Growing wealth inequality

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Purple

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"Printing money" generally leads to an increase in equities and capital appreciation with the hope that there will be a trickle down into the consumer economy and the pockets of average citizens. The actual result has been a massive increase in inequality and an appreciation of capital assets which had further disenfranchised the non property owning middle classes.

Is there a better way of injecting money into an economy?
Wage increases last forever and are skewed towards those on higher incomes. Would it be better to copy the Americans and give cash to everyone?
Should we introduce a wealth tax which actually taxes wealth; pensions and property or is this beyond Ireland and other small nations?

We now have an increasing concentration of wealth among older people and increasing levels of inter-generational wealth. That's great if, like me, you are on the right side of that divide but it's not fair or just and it certainly won't help societal cohesion.
 
NoRegretsCoyote said:
For Ireland, this is simply not true.
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Did you read the summary in the link you posted? We are seeing big an increase in property wealth and other asset classes and an increase in inherited wealth.

Capital asset inflation over the last 20 years has massively outpaced wage inflation.
Returns and growth in equity markets has massively outpaced wage inflation.
Money has always made money but it's never been more true.
 
I found Thomas Piketty's 'Capital in the Twenty First Century' really thought provoking on this topic, really could not recommend it highly enough. I felt I came away from it with an altered world view.

It reads a bit like an academic textbook, so is a bit more accessible as an audiobook if you’re not big into economics.

Bit of a summary and analysis from the Harvard Business Review here if even the audiobook sounds like too much work - https://hbr.org/2014/04/pikettys-capital-in-a-lot-less-than-696-pages

 
The unequal distribution of wealth is a global phenomenon and has been accelerated by big tech and winner takes all. Look at the valuations of the big tech companies like amazon and now tesla and their ceos. If you are going to tackle wealth inequality then that's where it needs to start. Amazon is more dominant now than the standard oil of a century ago. Look at the effects of the pandemic, most small businesses shut and Amazon and big tech bigger and more dominant than a year ago. How much of the pup payments which we will be paying back for decades has gone straight to profits for big tech
 
 
Zenith63 said:
China has seen a sharp reduction of poverty, but also a substantial increase of inequality.
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In 1980 China had pretty much perfect wealth equality: no one had any


Anyway the claim was about global wealth inequality which should fall if a large % of the world's biggest country accumulates private wealth from zero.
 
NoRegretsCoyote said:
I am not so sure. 30 years ago a billion Chinese people had basically zero private wealth. Now they have quite a lot. Shouldn't this reduce inequality at a global scale?
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Yes, that's very true. The wealth inequality we are seeing is more in rich countries than poorer countries. The distribution of the wealth that is held among working people globally has definitely leveled out considerably but the concentration of wealth in capital is also a global phenomenon.
 

Did I read somewhere (can't remember the source) that the ratio of Fortune 500 CEO pay to the average worker in the CEO's company has gone from something like 20:1 in 1950 to 205:1 in 2020. Maybe it is distorted with share options and while I don't envy a CEO of a major MNC, the comparison does seem to indicate a higher concentration of wealth in the top 1%.... hardly a sign of lowering inequality??
 
Interestingly the UK brought in regulations last year to try and highlight that very issue. Pretty remarkable thing for a Conservative government to be doing!

 
That's a good read and I think Ireland does have something to be proud of in-terms of income inequality. However I think the author has been more than a little disingenuous by focusing just in income inequality, not even mentioning the world wealth in the article.

Some info on wealth inequality (the subject of this thread) in Ireland -
 
NoRegretsCoyote said:
That's because in Ireland it's only been surveyed consistently twice: in 2013 and 2018.
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Ah now. Lack of data is not a valid reason for ignoring the existence of something. That TASC report was written 5 years before the RTÉ article.

Anyway my point is the average person may not spot the nuance between inequality broadly, income inequality and wealth inequality. The article would lead many to think that Ireland is doing marvellous on inequality in general. In reality we’re doing well on income inequality, but more poorly than most of Europe on wealth inequality. The former may solve the latter over time of course.
 
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