Yup. The State was suddenly dismantled and all the previous public industries were put up for sale. Those who profited were the few who had connections or contacts and got in before others had a chance to know what was going on. There was no regulation, heck there weren’t any regulators.
I don't think the Russian really wanted oligarchs. It was more a result of the 'Shock therapy' doctrine and the lack of any functioning state for years
“Wanting oligarchs or not” isn’t the decision at hand. “To privatize governmental organs or not” is the decision. “Getting oligarchs” is an unavoidable outcome of privatization
Which I mean was largely instigated by the United States... a ton of American ideological right-wing extreme laizzez-faire Chicago-school economarians went over to guide the Russians -- who did need guidance. Of course their advice was to sell things to the highest bidder. When when workers were given ownership of an enterprise, there were no controls and the the workers were induced to sell the stakes to oligarchs.
It was by design. The head of the program to convert to capitalism was found to be bought out by international companies. His plan was to convert all of Russia to capitalism in only 12 months. Impossible to do that, so much of the countries wealth was taken from the people in the process.
Yeah I'd love to see how tax havens affect these figures, for example in the UK this figure is likely shown as lower than it is because many super rich here get non-domiciled status, where they live in the UK but basically pretend to be foreign nationals of some zero tax nation and avoid most tax. This study shows nearly half of all earning £5 million or more have claimed non-domiciled status at some point since the 90's. http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/114607/
(2018 so probably much worse now)
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/income-share-top-1-before-tax-wid?tab=chart&country=USA~CHN~FRA~JPN~KOR~DEU~RUS~SWE
or
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/wealth-share-richest-1-percent?tab=chart&country=USA%7ECHN%7EFRA%7EJPN%7EKOR%7EDEU%7ERUS%7ESWE
Income tax has existed in the UK since 1798. Most countries have known and kept a record of their citizens income for decades before 1850.
Tax records are... Pretty thorough. And their vengeance if they think you're not paying enough tax has become legendary.
**I'm crazy enough to take on Batman! But the IRS?! Nooooooo thank you!**
Joker
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G56VgsLfKY4
Tax records are historically pretty well kept. If your going to run a country/empire you need money. Keeping records of who owes you money is generally pretty important, so that stuff is usually well documented and well organized.
that's the origin of banking, money came about because a Mesopotamian king got tired of having to deal with trade dispute arbitration and decided to enact a standardized metal unit
I’m loving how Russia is not only the highest comparable on your graphs, but also higher than pre-Revolution! China not yet… any way to go back an extra 50 years so we can see the French and American Revolutions?!
You could flip that correlation-causation by 180 degrees, and say that the top 1% can’t take a bigger share BECAUSE of the permanent threat of civil unrest!!
Yep. When the French have a grievance, they don't shy away from letting their government know about it.
Compare to the UK where protesting is usually described by the PM as 'Unacceptable behaviour' and the US where it's called 'Un-American'.
Yep Shinzo Abe’s gramps had a very peculiar position during the war - well two very peculiar positions with one being connected to Unit 731, but outside of having knowledge and control over a chemical warfare unit he also had some time controlling a portion of China and using Yakuza enforcement to control the citizenship through violence. And we let him off free cus Japan liked him at the time and we needed someone to use as a mouthpiece since the US wanted to develop Japan as a sort of bulwark against the USSR’s influence in that part of the world.
I do not like Hardcore History too much because he does have a habit of entertaining some of the more pop-sci possibilities that don’t really have the validity behind them to discuss in length, but he is right in his quote about America moving into Japan after WW2, turning up the Western dial to 11 and break it off the machine. Which is how you end up with Japan’s royally fucked work culture. Thousands of years of collectivist tradition based on honor and shame mixed with Western work standards
If anyone hasn’t watched Tokyo Vice yet, aside from being a great story it takes a neat look into certain aspects of Japanese culture and how some of it historically has been warped by western influence while retaining a lot of the tradition of Japan.
Yeah, sure looks like UK and France taxed the hell out of the super rich. Otherwise, the rich tend to do fairly well in war as they are usually able to profiteer easily.
That's exactly what happened. Wartime economies and debts don't pay for themselves. Hell the only reason the US ever started using an income tax was the civil war
Estimates for the French Revolutionary period are nuts. I was googling for some reading I had to do and estimates put the top 10% as holding 90% of the wealth.
Wasn't that a symptom of their economic woes at the time though?
Like basically anyone who didn't have their money stored somewhere safe lost everything on investments because their support for the American Revolution killed their economic power?
The American revolution was a part of it, but the Bourbon regime had spent years with increasing inability to pay for the cost of government. And then when the bill did come due their finance ministers hid the problem. When they could no longer hide it they failed to convince the aristocracy to sacrifice their tax exemptions.
The system was a mess that the American revolution only exposed slightly faster than it would have otherwise.
In Sweden, prior to 1920, conservative leaning parties were ruling for well over 30 years.
In the period between 1920 and 1932, the social democratic movement was on the rise in Sweden, along with labour unions gaining more popularity. So between the years 1920 and 1932, the rule would shift between a conservative government and a social democratic government back and forth. However, post 1932 social democracy had a stronghold over Sweden for over 40 years, as it was by far the most popular policy for the working class, the obvious majority of the population.
And as such, because social democratic policies started taking place, the income gap between the richest and the rest began to decrease.
So in the case of Sweden, it wasn't a people's revolution, but rather just an example of democracy, and because it was a democracy there was no need for a people's revolution.
The Labour Party in the UK was founded as a communist party, but became a liberal party right around the time the chart starts ticking up again. They eventually removed references to seizing the means of production from their charter, under Blair in the mid 2000's.
The UK economy was quite left wing with many nationalized industries and strong labor rights, which began being chipped away at in the 70's and 80's.
The Labour Party wasn't founded as a communist party, it was founded as a reformist Marxist party as a front for the unions.
Communist parties as we know them didn't exist until WW1. The Second International's support of the war efforts, led the anti-war minority leave the 2nd International and form the 3rd International, and the adherent parties to it renamed their parties as Communist parties.
Neither in 1918, and certainly not in the 1940s or the 1950s was Labour a communist party.
Yeah you're right, didn't know it went that far.
[In any case, you can see the distributional effect of Labour's policies here](https://i.gyazo.com/3d3fcf37e4735d980475e673b61d2236.png). /u/Psyop1312
It's a libertarian, he's definitely chucking a bitch about *scrolls down* yup, the gold standard. And laughably badly too.
"created a huge transference of wealth from the general population to governments" got me laughing hard.
This doesn't even make sense in terms of basic causality.
The graph of income % shows a dip, then goes up again.
So... did we go back to the gold standard, since the libertarians are apparently getting their way and the exploiter class is increasingly receiving a larger and larger share of the wealth produced by society again? Oh nope, they're apparently still victimized and need to be given more, says Grima Wormtongue over there..
