United States Is Now the Most Unequal of All Advanced Economies

Posted: 12/08/2013 3:15 pm

Eric Zuesse

Investigative historian

The United States has such an unequal distribution of wealth so that it's in the league of corrupt underdeveloped countries, no longer in the league of the developed nations, according to the latest edition of the world's most thorough study of wealth-distribution.
The most authoritative source comparing wealth-concentration in the various countries is the successor to the reports that used to be done for the United Nations, now performed as the Credit Suisse Global Wealth Databook. The latest (2013) edition of it finds (p. 146) that in the U.S., 75.4% of all wealth is owned by the richest 10% of the people. The comparable figures for the other developed countries are: Australia 50.3%, Canada 57.4%, Denmark 72.2%, Finland 44.9%, France 51.8%, Germany 61.7%, Ireland 58.4%, Israel 68.9%, Italy 49.8%, Japan 49.1%, Netherlands 54.6%, New Zealand 57.6%, Norway 65.9%, Singapore 61.1%, Spain 54.0%, Sweden 71.1%, Switzerland 71.5%, and U.K. 53.3%. Those are the top 20 developed nations, and the U.S. has the most extreme wealth-concentration of them all. However, there are some other countries that have wealth-concentrations that are about as extreme as the U.S. For examples: Chile 72.5%, India 73.8%, Indonesia 75.0%, and South Africa 74.8%. The U.S. is in their league; not in the league of developed economies. In the U.S., the bottom 90% of the population own only 24.6% of all the privately held wealth, whereas in most of the developed world, the bottom 90% own around 40%; so, the degree of wealth-concentration in the U.S. is extraordinary (except for underdeveloped countries).
The broadest mathematical measure of wealth-inequality is called "Gini," and the higher it is, the more extreme the nation's wealth-inequality is. The Gini for the U.S. is 85.1. Other extremely unequal countries are (pages 98-101 of this report) Chile 81.4, India 81.3, Indonesia 82.8, and South Africa 83.6. However, some nations are even more-extreme than the U.S.: Kazakhstan 86.7, Russia 93.1, and Ukraine 90.0. But Honduras and Guatemala are such rabid kleptocracies that their governments don't even provide sufficiently reliable data for an estimate to be able to be made; and, so, some countries might be even higher than nations like Russia.
Under Barack Obama, the U.S. has, for the first time in this nation's history, increased the concentration of its privately held wealth during an "economic recovery" from a financial crash. (Consequently: the bottom 90% have experienced no benefit from this "recovery.") Usually, there is more instead of less economic equality in the wake of a crash; but Obama's policies of holding harmless the Wall Street insiders who profited enormously from creating the bubble, and of restoring their wealth by taxpayers buying up their toxic assets via the bailouts, etc., have made the U.S. more like nations such as Chile, India, Indonesia, and less like nations such as Australia, Canada, and Finland. Although Mr. Obama's rhetoric has been opposed to extreme wealth-concentration, his policies have actually intensified that tendency. Republicans are not satisfied with the extent to which he has done this, and they call for even more extreme wealth-concentration policies, but Obama has actually benefited America's billionaires a great deal. Romney received most of their campaign money, but Obama has performed extraordinarily well for them.
According to the latest study by the highly regarded economic-concentration specialist Emmanuel Saez, the richest 1% of Americans have been receiving 95% of the income-gains during the Obama "economic recovery." This "recovery" has raised incomes for the top 1% by 31.4%. Everyone else has seen income-gains of 0.4%. Other studies have shown that the bottom 95% of Americans have actually experienced overall reductions in their incomes under President Obama. So: for most Americans, the "recession" has merely continued.
Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of They're Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010, and of CHRIST'S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity.

Sarah Palin And Matt Lauer Had An Insane Conversation

The Huffington Post  |  By Jack Mirkinson Posted: 11/11/2013 11:09 am EST  |  Updated: 11/11/2013 4:30 pm EST 

To watch Matt Lauer and Sarah Palin try to discuss health care on Monday's "Today" was to watch two entirely separate conversations awkwardly meet in the middle.
When Lauer told Palin that the Tea Party was really into repealing Obamacare, she was very into that. "Right on!" she cried.
When he asked about what the Tea Party alternative to Obamacare was, Palin looked him straight in the eye and answered an entirely different question. "And it's not just the independent grassroots Tea Party movement saying this!" she said.
"But where's the plan from the Tea Party?" Lauer beseeched, his increasingly scraggly beard lending him the air of a reproachful professor.
"Especially Democrats running for re-election," Palin continued (she had been talking the whole time). She finally ran out of steam and answered the actual question. Oh how she answered it!

