Krugman writes: "In a couple of days I'm going to be participating in an Economic Policy Institute conference on 'excessive wealth disorder' - the problems and dangers created by extreme concentration of income and wealth at the top."
People waiting in line at a job fair in Bloomington, Minn., in 2011. (photo: Craig Lassig/NYT)
Notes on Excessive Wealth Disorder
24 June 19
How not to repeat the mistakes of 2011.
n a couple of days I’m going to be participating in an Economic Policy Institute conference on “excessive wealth disorder” — the problems and dangers created by extreme concentration of income and wealth at the top. I’ve been asked to give a short talk at the beginning of the conference, focusing on the political and policy distortions high inequality creates, and I’ve been trying to put my thoughts in order. So I thought I might as well write up those thoughts for broader dissemination.
While popular discourse has concentrated on the “1 percent,” what’s really at issue here is the role of the 0.1 percent, or maybe the 0.01 percent — the truly wealthy, not the “$400,000 a year working Wall Street stiff” memorably ridiculed in the movie Wall Street. This is a really tiny group of people, but one that exerts huge influence over policy.
Where does this influence come from? People often talk about campaign contributions, but those are only one channel. In fact, I’d identify at least four ways in which the financial resources of the 0.1 percent distort policy priorities:
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