Is wealth increasingly unevenly distributed?
Many people lose sleep over the idea that (great) wealth is increasingly unevenly distributed, that fewer people have amassed a larger share of the pie than ever before. This conviction seems to arise from observing the very richest and wrinkling one’s nose and scoffing and being indignant.
(Is anyone ever dignant?)
The New York Times today published a summary of the 30 richest Americans of all time, measuring their riches in today’s dollars using the relative share of GDP.
Two of them are alive today, Bill Gates (ranking fifth) and Warren Buffett. Sam Walton founder of WalMart died in 1992, all the others were dead by 1950.
The four richest were born in 1750, 1763, 1794, and 1839.
There’s more to it, of course, but in any case this hardly supports the notion that wealth is more unevenly distributed extreme wealth is accrued by fewer people now than it used to be.
Incidentally, these moguls have one notable thing in common: they all have a Y chromosome. It seems worth investigating the role of this genetic trait in the accumulation of wealth.
July 16th, 2007 at 9:30 pm
Scoff, scoff and indignant wrinkling. Is this post specifically written to inflict the wrath of Baal on your blog? I’m feeling the urge to respond, but I’m not sure if you’re being serious. Well, maybe this just means that you have begun a new career. In that case: Congratulations! If this is another “Sylvía Nótt” self-destruct post: Shame on you!
July 16th, 2007 at 10:20 pm
Thank you for your carefully reasoned rebuttal. ;-)
July 17th, 2007 at 11:34 am
My answer to your question: “Is wealth increasingly unevenly distributed?” is: “Yes”. Various references and resources on the subject can be found in the Wikipedia article “Distribution of wealth”.
July 17th, 2007 at 1:49 pm
Yep. The heading is badly flawed, as is the translation from Icelandic of the conclusion sentence. I was poking fun at resentment towards the super-wealthy. I was referring to the distribution of extreme wealth and not addressing issues at the other end of the scale (or over the whole scale) at all, it was a half-joking off-the-cuff observation, and I did not make this clear. Full ack. I have amended the text (but only a little bit) to try to fix that.
That “Shame on you!” was unnecessarily supercilious though. The view is nice enough down here, no need for high horses.
It’s “Silvía Nótt” by the way. : )
July 17th, 2007 at 5:57 pm
And I thought that the “Shame on you!” part was so fittingly scoffing, coming from an indignant wealth distribution worrier like myself. Apparently it was just super silly. : )
July 17th, 2007 at 6:13 pm
Ah. [Note to self: remember that text is lo-fi.]
September 11th, 2008 at 12:40 am
If everyone understood money everyone could be wealthy. They would be more useful to society and would create for themselves more wealth. There is no reason this cannot be the case.
October 21st, 2008 at 6:08 pm
I just can´t stop beating this horse. Sorry. But today OECD published a report on wealth distribution and I came to think of this blog post. And no, that report does not specifically cover the people with (great) wealth.
October 21st, 2008 at 7:12 pm
That was a fairly anemic beating. Surely you can do better! : )
Already conceded: that all this data says is that the imbalance of the personal wealth distribution at the uppermost extreme has been decreasing over the long term. It does not say anything about the imbalance of the rest of the personal wealth distribution (which probably should be of more interest/concern to us), nor about the imbalance of the personal living standards and personal liberties distributions (which definitely should be of more interest/concern to us, but which are obviously causally related to the wealth distribution).
Still adamant: that the scoffing and indignation at the extremely wealthy is out of proportion to the effect (economic, as opposed to emotional) on the others, of the withholding of that wealth. It is also wasteful of the energies of the scoffer, for which there are surely better uses. Thus it is “wrong” from a utilitarian perspective.
There are some similarities to the situation in Iceland these days, where many people seem to feel (a) that the only thing (as opposed to one very understandable thing) to do these days is to shake your fist, your other extremities, or blunt instruments at the people believed to be more or less responsible for the setting up, the triggering, and the botched firefighting of our current thermonuclear explosion, and (b) that the crime of neglecting this negativity and remaining upbeat and focused on producing new opportunities, new jobs and (heaven forbid!) new export revenues, is morally treasonable to the Icelandic nation and — worse! — is part of a short-trousered conspiracy to defend the bungling Seven-Headed Beast in the central bank.