While poverty around the world is a relative term, studies have shown that the degree of "inequality" that exists within any modern industrialized nation has a direct impact on its "social fabric and quality of life."
- US for a long time has had the largest gap and inequality between rich and poor compared to all the other industrialized nations
- top 1% received more money than the bottom 40% with the gap widest in 70 years
- while the share of income going to the top 1% has increased, it has decreased for the poorest 40%
- 1 in 7 people in the US are in poverty. In 2009, 43.6 million people — 14.6 percent of the population — were living in poverty in the U.S
Then chairman of the Federal Reserve, Allan Greenspan, revealed concerns in mid-2005 that the increasing and widening income gap might eventually threaten the stability of democratic capitalism itself in the US.
Poverty Around The World — Global Issues
I think you might need to look at these statistics from a different perspective:
I had a review this weekend about “The Haves and the Have-Nots,” a new book by the World Bank economist Branko Milanovic about inequality around the world. My favorite part of the book was this graph, next to which I actually wrote “awesome chart” in the margin:
This was reprinted by New York Times economic writer Catherine Rampell in January with an explanation:
Here the population of each country is divided into 20 equally-sized income groups, ranked by their household per-capita income. These are called “ventiles,” as you can see on the horizontal axis, and each “ventile” translates to a cluster of five percentiles.
The household income numbers are all converted into international dollars adjusted for equal purchasing power, since the cost of goods varies from country to country. In other words, the chart adjusts for the cost of living in different countries, so we are looking at consistent living standards worldwide.
Contrary to the current media meme, when adjusted for international dollars as well as cost and standard of living, there is far greater income inequality in Brazil, China, and India.
Frankly, it's not even close (emphasis added throughout):
Notice how the entire line for the United States resides in the top portion of the graph? That’s because the entire country is relatively rich. In fact, America’s bottom ventile is still richer than most of the world: That is, the typical person in the bottom 5 percent of the American income distribution is still richer than 68 percent of the world’s inhabitants.
That deserves a replay for those whining on Wall Street and the ignoramuses supporting them: "the typical person in the bottom 5 percent of the American income distribution is still richer than 68 percent of the world’s inhabitants."
Rampell further observed in her January book review:
The typical person in the top 5 percent of the Indian population, for example, makes the same as or less than the typical person in the bottom 5 percent of the American population. That’s right: America’s poorest are, on average, richer than India’s richest — extravagant Mumbai mansions notwithstanding.
But there's more:
At a very basic, agrarian level of development, Milanovic explains, people’s incomes are relatively equal; everyone is living at or close to subsistence level. But as more advanced technologies become available and enable workers to differentiate their skills, a gulf between rich and poor becomes possible.
Please watch this video for the real truth:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oP60sIKKJWQ
Even poor Americans have a lot to be thankful for compared to a vast majority of the world's people.
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