For richer, for poorer


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The graphics shown are very interesting. The only country who seems to be doing something about it's social inequality is Brazil. The difference between Brazil and America now is nearly 1% in the GINI graphic and if things keep going they way they are for both countries, in less then 15 years Brazil will be a country with less social inequality then the US.

progressive banker

It is inexcusable that The Economist should write about inequality without mentioning the work of Richard Wilkinson, an epidemiologist who shows that that, once the focus on measuring welfare is moved beyond a monetary measure, that on many dimensions of social and medical pathology, more equal societies (as measured by income measures) are far more *healthy* than highly unequal ones. Humans are meant to live in a state of relatedness and community that is destroyed by high levels of material inequality. More equality is likely to achieve more social welfare than more growth among rich nations.

See or


wonderful that the Economist and others have recognized that there is a disparity in wealth. The "ordinary" people tried to find ways of trumpeting this news to the average American via OWS but they for the most part got arrested, beaten or run off. So fine, now we have it fixed in prnt for all to see. The only problem is HOW TO FIX THE DISPARITY?. revolution? Boycotts? "peaceful non-compliance? "making our own salt"? The little guy has little in the way of leverage--so it is to government that we must turn but sadly they are in bed with the rich and thereby leaving us little alternative. The disparity will not go away by itself. The wealthy have gotten their wealth ---money never increases by one Rothschild exchanging it with another family member-- only through the labor of others.
So now it is up to Economist to suggest ways that we, the poor, can overcome our situation and not just tell us that we are in one----we already knew that!

Larry Motuz

Someday, economists will recognize that, in a closed economy, rising income inequality shifts the consumption function downwards and, in an open economy, that shift downwards 'may' become exacerbated by international capital flows that substitute higher paid domestic skills' employment at home with lower paid skilled employment elsewhere.

In a world where labour is effectively immobile relative to capital, increases in inequality can carry bad news for both open and closed economies.


I can't believe what I'm reading...another ROBIN HOOD has reared his ugly head and tried to use classic envy to promote a concept which has been the cause of more bloodshed and collapsed societies than any other plague and has destroyed the group it pretended to help.


While the author is probably correct in saying that the "best-known way of measuring inequality is the Gini coefficient," a better way of portraying it, especially when comparing it across multiple countries simultaneously, is a set of Lorenz curves.


I noticed some comma mistakes in this article. There are unnecessary commas separating "or . . . exceeds" from "on a scale that matches, or even exceeds, the first Gilded Age."

Also, there is an error in the sentence: "In all sections of society, there is growing agreement that the world is becoming more unequal, and that today’s disparities and their likely trajectory are dangerous." Commas before conjunctions (and, but, or, etc.) are only used when the clause following the conjunction is a complete sentence. Because what follows after "and" in this sentence is not a complete thought, the comma before "and that" is incorrect.

Veenaga Bhushan

How is see it different from how you feel it , and intuition of yours at that time. feeling willdiffersfrom man to man, personto person. The rich are storingthe matterto make meterial, brand it to dispurse. But the poor the fortune creator,means matter creater, the raw merterial creator, don't know the processof making, hence he lag behind. He through the TOMOTO's in to the road, when there is abundant supply and no demand, he don'tknow to make itcommertiallyused, asthey are perishable. Let himextract the juse and add somepreservativetostore and market. This may be done, but the government neverthink in this wayto help the small,but they always thinking to serve and make returns inthe form oftheir supportersto make some money, who grow rich.

Chinese American

Nicely written article, income inequality is the biggest social economic problem. Imagine if you are a business owner, you mostly dealing with customers from middle class and lower middle class. Your business's prosperity depends heavily on their disposable income. If income inequality widens, middle class and lower middle class will have less disposable income, and most business owners will suffer as the result, and the economy will crash. Furthermore, most people cannot lift themselves from poverty simply by hard working, because they also need education, opportunities and other social and economic supports. Therefore, for the economy to be healthy and sustainable, you need some kind of redistribution system that transfer the benefits from the rich to the poor via money or other social benefits. Republicans and libertarians' view that free market fixes all is short-sided and completely wrong.


