Wealth Distribution

Despite the renowned interest in wealth disparities, the distribution of wealth in Greece is largely understudied. This study maps the levels, dynamics, and composition of household wealth using data from the three waves of the Household Finance and Consumption Survey for Greece for the period after the debt crisis of 2009-10 till 2017. The evidence suggests that the richest 1% of the population holds roughly as much wealth as the poorest 50%, while the richest 10% holds about four times the wealth of the poorest 50%. Most inequality indicators employed indicate increasing trends in wealth disparities between 2009 and 2017. During this period, average and median wealth holdings decreased by about one third, and the share of financially fragile households increased by about 20%. Estimates from factor inequality decompositions suggest that, although relatively evenly distributed, housing asset holdings explain much of the increase in overall wealth inequality in Greece, followed by self-employment business equity, while financial assets play a negligible role. Yet, financial wealth inequality is much more pronounced than housing wealth inequality in Greece. The findings of the paper carry important implications for the design of appropriate policies aiming at reducing wealth inequalities and strengthening financial resilience.

Slavoj Žižek has used the following old Russian joke to highlight the ineffectiveness of what passes for Left resistance to Right-Wing politics and corporate capitalism:

In 15th century Russia, occupied by Mongols, a farmer and his wife walk along a dusty country road. A Mongol warrior on a horse stops at their sight and tells the farmer that he will now rape his wife. He then adds: “But since there is a lot of dust on the ground, you should hold my testicles while I’m raping your wife, so they’ll not get dirty. After the Mongol finishes his job and drives away, the farmer starts to laugh and jump with joy. The surprised wife asks him: “How can you be jumping with joy when I was just brutally raped?!” The farmer answers: “But I got him! His balls are full of dust.”

This joke*, sadly, is extremely apropos of the progressive Democrats (Sanders, Warren, and others) handling of the 2.2 Trillion Dollar Coronavirus Relief Bill...

We describe an agent-based computational model that simulates the distribution of wealth in three classes: upper, middle and lower. The experimental data show us that: (1) the wealth of economy based on renewable resources is increasing if the resource growth interval is decreasing with the condition that the other factors remained unchanged; (2) the wealth of an economy based on renewable resources is higher in comparison with the wealth of an economy based on nonrenewable resources. This conclusion stresses the fact that the global economy must focus on using renewable resources because this approach may increase the global wealth.

The effects of inequality on economic growth has been a growing concern for researchers and
policy makers for many decades. However, almost all of these studies use income distribution
as a proxy for income as well as wealth inequality. Wealth may be more concentrated than
income and therefore, wealth inequality may be much higher than income inequality. Using a
new panel data set for 45 sample countries over the period 2000-2012, this study investigates
the effects of wealth inequality on subsequent economic growth. Empirical results from the
system GMM estimates suggest that the unequal distribution of wealth significantly deters
cross country economic growth. However, improved governance may reduce wealth inequality
and thereby promote growth. The results are robust to alternative estimators, alternative
measures of wealth inequality, as well as econometric specification.

Using data from the 2013 Survey of Consumer Finances, this research examines competing and complementary cultural and structural explanations of the sources of racial differences in wealth. We use OLS regression and quantile regression to identify the major individual-level sources of wealth differences between African Americans and whites. Whites have more favorable wealth characteristics than do African Americans on all of the variables in the analysis: gender of household head, bankruptcies, spending patterns, stock ownership, business ownership, home ownership, inheritance, educational attainment, income, occupation, age, and number of children. Cultural factors, having a female-headed family, spending patterns, and inheritance account for little of the racial wealth gap. Racial differences in income, stock ownership, and business ownership account for much of the explained racial wealth gap. Moreover, compared with whites, African Americans receive significantly lower wealth returns to education, age, income, stock ownership, and business ownership. We discuss the implications of our findings.

