POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC ASPECTS INVOLVED IN RESUMING THE DEBATE ON INCOME DISTRIBUTION

This paper discusses how the issue of income distribution has resumed its importance in recent decades, showing the evolution of income inequality from the post-Second World War to the present, based on data from studies elaborated by researchers who work in internationally renowned academic centers. Income inequality starts to increase with the rise of neoliberalism in the 1980s, becoming greater in the 2000s, concentrated in the richest 1% of capitalist countries. This reality has demanded new interpretations by scholars, bringing to the debate contributions from Sociology, Political Science and Political Economy. Authors have shown how changes in the international order and its consequences on the pattern of capitalist accumulation in favor of rentier capitalism – a predominantly financial accumulation of capital – have altered the functioning of representative Democracies and affected economic inequality in capitalist countries, contrasting what happened in the “Golden Age” of capitalism (1945-1980) with what has been happening since the 1980s and especially in the 2000s.