How Workers Get Poor Because Capitalists Get Rich: A General Equilibrium Model of Labor Supply, Community, and the Class Distribution of Income

Abstract

We develop an integrated, general equilibrium, model of how the presence of vertical ties of ‘community’ between sections of workers and sections of capitalists can critically affect the distribution of income between capitalists as a class and workers as a class, as well as between workers belonging to different communities. We show that an exogenous increase in the incomes of capitalists sets in motion community and market processes that subsequently (a) further increase capitalists’ incomes, (b) can reduce workers’ earnings as well as welfare, and (c) systematically influence earnings differentials between workers belonging to different communities.