Irish history proves the power of market access

Income inequality may lie at the core of many problems at the heart of the so-called developed world.

The shift towards more extreme political views, and strife within the employer-employee nexus, could be linked to a long-term trend showing the widening disparity between those with relative wealth and those without.

The wealth management company Pictet provides interesting data underlining this point: between 1980 and 2014 the top 1% of income group earners in America saw their average real (adjusted for inflation) after-tax pay rise almost threefold.