John Rawls's (1971) A Theory of Justice: Original Edition (TJ) had a sizable impact on a number of disciplines, including economics and economic policy thought. (His ideas in this original version of the theory are clarified and further developed in his 2005 Justice as Fairness: A Restatement (JF).) Rawls's influence on economics largely derived from one aspect of his …
More on The Spirit Level
There are quite a few interesting comments on my earlier post on The Spirit Level on Economist's View. I can't respond in detail to all of them, but here are a few additional thoughts. A few commentators seem to think I'm unsympathetic to the book, which isn't accurate. So let me be more direct in my assessment of The …
Income inequalities and social ills
According to Kate Pickett and Richard Wilkinson in The Spirit Level: Why Greater Equality Makes Societies Stronger, income inequalities in a society are a source of a variety of social problems in that society, almost without regard to the absolute level of income in the society. Their basic measure of inequality across countries and states in …
The drop-out crisis (2)
We've talked about "wicked problems" before -- problems that involve complex social processes, multiple actors, and murky causal pathways (link, link). A particularly important example of such a problem currently confronting the United States is the high school dropout crisis. The crisis is particularly intense in high-poverty areas, but it is found in all states and …
Social media and social cohesion
The current topic on the UnderstandingSociety blog poll is a proposition about social cohesion: THE INTERNET IS HELPING TO CREATE NEW PATHWAYS OF SOCIAL COHESION IN CONTEMPORARY SOCIETY. The poll is still open, but as of today 70% of respondents somewhat or strongly agree that the Internet creates a basis for new forms of social …
Persistent racial inequalities in America
Historian Thomas Sugrue is a national expert on the state of persistent racial inequalities in our nation today. His The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit set the standard for the field of recent urban history when it appeared in 1996. His most recent book, Not Even Past: Barack Obama and the Burden …
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New thinking about taxes in France
The structure of the tax code in France is getting new attention these days. President Sarkozy has made fiscal reform a key issue in the run-up to the presidential elections in 2012. The Nouvel Obs has a very good section this week on a recent book by Camille Landais, Thomas Piketty, and Emmanuel Saez, economists …
National attitudes on racial equality
Today the country celebrates the birthday of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Most of us think of Dr. King as a genuinely important American thinker, and one whose life and actions permanently changed some important values and thought processes in this country when it came to racial equality and affirming communities in the United States. …
Deciphering French society
Louis Maurin recently published a valuable book on contemporary French society, Déchiffrer la société française, which is intended to shed light on the social realities of France in a way that is genuinely accessible to the public. There are chapters on population, the family, schooling, immigration, unemployment, consumption, and social values, among other important topics (link). …
Hobbes in context
We often think of Hobbes as being an originator in English philosophy, a strikingly innovative thinker who burst on the scene with the first formulation of a social contract theory of government. And we sometimes think of his justification of absolute sovereignty as a fairly direct reaction to the disorders Britain experienced during its Civil …
Understanding Society 