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Advances in Politics and Economic 
ISSN 2576-1382 (Print) ISSN 2576-1390 (Online) 

Vol. 2, No. 2, 2019 
www.scholink.org/ojs/index.php/ape 

68 
 

Original Paper 

Inequality 

Peter Bearse, Ph.D.1* 

1 A Peoples and Citizens Congress, Carrabelle, United States 
* Peter Bearse, Ph.D., A Peoples and Citizens Congress, Carrabelle, United States 

 

Received: February 26, 2019     Accepted: March 4, 2019      Online Published: March 15, 2019 

doi:10.22158/ape.v2n2p68                URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.22158/ape.v2n2p68 

 

Abstract 

Inequality has become a malignant, contagious disease. It feeds, it grows, it attaches itself to nearly all 

aspects of life. It poisons or impedes many of our relationships. Above all, it is a threat to the health 

and stability of our democratic republic. It has become the major issue of our time. We can see more 

clearly how and why it has become so as we review eight major features of our society. Refer to the 

diagram below as you read.  

 



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Figure 1. Diagram 

 

1. Introduction 

We proceed by discussing each of the eight categories featured around the circumference of the 

DIAGRAM, above, in order of their appearance starting with “The Market” and moving clockwise 

henceforth.  

The Market~so-called “free”—is the most powerful generator of inequality. It is not free. Market 

power is skewed. It’s only in the idealistic, textbook model of a perfectly competitive economy 

populated by small businesses and actors with equal assets that the market works reasonably well to 

produce stability and economic well-being for all. The real world features inequalities of all kinds at all 

levels. The market dynamics of such an economy tend to increasingly aggravate inequalities as 

economic actors who grow wealthier or bigger use their power to build their wealth and decrease 

competition. Thus, the unfree market becomes increasingly so. “Trickle down” is a myth. At their core, 

private markets are transactional mechanisms grounded in two beliefs mistakenly thought to be both 

moral and ethical:  

(i) that imbalances of power between two sides of a transaction can be ignored, and that. 

(ii) the end justifies the means. 

Technological innovations driven by science have increasingly driven inequality upward. The old 



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model of innovation—whereby an individual provides an invention that spreads—is less and less 

germane. Technology is increasingly “high tech” financed by or through major institutions, including 

big business, large universities and government. Business and educational marketplaces are 

increasingly driven by high-tech. 

Education, the presumed “great equalizer”, is becoming less so as the Dewey model of equal public 

education for all is compromised by the spread of public/private models preferred by the better off. 

They naturally seek to give their offspring an additional “leg up” in the system. These include 

practically private charter schools financed by public money. Education is now primarily oriented to 

producing college graduates and raising certification levels for doing even rather ordinary tasks. 

Belated recognition of the importance of vocational education will help to build a society increasingly 

stratified by economic class—a European, not an American model. 

The Diagram above condenses the forces at work into diabolical loops—a set of vicious sub-circles. 

The educational system, for example, is distorted by inequality that, in turn, feeds back to further 

increase inequality.  

Politics, another mythical equalizer, has become both dependent upon and generator of inequality as 

the cost of political campaigns rises at rates that are multiples of the CPI. “One man, one vote” has 

been largely supplanted by “money talks and bullshit walks” while campaign finance reform has failed. 

The old-fashioned, people-based, door-to-door politics has largely given way to big-money politics via 

advertising. Meanwhile, the advertising industry increasingly consolidated and dominated by big media 

corporations, helps to turn people away from activism and into consumers of infotainment and political 

pablum. 

Finance: As the last “Great Recession” revealed, financial innovation and game-playing by major 

financial firms serve to generate both financial instability and greater inequality (Note 1). The 

“99%”—small investors among individual citizens—had long since become irrelevant players in 

financial markets. Not one executive of a major financial company was even indicted, let along 

convicted of financial malpractice, yet the “1%” associated with the largest organizations served to 

increase their wealth while immiserating millions of Americans.  

Work & Income: Political and educational factors increasing inequality are reinforced by those of 

work, income and wealth. Those with no more than a high school education can no longer earn enough 

to sustain a family at a lower middle-class level of living.  

A significant proportion of the highest incomes are mostly unearned, gotten from short-term, high-risk 

investments. The gap between the middle-class (already reduced by the 2008-2012 financial crises) and 

the upper-classes has been increasing. The share of financial sector activity in GDP has increased 

significantly. And so has the gap between the “real” (productive of real things) and money-based 

sectors of the economy. 