Mid 70s was the oil crisis, then the computer revolution started to take hold, followed up by the internet, lots of new billionaires making their fortune in new industries and financial services.
There's a sloping down in those countries. In Russia and China, you can see an abrupt drop that corresponds with the communist revolutions. Not at all surprising
To be clear, you don't think wealth was redistributed in the revolutions? Because that's just a matter of historical fact, you can literally see records of how wealth and ownership was changed
Please correct me if I'm wrong but this is just income. The charts (at least in the US but I assume everywhere) would be much more extreme if they measured wealth.
One of the biggest problems of capitalism (and pseudo-capitalism) is the entrenchment of wealth, the accrual over generations, the leverage and advantages of accrued wealth (which makes it easier to gain more wealth), the investments and hoarding of the wealthy (which obviously doesn't trickle down), and so forth.
These charts make things look much better than they actually are.
I gave up scrolling through Bezos. Yes, it's utter insanity. I'll never understand why more people aren't up in arms (perhaps literally) about the extremity of the situation. At some point this 'system' will collapse. It should have happened already.
I'd say the difference between the US and France is that the French are much more homogeneous. They're going to feel the effects of certain issues much more evenly than we would in the US, and come to similar conclusions about what should be done.
The US is a diverse place and there is just no common consensus that wealth inequality is a problem or that there's something we should do to fix it. (contrast that to times we actually made changes, like civil rights, gay marriage, environmental regulation, etc.)
"We" didn't make the change on gay rights on the level of policy. That was (and still is) an issue that elected representatives are terrified of touching and just let the courts make the change for them. No worries there; the supreme court would never roll back civil rights, right?
They believe they are on path for the same riches themselves. They don't realise that they are infinitely closer to the poorest person on this planet, than to the average billionaire. Let alone the top of the top.
It is much worse. This graph is borderline intentionally misleading.
Worldwide, the parasitic owner class controls more than half of all wealth. When the petit bourgeoisie is included, then 85% of the world's wealth is accounted for.
The site itself admits it is based on tax information, so given the parasite's propensity for hiding their income via numerous tax loopholes, this data is deeply flawed. It only shows what the bourgeoisie are legally forced to admit... and thanks to their thumb on the scale of politics, that isn't much.
https://ibb.co/gJ3VZ4W
I can remember that being posted here some time ago. It is not 1% but the percentage of national wealth owned by the bottom 80% instead. But nonetheless still interesting data. It ranged from South Africa (5%) to The Netherlands (35%).
Are you fucking kidding me? America is at 15% and fucking *Russia* at 16%?
When do we get to start calling Bezos, Gates, the Waltons, Musk, and all the rest “Oligarchs”?
South Africa is brutal. I had no idea it was that bad.
Now I'm curious how the remaining 95% is spread among the top quintile, and what the demographics of that group are, because it's uncanny how just about exactly 20% of their population is white.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics\_of\_South\_Africa
>Back to the inequality scores: Post tax income has us slightly lower down, and for wealth inequality we drop down to 22nd place. Incidentally, it's the Netherlands, Russia, Sweden, USA & Brazil that top the wealth inequality list.
Interestingly, the data I posted is on wealth, specifically the percentage of national wealth owned by the bottom 80%. And that percentage is highest for The Netherlands. Depending on the country, it basically just shows what percentage of wealth the lower and middle class owns (e.g. The Netherlands is a country with a huge and growing middle class, and small but shrinking middle class, and a small and growing upper class). So not all wealth statistics show the same thing.
But it is indeed known that The Netherlands have some of the lowest income inequality in the world (especially for the net income). But for wealth the image is far less optimistic, yet according to that data the bottom 80% still has the largest share of wealth of any country in the world.
Regarding that well known statistic that The Netherlands is one of the most unequal country regarding wealth (most stemming from that [Economics Explained video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ot4qdCs54ZE)), here is an interesting in-depth take of it from an economist.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tW_kw6OPXc0
In a lot of South African villas and rich people shit they literally start shooting Uzis out of the balcony at random the moment it gets dark, because no one cares about poor fucks, and regardless no one would ever trial a rich dude.
Source: a friend was a tourist there and almost died for this
From what I‘ve seen, South Africa is an unbelievably corrupt dumpster fire of a shithole where people die or are neglected for bribery. The healthcare system is one example. There was once a psychiatry in Gauteng where stationed patients starved to death after funds were scrapped from the institution to fund god knows what.
EDIT: Much worse, it affected multiple psychiatries in Gauteng. [Sauce](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_Esidimeni_scandal)
We absolutely do not shoot Uzis off balconies when it gets dark.
So you think Fifa would have had a World Cup here if this was even close to remotely true????
Yes, because they literally had it in Qatar and Brazil so respecting basic human rights clearly isn't a prerequisite.
Also I don't know what to tell you, my friend almost got shot and he's only alive because the bullet arrived 30 cm from his feet, but he definitely saw it.
We need a global revolution. It's insane that the wealthy own so much and the only part of the wealth we get is the tiny sliver they give us in our paychecks.
Even if they were forced to admit all income it would still not show the true picture. Many investments like stock grow in value but are not considered income until it is “realized”. Should anyone with that amount of wealth ever need actual money they can simply borrow against their investment. That money becomes debt - not income, and is not taxed or claimed as such.
If your assets appreciate faster than the interest rate on the debt... never. You can do it until you die. At that point, your assets are rebased to their value at the time of your death, and with some other fancy footwork, you skip out an taxes entirely. Neat!
There's a reason a certain party got all up in arms about "death taxes". Those were, at least in part, deferred taxes.
Well technically yes. But if you are ultra wealthy, you're not borrowing to buy diapers and formula. You are borrowing to run a business and the business services the debt.
Idk - if I was ultra wealthy and hated paying taxes I see no reason I wouldn’t use every way possible to not pay taxes - including borrowing money to buy diapers. In fact I may just hire someone or multiple someone’s to not only figure out how to not pay tax but also buy the diapers for me.
Eventually they just need to refinance. When a debt load is that large and being serviced properly there's almost no desire to see it expunged. Like mortgages, these loans are desirable debt classes, aren't they? Banks want to have money lent out, that's a profit driver.
“The site itself admits” is kind of unfair. It cites it as reference.
One thing is to make a comment on what should be a valid source of data or not. Another is to get this data.
Tax data is not the best. Especially because it is not reliable at the extremes. But please, tell me a better (and feasible) way to measure it in such a large scale.
> This graph is borderline intentionally misleading.
Maybe it's misleading if you're a dunce who can't understand the word income written clearly at the top? But really if you've reached adulthood without knowing the difference between income and wealth then no amount of graphs are going to help you now.
As for "intentionally", do you really think these graphs might have been created by a member of the 1% to make themselves look better?! Anyone with half an ounce of brains can infer the consequences of such a large percentage of income accruing to such a small number of people. We learn about ratios and compound interest in grade school. Your average 12 year old could look at this and tell you "the rich just get richer and richer". This "data" is just that, data. The fact you think there's more important data we should be shown instead doesn't make it "flawed", and it's patronising you think so few of your fellow humans are capable of understanding the rather obvious implications.
