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Inequality: A NewZealand Crisis 2013 год

Inequality: A New Zealand Crisis
книга

Полный текстСтраница публикацииПубликация в OpenAlex
Аннотация: is a journalist who wants to tell a story about 'inequality' more accessible to a wider public than most academic debates about the subject, which are often so bestrewn with jargon and complex statistics that only the initiated can participate.He also might have pointed to the prevalent tendency within the popular media not to provide sufficient depth or clarity on complex social issues to enable readers to grasp the intricacies of what is being written about.Add in very large doses of, often disguised, political and moral bias and the possibilities for rigorous and balanced assessment become even more remote.Despite these obstacles, this book mainly succeeds in achieving its aims by providing generally clear and readable commentaries on inequality by authors who explicitly state their own values, policy advocacy and political perspectives.A diversity of perceptions is therefore inevitable, as Rashbrook notes in the Preface.Nonetheless, what unifies the wide range of opinions displayed in the chapters that follow, by commentators from within and beyond academia, is a shared aspiration to provide a compelling case for accepting that income inequalities in New Zealand have reached a point where detailed examination, explanation and remedial action are essential.Yet calling the current situation in New Zealand a crisis is debatable.Have we reached a 'tipping point' (2) where Kiwis' oft noted traditions of equality and fairness are perceived as in such poor repair that they should do something about it?Admittedly, my scepticism is unfairly compounded by writing this review well after Inequality hit the shelves, at a time when a centre right administration was very recently, and resoundingly, returned to the Beehive.This government, while having child poverty and housing disparities, for example, on its agenda, is unlikely to share many of the views proffered in this text.But whether voter preferences should be taken as reflecting delusion or disavowal of a calamitous defining moment is hard to fathom.In his opening chapters the editor sets the scene by outlining why he thinks inequality should matter to all New Zealanders, including the well-heeled.He also has a good stab at demystifying the statistics that inevitably confront anyone trying to decide how to define and measure income disparities in relative fashion. 1 Cogent arguments are advanced about why we should all be concerned about inequality per se, not just poverty.Endorsing the influential comparative research on inequality by the authors of The Spirit Level, 2 Rashbrook stresses that only focusing on the widening gulf between the breath-taking salaries earned by a handful of corporate executives and the marginalised existence of those at the bottom of the heap, detracts from the point that excessive income (and wealth) differences negatively affect the health, security and well-being of everyone; not least because of their impacts on the overall economic performance of societies.His views are generally ably backed up in subsequent chapters.In a well-argued essay, Robert Wade shows how New Zealand income disparities mirror those in most Western societies, although its recent historical shift from one of the least to most unequal states in the OECD is distinctive.His expansive comparative survey, reminiscent in some ways of the arguments presented in Thomas Piketty's more recent book on wealth distribution, 3 neatly demolishes the neo-liberal illusion that equality and democracy are best accomplished with a minimum of market constraints.Yet, for Wade, shifts in this direction over recent decades fortified rather than created a longstanding plutocracy in Western capitalism, with New Zealand being no exception.This, of course, raises fundamental questions about the relative weight to
Год издания: 2013
Ключевые слова: Social Issues and Policies, Employment and Welfare Studies
Другие ссылки: doi.org (HTML)
Journal of New Zealand Studies (The Stout Research Centre for New Zealand Studies) (PDF)
Journal of New Zealand Studies (The Stout Research Centre for New Zealand Studies) (HTML)