December 1, 2007 / New York TIMES
What's Online
As Always, an Unequal Pie
By DAN MITCHELL
THE distribution of wealth lies at the heart of political economics.
Nations and empires have risen and fallen, and millions have died, as
a result of humanity's struggle to decide how (or whether) to divide
wealth.
But for all that, the level of wealth inequality has remained
remarkably consistent over the last 2,000 years, according to a recent
study by Branko Milanovic, a researcher with the World Bank, and two
economics professors, Peter H. Lindert of the University of
California, Davis, and Jeffrey G. Williamson of Harvard University
(economics.harvard.edu).
While "human civilization has advanced by leaps and bounds over the
past two millennia, income inequality has stayed relatively the same,"
Zubin Jelveh of Portfolio.com wrote about the study.
The "inequality extraction ratio" is basically the share of the wealth
difference taken by "elites." Since the United States is the
wealthiest nation in history, the potential for elites taking a bigger
share of the wealth (without allowing mass starvation) is greater. But
they have not done so. "Thus," the researchers write, "the social
consequences of increased inequality may not entail as much relative
impoverishment, or as much perceived injustice, as might appear."
Tim Harford of Slate.com, writing about the same report, called this
"faint praise for the United States, perhaps." But, he added: "It is
interesting to observe that while modern societies are rich enough to
be much more unequal than their predecessors, they show similar
patterns of income inequality. Perhaps — I am speculating wildly —
human societies have some hard-wired tolerance for inequality?"
Or perhaps, no matter how wealthy a society, there will always be
income inequality, whether or not we are "hard wired" for it.
-------------
or perhaps every time the working and poor classes start raising the
share of the product they receive, the "elite" calls in the big guns
(the Pinochets et al) to suppress them? and every time the rich elite
gets too greedy, it leads to a 1929-33 type collapse, a massive
upsurge in class struggle from below, or something similar? But the
time scale of this data does not allow anyone to conclude anything
about the causes of the stability of the numbers. there are also more
measurement problems than one can shake the New York TIMES at. how is
the product of a self-sufficient peasant measured?
--
Jim Devine / "The radios blare musak and newsak, diseases are cured every day /
the worst disease is to be unwanted, to be used up, and cast away." --
Peter Case ("Poor Old Tom").
