Don't let the term "nominal" undersell this: it's nominal inequality that locks working people out of assets and imposes upon them the need to service the (otherwise) exponentially growing profit expectations of their economic complements. At no point in the cycle is it better to be poor than rich, but the contractionary quadrant is the one where the gap shrinks.
2008 decreased inequality for a very short time, inequality increased after. The rich have the available assets to profit from instability and are able to ride out unemployment, for the poor a crash and losing their job can be existential.
Why would it? The wealthy people who haven’t allocated their capital to those assets that are depressed from a recession can reallocate to the depressed assets and end up even wealthier on the rebound. People with no money at all don’t have that opportunity to invest.
> At no point in the cycle is it better to be poor than rich, but the contractionary quadrant is the one where the gap shrinks.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0k5aVLi_yhM
When the market crashes, a lot of people lose jobs, and a lot of people die. Everyone suffers but those with money suffer the least, by far.