A long time ago I formed the opinion that excessive inequality is a Bad Thing and I thought it likely that there would be some sort of correlation between inequality and Bad Things. From reading news and a limited amount of history it seemed to me that, a considerable degree of inequality has been and still was the norm and very unequal countries would be divided between the vast majority, suffering the effects of poverty and a tiny minority, the rich, for whom falling into poverty is unthinkable. The prospect of poverty is so horrific for the rich that they will embrace anything that supports their situation, no matter how immoral or irrational. In particular they would favour actions that increased inequality even further. Thus inequality can be both cause and effect of Bad Things.

I have done a considerable amount of investigation using spreadsheets to find evidence that it actually is a Bad Thing.

Fairness Pays Is a presentation in which, using easily available data, I show how countries that are more “unfair”, that is, where there are higher levels of corruption and inequality, are poorer.

In another presentation I show some estimates of the effects of a change of equality

Note that the return from these presentations does not work.