"The rich get richer and the poor get poorer" is an aphorism attributed to Percy Bysshe Shelley. In A Defence of Poetry (1821, not published until 1840) Shelley remarked that the promoters of utility had exemplified the saying, "To him that hath, more shall be given; and from him that hath not, the little that he hath shall be taken away. The rich have become richer, and the poor have become poorer; and the vessel of the State is driven between the Scylla and Charybdis of anarchy and despotism." [1] It describes a positive feedback loop (a corresponding negative feedback loop would be e.g. progressive tax).
"To him that hath" etc. is a reference to Matthew 25:29 (the parable of the talents, see also Matthew effect). The aphorism is commonly evoked, with variations in wording, as a synopsis of the effect of free market capitalism producing excessive inequality.
Andrew Jackson, the seventh President of the U.S. (1829–1837), in his 1832 bank veto, said that "when the laws undertake... to make the rich richer and the potent more powerful, the humble members of society... have a right to complain of the injustice to their Government." [2] [3] The phrase also has connections to Martial's epigrams. In one of his epigrams, he states, "You will always be poor if you are poor, Aemilianus. Nowadays wealth is given only to the rich." [4]
The phrase also resembles two Bible verses from the Gospel of Matthew:
For whosoever hath, to him shall be given, and he shall have more abundance: but whosoever hath not, from him shall be taken away even that he hath ... [5]
For unto every one that hath shall be given, and he shall have abundance: but from him that hath not shall be taken away even that which he hath. [6]
The phrase was popularized in 1921 in the wildly successful song "Ain't We Got Fun?", and the phrase is sometimes attributed to the song's lyricists, Gus Kahn and Raymond B. Egan. [7] [8] The line is sometimes mistakenly attributed to F. Scott Fitzgerald. It appears in The Great Gatsby , as "the rich get richer and the poor get—children!" The character Gatsby orders the character Klipspringer, sitting at the piano, "Don't talk so much, old sport... Play!" and Klipspringer breaks into the Whiting, Kahn and Egan song. [9]
Thomas Piketty's book Capital in the Twenty-First Century (2014) presents a body of empirical data spanning several hundred years that supports his central thesis that the owners of capital accumulate wealth more quickly than those who provide labour, a phenomenon widely described with the term "the rich-get-richer". [10]
In the United States, the phrase has been used frequently to describe socioeconomic trends under the Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush presidencies, [11] [12] [13] and in the United Kingdom to refer to the Thatcher era. [14] In 1990, Thatcher responded to a question posed in the House of Commons by the Liberal Democrat MP Simon Hughes about wealth inequality in the UK by saying "he would rather that the poor were poorer, provided that the rich were less rich. ... What a policy. Yes, he would rather have the poor poorer, provided that the rich were less rich. That is the Liberal policy." [15] It has also been used in the UK to refer to the 2010–2015 coalition and 2015–2016 governments led by David Cameron. [16]
In statistics, the phrase "the rich get richer" is often used as an informal description of the behavior of Chinese restaurant processes and other preferential attachment processes, where the probability of the next outcome in a series taking on a particular value is proportional to the number of outcomes already having that particular value. This is useful for modeling many real-world processes that are akin to "popularity contests", where the popularity of a particular choice causes new participants to adopt the same choice (which can lead to the outsized influence of the first few participants).
Product recommendations and information about past purchases have been shown to influence consumers choices significantly whether it is for music, movie, book, technological, and other type of products. Social influence often induces a rich-get-richer phenomenon (Matthew effect) where popular products tend to become even more popular. [17]
The Beatitudes are blessings recounted by Jesus in Matthew 5:3-10 within the Sermon on the Mount in the Gospel of Matthew, and four in the Sermon on the Plain in the Gospel of Luke, followed by four woes which mirror the blessings.
Trickle-down economics is a pejorative term for government economic policies deemed by opponents to disproportionately favor the upper tier of the economic spectrum. These opponents reject the notion that spending by this elite group would "trickle down" to those who are less fortunate and lead to economic growth that will eventually benefit the economy as a whole. Use of the term has been criticized on the grounds that no mainstream economist or major political party advocates the trickle-down theory.
Jay Gatsby is the titular fictional character of F. Scott Fitzgerald's 1925 novel The Great Gatsby. The character is an enigmatic nouveau riche millionaire who lives in a luxurious mansion on Long Island where he often hosts extravagant parties and who allegedly gained his fortune by illicit bootlegging during prohibition in the United States. Fitzgerald based many details about the fictional character on Max Gerlach, a mysterious neighbor and World War I veteran whom the author met in New York during the raucous Jazz Age. Like Gatsby, Gerlach threw lavish parties, never wore the same shirt twice, used the phrase "old sport", claimed to be educated at Oxford University, and fostered myths about himself, including that he was a relation of the German Kaiser.
"Ain't We Got Fun" is a popular foxtrot published in 1921 with music by Richard A. Whiting, lyrics by Raymond B. Egan and Gus Kahn.
