Item

Abstract

The transition to post-industrial society has reduced some inequalities, especially those of gender and the classes divisions of industrial society, but is associated with its own characteristic inequalities, relating to financialization and globalization, the emergence of particular high- and low-income sectors and occupations, the decline of both the economic and political weight of organized labour, and the skewed territorial distribution of some services industries. The inequalities affect both pre- and post-tax and –transfer distributions. Indications are given of public policy responses that would reverse these trends. These would not however be a technocratic issue, but one of the political balance among social forces. An important consequence of post-industrialism has been a weakening of classes and other groups contesting inequality.