Inequality Archives – Center for the Advancement of the Steady State Economy

Whose Behavior Needs to Change? The Other Side of the International Development Coin

October 10, 2024/10 Comments/in Alix Underwood, Consumption, Economic Policy, Governance, Inequality, Limits to Growth, Postgrowth, Poverty, Steady State Herald, Sustainability, Wealth, Wellbeing /by Alix Underwood

by Alix Underwood

“Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach him how to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.” The Western-led international development sector, born in the aftermath of World War II, has evolved according to this (ironically) Chinese proverb. To better reflect the status of international development, I would append the following sentences to the worn-out proverb: “Use advanced extractive technology to harvest all the fish from the man’s ocean,

San Jose: An Information Economy Giant with Whopping Footprints

September 19, 2024/9 Comments/in Alix Underwood, GDP, Inequality, Limits to Growth, Materials use, Steady State Economy, Steady State Herald, Technology, Trophic Theory of Money, Wealth /by Helene Langlamet

by Alix Underwood

What is your reaction when you hear the tagline “city with the highest GDP per capita in the United States”? Perhaps you would like to live in that city. Perhaps you think it sets a positive example for other cities. If so, you are not alone. Corporate and political leaders have been prioritizing economic growth for decades, and this mindset has trickled down until it has saturated the public.

The problem is that there is a fundamental conflict between economic growth and environmental protection.

Introducing the Salary Cap Act

March 7, 2024/12 Comments/in Daniel Wortel-London, Economic Policy, Environment, Inequality, Steady State Economy, Steady State Herald, Wealth /by Gary Gardner

by Daniel Wortel-London

The daily news regularly features commentary about the outrageous and growing income inequality in the USA. The data support the outrage:

In 1965, the CEO-to-worker salary ratio at the average U.S. company was 21-to-1. Today that ratio is 344-to-1.
In 2022, CEO pay at 100 S&P 500 companies averaged $15.3 million, while median worker pay averaged only $31, 672, according to an Institute of Policy Studies analysis.

A Steady State Sustains All Boats

April 13, 2023/4 Comments/in Economic Growth, Inequality, Steady State Economy, Steady State Herald, Wealth /by Gary Gardner

by Gregory M. Mikkelson

An important recent article on resource use and its environmental impacts starts from the premise that “the planet’s resources and ecosystems are a commons, and… all people are entitled to an equal, sustainable share.” Alas, the world today deviates wildly from this norm. Indeed, inequality—of resource use, but also of income and wealth—is extremely high today and is actually worsened by economic growth. What’s more, it is bad for our politics,

Archive for category: Inequality

by Alix Underwood

by Alix Underwood

by Daniel Wortel-London

by Gregory M. Mikkelson