Separating efficiency and equality, automation, and piketty's theory of increasing capital share

Despite disincentive effects, it is more efficient to tackle inequality by general equality promotion policies, including tax/transfers, than by trying to pursue equality in specific issues or policies. The latter policy also has the same degree of disincentive effects as the general policy but has...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Ng, Yew-Kwang
Other Authors: School of Social Sciences
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: 2019
Subjects:
Online Access:https://hdl.handle.net/10356/87329
http://hdl.handle.net/10220/48209
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Institution: Nanyang Technological University
Language: English
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Summary:Despite disincentive effects, it is more efficient to tackle inequality by general equality promotion policies, including tax/transfers, than by trying to pursue equality in specific issues or policies. The latter policy also has the same degree of disincentive effects as the general policy but has additional distortive effects. While Piketty' concern with inequality is well taken and his proposal to reduce inequality has merits, his argument on the inevitability of increasing capital share under capitalism and the condition of rate of returns to capital being larger than the rate of growth in incomes (r > g) is not correct. (JEL D3, D6, H).