Official estimates are bad enough. The UK, for example, comes out very unfavourably in international comparisons of income and wealth distribution. There the top ten percent of households have disposable income nine times that of the bottom ten percent. But the level of inequality is much higher for pre-tax incomes where the incomes of the top ten percent is 24 times higher than that of the bottom ten percent. Worse, the top one percent of households on average had an income of £253,927 and the top 0.1 percent had an average income of £919,882 [in 2012]. In terms of income the UK is much more unequal than most OECD countries and is the 7th most unequal; amongst European countries the 4th most unequal.
Wealth inequality in the UK is even greater than it is for income; the richest ten percent of households hold 45 percent of all wealth and the poorest 50 percent have 8.7 percent. Within the OECD countries the UK has a Gini coefficient for wealth a little higher than the rest [73.2 compared to 72.8]. [...]
It is also worth noting that the UK has had massive property price inflation partly through the liquidity generated by QE and again the greatest benefit will have accrued to the richest segment of the population; this is an extra transfer to the top five percent since real gains on property were excluded from the Bank’s estimates. [...]
The EU confronts a deep and growing income and wealth inequality which in part has its origins in globalised trade and in trends in technological development that substituted precarious work for previously well paid and secure employment. But we also witness governments across the EU following tax policies that are increasingly regressive in their impact with greater dependence on indirect taxes and reductions in the degree of progressivity in income taxes.
No comments:
Post a Comment