We feel that something is rotten in the state of Denmark. (Quite literally, in the Danish case...what a shithole of a Scandi country!)
In the FT's "Data Point" column, Burn-Murdoch has a piece from earlier this year about inequality. I will quibble with his use of "fairness," but otherwise it's a pretty good piece outlining what happened and how the intelligentsia have thought about these matters in recent decades.
This sounds about right:
Public concern about income gaps has clearly become decoupled from the measured reality, but why? One theory is that what people are really feeling is the recent slowdown in economic growth.
Growth isn't just important, materially; it's vital for our econ systems and social harmony too. When the economy hovers around 0-1% growth, the way that manifests in the economy feels like stagnation and decline.
Nice chart about the untethering of inequality in different portions of the distribution:
Conclusion:
So we have seen no increase in aggregate inequality. The story for the lowest-paid is unambiguously good but for the bulk of people who sit somewhere in the middle, it could be argued that the two divergent trends combine for a decidedly uncomfortable situation. [...] these shifts are organic rather than by design. Economies change. Occupations rise and fall in rewards and prestige. It’s a tale as old as time. But that doesn’t mean it should be ignored.
Some stackers will quibble with the "organic"/not-designed bit.
Steve Hanke, a monetary guy I appreciate but someone Bitcoiners love shitting on (mostly because of his asinine takes on BTC, but whatevs), agrees in a letter to the FT:
[Burn-Murdoch] finds that the trend in overall income inequality in the US since the 1990s is flat. But that masks the fact that, while the poorest are catching up with the middle of the income distribution, the very richest are rapidly pulling away from the middle. When it comes to changes in the income distribution, changes in the money supply are far from neutral.
Yeah, man.
nonpaywalled here: https://archive.md/ej1XZ