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I thought it was because capital has been building up since WW2 without any giant destructive events to reduce it. Kind of like how things had been just before
by jlawson 8y ago
I thought it was because capital has been building up since WW2 without any giant destructive events to reduce it. Kind of like how things had been just before WW1.
This is a central part of Piketty's case in Capital in the Twenty-First Century. Capital just builds up over time, unless something happens to destroy it.
Of course I can't argue against money printing being a cause; I don't know the numbers. It seems there are likely several significant contributing causes.
- village-idiot 8y agoEh, several countries have proven that monetary, tax, and welfare policy can absolutely reduce wealth disparity within a nation. The US is currently proving that some policies can increase disparity. Certainly major catastrophic events has a larger effect, but you don’t need one.
- jlawson 8y agoIs be interested in specific examples of these 'several countries'.
- village-idiot 8y agoDenmark and Canada come to mind. Both have flattened their inequality curve in the past decade or so.
- jlawson 8y agoCanada had a pro-business conservative government up until a few years ago. I don't have the numbers to say if any inequality curve was flattened or not, but if something did happen it seems very unlikely it was a result of policy. Denmark and Canada also share a property: They are small (population-wise) nations with heavyweight neighbors. Any effect you see is likely to be totally confounded by interactions with those neighbors. E.g. Canadian billionaires may tend go to America, so Canadian inequality "falls". But obviously this isn't doable for the world as a whole.