The Great Gatsby is a 2000 British-American historical romantic drama television film, based on the 1925 novel of the same name by F. Scott Fitzgerald. It was directed by Robert Markowitz, written by John J. McLaughlin, and stars Toby Stephens in the title role of Jay Gatsby, Mira Sorvino as Daisy Buchanan, Paul Rudd as Nick Carraway, Martin Donovan as Tom Buchanan, Francie Swift as Jordan Baker, Heather Goldenhersh as Myrtle Wilson, and Matt Malloy as Klipspringer. The film aired on March 29, 2000 in the United Kingdom on BBC, and on January 14, 2001 in the United States on A&E.
A preferential attachment process is any of a class of processes in which some quantity, typically some form of wealth or credit, is distributed among a number of individuals or objects according to how much they already have, so that those who are already wealthy receive more than those who are not. "Preferential attachment" is only the most recent of many names that have been given to such processes. They are also referred to under the names Yule process, cumulative advantage, the rich get richer, and the Matthew effect. They are also related to Gibrat's law. The principal reason for scientific interest in preferential attachment is that it can, under suitable circumstances, generate power law distributions. If preferential attachment is non-linear, measured distributions may deviate from a power law. These mechanisms may generate distributions which are approximately power law over transient periods.
Income inequality has fluctuated considerably in the United States since measurements began around 1915, moving in an arc between peaks in the 1920s and 2000s, with a 30-year period of relatively lower inequality between 1950 and 1980.
The inequality of wealth has substantially increased in the United States in recent decades. Wealth commonly includes the values of any homes, automobiles, personal valuables, businesses, savings, and investments, as well as any associated debts.
"Socialism for the rich and capitalism for the poor" is a classical political-economic argument asserting that, in advanced capitalist societies, state policies assure that more resources flow to the rich than to the poor, for example in the form of transfer payments.
Redistribution of income and wealth is the transfer of income and wealth from some individuals to others through a social mechanism such as taxation, welfare, public services, land reform, monetary policies, confiscation, divorce or tort law. The term typically refers to redistribution on an economy-wide basis rather than between selected individuals.
Emmanuel Saez is a French-American economist who is a professor of economics at the University of California, Berkeley. His work, done with Thomas Piketty and Gabriel Zucman, includes tracking the incomes of the poor, middle class and rich around the world. Their work shows that top earners in the United States have taken an increasingly larger share of overall income over the last three decades, with almost as much inequality as before the Great Depression. He recommends much higher marginal tax rates, of up to 70% or 90%. He received the John Bates Clark Medal in 2009, a MacArthur "Genius" Fellowship in 2010, and an honorary degree from Harvard University in 2019.
Thomas Piketty is a French economist who is a professor of economics at the School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences, associate chair at the Paris School of Economics (PSE) and Centennial Professor of Economics in the International Inequalities Institute at the London School of Economics (LSE).
The parable of the lamp under a bushel is one of the parables of Jesus. It appears in Matthew 5:14–15, Mark 4:21–25 and Luke 8:16–18. In Matthew, the parable is a continuation of the discourse on salt and light in Jesus' Sermon on the Mount, whereas in Mark and Luke, it is connected with Jesus' explanation of the Parable of the Sower. The parable also appears in the non-canonical Gospel of Thomas as saying 33.
Plutonomy is the science of production and distribution of wealth.
Income inequality in India refers to the unequal distribution of wealth and income among its citizens. According to the CIA World Factbook, the Gini coefficient of India, which is a measure of income distribution inequality, was 35.2 in 2011, ranking 95th out of 157. Wealth distribution is also uneven, with one report estimating that 54% of the country's wealth is controlled by millionaires, the second highest after Russia, as of November 2016. The richest 1% of Indians own 58% of wealth, while the richest 10% of Indians own 80% of the wealth. This trend has consistently increased, meaning the rich are getting richer much faster than the poor, widening the income gap. Inequality worsened since the establishment of income tax in 1922, overtaking the British Raj's record of the share of the top 1% in national income, which was 20.7% in 1939–40.
The "Great Gatsby Curve" is the term given to the positive empirical relationship between cross-sectional income inequality and persistence of income across generations. The scatter plot shows a correlation between income inequality in a country and intergenerational income mobility.
Capital in the Twenty-First Century is a book written by French economist Thomas Piketty. It focuses on wealth and income inequality in Europe and the United States since the 18th century. It was first published in French in August 2013; an English translation by Arthur Goldhammer followed in April 2014.
World Inequality Database (WID), previously The World Wealth and Income Database, also known as WID.world, is an extensive, open and accessible database "on the historical evolution of the world distribution of income and wealth, both within countries and between countries".
The Elephant Curve, also known as the Lakner-Milanovic graph or the global growth incidence curve, is a graph that illustrates the unequal distribution of income growth for individuals belonging to different income groups. The original graph was published in 2013 and illustrates the change in income growth that occurred from 1988 to 2008. The x axis of the graph shows the percentiles of the global income distribution. The y axis shows the cumulative growth rate percentage of income. The main conclusion that can be drawn from the graph is that the global top 1% experienced around a 60% increase in income, whereas the income of the global middle increased 70 to 80%.
It's said that Thatcher made the British people richer. She didn't. ... The rich got richer; the poor got poorer.
People on all levels of income are better off than they were in 1979. The hon. Gentleman is saying that he would rather that the poor were poorer, provided that the rich were less rich. That way one will never create the wealth for better social services, as we have. What a policy. Yes, he would rather have the poor poorer, provided that the rich were less rich. That is the Liberal policy.