演講者簡介 : Professor Daniel Waldenström received his Ph.D. in Economics from the Stockholm School of Economics in 2006 and his Ph.D. in Economic History from Lund University in 2009. He is currently a Professor of Economics at the Research Institute of Industrial Economics (IFN Stockholm). His research concerns Economic Inequality, Taxation, Fiscal Policy, and Economic History.
演講摘要 : Once there were prices and peasants and very few between. The extremes of wealth and poverty are still with us, but that shouldn’t blind us to the fact our societies have been utterly transformed for the better over the past century. As Daniel Waldenström makes clear in this authoritative account of wealth accumulation and inequality in the modern west, we are today both significantly richer and more equal. Using cutting-edge research and new, sometimes surprising, data, Waldenström shows that what stands for since the late 1800s is a massive rise in the size of the middle class and its share of society’s total wealth. Unfettered capitalism, it seems, doesn’t have to lead to boundless inequality. The key to progress was political and institutional change that enabled citizens to become educated, better paid, and to amass wealth through housing and pension savings. Waldenström asks how we can consolidate these gains while encouraging the creation of new capital. The answer, he argues, is to pursue tax and social policies that raise the wealth of people in the bottom and middle rather than cutting wealth of entrepreneurs at the top.