In her groundbreaking paper “Having too much” Ingrid Robeyns introduces “limitarianism”, arguing that it is morally impermissible to have more resources than needed for a maximally flourishing life. Since, limitarianism is gaining attention from supporters and critics. This paper focuses on one component of Robeyns’ limitarian theory, namely the nature of the riches threshold, the point above which limitarian restrictions kick in. The threshold, according to Robeyns, is located at the point in which human flourishing is satiated; above this threshold, surplus resources do not have any moral weight. This paper suggests an alternative riches threshold: a relative, resource-based threshold, which is better attuned to limitarianism’s justifications, is not susceptible to the incentives objection, is suitable for a partial principle of justice that should be applied in tandem with other principles of justice, and is more compatible with the intuition underlying limitarianism. Since the riches threshold should fit the justification offered for limitarianism, different justifications for the principle result in different thresholds. Therefore, I also argue that limitarianism is best understood as a set of principles, each with its own threshold, justifications, and conditions for operation.

Crime is an economically important activity, sometimes called the industry of crime. It may represent a mechanism of wealth distribution but also a social and economic charge because of the cost of the law enforcement system. Sometimes it may be less costly for the society to allow for some level of criminality. A drawback of such policy may lead to a high increase of criminal activity that may become hard to reduce. We investigate the level of law enforcement required to keep crime within acceptable limits and show that a sharp phase transition is observed as a function of the probability of punishment. We also analyze the growth of the economy, the inequality in the wealth distribution (the Gini coefficient) and other relevant quantities under different scenarios of criminal activity and probability of apprehension.

The task of studying the impact of social class on physical and mental health involves, among other things, the use of a conceptual toolbox that defines what social class is, establishes how to measure it, and sets criteria that help distinguish it from closely related concepts. One field that has recently witnessed a wealth of theoretical and conceptual research on social class is psychology, but geographers' and sociologists' attitude of diffidence toward this " positivistic " discipline has prevented them from taking advantage of this body of scholarship. This paper aims to highlight some of the most important developments in the psychological study of social class and social mobility that speak to the long-standing concerns of health geographers and sociologists with how social position, perceptions, social comparisons, and class-based identities impact health and well-being.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2017.11.037

Emigration is a social movement associated to the demand of better life conditions in different countries from those where one was born. In the specific case of skilled workers, this phenomenon is typically characterised in a negative way, due to the country’s loss of highly skilled resources, in whose education significant investment was done. While the impact of immigration on labour markets is widely studied and developed, the same is not true in what respects the impact of emigration at emigrant´s home countries. This article aims to analyse the effects of high skilled emigration from developed countries on wealth distribution at origin countries. For such purpose, an agent model was developed, and simulations are proposed to depict this phenomenon and discuss the inherent impacts.
I

