People are curious by nature. They are engaged in education, research, and the development of machinery and information technology. It seems that they want to use this aid to ensure their survival and improve their living conditions. To do this, they use energy and raw materials to produce products. The more products they produce and the more money they make selling them, the more of both can be distributed to the people involved.
Income is received as wages, salaries, interest and returns, among other things. They are distributed equally among the people involved, or unequally. Equality of distribution is applied, for example, when wages and salaries do not drift too far apart, as it can be the case with inequality of distribution. The unequal distribution of income is reflected, among other things, in the proportional distribution of income or as a result of speculative use of money.
Incomes are drifting apart in a growth-promoting way and create the social market economy:
In the early stages of economic development, distributing the benefits of growth in proportion to income increases may mean that some people receive larger increases than others. For people with smaller increases, there is an incentive to want to receive more in order to be able to afford more products. This is how economic growth is initiated and can initially develop seemingly by itself. Simultaneously, some of the growth gains are siphoned off for people who are unable to participate in them to a sufficient extent on their own. This type of economy is called a "social market economy". It looks like a perpetuum mobile, which at first glance hardly seems to require any regulatory intervention. Although incomes are developing in different directions, this primarily acts as a driver for growth.
Incomes are drifting apart, creating economical polarization:
Increasing automation and rationalization, coupled with the unequal distribution of growth, are leading to a widening gap in income and wealth. Some people then receive such high incomes that they save a portion of it. From a certain level of wealth, the probability of participating in speculative markets also increases, causing incomes to drift further apart. On the other hand, the incomes of other people are at such a low level that such people can hardly cover their consumption needs.
Incomes are drifting apart at the expense of people with low incomes:
Deficiencies in economic growth, driven by automation and rationalization, are becoming increasingly apparent when the unequal distribution of growth gains results in high-income individuals being served so extensively that only a small amount remains for low-income individuals.
Drifting incomes lead to the retention of resource stocks:
There is an environmental benefit to conserving resources rather than using them to achieve greater economic growth. Savings can take place when rich people and particularly rich countries save financial surpluses or use them for speculative purposes, and poor people and particularly poor countries have to minimize their consumption due to a lack of income. Thus, economic growth is limited by these circumstances and the resources saved allow richer people and in particular richer countries to have resources available for longer than if all the growth gains were distributed so equally that the increase in consumption for all people involved was towards an equal maximum level.