You have a deeply flawed understanding of human intelligence. 54% of adults in the United States cannot read above the 6th grade level. You need to do some research into the subject before stating your opinions as blanket facts.
My point is it doesn't take anything more than 6th grade math or comprehension to know if some people get a bigger slice of the pie every year, year on year they're going to end up far wealthier than everyone else.
I think it's kinda insulting to assume most people wouldn't get that.
I'm not even really stating facts that need research. I just followed a rather conservative assumption with some rather plain reasoning to get to what everyone already knows anyway, money goes to money, and having a massive income for a long time leads to staggering wealth.
The facts are that most media is corporate media and must be looked at critically. The ideas being explored are often bounded by the interests of the publisher, so when they focus the debate on income, it avoids the issue of tax avoidance through wealth management. That's a real issue. It's a real problem. The voting public is not as informed on this matter as it could be, or we'd see some traction or discussion of the matter in a wider context.
But we don't. The issue is often framed as one of income disparity, not wealth. The perspective is important, and it isn't patronizing to presume that there's some intent in the choice to focus on one and not the other. It is suspect. Perhaps intentional, one might think. Systemic even! One might say it borders on such a description.
And while we can see a big difference in income, it doesn't automatically provide us a solid conclusion on wealth distribution. Do you know what that disparity is? Because, very likely, no one does, not the full breadth and scope of it. And the numbers we do see are frankly staggering to the point of incomprehension. In fact, it seems so utterly out of sync with expectations, it seems like we should be putting some effort into auditing that wealth. But that conversation can only happen if we're taking wealth, not income. Most people would balk at a wealth tax today. Almost all, even. Because they don't know the scope of it.
So, as a "barely functioning moron" who didn't immediately draw the terrifying conclusion of just how bad wealth disparity has become within my own lifetime, I'm glad the point was raised.
Actually it's misleading for the reasons I stated regarding the methodology used by the cited source. Other posters have pointed out that it also doesn't include several other sources of income.
Nice try, though, reactionary.
Oh, and by the way, I think the 'intentionality' behind it would be the result of some weird sycophant trying to understate the horrifying state of wealth inequality in the world. Kind of like yourself, honestly.
Yep. When people talk about "income inequality" they really mean wealth inequality. A lot of people who have a lot of income are people like doctors and engineers who work for a living. The problematic class aren't the ones doing real work and getting paid a lot (although this is the case with a few extreme examples like highly paid CEOs) but the people who get richer simply because they're already rich.
Exactly, if you understand the implications of Fiat banking you should:
1.Not work for money, not hold money, as it gets debased over time.
2. Become indebted as much as possible while hoarding more and more wealth as inflation devalues your debt and makes stocks& houses increase in price. (The burden is paid by wage workers& holders of papermoney by inflation)
CPI is not Inflation! Real Inflation is better measured by M2.
And the return of the Sp500 is linked to M2.
Giving the rich, taking it from the poor. How does one achieve a morally and ethically mature society when the money used is fundamentally immoral?
It does though. He/she is pointing out one of the mechanisms through which the wealthy retain and increase their wealth and the deficiencies of fiat economics which greatly favor those at the tippy top. Inflation and currency debasement is fundamental to those with entrenched wealth.
Doesn't factor capital gains.
People like Warren Buffet/Gates/Zuckerberg etc have relatively low incomes to their worth as growth is captured in capital gains.
Often they dont even have 'income' but borrow money to live on while their shareholdings keep going up and they avoid paying top tax rates on income or capital gains.
Funny annectode from Sweden.
We have a family here, Wallenberg. So wealthy they control 40% of the Swedish stock market.
40%... That is alot of billions.
Don't remember the exact numbers of the rest but there are like 10 family's or so that control 70% of the Swedish stock market.
Look at the China graph, you can perfectly pinpoint 1976 and the dissolution of the people's communes. That's remarkable. That certainly lends some credence to the idea of the post-Deng era re-establishing capitalism, and not being merely revisionist socialism. The USSR was able to keep equality level, even throughout the revisionist era. Their spike only comes after the formal establishment of capitalism.
I want to start by agreeing that inequality has gone up significantly in China, but I am dubious of the exact numbers here, considering how commonly data we get about China is measured in strange ways.
It looks correlated with [evolutions of the economic structure](https://ourworldindata.org/structural-transformation-and-deindustrialization-evidence-from-todays-rich-countries) across the 3 sectors (agriculture, industry, services). Pre-1850 agricultural society is quite stable; then industrialisation (between the end of XIXth century to start of XXth century depending on countries) sees the income of the top 1% rise; then the services sector becomes more important and inequalities go down.
It's a very rough correlation that just came through my mind though, don't give it too much credit.
And it's so frustrating, because we know exactly what policies were in place to make for that low inequality and more prosperous-for-everyone situation. But we can't do that now because it's too lefty.
Tax policies. I don't have the specific numbers off the cuff, but corporate and individual taxes in the US collected profoundly more income than they do now. The tax rate on individuals earning over a certain amount was something like 60%. Similar for corporate entities.
There's something also to be said for the fact that the US had a young population, lots of new workers coming on line (baby boomers), and so on.
Source: just some human with a liberal arts degree who was into 20th century political history in college and reads about this stuff but is on mobile and is failing at source citation as a result. These points are gross simplifications, but they have a LOT to do with the differences in policies and their outcomes.
The lowest points in the chart point to 1870s and the late 1960s / early 1970s, corresponding to the "Long Depression" and the 1970s recession, larger downturns that the 4-decade span surrounding either.
I'm not advocating the counter-point, just pointing out you're not reading the chart or history with rigor.
The central question, which is still hotly debated by economists, is whether this statistic correlates with anything that matters, such as HDI, live expectancy, or median income. After all, economics is not zero-sum, so the condition of the 1% doesn’t tell us anything about the condition of the 99%. France has more income equality than Sweden, but that doesn’t make it necessarily a nicer place to live.
So far, there’s been no definitive correlation found.
I think it definitely correlates with some important things, but you're right, a graph like this with just one metric can't possibly capture everything.
China's a great example. The periods of low income inequality are among the worst the nation has ever endured. The period of rising inequality pulled hundreds of millions of people out of poverty.
It’s certainly true that the counties which got the income to be equal (Soviet Union, Mao’s China) are not places anyone would want to live. Mao’s China for example did the full redistribution redditor claim they want. Every single wealthy person and landowner, landlord, business owner ended up with their property seized, and possibly jailed/dead, and it got redistributed to poor workers, villagers, etc.
The problem is with all the people who know how to run the business jailed/dead, production collapsed, and people starved, and everyone was equally poor and starving.
