Great Leveler (eBook)

Violence and the History of Inequality from the Stone Age to the Twenty-First Century

Walter Scheidel (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2018
528 Seiten
Princeton University Press (Verlag)
978-0-691-18431-9 (ISBN)

Infos

How only violence and catastrophes have consistently reduced inequality throughout world historyAre mass violence and catastrophes the only forces that can seriously decrease economic inequality? To judge by thousands of years of history, the answer is yes. Tracing the global history of inequality from the Stone Age to today, Walter Scheidel shows that inequality never dies peacefully. Inequality declines when carnage and disaster strike and increases when peace and stability return. The Great Leveler is the first book to chart the crucial role of violent shocks in reducing inequality over the full sweep of human history around the world.Ever since humans began to farm, herd livestock, and pass on their assets to future generations, economic inequality has been a defining feature of civilization. Over thousands of years, only violent events have significantly lessened inequality. The "e;Four Horsemen"e; of leveling-mass-mobilization warfare, transformative revolutions, state collapse, and catastrophic plagues-have repeatedly destroyed the fortunes of the rich. Scheidel identifies and examines these processes, from the crises of the earliest civilizations to the cataclysmic world wars and communist revolutions of the twentieth century. Today, the violence that reduced inequality in the past seems to have diminished, and that is a good thing. But it casts serious doubt on the prospects for a more equal future.An essential contribution to the debate about inequality, The Great Leveler provides important new insights about why inequality is so persistent-and why it is unlikely to decline anytime soon.

Autor

Walter Scheidel is the Dickason Professor in the Humanities, Professor of Classics and History, and a Kennedy-Grossman Fellow in Human Biology at Stanford University. The author or editor of seventeen previous books, he has published widely on premodern social and economic history, demography, and comparative history. He lives in Palo Alto, California.

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 18.9.2018
• Reihe/Serie: The Princeton Economic History of the Western World
• Reihe/Serie: The Princeton Economic History of the Western World
• Zusatzinfo: 45 b/w illus.
• Verlagsort: Princeton
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Geisteswissenschaften ► Geschichte ► Allgemeine Geschichte
• Themenwelt: Sozialwissenschaften ► Pädagogik ► Sozialpädagogik
• Themenwelt: Sozialwissenschaften ► Soziologie ► Empirische Sozialforschung
• Themenwelt: Wirtschaft ► Volkswirtschaftslehre ► Finanzwissenschaft
• Themenwelt: Wirtschaft ► Volkswirtschaftslehre ► Wirtschaftspolitik
• Schlagworte: abolitionism • Bankruptcy • belligerent • Capital Gain • Capitalism • city-state • Commoner • communist revolution • Competition • Confiscation • Conscription • Corruption • Creditor • debt • Democratization • developed country • Developing Country • disaster • Disposable and discretionary income • dividend • early modern period • Economic Development • Economic Growth • Economic Inequality • Economic Liberalization • Economic Rent • Economics • economist • economy • Employment • Entrepreneurship • Expropriation • Failed State • famine • Financial Crisis • Globalization • Government Debt • Great Compression • Household • Illustration • income • Income bracket • income distribution • indirect tax • industrialisation • Inflation • Institution • Kuznets Curve • laborer • Landlord • Latin America • Leveling mechanism • Leveling (philosophy) • Liberalization • Long term • Mass Mobilization • Measures of national income and output • middle class • Modernity • Nationalization • national wealth • Payment • peasant • Percentage point • Population Growth • Poverty • Price controls • Real Income • real wages • Recession • Ruler • ruling class • salary • Scarcity • shortage • Slavery • Society • State Formation • Tax • Tax Rate • tax revenue • Technological Change • Thomas Piketty • Total War • Trade Union • urbanization • wage • war • war effort • warfare • Wealth • wealth concentration • wealth tax • welfare • Welfare State • Workforce • World War I • World War II • Writing • year
• ISBN-10: 0-691-18431-3 / 0691184313
• ISBN-13: 978-0-691-18431-9 / 9780691184319