Inequality and so Forth

I liked Brad DeLong's take on inequality a lot. Brad Plumer's essay on rich people controlling the political system is also very good. It's worth tying the two together as well. Sometimes, for example, you get something like the Sony Bono Copyright Term Extension Act in which a relatively small number of people (the executives of large media companies, the owners of large media companies, and a handful of superstar content creators) who were all far wealthier on average than the typical American used their wealth to get congress to effectuate a significant transfer of wealth away from the vast majority of citizens and toward them.

You rarely see such direct examples of rich people using political clout to simply confiscate wealth and further enrich themselves, but it's hardly unheard of either. I recommend Dean Baker's book, The Conservative Nanny State. On a micro-scale ask yourself why it is that in Washington, DC (and as best I can tell pretty much all major American cities) that city services are delivered better and faster to the neighborhoods where rich people live, further increasing the value of the property they already own.