| I'm inclined to think that very, very few people (including myself) really know: (a) What exactly is income inequality? Can you define it with some type of formula or methodology? Are we using the gini coefficient, atkinson index, decile ratios, etc? Article authors mostly use vague references to "income inequality" and "the top 1%" and "the rich get rich and the poor get poorer" etc without really knowing what they are talking about. (b) Once we've defined what exactly we're talking about, now let's talk about it's effects...positive or negative. Is this bad because money is pooled up and not being spent on consumer goods? Is it bad just because people think it's unfair? How is all of this extra income at "the top" being used? Invested into stock markets, into private startups, sitting in a bank account, buying yachts, etc? Where is all this extra income flowing to? (c) Next, how do we measure the effect of inequality (b)? (d) If we fix inequality, does it automatically fix the negative effects from (b) above? Or is it possible that inequality is only correlated with the supposed effects from (b) and there does not exist a causal relationship like we thought? I am continually frustrated when I see articles getting passed around social media and getting in the heads of "regular people" when the article author doesn't really know what they're talking about, the person reading the article doesn't understand what they're reading, and the end result is emotionally charged people angry at the world for some [maybe real or maybe not] reason that they probably can't even articulate. |