[Peace-discuss] [Sdas] FW: Top 1% earn as much as poorest 57% (fwd)

[parenti susan rose]

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Wed, 23 Jan 2002 18:31:48 +0100
From: Marianne Brun <manni at snafu.de>
To: sdas at onthejob.net
Subject: [Sdas] FW: Top 1% earn as much as poorest 57%


----------
Von: portsideMod <portsidemod at yahoo.com>
Antworten an: portside at yahoogroups.com
Datum: Tue, 22 Jan 2002 21:09:48 -0800 (PST)
An: portside at yahoogroups.com
Betreff: Top 1% earn as much as poorest 57%

Top 1% earn as much as the poorest 57%

By Larry Elliott and Charlotte Denny

January 18, 2002; Guardian

The world's richest 50m people earn as much as the poorest 2.7bn
and may soon be forced to live in heavily protected gated
communities to escape the resentment of the billions living
below the poverty line, a senior World Bank economist warns
today.

Research from Branko Milanovic, published today in the Economic
Journal, shows a staggering increase in global inequality, which
has been rising as rapidly internationally as in Britain under
Mrs Thatcher. In a wide ranging study covering 85% of the
world's population from 91 countries, Mr Milanovic has found
that the richest 1% of the world have income equivalent to the
poorest 57%. Four fifths of the world's population live below
what countries in North America and Europe consider the poverty
line.

The poorest 10% of Americans are still better off than two-
thirds of the world population. "We can wonder how long such
huge inequalities may persist in the face of ever closer
contacts, not least through television and movies, where opulent
lifestyles of the rich influence expectations and often breed
resentment among the poor," said Mr Milanovic. "Should it be of
concern to the rich? Perhaps, if we believe that wide income
gaps lead to immigration and resentment breeds terrorism. For
ultimately, the rich may have to live in gated communities while
the poor roam the world outside those few enclaves."

Mr Milanovic said there were three main reasons for the increase
in global inequality. Firstly there has been a growing gulf
between sluggish rural incomes in Africa and several populous
Asian countries such as India and Bangladesh compared with the
rich west.

Secondly the shock treatment administered to the former Soviet
Union and its satellites in eastern Europe emptied out the
global "middle class". Before the fall of the Berlin wall, most
citizens in socialist countries had incomes between those in the
rich west and the impoverished south.

Finally, China's embrace of the market economy has opened up a
divide between more affluent urban dwellers and poor farmers in
the world's most populous country.

Mr Milanovic's research compares inequality in 1988 with the
position five years later. However, he has since used 1998 data
to check his findings and said that the level of inequality
globally has remained the same.

The study used a measure of inequality known as the Gini
coefficient which uses a scale from zero to 100 where zero is a
completely equal country and 100 is a country where one person
has all the money.

Mr Milanovic said that the world's Gini coefficient was 66 -
double that in Britain - and equivalent to 66% of people having
zero income and the remaining 34% dividing the entire world
among themselves equally.



__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Send FREE video emails in Yahoo! Mail!
http://promo.yahoo.com/videomail/


portside (the left side in nautical parlance) is a
news, discussion and debate service of the Committees
of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism. It
aims to provide varied material of interest to people
on the left.

Post            : mail to 'portside at yahoogroups.com'
Subscribe       : mail to 'portside-subscribe at yahoogroups.com'
Unsubscribe     : mail to 'portside-unsubscribe at yahoogroups.com'
List owner      : portside-owner at yahoogroups.com
Web address     : <http://www.yahoogroups.com/group/portside>
Digest mode     : visit Web site


Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/




_______________________________________________
Sdas mailing list
Sdas at che.onthejob.net
http://che.onthejob.net/mailman/listinfo/sdas