Lately I’ve been hearing that the difference between the haves and have-nots in the U.S. has been increasing, and that unequal distribution of incomes has been approaching that of the Gilded Age. Is this literally true? While I understand that Bill Gates and corporate CEOs and such are taking home some serious cash, are we really seeing a return to the era of the robber barons, when a tiny percentage of the population controlled a huge chunk of the national wealth? –Betsy Schorsch, Chicago
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Questions like this always irritate the man of science (and no doubt the woman too) because the answer depends on how the issue is framed. Is the degree of inequality in the distribution of income “approaching” that of the Gilded Age? Sure. If I take one step south I’m approaching Patagonia, too. Doesn’t mean I’m necessarily close. So let’s tighten things up a bit. On November 20, 2003, the New York Review of Books contained the following statement by Paul Krugman: “Recent statistics confirm that income inequality in the United States has returned to Gilded Age levels.” Krugman, a New York Times columnist and Princeton economics professor, has been a leading publicist of the idea that we’re not merely returning to the Gilded Age, we’re already there. But are we?
Well, 6 percent is a lot more than 2 percent. In France and the UK, which had concentrations of wealth similar to ours in the early 20th century, the superrich have done nowhere near as well–they take home a steady 2 percent of the national income in France, 3 percent (and climbing) in the UK. On the other hand, 6 percent is still well shy of 10 percent, and merely gets us back to the circumstances that prevailed in 1938.
