The rise in income and wealth inequality exacerbates the global saving glut

Worse, potential growth has also fallen in both advanced and emerging economies. For starters, high levels of private and public debt are constraining spending – especially growth-enhancing capital spending, which fell (as a share of GDP) after the global financial crisis and has not recovered to pre-crisis levels. That falloff in investment implies slower productivity growth, while aging populations in developed countries – and now in an increasing number of emerging markets (for example, China, Russia, and Korea) – reduce the labor input in production.

The rise in income and wealth inequality exacerbates the global saving glut (which is the counterpart of the global investment slump). As income is redistributed from labor to capital, it flows from those who have a higher marginal propensity to spend (low- and middle-income households) to those who have a higher marginal propensity to save (high-income households and corporations).

Moreover, a protracted cyclical slump can lead to lower trend growth. Economists call this “hysteresis”: Long-term unemployment erodes workers’ skills and human capital; and, because innovation is embedded in new capital goods, low investment leads to permanently lower productivity growth.
he wrote in his Project Syndicate .

Nouriel Roubini is an American professor of Economics at New York University`s Stern School of Business and chairman of RGE Roubini Global Economics