The Stingiest Nation

The chart above is by Kevin Drum, in a short article he wrote for Mother Jones magazine. It shows the most unequal nations in terms of income (among the developed nations). One of the most unequal is the United States, which has a larger income (and wealth) gap between the rich and the rest of its citizens than it has had since before the Great Depression -- and the gap is still growing, and if a change in economic policy is made soon, that gap will soon even eclipse that of third world nations (already being worse than a few of them).

The chart shows how much the government of those nations does to decrease that gap in equality. Note that the country that is doing the least to reduce the gap in income is the United States -- and some politicians in the U.S. would like to do even less. As citizens of the richest nation in the world, we should all be ashamed of how little our government is doing. Here is how Mr. Drum puts it:

The United States is one of the richest countries in the world, with a top 1 percent that's seen its income triple or more in the past three decades. And yet, we also do the least to fight the rising tide of income inequality. Government programs in America reduce the level of inequality by only 26 percent. Nobody else is so stingy.