Market Development Verses Economic Growth


Value for labor was established long ago. WE now can use paper money like gold was once used, but large companies with large savings accounts cannot spend that money; because of falling demand, they mistakenly fear to invest.

Use it or lose it. Once labor goes away as a commodity, all the money or gold in the world will do you no good.

Trying to pin profit (or the blame for lack of it) on the working public has come to a balance tipping point. Too few families with disposable income and too many cash hoarders who have no need of labor and who think that hoarding money buys security. Money that doesn't circulate has a limited ability to buy security in an insecure community.

Put another way the current from a battery is DC or one-way current. Eventually the battery dies.

Once you generate current you can cause it to move bi-directionally or AC current. The flow can be endless. Replacing "current" with "currency" so to speak: a tax on utility providers (for example) needs to apply. In the same way that electric generating companies can raise prices unilaterally. Home owners need to receive value for having the house hooked up; a license fee charged to energy distributors. Adam Smith pointed out the fact that eventually division of labor would require the recognition of valuable services previously taken for granted. It's time for that now. Get money into the hands of poor people fast and now lest despair set in.


We have to identify the causes for the growing disparities all over the world. We also have to understand the causes of crisis of the world economy at large and the slump of leading economies like USA, Japan, GB, and other European economies. Some people like us believe that real culprits are commodity exchanges, metal exchanges, Currency exchanges. The global operators of these institutions are mostly responsible for plundering of the wealth of the world community and its concentration in fewer hands. Their representatives like Obama, Cameron, Manmohan Singh in India are not interested to solve these problems Instead they are working how to postponed it and shift it on others. They are working as the agent of these operators in connivance with Monopoly houses, MNCs and other financial institutions.

Todd T

Inequality is not inevitable, as soon as the causes of inequality are removed individuals in the world will be able to prosper. Socialism, progressivism, communism, tyranny, theocracy and other ridiculous methods politicians and their political class to take money power from others. All of them are rooted in the name Marxist misconception of money being some kind of finite resource and the rich and successful merely had a larger bucket and cheated their way to the front of the line. The only people with buckets and cheating are politicians, bureaucrats, special interest, unions, crony capitalists dependent on government contracts and freeloading welfare recipients. Cut this political class off and inequality goes away.

Oprah Winfrey, Bill Gates, JK Rowling, a successful doctor, a successful plumber or anyone else who earned their success are not some kind of thieves who got there by theft or cheating. The very idea that they are somehow responsible for others being poor is insulting and ridiculous, when it is the socialist and progressive taxation and regulations on everyone's property and freedom that causes the inequality.

Money is simply representation of value. Everyone has value. Their labor, their property, their ideas, their resources or whatever they have. Are some people able to come up with better ideas, absolutely and they get paid for it. Some people have perhaps only their labor but this is also valuable and contributes to what money is and how much we have. The problem with progressives is they restrict what generates value by imposing restrictions on who can do what or takes from those who earn it and for everyone else their taxation, money printing and regulations cause inflation making what money some earn become not enough to have a decent existence.

It amazes me how people like this author continue to push and pretend their socialist agenda and socialist governments are somehow not the problem and that more of the same idiotic socialist ideas will fix the problem.

Money is not a finite resource, there is plenty for all because everyone has value to contribute which always increases what is available. It is when politicians who create NO value at all yet take money anyway, which is the ultimate cause of bad economies, inflation and making it impossible for simple labor to not have enough value to pay for existing. It is no challenge at all to smack down the politicians and block them from everyone's money and freedom, do it and inequality will be completely removed.


The US should adopt socialism. Granted, individuals will automatically associate socialism with communism; however that is not the case. If capitalism still exists, I would suggest comprehensive policy reform; specifically, preventing lobbying tactics that create loopholes that benefit the 1%. Maybe, tax capital gains at a higher percentage.


