The Only Thing, Historically, That's Curbed Inequality: Catastrophe

[John Newman]

> On Feb 23, 2017, at 1:07 AM, grarpamp <grarpamp at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2017/02/scheidel-great-leveler-inequality-violence/517164/
> https://politics.slashdot.org/story/17/02/21/2114240/the-only-thing-historically-thats-curbed-inequality-catastrophe
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Compression
> 
> The Atlantic has an interesting article on how societies have
> decreased economic equality. From the report: "Calls to make America
> great again hark back to a time when income inequality receded even as
> the economy boomed and the middle class expanded. Yet it is all too
> easy to forget just how deeply this newfound equality was rooted in
> the cataclysm of the world wars. The pressures of total war became a
> uniquely powerful catalyst of equalizing reform, spurring
> unionization, extensions of voting rights, and the creation of the
> welfare state. During and after wartime, aggressive government
> intervention in the private sector and disruptions to capital holdings
> wiped out upper-class wealth and funneled resources to workers; even
> in countries that escaped physical devastation and crippling
> inflation, marginal tax rates surged upward. Concentrated for the most
> part between 1914 and 1945, this 'Great Compression' (as economists
> call it) of inequality took several more decades to fully run its
> course across the developed world until the 1970s and 1980s, when it
> stalled and began to go into reverse. This equalizing was a rare
> outcome in modern times but by no means unique over the long run of
> history. Inequality has been written into the DNA of civilization ever
> since humans first settled down to farm the land. Throughout history,
> only massive, violent shocks that upended the established order proved
> powerful enough to flatten disparities in income and wealth. They
> appeared in four different guises: mass-mobilization warfare, violent
> and transformative revolutions, state collapse, and catastrophic
> epidemics. Hundreds of millions perished in their wake, and by the
> time these crises had passed, the gap between rich and poor had
> shrunk."

The first bubonic plague in England in 1340s led to a huge shortage
of labor and ultimately contributed to the end of serfdom..

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Death_in_England

wikipedia says:

The English government handled the crisis well, and the country did not experience the extreme reactions that were seen elsewhere in Europe. The most immediate consequence was a halt to the campaigns of the Hundred Years' War. In the long term, the decrease in population caused a shortage of labour, with subsequent rise in wages, resisted by the landowners, which caused deep resentment among the lower classes. The Peasants' Revolt of 1381 was largely a result of this resentment, and even though the rebellion was suppressed, in the long term serfdom was ended in England. The Black Death also affected artistic and cultural efforts, and may have helped advance the use of the vernacular.

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