What is required to ensure that the progress we generate is as equitable as possible and spreads as far and wide as we can make it?

Via Big Think

“This is discussion that often happens in #economics about whether we should choose economic growth or equality. A lot of people assume there’s a trade-off that, sure, you can redistribute the wealth, but that will cost you a lot of progress in innovation. I think one of the interesting recent findings actually from a lot of smart economists is that it doesn’t have to be this way. Actually, you can get both. There’s now new evidence that the higher inequality gets, actually, you get less economic growth and you get less innovation. I think what you want to do is to give as many people as possible the opportunity to contribute.

In that sense, poverty is an extraordinary waste. It’s not just immoral that in a world of plenty there are still living people in poverty, but it’s also an extraordinary waste. It’s also the rich who suffer from that because the homeless man on the corner of the street, he could have been the next Einstein. How much talent has been lost there? I guess we don’t have to choose between equality of opportunity and economic growth. I think we should strive for both.”said  Rutger Bregman

Read the whole very interesting discussion.