Sunday, March 19, 2017

Kenneth Thomas — U.S. Has Worst Wealth Inequality of Any Rich Nation, and It's Not Even Close

I've discussed the Credit Suisse Global Wealth Reports before, an excellent source of data for both wealth and wealth inequality. The most recent edition, from November 2016, shows the United States getting wealthier, but steadily more unequal in wealth per adult and dropping from 25th to 27th in median wealth per adult since 2014.…
One important point to bear in mind is that while the United States remains the fourth-highest country for wealth per adult (after Switzerland, Iceland, and Australia) at $344,692, its median wealth per adult has fallen to 27th in the world, down to $44,977. As I have pointed out before, the reason for this is much higher inequality in the U.S. In fact, the U.S. ratio of mean to median wealth per adult is 7.66:1, the highest of all rich countries by a long shot....
Middle Class Political Economist
U.S. Has Worst Wealth Inequality of Any Rich Nation, and It's Not Even Close
Kenneth Thomas | Professor of Political Science at the University of Missouri-St. Louis

2 comments:

Penguin pop said...

The US has to be one of the most hypocritical countries on Earth because of BS like this. A lot of these problems could be solved now, but no, idiotic ideas in politics get in the way and a toxic combo of nepotism, wealth and power coming together and creating state corporatism and corporate statism. We're a joke.

Calgacus said...

Yes, but James Galbraith has an important point on this; he wrote some papers and a book on it. Today's Europe, especially the Eurozone is much like a (highly dysfunctional) state - one currency, "national" law, free trade etc. And if you look at Europe as a whole, not each individual country, it is even more unequal than the USA.