The recent decrease should come as no surprise. Markets are well below their late 2021 levels, and the wealthy hold a disproportionate share of the stock market. Executive compensation also tends to move with the markets, which affect the wealth of founders such as Mark Zuckerberg, who according to one measure has lost about three-quarters of his net wealth at its peak. And then there are all those former crypto billionaires, and not just Sam Bankman-Fried.
At the lower end of the income scale, the picture is more complex. Nonetheless the labor market has yet to crash, the current unemployment rate is 3.7%, and there are signs of an inflationary soft landing. Over the third quarter of 2022, the bottom 50% saw their real incomes rise an average of 1.5%. None of those narratives are finished, but matters could be worse.
I am not here to shed tears for the very wealthy or to argue that the bottom half doesn’t need more help. My question is this: Do we feel good about this state of affairs? I would merely observe that lesser wealth and income inequality have not brought new glories to the world.
Of course poorer people would be better off if they had more money, and we should enact policies to help bring that about. But critics of inequality make a different and much stronger set of claims, saying that inequality is responsible for health problems, despair, bad governance and social unrest. Those arguments — focusing on inequality rather than the absolute level of poverty — are an essential part of the current critique of capitalism.
Lower income inequality is not without downsides. Charitable giving is likely to fall. Fewer ambitious corporate projects will be undertaken. Major technology companies, which have seen some of the biggest declines in value, are laying off workers, most of whom will probably get lower-paying jobs and experience more anxiety.
To be clear, these are manageable problems. But they are problems nonetheless. Some number of Americans, above and beyond the wealthy, will be worse off because the riches of the very wealthy have declined.
And it’s not as if people on the lower end of the income scale feel happier or more healthy because the wealthiest are now poorer. For most Americans, life goes on; their main economic concern is that high inflation will eat into potential wage gains.
Nor is it the case that the proletariat have taken hold of the reins of power and a new populist utopia is nigh. The very wealthy might make fewer political donations, but the influence of money on politics was overrated in the first place. It hardly seems like a new era of egalitarian redistribution. Instead, Western government budgets are fairly tight, and in the U.S. in particular the set of plausible policy alternatives is likely to get more narrow.
For at least two decades, the attention given to rising income and wealth inequality was huge, among both policymakers and academics. Over the last decade, the attention given to falling income and wealth inequality has been tiny. Our views of this issue, shaped by the media, may be seriously out of date.
I am by no means convinced that this reduction in inequality will continue. Forthcoming technological advances will have unpredictable effects. But if the last decade proves to be an interlude, there is still a lesson: Maybe inequality wasn’t the problem in the first place. That’s why I’m not cheering at its decline, and why I suspect not everyone else is, either. The real challenge isn’t how to reduce the difference in wealth between the rich and the poor. It’s how to reduce poverty.
(COMMENT, BELOW)
Cowen is a Bloomberg View columnist. He is a professor of economics at George Mason University and writes for the blog Marginal Revolution. His books include "The Complacent Class: The Self-Defeating Quest for the American Dream."
Previously:
• 10/10/22 A crisis is coming in Europe. The only question is, which kind?
• 09/06/22 What is the purpose of public policy?
• 08/15/22 The future of travel is less exotic
• 08/01/22 Welcome to the era of antisocial media
• 07/25/22 Biden's COVID diagnosis is a wake-up call for America
• 05/12/22 A nuclear strike might not prompt the reaction you expect
• 03/22/22 Doomscrolling has ruined our sense of time
• 01/22/22 Wokeism has peaked
• 01/31/22 The latest bias to worry about
• 01/17/22 America's loneliness epidemic
• 01/07/22 Some of America's top universities just revealed they're not morally serious
• 12/29/21 America would be more happy with more people
• 12/10/21 Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk . . . and Paul McCartney
• 12/08/21 The only two pieces of advice you'll ever need
• 11/29/21 Nuclear fusion is close enough to start dreaming
• 10/27/21 America's national mood disorder
• 06/10/21 Lifting of mask mandates poses a challenge for Libertarians
• 05/28/21 Why economics is failing us
• 04/19/21We need green energy. We don't need green jobs
• 04/14/21 Libertarianism isn't dead. It's just reinventing itself
• 04/05/21 What does the world need? More humans
• 02/10/21 If Biden goes big now, he may have to go small later
• 01/12/21 Covid improved how the world does science
• 12/07/20 How to make sure your complaint is heard
• 10/27/20 It's getting better and worse at the same time
• 09/14/20 How to be happy during a pandemic
• 09/04/20 Trump is winning the vaccine debate with public health experts
• 07/01/20 Why Americans are having an emotional reaction to masks
• 05/20/20 Covid-19 will expose the ghosts in the U.S. economy
• 05/07/20 Are aliens visiting us? US military seems to think so
• 05/06/20 America's reopening will depend on one thing --- trust
• 04/22/20 How the covid-19 recession is like World War II
• 04/15/20 America is returning to 1781
• 04/08/20 Covid-19 is is upending everything for status seekers
• 03/17/20 The coronavirus will usher in a new era of entertainment
• 01/28/20 Social Security isn't doomed for younger generations
• 01/08/20 Why 2020 is harder to predict than 2019 was
• 12/02/19 Equality is a mediocre goal so aim for progress
• 11/25/19 Inflation inequality creates winners and losers
• 11/09/19 OK kids. This boomer has had enough
• 10/20/19 Would you bet against Trump in 2020?
• 09/25/19 The right industrial policy for America
• 09/24/19 Harvard's legacies are nothing to be proud of
• 09/02/19 Yes, the Fed could still stop a recession
• 08/20/19 A trade deal with China wouldn't change much
• 07/29/19 How your personality traits affect your paycheck
• 07/16/19 Internet 101 should be a required class
• 05/28/19 How Dems actually are the ANTI-immigrant party
• 04/23/19 Want to help fight climate change? Have more children
• 03/22/19 America isn't as divided as it looks
• 03/12/19 The Twitter takeover of politics: You ain't seen nothing yet
• 03/04/19 How to tell which Dem dreams won't come true
• 02/07/19: Now the Dems want to end America's nuclear first strike option. How clueless is that?
• 01/29/19: The shutdown hit a lot of government workers --- hard. But, ultimately, who is responsible for their unfortunate circumstances?
• 12/12/18: The West is abusing its legal power to punish people or institutions that do things it doesn't like. It better stop
• 10/23/18: The US needs Saudi Arabia, and vice versa
• 10/19/18: The right finds the perfect weapon against the left
• 07/24/18: The drive for the perfect child gets a little scary
• 06/04/18: Side effects of the decline of men in labor market
• 05/14/18: Proving Marx's theories right
• 05/08/18: Holding up a mirror to intellectuals of the left
• 05/01/18: Virtual reality will make lives better ... mostly
• 04/16/18: It's hard to burst your political filter bubbleIt's hard to burst your political filter bubble
• 04/09/18: The missing key to grasping why American politics seems to have become more polarized, with no apparent end in sight
• 04/05/18: Two American power centers are about to clash
• 03/22/18: We fear what we can't control about Uber and Facebook
• 03/08/18: How to stop the licen$ing insanity
• 01/10/18: Polarized Congress needs to bring back earmarks
• 12/27/17: The year when the Internet collides with reality
• 11/07/17: Would you blame the phone for Russian interference?
• 10/23/17: North Korea is playing a longer game than the US
• 10/12/17: Why conservatives should celebrate Thaler's Nobel
• 08/02/17: Too many of today's innovations are focused on solving problems rather than creating something new