An Exponential Challenge
Relatedly: This “econophysics” study, looking at patterns of societal wealth- distribution, underscores the difficulty of reducing social inequality.
It finds (rather understatedly) that the inequalities of market economies “may be very hard to get rid of”, and that therefore “any kind of policy [aimed at redistribution] will be very inefficient”.
Quote: “People on the whole have normally distributed attributes, talents and motivations, yet we finish up with wealth distributions that are much more unequal than that”.
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Update: Speaking of claims about wealth-distribution… Check out this over-the-top anti-socialist educational clip from the 1950s.
Milkandcookies.com describes it this way:
This film embarrassingly attempts to portray America as having a widespread distribution of wealth. The ‘expert’ presenter makes the usual critical error (or ruse) of those attempting to prove such a proposition: he equates wealth with income. Still, the film does seem to demonstrate that in the mid 1950’s, the average person did indeed have some wealth. Other aspects of the presentation are intentionally misleading, such as the sliding people on the income graph. The intent is to show the income distribution curve, but the presenter conveniently places all the people in the highest income category at the minimum income level for that group. A real graph would of course spike exponentially at high levels.
Much entertainment also comes from the scripted scenes with actors portraying British and Russian citizens, marvelling at the wealth of the average American. The best scene is undoubtedly where the ‘expert’ claims that Karl Marx’s prediction that a capitalist system leads to an unbalanced distribution of wealth is false. One need only compare today’s wealth distribution curve with that presented here to shed light on the validity of that assertion.’
