The Real Causes of the Growing Inequality

This TED talk by a rich man calling for a new economics misrepresents the causes and cure for the extraordinary increase in the inequality of American income and wealth in the past 23 years

The real causes are the offshoring of US manufacturing jobs, mass immigration of poor people due to open borders, imposition of the doctrine that corporations only have responsibility to share holders, economic concentration and non-enforcement of the Sherman Anti-Trust Act, repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act, years of money printing bailout of the financial system that drove bond and stock prices up, and the financialization of the economy that diverts consumer income into the service of debt.

The cure is to repeal these policies that destroyed the American Dream.

The TED talk is mainly BS. The speaker does not explain why the system worked and did not produce massive inequality in income and wealth until the causes above began appearing in the Clinton years and thereafter.  The speaker is right that neoliberal economics is largely nonsense.  Michael Hudson calls it “junk economics.”  But economies are not run by economic theories.  They are run by interest groups that write the legislation and set the rules.

In truth, what the TED talk is really doing is covering up the causes of inequality, not correcting them.

The Real Causes of the Growing Inequality