It’s time to rewrite the rules of economics to end the growing chasm of inequality | Liam Byrne
The debate taking place between the snow-topped peaks of Davos this week will be dominated by one issue and one issue alone, the surge in inequality. In a democracy, anger isn't abstract. As both the vote for Brexit and the election of Donald Trump show, it turns up on polling day.
In the US, new research shows that in the rust-belt states an incredible 40% of those born in 1980 are worse off than their parents. Here in the UK the gender pay gap still looms large - and as the Institute for Fiscal Studies revealed, there has been a four-fold increase in the number of men in low-paid, part-time work over the last 20 years. This represents a stark betrayal of the implicit intergenerational contract of the postwar years - that each successive generation would be better off than the preceding one. And that betrayal is by no means confined to the post-industrial interior of the US; it is in danger of becoming the social and economic condition of our age.
Related: Bleak trend of low, part-time wages in UK is revealed
Related: It's time to target the top end of town and the obscene profits of the super-rich | Helen Szoke
Continue reading...