Poverty and the unequal distribution of wealth

Poverty and the unequal distribution of wealth

Throughout the second half of the 20th century, US foreign policy was largely focused on fighting communism. Some, but not all, socialist efforts to redistribute wealth from the upper and middle classes towards the lower classes were often met with opposition, perhaps made greater due to the external threat of communism and its connection with socialism. Efforts to break up large conglomerates which started near the turn of the century became less frequent after the Great Depression and in the 1980s and 1990s, there were numerous mergers which would not have been possible in the past.

Some political activists blame these mergers for perceived increases in income and wealth inequality during this time, although econometricians blame the increase on a wider variety of causes, including increasing returns on education, rises in the stock market, the winner-take-all phenomenon, changes in the US tax code, and changes in the composition of households used to compute income and wealth statistics.