I have just finished reading "Inequality: What Everyone Needs to Know" from James K. Galbraith published by Oxford University Press. I got an ARC from Netgalley.
This appears to be part of a series to orientate readers about the academic discourse on various topics and so to allow intelligent readers without a background in these areas to form opinions about these topics. As a result, I am probably not a perfect reader to assess this objective as I have studied in this area and while it has been some time, I do have a decent understanding of some of the academic material on this topic.
Having said that, it has been a while since I left pure academia and while I have dipped in and out of some of the newer literature, I appreciated the opportunity to get a fresh survey of the debates. I appreciated how the author managed to put together what is quite a short book and yet it provides an orientation of a range of facets of inequality covering the history of the concept, measurement issues, current trends and debates about about whether inequality should be ameliorated, and if so, how. The book struck me as both accessible and comprehensive.
One of the key issues that I thought Galbraith highlighted particularly effectively was the crucial place of measurement. In political debates, the specificity of measurement often disappears and yet as Galbraith points out, this issue is critical. He discusses the key differences between gross income, net income and pay measures of inequality as well as highlighting why wealth inequality is so hard to measure. His point about how market-based valuations (such as for billionaires like Bill Gates) can evaporate as soon as you have to sell even a small portion is insightful. Once he'd pointed out, it seemed so obvious and yet it is a point I haven't seen made before and an important one in the debate around wealth taxes which Piketty has reignited.
His defense of Simon Kuznetz is also very interesting. Whenever I have seen Kuznetz presented before, his Kuznetz curve with inequality rising as a country starts to grow and then falls once it reaches a certain point has been the focus. What Galbraith highlights is that the curve itself is far less important than Kuznetz's arguments about the structural transformations of economies and how this impacts on inequality. This seems to be a key focus of Galbraith's own research and also the reason why he seems to have a preference for measures of inequality in pay (rather than income).
The book is quite US-centric, and I think is intended for a US audience. The US gets a full chapter on recent trends while the rest of the world shares one chapter. I can understand the choice, but as a South African, I would have found a bit more discussion of developing countries interesting. As a South African, I found his discussion on the risk of predatory states as well as preferred methods for combating rising inequality very interesting. In South Africa, labour market rigidity (in the form primarily of unions, labour laws and minimum wages) are often blamed for inequality and I think Galbraith argues effectively that this is probably the wrong way to look at things.
I thought how Galbraith handled ideology was excellent. He makes some very interesting points about the difference for inequality amongst different types of non-democratic states - specifically between communist regimes and military dictatorships for instance. His chapter on war, which did feel like a bit of a diversion relative to the rest of the text, was interesting nonetheless and raised some interesting arguments in terms of the importance of equality relative to democracy and the relationship between these two.
The one area which he didn't discuss in much detail was the link between inequality and mobility. In my view, under examination, many people's preference for equality lies in a concern for mobility and for people to be able to rise and fall under their own efforts. Then, the question becomes whether or not an unequal state can provide this, and how mobility is affected by both inequality and other structural issues. I know it is a question which has arisen in academic debates and I do think it would have been a useful topic to cover (even if briefly) in a text such as this for a "lay" audience.
Otherwise, I think this is a very helpful contribution to current debates and I think many people would benefit from reading it.
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