<story><title>Is Inequality Inevitable?</title><url>https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/is-inequality-inevitable/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>Empact</author><text>It should be self-evident that the accelerating inequality we’re witnessing is not the natural inequality of competition and the power law, easily explained by simple arithmetic.&lt;p&gt;An &lt;i&gt;accelerating&lt;/i&gt; and &lt;i&gt;historically high&lt;/i&gt; broad societal effect is naturally a product of broad and unique properties of the current regime, rather than fundamentally consistent properties, which would naturally be seen across all time.&lt;p&gt;What is more broad and far-reaching than manipulation of the money supply itself? “We have found that inflation (1) worsens income distribution; (2) increases the income share of the rich; (3) has a negative but insignificant effect on the income shares of the poor and the middle class; and (4) reduces the rate of economic growth”
&lt;a href=&quot;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;citeseerx.ist.psu.edu&amp;#x2F;viewdoc&amp;#x2F;download?doi=10.1.1.295.848&amp;amp;rep=rep1&amp;amp;type=pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;citeseerx.ist.psu.edu&amp;#x2F;viewdoc&amp;#x2F;download?doi=10.1.1.295...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;It’s not difficult to see why - under an inflationary regime, those holding currency lose out relative to those holding assets, because the former’s wealth is not preserved; and low income wages are facing a constant headwind that their earners are less equipped to navigate.&lt;p&gt;We in the US have been engaging in an experiment since 1971, which has resulted in a marked discontinuity and a shift in to whom productivity growth accrued:
&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;wtfhappenedin1971.com&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;wtfhappenedin1971.com&amp;#x2F;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;This is not necessarily the true or only explanation of our accelerating and historically high inequality, but it has the properties of a realistic explanation, in that it identifies a broad, historically distinct cause.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>dre54673</author><text>I&amp;#x27;ve noticed an increasing trend in people using phrases such as &amp;quot;it is trivial&amp;quot;, &amp;quot;it is obvious&amp;quot;, &amp;quot;it is self evident&amp;quot; to defend their arguments. I have yet to encounter a case where it made their argument better.&lt;p&gt;This might be off topic but it has become a pet peeve because I&amp;#x27;ve even started to encounter it in real life. It is similar to starting a discussion with &amp;quot;if you disagree with me, you are stupid&amp;quot;.</text></comment>
<story><title>Is Inequality Inevitable?</title><url>https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/is-inequality-inevitable/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>Empact</author><text>It should be self-evident that the accelerating inequality we’re witnessing is not the natural inequality of competition and the power law, easily explained by simple arithmetic.&lt;p&gt;An &lt;i&gt;accelerating&lt;/i&gt; and &lt;i&gt;historically high&lt;/i&gt; broad societal effect is naturally a product of broad and unique properties of the current regime, rather than fundamentally consistent properties, which would naturally be seen across all time.&lt;p&gt;What is more broad and far-reaching than manipulation of the money supply itself? “We have found that inflation (1) worsens income distribution; (2) increases the income share of the rich; (3) has a negative but insignificant effect on the income shares of the poor and the middle class; and (4) reduces the rate of economic growth”
&lt;a href=&quot;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;citeseerx.ist.psu.edu&amp;#x2F;viewdoc&amp;#x2F;download?doi=10.1.1.295.848&amp;amp;rep=rep1&amp;amp;type=pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;citeseerx.ist.psu.edu&amp;#x2F;viewdoc&amp;#x2F;download?doi=10.1.1.295...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;It’s not difficult to see why - under an inflationary regime, those holding currency lose out relative to those holding assets, because the former’s wealth is not preserved; and low income wages are facing a constant headwind that their earners are less equipped to navigate.&lt;p&gt;We in the US have been engaging in an experiment since 1971, which has resulted in a marked discontinuity and a shift in to whom productivity growth accrued:
&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;wtfhappenedin1971.com&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;wtfhappenedin1971.com&amp;#x2F;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;This is not necessarily the true or only explanation of our accelerating and historically high inequality, but it has the properties of a realistic explanation, in that it identifies a broad, historically distinct cause.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>JumpCrisscross</author><text>&amp;gt; &lt;i&gt;We have found that inflation (1) worsens income distribution&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;This is an interesting question, but that&amp;#x27;s [1] a terrible study.&lt;p&gt;It compares &amp;quot;data averaged over 5-year periods&amp;quot; across different countries. It&amp;#x27;s effectively a scatter plot of income inequality versus inflation.&lt;p&gt;The study&amp;#x27;s findings are better stated as &amp;quot;countries with high inflation have worse income distributions.&amp;quot; Which makes sense. High-inflation countries tend to have low-quality institutions and low economic growth, factors which make being middle class difficult and poor miserable.&lt;p&gt;The right way to do this is longitudinally, studying populations over time. Even that&amp;#x27;s hard, given the number of interceding factors. At a minimum, an input must be the distribution of credit and debt, given inflation transfers wealth from the former to the latter.&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;citeseerx.ist.psu.edu&amp;#x2F;viewdoc&amp;#x2F;download?doi=10.1.1.295.848&amp;amp;rep=rep1&amp;amp;type=pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;citeseerx.ist.psu.edu&amp;#x2F;viewdoc&amp;#x2F;download?doi=10.1.1.295...&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>