Created Unequal: The Crisis in American Pay | James K. Galbraith

Created Unequal: The Crisis in American Pay | James K. Galbraith | A book for Europeans

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Created Unequal: T...

	Created Unequal: The Crisis in American Pay James K. Galbraith University Of Chicago Press, 2000 - 378 pages average customer review:based on 14 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

The boom of the U.S. economy in the late 1990s suggests that Americans are better off than they were a decade ago, but this is not true across the board and the reason, as James Galbraith explains, is wage inequality. He contends that inequality is not the result of impersonal market forces but of specific government decisions and the poor economic performance they created. Featuring a new afterword on wage shifts since 1994, Created Unequal is a rousing book that reminds us we can reclaim our country through economic understanding, commonsense policy, and political action.

"Created Unequal is not light reading, but Galbraith's elegant arguments, passionate exposition, and profound conclusions make it worth the trouble. . . . [Galbraith] remind[s] us that the economy is and ought to be run by humans, not humans by the economy."?Joanna Ciulla, Los Angeles Times Book Review

"Created Unequal is a lucid and wise explanation of why America seems to be prospering while most Americans aren't. James Galbraith takes steady aim at a variety of widely accepted economic myths and hits most of them dead center. This book will tell you a lot about the way your economic world really works."?Jeff Faux, President of the Economic Policy Institute

"[A] brilliant and iconoclastic examination of the major social trend of our time."?Michael Lind, Washington Monthly

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A compelling case that politics affects wages.

Galbraith provides a cogent, well-documented argument that instability has more to do with wage inequality than does a mechanism for market efficiency. "When the ocean is flat, rowboats and dinghies can join the trawlers out on the reef where the fish are running. But in a gale, the little boats sink while the large ones do not." He argues that reasonable wages obtain from low unemployment and that expecting science and technology to act as the "centerpiece of a progressive agenda is absurd." Highly recommended.

A book for Europeans

Polititians and business people in Europe often recommend to learn from the US. But usually they don't tell the full story. Galbraith's book does.

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Wage determined by Supply-demand, buyer-seller. Liberty to buy-sell-trade-commerce

Wages are determined by Supply-demand, buyer-seller. Liberty to buy-sell-trade-commerce in a free society.

In a free society with free citizens, as opposed to state-enforced police state like north korea or cuba,
prices and hence wages are determined by supply-demand, demand-supply.

Price is where supply-demand meet.

Witness gold, silver, oil, all traded globally with a price determined by supply-demand.

Why is Wal-Mart on the #1 on the Fortune 500 and Fortune Global 500. Simple: quality products at low prices.

Why is Toyota the #1 car-builder and GM and Ford going almost bankrupt. Simple. Toyota can build quality cars at "reasonable" prices.

Consumer want quality products-services at at low prices. True at all places and at all times.

Wages are also determined by supply-demand. Being a retail service clerk is Not going to earn an NBA salary.

Wages in a free society, as wages for pro football, basebll, and basketball are set by the free market of supply-demand.

True today and unlikely to change anytime soon.

Galbraith has exempted himself from either the "marketplace" and the "customer", like father, like son, with a phony, fake, welfare-for-academic job like a professor at the University of Texas.

If you are so smart, why aren't you in the real world making it.

From Yale to Harvard to Cambridge, to Univ of Texas. . From one ivory tower to another ivory until retirement.

Typical "ivory tower pinhead". What a massive fraud. The rest of us have to actually work for a living. Lifelong "ivory tower pinhead".

Those who do not live in reality write books about un-reality. That's what this silly little book is about.

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Technically solid, but weaker on policy arguments

"Created Unequal" is an impressive work of economic analysis of wage and wealth inequality. Although the book occasionally gets into some relatively rigorous economics, it should be accessible to the determined lay reader.

Professor Galbraith's central thesis is that the amount of wage inequality (the difference between what the wealthiest make and what the poorest make) is tied directly to a number of key factors: the unemployment rate, the interest rate, the strength of the dollar, and so on. Essentially, the lower the unemployment rate, the less the degree of wage inequality. I am simplifying his thesis considerably here, but this is the essence of it. There is a considerable amount of technical research presented that supports the thesis and demonstrating a strong correlation between wage inequality and unemployment.

So, Professor Galbraith makes a persuasive case that the government can affect wage inequality by making certain policy decisions, such as lowering unemployment, raising the minimum wage, weakening the dollar against international currencies, and so on.

But, what is missing from the book is a serious justification of why the free market should not dictate the value of labor. In other words, from a normative standpoint, why should workers be paid two or three or more times the value of their labor? There are egalitarian arguments to be made, of course, but at the same time, if the value of Bill Gates' labor is, say, 100 times more valuable than the work of a custodian, why should Gates' wages be limited to, say, 30 times that of custodian? (At one point, Professor Galbraith suggests a 30-1 limitation.)

In the end, this is an impressive and valuable work. You may or may not agree with the policy decisions that Professor Galbraith supports, but his analysis must be reckoned with.

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An eye opening look at the american wage structure.

Created Unequal begins by telling the reader that the book will discuss the gap between the highly skilled employee and the unskilled. Mr. Galbraith begins by dicussing the chamge in monetary policy since the 1970's and the change in the labor force, as well. Since the 70's more women and minorities have joined the labor force and the U.S. has enjoyed a prospering economy and slipped into a recession. The main focus of the book is discovering what caused such a huge gap between the skilled and unskilled. One possible solution Mr. Galbraith suggests is the rise in the number of college bound and college graduates in the past twenty years. The increase in education has forced employers to pay these higher skilled employees a greater wage. Another possible answer, which directly relates to education, is the advancement of technology, namely the personal computer. As more and more computer were,and are, becoming part of the business world employers needed to find employees who knew how to operate the new machines. In the beginning, these employees were a rare find and thus, could demand a higher wage. This solution, the most popular among modern economists, is rejected by Galbraith. He states that the rise in education came before the introduction of the personal computer. The technicality and dryness of the book was to be expected as it is a study on a dry science. We did, however, find that the book presented a new outlook on the way sociery functions. The gap between the rich and the poor is large, and ever widening. There no longer exsists a middle class who can keep the balance and rock the vote on Republican, rich favoring policies. Mr. Galbraith is an excellent economist who writes technically on a topic of intrest to everyone.

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3

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