Inequality and Global Supra-surplus Capitalism

This book is written as a sequel to John Kenneth Galbraith's The Affluent Society, and provides a theoretical framework, for the first time, for surpra-surplus capitalism.

Conventional economics has the income and wealth distributions as "givens". This assumption immediately excludes such distributions from economic and social concern. Occasionally, economists such as Kenneth Boulding and even earlier, Michal Kalecki, have attempted to develop alternative perspectives in which such distributions are integral to the story and therefore have implications for public policy. At the same time, conventional microeconomics is a theory of price only in which economic efficiency (in an engineering sense) is the only value to be optimized. The income or wealth distributions are given as constraints. Mathematically, the constraints thereafter become invisible; they have no further role to play. The choices that are presumed to be made are neither inhibited nor facilitated by a household's position in the income or wealth distributions.

This volume will explore problems with conventional theory and policy, but its main thrust comprises a theory of supra-surplus capitalism, applicable to both developed and developing countries, and its relation to inequalities worldwide.

Contents:

• Introduction:

  • The Paramount Position of Production
  • The Supra-surplus Society
  • Unconventional Wisdom
  • Economics and the Traditions of Scarcity and Despair
  • Post Great Recession Expectations

• The Necessary Economy:

  • A Neo-Recardian View of Surpluses and Budget Shares
  • The Kaleckian Income Distribution
  • The Importance of the Kaleckian Income Distribution
  • Veblenian Demand and Engel's Law

• Supra-surplus Capitalism:

  • Prices, Advertising, and Power
  • The Vita Theory of the Personal Income Distribution and Power
  • The Global Linkages
  • The Importance of the Vita Theory
  • Stagnation and Innovations

• Casino Capitalism:

  • At Inception
  • A Net Worth Perspective
  • The Casino Effect of T
  • A Minsky Moment
  • Inequalities

• Policies:

  • The Negative-Interest-Rate Global Society
  • The Minimum Wage and the Rehabilitation of Fiscal Policy
  • Taxation on Wealth
  • The Campaign of 2016 and the Trump Transition

Readership: Graduate and undergraduate students of contemporary and historical economics, researchers and academics of economics.Key Features:

• Provides an economic theory rooted in the real world
• Develops a theory applicable to both developed and developing countries
• Makes a distinction between the necessary and discretionary economy
• Lays out the basis for new economic policies, some of which have been partially implemented in the past
• Provides a theoretical framework, for the first time, for surpra-surplus capitalism
• Integrates foreign and domestic economics in a meaningful way
• Develops the basis for income and wealth inequalities in different economies
• Provides a multitude of potential policy remedies