The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development has noted a sharp increase in economic inequality in the United States and the world’s richest countries. The study examined statistics from 30 countries from 1985 to 2005 and took three years to complete.
Only Mexico and Turkey surpassed the United States in terms of inequality and poverty. While the richest 10 percent in the United States earned an average $93,000 per year, the poorest 10 percent only averaged $5,800—20 percent lower than the average for the same percentile for all countries in the OECD study.
OECD Secretary-General Angel Gurria noted that extreme inequality “polarizes societies, it divides regions within countries, and it carves up the world between rich and poor.”
The growth of inequality, manifested so clearly even in the richest country in the world, debunks myths such as “trickle down economics” and “opportunity for all.” Those fabrications are only meant to prop up the profit system that benefit the rich at the expense of the working class.