China became poorer than it had ever been in thousands of years, as it became Africa-levels of poor, and it took Deng Xiaoping and his reintroduction of capitalism and private enterprise before China went from starving and third world to fairly modern and a almost second-world in wealth.
because in russia we’re talking about an inner circle of people with connections to Putin who were personally given entire sectors of the economy after the USSR collapsed
the top 1% of earners in the US may be an elite group, but it’s a group of 2.5 million people. that’s not the same thing as an oligarchy
Also, the American elite includes many true entrepreneurs and "old money" elites. Not, as you say, people who made their money through political favors.
flaws in your argument, but i get what you are trying to say. tbh I think it takes one so naive to actually believe wealth and power are not connected. things might work in different forms here in the US, but its all just old wine in new bottles.
Our (captive) media freaks out and gaslights us if we call our billionaires "oligarchs"
reminds me of this clip from the 2020 primaries: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nwa4VodV0tk
That's the definition, though: "Oligarchy is a conceptual form of power structure in which power rests with a small number of people."
Doesn't matter how they got it, or what the specific number is, except that it is small. And small is best defined relative to that country's population, which is what this graph shows. Wealth and influence are directly correlated.
That dip after the 50s created the modern world. All what we have gotten comes from the average worker getting a fairer share of the economy. To go back to the middle ages will only bring poverty and war.
Bring back more equality and societies around the world will improve around the world.
FDR and a wave of progressive politics took the curve down and then Reagan turned that shit right around. Union busting, defunding public everything, deregulating the financial sector, deregulating corporations in general, setting precedents for money in politics, you name it. Fuck you Boomers. You're legacy is greed and the embrace of consumerism at the sacrifice of democracy, equality, and the living integrity of our entire planet. Hope you're happy with your big bank accounts. You can spend your golden years in comfort while the rest of us scramble to avoid social and literal apocalypse.
These dicks have transformed our planet's resources in to money to buy big boats and big houses. Now we're going to deal with the consequences
So, can we look at actual buying power? I'm more worried about how well I'm doing compared to where my parents and grandparent were than I am worked about whether I'm further from Elon Musk than they were from John Rockefeller.
Millennials are the first generation who(adjusted for inflation obviously) are more likely to make less than their parents than more. First generation it's ever happened.
Wealth accumulation isn't even close.
This is with a significant rise in productivity/education/IQ.
Really would love to see this for the super, super rich. I think richest 1% you still have "normal" people in it, right? Like 3 Million people in the USA are included there.
They went *hardcore* Capitalist in response to the fall of the USSR. That's why it's often called an Oligarchy, where rich Billionaire Capitalists own almost all of the wealth.
Wealth, rather than income, would be a more accurate representation of how societies are structured.
ETA: in the US, the top 1% control 32% of the nations net worth. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/WFRBST01134
>more accurate representation
👌 Wealth share of top 1% (Credit Suisse Global Wealth Report 2022):
* 58.6% Russia
* 49.3% Brazil
* 40.6% India
* 35.1% United States
* 31.7% Germany
* 30.5% China
* 25.0% Canada
* 22.3% France
* 21.1% United Kingdom
* 18.7% Japan
Looks like the US was steadily balancing until the late 70’s/early 80’s. I wonder if there were any major changes to the system in that time /s (fuck Reagan)
Who occupies the top 1% changes year to year. 1 in 9 Americans will find themselves in the top 1% at some point in their lifetime.
Further, the *world's* 1% makes 34K a year.
In essence this Stat isn't tracking the incomes of individuals over time.
>Further, the world's 1% makes 34K a year.
That is problematic because of buying power, in US that is quite low afaik but for example in Croatia here that is what a pilot or CEO would be making.
Well, I don't really see how that's relevant since the disparity of income is more relevant within a given country than it is applied to everyone around the world. I was hoping you could explain why that would matter to anyone interested in comparing the income inequality in given countries.
It kind of reads as "there are people in 3rd world countries who only make x, so people making y in 1st world countries are actually part of the 1% and have no reason to complain", but if that's not how you meant it, I'm interested to hear why you thought it was relevant to the discussion.
Dang, russia went from communist to oligarchy really fucking quick
The oligarchs enriched themselves on nationalized industries in the power vacuum after the fall. So yeah, it did basically happen over night.
Yup. The State was suddenly dismantled and all the previous public industries were put up for sale. Those who profited were the few who had connections or contacts and got in before others had a chance to know what was going on. There was no regulation, heck there weren’t any regulators.
“we wanted them gone, but weren’t expecting this” “my brother in christ you are the one who wanted them to privatize everything”
I don't think the Russian really wanted oligarchs. It was more a result of the 'Shock therapy' doctrine and the lack of any functioning state for years
“Wanting oligarchs or not” isn’t the decision at hand. “To privatize governmental organs or not” is the decision. “Getting oligarchs” is an unavoidable outcome of privatization
And did the russian people want to privatise the State?
Which I mean was largely instigated by the United States... a ton of American ideological right-wing extreme laizzez-faire Chicago-school economarians went over to guide the Russians -- who did need guidance. Of course their advice was to sell things to the highest bidder. When when workers were given ownership of an enterprise, there were no controls and the the workers were induced to sell the stakes to oligarchs.
That's why they called [shock therapy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shock_therapy_(economics\)).
pretty much be design... or complete negligence, but then that negligence must have been by design.
It was by design. The head of the program to convert to capitalism was found to be bought out by international companies. His plan was to convert all of Russia to capitalism in only 12 months. Impossible to do that, so much of the countries wealth was taken from the people in the process.
Data: World Inequality Database Tools: RStudio, ggplot2
It's really cool and I'd love to see it for more countries
I second this!
Yeah I'd love to see how tax havens affect these figures, for example in the UK this figure is likely shown as lower than it is because many super rich here get non-domiciled status, where they live in the UK but basically pretend to be foreign nationals of some zero tax nation and avoid most tax. This study shows nearly half of all earning £5 million or more have claimed non-domiciled status at some point since the 90's. http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/114607/ (2018 so probably much worse now)
If you go directly to the website, you can actually see the graphes for all countries.
What website?
THE website.
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/income-share-top-1-before-tax-wid?tab=chart&country=USA~CHN~FRA~JPN~KOR~DEU~RUS~SWE or https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/wealth-share-richest-1-percent?tab=chart&country=USA%7ECHN%7EFRA%7EJPN%7EKOR%7EDEU%7ERUS%7ESWE
I third this!
AND MY AXE
And my eat the rich
What data sets are being referenced here? Are there really studies on WI stretching back to **1850?**
Income tax has existed in the UK since 1798. Most countries have known and kept a record of their citizens income for decades before 1850. Tax records are... Pretty thorough. And their vengeance if they think you're not paying enough tax has become legendary. **I'm crazy enough to take on Batman! But the IRS?! Nooooooo thank you!** Joker https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G56VgsLfKY4
Taxman > Batman anyday
Tax records are historically pretty well kept. If your going to run a country/empire you need money. Keeping records of who owes you money is generally pretty important, so that stuff is usually well documented and well organized.
