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Lecture: Inequality
J. Bradford DeLong
Department of Economics & Blum Center for Developing Economies at
U.C. Berkeley
, & WCEG
http://bradford-delong.com
::
brad.delong@gmail.com
:: @delong
2016-10-17
Revised 2022-12-22
14565 words
<
https://www.icloud.com/pages/0n-VUHop4KJl67sTtqKPidlLA
>
I. Inequality since the Dawn of Civilization
1
A. The Pattern of Human History
Before 1870, there was no possibility that humanity could bake an
economic pie that was suffi ciently large for everyone to potentially have
enough
. Slow technological progress, the necessity under patriarchy of
trying to have more sons in the hope that at least one would survive, and
natural resource scarcity—those put mankind under the Malthusian
harrow, in dire poverty. Thus most of governance back then, and most
social energy back then, was directed at some elite's (a) running a force-
and-fraud, exploitation-and-domination machine, (b) elbowing other
potential elites out of the way, and then (c) utilizing their ill-gotten gains
in building a high culture in which the non-élite were villains and churns.
The pressures making for human inequality, and for gross human
inequality, were enormous and inescapable.
Thus, for most of recorded human history, history as studied by
non-"presentist" historians consisted of this: studying how those who
benefi ted from the operation of the exploitation-and-domination machine
cooperated in building and enjoying their high culture and came into
1
1
Brown University Janus Forum Lecture: Inequality: Is America Becoming a Two-Tiered
Society?
N. Gregory Mankiw and J. Bradford DeLong
Faculty Club at Brown
University :: 5:30 PM - 8:00 PM :: October 17, 2016
<
http://www.brown.edu/
> <
https://
www.brown.edu/academics/political-theory-project/janus
> <
https://www.facebook.com/
events/803302536473621/
>
T
conflict within and between civilizations, as they carried out their
respective roles as masters, thugs-with-spears (and later thugs-with-
gunpowder-weapons), order-giving bureaucrats, record-keeping
accountants, and propagandists.
To put it concisely, “
modes of domination
”
were as important as modes of
production
back
in the old days.
B. Farmers Cannot Run from Thugs
his fact of i
nequality
-at-the-core-of-society
has
surely
ruled
the
human world
since
at least
shortly after the invention of agriculture.
Once people began to farm, they become relatively stationary. This opened
up the possibility of relatively dense populations.
And so society change
d with the coming of agriculture starting 10,000 or
so years ago.
First, there are much denser populations: hunter-gatherers appear to have a
population density of perhaps 5 people per square mile.
2
This then brings
larger social groups: bigger and then much bigger than the hundred-or-so
maximum of the previous hunter gatherer era.
More important than density, perhaps, is the fact that agriculturalists
cannot carry their resources away with them. Their wealth is in their land
and the crops they are growing, rather than in their heads and in the tools
they carry. Thus farmers cannot run away when thugs with spears show up
and demand half their crop.
And, of course, once they have half your crop on which to live, the thugs-
with-spears can
professionalize
.
3
They can spend time training with their
spears, thus become professional rather than amateur practitioners of
2
2
Marcus J. Hamilton
et al. (2007):
Nonlinear scaling of space use in human hunter–
gatherers
<
http://www.pnas.org/content/104/11/4765.full.pdf
>
3
Jerald Jack Starr
(2013):
Sargon’s Victory Stele <
http://sumerianshakespeare.com/
56801/
>
coercive violence, and so any form of resistance by farmers then becomes
much more hazardous.
3
M
Farmers also found themselves confronted with another caste of human
parasites: not so much thugs as grifters—those who claimed privileged
access to the mind
s
of the gods, and who would also demand to be fed out
of the farmers
’
crops.
These grifters could indeed prove that they understood the mind of the
gods. They would watch the stars. And so they could, with high
probability predict when the last freeze had passed, or when the rains
would begin, or when the fi rst freeze would come. In this ability, at least,
the grifters who claimed privileged access to the will of the gods were at
least useful—or so I believe
,
given the number of days I stumble into the
kitchen not knowing whether it is Tuesday or Wednesday.
4
(The thugs with spears could also claim to be
“
useful
”
, in that they could
say they spent much time protecting the farmers from
other
thugs with
other
spears.)
Thus we were off and running, with grossly unequal societies.
Note that having to provide half your crop to the thugs with spears and the
grifters who claim to know the mind of the gods is in no sense
“
functional
”
for a human society. At least, it is in no sense
“
functional
”
from the perspective of those of us who take it for granted that the point of
a human society is to achieve the utilitarian greatest good of the greatest
number. In agrarian societies, this kind of inequality is not
“
productive
”
but rather
“
extractive
”
.
