[SideburnsOfDoom]

A newspaper which is pro the right-of-center government, pro big business says that there is no need to reign in big business; because despite their winning streak over the last few decades and the mounting criticism of mounting inequality, things are going to turn against them any day now, honest!

Film at 11.

[RobertoG]

I think the important message is more general: "don't worry because markets equilibrium will solve all the problems. Don't look too hard to the last 30 years, it was not a policy problem, it was just a demographic anomaly. Our theories are good and worked perfectly."

What surprise me is that they use the capital vs. workers narrative.

[gregjwild]

The right wing press just loves to fain Marx when it suits their own narrative.

That said, I often wish the mainstream left would diversify their own font of knowledge. Especially given most don't read him.

[JupiterMoon]

The left don't read Marx because Das Kapital is one of the slowest most boring reads I've ever encountered...

On the other hand the basic concept of labour and capital as market objects with values controlled by supply and demand makes a lot of sense.

[dandare]

Politics aside, unless you challenge the data it was an demographic anomaly. Do you think it had no effect on the markets?

[gadders]

The mounting criticism of mounting inequality is a political position. It's not an objective statement of fact. They are free to ignore it if they disagree with it.

[SideburnsOfDoom]

> The mounting criticism of mounting inequality is a political position. It's not an objective statement of fact.

The mounting inequality itself is however not just an opinion.

> They are free to ignore the mounting criticism

But they're not ignoring it as such, and IMHO it's gotten to the point where it would be foolish to do so. So now they're supplying an alternative political position on what to do - i.e. don't worry, markets will sort everything out.

[icebraining]

The mounting inequality itself is however not just an opinion.

But how much inequality is a problem is an opinion, I'm afraid.

[RobertoG]

How much inequality is a problem can be an opinion, but what we have is a trend to growing inequality.

At least that you are OK with total inequality (or with a systemic collapse) we should start to look at this carefully.

And this is what the article deal with, what is saying is: "the trend is going to reverse because it was born from demographics, nothing to do with the Washington Consensus, the dismantling of worker protections and other small details."

[gadders]

For mounting inequality, it depends who you ask and where. It's not increased in the UK for instance: http://blogs.new.spectator.co.uk/2015/09/stiglitz-piketty-je...

Of course, this is from a right-wing magazine, so they could just be making it up to appease their owners or something.

And it also depends on the definition of poverty. Is it absolute or relative? As soon as you start talking about relative poverty, you are effectively arguing for wealth redistribution.

//EDIT: swapped poverty in for inequality above//

[RobertoG]

I don't want to be negative but the article in the spectator dismiss the Gini index (that I'm sure has its problems) using a tweet as its source.

Just to weight in with an alternative view: http://mainlymacro.blogspot.fr/2014/11/redistribution-under-...

[gadders]

To be fair, it was a tweet by Nassim Taleb.

[SideburnsOfDoom]

> To be fair, it was a tweet by Nassim Taleb.

Do you think that's a positive recommendation? Because it's not clear and I don't.