Inequality: A Conversation, with Alan Karras, Steve Vogel and Lenny Goldberg

We need only engage with the media, in whatever form (e.g. print, digital, analog, satellite, terrestrial), to find reminders that across the world, and within societies, the wealth gap between the rich and the poor is growing, as is the actual number of workers who can no longer guarantee their own subsistence through working one, or two, or three jobs! At the same time, we learn that those at the economic pinnacle of wealth in the world are acting in ways that benefit their own economic wellbeing without regard to others in their same countries, communities or even companies. This concentration of wealth seems to be seeking out allies in the political centers of power who will quash regulatory regimes that might restore a society that provides at least a modicum of equal opportunity.
This conversation will explore this very contemporary problem by (1) examining and explaining the growing income and wealth gap within societies; (2) looking at proposals that have been floated to make things better, whether in the form of redistributive taxation (e.g. a billionaire's tax), better management of healthcare costs and expenses, reforms to market governance (such as antitrust or labor regulation), or preventing corrupt practices by those in office, along with those charged with bureaucratic oversight of existing policies; and (3) contemplating what kinds of social and civic education might help to prevent the continued rise in economic inequality, in whatever form it appears.
About the Speakers
Alan Karras is Special Assistant to the Dean (Social Sciences), Associate Director of Political Economy, the G. Eric and Margaret Davis Notable Lecturer in Political Economy at UC Berkeley. Trained as a historian, he has taught classes in Classical Theories of Political Economy and World History since coming to campus in 1995. He is the author of Smuggling (2009), and Sojourners in the Sun (1992), along with several edited collections. He is one of the co-authors of W.W. Norton’s bestselling world history textbook, Worlds Together, Worlds Apart, and is currently finishing up the research for a new world history of corruption, centered around Britain's East India Company.
Steven K. Vogel is Director of the Political Economy Program, the Il Han New Professor of Asian Studies, and a Professor of Political Science and Political Economy at UC Berkeley. He specializes in the political economy of the advanced industrialized nations, especially Japan. He is the author of Marketcraft: How Governments Make Markets Work (2018), Japan Remodeled: How Government and Industry Are Reforming Japanese Capitalism (2006), and Freer Markets, More Rules: Regulatory Reform in Advanced Industrial Countries (1996), and co-editor (with Naazneen Barma) of The Political Economy Reader: Contending Perspectives and Contemporary Debates (2022).