2016 Postmortem
In reply to the discussion: Bernie Sanders, Automation, and the Fate of the US [View all]paulthompson
(2,398 posts)Here's a quote from the London Times a few years ago to directly rebut that:
"James Davies, Professor of Economics at the University of Western Ontario, and one of the authors of the report, said: 'Income inequality has been rising for the past 20 to 25 years and we think that is true for inequality in the distribution of wealth.'" (http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/asia/article661055.ece" target="_blank">London Times)
That said, if you look at things on a per country level (which is what you're probably doing), inequality is going down, because thirty years ago the difference between rich First World countries and poor Third World countries was sharp. Since then, thanks to NAFTA, GATT, outsourcing, technological changes, etc, wages for the average person have been rising in Third World countries like China and India and stagnating in First World countries, closing the gap some. But if you look at people overall, the rich are getting richer and taking a bigger portion of the world's wealth every year.
Basically, with fewer barriers to trade, companies hire where wage are lowest, eventually pulling up wages there but increasing pressure to keep wages down everywhere else. So while there has been a general leveling of average wages, at the same time those are the top are taking a bigger and bigger percentage of the profits, leading to more global inequality overall. The rich are richer and have more of the world's wealth than they did 20 or 30 years ago, and that trend is almost certain to continue and even accelerate.