The subtitle of this is "A Brief and Idiosyncratic History of Global Inequality." Branko Milanovic is an economist at the World Bank, and he brings an interesting review of inequality of incomes throughout history and across the globe. He introduced me to the Gini coefficient, a measure of income inequality within and between countries. If all income were equal for everyone in a country, their coefficient would be 0. If one individual managed to wrest all of the income and leave the rest of the population with no income at all, the Gini would be 100.
The most egalitarian countries in the worlds have Ginis of 25-30. The Gini coefficient for the US reached its low of 35 in the late 1970s, and has risen to over 40 since the Reagan era.
The recent Occupy Wall Street protests obviously reflect the increasing disparity. What they fail to do is propose any solutions. The book also provides few solutions or even suggestions, but describes the concerns quite well. He has three main sections, each with an overview of the economic theory and some statistics, followed by a series of "vignettes" that help to understand the concept. It's a good format, since the impacts can be somewhat abstract, and the vignettes help bring the concepts to earth.
I wonder if some of his analysis of the strength of the EU holds up. He touts the EU's ability to "absorb" lower income countries with much weaker economies, but the problems with Greece and Italy this year seem to call that into question. (The book came out in early 2011.)
My friend and former colleague Don Cole wrote about this book on his blog (http://mediarealism.blogspot.com/) and got me interested in it, to I reserved it from the library. Finished on 1/21/12.
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