In the “calamitous” 14th century, as Barbara Tuchman called it in her classic „A Distant Mirror“ (1978) , the medieval world entered a period of severe crisis in demography, economy, politics and religion. This crisis took hold in all regions, ranging from China in the East to England in the West. Even before the catastrophic pandemic of the Black Death (1346-1352), deteriorating climatic conditions had ended the period of demographic and economic expansion that began in the 10th century.
The local and regional impacts and consequences of these general potentially crisis-laden conditions may have differed; outcomes ranged from actual societal collapse to the emergence of powerful new polities – while Byzantium´s power dwindled away, Hungary entered a period of strong rulership and external power in the reign of Louis I of Anjou (1342-1382), for instance. But these conditions provide a framework for global perspective on this period and allow us to use the 14th century-crisis as a field of “natural experiments of history”, as Jared Diamond and James A. Robinson have called them ; accordingly, we analyse how similar crisis phenomena influenced the development of societies with different (or similar) traditions, religions, institutions, geographies or ecologies.
In order to be able to capture the local variations and complexities, we adopt concepts and tools provided by the field of complexity science. Mono-causal or linear explanations are inadequate for the analysis and the description of crisis, transformation or collapse of pre-modern polities. Within this framework, complex systems are understood as large networks of individual components, whose interactions at the microscopic level produce “complex” changing patterns of behaviour of the whole system on the macroscopic level. In the last decades, historians and social scientists who became interested in complexity theory tried to use its concepts and terminology for the conceptualisation and description of phenomena in their own fields, but often only in a “metaphoric” way. Less frequently, though, historians have tried to make use of the mathematical foundations of complexity theory or of quantitative tools provided by this field. Recent scholarship has implemented some of these tools especially for the construction of macro-models of socio-economic development. While these studies help us construct analytical tools for the macro-level of our own research, they run the same risk as earlier scholarship of neglecting complex variations at the local and regional levels.
Therefore, we combine complexity theory with the analytical framework of „systems theory“ developed by the German sociologist Niklas Luhmann in order to capture the interveawements between politics, economy and religion within a polity and with the political, economic and ecological environment. In addition, we employ the methods and tools of network analysis, which allow us to capture, analyse and model linkages and cause-effect correlations in society, economy, politics and religion on the macro- and micro-level down to groups and individuals.
Overall, as a complement to earlier studies our analytical
approach shall allow us to capture the “diversité véritable” of our period without losing track of essential commonalities (the “strange parallels”, as Victor Liebermann has called them in his remarkable study on Southeast Asia in Global Context, 2009 ) of this “first world crisis” across all cultures and societies. The scientic value of this approach will be demonstrated for some specific cases.

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WELCOME TO FREEMASOM PORTAL ONLINE/HOW TO JOIN THE CLUB
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Dear Influential Individual,We are delighted that your life’s journey has led you to discover our organization.Maybe you have met one of our members in the flesh. Or perhaps not; we value anonymity. We see and know all just as a shepherd sees and knows all of the flock, our eyes peering over the masses to identify any threat to the survival of the human species. We are the bringers of new dawns, the guardians of the human species. We are the Pyramid, the Eye, the Light, the Eternal Circle. We are the Illuminati.

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Agent OLADIPO FEMI CALL OR WHATSAPP +2348160966245 NIGERIA

The FREEMASON is a collective of prominent figures throughout the world who have united to guard the human species from extinction. Our members bear the burden of a planet’s leadership with the lives of 7 billion in their hands. As the human continues to rise above its other animal counterparts, governing of the planet has turned into a daunting task.

Once a member, the requirements are unimposing and often spaced between many years. Our requests are simple and therefore may be hard to comprehend, but disloyalty is not tolerated. You must understand this before applying. Members must fulfill their oaths to the FREEMASON under every circumstance and recognize that they are merely one part of a much larger Universal Design.

For centuries, our organization has separated individuals of outstanding political, financial, or cultural influence from the flock and established them as shepherds of the human species. Perhaps you have already proven yourself in these fields. For that, the FREEMASON officially congratulates you. Your dedication gives hope for the future of the human species.

Economic growth is a significant means of increasing a nation’s income and poverty reduction of a Nation Benach J, Muntaner C. (2010). The social well-being and the standard of living depend on the various government policies. Some specific types of policies are Domestic, Economic, Education, Energy, Environmental, Foreign, Social, Security and Public policy (P.A.Q) 2017. Each of the above-stated policies, when implemented will affect a nation in different ways. The outcome achieved can be a satisfactory solution, no effect at all or otherwise amplify the problems. These problems referred to as inflation present themselves in simple or complex form due to changes and effects as time goes on (Keefer, P. 2010). The economic policies are in two distinctive forms - Fiscal and Monetary. Fiscal policy is the influence of a government on a global scale market on spending and taxation, whilst monetary policy is the control, and power a government has over money. These policies can be influence by international establishments such as World Bank, World Trade Organisation, and United Nation. World powers like China, USA and Russia are also external forces that invest in countries to make other nations’ policies to be lucrative towards them. Internally, within a country, a nation’s political beliefs, climate change, and security instability can heavily influence a nation’s policy Alagidede, P. (2012).

