What is more, this basic force for divergence can be reinforced by other mechanisms. For instance, the savings rate may increase sharply with wealth.36 Or, even more important, the average effective rate of return on capital may be higher when the individual’s initial capital endowment is higher (as appears to be increasingly common). The fact that the return on capital is unpredictable and arbitrary, so that wealth can be enhanced in a variety of ways, also poses a challenge to the meritocratic model. Finally, all of these factors can be aggravated by the Ricardian scarcity principle: the
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