http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/28/upsho ... e.html?r=0
Economic inequality is already a concern, but it could become a nightmare in the decades ahead, and I fear that we are not well equipped to deal with it.
Truly extreme gaps in income and wealth could arise from many causes. Consider just a few: Innovations in robotics and artificial intelligence, which are already making many jobs uncompetitive, could lead us into a world in which basic work with decent pay becomes impossible to find. An environmental disaster like global warming, pollution or disease could sharply reduce the ability of people of ordinary means to live in specific regions or entire countries.
Along with nine other economists, I contributed to a project that engaged in really long-term forecasting. The results appeared in a book edited by Ignacio Palacios-Huerta of the London School of Economics: “In 100 Years: Leading Economists Predict the Future,” (M.I.T., 2013). None of us expressed optimism that inequality would be corrected in the future, and none of us ventured that any major economic policy was likely to counteract recent trends.
Robert Shiller 是诺贝尔奖经济学得主，Yale 大学教授，曾经写过 "Irrational Exuberance"，预测了房市泡沫。他写文章的风格特有趣，用温和平稳的口吻传递强烈可怕的观点。In the disturbing book “Poverty and Famines: An Essay on Entitlement and Deprivation,” (Oxford, 1983) Amartya Sen, a Harvard professor, documented an extraordinary thing: In each of four devastating famines in different parts of the world, there was enough food to keep everyone alive. The problem in each case was that the food was not shared adequately. Systems of privilege and entitlement permitted hoarding of food by people of status whose lives went on much as usual, except that they had to brush off starving beggars and would occasionally see dead bodies on the street.
