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David Gordon Memorial Lecture Unbound: Releasing Inequality’s Grip on Our Economy
Review of Radical Political Economics ( IF 1.000 ) Pub Date : 2020-09-22 , DOI: 10.1177/0486613420938187
Heather Boushey 1
Affiliation  

There is a transformation now underway in economics that is thoroughly upending the conventional wisdom about how our nation can deliver strong, stable, and broadly shared economic growth. A new generation of scholars, informed by new data and sources of empirical evidence, is challenging long-held assumptions about how the economy works and the extent to which those workings can be understood in isolation from the larger dynamics of the rest of society. Real-world observations are undermining the claim that markets left to their own devices reliably deliver socially beneficial outcomes. All this is paving the way for a major shift. The new framework starts from the understanding—grounded in the evidence—of the ways that inequality obstructs, subverts, and distorts economic growth. While Adam Smith’s famous invisible hand pushes the economy toward broadly beneficial outcomes, economic inequality acts as bind, thwarting the idealized market processes as it transforms into social and political power. A rising tide cannot lift all boats when some cannot even get launched and others pushed off course and deprived of navigation tools, founder on the rocks. Inequality constricts economic growth. This framework exposes dynamics more complex than the conventional economic wisdom of the past can explain. While it is tempting to embrace the simple tale that a rising tide lifts all boats, we need to make sense of a large body of research literature, much of which has focused not directly on the question of how inequality affects economic growth but rather on how inequality affects mechanisms that in turn drive investment and productivity. The reasons that economic benefits are not flowing to families may be disparate, but there are many common themes—which, once fully traced, can reveal new patterns to guide better economic thinking and policymaking.

中文翻译:

大卫戈登纪念讲座未绑定:释放不平等对我们经济的控制

经济正在发生一场变革,彻底颠覆了关于我们的国家如何实现强劲、稳定和广泛共享的经济增长的传统观念。新一代学者受到新数据和经验证据来源的启发,正在挑战长期以来关于经济如何运作以及这些运作在多大程度上可以独立于社会其他部门的更大动态之外的假设。现实世界的观察正在破坏这样一种说法,即市场留给自己的设备可靠地提供对社会有益的结果。所有这些都为重大转变铺平了道路。新框架始于对不平等阻碍、颠覆和扭曲经济增长的方式的理解——以证据为基础。虽然亚当·斯密著名的无形之手将经济推向广泛有益的结果,但经济不平等起到了约束作用,阻碍了理想化的市场过程,因为它转变为社会和政治权力。当一些船只甚至无法下水,而另一些船只偏离航线并失去导航工具时,涨潮无法将所有船只都抬起来,在岩石上沉没。不平等限制了经济增长。这个框架揭示了比过去的传统经济智慧所能解释的更复杂的动态。虽然人们很容易接受涨潮掀起所有船只的简单故事,但我们需要理解大量的研究文献,其中大部分并未直接关注不平等如何影响经济增长的问题,而是关注不平等如何影响反过来推动投资和生产力的机制。经济利益没有流向家庭的原因可能各不相同,但有许多共同的主题——一旦完全追溯,就会揭示新的模式,以指导更好的经济思考和政策制定。
更新日期:2020-09-22
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