Economists, even conservative ones, are fretting over wealth inequality at annual U.S. meeting

In 2016, The Economist says in this short video, the richest 1 percent of the world's population will, for the first time, have a larger share of global wealth than the other 99 percent.

Wealth and income inequality used to be a topic that concerned mostly leftist and Marxist economists, but this week it is perhaps the major topic of discussion and research at the American Economic Association's annual meeting in San Francisco, The New York Times reports. And the top 1 percent of the wealth isn't even the real story; the biggest gains in wealth have been among the top 0.25 percent of earners, roughly 250,000 people whose income has ballooned in recent decades while the typical American worker is earning roughly the same.

The economists disagree over the consequences and policy prescriptions for the growing wealth chasm, but "this is a truly global phenomenon, and I don’t know any serious economist who would deny inequality has gone up," says Nicholas A. Bloom, a Stanford economics professor. "The debate is over the magnitude, not the direction."

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

The Times focus on a paper Bloom is writing with four other economists which shows that the top quarter of 1 percent of Americans — those earning $640,000 or more a year — have seen their salaries double from 1981 to 2013, even accounting for inflation, but that the pay of the highest-paid employees at large, successful companies has gone up 140 percent while the wages of the typical employee at these corporate juggernauts have fallen 5 percent. "There's no reason the free market will solve this," says Bloom, whom The Times describes as "a native of Britain whose politics veer toward a laissez-faire approach and the Conservative Party there." You can read more about Bloom's research and the annual AEA meeting at The New York Times.