Rising inequality

[stpioc]

While the average household income (corrected by purchasing power differences) in the US is about 14% higher than in Canada and about 25% higher than in Germany and France, the average income of the bottom 10% in the US is 42% lower than in Canada and about 50% lower than in France and Germany (Figure 2).

OECD2015-In-It-Together-Highlights-UnitedStates-Embargo-21May11amPArisTime.pdf

[stpioc]

Here is another effect, the kids or rich parents who bibed them into college are not up to it, slowing down education for everybody else:

If you think corruption in elite US college admissions is bad, what happens once those students are in the classroom is even worse. I know, because I teach at an elite American university – one of the oldest and best-known, which rejects about 90% of applicants each year for the small number of places it can offer to undergraduates. In this setting, where teaching quality is at a premium and students expect faculty to give them extensive personal attention, the presence of unqualified students admitted through corrupt practices is an unmitigated disaster for education and research. While such students have long been present in the form of legacy admits, top sports recruits and the kids of multi-million-dollar donors, the latest scandal represents a new tier of Americans elbowing their way into elite universities: unqualified students from families too poor to fund new buildings, but rich enough to pay six-figure bribes to coaches and admissions advisors. This increase in the proportion of students who can’t do the work that elite universities expect of them has – at least to me and my colleagues – begun to create a palpable strain on the system, threatening the quality of education and research we are expected to deliver.

What happens after rich kids bribe their way into college? I teach them | Anonymous | US news | The Guardian

[Admin]

For the first time on record, the 400 wealthiest Americans last year paid a lower total tax rate — spanning federal, state and local taxes — than any other income group, according to newly released data.

Opinion | The Rich Really Do Pay Lower Taxes Than You - The New York Times

[Admin]

A lack of access to decent healthcare is one of the prime reasons why the gap between rich and poor is so much greater in the US than in Europe.  At the Peterson Institute’s conference on inequality Lucas Chancel, of the Paris School of Economics, delved into some of the reasons why:  Case and Deaton (2015) show that, after a historical decline, morbidity rates among white men have increased in the US since the late 1990s, contrary to other high-income countries. Chetty et al. (2017) find that there is a 14 years life expectancy gap between top and bottom 1% males in the US, and that this gap has widened since 2001.

In return, poor health is associated with reduced capabilities for the worse-off, as well as lower incomes and mobility chances (Marmot, 2003; Case, Lubotsky and Paxson, 2002), fuelling a broader cycle of social inequality and low pre-tax income growth at the bottom of the distribution. One of the most salient difference between US and Western European health systems is that the latter are characterised by public universal access, which tend to limit inequalities in access to health. The paper also noted that, while health transfers under Medicare and Medicaid were the key reason why post-tax income for the bottom 50 per cent of the population in the US had risen over the past four decades, it was “likely that an important share of these transfers just matched the increase in the price of health services rather than enabled an increase in the quality or amount of health services.”

Rising healthcare costs are another driver of US inequality | FT Alphaville

[Admin]

The 10 richest men in the world have seen their global wealth double to $1.5tn (£1.01tn) since the start of the global pandemic following a surge in share and property prices that has widened the gap between rich and poor, according to a report from Oxfam. Urging governments to impose a one-off 99% wealth tax on Covid-19 windfall gains, the charity said World Bank figures showed 163 million more people had been driven below the poverty line while the super-rich were benefiting from the stimulus provided by governments around the world to mitigate the impact of the virus. Oxfam projects that by 2030, 3.3 billion people will be living on less than $5.50 per day. The charity said the incomes of 99% of the world’s population had reduced from March 2020 to October 2021, when Elon Musk, the founder of the electric car company Tesla, and the other nine richest billionaires had been collectively growing wealthier by $1.3bn a day.

World’s 10 richest men see their wealth double during Covid pandemic | Rich lists | The Guardian