Taking a devil's advocate position, if we consider your argument to be true then it's implied that one solution for poor people is take out loans. The incentive for doing so would be to obtain money to purchase property and/or assets that will appreciate in value. When it comes time to repay the loan, the amount owed will be less valuable than the property/assets you bought.
This happens all the time. This is how businesses are created, how college degrees are obtained, etc.
I think you're mistakenly identifying the fractional reserve system as the most significant cause behind the (very general) problem of increasing gross wealth disparity. Sure, fractional reserve banking inflates the money supply, but competition (whether it's fair or unfair/illegal) and greed are more direct causes of gross wealth disparity than the appreciation in value of 'idle' property/assets (i.e. not a business; perhaps a home or a gold bar). In the unlikely event that I go to sleep tonight and wake up tomorrow morning to a totally altruistic world, I have a feeling that much of that wealth disparity would disappear rather quickly (e.g. rich people might donate to the poor or work for free, hospitals and medicines from pharmaceutical companies would be at low or no-cost, etc.).
Hey Devil's advocate, nice to have you here. Glad we have lawyer types in here to defend Satan.
And here is why I think
FRB IS THE MOST SIGNIFICANT CAUSE BEHIND WEALTH DISPARITY:
1. You are the Queen of England - you do nothing - you don't even sell property. You become far wealthier than everyone.
2. Above applies to every land owning aristocrat/businessman/realtor.
3. Some smart guys realise the system is COMPLETELY RIGGED. What do you do? You borrow HEAPS OF MONEY, you start XYZ Hedge Fund and you buy any kind of asset for the heck of it. You look smart doing it and get tons of bonuses and profit. Everyone thinks you're a hero until M3 collapses. Then everyone thinks you're an idiot. But hey, you're rich.
4. Some other dumb people with no college degree happen to work in real estate. Wow, they get rich because they get a cut of every transaction!!! They look smart but actually they're just average.
5. Other dumb people work in banking and get cheap loans and have "good careers" in banking. They become successful and respected in society. Whilst nurses, engineers, firemen, teachers, computer programmers and FAST FOOD WORKERS all struggle to keep up with the cost of living.
6. Smart engineers, physicists and mathematicians are co-opted into the banking system to design financial algorithms that benefit the 1%.
So yeah. I blame FRB. The finance sector as a percentage of the US economy has increased from less than 3% to over 7%.
http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2011/12/14/389487/financial-sector-gdp-recession/According to the latest data from the Commerce Department, the financial sector now accounts for 8.4 percent of the United States’ Gross Domestic Product, “eclipsing the peak it hit in 2006.” In the 1950s, the financial sector accounted for less than 3 percent of GDP. Meanwhile, financial firms are once again making more than 30 percent of all corporate profits in the U.S.
http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/06/11/financialization-as-a-cause-of-economic-malaise/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_r=0According to a new article in the Journal of Economic Perspectives by the Harvard Business School professors Robin Greenwood and David Scharfstein, financial services rose as a share of G.D.P. to 8.3 percent in 2006 from 2.8 percent in 1950 and 4.9 percent in 1980. The following table is taken from their article.