Thursday, January 11, 2007

Wealth and inequality

Here's an interesting take on income, wealth, and inequality.
Inequality of wealth or income should be of absolutely no importance per se. What matters is inequality of consumption. The best video game system a billionaire can afford is the Playstation 3. The best video game system a working class American can afford is also the Playstation 3. In this article I list some other examples of such consumption equality. In today's economy, the rich and lower middle class buy many of the exact same goods. This wasn't true 100 years ago. Wealth, therefore, has lost some of its privileges and consequently real inequality has decreased.

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