{"id":8365,"date":"2015-05-22T06:00:00","date_gmt":"2015-05-22T11:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=8365"},"modified":"2015-05-22T06:00:00","modified_gmt":"2015-05-22T11:00:00","slug":"economic-inequality-10-reasons-why-we-cant-beat-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=8365","title":{"rendered":"Economic inequality: 10 reasons why we can&#8217;t beat it"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"story-headline\">\n<h3 class=\"story-title\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.cbc.ca\/news\/economic-inequality-10-reasons-why-we-can-t-beat-it-1.3081938\" target=\"_blank\">Economic inequality: 10 reasons why we can&#8217;t beat it<\/a><\/h3>\n<\/div>\n<p class=\"story-deck\"><strong>Even the OECD says inequality is bad. But making it go away is much tougher<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>It almost feels like an old story. Ever since the economy\u00a0crashed in 2008\u00a0a growing chorus of voices has\u00a0warned that inequality was wiping out the middle class and damaging society.<\/p>\n<p>This week the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, the\u00a0rich countries`\u00a0think-tank, made headlines for declaring that growing inequality is not only bad for social cohesion, but is actually cutting points off economic growth.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.cbc.ca\/news\/business\/precarious-jobs-holding-back-young-workers-oecd-finds-1.3082178\">Precarious jobs holding back young workers, OECD finds<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n<li><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.cbc.ca\/news\/business\/minimum-wage-canadian-cities-unlikely-to-mimic-l-a-chicago-hikes-1.3080645\">Canadian cities unlikely to mimic L.A. on minimum wage<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>If we all agree, why is it such an intractable problem?\u00a0The story is complex, but here are just a few reasons why inequality is so hard to fix.<\/p>\n<h2>1. Equality where?<\/h2>\n<p>While inequality within\u00a0rich countries has been getting worse, many point out that global\u00a0inequality has been shrinking.<\/p>\n<p>Countries like the U.S. and Canada used to\u00a0consume\u00a0a majority of the world&#8217;s wealth. As the rich and middle class in places like China and India get a bigger piece of the action, some argue that morally, increasing global equality\u00a0outweighs a relative\u00a0decline in wealth by some people in the rich world.<\/p>\n<h2>2. Free trade and globalization<\/h2>\n<p>The push to create open trade between countries means that the low- and unskilled workers of rich countries are increasingly\u00a0competing directly with workers in China, Bangladesh, Vietnam and India. Even within North America,\u00a0industrial jobs often move to where wages are lowest, meaning middle class industrial jobs disappear.<\/p>\n<h2>3.\u00a0Automation<\/h2>\n<p>Even in developing countries, manufacturers are replacing jobs with<a href=\"http:\/\/www.cbc.ca\/news\/business\/are-robotic-smart-machines-behind-the-jobless-recovery-1.2326104\">robots and automation<\/a>. Here in North America, computerized processes are already taking jobs done by factory workers, clerical workers and even professionals as clever software learns to search legal titles and write simple news stories.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;click on the above link to read the rest of the article&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Economic inequality: 10 reasons why we can&#8217;t beat it Even the OECD says inequality is bad. But making it go away is much tougher It almost feels like an old story. Ever since the economy\u00a0crashed in 2008\u00a0a growing chorus of voices has\u00a0warned that inequality was wiping out the middle class and damaging society. This week [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[3544,3000,244,4350,312,425,2164,5256],"class_list":["post-8365","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","tag-cbc","tag-cbc-news","tag-economics-2","tag-equality","tag-financial-crisis","tag-inequality","tag-oecd","tag-organization-for-economic-cooperation-and-development"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8365","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8365"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8365\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8366,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8365\/revisions\/8366"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8365"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8365"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8365"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}