I’m reading a lot of books for research purposes this year, and this one has been the most disappointing – What Then Must We Do? by Gar Alperovitz. You can see my review at Amazon AU.
Of the two pieces of information I found worth using, the second could have been great. However being in the second-to-last paragraph of the book, you would think more effort could have been made:
“America is the wealthiest nation in the history of the world. Over the course of the twentieth century alone, real income per capita (adjusted for inflation) increased roughly sevenfold in the United States. As we have seen, so wealthy is our nation that were income divided equally today, all families of four would receive almost $200,000. (Alternatively, of course, the workweek could be cut in half, with family income reduced on average to $100,000–roughly two times current median family income.”
What is a family of four? If it is two adults and two children, then the assumption is that half of the population are children. That’s nothing like reality. Surely just counting the number of adults is easier?
But more importantly, he has made the simplistic assumption that if the nation works half as much, they earn half as much.
Here’s the real statistic, and it is an important one to use alongside the popular The richest 0.1% earn more than the… stats that abound.
If the national GDP was split evenly, it would equate to $95K per adult before tax.
That’s what income equality looks like – the average American earns double the income from the same amount of work. People can easily imagine what that looks like to them.
Or to put it more crudely, half of your income is currently being stolen by rich people, compared with equality.
- The median income in the US is $31K per full-time worker, or $63K per household
- Average per capita income (after income tax) is $45K
- Labor share of income is 45%
- GDP is $20 trillion
- Adults (18+) in the US is 210 million