One could ask that question about all areas of equality policy, I want to see how it relates to claims that we should aim for more financial equality or, as it usually put, for less financial inequality. As I mentioned in one of my previous witterings, "wealth" can refer to income or it can refer to capital assets, for present purposes I will look at income. The way the policy is argued for is ver...

contribution by Stewart Lansley When it comes to official explanations of the current crisis, inequality is the elephant in the room. The report of the bipartisan US Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, which blamed pretty well everybody and everything for the 2008 crash, failed to mention ‘inequality’ once in its mammoth 662 page report. Yet the

The commission set up by the US Congress to probe the causes of the 2008 financial market meltdown will interview foreign regulators and put bank executives back on the witness stand

See this article, where the author concedes that capitalism as we've known it over the last 30 years has changed forever. Among his conclusions: * wealth taxes are inevitable - quote: "If the government is going to step in to protect accumulated financial wealth in the way that it has, then (a) those with accumulated financial wealth will have to pay higher taxes in the future to service...

“Wealth inequality is very much greater than income inequality, and widening,” Clegg said. “The bottom third of households hold just 3% of the nation’s wealth. The top third hold three-quarters of it. This inequality of wealth then cascades down the generations, potentially widening the opportunity gap.” The specific piece that isn’t is this: The bottom

Is inequality to blame for the US financial crisis? To see why it might be, start - as all American stories must - with Calleigh Duquesne. She drives a Chrysler Crossfire, which probably costs almost half her annual salary. It’s...

Another letter, this one from today's Times. It makes a simple point, but one that frustratingly few seem to grasp: financial services do not create wealth, but merely shuffle it about: Sir, Manufacturing remains one of the few ways of creating wealth for the country. Financial services do not — they recycle other people’s wealth. And when people have less to recycle, or when they choose to re...

A long piece at the ASI. Laying out the reasons why the Hills Report on wealth inequality is so horribly, terribly, wrong. It measures wealth inequality before all the corrective measures we take about such inequality. What we want to know of course is how much inequality do we have after such measures: only then can we ask

The collapse of another US investment bank, Lehman Brothers, and the sale of Merrill Lynch to the Bank of America this weekend finally brought home the scale of the financial crisis.

History shows a clear link from inequality to instability. The main outcome of the post-1980 experiment has been an economy that is both much more polarised and much more fragile and prone to crisis, and the two most damaging recessions of the last century were both preceded by sharp rises in inequality.