This article, by surveying the literature, looks at the impact of associational organizations on patterns of wealth inequality in pre-industrial western Europe. It shows how they developed less regressive forms of taxation and redistribution, embedded the transfer and use of land and capital in coordination systems that curtailed accumulation, and sometimes even imposed maximums of wealth ownership, and it tentatively argues that their role had a downward effect on wealth inequality, even despite the exclusive character of these organizations. Tweet This article tentatively argues that associational organizations, by organizing taxation, curtailing accumulation, and imposing maximums on ownership, had a downward effect on wealth inequalities in pre-industrial western Europe, even despite their exclusive character.

Rawls and Piketty are the most prominent modern redistributionists. There are great flaws in their theories. Rawls presents a theory of prudence, not of justice. He implausibly rejects individual entitlements to abilities, inherited or aquired. Piketty is worried about wealth, not about poverty which is the real social evil. He is plainly wrong that wealth clings to certain individuals and families: it is highly mobile and precarious. This is illustrated in the two novels Piketty frequently quotes, by Balzac and Austen, and of course also by evidence from real life.

Malaysia and South Africa implement the most extensive affirmative action programmes worldwide. This book explores why and how to effect preferential treatment which has been utilized in the pursuit of inter-ethnic parity, specifically in higher education, high-level occupations, enterprise development and wealth ownership. Through methodical and critical analyses of data on education, workforce and population, the book evaluates the primary objectives of increasing majority representation in education, employment, enterprise and ownership. The book also critically considers questions of the attainments and limitations of ethnic preferential treatment in reducing disparity, the challenges of developing capability and reducing dependency and the scope for policy reforms.

The inquiry question is: “Which of the current diverse ideas on ‘alternative economics’ are the best for adequately, comprehensively addressing the great transition to climate, energy and biodiversity sustainability?” This dissertation proposes to address the need for an alternative economic system or systems to support the necessities of a world facing countless ecological systems collapse, global climate change and social inequity exacerbated by wealth disparity.
‘Alternative economics’ is defined here as all current economic practices and theories that may redress the flaws in the current dominant global economic system, which is capitalism. The approach to the research is theoretical; that is, I analyze the current literature in the areas of economics, and relevant literature in the social sciences, philosophy, political economics, and environmental studies. I then attempt to generate new knowledge through the analysis, critique, extension and integration of existing theories and empirical research. This research is also transdisciplinary, an approach that transcends conventional disciplinary regimes and boundaries.
The scope of this study is to ascertain the best alternatives to our current system of capitalism, by examining the arguments for and against alternative economic systems. The definitive goal of this research is to examine the most recent literature on alternative economics and based on this research, identify which economic alternatives most suitably address the needs of our ecological systems and address the issue of global climate change.
Keywords: alternative economics, sustainability, great transition, eco-socialism, de-growth economics, ecological economics, socialism, transdisciplinary.

The placement of engineering technologist is a national concern that must be addressed for the future of our nation.  The corporate ladder has a missing rung for graduates of these programs across the nation.  It is a complex matter that includes licensing liability considerations but it also includes some potential inequality concerns.  Community college engineering programs are typically accredited by The Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology / Engineering Technology Accreditation Commission (ABET/ETAC) programs or an analogous accreditation inspired by this curriculum. The distinction is magnified in the professional licensing program of some states that do not directly acknowledge the engineering technologists’ classwork.  Engineering Technology students are required to add a significant number of college credit hours to their existing education curriculum to satisfy licensing exam requirements.  A review of the 2012 National Science Foundation reveals that the issue of inequality and social stratification of the engineering structure are present. The students are not given equal opportunity to select between the two types of engineering programs at the associates degree level.
Furthermore, the four year programs, that are accredited for favorable consideration with the professional licensing board, are out of reach for many low income students.

