I could look it up, but I don't really care (look it up yourself if its important to you). I don't care about relative wealth, I care about absolute wealth, not just in total of course, if one guy had a quadrillion dollars and everyone else had almost nothing that would be bad, but the total combine with the amount that the typical person, and perhaps the typical poor person has. The amount they have, not the percentage. If I could wave a magic wand and increase my real wealth by a factor of two, but everyone richer than me got to have three times as much, except the top 1% who got 10 times as much (with those equal to or poorer than me having no change), I would do it and consider it a positive development, despite the fact that inequality would increase.
I only care about inequality in terms of the have nots, not having, not in terms of "its so unfair the rich get more". If the rich got more, and the change didn't cause others to make less, then its a Pareto-improvement, not a loss. |
