Economic inequality
Mitigating factors

Countries with a left-leaning legislature generally have lower levels of inequality. Many factors constrain economic inequality – they may be divided into two classes: market driven, and government sponsored. The relative merits and effectiveness of each approach is a subject of debate:

Market forces outside of government intervention that can reduce economic inequality include:

Typical government initiatives intended to reduce economic inequality include:

Research shows that since 1300, the only periods with significant declines in wealth inequality in Europe were the Black Death and the two World Wars. Historian Walter Scheidel posits that, since the Stone Age, only extreme violence, catastrophes and upheaval in the form of total war, Communist revolutions, the French Revolution, pestilence and state collapse have significantly reduced inequality. He has stated that "only all-out thermonuclear war might fundamentally reset the existing distribution of resources" and that "peaceful policy reform may well prove unequal to the growing challenges ahead." However, Scheidel also stated that "There is certainly room for incremental change, that's what the example of Latin America shows in the past 15 years or so."
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