I woke up this morning seized with an uncontrollable urge to post Bloomsbury's video of me discussing The Great Divergence: America's Growing Inequality Crisis And What We Can Do About It, on my blog. Please don't judge me. I will henceforth confine overt marketing of the book--latest favorable reviews, upcoming book appearances, etc.--to my Web site, timothynoah.com (now available on mobile devices! and soon to carry an RSS feed of this blog, if I can figure out how to do that). The Great Divergence will be in stores on April 24.
While we're on the subject of income inequality, the New York Times today celebrates tax day with an excellent Page One profile by Annie Lowrey of economists Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez, reigning rock stars of Inequality Studies. (It was Piketty and Saez who introduced the "one percent" and "99 percent" findings undergirding the Occupy movement.) If Lowrey's piece leaves you wanting to wage class cyberwarfare, check out Piketty and Saez's World Top Incomes Database, a peerless resource on income inequality around the globe now current for the United States through 2010. Or you can read the latest version of Saez's "Striking It Richer" (Cliff'sNotes version of Saez and Piketty's groundbreaking 2003 paper for the Quarterly Journal of Economics), also updated to 2010. Money quote: "The top 1% captured 93% of the income gains in the first year of recovery [i.e., 2010]."
Welcome to the members-only economic recovery. Please present proof at the door that your family income exceeds $352,000. All others will be turned away.