Income Inequality Worse in the U.S. Than in Egypt
January 31, 2011 at 12:08 PM Leave a comment
We’re hearing a lot about income inequality and the high price of goods mixed in with the coverage of what’s going on in Egypt. What we’re not hearing is that the divide between the rich and poor is actually worse in the United States than it is in Egypt:
As Yasser El-Shimy, former diplomatic attaché at the Egyptian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, wrote in Foreign Policy, “income inequality has reached levels not before seen in Egypt’s modern history.” But Egypt still bests quite a few countries when it comes to income inequality, including the United States.
According to the CIA World Fact Book, the U.S. is ranked as the 42nd most unequal country in the world, with a Gini Coefficient of 45.
In contrast:
– Tunisia is ranked the 62nd most unequal country, with a Gini Coefficient of 40.
– Yemen is ranked 76th most unequal, with a Gini Coefficient of 37.7.
– And Egypt is ranked as the 90th most unequal country, with a Gini Coefficient of around 34.4.
The Gini coefficient is used to measure inequality: the lower a country’s score, the more equal it is. Obviously, there are many things about the U.S. economy that make it far preferable to that in Egypt, including lower poverty rates, higher incomes, significantly better infrastructure, and a much higher standard of living overall. But income inequality in the U.S. is the worst it has been since the 1920′s, which is a real problem.
Currently, the top one percent of households make nearly 25 percent of the total income in the country, after they made less than 10 percent in the 1970′s. Between 1980 and 2005, “more than 80 percent of total increase in Americans’ income went to the top 1 percent.”
Oh, and by the way, that top 1 percent is the crowd the GOP was fighting for when it insisted on an extension of the Bush tax cuts.
Entry filed under: Corporatocracy, Fascist America, Financial Crisis, Middle East, Our Tax Dollars, We the People. Tags: .
Trackback this post | Subscribe to the comments via RSS Feed