Thursday, May 05, 2016

Thursday Morning Links

This and that for your Thursday reading.

- Jim Dwyer writes about the cumulative effect a childhood in poverty has on individual development. And Lee Elliot Major calls out the self-perpetuating exclusion set up by the wealthy to preserve their privilege:
A survey found that the ‘Bank of Mum and Dad’ now helps to finance 25% of all UK mortgage transactions as parents give their children a leg-up onto the property ladder. In many parts of London buying a property is now out of bounds for all but the wealthiest offspring. Exclusive enclaves for the next generation of elites are being created – within walking distance to the nation’s most influential best-paid jobs in the capital.

These trends echo a similar seemingly unstoppable pattern witnessed across the Atlantic. The New York Times reported that the top 20 per cent of the income distribution in the United States is separating itself from the rest of the population — by geography and by income, as well as by education. Citing a raft of recent academic studies, the author argued that ”this self-segregation of a privileged fifth of the population is changing the American social order and the American political system, creating a self-perpetuating class at the top, which is ever more difficult to break into.”
- In keeping with that trend, Eric Morath discusses how the gig economy is exacerbating inequality by producing more returns for the people who already have the most. And Patrick Caldwell points out how Kansas' extreme giveaways to the rich have failed on every conceivable front.

- Michael Babad examines how much more difficult it is even for younger workers with steady employment to buy a home due to prices far outpacing incomes.

- Toba Bryant studies the policy options and processes which can be pursued in working to ameliorate income inequality. 

- Finally, Carter Vance asks when we can expect to see the Libs take any of their promised steps to fix even the worst parts of C-51 - and the answer looks to be no time soon.

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