It all began with an anonymous Twitter handle named “Ivan the K.” The self-appointed “Lead Independent Director of Finance Twitter” had a dark theory in the depths of the pandemic. In 2020, they asked the universe, “Why is no one talking about a K recovery?” since there was much discussion at that time about an economic bounceback in the shape of either a U, an L, or, most bullish of all, a V. “Some things will bounce back,” Ivan wrote, “some will not recover. Think about it.”

Economists seem to have thunk on it and agreed: The K is real. It bears similarities to another saying, invented nearly 200 years earlier by the great English romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley : “The rich get richer, the poor get poorer.”

This is also called “the Matthew effect,” as some trace the sentiment

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