Future Historians

FRED - Scott_Inequality-Violence.docx - James C. Scott, review of Scheidel, The Great Leveller: Violence and the History of Inequality from the Stone Age to the 21st Century - 5 pp. - Critical review of a deeply pessimistic account of the relationship, historically and at present, between social/economic inequality and violence. “He implies that inequality in the economic sphere produces, other things being equal, a political advantage that can perpetuate the position of the elite by means of taxes, business regulations and labour laws. Inequality, in other words, leads to oligarchy, which in turn reproduces and exacerbates inequality…. The highest rates of extraction by elites are found, Scheidel claims, in conquest and colonial settings, where predation and extraction from a subjugated population are the nature of the enterprise…. We are required, having recognised that there are such social and cultural necessities, to ask not merely what is extracted from a population, but what is available to them (their disposable income after taxes and transfers) and whether what they have affords them the minimum human and cultural decencies that characterise their society. In any contemporary developed society, that would include good enough food and shelter, basic education, medicine and health services etc.” WIKIPAPER: Fred_Inequality.docx

RG-CapitalismFinalCrisis.docx in Add to Wiki folder. Historical and economic explanation. 21 pages

Fred- Inequality.docx in Add to Wiki folder.