How to reduce wealth inequality?

[iNow]

Another view suggesting that perhaps more education isn't enough:

 

http://equitablegrowth.org/research/graduating-college-students-reduce-wage-inequality/

[Their] research implies that the most direct and effective way to reduce the wage gap is to expand the share of the workforce with a college degree.

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[However...] It’s worthwhile to place this analysis within the context of a larger debate about the labor market and why it’s not delivering broad-based wage growth to the people who comprise it. Since 2000, median wages have stagnated and the labor market participation rate has fallen, as have the rates of job-to-job mobility and household and small business formation. Young workers are not climbing the job ladder to the middle class. The share of national income earned by workers declined. Over an even longer timeframe, wages have not kept pace with worker productivity.

 

All of these phenomena suggest that the labor market isn’t working for most employees—problems that aren’t confined to those without a college education—and that suggests the problem isn’t that too few people have college degrees. Rather than focus on education attainment as the solution to inequality, it’s time for policy-makers to move on from the race between education and technology and focus on our stagnant labor market. As Summers said, “the core problem is that there aren’t enough jobs.” The key to reducing inequality is more jobs and a higher demand for labor. In the absence of more jobs, heroic assumptions about educational improvement are likely to deliver only modest economic benefits.

 

[fiveworlds]

Another view suggesting that perhaps more education isn't enough:

 

But the rich can spend over 1600£ on dessert while on their private jet. Being smart will not give you $2523.52 to spend on dessert for one meal. I know well educated people who have lived for years on less money than that.

Edited May 15, 2015 by fiveworlds

[physica]

Another view suggesting that perhaps more education isn't enough:

We also have to consider the quality of education. The study academically adrift showed that a little over a 3rd of graduates showed no improvement in verbal reasoning, working out the difference between fact and opinion, structuring an arguement and numerical reasoning after 4 years of university education. If employers wise up to this then you'll get a floating group of college grads not gaining skills whilst having to repay loans. Who would you pick for a mannual job? A high school grad whos been working for 4 years or a bad college grad who's shown no academic improvement and has been partying for 4 years.

[iNow]

All of this is tangential, moot, and ultimately a red herring, but you need to know that in the majority of cases the job would go to the college grad because the recruitering system will auto-reject any submitted applications that don't meet at least the minimum basic requirements. The same would occur even absent an applicant tracking system if handled manually by a human recruiter since finance and hr teams would have to approve the hire ad an exception and likely at a lower pay grade if they did.

 

Now, back to wealth inequality and potential ways to reduce it...