Wealth Inequality in America

4 Mar 2013

Not much new here – but it is well explained. Personally, instead of focusing on a subjective comparison of what people thought would be “fair”, I would have liked to see more visuals illustrating how this has changed over the past few decades.

4 Responses to Wealth Inequality in America

Carl

March 5th, 2013 at 4:28 am

Very interesting video. The angle that is never shown in videos and graphs like these is the change in standard of living for the bottom half of the population. Instead of just looking at how the pie is divided up and how only crumbs are left for the worse off, it would be really facinating to see how their standard of living has changed relative to the same group 20 or 40 years ago.

Personally I’d imagine an increase in the standard of cars used, access to communication like internet, computers and iPhones as well as holidays being taken further away from home.

Mike

March 5th, 2013 at 2:24 pm

My major quibble is the video flips between income and wealth as if they’re interchangeable. You can make valid points with both comparisons, but more of a transition is needed.

Timothy Leary

March 8th, 2013 at 3:30 am

impassiveness graphics

Regan

June 14th, 2013 at 2:17 pm

This presentation is seriously flawed in at least two ways. Notice how he starts with and ideal pattern of distribution then moves to how distribution is perceived and finally shows how wealth is really distributed among us. This gives the impression (consciously or not) that the rich are becoming richer and the poor are getting poorer. As if the rich are taking money out of the pockets of the poor. Of course, this is not the case.

Also, the implication here is that there is a fixed amount of wealth. We know this is not true. If you get a raise that doesn’t mean that I must take a pay cut. Adjusted for inflation, our GDP has roughly doubled in the last 30 years. If faced with a choice of owning half of the GDP from 30 years ago OR one-third of it today which would you choose? In other words, would you rather have half of one pie or would you rather have one-third of another pie that was twice as big? Choosing the second option would increase wealth inequality but you would be wealthier in absolute terms.

The point is that income/wealth inequality can rise while EVERYONE becomes richer. In fact, that is what’s been happening for years.

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