Inequality in the United States has become a household concept, if for no other reason than Sen. Bernie Sanders centering his presidential run around fixing it. There’s plenty of visible evidence of it, but author Chuck Collins wants Americans to take a closer look at other aspects of inequality too, particularly wealth disparity, the power imbalance it creates, and how the rules of the economy have been changed to benefit those asset owners at the expense of everybody else.
Collins is a senior scholar at the Institute for Policy Studies, where he directs the Program on Inequality and the Common Good. His report “Reversing Inequality: Unleashing the Transformative Potential of an Equitable Economy,” co-published with the Next System Project, takes an exhaustive look at the causes of continued wealth disparity in the United States and lays out several ways to reverse it, ranging from narrow policy fixes—raising the minimum wage, strengthening labor standards and protections, and expanding health coverage to everyone—to systemic reforms in how corporations are chartered, breaking up monopolies, encouraging the growth of socially responsible “B Corporations,” and establishing a National Infrastructure and Reconstruction Bank.
Collins spoke with YES! Magazine senior editor Chris Winters about the need for a system of economic rules that make it easier for people to act in non-exploitative, non-extractive ways and four collections of steps needed to address inequality: lifting the floor, leveling the playing field, deconcentrating wealth, and rewiring the next system.
[For more on this story by Chris Winters, go to http://www.yesmagazine.org/new...-easy-steps-20170920]
Illustration: By Mark Airs/Getty Images. Globalization and technological change contribute to inequality, but they are not the driving forces.
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