The past 25 years have seen the largest reduction in global inequality in human history

[Recursion]

http://elibrary.worldbank.org/doi/abs/10.1596/1813-9450-6259

For that matter this has been the first period of declining global inequality since the Industrial Revolution began.

Over this same period, global hunger has fallen by two fifths:

http://www.ifpri.org/publication/2014-global-hunger-index

Do you expect global inequality to continue on this trend, or do you expect this situation will begin reversing itself? (The fact that I'm posting this in GD-P reveals my hypothesis that I imagine your answer to this question is strongly correlated with your candidate choice.)

11 votes, 2 passes | Time left: Unlimited
	I expect global inequality will continue to decrease for the foreseeable future
	3 (27%)
	I expect global inequality will be largely unchanged for the foreseeable future
	0 (0%)
	I expect global inequality will begin to increase at some point soon
	0 (0%)
	I believe any metric that shows global inequality to have decreased is hopelessly broken
	8 (73%)
	2 DU members did not wish to select any of the options provided.
Show usernames Disclaimer: This is an Internet poll

[FreakinDJ]

1. The American Middle Class paid for it

[Recursion]

2. Yes, the global rich saw some stagnation

That's how we usually expect inequality to decrease, right?

[hill2016]

3. you can't reduce inequality

without redistribution.

The American middle class are the top 1% of the world.

[Recursion]

5. well, 3% or so

The global 1% starts at $34K per capita which given family sizes is probably on the upper end of the US middle class.

[Ghost Dog]

26. Comparison of incomes across the global population is pretty meaningless.

If you look within each country I think you will find most everywhere disparities between rich (especially very rich) and poor have increased, even as standards of living for the poorer in some have improved.

[JonLeibowitz]

27. Why do you think the OP chose this metric?

As far as disingenuous questions and polls go, this takes the cake.

[Recursion]

29. IDK; why did Krugman?

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/01/01/recent-history-in-one-chart/

Probably because the gains the world's poor have made in the past generation are mind-boggling and seemingly completely ignored by most Americans.

[JonLeibowitz]

31. I mean, I'm fine with that blog post by Krugman, but my interpretation depends on your intention.

Is the message here that it is right to accept policies which are bad for American workers in general but which happen to benefit workers in other countries? Could you please be straightforward here?

By the way, even Krugman admits that "free trade" creates losers of workers in developed countries without wealth redistribution:

But it’s also true that much of the elite defense of globalization is basically dishonest: false claims of inevitability, scare tactics (protectionism causes depressions!), vastly exaggerated claims for the benefits of trade liberalization and the costs of protection, hand-waving away the large distributional effects that are what standard models actually predict. I hope, by the way, that I haven’t done any of that; I think I’ve always been clear that the gains from globalization aren’t all that (here’s a back-of-the-envelope on the gains from hyperglobalization — only part of which can be attributed to policy — that is less than 5 percent of world GDP over a generation); and I think I’ve never assumed away the income distribution effects.

Furthermore, as Mark Kleiman sagely observes, the conventional case for trade liberalization relies on the assertion that the government could redistribute income to ensure that everyone wins — but we now have an ideology utterly opposed to such redistribution in full control of one party, and with blocking power against anything but a minor move in that direction by the other.

Can I ask what your point is with this OP?

[Recursion]

33. That low point at the 80th percentile is still an 8% after-inflation gain

It's hard to call that "bad", personally.

Can I ask what your point is with this OP?

To see what the global top 5% (roughly, this message board) thinks about global inequality.

[JonLeibowitz]

34. I think you would get higher quality responses if you didn't frame it in the context of the

Democratic primary, which, as you know is heavily focused on class differences and inequality within the U.S. economic system.

It is not incompatible to be heartened by plunging global inequality and still outraged at the rising inequality within our country.

[kristopher]

38. Jose of Houston, Texas wrote on January 3, 2015

Okay, a couple of things about this chart. First, it's showing real increases in income for people at different points in the world distribution of income. That "China's Middle Class" individual may have been a rural peasant earning $2,000/year in 1988 who is now earning a little under $4,000 a year working sixty hours a week in some factory. This is not a huge improvement.

What's more, what's happened in China in the last 30 years isn't going to continue. Going from rural peasant to factory worker with a cocomitant increase in income (and a perhaps ten-fold increase in productivity) is a one-time occurence.

On the other hand, a fifty percent real increase for somebody in the world's top .1% is a big deal as you're going from maybe $1 million a year to $1.5 million a year.

The world's poor, who in the last 30 years have gone from serf-like conditions to the conditions of the working poor in 19th Century Western European factories will find their incomes stagnating at these very low levels while the incomes of the very rich continue to balloon.

Comments http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/01/01/recent-history-in-one-chart/

I'd also be grateful if you'd respond to Cathy in California whose question and research remains relevant to interpretation.

I just spent some time figuring out this graph, like many others,... To add to the far right note on my graph: 44% of the increase of global income between 1988 and 2008 went to the top 5% of world population.

She would like to know, "Is that useful?" I think it is. What do you say, is that an important point when discussing how selfish is the middle class in the US?

Not that I would endorse such hyperbole, but some might even say that distribution indicates that the US middle class has been denied passage on the global fleet of tide-raised boats - strictly, and I repeated strictly in order that an extremely small group of amoral global vampires may benefit in a manner completely disproportionate to their human worth to society.