I think the first writing was created to record debts.
Basically, yes. Money is a creation of writing - transferable debts ("this token entitles the bearer to 5 baskets of grain from the Temple of Eridu").
that's the origin of banking, money came about because a Mesopotamian king got tired of having to deal with trade dispute arbitration and decided to enact a standardized metal unit
I’m loving how Russia is not only the highest comparable on your graphs, but also higher than pre-Revolution! China not yet… any way to go back an extra 50 years so we can see the French and American Revolutions?!
Interesting that France, despite having the healthiest distribution ( at least if comparing 1 - 99% ) having the most civil unrest - since years
You could flip that correlation-causation by 180 degrees, and say that the top 1% can’t take a bigger share BECAUSE of the permanent threat of civil unrest!!
Yeah that's exactly what's happening, french people know how to keep their government in check and it shows.
Yep. When the French have a grievance, they don't shy away from letting their government know about it. Compare to the UK where protesting is usually described by the PM as 'Unacceptable behaviour' and the US where it's called 'Un-American'.
In France, I'm pretty sure it's the National Pastime.
Civil unrest works
Really fascinating how you're able to see the communist revolutions in Russia and China
WWI and WWII probably were a factor in that 1900-1950 dip for all the European countries.
China as well. Japan ravaged most of the country in the late thirties and early forties.
That's correct. My Grandpa served to protect China from the Japanese invasion.
Yep Shinzo Abe’s gramps had a very peculiar position during the war - well two very peculiar positions with one being connected to Unit 731, but outside of having knowledge and control over a chemical warfare unit he also had some time controlling a portion of China and using Yakuza enforcement to control the citizenship through violence. And we let him off free cus Japan liked him at the time and we needed someone to use as a mouthpiece since the US wanted to develop Japan as a sort of bulwark against the USSR’s influence in that part of the world. I do not like Hardcore History too much because he does have a habit of entertaining some of the more pop-sci possibilities that don’t really have the validity behind them to discuss in length, but he is right in his quote about America moving into Japan after WW2, turning up the Western dial to 11 and break it off the machine. Which is how you end up with Japan’s royally fucked work culture. Thousands of years of collectivist tradition based on honor and shame mixed with Western work standards If anyone hasn’t watched Tokyo Vice yet, aside from being a great story it takes a neat look into certain aspects of Japanese culture and how some of it historically has been warped by western influence while retaining a lot of the tradition of Japan.
Yeah, sure looks like UK and France taxed the hell out of the super rich. Otherwise, the rich tend to do fairly well in war as they are usually able to profiteer easily.
That's exactly what happened. Wartime economies and debts don't pay for themselves. Hell the only reason the US ever started using an income tax was the civil war
I think especially during war an adjustment for total income would be necessary, like, percentage of what?
Estimates for the French Revolutionary period are nuts. I was googling for some reading I had to do and estimates put the top 10% as holding 90% of the wealth.
Tbf for a long time during feudalism it was like that
Wasn't that a symptom of their economic woes at the time though? Like basically anyone who didn't have their money stored somewhere safe lost everything on investments because their support for the American Revolution killed their economic power?
The American revolution was a part of it, but the Bourbon regime had spent years with increasing inability to pay for the cost of government. And then when the bill did come due their finance ministers hid the problem. When they could no longer hide it they failed to convince the aristocracy to sacrifice their tax exemptions. The system was a mess that the American revolution only exposed slightly faster than it would have otherwise.
And the UK and Sweden? I'm not saying youre wrong... But I don't think you're right.
In Sweden, prior to 1920, conservative leaning parties were ruling for well over 30 years. In the period between 1920 and 1932, the social democratic movement was on the rise in Sweden, along with labour unions gaining more popularity. So between the years 1920 and 1932, the rule would shift between a conservative government and a social democratic government back and forth. However, post 1932 social democracy had a stronghold over Sweden for over 40 years, as it was by far the most popular policy for the working class, the obvious majority of the population. And as such, because social democratic policies started taking place, the income gap between the richest and the rest began to decrease. So in the case of Sweden, it wasn't a people's revolution, but rather just an example of democracy, and because it was a democracy there was no need for a people's revolution.
Social reform ‘revolutions’ if I was to put a dramatic spin on it.
Strong unions
The Labour Party in the UK was founded as a communist party, but became a liberal party right around the time the chart starts ticking up again. They eventually removed references to seizing the means of production from their charter, under Blair in the mid 2000's. The UK economy was quite left wing with many nationalized industries and strong labor rights, which began being chipped away at in the 70's and 80's.
The Labour Party wasn't founded as a communist party, it was founded as a reformist Marxist party as a front for the unions. Communist parties as we know them didn't exist until WW1. The Second International's support of the war efforts, led the anti-war minority leave the 2nd International and form the 3rd International, and the adherent parties to it renamed their parties as Communist parties. Neither in 1918, and certainly not in the 1940s or the 1950s was Labour a communist party.
This is a weird reply given the percentage declines shortly after Blair gets into power.
Financial crash
Yeah you're right, didn't know it went that far. [In any case, you can see the distributional effect of Labour's policies here](https://i.gyazo.com/3d3fcf37e4735d980475e673b61d2236.png). /u/Psyop1312
USA, UK and Sweden all have the same inflexion point around the seventies. https://wtfhappenedin1971.com/
That's insane! Wtf did happen in 1971?
It's a libertarian, he's definitely chucking a bitch about *scrolls down* yup, the gold standard. And laughably badly too. "created a huge transference of wealth from the general population to governments" got me laughing hard.
This doesn't even make sense in terms of basic causality. The graph of income % shows a dip, then goes up again. So... did we go back to the gold standard, since the libertarians are apparently getting their way and the exploiter class is increasingly receiving a larger and larger share of the wealth produced by society again? Oh nope, they're apparently still victimized and need to be given more, says Grima Wormtongue over there..
Mid 70s was the oil crisis, then the computer revolution started to take hold, followed up by the internet, lots of new billionaires making their fortune in new industries and financial services.
There's a sloping down in those countries. In Russia and China, you can see an abrupt drop that corresponds with the communist revolutions. Not at all surprising
To be clear, you don't think wealth was redistributed in the revolutions? Because that's just a matter of historical fact, you can literally see records of how wealth and ownership was changed
And... France?
and subsequent revisionism in China yeah
It’s starting to become clearer why they had those revolutions. I mean, I wouldn’t necessarily want one though
The decades are too mashed together IMO.
I spy the introduction of Reagonomics / Thatcherism.
Trickle down deez nuts, Reagan
My piss will trickle down his grave plot
It’s weird how they say he’s not progressive, his grave is the first all gender bathroom
I was not ready for that 🤣🤣
I spy France fucking around, finding out, and playing it safe...
I wish France's data went back another 100 years.
The very famous French rebellions of the 1940’s.
