Despite the US’s economic success, income inequality remains breathtaking. But this is no glitch – it’s the system
The Chinese did rather well in the age of globalization. In 1990, 943 million people there lived on less than $3 a day measured in 2021 dollars – 83% of the population, according to the World Bank. By 2019, the number was brought down to zero. Unfortunately, the United States was not as successful. More than 4 million Americans – 1.25% of the population – must make ends meet with less than $3 a day, more than three times as many as 35 years ago.
The data is not super consistent with the narrative of the US’s inexorable success. Sure, American productivity has zoomed ahead of that of its European peers. Only a handful of countries manage to produce more stuff per hour of work. And artificial intelligence now promises to put the United States that much further ahead.
This is not to congratulate China for its authoritarian government, for its repression of minorities or for the iron fist it deploys against any form of dissent. But it merits pondering how this undemocratic government could successfully slash its poverty rate when the richest and oldest democracy in the world wouldn’t.
Agree or disagree, it’s just a fact.
If China genuinely wanted the poor to be less so. They wouldn’t have allowed the wealth disparity. Industrialization has lifted the base standard of living in every country its happened in. China, England, Russia, the US, currently in India. The problem, is that it has always benefited the owners far more. There’s always a strong plateau to the benefit of the social base in these systems. And no one has managed to fix it long term, not China or anyone else.
In fact, China’s youth right now are facing conditions surprisingly similar to those in the United States and elsewhere. With little economic opportunity for their futures, often jobless. Getting ready to grapple with a level of automation that other countries haven’t even come to terms with yet. It’s infinitely more likely that the next couple of decades will see massive social struggle and over there long before they will ever see communism.