Inequality will be obscene for our generation!!

Some points:

- Rent is increasingly taking more out of people's salaries
- Some kids get A LOT of help from parents and therefore won't need to pay rent
- Women with degrees only want to marry men with degrees too
- Property prices in some areas are increasing faster than wages (major cities)
- Education is becoming more expensive - some will start work with varied levels of debt

Your views?

1% own 50% of the world!

A nice return to feudal society really. Money comes to money I guess.

Interesting but you will find inequality is higher in "Developed countries" than the difference between developed and developing people based in those countries.

Interesting but you will find inequality is higher in "Developed countries" than the difference between developed and developing people based in those countries.

Some points:

- Rent is increasingly taking more out of people's salaries
- Some kids get A LOT of help from parents and therefore won't need to pay rent
- Women with degrees only want to marry men with degrees too
- Property prices in some areas are increasing faster than wages (major cities)
- Education is becoming more expensive - some will start work with varied levels of debt

Your views?

1% own 50% of the world!

Some points:

- Rent is increasingly taking more out of people's salaries
- Some kids get A LOT of help from parents and therefore won't need to pay rent
- Women with degrees only want to marry men with degrees too
- Property prices in some areas are increasing faster than wages (major cities)
- Education is becoming more expensive - some will start work with varied levels of debt

Your views?

1% own 50% of the world!

Property prices everywhere have been outsripping wages since 2000, and have been doing so by a vast amount.
But yes, I think something society is going to have to tackle is huge inequality. Also from how people look there is a widening gap. If you go around a poor area you see that the people are shorter and have very poor fitness (either too fat or scrawny).

I agree, markets produce inequality and most developed nations are broadly those which have embraced the markets for longest (only now is Africa and India really getting going).

That said the 50% of the worlds wealth that the 1% own almost exclusively excludes the developed world since our welfare systems pretty much ensure that even the poorest of the developed world are in the top third. The 10% UK decile for example puts us in the top 30% globally.

Also worth noting how some nations have been rich in the past but thrown their future away for long periods. Iraq and Iran for example both took around 20 years to recover the per capita values they once had after their war. Cuba before the revolution had the 3rd highest real wages in the world (behind the US and Canada in the early 60's) and a GDP per capita on par with Italy (around 20th of 125 nations the World Bank has estimates for at that time). Argentina has an even starker history in that by 1913 it had the 10th highest GDP per capita in the world and so many rich individuals that Harrods had a store, unfortunately it's wealthy democracy fell to a socialist military government that ruined it since. While poorer, Zimbabwe had a similar African story being the richest nation in Africa by the 70's but them Mugabe came. Similar story for Venezuela (so much mineral wealth it should be the latin Saudi Arabia), 17th richest in 1960 but actually got poorer after 1981 until 05.

Just imagine how wealthy some of those nations could have been.

..

Personally i think some cultures just have superior values in relation to stable government and wealth creation.

I'd agree but this is changing fast though. As Paul Mason has highlighted austerity is not just about governments cutting spending but reducing living standards so they match India and China's middle class on the way up.

My theory still holds that inequality is looking to get a lot worse.

I don't really believe it's intentional, i just think there's a disconnect between politicians and academic economics (we have a Chancellor with a History degree for example).

Inequality will be obscene for our generation!!

lol it is the free market at work, with the free market at work. Inequality is likely to get a lot worse.

lol it is the free market at work, with the free market at work. Inequality is likely to get a lot worse.

You are precisely 100 years out of date. This is what the Russian communists said; look where it led them.

As for increasing inequality, this is inevitable if the democratic world continues to develop and undeveloped nations continue to allow corrupt despots to rule them. Zimbabwe was a relatively prosperous country (at least by African standards) once. Now it has a few hundred super-rich friends and relatives of Mugabe, the same number of poor black people as it had before and a diminishing middle class of white people and is a basket case.