Salvatore Babones (@sbabones) is a senior lecturer in sociology & social policy at the University of Sydney and an associate fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS).
Department of Sociology
& Social Policy
R.C. Mills Building A-26
The University of Sydney
NSW 2006 AUSTRALIA
salvatore@salvatorebabones.com
Federal workers should not have to pay for the Social Security tax cuts
Originally pubslished at: http://inequality.org/federal-worker-pay-social-security/ ...Social Security taxes are some of the most unfair in America. Now its the federal workers being targeted. Their pay has already been frozen for 2011 and 2012, however Congress plans to cut government contributions to federal worker retirement plans. READ MORE
U.S. income distribution: Just how unequal?
Originally pubslished at: http://inequality.org/unequal-americas-income-distribution/ ...With inequality now a front-page issue, the stats that measure inequality have taken on a new importance. And no inequality stat has a longer pedigree – or more confusion surrounding it – than the ‘Gini coefficient.’ READ MORE
The real Social Security crisis
Originally pubslished at: http://www.otherwords.org/articles/the_real_social_security_ ...It may be difficult to face facts in an election year, but the fact is that Social Security retirement benefits are just too low. READ MORE
To grow the realonomy, tax and spend
Originally pubslished at: http://inequality.org/tax-and-spend/It’s time to tax and spend our way out of the recession. Tax and spend – these three words are now the key to economic recovery in America’s Realonomy. READ MORE
As the plutonomy powers ahead, the “realonomy” remains in recession
Originally pubslished at: http://www.truth-out.org/plutonomy-powers-ahead-realonomy-re ...It’s only the Plutonomy that’s growing like crazy while the Realonomy has been in recession since 1999. It’s government’s job to redirect some of that growth to the other 99 percent. READ MORE
Outrageous bonuses for federal workers
Originally pubslished at: http://inequality.org/bonuses-federal-workers/ ...Federal workers live in the Realonomy with the rest of us, not in the Plutonomy of the bankers and executives. How outrageous are the bonuses for federal workers really? READ MORE
UK panel: Executive compensation is a “market failure”
Originally pubslished at: http://www.truth-out.org/uk-panel-executive-compensation-mar ...The “skills premium argument” suggests that executives tend to be highly intelligent and highly skilled. It’s just a coincidence that they believe that their own high salaries are the inevitable result. However, it has turned out that this argument is wrong and that top pay is a symptom of market failure. READ MORE
The intergenerational stickiness in income is around 60 percent. In other words, over half of a person’s economic status in life is predetermined at birth. Government can and should be part of the solution to promote upward mobility. READ MORE