"The plan is to allow those things that had been proposed over many years to reform a health care system in America that certainly does need more help so that there's more competition, there's less tort reform threat, there's less trajectory of the cost increases? And those plans have been proposed over and over again. And what thwarts those plans? It's the far left. It's President Obama and his supporters who will not allow the Republicans to usher in free market, patient-centered, doctor-patient relationship links to reform health care!"

"Let's move on," Lauer said. Yes, let's! Somewhere, Megyn Kelly was saying to herself, "Been there."
Note: An earlier version of this post stated that Lauer's beard was "gazing reproachfully at Palin." However, after reader David Rutz pointed out that Lauer's beard is, in his words, "not nearly cool enough to be personified," we found that we were inclined to agree. We pledge now to only personify Lauer's beard when it is truly bushy and wild.

Tom Graves's Government Shutdown Stance Cheered By Georgia Constituents

By BILL BARROW 11/04/13 03:01 AM ET EST





ROME, Ga. -- ROME, Ga. (AP) — Undeterred, U.S. Rep. Tom Graves is stepping up his criticism of President Barack Obama's health care law and defending his role in last month's partial government shutdown, even though tea party demands weren't met to dismantle it.
"This isn't over," Graves, the sponsor of the GOP's unsuccessful resolution to defund the president's signature law, says despite the fact that the shutdown ended Oct. 16 without any changes to the health care law. "In no way was this in vain."
The Republican has hit the national talk show circuit, and his social media sites regularly highlight the law's clumsy implementation. "POTUS refused to negotiate, forced govt shutdown & now Ds are running to our last pre-shutdown offer to delay #Obamacare indiv mandate," he posted on Twitter recently.
Back in his northwest Georgia district, constituents like John Massey, a 67-year-old jeweler and military veteran, applaud his steadfastness.
"Sometimes it takes somebody to stir it up, and if the tea party is what it takes, so be it," he said.
The mood helps explain why many House Republicans like Graves have little incentive to relax their governing approach, from opposing every aspect of Obama's health care law to refusing to raise the nation's borrowing limit.
Massey's sentiment is widespread in Georgia's 14th Congressional District, which encompasses the Appalachian foothills near Chattanooga, Tenn., to the outer edges of metro Atlanta.
A former state lawmaker, Graves won a special election in 2010 to succeed Nathan Deal, who left Congress for the governor's mansion. Deal had gone to Congress as a Democrat two decades ago, but switched parties in 1995, months after Georgia's Newt Gingrich led Republicans to the House majority. The region has trended solidly Republican since, and redistricting after the 2010 census pushed Graves' district even further to the right.
In 2012, Republican Mitt Romney got 73 percent of the district's presidential vote, 20 percentage points better than his statewide total. So it's no surprise that the 43-year-old congressman was at the forefront of House Republicans who pushed Speaker John Boehner to deny money for the health-care law and block a debt-ceiling vote.

The strategy ultimately led to a partial government shutdown and threatened a default on national debt payments. Boehner relented to the White House on the eve of the Treasury Department's default deadline, but Graves was among the 144 Republicans who voted against the deal.
"It didn't fix any of the problems with the (health care) law or the larger problems with the budget," Graves said, without offering specific recommendations for health care policy or ways to curb the debt.
Floyd County Republican Chairwoman Layla Shipman said Republicans should "offer more detailed alternatives," but said emphatically, "I'm proud of Tom." The congressman, she said, "pretty much mirrors most of the views here. ... I was proud of seeing the Republican Party dig in. I think we need more Tom Graves."
Massey, the Rome jeweler, put the standoff in the larger context of his views on government and the economy.
He said the anchor provisions of the health care law — the insurance exchanges with taxpayer-subsidized premiums and expansion of the government's Medicaid insurance program — are "more giveaways" that cost too much. Any major budget deal, he said, should curtail "this entitlement mentality."
Even some residents with less strident views are skeptical about the health care law and realistic about the district's politics.
Nedra Manners, a Democrat who works in Massey's antique shop in Rome, said she's shopped around on the federal insurance exchange — Georgia's Republican leaders declined to run their own — but hasn't been able to get a price quote. The 62-year-old noted new coverage standards and methods for figuring premiums and said her existing individual policy premium, not sold on the exchange, is set to double. "A shutdown isn't the answer," she said, but, "I'm not sure the law is set up the best way."
Self-described libertarian Colin Williams, a 27-year-old who works in a new home supply distribution center in the district, also blasted widespread premium increases, and he blamed the new law. Asked whether he followed his congressman's efforts to derail it, Williams said he hadn't but added that he wasn't surprised at Graves or the shutdown.
"He's just another cog in the political machine," Williams said, "and I'm sure he'll get re-elected."
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