Income inequality is one of the most widely discussed topics amongst policy makers and politicians globally. World Economic Forum rated it as one of the top global risks of 2013. The effects of income inequality are far, wide and off course long lasting. It can ruin generations to come and can have a severe impact on the very existence of the society. Further, it has adverse impact on the well being of the economy as well. Policy initiatives by various economies and global organisations like World Bank, United Nations among others have had little or no impact. The roots of inequality rest in the very foundation of the conventional financial system. So if we want to eliminate inequality, an alternative financial system which can help in justifiable redistribution of resources is required. Islamic finance with its deep rooted core values provides an alternative. This paper attempts to understand the key factors responsible for rising income inequality and how Islamic finance can help in the same.

The residual liquid biomass from agricultural and agroindustrial processes, in general
way, represents a renewable resource in significant amount, without an economically and
environmentally sustainable destination. For instance, the solution concerning glycerin stocks, remaining from the vegetable oil transesterification for obtaining biodiesel, has been postponed due to the lack of engineering alternatives appropriate to the proper utilization of this biomass. Therefore, the development of a liquid biomass gasification reactor based on partial oxidation has been initiated, where a non conventional combustion technology has been employed, Filtration Combustion, as a design basis for the reactor conception, in which the reference biomass used was glycerol. This work, eminently experimental, was carried out to build a gasification reactor prototype, in laboratory scale, in which its burner is completely filled by ceramic spheres of alumina (Al2O3), thus forming a inert porous matrix, which is partially immersed in glycerol at its bottom end and which involves a heat exchanger installed at the top of the reactor. The process is investigated to identify some key design features such as: reactor operation limit in terms of fuel-air mixtures; occurrence of instability phenomena; combustion wave propagation velocity; and influence of the main operation parameters, equivalence ratio, fuel consumption rate, and air and water flow rates into the reaction. Although all experimentation has been restricted to test the gasifier for the production of synthesis gas by partial oxidation method, theoretical investigation was broader, comprising the autothermal reforming. The experiments, supported by monitoring instruments and chromatographic analysis, were supported by a theoretical study based on a simplified analytical model, considering the global reaction of partial oxidation associated with water-gas shift reaction. Experimental results have demonstrated the feasibility of the process, providing operational stability over a wide range of equivalence ratio, and conversion efficiency (>20%) of glycerol to syngas, while maintaining energy extraction from reaction.

"In many pre- and early industrial economies, housing has generally ranked just behind food as one of the most significant charges on the income of all but the wealthiest classes in society. Moreover, even today, housing, along with real estate, constitutes the bulk of most families’ personal wealth, and the construction industry not only represents a significant segment of the economy, but also provides a valuable indicator of the pace of economic growth.

Although modern social scientists have used the evidence of housing as a useful proxy for the distribution and level of income in poorly documented societies, and archaeological evidence permits us to reconstruct housing standards for Greeks and Romans from a wide range of social classes in considerable detail, ancient economic historians have only begun to exploit this critical evidence. Ian Morris has argued for a dramatic improvement in Greek living standards between the 9th and the 4th centuries B.C. based upon the increase in the size and cost of housing. Moreover, Wolfram Hoepfner and Ernst-Ludwig Schwander have argued for the social and political significance of the striking egalitarianism in Greek housing. For Rome, Andrew Wallace-Hadrill and Paul Zanker have analyzed housing at Pompeii and Herculaneum, pointing out the existence of a large and relatively prosperous middle-income group. For the most part, however, such studies have failed to move from impressions to a full quantification of their results. Even Wallace-Hadrill’s superb study, which was based upon a carefully compiled survey and analyzed his sample to yield fascinating and valuable statistical evidence, left a number of possible avenues of analysis unexplored and eschewed quantitative, as opposed to impressionistic, comparisons with other cultures or historical periods.

I propose to examine a number of archaeological samples of Greco-Roman housing in the light of the housing, wealth and income distribution in a number of pre- and early industrial cultures. The study of housing further supports the evidence for Greco-Roman mean heights and agricultural productivity, and suggests that the distribution of income in both Greek and Roman society was likely to have been significantly more egalitarian than in most pre-industrial cultures. To cite just one implication of this research, I will argue that previous estimates of GDP per capita for the Roman empire proposed by Goldthwaite, Temin, Maddison, Scheidel & Friesen, and by Milanovic, Lindert, & Williamson would need to be adjusted significantly upwards."

