Piketty’s ‘Capital’ and New Zealand

Thomas Piketty’s new book ‘Capital in the Twenty First Century’ has been making waves overseas: it’s number one on Amazon, and has been lauded as a book that will transform how we think about society and do economics – by Paul Krugman, no less. So far, there’s not been much attention on how it will…

Why inequality matters, not just social mobility

Income inequality isn’t the real issue: what matters is social mobility, the ability that people have to move out of poverty. That, at least, is the line that some commentators are taking in response to the irrefutable evidence of widening income gaps, both here in New Zealand and elsewhere. The most fundamental problem with this…