Gap between rich and poor is the defining issue of our time: Broadbent Institute

Source: The Globe and Mail

A year after the Occupy movement set up camps in cities around the world to protest economic disparities, the institute founded by former NDP leader Ed Broadbent has conducted a study that says income inequality is the defining issue of our time.

“Reasonable people can differ over what income and wealth differences are needed to provide incentives and appropriate motivation in a market economy,” said the report released Tuesday. “But extreme economic inequality clearly undermines equal developmental opportunities and individual freedom since unequal economic resources give rise to significant imbalances of power.”

... The Broadbent report argues that, when left to their own devices, “markets generate large inequalities of income and wealth which pose a threat to the moral goal of equal life chances.” It says a society based on merit is undercut when extremes of wealth allow the very rich to buy advantage for their children.

And it says that, in situations of extreme inequality, less wealthy consumers try to copy the spending patterns of the affluent, creating unaffordable debt and economic bubbles which burst causing recessions like the one that began in 2008.

Read more: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/ottawa-notebook/gap-between-rich-and-poor-is-the-defining-issue-of-our-time-broadbent-institute/article4596819/

Broadbent Institute: http://www.broadbentinstitute.ca