Although wealth inequality has many established negatives, this study investigates a potential positive, unprecedented wealth concentration makes it possible for solutions to large and seemingly intractable problems to be deployed by convincing a relatively small number of individuals to invest. In order to probe this potential outcome of inequality, this study quantifies the number of people necessary to radically reduce the greenhouse gas emissions responsible for global climate destabilization from the U.S. electric grid, which is one of the largest sources of emissions. Specifically, this study determined that 1544 GW of solar photovoltaic (PV) technology must be deployed to eliminate the use of fossil fuels on the U.S. electric grid, if PV is conservatively deployed as a function of population density. The results showed that only 79 American multi-billionaires would need to invest in PV. This investment would still leave each investor with a billion dollars of liquid assets as well as substantial long-term profits from PV. The analysis also concluded that 79 people is a conservative upper estimate of those that would need to be convinced of the usefulness of moving to a solar U.S. grid and that this estimate is likely to decrease further in the future.

"In my article defending Lo Cascio’s interpretation of the Augustan census figures and the consequent high estimate for the population of Italy under Augustus (comparable to the population of Italy ca. 1800), I deliberately avoided any comment on the level of agricultural productivity in Roman Italy. Nor did I address in any detail the possible defence of the Beloch-Toynbee-Brunt population hypothesis based upon estimates of the agricultural carrying capacity of Italy. One could argue that one is unlikely, using Greco-Roman agricultural methods, to be able to feed a population comparable to that of 19th century Italy, particularly given that anthropometric evidence suggests a level of nutrition for Roman Italy that would not be attained in Early Modern Italy until the mid-20th century. I find this argument unconvincing, however, and I will canvass a few of the arguments against it in my contribution to this colloquium. Pleket’s ground-breaking comparative analysis of Roman and Early Modern agrarian history, and evidence for a significantly higher level of agricultural intensification in the Mezzogiorno during the Roman period cast doubt on Brunt’s pessimistic model of Roman agriculture. In my talk, I will briefly outline some of my own and others’ recent agronomic research on the high productivity of Roman mixed farming and animal husbandry, pointing out how archaeozoological and archaeobotanical evidence contradicts the conventional view of the poverty of Greco-Roman farming.

The core of my paper will place the model of Toynbee and Brunt into a broader comparative perspective by examining the influence upon their picture of a conscious or unconscious analogy with English agrarian capitalism of the long 18th century, as typified by the enclosure movement and the Highland clearances. The orthodox interpretation of most Classical historians, influenced by Brunt’s pessimistic estimate of the productivity of farming by small-holding owner-occupiers, is based, I will argue, upon an uncritical acceptance of the hostile (and often self-interested) ideological attacks on peasant farming by the exponents of the English model of vast concentrated landholdings and large scale commercial tenant farming using landless labourers. I intend to examine this prejudice in the light of the critique of the Genevan economist Sismondi, using evidence for the productivity of 16th century English, and 17th and 18th century Dutch peasant farming as well as that of small holders in North America. I wish to show that the model of diversified intensive small-holdings idealized by the Romans and advocated by the Gracchi is in fact highly productive and commercially viable. I will show that the methods outlined by Cato the elder, and those later advocated, based on Hellenistic and Carthaginian agronomic practice, by Varro and Columella are well adapted for small-holders.

