Historically, has the gap between rich and poor ever NOT widened, and when?

Question

Are the poor naive to hope for rich politicans to represent them?

Answer 1

Nope, it has always been the rich getting richer & the poor getting poorer...if that is possible, maybe more becoming poor is more accurate. Especially in the last 7 years!

Answer 2

This question reminds me of "If prices at WalMart are lower every day, then why isn't anything free yet?" Are you suggesting that the gap widens infinitely and never narrows? Think this through.

The shining example is the USA. Until The Great Depression, we were largely a nation of middle class farmers, industrial workers, and tradespeople with a sprinking of very rich and very poor. In modern Japan the gap is much narrower than in USA; top execs make about 10-20 times the pay of the average worker, not 50-100 times. This is a much narrower gap than preWW2, when Japan was still largely a feudal economy with hardly any middle class at all.

I hope that this a question for history homework and you aren't seriously taking the political position that destruction of our middle class is inevitable.

Answer 3

I beleive that from the end of WWII to around 1980 this was not the case for the US:

"Despite a decrease in inequality during the 1940s, 50s and 60s, inequality has been increasing since.[13] While income increased among all demographics,[16] the upper-most earners saw substantially larger increases.[17] According to economist Janet Yellen "the growth [in real income] was heavily concentrated at the very tip of the top, that is, the top 1 percent."[18] A 2006 analysis of IRS income data by economists Emmanuel Saez at the University of California, Berkeley and Thomas Piketty at the Paris School of Economics showed that the share of income held by the top 1% was as large in 2005 as in 1928. The data revealed that reported income increased by 9% in 2005, with the mean for the top 1% increasing by 14% and that for the bottom 90% dropping slightly by 0.6%.[11] Between 1967 and 2003 the percentage growth in household income for the 95th percentile was 54.63% larger than that experienced by households in the 20th percentile.[19] In addition to the top earners receiving a great share of earnings than the rest of society, the emergence of a two-tier labor market has led to larger income differences along the lines of educational attainment.[20] In addition to expertise, productiveness and work experience, inheritance, gender, and race had a strong influence on personal income[21][22] while household income was largely affected by the number of income earners.[13] Yet, other causes for income inequality, especially some of those behind its recent rise, remain unknown.[18] While income rose among for all demographics and gender as well as race gaps were closing,[23][1] inequality has increased with those at the very top of the economic strata have been receiving an increasing share.[18]"

Answer 4

i do not know how much it matters as the rich tend to spend more money which in turn gets put back into the market creating businesses or jobs. the world poverty level is $1.00 a day. an economist on lou dobbs last night said the lower end of the scale is doing better than they were twenty years ago, relatively speaking. i do not dwell on who has more money than me(envy), i focus on providing for my family of three and we do alright yet we make less than 65,000 a year combined. i think if people stopped trying to keep up with the jones, we would all be better off.

Answer 5

Perhaps in Europe just before the Renaissance, when the black plague killed off 40% of the population. More wealth for fewer people, premium on labor, rise of a "middle class". Just a wild guess.

Answer 6

Under communism, which claims to eliminate all social classes, the poor just get poorer while the rich either run the govenment or get killed by it.

Answer 7

off the top of my head.. the Great Depression ... when basically everyone got dropped.

I'm sure there are other periods.. but I'd have to go back and look and just don't feel up to the task right now.. I have to prepare for a training.