There’s lots of talk about the growing gap between the haves and have-nots. Everyone from Mitt Romney to President Obama is talking about their version of middle-class economics, and raising concerns about growing poverty rates.
But could our growing inequality be connected to the very type of economic activity that is driving innovation and the new economy?
That’s the suggestion of a provocative piece by Richard Florida.
“Several recent studies (two of which I've already written about here at CityLab) have found inequality to be connected to economic clustering—the very force that propels innovation and economic growth,” he writes.
“But what exactly is the connection between inequality and economic growth? Do economic success stories always have to be connected to inequality?”
The short answer, writes Florida, is no. But the solutions he suggests may not find much political support in the United States. Florida distinguishes between “a low road path found in the U.S. and UK, where economic growth comes with relatively high levels of inequality. But on the other, there is a high road path, taken by countries like Sweden, Finland and Denmark, where economic growth goes together with substantially lower inequality.
“Cities and nations face a choice about inequality,” he writes. “They can permit the gap between the rich and poor to gape even wider, allowing those at the bottom to fall through a porous safety net. Or they can take the high road, combating inequality through redistribution and other mechanisms without giving up their growth.
You can read the entire piece here.