In addition, I wish to briefly address some weaknesses in the modern interpretation of the phenomenon of latifundia and the concentration of land-holdings contrary to the Licinian Sextian laws. Critical problems emerge in the conventional view as soon as one situates it within a broader historical perspective. Our ancient epigraphical and archaeological evidence argues strongly for the continued viability of small farms in the Gracchan period and beyond, a marked contrast with the profound proletarianization of the English rural populaton revealed in Bateman’s survey of landed property in Victorian England. Further, I will argue that the attitudes of wealthy Romans towards the acquisition and management of landed property strongly favour relatively small capital intensive farms rather than large or extensive estates, and will have placed far less pressure than is typically allowed upon the land available for small-holders. The Gracchan agrarian reforms can be seen as the acceleration of a long-standing and relatively uncontroversial Roman tradition of providing land grants to poor or landless farmers, so dramatically different from the adamant opposition of the English landed interest to the acquisition even of small garden plots by their labourers. The alarm of the Roman optimates ought therefore to be seen in terms of the broader political implications of the aggressive use of tribunician legislation to relax their grip on power, coming as it did, in the context of the successful popularis campaign to introduce the secret ballot, which had succeeded only a few years earlier, in 139 BC. Finally, I will argue that Rosenstein's critique of the Brunt thesis is even more compelling if one corrects for the low population estimate and pessimistic estimate of the productivity of peasant farms. It is highly likely that paid military service, supplemented with booty from successful campaigns, would have served as an important safety-valve to cushion the impact of the chronic land-hunger of Roman and Italian small-holders."

I have been working on publishing my LLM Thesis, first prepared between 1987 and 1993, since 2012.  I welcome your thoughts.

I wrote my LLM Thesis on Labour Relations Law, Technological Change and Sustainability at Osgoode between 1987 and 1993. I saw a freight train coming barreling down the global train tracks straight at Ontario's and Canada's manufacturing sector and mineral extraction sectors. I argued that it was necessary in the 1990s to start job sharing and other adjustment strategies because there would be less work.

The same concepts arguably apply to the hollowing out of the European economies that has been underway for decades as capital has shifted labour to developing nations with lax and even non-existent labour, occupational, environmental, consumer protection laws etc., weak health care systems. minimalist educational systems and no social justice structures.  The trend already was very apparent in the 1960s and 1970s and expanded at a great rate in the wake of global free trade agreements that eclipsed GATT and the WTO in their power and scope.

These agreements have led to social unrest and serious anxiety, as reflected in the recent Brexit vote.

Regrettably my arguments were not well received although some folks in the Bob Rae cabinet agreed with the concepts of job sharing and redistribution of wealth, especially in the face of the 1991-1994 recession.  How about Wynne-Trudeau days in 2017 for all civil servants in the broad public sector?  This would open up opportunities for youth and encourage boomers and their children to begin to live to less, a necessary transition if we are serious about addressing climate change and other social and environmental ills. I would say it is time.

The Nahal Mishmar hoard (technological and cultural context)

The Nahal Mishmar Late Chalcolithic hoard from the Negev desert is well known as the richest complex of technologically and morphologically unique objects, unvalued for the characteristic of the early metal production in Palestine. The paper presents a review of its technological and stylistic investigations within functional groups of metal artefacts (tools/weapons, standards, «crowns», vessels). The author points to some discrepancies in the chronology of the hoard, with the regard to some analogies of later date from Tepe Hissar, Susa, Ur. Absence of metal scrape does not allow consider it a founder’s hoard. It also includes no personal ornaments, ingots, noble metals (unlike Nahal Qanah). The hoard represents a primary means of storing wealth, a treasure which belonged to a local community and was preserved in its central place, religious and administrative centre (probably shrine En Gedi). This situation is characteristic of the processes of accumulation, redistribution, and use of common wealth, and exchange organization best illustrated for the Late Chalcolithic – EBA by Arslantepe VIA hoard.

