On Causes And Features Of Economic Inequality In Modern World

Increasing poverty, declining incomes and mass unemployment against the background of rising incomes and wealth of the ruling elites is a fiasco of the traditional model of market capitalism. Further differentiation of incomes of the population reduces aggregate demand and complicates the process of selling goods and services. Modern methods for measuring economic inequality using the Gini coefficient and the coefficient of funds do not consider wealth stratification, which leads to underestimation of people’s economic inequality. According to the Gini index, the degree of current economic inequality in Russia and the United States is almost at the same level. The split of the economy into the “economy of the rich” and the “economy of the poor” generates additional expenses for society increasing the cost of the wasteful and expensive production of goods and services for the rich. In our opinion, the solution to the problem of economic inequality in modern society is a further increase in taxes on super-rich families and the development of a social insurance system for the rapidly impoverished population. It is necessary to adopt a more coordinated, comprehensive and consistent policy aimed at employment growth. The creation and development of a legal, civilized and mobile international labor market, the socio-economic and legal protection of labor migrants will enable to form a middle class in the countries with a high degree of inequality and to partially solve the problem of poverty in these countries.