In Western countries, is the socioeconomic gap widening or narrowing?

[MissSunshine2]

In western countries in particular. I ask because I mostly socialise within the Autistic community and I find that being Autistic is an equaliser.

My friends are mostly a mixture of working class and the wealthy, because they’re the people I normally come across. We all sit in groups together for dinner, no one being considered more or less than; so I’m not sure how things normally go outside the Autistic community or outside the community sector, where I’ve been dealing with people.

[Kaneki05]

It's widening but in the way you are talking about it from a purely social thing you are probably right with that because if in such community revolving around something not judged by wealth you'll see many different types of wealth gather.
But socioeconomic is not just about that. It's a wider look on wealth disparity.

[LC75LC71]

Ugh. I can't give you advice on how to level up your friendbase outside of your selected group, but not using words like socioeconomic should help no matter what.

[OneViewpoint]

Wealth inequality is increasing rapidly in most western societies operating under a Capitalist economic system. It's a fundamental flaw of Capitalism and democratic government that is not designed to fight corruption from concentrated wealth in the hands of a relative few individuals.

[Berethor]

The Wage Gap is a Myth, you can Read about it in the Link Below, have a good time. :)

https://www.cato.org/commentary/gender-pay-gap-myth-wont-go-away

[genericname85]

it's widening in all countries. cause money always accumulates in fewer and fewer people. cause money as pretty much any ressource is subject to the pareto distribution mechanism. there's certain political tools that can slow that down and certain catastrophic historic events can sort of "reset" it but in history we never had a society that managed to stabilize socioeconomic distribution of ressources in a way where the pareto distribution didn't occur.

[genericname85]

i guess pareto distribution just names the snapshot of the status quo that will always occur. the process is called the Matthew effect or more generally "preferential attachment", cause the tendency for ressources to be more likely allocated wherever there is already a lot of ressources is persistent througout nature. and there's no society ever that didn't have the matthew effect, thus no society that ever didn't have a pareto distribution of wealth.

[FreyaRed]

Widening. The bottoms stagnates while the top grows into orbit.

[msc545]

It's whitening and widening, of course. I can't even believe you asked this question.

[4ngelic]

widening considerably

[exitseven]

It is getting wider. AI will make this worse.

[beefcakebradybatson]

Vastly widening.

[CupcakeTheDestroyer]

It’s widening