Easton, who's recently published a user's guide to economic inequality, says inequality is difficult to measure.

One indicator might show it going up while another has it coming down or staying the same, 'so it's easy to choose the indicator you want'.

But, he says, all the indicators are that New Zealand suffered a sharp rise in inequality as a result of policy changes to tax rates and benefits 30 years ago and is now in the company of those OECD countries with the biggest gap between rich and poor.

'The simple way to put this is that in the 1980s we were in the bottom half of the OECD as far as inequality was concerned. Those above us had greater inequality.

'By the mid-1990s we were in the top half — among the most unequal parts of the OECD — and it's still like that.' Continue reading.

Cecily McNeill has edited Wel-Com, the newspaper for the Wellington and Palmerston North dioceses, for the past eight years, and worked as a radio journalist for 20 years.

Source: Eureka Street

Image: mimosaplanet.com

In essence, critics of the document - which called for a global authority to curb the excesses of financial markets - speculated that its authors had done an "end run" to avoid the pre-publication scrutiny of top Vatican officials.

Cardinal Peter Turkson, president of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, speaks at a Vatican press conference on the Vatican document on global finance. The document called for a gradual creation of a world political authority with broad powers to regulate financial markets and rein in the "inequalities and distortions of capitalist development." (CNS/Paul Haring)

That turned out not to be true, but the episode illustrated that the editing and approval procedures at the Vatican are less than transparent and far from uniform.

The 41-page text on reforming the international financial system was prepared by the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace. Among other things, it proposed a "central world bank" to regulate the flow of monetary exchanges, and taxation on financial transactions to aid the economies of poorer countries.

Critics immediately tried to downplay the importance of the document and argued that the justice and peace council was a minor player at the Vatican. Then in mid-November, an Italian blogger reported that the Vatican secretary of state, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, had been blindsided by the text and had ordered that, from now on, all such documents must have the prior approval of his office.

The real back story was far different.

Continue reading about the Vatican's financial document complex route to publication

Image: Boston Pilot