The last three decades have seen the emergence of Gilded Age levels of inequality. The 2008 financial crisis, the Arab Spring and the Occupy Wall Street movements all sparked renewed focus on this widening of income inequality, amid fears that the ‘one percent’ could eventually hold more wealth than 99 percent of the population combined.
The inaugural 2015 UBC Lind Initiative, hosted by the Liu Institute for Global Issues, examines the far-reaching effects of inequality – not only when it comes to income and wealth, but gender, race, marriage, globalization, and the environment. The Initiative includes a speaker series and an upper-level university seminar featuring economists Joseph Stiglitz and Jeffrey Sachs, journalists Andrew Sullivan and Jill Abramson, author Teju Cole, and Green Party leader Elizabeth May.
In partnership with the Lind Initiative, OpenCanada.org is turning its attention to matters of inequality with articles, essays, analyses and interviews with key experts, writers and scholars who explore the issue in its myriad forms. Through contributions from economist Dambisa Moyo, Aboriginal journalist Angela Sterritt, Harvard visiting professor Miles Corak, and Nick Malkoutzis of Athens’ Kathimerini English, among others, readers can gain a better understanding of a crisis at the forefront of today’s politics in Canada and around the world.
The Politics of Inequality series is a partnership between OpenCanada and the Lind Initiative at the Liu Institute for Global Issues at the University of British Columbia.