[Recursion]

28. Half of the world has crossed the $2/day mark in the past generation

saying standards of living for the world's poor have improved is an understatement.

[Ghost Dog]

30. Yes, and this is good,

although purchasing power parity formulae need to be applied as well as other social and environmental factors. The reduction in overall hunger is also good but will be difficult to further improve or even maintain in the context of rapid climate change and the lack of remedial action.

[Recursion]

32. The $2/day number is PPP

Nominally it started at $1 a day back when the UN came up with the millenium goals.

The reduction in overall hunger is also good but will be difficult to further improve or even maintain in the context of rapid climate change

That's my big nightmare, globally. About 3 billion people ultimately depend on the Indian Ocean monsoon system for the daily caloric intake, and that's terrifyingly sensitive to climate change. Disrupt it now, and the 1876 famine that killed 6 million will look like a walk in the park.

[FreakinDJ]

13. So that's why the Clintons took Third Way international

Starting to make sense now

[cherokeeprogressive]

4. Elderly ≥ 65 years old: 12-28 breaths per minute.

20 x 60 = 1200 breaths per hour. $250,000 / 1200 breaths per hour = $208.33 per breath.

Hillary Clinton gets paid $208.33 per breath in front of Goldman Sachs employees who make TENS OF MILLIONS of dollars every year for carrying hundred pound sacks of cement up stairs 8 hours per day (LOL!). She has NO INTEREST in fixing global income inequality.

[Recursion]

6. On that, can anybody who took the fourth option explain what they think a better metric would be?

I'm kind of curious what they think they know that the world bank doesn't here...

[JonLeibowitz]

9. Since I was tempted to select the fourth option, see post #8.

You may not find my answer responsive to the poll, but I'm afraid in the context of GDP the poll is misleading.

[Dem2]

7. Isn't inequality reduction why Trump is doing so well?

White suburban people in the US seeing their wages "converge" with those of 3rd world countries? (obviously not saying that I agree.)

[Recursion]

10. I do think that's a large part of it

Trump's (and from the other side, Sanders's) campaigns are tapping in to Americans' realization that we are "the rich" who are paying for a global inequality decrease.

[Dem2]

14. Yes

I meant to include Sanders, but the difference is Sanders wants to pull us up from within, while Trump thinks he can "punish" the rest of the world and "isolate" the US from those bad people who are siphoning off our wealth. Obviously lifting ourselves up is the only way it can be done, Trumps ideas have always failed and can destroy a nation in the worst case.

[Recursion]

16. Oh, definitely agreed Sanders's response is much better

ie "let's see the same kind of redistribution nationally we have globally". But the source is the same.

[artislife]

37. Yes, it is also the reason h is doing so well. nt

[JonLeibowitz]

8. I select "Pass" -- I don't doubt that global inequality has decreased. However:

I am not a citizen of the world, I am a citizen of the U.S.

Therefore my candidate choice reflects my view of the best interests of the American people.

And U.S. inequality has not decreased.

[hill2016]

11. sorry when you say you're not a citizen of the world

are you from Mars or Venus?

Why don't you care about the people of the world who don't have free health care or free college?

[JonLeibowitz]

15. You know what I mean.

The concept of a nation state means that a country's benevolence towards a competitive marketplace is not rewarded.

[Bread and Circus]

19. You actually were using the word citizen correctly. Hill2016 was not.

[JonLeibowitz]

22. Yep, thanks. And when has hill2016 ever said something rational? I have not seen it.

[Bread and Circus]

23. Me either.

[Bread and Circus]

17. According to Merriam Webster, a "citizen" actually refers to a member of some sort of state

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/citizen

Full Definition of citizen

1 an inhabitant of a city or town; especially : one entitled to the rights and privileges of a freeman

2 a member of a state b : a native or naturalized person who owes allegiance to a government and is entitled to protection from it

3 a civilian as distinguished from a specialized servant of the state

===

citi - zen

citi <<< I think that's a key part of the word

zen <<< that's another key part of the word

===

We inhabit the world... but we aren't citizens of it

[Bread and Circus]

18. This is GD:Primaries for the United States Presidency. Not Mars, Venus, or Kazakhstan

And seeing as how many awesome countries do have universal health care and free college, why don't you care that we here in the USA don't?

[Fozzledick]

20. Earth - Love It or Leave It !!1!

If you don't like this planet, then go back where you came from!!

[JonLeibowitz]

21. That would be planet Qo'noS

[Fozzledick]

24. Damn Illegal Aliens!!

We should build a wall around the planet and make the Klingons pay for it!

[Autumn]

25. The people of the United States don't have free health care or free college.

I'm shocked you are so concerned about the people of the world not having free stuff considering your earlier rants about Bernie wanting to give away "free stuff" . Your concern and caring for the people of the world is touching.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/12511061225

http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1251&pid=954299

[Bread and Circus]

12. Ok thanks, I will pass that on the next time I meet the President of the United States of the World

[JDPriestly]

35. The interesting thing is, assuming these statistics to be true, is that in that same time,

as Bernie warns us, inequality in the US has increased greatly.

Do you think there is some link?

I'm very happy if inequality globally is declining. Very happy. That is wonderful!

[white_wolf]

36. This article is an interesting counterpoint.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ian-fletcher/free-trade-isnt-helping-w_b_837893.html