#p2 #p21 #tlot #tcot #teaparty #union #iww #occupy #ows Inequality - Why Australia must not follow the US http://www.canberratimes.com.au/comment/inequality-why-australia-must-not-follow-the-us-20140706-zsxtk.html There is growing concern about inequality, and rightly so. There is growing inequality in most countries - marked increases in some, with more and more of each nation’s income going to the top, more people in poverty, and a hollowing out of the middle class. But the fact that there is so much more inequality in some countries than others means that the degree of inequality is not just a matter of economics; it is the result of policies and politics. Each confronts the same laws of economics, the same global economic forces; but how they respond differs markedly. In the past few years, there has been a fundamental shift in our understanding not only of the causes of inequality, but also of the consequences. There are two ways to do “well”: to increase the size of the economic pie, and be justly rewarded for doing so; and to seize a larger share of the nation’s economic pie. The former is called wealth creation; the latter wealth appropriation or rent seeking. There is a growing consensus that an increasing share of inequality at the top arises from rent seeking - whether it takes the form of the exercise of monopoly power, taking advantage of deficiencies in corporate governance to seize an increasing share of corporate revenues, or using political power to get public resources at low prices or sell government goods and services at inflated prices...