![]() The brutal truth is that most citizens in the United States are doing worse economically year after year, and our income disparity is now on par with authoritarian regimes. This income inequality is similar to the levels seen today in Russia and Iran. Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz finds that from 2005 to 2015 the income of the ultra-rich increased by eighteen percent, while the middle class saw slight declines in income and men with high school degrees experienced precipitous falls in income. Some might argue that these successes of the ultra-rich have trickled down to the middle and working classes the data simply does not support such notions. As recently as 1990, however, these numbers had been twelve percent and thirty-three percent, respectively. By 2015, nearly twenty-five percent of all income in the US was earned by the wealthiest one percent of the population–and this elite group controlled forty percent of the nation’s wealth. In the United States, the middle class has been in decline for nearly five decades. This profound inequality has existed in the developing world for most of the modern era, but it is increasingly found in the developed world as well. Those 3.5 billion people live in abject poverty and face horrifying human security issues despite over seven decades of “expert” development advice from the West and trillions of dollars in foreign aid. In the world today, eight men control as much wealth as the poorest half of the globe–that’s around 3.5 billion people. Civil war was averted, while the groundwork was laid for Athens’ eventual transition to democracy. Solon used these powers to free slaves, restore ancestral lands to their rightful owners, and increase political rights for immigrants. To achieve this, they gave a poet named Solon special powers to change Athens’ laws. As tensions mounted between the rich and poor, the rich did exactly what Louis XVI failed to do in 1789–they agreed to radical change that would ensure greater wealth equality. Countless Athenians had lost their land to the aristocrats or been forced into slavery to pay their debts. The aristocracy had become increasingly rich to the detriment of the lower classes. No sovereign authority presently exists to contend with such an insurgent form one that is an unintended consequence of globalized capitalism and is resulting in growing economic inequalities in Western states, yet has been relatively violence free.” Īthens was in crisis in 594 B.C. This is very much representative of a Gilded Age (1870-1900) redux, but at a globalized level. This is done by promoting an extra-sovereign economy: using foreign tax havens, playing states off against each other to maximize profit, being a nonresident citizen so as not to pay taxes, and employing a bevy of lawyers and lobbyists within states to gain special privileges and economic considerations. ![]() “.the ‘winners of globalization,’ represented by multinational corporations and global elites, are seeking to remove themselves from the regulatory, taxation, and, ultimately, political authority of states. Henry David Thoreau Versus the Plutocratic Insurgency ![]()
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