Law and Regulation: These no longer provide the basis for an equal-opportunity economy. Among 

other factors at work, occupational groups establish certification and licensing requirements that 



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increase barriers to entry. Capital and financing requirements have increased barriers to 

entrepreneurship. Even among the well-educated, “Who you know” and “How well are you connected” 

are at least as important as “What you know”. Bankruptcy laws favor owners over creditors.  

Finally, note that the diagram illustrates: 

(1) Two-way interactivity between inequality and each of the eight factors aggravating inequality, 

and also 

(2) Interactivity between each of the eight factors and those adjoining. There are also interactions 

between each and those not adjoining. A matrix is required as shown below to illustrate the complete 

set. Summing the elements across the rows would reveal that the Market is first among influences;  

 

Table 1. Matrix 

Market Politics  Finance Techno. Law  Regulate Educate Work  

Politics Finance Techno. Law  Regulate Educate Work  

Finance Techno. Law  Regulate Educate  Work   

Techno Law  Regulate C Work    

Law  Regulate Educate Work     

Regulate Educate Work      

Educate Work       

Work       

 

Overall, however, what the Diagram calls for is a mathematical, non-linear model to estimate 

parameters that would fully and quantitatively the relationships illustrated in the Diagram and Matrix. 

Such a model lies beyond the scope of this essay. 

Consider the interactivity between “Education” and “Work”, for example. One aspect of this is set forth 

in Manstead, who wrote: 

“…the school system reproduces social inequalities by promoting norms and values that are more 

familiar to children from middle‐class backgrounds. To the extent that this helps middle‐class children 

to out-perform their working‐class peers, the ‘meritocratic’ belief that such performance differences are 

due to differences in ability and/or effort will serve to ‘explain’ and legitimate unequal performance”. 

Full treatment of the interactions here and would require a supplementary piece, even a book. 

What is missing from the Diagram?—Globalization, an overarching influence on all of the included 

factors. It also serves in heighten inequality, especially via multinational corporations. They pay their 

executives higher multiples of workforce earnings. They park significant portions of their corporate 

earnings in tax havens abroad, thus lessening federal tax revenues that could be used to help offset the 

deleterious impacts of rising inequality.  

Thus, the diagram reveals that our society and economy now amount to a huge inequality generating 



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72 
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machine. The consequences are fearful to contemplate. They suggest what some writers have already 

concluded we have: An oligarchy, not a democratic republic. It’s quite foreseeable that America, the 

fabled land of opportunity and freedom, may become a 3-tier class society dominated by the rich, with 

a small go-along, get along middle class lording it over a large, subservient lower class hardly able to 

get along at all. If we are to have any chance to avoid this dreadful prospect, then reduction of 

inequality needs to be moved to the top of political and organizational agendas at all levels. The 

American Dream is not grounded on inequality. It is endangered by the high level of inequality of 

incomes and wealth already attained and ever rising. 

 

References 

Grasso, Mariat, B., Yoxon, S. K., & Tempe, L. (2017). Relative Deprivation and Inequalities in social 

and political activism. Springer Nature, link.springer.com (13 Dec., open access) or Acta Politica. 

Retrieved from https://soi.org/10.1057/s41269-017-0072y 

Hoffman, M. K. (2019). Shell Game. Maine, U.S.A.: Shoestring Publishing.  

Kraus, M. W. (2015). Americans Overestimate Social Class Mobility. Journal of Experimental 

Psychology. Retrieved from https://doi.org/10.1016/j.esp.2015.01.005/ 

Kraus, M. W., & Park, J. W. (2014). The Undervalued Self: Social Class and Self-Evaluation. 

FRONTIERS of PSYCHOLOGY. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2014.01404 

Manstead, & Anthony, S. R. (1996). The psychology of social class: How socioeconomic status impacts 

thought, feelings, and behavior. New York: Wiley.  

Sass, J., & Jacobs, L. R. (2009). The Place of Inequality in Non-Participation in the American Polity. 

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Advancement of Psychology.  

UAB. (2017). Social Networks do not help to eliminate inequality in political participation. 

WIKIPEDIA: Political Participation and Inequality. 

 

Note 

Note 1. Although, as Hoffman (2019) reveals, the Recession was sparked by a huge jump in oil prices. 

 


