Many serious people think that economic inequality in the United States and other developed economies should be a hot political topic.
But the public hardly cares.
There is a bad reason behind the lack of public interest.
President Barack Obama said in last December that dangerous and growing inequality was the defining issue of our time, but a recent Gallup poll showed that this view was not widely shared.
Only 3% of Americans choose the gap between the rich and the poor as the most important issue in the country, and 4% choose poverty.
The unemployment rate reached 19%.
The indifference of the United States is surprising, because by international standards, the increase in inequality is relatively large, judging from the recent chart of economic inequality at the New Economic Thinking Institute of the Martin School in Oxford.
But there is a general lack of attention. Neither help-the-poor nor soak-the-
In any rich country, rich politicians have gained a lot of attraction.
Economic inequality is actually shrinking globally.
Every year, fewer and fewer people do not have enough food, clean water, decent housing and clothing, electricity and other basic economic goods.
More and more people are going throughClass lifestyle
Almost every year, the average income gap between developing and developed countries is narrowing.
However, the book shows that income and wealth are increasingly concentrated at the top of society from Canada to Germany.
Why did other people burn without anger?
The best explanation is that the data is misleading.
In developed economies, real consumption is not more unequal than most widely cited measures suggest.
Pre-tax income figures ignore the power of balance in the modern economy.
Taxes have fallen more for the rich, and benefits have increased the effective income of the poor.
Many important goods and services, whether it is government orders or in practice, are available because everyone has enough money to pay.
A single mother's welfare lifestyle is millions of miles from Bill Gates's.
But they use the same roads and can watch the same program on TV.
They all have access to advanced health care.
The focus on widening income differences has shifted attention to this core trend: real lifestyles are improving at roughly the same rate from top to bottom.
The economic logic of mass production ensures the rapid spread of new products throughout the population.
The rich may have higher-end phones earlier than the poor, but in a few years, almost everyone can use the Internet almost equally.
Of course, the rich always live better physically than the middle class.
In dollar terms, the top 10% are likely to fall in recent years.
However, the gap in lifestyle has not widened much.
On both sides of the gap between the rich and the poor, with the progress of technology and the development of services, most people's consumption has increased.
However, when the income gap begins to widen, the rich are already as comfortable as possible.
Therefore, the space to increase the distance from other places is very small.
Most of their extra income goes to investment.
Some were given away and the rest were spent on the fridge, which had little effect on the actual quality of life.
Therefore, the wealth gap has widened more than the lifestyle gap.
The increase in inequality in this area is far from harmless.
These additional investments and donations purchased additional electricity.
The more money people splurge, the more impact they have on legislators, lawyers, and charities and educational institutions.
They can create tax laws that drive companies to favor shareholders, who themselves are customers and workers.
What's more, Super
Rich can fund foundations, think tanks and support publications that help shape public debate.
Hedge-fund billionaires Bill Gates and the Kohl brothers can express their views in the crowd.
Historically, the proximity of wealth and power is nothing unusual.
In modern democracies, however, the two should be separate.
These societies are based on the principles of equality before voters, before the law and in the world of thought.
The latest economic trends may not increase real economic inequality, but they may completely undermine the equality of citizens, which is more important.
Even if most citizens barely notice the loss, the benefits of prosperity should be distributed more evenly.