Must-reads: December 18, 2015
- : Does wealth inequality matter for growth?: “The relationship between politically connected wealth inequality and economic growth is negative, while politically unconnected wealth inequality… [has] no significant relationship.”
- : Sorry, but Your Favorite Company Can’t Be Your Friend: “Companies try to blur the lines, insinuating themselves into your friend zone…” :: It’s not companies that are trying to blur the lines, so much as pro-market ideologues (and I mean that of the extremely-smart Josh Barro in the *nicest possible way) trying to draw lines that cannot be sharply drawn…*
- : Piketty, in Three Parts: “Piketty[‘s]… data… confound[s]… previous… wisdom that we didn’t need to worry about inequality. This makes a vast and important social phenomenon… visible, salient and socially undeniable…” :: the best precis of Piketty as both sociological phenomenon and political actor I have yet seen…
- (1999): Thinking About the Liquidity Trap: “fiscal stimulus… [is only] a way of buying time… [absent] assumptions that are at the very least rather speculative…” :: How very closely Krugman’s fiscal-policy analysis then tracks Rogoff’s analysis today…