by MC12
The U.$. Census Bureau came out with new income figures for 1996 last month, showing that income inequality in the country remains at the high levels reached in the early 1990s. In this report MIM highlights three long-term trends in the income distribution.
U.$. VERSUS WORLD INEQUALITY
While income inequality is increasing among U.$. residents, it is much lower than inequality in other countries, and no country in the world has income inequality as great as the income inequality between rich and poor countries overall. The first graph shows the family income distribution for the U.$ in 1967 and 1996, for Brazil (1989) and for the world as a whole (circa 1990).
The straight diagonal line represents perfect income equality: if every 1% of the population got exactly 1% of the income. On the other extreme, if the top 1% got all 100% of the income, the only line would extend from the bottom right straight to the top right of the graph. So the gap between the income distribution line and the perfect equality line represents the amount of income inequality. Family inequality measures assume everyone in the family shares the income -- not really true, but a good indicator for comparing groups.
On the graph, you can see that the level of inequality increased in the U.$. from 1967 to 1996. However, this movement was very small compared to the distance between U.$. inequality and inequality in Brazil (the most unequal country in the world).
The last line shows an estimate of world inequality. We use the World Bank's estimates of income (GNP) per capita, which means we assume that all income is shared equally within countries. Again, this is not true, but it's good for comparing the wealth of different countries. This line shows that inequality between countries is greater than inequality even in the most unequal country, and much greater than U.$. inequality, even with the move toward more inequality in the last 30 years.
This is one piece of evidence on which we base our conclusion that national contradictions are principal in the world at this time: This is the greatest source of inequality in the world.
MORE RICH WHITES
The second graph shows that the U.$ has seen a large increase in the number and percentage of rich families, families making more than $100,000 per year. Some of this is due to the tendency among the middle class for wimmin to work for pay as well; these are families with two middle class (by Amerikan standards) incomes in one family. But this also reflects increased earnings for professional "workers" with higher levels of education -- the group that increased their earnings the most in the last 17 years. In 1967 only 3% of white families had incomes over $100,000, compared to more than 11% today (this adjusts incomes for inflation to equal 1996 dollars). This is a very large and growing group of educated, professional whites with strong material reasons to support imperialism and the status quo. There has also been an increase in rich families among Blacks, part of the growing inequality in the Black nation, but the number and percentage remain much smaller.
MORE OF THE POOR ARE BLACKS AND LATINOS
The third graph shows that the bottom of the income distribution is increasingly made up of Blacks and Latinos. This shows the percentage of all families with less than $15,000 per year income that are Black or "Hispanic." This cut-off point is roughly equal to the bottom 20% of families. Although the reactionary Census Bureau makes this hard to measure accurately because of their "racial" (Black v. white) versus "ethnic" (Hispanic v. non- Hispanic) classification scheme, it is clear that Blacks and Hispanics are a growing proportion of this poorest group. Most "Hispanics" are also counted as "white" by the Census, a very small proportion are counted as "Black," which means they would be counted twice on this graph where Hispanics are stacked on top of Blacks, so the numbers are not exact.
MIM concludes from these tree trends that world inequality is mostly between countries, not within countries. Further, within the U.$. there is an increasingly large and vocal group of rich whites whom we know are politically dedicated to imperialism and the status quo. And finally, these trends underscore MIM's decision to pay most attention politically to the poorest 20% of the country, which includes a large and growing proportion of oppressed nation members who are most likely to work against imperialism, for national liberation struggles and socialism.
NOTE ON SOURCES:
The income data are from U.S. Bureau of the Census, Current Population Reports, P60-197, Money Income in the United States: 1996, U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC, 1997. The report is available from www.census.gov. The World Bank data are from World Development Report 1995, New York: Oxford University Press.
Many people complain when we use government statistics because the government may lie, because it uses methods that are skewed, and so on. Our response is that it's good to be suspicious, but the government also has an interest in getting out information that is useful to the bourgeoisie for its own purposes. The greatest error in these statistics is probably the undercounting of poor members of oppressed nations, so we assume things are always somewhat worse than the numbers show. Prisoners are also excluded from most of this data. However, we believe the up and down trends are usually accurate even if the specific numbers are not, so that's what we look at.
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