What Is Happening? | Lecture 3 | Inequality 101 with Branko Milanovic & Arjun Jayadev

How did global inequality come about? In this third lecture in the Institute for New Economic Thinking’s “Inequality 101” series, Branko Milanovic explores how the industrial revolution created widening inequality between different countries.

Inequality, in many ways, may be the biggest question of our times. And yet it is a topic that is still underexplored in conventional economics curricula. In this five-part lecture series from the Institute for New Economic Thinking, economists Arjun Jayadev ( @AzimPremjiUniversity ) and Branko Milanovic ( @GradCenterCUNY ) break down what inequality is, how we measure it, why it exists, and how to address it.

0:00 Introduction
0:18 Estimated global income inequality
6:48 Rough' outline of First, Second & Third World pre-1990
10:55 The three ages
17:45 European Union membership
24:57 The poor, rich & middle class in the US and UK
29:37 The poor, rich & middle class in China and the UK
32:22 Going beyond the averages: Convergence of Chinese incomes

[nedim_guitar]

Very interesting part about migration because of globalization and inequality between countries!

[dericbindel]

I'm very curious how these comparative distributions look when various living expenses like rent, food, and healthcare are accounted for.

[clarestucki]

Income inequality increases exponentially as a result of industrialization and even more so with the creation/invention of high-technology and robotics, because those things serve to leverage the productivity of the talented and the skilled, but do little or nothing to enhance the productivity of the untalented/unskilled.


Within agrarian economies, the most skilled farmer might be 50% more productive than the unskilled farmer. However, a highly talentd, highly skilled entrepreneur or manager in a high-tech economy (think a Steve Jobs or a Bill Gates) can easily be 10, 000 times more productive than a laborer.