B. No Leaky Bucket
ore than a generation ago, the strongly egalitarian Brookings
Institution economist Arthur Okun warned against too vigorous a
pursuit of inequality. He wrote of a
“
leaky bucket
”
transferring income
from rich to poor transferred less to the poor than it took from the rich,
equalizing but impoverishing society, hence it shouldn't be pushed too
4
4
William Calvin (1991):
How the Shaman Stole the Moon: In Search of Ancient Prophet-
Scientists from Stonehenge to the Grand Canyon
<
http://amzn.to/2k7JSOB
>
H
far.5 The
“
leaky bucket
”
of Arthur Okun remains a famous metaphor that
shapes the discussion about inequality today.
Whether or not and to what extent if it does apply to modern industrial
societies, the leaky bucket of Arthur Okun
does not apply to pre-industrial
agrarian-age
extractive
inequality at all.
C. The Man Who Saw the Deep
ow pronounced was this agrarian age extractive inequality
, relative to
either what went on before the agrarian age or what goes on in our
post-industrial societies today
?
What happens when one thug with a spear meets another thug with a
spear? It can get ugly. So sooner or later the thugs with spears organize
themselves, with marked out and assigned territories. It still gets ugly
among them. But it gets ugly less often. However, when it does get ugly it
can get very ugly indeed: we have what we now call the social practice of
"war".
Moreover, within the group of these expert practitioners of coercive
violence—plus those who predict the actions of nature and the gods by
watching the stars—there arises a problem: how they are going to
distribute the crops that they have taken from the farmers at the point of
the spear? Internal hierarchy develops among the elite. And, perhaps
around the year -3000, these internal hierarchies begin coming to a very
sharp point at the top.
We see it deep in the roots of human literature. The fi rst piece of human
literature that has survived to us and thus is accessible to us is a
Mesopotamian story:
The Man Who Saw
the Deep
—what we call the
Epic
of Gilgamesh
.
6
Its protagonist is, well, Gilgamesh,
here
portrayed holding
a lion cub. The epic describes Gilgamesh in his setting: king of the city of
5
5
Arthur Okun (1975): Equality and Effi ciency: The Big Tradeoff <
http://amzn.to/
2jDb9p6
>
6
Wikipedia: The Epic of Gilgamesh <
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epic_of_Gilgamesh
>
Uruk, in Mesopotamia. The statue shows how at least later generations
remembered Gilgamesh's physique: buff, swoll, mighty-thewed, and does
his face look wise, and perhaps even fair? The lion cub looks remarkably
placid—perhaps drugged, or perhaps acknowledging that Gilgamesh is
even lord of lions.
It begins thus:
Surpassing all other kings, heroic in stature, brave scion of Uruk, wild
bull on the rampage! Going at the fore he was the vanguard, going at
the rear, one his comrades could trust!... Who is there can rival his
kingly standing, and say like Gilgamesh, ‘It is I am the king’?
Gilgamesh was his name from the day he was born, two-thirds of him
god and one third human
…
.
6
The young men of Uruk he harries without warrant, Gilgamesh lets no
son go free to his father. By day and by night his tyranny grows
harsher, Gilgamesh, the guide of the teeming people! It is he who is
shepherd of Uruk-the-Sheepfold, but Gilgamesh lets no daughter go
free to her mother
…
Inequality—gross inequality—is at the heart of the story.
Gilgamesh is the great and glorious king of Uruk.
He
is two-thirds god and
one-third man.
Yet the
author of Gilgamesh here tells us that there is
enormous tension in Uruk.
He dominates and oppresses the people of the city.
H
usbands, mothers,
even warriors have to watch Gilgamesh sexually possess their wives,
daughters, and brides-to-be.
He
disrupts the dance of sex and matrimony.
Fathers no longer have their sons and mothers no longer have their
daughters to aid them in their work, for Gilgamesh has taken them all and
assigned them to serve him and accomplish his tasks.
He forces the men to
work on his construction projects and drill in his army.
How is Gilgamesh able to do this? He is, after all, only one man in an
entire city—buff, swoll, mighty-thewed, perhaps even wise as he is. At
one level, he is able to do this because he is at the top of an organized
pyramid of thugs with spears who know how to use them and are willing
to make a bloody example of anyone not suffi ciently deferential. And he
may not be able to do this for long: cf. the story of Dionysius of Syrakusa
and the sword of Damokles.
But there is another level: people are telling and listening to stories—
Gilgamesh is telling stories, the warriors and priests are telling and
listening to stories, the farmers and craftsmen are listening to and perhaps
telling stories—that say that the way things are, with Gilgamesh as king
and tyrant, is the way things should be. For after all, "is Gilgamesh not the
shepherd of his people?" Is Gilgamesh not "magnifi cent and glorious"? Is
Gilgamesh not only 1/3 man, but 2/3 god?
People seek to form mental models of reality in order to understand the
world, and they vastly prefer mental models that make sense of the world,
in terms of logical and appropriate cause-and-effect.
7
The people of Uruk are unhappy.
