Stanford historian uncovers a grim correlation between violence and inequality

So the last decade's decline in violence in the US indicates a decline in inequality?

In the past few weeks the idea of 'legitimatizing violence' has been circulating heavily. On my Facebook feed most of it has centered on the idea that it is "okay" to punch neo-nazis now. The people saying this are people I'd never expect to. Twitter is similar. I wish I had stats on whether the legitimatization meme is really rising. To me, it looks like the fake news meme. Suddenly it's everywhere.

Louis Chauvel, a french sociology professor, made a similar argument using a Prey-Predatory model with trade union membership and income inequality over the last 100 years :

"This article shows empirically how trade union membership and income inequality are mutually related in twelve countries over more than 100 years. While past research has shown that high income inequality occurs alongside low trade union membership, we show that past income inequality actually increases trade union membership with a time lag, as trade unions recruit more members after inequality has been high. But we also show that strengthened trade unions then fight inequality, thereby destroying what helped them to recruit new members in the past. As trade union density decreases, inequality increases and eventually re-incentivises workers to join unions again. By showing this empirically, we reconceptualise the relationship between inequality and union density as a prey and predator model, where predators eat prey – unions destroy inequality, but thereby also destroy their own basis for survival. By empirically showing that trade union density and social inequality influence each other in this way over long periods, this article contributes to a dynamic approach on how social problems and social movements interact."

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/kykl.12128/full

How about we take away everything down to 10^6$ from the 0.0001% richest and redistribute it to everyone. We repeat this with the 0.0001% of the richest every year from there on. Every time someone is chosen for this honour they get a medal.

I don't really think that their conclusions are very honest. They provide only extraordinary situations, which are not usual by any measure. Masses during (and some time after, for like ~1 generation) such events are much less demanding, and they unite to survive (I can think that a lot of damaged countries after WWII built very successful industries, sometimes from scratch).

What I think can really affect violence, is a level of income for lower-class people. For example, in a lot of ex-USSR countries it is quite a problem – people are pretty violent just in everyday life, and we don't see positive trend in Russia, for instance. So, while super big difference between income of top and low classes contributes to the violence, the ability to have decent life, I think, will decrease violence drastically. Of course, it is oversimplification, there are tons of other factors, but I feel it this way, because violence is mostly done by people with the lowest income (and I don't think it is mandatory to be low relative to the highest, it is relative to the good level of life).