Jersey City NJ, Bank of America and New Jersey City University (NJCU) have announced a historic partnership whereby the company will invest $560,000 in the NJCU School of Business and its Career Services Center. This unique grant is the largest single corporate gift and most significant investment in career development in NJCU’s history. The investment is in the form of a four-year grant that will address racial, ethnic, and income inequality and help students of color successfully complete the education and training necessary to enter the workforce and embark on a path to success.
Ridgewood NJ, the $1.2 trillion “infrastructure” bill rammed through the House last Friday includes a multi-billion slush fund that will allow the Biden Transportation Department to bypass the states and spend the money at his discretion — because he is so knowledgeable about transportation having served as the Mayor of South Bend, Indiana. United States Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg will be able to allocate these funds for such projects as combatting climate change and righting the “inequities caused by past transportation projects.” He thinks federal transportation policy has been systemically racist.
Income Inequality Is Not Rising Globally. It’s Falling.
By TYLER COWEN
July 19, 2014
Income inequality has surged as a political and economic issue, but the numbers don’t show that inequality is rising from a global perspective. Yes, the problem has become more acute within most individual nations, yet income inequality for the world as a whole has been falling for most of the last 20 years. It’s a fact that hasn’t been noted often enough.
The finding comes from a recent investigation by Christoph Lakner, a consultant at the World Bank, and Branko Milanovic, senior scholar at the Luxembourg Income Study Center. And while such a framing may sound startling at first, it should be intuitive upon reflection. The economic surges of China, India and some other nations have been among the most egalitarian developments in history.
Of course, no one should use this observation as an excuse to stop helping the less fortunate. But it can help us see that higher income inequality is not always the most relevant problem, even for strict egalitarians. Policies on immigration and free trade, for example, sometimes increase inequality within a nation, yet can make the world a better place and often decrease inequality on the planet as a whole.
International trade has drastically reduced poverty within developing nations, as evidenced by the export-led growth of China and other countries. Yet contrary to what many economists had promised, there is now good evidence that the rise of Chinese exports has held down the wages of some parts of the American middle class. This was demonstrated in a recent paper by the economists David H. Autor of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, David Dorn of the Center for Monetary and Financial Studies in Madrid, and Gordon H. Hanson of the University of California, San Diego.
