Claus Offe Varieties of Inequality What Can Be Done About Them and Why It Must Be Done Keynote Speeches<http://www.iwm.at/events/category/keynote-speeches/> Thursday, 11 June 2015, 6:00pm - 7:30pm, IWM library<http://www.iwm.at/events/venues/iwm-library/> [Claus_Offe]<http://www.iwm.at/wp-content/uploads/Claus_Offe2.jpg>Two things are established beyond any reasonable doubt. First, inequality of income and, even more so, wealth have steadily increased in the OECD world since the 1980s. Second, prevailing levels and drivers of inequality are not just obscene in terms of any conceivable notion of social justice; they are also severely damaging for the entire economies, societies and polities affected, not just for the losers. The puzzle, both theoretical and very practical, is why capitalist democracies allow the serious self-inflicted damage of widening inequality to continue. One possibly promising practical answer is that (re)distributive policies are reframed so that they focus not on "the poor" nor on "the worker", but on the citizen as the bearer and beneficiary of universal economic rights as distributive claims. http://www.iwm.at/events/event/varieties-of-inequality/ ********************************************* Altzinger Wilfried Vienna University of Economics and Business Department of Economics Welthandelsplatz 1 / D4, Level 2 (2.032) A-1020 Vienna http://www.wu.ac.at/vw1/m/altzing ++ 43 676 8213 4511 ********************************************* [Campusplan]