Why Do Economic Inequalities Matter?

From: The Age of Increasing Inequality

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Faster economic growth is not a feasible solution for Canada’s problem of increasing inequality. But although technological change will create new problems of job destruction, it also creates new possibilities for the sharing of income, work, and leisure. The importance of social choices is magnified by their implications for human rights — the dark lesson of the 1930s is that the political stresses created by increasing inequality can produce xenophobic, authoritarian responses, with disastrous consequences.

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Contributors

Lars Osberg

LARS OSBERG is McCulloch Professor of Economics at Dalhousie University with research interests in labour economics and income and wealth distribution. He received his PhD in Economics from Yale University and has published numerous articles in academic journals and seven books. He is past President of the Canadian Economics Association. He lives in Halifax, Nova Scotia.