The columnist seems to be defending the stark
inequality of the developedCapitalist world with the
poverty of the underdeveloped
economy. He is successful in driving point home without relying on boring statistics and long quotes from the experts. He defends the harsh material
inequality of ‘Developed’ Florida with too much
poverty of Cuba. Now the interesting part of his writing is he does not see any political system in the past (550 years) and in the future which will help or engineer the transfer of significant portion of wealth from the rich countries of the world to the poor countries. He suggests that, Communist victories in post-world war II elections in Italy and France would have impoverished the nation which are now rich and, reign of Deng Xiaoping in China, if it would have commenced from 1956 would have made all the difference. Though his apprehension here is that, such possibilities would have made South rich at the cost of North. His suggestions that the individuals have their own capacity to work and earn to be rich or poor. Here I fully agree with him when he says “but I don’t see what alternative political-economic arrangements could make individual’s relative wealth closely correspond to their relative moral or other merit”. He suggests the poverty can be tackled by providing a poverty insurance/ safety net- not of inequality. Here, looks like he is only addressing to the problem of poverty of the developed nation. He laments over the income inequality in the USA, between the four-year college degree holder and others. He quotes figures that, their income has rose by 30% to 90% over the last three decades. Here he highlights very interesting point which needs to be taken very seriously by the planners is that, the formal education have become scarcer, the education premium has risen, which may further widen the gap of inequality. He says, that, Corporate America’s and their peer’s earn ten times more today than what they did a generation ago. Here he argues this phenomenon is not because the present generation CEO’s are more effective than the past, but for the reason that, the other corporate stake holders have become less able to constraints top managers and financers from capturing more of the value-added. The most serious analysis he puts across in this article is that, the failure in deliberate Social investments have resulted the similar grim reality of income inequality across the globe. He also says that, this has one more facet to this investigation is that, there is no noteworthy acceleration of economic growth in the wealth of the nations, but it has resulted in upward distribution of the wealth. One almost agrees with him when he says that, the present tycoons who are controlling the major portion of the wealth and resources of the world deserve only 5% of their holding as their reward for entrepreneurships, rest of 95% redistributed amongst citizen of the nation or others would have served the health of the world economy better..