By Mac Johnson
...a more complete statement might be “if all the world’s wealth was distributed evenly, each person would have $20,500 of assets to use—destroying the economy and causing a huge spike in sales of useless consumer items. Six months later, the world’s richest 2% would again own 50% of the world’s wealth and the bottom 50% would again be victims of ‘inequality.’”
That’s because the greatest determinate of wealth is culture and behavior—a fact that is usually ignored in reporting the disproportionate and unfair inequality suffered by the underprivileged. Many reporters seem very fond of the term “distribution” when discussing inequality, as in “income distribution” or “the distribution of wealth.” Although the term has a statistical meaning, I don’t think that’s why it is so beloved. If “wealth is distributed so unevenly across the world,” then obviously it needs to be “redistributed.” It’s just not fair that the wealth fairy distributed so much to so few. (more)
