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{"text":[[{"start":6.62,"text":"Concerns about wealth inequality have grown in recent years, with calls for wealth taxes now recurrent features of political discourse on both sides of the Atlantic."}],[{"start":16.88,"text":"It is often pointed out in response that most measures of wealth inequality show little to no change over the same period. Taken at face value, this argument is reasonable. The share of wealth held by the top 10 per cent in the US, UK and Europe has been flat or falling for the past 15 years. Even if we zoom in on the top 1 per cent, their share of wealth is no higher today than it was 15 years ago (although it had been climbing before this period in some places)."}],[{"start":null,"text":"
"}],[{"start":47.62,"text":"But I’m not sure this answer addresses what lies behind the underlying concern. Standard measures of wealth inequality tell us how evenly wealth is distributed in relative terms. This is an important concept but just as important, if not more so, is the extent to which one can move up or down that distribution."}],[{"start":66.62,"text":"If macroeconomic conditions lead everyone’s wealth to double, relative shares for the top and bottom are unchanged. But if that wealth boom is not matched by a corresponding rise in wages (the ability to earn one’s way up that distribution), suddenly the same-sized relative gaps matter much more, reshaping how the economy both feels and functions."}],[{"start":87.9,"text":"In a society where the gap between the comfortably off and the just-getting-started can be crossed in a decade or two of hard work, success feels attainable and incentives are strong. When those gaps are so wide that even a lifetime of striving doesn’t offer the prospect of feeling you’ve “made it”, things start to break down."}],[{"start":107.04,"text":"This is essentially what has been playing out in many countries over recent decades. While wealth inequality has not changed much, the relative importance of wealth compared to income has. The median household’s disposable net worth (net property and financial wealth excluding pensions) in the UK, US, Germany and France has roughly doubled in real terms since the mid-1990s; incomes have grown by only around 30 per cent."}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":133.56,"text":"The result is that where a generation ago it would have taken about 20 years of savings from the average salary to earn your way from the bottom quarter of the UK’s wealth distribution to the top quarter, it now takes 40. There are similar or even larger upward extensions to society’s economic ladder elsewhere."}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":152.34,"text":"This is all the more pernicious since the growing role of passive wealth gains (whether gifted by an asset price boom or one’s parents) relative to income in determining someone’s economic status is mirrored by their growing importance for wellbeing. In the 1990s income rank mattered more than wealth rank for life satisfaction or avoiding distress. Since then wealth has become steadily more influential and is now the larger driver."}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":179.74,"text":"Much has been written about the harmful side-effects of brutally meritocratic societies, but the elevation over the past generation of passively acquired wealth over earned income in determining financial standing — even as wealth inequality itself has barely budged — deserves equal discussion. It has surely played a role in the build-up of resentment towards those at the top, whether billionaires or accidental property millionaires."}],[{"start":204.08,"text":"It would be remiss not to consider also the role of today’s billionaires in shaping public views on wealth. Where the gilded class of the much more plutocratic early 20th century engaged in highly visible philanthropy, and often kept their political involvement more financial than vocal, today’s cohort is the opposite."}],[{"start":222.88,"text":"The most obvious case is Elon Musk, whose loud interventions in politics at home and abroad have angered millions and sent his popularity tumbling, and whose sharp cuts to US overseas development spending could arguably be described as “anti-philanthropy”."}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":238.48,"text":"Then there is the fact that the products and services that generated the wealth of some tech barons are a recurring source of angst for many people, in part because they disproportionately highlight the lives of the most well-off."}],[{"start":250.54,"text":"With wealth increasingly outmuscling income, earning one’s way up the ladder more and more unrealistic, and frequent inflammatory interventions into daily life from the world’s wealthiest, it’s hardly surprising that concerns about wealth are on the rise, even if inequality itself may not be."}],[{"start":251.04,"text":"john.burn-murdoch@ft.com, @jburnmurdoch"}],[{"start":271.64,"text":""}]],"url":"https://audio.ftcn.net.cn/album/a_1785476836_3706.mp3"}