I don't know, but to me it is a demagogy and a parasitic discourse, leaving no room for any real solution, ideas of value etc. "It is not inevitable", what the hell that does have to stand for? Ideas I have been developing appear a tad over the top, however my contention is that only such ideas could have any real impact on social contract, or its abatement, or a creation of a new reality. I ve tried with Mindbanking (, but it didn't work as I though it would, as it is operating inside the rigid infrastructure. I have an idea of a system that could replace economy called Cornucopia System (, however it is spreading rather slow. Then I ve realized what is missing, and I ve came with the idea of The Game, so powerful in infrastructure that could collapse this matrix we call reality and Baudrillard calls hyperreality (
The project The Game is a research in an infrastructure of the game, with the objective to create paradigm shift in the very infrastructure or create the indigenous one. The paradigm we are against here is: for the one to win the other should lose. The games that have “no winner” are rare or almost non existent. One of the rare examples is the card game Preference; which is played until the score in the middle column of all three players is nil. The goal of the the project is to find and infrastructure similar to the Preference one, and even superior one, as well as to create the game which one could play the entire life, creating new realities and universes, which could respectively override entire social reality as we know it. Requirements for such a game would be: immensely complex system/infrastructure, creating game-play which surpasses any known game-play infrastructure, without predictable outcome or any outcome for that matter; constantly shifting, changing and building new systems withing the game, which all influence each other in a complex and self-producing environment. The environment is absolutely generated by player’s decisions; governing that every move a player makes influences the environment on a system level.

However, the question is how to create an environment without one? One would definitely need a big bang or similar powerful force? What if there was no big bang to begin with, what it was an idea which became by the very cognition or actualization of self. What I am chewing here is The Game in a context of creating a universe and what would the tool(s) for creation be. If there is a designated tool or set of tools, they respectively generate preset conditions, and the game-play is already restricted in its infrastructure. The only solution I see here is to create an environment which would have no causality, but have immensely complex and self-aware system. That surpasses even most advanced AI modules. So actually there has to be already created environment, or maybe again not?

Communication of the user with the environment or the entity is in the form of the verbal provocation, which creates the shape or an object as a randomly chosen algorithm, as creation by random algorithm. Further communication with an entity would expand and develop its system and respectively its intelligence.

The entity should be able to act on language syntax, tone of voice etc.; however, the question is what would that entity be; a basic or a tad complex AI module, or something entirely different? System or level of complexity/entropy in the interaction between two entities is still not satisfactory. ME3 mentions quantum entanglement communication system, but they do not explain what exactly is it. I think I would rather have quantum ontology system than the mentioned one. And of course there is a question of connecting platform with the game-play, also having in mind a system without causality.


Unless you've ever been discriminated against because you were too good at something and the teacher thought you had to be cheating; you can't really relate to invidious discrimination based on race or educational background.

Here is South Texas the old Anglo guard has made sure that native Mexicans consistently get the rug pulled out from under them. Unless they have great breasts and legs and do oral and anal. Try to succeed in business and like the recently murdered Mexican cement contractor who was on his way to financial independence, you just can't seem to ever turn the corner. Unless you have great breasts etc.

It is interesting that Tort reform in Texas coincides with large numbers of minority law school graduates.


It would be interesting to use a Gini Coefficient to measure the disparity in large corporations between the highest-paid and lowest-paid workers. This measure might be useful in deciphering which companies are more sustainable and socially responsible than others.

DanPendleton in reply to guest-inwjsjl

Not being "socially responsible" = greed. And US corporations stopped any pretense at being "socially responsible" when they started outsourcing middle-class jobs to China/India en masse. Nowadays, they say it's not really about "greed" but rather about being "globally competitive". But really who are they competing against if not each other? So, bottom line, I don't know who they think they're kidding.

Change Quadrants

"Many economists... worry that widening income disparities may have damaging side effects... they can bar talented people from access to education or feed resentment that results in growth-destroying populist policies." By mind boggled when I read this: I do not think of the many revolutions, wars and conflicts which have income gaps as their cause and effect as “populist policies”.

Then, I read about the striking success of Salete Martins, the bubbly 42 year old Brazilian, which involves her working by day, by night, at weekends, and in between. The “in between” activities has her “flogging” (beauty products); the amount she is “flogged” remains an unclaimed irony.

The report was strong on recitation and short on critical evaluation. Ctrl F finds limited mention of “corrupt” or “governance” or “debt”. Scant consideration is given to any options for engaging rich people, individually or collectively, in ending extreme poverty.

The section on “A True Progressivism” suggested strategies which are more relevant to improving productivity and nurturing innovation. Is “Inequality” its own topic?



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