Insert speculation du jour:
Personally, I’ll go with Nancy Birdsall’s useful distinction between destructive and constructive inequality:
inequality is constructive when it creates positive incentives at the micro level. Such inequality reflects differences in individuals’ responses to equal opportunities and is consistent with efficient allocation of resources in an economy. In contrast, destructive inequality reflects privileges for the already rich and blocks potential for productive contributions of the less rich.
That large of an accumulation of wealth at the top is destructive because it can buy that much more privilege for those associated with that wealth.
Comments 3
Brent — April 20, 2009
According to figures, wealth has grown for all income brackets. The lowest income earners did grow their wealth over those years , but just not as fast as the higher income earners. Typically when we think of growing inequality we envision the poor getting poor-er but this simply isn't the case in above study.