[lbo-talk] Interesting Chilean economist, on DN today

lbo83235 lbo83235 at gmail.com
Fri Mar 4 05:09:40 PST 2011


On Mar 3, 2011, at 5:43 PM, Peter Fay wrote:


> I wouldn't put much weight on this graph, as it measures GDP vs GINI - not
> too meaningful. Perhaps better would be change in GDP vs change in GINI

Thanks to everyone who responded. I think this from Peter gets closest to addressing my question. Basically, I'm trying to figure out an interesting ratio to look at in order to shed light on the social impacts of capital accumulation. So my first thought (as essentially a complete amateur in economics) was to look at Gini against GDP per capita. Basically, I'm looking for some plausible empirical response to the neolib contention that "wealth creation leads to greater prosperity / more opportunity / a better life for all."

To make a response even more meaningful, it seems like you'd want to use some kind of socially robust metric of "economic opportunity" for the numerator - something that transcends consumption and gets to social mobility, creative autonomy, land ownership, retirement age and SOL, etc. - and something like GDP or NNI per capita as the denominator.



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