It's much ( and I mean very much ) more difficult to actually prove that money corrupts the political process in any significant way. And it may be even more di

It's much ( and I mean very much ) more difficult to actually prove that money corrupts the political process in any significant way. And it may be even more difficult to show that this is expressed as (or causes then) an increase in inequality. I could easily be quite wrong, but most articles I read of income inequality are simply descriptions of (perceived) social ills caused by systems which follow a Pareto distribution. Pareto distributions have exactly one parameter - the "alpha". US income is distributed by two Pareto distributions added together - a bimodal Pareto distribution. One has a sort of offset such that its median is around $100K. If inequality is increasing, it is because the distribution representing the higher income scale is growing - its alpha is increasing. Nothing else need change except that, to change inequality. I understand "the map is not the territory" but I write this just as a description of the process in a shorthand form, not to imbue the distributions with powers of anything more than description. The underlying process need be no more than increasing numbers of people in a "higher energy state" of the economy. Those in the lower energy state could probably not even "feel" this except through reports, and possibly changes in the prices of certain things.