Vi
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You should check out Hans Rosling's work. He has some great videoes regarding demography:)
Sienna
Making everyone poorer would reduce the wealth gap.
The oldest fallacy (a fallacy is an illogical belief) in economics is that the wealth of the rich, causes the poverty of the poor. This is not correct. It's the other way around. The wealth of the rich, makes the poor people richer than they otherwise would be. So reducing the wealth of the rich, does not make the poor richer. It makes them poorer. That's why under communism, everyone got poorer.
If it was true that one person's wealth makes someone else poorer, then mankind as a whole would never have gotten beyond the standard of living of our primitive or animal ancestors, because as soon as one person got richer, someone else would have gotten poorer. It would be a zero sum game.
Also, the process of wealth creation, is not a process by which everyone puts an equal amount into a common pool, and then the rich people take out an unequal amount. Therefore it is not unfair for rich people to have more than poor people, because that's not how wealth is created.
The only thing that can be done to reduce the wealth gap is to make the poor people poorer.
Reducing the wealth gap is one of those ideas that sounds good at first, but when you think about it, it turns out to be illogical and anti-social.
Winston
Perfect-world situations aside, this depends on a number of different factors. People are different. The transfer of wealth is in a constant flux. Using the US as an example, many people have debated the most effective way to reduce the wealth gap. Some may say tax the rich: in which case may lead to undesirable results. Some may propose making no taxes at all: which will also lead to undesirable results. For every gain, you lose something.
Perhaps the best way is mass education where it is greatly incentivized to learn. Perhaps the wealth gap must exist.
Weasel McWeasel
Make the lottery easier to win, with smaller, but more reasonable prizes......so more people can win $1,000,000, let's say,.............instead of one person winning 350 million dollars. If more people won larger, reasonable prizes, and more people saw their neighbors actually winning once in awhile.........more people would be tempted to play, generating wealth, and sharing all that prize in a more equitable way, which the prizewinners would then pump back into the economy by spending.
DoILiveInOz
1. Reduce the taxes on alcohol, lottery-tickets, and tobacco.
2. Educational vouchers and competition in education.
3. Kill all the rich people and steal their money.
(Often, reducing the wealth gap causes more harm then good)