Social Justice Activism

General limitations on and taxation of rent-seeking are popular across the political
spectrum.
Public policy responses addressing causes and effects of income inequality in the US
include: progressive tax incidence adjustments, strengthening social safety
net provisions such as Aid to Families with Dependent Children, welfare, the food stamp
program, Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, organizing community interest
groups, increasing and reforming higher education subsidies,
increasing infrastructure spending, and placing limits on and taxing rent-seeking.
A 2017 study in the Journal of Political Economy by Daron Acemoglu, James
Robinson and Thierry Verdier argues that American "cutthroat" capitalism and inequality
gives rise to technology and innovation that more "cuddly" forms of capitalism
cannot. As a result, "the diversity of institutions we observe among relatively advanced
countries, ranging from greater inequality and risk-taking in the United States to the
more egalitarian societies supported by a strong safety net in Scandinavia, rather than
reflecting differences in fundamentals between the citizens of these societies, may
emerge as a mutually self-reinforcing world equilibrium. If so, in this equilibrium, 'we
cannot all be like the Scandinavians,' because Scandinavian capitalism depends in part
on the knowledge spillovers created by the more cutthroat American capitalism." A 2012
working paper by the same authors, making similar arguments, was challenged by Lane
Kenworthy, who posited that, among other things, the Nordic countries are consistently
ranked as some of the world's most innovative countries by the World Economic
Forum's Global Competitiveness Index, with Sweden ranking as the most innovative
nation, followed by Finland, for 2012–2013; the U.S. ranked sixth.
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