The Guardian discusses Sir Tony Atkinson’s forthcoming new book Inequality: What Can Be Done?

A typical response to rising economic inequality is to blame it on large-scale, unstoppable economic forces - notably globalisation and technology change. While these forces have certainly had an impact on inequality, The Guardian notes in a discussion of Sir Tony Atkinson’s new book, Atkinson’s data and analysis show that the biggest factors have been choices of policies and designs of institutions. All developed countries have been subject to these same global forces, but the outcomes on inequality have differed vastly across the US, EU, Japan, and other OECD countries. These country-specific outcomes have been the result of country-specific political choices and policies. This also means “it doesn’t have to be like this” and Atkinson provides a detailed set of policy recommendations for addressing the stresses of rising inequality. Read the full article here.