Checks and Balance: Inequality qualities
Checks and Balance from The Economist
The Economist
4.6 • 1.7K Ratings
🗓️ 14 July 2023
⏱️ 49 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
By some measures, in the aftermath of the pandemic, income inequality in America is either increasing or remaining stubbornly high. On the left, the gap between rich and poor has long been an urgent issue—and more people on the right now agree. As both sides of the aisle look for solutions, they are reaching some surprisingly similar conclusions. What are the proposed answers to economic inequality in America? How likely are they to be taken up?
Economist Thomas Piketty talks us through the state of economic inequality in America and some of the left’s proposals to reduce it. And Oren Cass of American Compass, a think tank, explains a new wave of conservative solutions to inequality.
John Prideaux hosts with Charlotte Howard and Idrees Kahloon.
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Transcript
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| 0:27.2 | Inequality can be tricky to quantify. |
| 0:36.8 | Economists bicker over what to include or ignore and how to account for different kinds of wealth. |
| 0:43.3 | It gets especially difficult when the society being judged collapsed several thousand years ago. |
| 0:49.7 | But using house size as a proxy for wealth, archaeologists are giving it a try. |
| 0:56.5 | For dozens of archaeological sites over thousands of years, |
| 0:59.8 | researchers have worked out genie coefficients. |
| 1:03.2 | The score goes from zero to one. |
| 1:05.1 | If one person held all the wealth, the genie coefficient would be one. |
| 1:09.2 | If every person were equally well off, it would be zero. |
| 1:13.5 | Pompeii got a score of 0.54. |
| 1:17.2 | A site in ancient Egypt got 0.68. |
| 1:21.5 | Mesoamerican Mexico City was just 0.3. |
| 1:26.2 | In America today, the genie coefficient for wealth is about 0.85. |
| 1:32.3 | And it's probably getting worse. |
| 1:34.8 | I'm John Prado and this is Chex and Balance from the Economist. |
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