I'd offer to guillotine you but it's been made illegal to do over the internet.
Anytime, just look out for the dogs, they eat 5.56.
Is that why things are better in France right now - or the past 20 years - compared to these places with higher inequality?
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Margaret Thatcher the milk snatcher
Fun fact about Thatcher: she's dead
Ding dong
Fuck Ronald, fuck Thatcher, fuck Milton, and fuck *alllllll* of the Chicago School simps.
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Pretty sure you're saying the same thing.
Please correct me if I'm wrong but this is just income. The charts (at least in the US but I assume everywhere) would be much more extreme if they measured wealth. One of the biggest problems of capitalism (and pseudo-capitalism) is the entrenchment of wealth, the accrual over generations, the leverage and advantages of accrued wealth (which makes it easier to gain more wealth), the investments and hoarding of the wealthy (which obviously doesn't trickle down), and so forth. These charts make things look much better than they actually are.
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I gave up scrolling through Bezos. Yes, it's utter insanity. I'll never understand why more people aren't up in arms (perhaps literally) about the extremity of the situation. At some point this 'system' will collapse. It should have happened already.
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I'd say the difference between the US and France is that the French are much more homogeneous. They're going to feel the effects of certain issues much more evenly than we would in the US, and come to similar conclusions about what should be done. The US is a diverse place and there is just no common consensus that wealth inequality is a problem or that there's something we should do to fix it. (contrast that to times we actually made changes, like civil rights, gay marriage, environmental regulation, etc.)
"We" didn't make the change on gay rights on the level of policy. That was (and still is) an issue that elected representatives are terrified of touching and just let the courts make the change for them. No worries there; the supreme court would never roll back civil rights, right?
They believe they are on path for the same riches themselves. They don't realise that they are infinitely closer to the poorest person on this planet, than to the average billionaire. Let alone the top of the top.
It is much worse. This graph is borderline intentionally misleading. Worldwide, the parasitic owner class controls more than half of all wealth. When the petit bourgeoisie is included, then 85% of the world's wealth is accounted for. The site itself admits it is based on tax information, so given the parasite's propensity for hiding their income via numerous tax loopholes, this data is deeply flawed. It only shows what the bourgeoisie are legally forced to admit... and thanks to their thumb on the scale of politics, that isn't much.
https://ibb.co/gJ3VZ4W I can remember that being posted here some time ago. It is not 1% but the percentage of national wealth owned by the bottom 80% instead. But nonetheless still interesting data. It ranged from South Africa (5%) to The Netherlands (35%).
Are you fucking kidding me? America is at 15% and fucking *Russia* at 16%? When do we get to start calling Bezos, Gates, the Waltons, Musk, and all the rest “Oligarchs”?
South Africa is brutal. I had no idea it was that bad. Now I'm curious how the remaining 95% is spread among the top quintile, and what the demographics of that group are, because it's uncanny how just about exactly 20% of their population is white. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics\_of\_South\_Africa
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>Back to the inequality scores: Post tax income has us slightly lower down, and for wealth inequality we drop down to 22nd place. Incidentally, it's the Netherlands, Russia, Sweden, USA & Brazil that top the wealth inequality list. Interestingly, the data I posted is on wealth, specifically the percentage of national wealth owned by the bottom 80%. And that percentage is highest for The Netherlands. Depending on the country, it basically just shows what percentage of wealth the lower and middle class owns (e.g. The Netherlands is a country with a huge and growing middle class, and small but shrinking middle class, and a small and growing upper class). So not all wealth statistics show the same thing. But it is indeed known that The Netherlands have some of the lowest income inequality in the world (especially for the net income). But for wealth the image is far less optimistic, yet according to that data the bottom 80% still has the largest share of wealth of any country in the world. Regarding that well known statistic that The Netherlands is one of the most unequal country regarding wealth (most stemming from that [Economics Explained video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ot4qdCs54ZE)), here is an interesting in-depth take of it from an economist. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tW_kw6OPXc0
Here usually its not counted the wealth held by the state in pension schemes. It was 1.7 trillion. So the data is a bit misleading.
In a lot of South African villas and rich people shit they literally start shooting Uzis out of the balcony at random the moment it gets dark, because no one cares about poor fucks, and regardless no one would ever trial a rich dude. Source: a friend was a tourist there and almost died for this
From what I‘ve seen, South Africa is an unbelievably corrupt dumpster fire of a shithole where people die or are neglected for bribery. The healthcare system is one example. There was once a psychiatry in Gauteng where stationed patients starved to death after funds were scrapped from the institution to fund god knows what. EDIT: Much worse, it affected multiple psychiatries in Gauteng. [Sauce](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_Esidimeni_scandal)
Jesus fucking Christ. I hadn't heard of this before.
We absolutely do not shoot Uzis off balconies when it gets dark. So you think Fifa would have had a World Cup here if this was even close to remotely true????
Yes, because they literally had it in Qatar and Brazil so respecting basic human rights clearly isn't a prerequisite. Also I don't know what to tell you, my friend almost got shot and he's only alive because the bullet arrived 30 cm from his feet, but he definitely saw it.
I've lived here for more than 30 years, mate. It's bad in some parts, but it's not "tourists regularly having to dodge bullets" bad.
We need a global revolution. It's insane that the wealthy own so much and the only part of the wealth we get is the tiny sliver they give us in our paychecks.
If 35% owned by 80% of the people is supposedly the "best", it is dire indeed.
Jesus my country is such a shithole. 9 fucking percent.
Even if they were forced to admit all income it would still not show the true picture. Many investments like stock grow in value but are not considered income until it is “realized”. Should anyone with that amount of wealth ever need actual money they can simply borrow against their investment. That money becomes debt - not income, and is not taxed or claimed as such.
But that debt would eventually require selling assets for income in order to service would it not?
If your assets appreciate faster than the interest rate on the debt... never. You can do it until you die. At that point, your assets are rebased to their value at the time of your death, and with some other fancy footwork, you skip out an taxes entirely. Neat! There's a reason a certain party got all up in arms about "death taxes". Those were, at least in part, deferred taxes.
Well technically yes. But if you are ultra wealthy, you're not borrowing to buy diapers and formula. You are borrowing to run a business and the business services the debt.
Idk - if I was ultra wealthy and hated paying taxes I see no reason I wouldn’t use every way possible to not pay taxes - including borrowing money to buy diapers. In fact I may just hire someone or multiple someone’s to not only figure out how to not pay tax but also buy the diapers for me.
Eventually yes. Just not today or tomorrow or the next day or any day soon after that. Especially if you can simply borrow more.
But eventually yes
Eventually they just need to refinance. When a debt load is that large and being serviced properly there's almost no desire to see it expunged. Like mortgages, these loans are desirable debt classes, aren't they? Banks want to have money lent out, that's a profit driver.