If solutions to the problem of inequality are to be as radical as reality now demands, what is instead required is a reimagining of what would be involved comprehensively to tame capitalism through democratic means. This will involve much further development of the kind of plurality of institutional and policy proposals sketched by Meade, and will involve both the private and public – individual and collective – forms of capital predistribution that Meade advocated. Piketty, like Meade, sees the need for both redistribution and predistribution, and both see that the institutional means necessary to create a more equal society will involve pursuing a plurality of parallel paths. It is closely in keeping with the spirit of Piketty’s Capital that the political and intellectual agenda ahead will be one that economics on its own cannot hope to encompass. It’s a vital agenda, with high stakes, and presents challenges to both academic researchers and political activists. On the success of this endeavour depends nothing less than the prospects for legitimate continuation of our economic system.

Based on evolutionary theory, Trivers & Willard (TW) predicted the existence of mechanisms that lead parents with high levels of resources to bias offspring sex composition to favor sons and parents with low levels of resources to favor daughters. This hypothesis has been tested in samples of wealthy individuals but with mixed results. Here, I argue that both sample selection due to a high number of missing cases and a lacking specification of the timing of wealth accumulation contribute to this equivocal pattern. This study improves on both issues: First, analyses are based on a data set of U.S. billionaires with near-complete information on the sex of offspring. Second, subgroups of billionaires are distinguished according to the timing when they acquired their wealth. Informed by recent insights on the timing of a potential TW effect in animal studies, I state two hypotheses. First, billionaires have a higher share of male offspring than the general population. Second, this effect is larger for heirs and heiresses who are wealthy at the time of conception of all of their children than for self-made billionaires who acquired their wealth during their adult lives, that is, after some or all of their children have already been conceived. Results do not support the first hypothesis for all subgroups of billionaires. But for males, results are weakly consistent with the second hypothesis: Heirs but not self-made billionaires have a higher share of male offspring than the U.S. population. Heiresses, on the other hand, have a much lower share of male offspring than the U.S. average. This hints to a possible interplay of at least two mechanisms affecting sex composition. Implications for future research that would allow disentangling the distinct mechanisms are discussed.

El objetivo principal de este trabajo será analizar teórica y empíricamente seis esquemas de clasificación social cuya variable central es la ocupación laboral, abordando tanto sus relaciones con la distribución de la riqueza como sus particularidades en el estudio de la movilidad social. Se considerarán los esquemas elaborados por: John Goldthorpe y colaboradores, Erik Olin Wright, Alejandro Portes, Susana Torrado, el índice de nivel económico-social (NES) y el esquema de Clases Ocupacionales basado en la Heterogeneidad Estructural (CObHE).

Islamic economics literature is rich in highlighting the welfare potential of Zakat, but very few empirical studies have undertaken the quantitative estimation of potential Zakat collection. In this study, we attempt to estimate potential Zakat collection at economy wide level to explore the welfare potential of the institution of Zakat. We attempt to estimate economy wide Zakat collection by including heads like Zakat on agriculture produce, value of livestock, tradable inventory, currency in circulation, foreign exchange reserves, estimated gold and silver deposits and financial assets like investments in National Savings Scheme (NSS), mutual funds, stock market capitalization, pension schemes and remunerative bank deposits. Our estimates suggest that approximately Zakat collection in Pakistan could reach 7% of total GDP and is sufficient for covering poverty gap in Pakistan. We also discuss that the institution of Zakat system can also have positive effects on flow of investment, promoting entrepreneurship culture and making capital markets and real estate markets more competitive. At the macroeconomic level, we also discuss the role of the institution of Zakat as a stabilizer.

This paper decomposes global inequality in redistribution, using data from the World Development Indicators data set of the World Bank. It finds that per capita income has a modest, yet persistent effect on redistribution. More provocatively, the paper also demonstrates that, over and beyond the impact of per capita GDP, global inequalities in redistribution over the last generation or so strongly reflect the double legacies of colonialism (improving the likelihood of redistribution in former-colonizer societies and sharply reducing it in erstwhile-colonized, recently independent societies). In addition, it also finds that the history of recent exposure to state socialism increases the presence of redistributive institutions, partly counterbalancing the effects of lower national incomes. The data have been obtained from the World Bank's online open-access data site World Development Indicators, http://data.worldbank.org.