I have heard it many times over the last couple years.
“the top 1% now have more wealth then the bottom 95%”
What I am wondering and have failed to find on my own is, is this really unusual?
To me at least that sounds like it realistically could be how it has always been.
Any interesting links or comments on this would be appreciated.
Actually, historically, it is pretty unusual.
In a hunter gatherer society (which occupied humans for waaaaay longer than any other model) things were relatively egalitarian. Everyone pretty much did the same sort of work and accumulated the same sorts of processions. The chief of your village probably would not have significantly more than anyone else and probably engaged in the same work day-to-day. After all, everyone needed food every day, so everyone worked to get it.
It wasn’t until agriculture that we became sedentary enough to really create surplus stocks of food. With these surplus stocks of food, we became able to support a class of people who were not directly involved in food production- royalty, scholars, priests and artists. This is when we first start seeing the accumulation of vast amounts of wealth. Exactly how much would vary greatly by society. Ancient kings in some areas lived spectacular lives. Other leaders may have simply had a slightly bigger hut.
Finding info on the Gini coefficient that is older than 50-100 years old is hard to do. I don’t know where to find that.
http://www.thewe.cc/thewei/_/images11/us_rich_scandal/income_inequality_us.jpe
However I’d assume the Gini coefficient is lower now than it was 200 years ago due to progressive taxes and wealth redistribution programs.
Plus meaningful wealth didn’t begin until the industrial revolution.
http://ginacobb.typepad.com/gina_cobb/images/2008/04/22/world_gdp_capita_12003_ad_2.png
However feudal society did seem extremely unequal as far as wealth goes, at least from what I know of it.
No idea about non-european societies or what their history was like. But I’d assume they were also extremely aristocratic and feudal for the most part.
I’d be interested to know how we stand today compared to the gilded age (1850-1900).
Any way of measuring that objectively?
When I was working on my D.Phil dissertation I ran a Gini coefficient for taxpayers in Suffolk, England for the 1523 tax return. I’ll spare you all the number crunching and analysis involved, and just tell you that I came up with a Gini coefficient of ~47%.
Bear in mind that the documents aren’t in perfect shape and the tax return didn’t include people who weren’t wealthy enough to pay taxes, so the inequality of wealth was probably higher than ~47%. Still, it’s an interesting shot at the answer of wealth distribution in 16th-century England.
A bit of a nitpick -
That’s not history, that’s pre-history. History started with writing, and by then, the societies that kept historical records also had accumulated wealth.
“History” is not synonymous with “the past”.
Anyway… define “wealth” and define “ownership”. How much was a parcel of land worth, if it could not be sold, only inherited? Did a medieval baron own his serf’s property, and did the king own the baron’s? If I can take something away from you at will, is it really yours?
I think this is the problem people have with the current situation. Yes, throughout most of history wealth was distributed this way, with a few very rich people at the top, and the vast majority having next to nothing. However, also unusual historically speaking, is a stable system democratic government. There’s a pretty good evidence to suggest the two things are related, and that a stable democratic government depends on having a decent sized middle class.
Certainly one of the factors of the collapse of the Roman republic was the concentration of wealth (due largely to a huge influx of the slaves from successful campaigns), and the disappearance of the small scale land-owning farmers. The exellecent history of Rome podcast has a good episode about this here.
I’ll admit that I have no firm statistics on this-- collecting them would probably be a master’s project.
However, it is my suspicion as a student of history that if you were to divide people into two categories (call them the “haves” and “have nots”), that the general percentage of total wealth divided between the two would be somewhat constant. However, within these two groups the wealth was historically more evenly distributed.
Part of it is just that in the pre-industrial period, really the only way to accumulate wealth was by owning land, and practical and political considerations generally prevented individuals (not counting monarchs or the heads of church) from accumulating wealth that would be more than a few times the size of a regular middling landowner. It wasn’t really until industrialization and the advent of modern corporate and financial institutions that it really became practical for individuals to accumulate and store wealth at such an enormous scale.
Keep in mind that these same institutions have also lead to a huge increase in overall wealth (a widening of the pie, so to speak), so paradoxically you get a much larger middle class and better economic conditions all around even though the divide of wealth distribution at the top end was widening enormously.
Also the subject was discussed on this NPR Planet Money podcast (Can’t find the first part but here is the second one):
I think it is different in the last hundred years or so due to progressive taxes and wealth distribution reforms. In one of the charts I posted it showed nations like France dropping from near 50 down to about 30 on the Gini Index from 1950 to 2000.
So at least in most OECD nations (which control most of the world’s wealth, around 70% I think), the Gini Index has gone down in the last few decades.
The rich are getting richer, we can leave it at that. AFAIK (studied this briefly in class last year) it is on a consistent trend towards poor getting poorer (US and CA). I cant remember the stats though.
“I think it is different in the last hundred years or so due to progressive taxes and wealth distribution reforms. In one of the charts I posted it showed nations like France dropping from near 50 down to about 30 on the Gini Index from 1950 to 2000.”
France. France is VERY VERY VERY VERY VERY VERY different from the US. Progressive taxes dont even help the poor (very minimally, but far from enough to impact it towards equal wealth distribution)
With priests and artists, you begin to have class distinctions. but not not of actual wealth. How many coconuts can someone amass? It’ll all rot away before anyone can eat it.
You need actual money to amass wealth.