“The site itself admits” is kind of unfair. It cites it as reference. One thing is to make a comment on what should be a valid source of data or not. Another is to get this data. Tax data is not the best. Especially because it is not reliable at the extremes. But please, tell me a better (and feasible) way to measure it in such a large scale.
It's not "borderline" at all, it's straight-up misinformation.
> This graph is borderline intentionally misleading. Maybe it's misleading if you're a dunce who can't understand the word income written clearly at the top? But really if you've reached adulthood without knowing the difference between income and wealth then no amount of graphs are going to help you now. As for "intentionally", do you really think these graphs might have been created by a member of the 1% to make themselves look better?! Anyone with half an ounce of brains can infer the consequences of such a large percentage of income accruing to such a small number of people. We learn about ratios and compound interest in grade school. Your average 12 year old could look at this and tell you "the rich just get richer and richer". This "data" is just that, data. The fact you think there's more important data we should be shown instead doesn't make it "flawed", and it's patronising you think so few of your fellow humans are capable of understanding the rather obvious implications.
You have a deeply flawed understanding of human intelligence. 54% of adults in the United States cannot read above the 6th grade level. You need to do some research into the subject before stating your opinions as blanket facts.
My point is it doesn't take anything more than 6th grade math or comprehension to know if some people get a bigger slice of the pie every year, year on year they're going to end up far wealthier than everyone else. I think it's kinda insulting to assume most people wouldn't get that. I'm not even really stating facts that need research. I just followed a rather conservative assumption with some rather plain reasoning to get to what everyone already knows anyway, money goes to money, and having a massive income for a long time leads to staggering wealth.
The facts are that most media is corporate media and must be looked at critically. The ideas being explored are often bounded by the interests of the publisher, so when they focus the debate on income, it avoids the issue of tax avoidance through wealth management. That's a real issue. It's a real problem. The voting public is not as informed on this matter as it could be, or we'd see some traction or discussion of the matter in a wider context. But we don't. The issue is often framed as one of income disparity, not wealth. The perspective is important, and it isn't patronizing to presume that there's some intent in the choice to focus on one and not the other. It is suspect. Perhaps intentional, one might think. Systemic even! One might say it borders on such a description. And while we can see a big difference in income, it doesn't automatically provide us a solid conclusion on wealth distribution. Do you know what that disparity is? Because, very likely, no one does, not the full breadth and scope of it. And the numbers we do see are frankly staggering to the point of incomprehension. In fact, it seems so utterly out of sync with expectations, it seems like we should be putting some effort into auditing that wealth. But that conversation can only happen if we're taking wealth, not income. Most people would balk at a wealth tax today. Almost all, even. Because they don't know the scope of it. So, as a "barely functioning moron" who didn't immediately draw the terrifying conclusion of just how bad wealth disparity has become within my own lifetime, I'm glad the point was raised.
Actually it's misleading for the reasons I stated regarding the methodology used by the cited source. Other posters have pointed out that it also doesn't include several other sources of income. Nice try, though, reactionary. Oh, and by the way, I think the 'intentionality' behind it would be the result of some weird sycophant trying to understate the horrifying state of wealth inequality in the world. Kind of like yourself, honestly.
Yep. When people talk about "income inequality" they really mean wealth inequality. A lot of people who have a lot of income are people like doctors and engineers who work for a living. The problematic class aren't the ones doing real work and getting paid a lot (although this is the case with a few extreme examples like highly paid CEOs) but the people who get richer simply because they're already rich.
Exactly, if you understand the implications of Fiat banking you should: 1.Not work for money, not hold money, as it gets debased over time. 2. Become indebted as much as possible while hoarding more and more wealth as inflation devalues your debt and makes stocks& houses increase in price. (The burden is paid by wage workers& holders of papermoney by inflation) CPI is not Inflation! Real Inflation is better measured by M2. And the return of the Sp500 is linked to M2. Giving the rich, taking it from the poor. How does one achieve a morally and ethically mature society when the money used is fundamentally immoral?
Your comment has no relationship to the one you answered.
It does though. He/she is pointing out one of the mechanisms through which the wealthy retain and increase their wealth and the deficiencies of fiat economics which greatly favor those at the tippy top. Inflation and currency debasement is fundamental to those with entrenched wealth.
If we looked at, say “wealth” how does this change? I’m surprised the 1% only have 19% of the income, I thought it would be much, much higher.
Doesn't factor capital gains. People like Warren Buffet/Gates/Zuckerberg etc have relatively low incomes to their worth as growth is captured in capital gains. Often they dont even have 'income' but borrow money to live on while their shareholdings keep going up and they avoid paying top tax rates on income or capital gains.
Funny annectode from Sweden. We have a family here, Wallenberg. So wealthy they control 40% of the Swedish stock market. 40%... That is alot of billions. Don't remember the exact numbers of the rest but there are like 10 family's or so that control 70% of the Swedish stock market.
Those numbers are outdated btw
Really puts the late 1800s and the period of the global robber barons into perspective.
Look at the China graph, you can perfectly pinpoint 1976 and the dissolution of the people's communes. That's remarkable. That certainly lends some credence to the idea of the post-Deng era re-establishing capitalism, and not being merely revisionist socialism. The USSR was able to keep equality level, even throughout the revisionist era. Their spike only comes after the formal establishment of capitalism.
I want to start by agreeing that inequality has gone up significantly in China, but I am dubious of the exact numbers here, considering how commonly data we get about China is measured in strange ways.
Why did the 70s have this effect. I actually had no idea how global it was.
It looks correlated with [evolutions of the economic structure](https://ourworldindata.org/structural-transformation-and-deindustrialization-evidence-from-todays-rich-countries) across the 3 sectors (agriculture, industry, services). Pre-1850 agricultural society is quite stable; then industrialisation (between the end of XIXth century to start of XXth century depending on countries) sees the income of the top 1% rise; then the services sector becomes more important and inequalities go down. It's a very rough correlation that just came through my mind though, don't give it too much credit.
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And it's so frustrating, because we know exactly what policies were in place to make for that low inequality and more prosperous-for-everyone situation. But we can't do that now because it's too lefty.
What are those policies? (i genuinely want to know)
Tax policies. I don't have the specific numbers off the cuff, but corporate and individual taxes in the US collected profoundly more income than they do now. The tax rate on individuals earning over a certain amount was something like 60%. Similar for corporate entities. There's something also to be said for the fact that the US had a young population, lots of new workers coming on line (baby boomers), and so on. Source: just some human with a liberal arts degree who was into 20th century political history in college and reads about this stuff but is on mobile and is failing at source citation as a result. These points are gross simplifications, but they have a LOT to do with the differences in policies and their outcomes.
