, it would need 24 times as much wealth."
To Understand Inequality, Look to the 9.9 Percent
THE 9.9 PERCENT
The New Aristocracy That Is Entrenching Inequality and Warping Our Culture
By Matthew Stewart
2021/11/18
2021/11/16
2021/11/15
2021/11/14
The Logic of Stupid Poor People
The Logic of Stupid Poor People
"I have about a half dozen other stories like this. What is remarkable is not that this happened. There is empirical evidence that women and people of color are judged by appearances differently and more harshly than are white men. What is remarkable is that these gatekeepers told me the story. They wanted me to know how I had properly signaled that I was not a typical black or a typical woman, two identities that in combination are almost always conflated with being poor."
"At the heart of these incredulous statements about the poor decisions poor people make is a belief that we would never be like them. We would know better. We would know to save our money, eschew status symbols, cut coupons, practice puritanical sacrifice to amass a million dollars. There is a regular news story of a lunch lady who, unbeknownst to all who knew her, died rich and leaves it all to a cat or a charity or some such. Books about the modest lives of the rich like to tell us how they drive Buicks instead of BMWs. What we forget, if we ever know, is that what we know now about status and wealth creation and sacrifice are predicated on who we are, i.e. not poor. If you change the conditions of your not-poor status, you change everything you know as a result of being a not-poor. You have no idea what you would do if you were poor until you are poor. And not intermittently poor or formerly not-poor, but born poor, expected to be poor and treated by bureaucracies, gatekeepers and well-meaning respectability authorities as inherently poor. Then, and only then, will you understand the relative value of a ridiculous status symbol to someone who intuits that they cannot afford to not have it."
2021/11/08
2021/11/03
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