Social media has been ablaze with this question recently. We know we face a crisis of mass poverty: the global economy is organized in such a way that nearly 60% of humanity is left unable to meet basic needs. But the question at stake this time is different.

Robert Pollin and Noam Chomsky have a new book out, Climate Crisis and the Green New Deal. It’s an important contribution to the emerging GND literature, from two thinkers I respect.

During the debate about the global poverty numbers that unfolded earlier this year, the Bloomberg opinion columnist Noah Smith wrote a piece discussing some of my claims. In the months since a number of people have asked me to respond.

How should we measure inequality?

When we look at inequality from the perspective of the poor – using the theory of increasing egregiousness – it becomes clear that the relative metric is inappropriate as a tool for assessing distribution. Certainly if our objective is to end poverty, this is the conclusion we must draw, as an additional dollar going needlessly to the rich could have been used to reduce poverty, and yet was not.

Last month Branko Milanovic published a blog post about the Yellow Vest movement against the fuel tax in France. He was worried–like many analysts–that the uprising proves it will be virtually impossible to roll out the policies necessary to reduce carbon emissions. He’s convinced that people simply won’t accept it.