Recent history of global inequality in one chart (Krugman).

[DanTex]

It's been suggested that "we are all the 1%", meaning Americans. This obviously can't be true, because there are about 300M of us and 7B people total, even if every American ware richer than every non-American (which is also obviously not true), we would only all be the 4.3% or so.

Still, it is true that working class Americans very well off by global standards, something like the top 20% or so.

However, this doesn't mean that income inequality, either domestically or globally, is not an important issue, nor does it mean that the focus on the 1% is misguided. The following chart from a Krugman blog post summarizes what has been happening:



The top 1% globally have been doing very well, and the other group doing well is the emerging middle class in countries like China, whose incomes have risen a lot even though they would still be well below the poverty line in the US. The groups that have done the worst are the 80th to 95th percentiles globally, which is where the working/middle class in wealthy nations falls, and then the bottom 5% globally.

These are the numbers, take away from them what you will.

[Recursion]

1. Those numbers work too

That's per capita rather than household, but fine; it's worth talking about from either perspective. We have just witnessed the greatest reduction of inequality in the history of the world, and we're pretty much all on the "losing" end of that.

[DanTex]

2. The 1% aren't on the losing end. What has happened is the 80-95 percentiles,

which is where most working/middle class Americans are, have lost out to both the top 1% and the global middle. And, yes, I think it's good to note that working class Americans are still in the to 20 or so percent globally.

But this doesn't make concerns about the 1% misguided.

[Recursion]

4. Nothing positive was coming of that thread

It's gone now.

[Rex]

3. Thanks for posting the real numbers, that other thread is a sad thing to see in GD.

Posting lies and made up numbers then doubling down on the lies with everyone that replies with the truth. Sad. Pathetic and wrong.

[pampango]

5. It is good to see the poorest 75% globally do so well in the last 25 years.

The only things wrong with that graph is stagnancy of the 80-95% (us) and the soaring incomes of the 1%, particularly the top 0.1%. I hope the bottom 75% continue to increase their incomes and the Western middle class regains the income it has lost to the global 1%.

[lumberjack_jeff]

6. Excellent graph.

Third world wages have been supplemented at the expense of the US working class.

[pampango]

7. We're hurting because the wages of poor people in the world have gone up?

Are they stealing our jobs and our wages? Maybe we do need some of those walls and tariffs that the Donald keeps talking about. Those damn foreigners workers (and immigrants) are really sticking it to us!

The 'excellent graph' clearly shows that the global 1% has profited immensely. There is plenty of ill-gotten wealth in the portfolios of the 1% for us to redistribute to our middle class if we just come up with the political will to do it. It happened under FDR. It can happen again.

FDR did not strengthen our working class by impoverishing workers in other countries. Nor did he seek to freeze their prosperity so that our workers could get ahead. He strengthened our working class by going after our 1%. We do not have to declare war on the global poor just so we can strengthen our working class. The 1% was the target for FDR and it should be our target, too.

[Donald Ian Rankin]

8. No, but you're no longer "stealing" theirs so effectively.

Employing people in other countries isn't stealing American jobs any more than employing people in America is stealing jobs from other countries.

My immediate take on that graph is that what it shows is that it is now increasingly possible to employ people in the third world instead of the first.

Broadly speaking, that's good news for employees in the third world, and for employers everywhere, and bad news for employees in the first world.

On balance, that's a good thing - it means rising prosperity and falling inequality. But if you look at it through a purely American lens, it's a bad thing, because it means precisely the reverse - rising inequality and stagnating living standards for those who, while in the top 75-80% by global standards, are poor by American standards.

[lumberjack_jeff]

9. It's not stealing jobs when GM builds a factory in Shanghai... it's borrowing.

Or, a benevolent act of spreading the ill-gotten gains of US workers, if you wish.

[Donald Ian Rankin]

10. Can you explain why there is a moral obligation to employ people in America rather than elsewhere?

Say I have the choice of building a factory in one of several countries.

Why do I have a moral obligation to put it in the richest one?

[lumberjack_jeff]

12. It's not moral - it's self interest.

GM should fear the costs, direct and indirect, of importing cars into the democratic marketplace of the people who gave them their corporate charter.

[whatthehey]

11. Or, in reality, it's building cars for Chinese customers

If they are "American jobs" (by the way Chinese firms own a fair % of GM) then anyone not Chinese who works for, say, Smithfield foods in the US making pork products for the US market is "stealing" a Chinese job.