We're number 7, behind communist China
Submitted by Timmethy2.0 on Thu, 12/01/2016 - 1:25pm
In terms of wealth inequality. 42.1% of our wealth is owned by the richest 1%. I haven't figured out how to copy graphs to here, yet, but here's a recreation of the list from the linked Independent article:
Of course, we have a lot more wealth, for now, than these other countries, so our oligarchs, for now, are the richest.
Comments
Here you go
I right click the image at its source. Save image to your computer (I use my desktop). Then use the "image" link at the bottom of your essay (or comment). Let all the images load from c99. Then select browse, upload the picture, put your cursor in the essay where you want the image, and insert. Sounds trickier than it is...
“Until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.”
Thank you n/t
Beware the bullshit factories.
This is why we need a Global People's Revolution to end
Rule by the Rich, not just wealth inequality. We need to make it clear, we humans have had enough of that.
There are two very different metrics: Wealth and Income.
There's wealth inequality and there's income inequality. The latter is also stated as "inequality in income gains."
When measuring the social experience, economists look at Income Equality because it has a direct effect on "social mobility," which measures if a child will ever make as much money as his parents. That's sometimes referred to as the GINI Index. The higher the GINI the faster families are traveling down the road toward multigenerational poverty. The GINI can predict future national poverty rates. As might be imagined, the GINI was low from FDR to Reagan. Since then, the US has the GINI of a banana plantation.
Here's a hint to keep this simple during a propaganda blast: The only way to affect the GINI is through tax rates on income. When the GINI was low and the US built a modern nation, college was free or affordable, even medicine was doable — the tax rate on the highest bracket of earnings was 93 percent. Also, an effective inheritance tax was in place that returned to Caesar what was Caesar's.
So, when you hear about "jobs" or "bringing back jobs" in relation to improving the fact that the majority of the US population is circling the drain, economically — that is ignorant. Jobs don't do anything but feed people living from paycheck to paycheck in a high GINI nation. Tax rates are the only thing that affects the wellbeing of People.
Income Inequality us tracked yearly, and its trend monitored.
Wealth Inequality, as in the chart posted above, is a snapshot taken once in a great while. It shows nations in an economic unmooring or chaos, sometimes gaining in overall economic growth. It also shows nations with corrupt tax laws or acting as a tax dodge hideout for the money of the world's wealthy. It's common for emergent nations to appear here. They can soar fast and early economically, and are filled with overnight billionaires. The wealth is very unbalanced (the trailhead to corruption) before they finally get a grip on themselves and refocus on national investments in the people and their environment. Everything else goes down a black hole.
Nations where most of the people have a high mean income and a high standard of wellbeing do not appear on this list because the bounty of the nation is a commonwealth. The poorest and most destitute nations don't show up here, either, for obvious reasons. Which nations are missing from that list?
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The political system is what it is because the People are who they are. — Plato
Well that sure makes a lot of sense
That must be why so little is being done to fix the problem.
Beware the bullshit factories.
The 1% got us
right where they want us. Broke and dead broke. They have no intentions of curing that, only making it worse. It's why there are no jobs, and why what few that remain are headed "offshore."
the little things you can do are more valuable than the giant things you can't! - @thanatokephaloides. On Twitter @wink1radio. (-2.1) All about building progressive media.
Its a choice that the American People have made.
if they don't immediately understand how they made that choice, then they are not fit to vote in an advanced democracy that requires each citizen to be fully informed. Unless this is a sham democracy and it doesn't matter how you vote, you still live in a tax-doging enclave for the wealthy while the huge majority go without basic human rights like health care, freedom from hunger, and affordable housing. Not to mention coast to coast blight and inadequate, old-tech transportation.
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The political system is what it is because the People are who they are. — Plato
"Merit" is propaganda too
I forget the source, but a few years back some economists did a software simulation of an economy in which every agent started off with both equal "resources" and equal "skills". The result was a standard Gini distribution driven entirely by the randomness of the simulator.
In other words, the Gini curve in a market economy is entirely due to the mathematics of market structures, not the virtues of the entities in that market.
We can’t save the world by playing by the rules, because the rules have to be changed.
- Greta Thunberg
That may be true.
Mathematics moves a lot of systems, and we do live in an entropic universe.
All we can really know is the human experience of mathematics; how we feel "inside" of a particular equation. Social justice falls apart inside of high Gini nations where income gains year over year flow to only a tiny handful of the population, and the succeeding generations of the majority become poorer and more destitute.
We also know how to fix it so that doesn't happen, by adjusting income tax rates to invest excess gains in ways that improve opportunities and provide a stable life for every citizen.
It's entirely up to the people if they want to live a shitty life or not. That's why self-determination is a human right. (At least it is in the rest of the world.) If Gini is a random thing, then I would want to live in a nation that successfully protects against its soul-sucking occurrence. That would be an excellent reason to help one's family to emigrate.
But, again, it's a personal choice.
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The political system is what it is because the People are who they are. — Plato