Inequality has remained persistently high for decades, and a new report shows just how stark the divide is between the richest and poorest people on the planet.
The 2022 World Inequality Report, a huge undertaking coordinated by economic and inequality experts Lucas Chancel, Thomas Piketty, Emmanuel Saez, and Gabriel Zucman, was the product of four years of research and produced an unprecedented data set on just how wealth is distributed.
“The world is marked by a very high level of income inequality and an extreme level of wealth inequality,” the authors wrote.
The data serves as a complete rebuke of the trickle-down economic theory, which posits that cutting taxes on the rich will “trickle down” to those below, with the cuts eventually benefiting everyone. In America, trickle-down was exemplified by President Ronald Reagan’s tax slashes. It’s a theory that persists today, even though most research has shown that 50 years of tax cuts benefits the wealthy and worsens inequality.
There’s not a problem in the country that’s not caused or exacerbated by wealth and income inequality, including the poor governance we endure at the local level.
Government is not here for you. You are just collateral damage in our wealthiest citizens’ quest for more money.
Example: According to the Daily Mail, 400 private jets flew into COP26. Now I can see a head of state or cabinet minister in an official jet, like Biden going there on Airforce One. But the rest of those jet owners were there to make sure that, whatever carbon pain is inflicted on the peasantry, they keep flying.
That’s how it works and it is why we need to craft our own resilience strategy at the local level and not wait on Big Climate and Big Government to do anything except protect their vested interests.
A LARGE PART OF THIS PERSISITENT INEQUALITY IS DUE TO IMMIGRATION. IMPOVERISHED IMMIGRANTS WITH LITTLE OR NO FORMAL EDUCATION AND STAGGERING FERTILITY RATES CONTINUE TO DILLUTE SUCCESSES OF WESTERN NATIONS.
Walk me through that, Mr. Ingle. How does that work, exactly?
How does that translate to a lack of jobs for college graduates burdened with onerous debt, for instance?
And which Western Nations are we talking about?