A simple, although crude, way to distinguish between the economic incentive story and the anti-competitive story is to assume that 100 percent of the income disparity in the United States is the result of market incentives. Under this assumption, the Gini coefficient of the United States can serve as an upper threshold between the “good” and the “bad” mechanisms for income disparity. It is an upper threshold because in the United States, racial discrimination and the political power of big business can also be construed as obstructions to economic opportunities.
