In German one word covers both – verdienen. The language takes the view that people don’t deserve more than they earn.
But most people do deserve more than they earn, even – most probably – the New York hedge-fund manager and billionaire John Paulson. On the evidence, he deserves heaven on earth. Last week he donated $100 million to the maintenance, jointly with New York City, of Central Park.
What precisely are the qualities that make Mr. Paulson such a successful hedge-fund manager? Charisma? Charm? A high I.Q., persistence, imagination, courage, originality, human relationships, mathematical wizardry? Harvard? Yale? Cunning, ruthlessness? A rich wife? Is being lucky one of them? Perhaps he has an unlucky twin brother with exactly the same gifts who is only a millionaire?
In any case, why should the rewards in the financial sector be so much higher than those in social work? Social workers are usually more virtuous. But virtue, we are told, is self-rewarding.
Obviously, over time, financial leaders, whatever their qualities, have had the power to arrange society in such a way that they come out on top and social workers, and those they look after, at the bottom.
In his next gift, John Paulson will no doubt help to reverse the trend.
Eric Koch’s new book, The Golden Years: Five Stories, was launched on Saturday, March 16. The book is available from the 
Inequality and our attitude to it seem to be at the core of the current polarisation in many societies. I strongly recommend this podcast by Jon Wisman, which provides more education than most things I come across.
http://businessmatters.net/2012/10/the-price-of-inequality/
I listened to the podcasts Paul recommends and they are excellent, but all I ever learned about economics is playing Monopoly. It is simple: when I am sitting there with all the money the game is over. On the other hand, by easing the rules, the game can be prolonged forever. Granted, in Monopoly there is a considerable amount of chance involved, but so is there is real life.
Since money is only a token of the underlying economy it has to circulate. If I have a dollar in my pocket, I have a piece of paper in my pocket. If I spent the dollar I get a dollar’s worth of something. If the next person spends the dollar they again get a dollar’s worth of something. It is called the velocity of money, which estimates that money changes hands about 12 times in one year. Considering that the same dollar traveled 12 times, twelve people got one dollar’s worth of value with the same dollar. It gets even better: since the government collects taxes from economic activity every time the dollar changes hands the government can get a bit of the action which then pays for all the social programs government supplies.
When inequality reaches a certain level the economy collapses and everybody looses.