[media-credit name=”Nathan Hartung” align=”alignright” width=”336″][/media-credit]As more wealth becomes concentrated among society’s wealthiest citizens, London School of Economics professor Robert Wade said in a talk Wednesday this trend contributes to more inequality in policymaking that favors the wealthy.

As part of the Havens Center lecture series, Wade explored a variety of political parties and organizations that have ignored inequality, such as the World Bank and the leading rich and developing nations in the Group of 20.

Wade referenced the Gini coefficient, a statistical measure of the distribution of income throughout the world, as evidence for why inequality is an issue that needs to be addressed.

Recently, there has been an uptick of concern about inequality on a national and international level with the World Bank’s reports on income distribution, Wade said. The Global Risks Report 2012, presented at the World Economic Forum, addressed the chronic fiscal imbalances and disparities in income, he said.

Wade compared many different countries and their levels of inequalities citing new data about the top 1 percent of incomes.

A native of New Zealand, Wade explored the great liberalization or “big bang” in New Zealand from 1984 to 2011, in which the economy was supposed to soar, but instead sank. The top 1 percent still did very well, he said.

Wade said the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development measured inequality in 15 different countries, which showed the most unequal countries were the Latino and Middle Eastern countries, European Mediterranean countries and Northwestern European countries.

Wade said there is often a “difference in preference between the wealthy and general public,” citing the fact that 53 percent of the general public agrees with the idea that the government should provide jobs, while 80 percent of the wealthy agree. The wealthy tend to oppose things like health insurance and more spending on public schools, he said.

As income concentration increases, the wealthy make it harder for the general public to have a say in issues, he said.

“Preferences of the wealthy get translated into public policy,” Wade said, noting that such a reality makes him question the democracy of the United States.

Wade said there is a “money-empathy gap,” where people high on the social economic ladder tend to become less empathetic and more selfish, which explains why the preferences of the wealthy differ.  The wealthy tend to believe that their own success is the result of their own merits and the poverty of others is due to their failures, he said.

The middle class does not seem to be raising issues against the wealthy and the “money-empathy” gap because they are more concerned with the redistribution of the lower class that could be raised, Wade said.

The mainstream left-wing party has also lost its political narrative. The left-wing party should focus its criticism of conservatives on advancing the interests and preferences of the wealthy, he said.

The conversation of inequality should focus on outcomes, not on improving equality opportunities, Wade said, and focus needs to be on the link between today and tomorrow.