In past years, I tried on several occasions and through various publications to highlight the importance of a conceptual distinction that I believe is pivotal for its ability to explain recent political and economic upheavals in Western democracies.

This conceptualization keeps the notions of inequality and divergence of income (and wealth) distinct. While the first notion – inequality - is rather common and intuitive, the second, that of divergence, needs to be qualified to understand its key role: in my interpretation, divergence is a different form of inequality of income or wealth, one that persists over time as a consequence of its structural nature, and is, or appears to be, hardly reversible.

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