[tahssa]

The problem, as I see it, is that when wealth becomes too concentrated it in fact destroys opportunities and therefore social mobility.

Some people want to believe that you can create a solution that fixes the opportunity/social-mobility problem without eroding the concentrations of wealth. Others believe that you have to attack those concentrations of wealth in order to bring back opportunity/social-mobility. I sit in the latter camp.

To give an example. When house prices expand out of reach for the much of the local population many will object to any additional taxation that targets excessive ownership (landlords) or even foreign ownership. They all have the same argument, that it will cause house prices to go down and harm the economy. Instead they promote low income housing programs which are just handouts that only slightly offsets this gigantic problem. These people really don't seem to understand that house prices are abnormal and need to go down to sane levels that will on average align with normal incomes in order for the gentrification process to reverse course.

In other words you can't really fix the problems that both Paul and Russell agree on without directly attacking the concentration of wealth problem. Everything else is just bullshit.

[T2_t2]

Explain China? Or Japan? Or Vietnam?

The world is not the USA. The world is 7 billion people, in countries and cities of varying economic outcomes. While income inequality is rising between inhabitants of the first world, global income inequality is shrinking. Specifically, the gap between Brooklyn, Beijing and Botswana is shrinking, even as the gap between individual citizens is rising.

And the biggest gap of all - the gap between 21 meals a week and < 21, is shrinking rapidly. As much as we bemoan great wealth compared to middle-classness, this gap - the gap between the never-hungry and the sometimes hungry - is IMHO the single biggest gap of all.

[tahssa]

It was an example. An example that was on topic towards economic inequality.

Just because you can find some examples where economic normalization is occurring doesn't mean that excessive wealth concentration isn't killing more opportunities than it creates.