They do not, however, seek to overthrow their king. They do not, however,
rise up, turn their pruning hooks into spears and their plowshares into
swords, slaughter Gilgamesh and his warriors, and establish a utopian
socialist egalitarian commune.
That would be a very dangerous and probably unsuccessful thing to
attempt.
Gilgamesh is, after all, fi t and worthy to be king, and rightfully king: he is,
after all, two-thirds God and one-third man. And it is good to be the king.
So they do not try themselves to overthrow Gilgamesh
,
or
even
ask the
gods to strike Gilgamesh down.
However, they do ask for help
.
They appeal to an entity more powerful
than Gilgamesh and beg for that entity to help them and fi x the situatio
n:
The women voiced their troubles to the goddesses....
“
Gilgamesh lets
no girl go free to her bridegroom
”
.... The warrior’s daughter, the young
man’s bride, to their complaint the goddesses paid heed...
So the goddesses and gods take counsel, and then go to the paramount lord
of Uruk, Anu the god
:
The gods of heaven, the lords of initiative, to the god Anu they
spoke…:
A savage wild bull you have bred in Uruk-the-Sheepfold, he
has no equal when his weapons are brandished. ‘His
companions are kept on their feet by his contests, the young
men of Uruk he harries without warrant. Gilgamesh lets no
son go free to his father, by day and by night his tyranny
grows harsher. Yet he is the shepherd of Uruk-the-Sheepfold,
Gilgamesh, the guide of the teeming people. Though he is
their shepherd and their protector, powerful, pre-eminent,
expert and mighty, Gilgamesh lets no girl go free to her
bridegroom’
…
The warrior’s daughter, the young man’s bride: to their complaint the
god Anu paid heed...
8
W
Anu, father of the gods, decides
to
distract
Gilgamesh: to give him
something more interesting to do than force the young men to work and
drill, and
force
the girls, daughters, and mothers of Uruk
to be his servants
and his sex objects
. Anu decides to devise...
adventures
for Gilgamesh:
“
Let them summon Aruru, the great one, she it was created them,
mankind so numerous.
”
... The goddess Aruru, she washed her hands,
took a pinch of clay, threw it
…
T
he god
s
improve the lot of the people in Uruk by
giv
ing Gilgamesh
other
things to do, so that he will leave the people of Uruk alone and not oppress
them.
So Araru creates a friend—Enkidu—for Gilgamesh.
Gilgamesh and
Enkidu fi ght, and then they bond, and then they become best friends, and
then they have adventures and go on quests
. And
our fi rst male-bonding
buddy story
in literature
is off and runnin
g.
By the end of the story Enkidu has died, Gilgamesh has learned about how
humanity survived the great worldwide flood, a barmaid has given him
lessons in Epicurean philosophy, the serpent has taken something
immensely valuable away from humanity, and Gilgamesh has experienced
personal growth: he is a much wiser—and much better—king.
Read it. It is a great story.
But Gilgamesh remains king: Uruk remains a polity of gross inequality.
II.
Dimensions of Inequality
A. Economic vs. Status Inequality
hen economists think of inequality, they almost invariably
think of it terms of incomes, spending, and prices
—all
as
measured by the yardstick of money
and prices, and thus by
what goods and services the rich guy can consume or command the use of
.
An unequal society is one in which those at the bottom get to make use of
a small share of societ
y’
s resources
. It is one
in which the work they must
9
I
do to gain access to that small amount and share is lengthy and
burdensome.
A great deal of inequality, however, is not just work, income, spending,
and prices.
A
great
deal
is simply things that you are not allowed to do, or
are expected and required to do, by virtue of what we might as well call
your
status-group, your estate, your
caste. Women. Minorities. Serfs.
Slaves.
This is always present as a background
in economic analysis. But this is
usually much more than a background factor in human societ
ies
. I am not
a
great
fan of those who try to distinguish wealth from freedom—power to
command resources from autonomy—positive from negative liberty—in
human societies. If you are locked in a cage, it matters a little to you
whether you could buy a key if only you had the more money which you
do not. So never take a distribution of wealth or income as in any sense a
set of suffi cient statistics for inequality.
B. Super-Patriarchy
, at least, I think that this can be seen most strongly and strikingly in the
agrarian human societies that flourished between 5000 and 2000 BC.
There is a very close and intimate connection in the agrarian age between
gross inequality and high patriarchy. Agrarian age inequality is literally
inscribed in our genes
.
It is an elementary fact of our genetics that there is a small proportion of
our genome—the mitochondrial DNA genome—that we inherit only from
our mothers. Thus we can trace descent back through the exclusively
female line, and by looking at the amount of mutations and genetic
divergence in a human population today in that portion of the genome,
determine the effective female population size of the human race back in
the past all the way back to mitochondrial Eve: the woman who is the
mother's mother's mother's... mother's mother's mother of us all.
10
