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- Inequality emerged as a central issue for the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) because of the growing body of evidence that inequalities in income and wealth cause economic instability, a range of health and social problems, and create a roadblock to the adoption of pro-environment strategies and behaviour.
www.weforum.org/stories/2015/09/5-reasons-why-we-need-to-reduce-global-inequality/
Globally, inequality may be shrinking as economic power shifts and new markets emerge, Milanovic’s most recent research suggests. Within many nations, just the opposite trend is at work: The gap between rich and poor is widening. So where are we on inequality and why does it matter? Why should we care about inequality?
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These reasons for redistribution are strongest when the poor are very badly off, as in the cases Singer describes. But there will always be some reason of this kind as long as redistributing assets increases the well-being of the poor more than it decreases that of the rich. These reasons for eliminating inequality are also based on an idea of equa...
The possibility of making the poor better off does not seem to be the only reason for seeking to reduce the worlds rising level of economic inequality. Many people in the United States seem to believe that our high and rising level of inequality is objectionable in itself, and it is worth inquiring into why this might be so. This inquiry is importa...
Second, if inequality, in itself, is something to be concerned about, we need to explain why this is so. It is easy to understand why people want to be better off than they are, especially if their current condition is very bad. But why, apart from this, should anyone be concerned with the difference between what they have and what others have? Why...
1. Economic inequality can give wealthier people an unacceptable degree of control over the lives of others.
If wealth is very unevenly distributed in a society, wealthy people often end up in control of many aspects of the lives of poorer citizens: over where and how they can work, what they can buy, and in general what their lives will be like. As an example, ownership of a public media outlet, such as a newspaper or a television channel, can give contr...
Economic inequality makes it difficult, if not impossible, to create equality of opportunity. Income inequality means that some children will enter the workforce much better prepared than others. And people with few assets find it harder to access the first small steps to larger opportunities, such as a loan to start a business or pay for an advanc...
4. Workers, as participants in a scheme of cooperation that produces national income, have a claim to a fair share of what they have helped to produce. What constitutes a fair share is of course controversial. One answer is provided by John Rawls Difference Principle, according to which inequalities in wealth and income are permissible if and only ...
Peter Singers powerful argument for altruistic giving draws on one moral relation we can stand in to others: the relation of being able to benefit them in some important way. With respect to this relation, to matter morally is to be someone whose welfare there is reason to increase.
But the objections to inequality that I have listed rest on a different moral relation. Its the relation between individuals who are participants in a cooperative scheme. Those who are related to us in this way matter morally in a further sense: they are fellow participants to whom the terms of our cooperation must be justifiable. In our current en...
These are not just objections to inequality and its consequences: they are at the same time challenges to the legitimacy of the system itself. The holdings of the rich are not legitimate if they are acquired through competition from which others are excluded, and made possible by laws that are shaped by the rich for the benefit of the rich. In thes...
T. M. Scanlon is Alford Professor of Natural Religion, Moral Philosophy, and Civil Polity at Harvard University.
Sep 22, 2015 · Inequality drives status competition, which drives personal debt and consumerism. More equal societies promote the common good – they recycle more, spend more on foreign aid, score higher on the Global Peace Index .
Nov 1, 2022 · Inequality boomed as deregulation, economic liberalization programs and other policies created opportunities for the rich to get richer. Why inequality matters
- Fatema Z. Sumar
Jun 7, 2019 · When looking at inequality, we must not only look at the differences between individuals within certain countries but also between countries themselves – as society becomes increasingly interconnected, it becomes more important than ever to understand inequalities on a global scale.
Jun 18, 2020 · This column analyses what has happened, why we should care, and what can be done about inequality. Governments have not focused enough on pre-market policies that prevent inequality arising in the first place. Post-market interventions should be seen as too little, too late.
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Aug 14, 2024 · In this post, Branko Milanovic, Senior Scholar at the Stone Center on Socio-Economic Inequality at CUNY and Visiting Professor at the LSE’s International Inequalities Institute, steps back to address the fundamental question: why should we care about the level of inequality in society?
