Date: 2024-09-27 Page is: DBtxt003.php txt00021838
INEQUALITY
GAIN IN INCOME OF PLUTOCRATS OVER TIME
Top 1% share of national income for France, USA and Russia 1905 to 2015
GAIN IN INCOME OF PLUTOCRATS OVER TIME
Top 1% share of national income for France, USA and Russia 1905 to 2015
Burgess COMMENTARY
The USA and France had similar trends prior to WWII. After WWII the USA had much more inequality than France but by the 1970s France and the USA were about the same.
Since the 1970s, the USA has increased inequality substantially to become more unequal than at any time in its history
It was not until around 2000 that France started to rapidly increase inequality, but has not become anything like as unequal as the United States.
Russia has a different history. Inequality was not a ubstantial factor in the Soviet economy, but with the demise of the Soviet Union and the unleashing of a version of Western capitalism eveything changed.
In the period from 1990 to 2000 the embedded wealth of the Soviet economy was reallocated to a very few people with power and influence in a manner that defies belief. I got an up-close glimpse of this when I was working on various projects for KPMG in the mid-90s when Western consultants were advising the various governments that had been part of the Soviet Union on how their economise should be reorganized in order to get the benefit of Western capitalism.
KPMG pulled out of a project in Ukraine involving the computerization of government accounting when the proposed software vendor realized that the devaluation of the Russian Rouble would probably render their software inoperable!
I was pulled out of a KPMB / World Bank project in Kazakhstan for some reason that was never fully explained to me. All I know is that there were some people in the Government of Kazhakstan that wanted me gone and neither KPMG nore the World Bank were prepared to put up any resistance. Looking back, it is pretty clear to me what happened ... and this graph of inequality in Russia from 1900 to 2000 pretty much tells the story, the the last thing these people wanted around is a pretty experienced followed the money accountant messing up their gluttony!!!!!!!!!!!!
Peter Burgess