Onko epätasa-arvo - tarkemmin sanottuna ajan kuluessa syvenevä epätasa-arvo - olennainen osa markkinataloutta? Professori Bruce M. Boghosian tutkimusryhmineen tutki asiaa matemaattisin mallein, ja hän kirjoitti tuloksista Scientific American -sivustolla.

“Let us imagine a system of 1,000 individuals who engage in pairwise exchanges with one another. Let each begin with some initial wealth, which could be exactly equal. Choose two agents at random and have them transact, then do the same with another two, and so on. In other words, this model assumes sequential transactions between randomly chosen pairs of agents. Our plan is to conduct millions or billions of such transactions in our population of 1,000 and see how the wealth ultimately gets distributed.”
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After a large number of transactions, one agent ends up as an “oligarch” holding practically all the wealth of the economy, and the other 999 end up with virtually nothing. It does not matter how much wealth people started with. It does not matter that all the coin flips were absolutely fair. It does not matter that the poorer agent's expected outcome was positive in each transaction, whereas that of the richer agent was negative. Any single agent in this economy could have become the oligarch—in fact, all had equal odds if they began with equal wealth. In that sense, there was equality of opportunity. But only one of them did become the oligarch, and all the others saw their average wealth decrease toward zero as they conducted more and more transactions.
(…)
And once we have some variance in wealth, however minute, succeeding transactions will systematically move a “trickle” of wealth upward from poorer agents to richer ones, amplifying inequality until the system reaches a state of oligarchy.
(…)
In fact, these mathematical models demonstrate that far from wealth trickling down to the poor, the natural inclination of wealth is to flow upward, so that the “natural” wealth distribution in a free-market economy is one of complete oligarchy. It is only redistribution that sets limits on inequality.

Tutkijat osoittivat yksinkertaista matematiikkaa ja fysiikkaa käyttäen markkinatalouden rakenteiden rikastuttavan rikkaita ja köyhdyttävän köyhiä. Markkinatalouteen on siis sisäänrakennettuna rikkaiden jatkuva rikastuminen samalla kun köyhät jäävät nuolemaan näppejään.

Tutkimustuloksen ja taloushistorian perusteella on selvää, että markkinataloutta täytyy säädellä voimakkaasti esimerkiksi veroin, tulonsiirroin ja julkisin palveluin - toisin sanoen hyvinvointivaltiollisin ratkaisuin.

Pitkällä aikavälillä tarvitaan kuitenkin visionääristä ajattelua siitä, miten talous voisi perusteiltaan rakentua tavalla, joka edistää oikeudenmukaista palkitsemista, demokratiaa sekä ympäristön, yhteisöjen ja ihmisten hyvinvointia - tehokkuutta unohtamatta.

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