Photo by Nick Benjaminsz
Readers should note two warnings. Expertise in other branches of economic
study is of limited assistance in studying economic inequality and income
distribution: it may even be a handicap if it lures the student into making
those same simplifying assumptions like those about well-informed rational
choice, which may be helpful in studying the economics of finance, trade,
production and even consumption, but often hinder the study of income distribution.
Secondly, whatever conclusions are reached about this subject of distribution
and inequality are certain to provoke strong hostility from one faction
or and other, if they are at all definite, since the subject matter is
concerned with decisions which all appear to damage some parties so as
to advance the interests of others.
Yet this study is well worth undertaking, just
because all the issues involved are ones about which people do feel strongly
and recognize as seriously affecting their own interests at one point or
another. By learning to recognise the same patterns of misunderstanding
and prejudice repeated over and over again, with variations, under widely
differing circumstances and among widely varying types of people quite
remote from their own, readers may increase their own ability to make balanced
judgements about similar issues which affect them personally.
Champernowne, D.G. & Cowell, F.A. Economic inequality and income distribution, Cambridge University Press 1998, p. xvii.
