General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: WTF? China, Mexico and India??? [View all]bhikkhu
(10,751 posts)And there are national and cultural traditions on both of those points. That's not to say the low ranking of the US isn't something that we could do better on, but the national comparisons are mostly apples and oranges, and an explanation of why various countries are different, or why one is "ahead" of another, wouldn't necessarily say lead to anything informative about income inequality.
Its worth noting that middle class is a local measure, a comparison of incomes between arbitrary peer groups. To say that there are 500 million middle class in India (one projection for 2020) wouldn't say much about their material prosperity compared to our own, just that the society there is less stratified on average.
Measuring income is more useful, and we do have an income inequality problem in the US. But that's hard to compare to other countries as well, as different countries count income differently (tax subsidies, social assistance, rent controls and so forth are variously counted or not). Its more useful to say we can do better here, regardless of arguing about how anyplace else measures.
on edit, and very worth noting: income inequality has been improving here, largely due to Obama's policies, and the Democrats in congress who helped get his legislation passed https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/06/09/obama-really-did-sock-it-to-the-rich-bad/