Source: Piketty’s World Inequality Report 2022

I shared this deep in a dunk thread earlier and figured there’s probably many comrades who haven’t seen this data. I think it’s very good rhetorically because a lot of libs have an incredibly vibes-based impression that the Soviet Union was just an Animal Farm old-boss-same-as-the-new-boss situation.

Instead, this demonstrates that Russia underwent one of the most dramatic inversions of income inequality of any country in recorded history.

For comparison here is the US over the same time period:

China:

And the UK:

  • HornyOnMain@hexbear.netEnglish
    52·
    1 year ago

    It’s disappointing but not that surprising to see the level of disparity between the wealthy and the poor in modern day china, what is surprising is to see that the fucking UK is more “equal” than china

    • SimulatedLiberalism [none/use name]@hexbear.netEnglish
      32·
      1 year ago

      It is true that renting is still more affordable than in the US, but property prices in Shanghai, Shenzhen and Hong Kong are already higher than LA and NYC, with Beijing just below them (all priced in USD, so take the income disparity into account as well). It is nearly impossible for young people to become a homeowner in Tier 1 cities these days.

      • Omegamint [comrade/them, doe/deer]@hexbear.netEnglish
        30·
        1 year ago

        I guess the only silver lining is that china puts in a lot of state effort to develop new cities that may exist as alternative options. The fact that massive inequality has gotten worse in china should come as no surprise though. The current success of china is still reliant on allowing their working class to be heavily exploited.

        • SimulatedLiberalism [none/use name]@hexbear.netEnglish
          19·
          1 year ago

          Yes, unfortunately they let the property market run wild (which didn’t exist before the 2009 GFC btw), and only in the last few years did they start to take it seriously. So they are at least doing something, but the results have been mixed so far.

      • invalidusernamelol [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
        27·
        1 year ago

        It’ll trickle down!

        But it’s fair. China is still experiencing massive growth so the inequality is somewhat less noticable than it would be if that growth had stagnated and the inequality continued to rise.

        As China’s growth slows, dealing with this is going to be the next big crisis that China will have to go through. All the western nations dealt with that crisis in the late 70’s and early 80’s. Their solution was austerity and neoliberalosm, the gutting of working class rights and consumption of moderately developed socialist states caught up in the crisis.

        The CPC is aware of this though. So is America. That’s why there’s a war footing right now. As China continues into crisis (a crisis that will effect the whole world), America postures to consume whatever nations it can and China is prepared to defend itself and other nations that America is ready to go for.

        If income inequality continues after that crisis, it’ll be because America won.

        • KobaCumTribute [she/her]@hexbear.netEnglish
          17·
          1 year ago

          All the western nations dealt with that crisis in the late 70’s and early 80’s. Their solution was austerity and neoliberalosm, the gutting of working class rights and consumption of moderately developed socialist states caught up in the crisis.

          Also expanding into the Chinese market, which effectively grew their available labor pool by at the least hundreds of millions of new workers and opened up new markets for industrial capital as well. The US had previously done the same thing with Japan in the 50s, effectively adding the millions of chronically underemployed former soldiers to its labor pool by having them produce commodities for export to the US.

    • geikei [none/use name]@hexbear.netEnglish
      19·
      1 year ago

      Like i comment elsewhere a very large part of Chinese income inequality is the huge rural-urban divide. All countries have it but its an order of magnitude worse in China so there are basicaly 2 different countries within China . Having 300 million people in the biggest cities earning western levels of income and 300 million people in rural small towns and villages earning a fraction of that skews the metric a lot EVEN tho life in rural ereas is also much cheaper and without taking into account that this is a symptom of the rapid urbanization and mpsernization that will probably uplift the latter group like it did the former