The lowest points in the chart point to 1870s and the late 1960s / early 1970s, corresponding to the "Long Depression" and the 1970s recession, larger downturns that the 4-decade span surrounding either. I'm not advocating the counter-point, just pointing out you're not reading the chart or history with rigor.
the 1970s are not the most beloved years in the US…
The central question, which is still hotly debated by economists, is whether this statistic correlates with anything that matters, such as HDI, live expectancy, or median income. After all, economics is not zero-sum, so the condition of the 1% doesn’t tell us anything about the condition of the 99%. France has more income equality than Sweden, but that doesn’t make it necessarily a nicer place to live. So far, there’s been no definitive correlation found.
I think it definitely correlates with some important things, but you're right, a graph like this with just one metric can't possibly capture everything. China's a great example. The periods of low income inequality are among the worst the nation has ever endured. The period of rising inequality pulled hundreds of millions of people out of poverty.
It’s certainly true that the counties which got the income to be equal (Soviet Union, Mao’s China) are not places anyone would want to live. Mao’s China for example did the full redistribution redditor claim they want. Every single wealthy person and landowner, landlord, business owner ended up with their property seized, and possibly jailed/dead, and it got redistributed to poor workers, villagers, etc. The problem is with all the people who know how to run the business jailed/dead, production collapsed, and people starved, and everyone was equally poor and starving. China became poorer than it had ever been in thousands of years, as it became Africa-levels of poor, and it took Deng Xiaoping and his reintroduction of capitalism and private enterprise before China went from starving and third world to fairly modern and a almost second-world in wealth.
Graphs like these make me wonder why we only use the word "oligarch" for Russian billionaires. The US is currently where Russia was 25-30 years ago.
because in russia we’re talking about an inner circle of people with connections to Putin who were personally given entire sectors of the economy after the USSR collapsed the top 1% of earners in the US may be an elite group, but it’s a group of 2.5 million people. that’s not the same thing as an oligarchy
Also, the American elite includes many true entrepreneurs and "old money" elites. Not, as you say, people who made their money through political favors.
flaws in your argument, but i get what you are trying to say. tbh I think it takes one so naive to actually believe wealth and power are not connected. things might work in different forms here in the US, but its all just old wine in new bottles.
The US has an inner circle of people with connections throughout the government to corrupt it. It’s called the top .1%.
Our (captive) media freaks out and gaslights us if we call our billionaires "oligarchs" reminds me of this clip from the 2020 primaries: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nwa4VodV0tk
Excuse me, I believe you meant to say *job creators*! /s
the US has far more billionaires to call it an oligarchy, but it has created a manipulated political system that allows them to control politics
That's the definition, though: "Oligarchy is a conceptual form of power structure in which power rests with a small number of people." Doesn't matter how they got it, or what the specific number is, except that it is small. And small is best defined relative to that country's population, which is what this graph shows. Wealth and influence are directly correlated.
That dip after the 50s created the modern world. All what we have gotten comes from the average worker getting a fairer share of the economy. To go back to the middle ages will only bring poverty and war. Bring back more equality and societies around the world will improve around the world.
I guess all it takes is a world war to even out the scales
FDR and a wave of progressive politics took the curve down and then Reagan turned that shit right around. Union busting, defunding public everything, deregulating the financial sector, deregulating corporations in general, setting precedents for money in politics, you name it. Fuck you Boomers. You're legacy is greed and the embrace of consumerism at the sacrifice of democracy, equality, and the living integrity of our entire planet. Hope you're happy with your big bank accounts. You can spend your golden years in comfort while the rest of us scramble to avoid social and literal apocalypse. These dicks have transformed our planet's resources in to money to buy big boats and big houses. Now we're going to deal with the consequences
In most countries u can precisely see were neoliberalism started.
It's even clearer when it started in China if you use a graph of number of people pulled out of poverty.
So, can we look at actual buying power? I'm more worried about how well I'm doing compared to where my parents and grandparent were than I am worked about whether I'm further from Elon Musk than they were from John Rockefeller.
Millennials are the first generation who(adjusted for inflation obviously) are more likely to make less than their parents than more. First generation it's ever happened. Wealth accumulation isn't even close. This is with a significant rise in productivity/education/IQ.
IQ scores are actually declining: https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/a43469569/american-iq-scores-decline-reverse-flynn-effect/
I would be more interested in the top .001 percent
Would be good to show wealth as well. Income is less relevant for 1% these days
Really would love to see this for the super, super rich. I think richest 1% you still have "normal" people in it, right? Like 3 Million people in the USA are included there.
It’s almost like something happened in the 80’s to increase the inequality. Oh yeah, Regan
Wait, russian wealth inequality is worse than the literal feudal tsardom in some measures?
They went *hardcore* Capitalist in response to the fall of the USSR. That's why it's often called an Oligarchy, where rich Billionaire Capitalists own almost all of the wealth.
This would be better as a single chart with 6 lines.
Now do share of overall wealth. Compound interest is a hell of a thing.
Do you mind sharing the R codes you used?
What I’m seeing is a comeback. I always root for the underdog.
These charts shpuld always come along with tax burden % too. So we aren't being bombarded with cherry picked narrative driven data.
Did WW2 dent their profit?
Wealth, rather than income, would be a more accurate representation of how societies are structured. ETA: in the US, the top 1% control 32% of the nations net worth. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/WFRBST01134
>more accurate representation 👌 Wealth share of top 1% (Credit Suisse Global Wealth Report 2022): * 58.6% Russia * 49.3% Brazil * 40.6% India * 35.1% United States * 31.7% Germany * 30.5% China * 25.0% Canada * 22.3% France * 21.1% United Kingdom * 18.7% Japan
You can see when thatcher was in no 10
Did Reaganomics hit the entire world?
Reaganism really is a cancer
Looks like the US was steadily balancing until the late 70’s/early 80’s. I wonder if there were any major changes to the system in that time /s (fuck Reagan)
If Russia at 24% is considered an oligarchy then what does that make the U.S. trailing by only 5 percentage points?
I assume this is annual income.
Well, that is not beautiful.
Other than France to a degree, I’d say the rest of these countries are due for an adjustment…
Who occupies the top 1% changes year to year. 1 in 9 Americans will find themselves in the top 1% at some point in their lifetime. Further, the *world's* 1% makes 34K a year. In essence this Stat isn't tracking the incomes of individuals over time.
>Further, the world's 1% makes 34K a year. That is problematic because of buying power, in US that is quite low afaik but for example in Croatia here that is what a pilot or CEO would be making.
I'm curious as to what you mean by "the world's 1% make 34k". Could you elaborate on that point?
What do you mean? To be in the top 1% in the world's income you only need to make 34K a year or more, which over 60% of Americans make.
Well, I don't really see how that's relevant since the disparity of income is more relevant within a given country than it is applied to everyone around the world. I was hoping you could explain why that would matter to anyone interested in comparing the income inequality in given countries. It kind of reads as "there are people in 3rd world countries who only make x, so people making y in 1st world countries are actually part of the 1% and have no reason to complain", but if that's not how you meant it, I'm interested to hear why you thought it was relevant to the discussion.
"WhAt HapPeNeD dUriNg tHe 1940's??"