At the start of this thread I noted that we lived in a country where the extremes between rich and poor had increased over the last 30 years with almost no-one noticing how much our economy had changed. So I was sursprised to find support for this proposition from an unlikely source. Josef Ackerman, Chief Executive of Deutsche Bank (one of Germany's largest) and head of the the Institute of International Finance" (an organization representing world banks)
"We have a social responsibility, because if this inequality increases in income distribution or wealth distribution we may have a social time bomb ticking and no-one wants to have that." He says - along with some CBFers, but not me - that the bankers have a social responsibility to be philanthropic with their bonuses.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-16857265I hardly think this justifies the Guardian headline "Global Business Elite Go Marxist at Davos!" but the view of growing income inequality as a problem was echoed there.
"Strange as it may seem, debates on the dangers of rising income inequality are now de rigueur at the annual gathering of the global business elite at this snowbound Swiss mountain resort[Davos] ... The message: inequality is no longer just a social or ethical issue but an economic blight that will stymie recovery. 'The superrich spend little of their incremental income, so we have a problem of aggregate demand, and that hurts the economy,' Roubini explained at a debate evocatively titled "The Seeds of Dystopia." More than half the 1,200 investors, analysts and traders consulted in a Bloomberg poll published on the eve of the summit agreed that inequality damages economic growth. "Marx was right; capitalism creates obstacles to its own advancement," said Roubini." Quite.
