RICH AND POOR — Income
Since World War II there has been an ever-growing percentage of total personal income in
the U.S. which goes to the already very rich. In 2012 this percentage of income going to
the top 10% of the population exceed 50% for the first time. The old popular slogan, that
under capitalism the rich get richer and the poor get poorer, is truer than ever. And the
powerful trend is for things to only get even worse in the future—unless this exploitative
system is overthrown. Morever, when personal wealth is considered, i.e. the
accumulated wealth of individuals or families, the
situation is even more extremely unequal than it is with personal income!
See also:
BILLIONAIRES,
MILLIONAIRES
“Ten men in our country could buy the whole world and ten million can’t
buy enough to eat.” —Will Rogers, 1931. Quoted in James W. Loewen, Lies My Teacher
Told Me (1995), p. 194.
RIGHT AND WRONG
“IX. The relationship between right and wrong
“A clear distinction must
be made between right and wrong, whether inside or outside the Party. How to deal
with people who have made mistakes is an important question. The correct attitude
towards them should be to adopt a policy of ‘learning from past mistakes to avoid
future ones and curing the sickness to save the patient’, help them correct their
mistakes and allow them to go on taking part in the revolution....
“A clear distinction must
be drawn between right and wrong, for inner-Party controversies over principle
are a reflection inside the Party of the class struggle in society, and no
equivocation is to be tolerated. It is normal, in accordance with the merits of
the case, to mete out appropriate and well grounded criticism to comrades who
have erred, and even to conduct necessary struggle against them; this is to help
them correct mistakes. To deny them help and, what is worse, to gloat over their
mistakes, is sectarianism.” —Mao, “On the Ten Major Relationships”, April 25,
1956, SW5:301-302.
“RIGHTS”
[To be added...]
See also:
BOURGEOIS RIGHT,
“NATURAL RIGHTS”
RISE AND FALL OF KEY MODERN ECONOMIES
Because of uneven development the major economies
of the world change in their relative size and importance over time. The graph at the right
shows the rise and fall of four major world economies (or “empires”) over a period of almost
200 years. It shows the percentage of world GDP in real
(Purchasing Power Parity) terms as produced by each of the four.
Note that during the modern capitalist and capitalist-imperialist era the percent of world
GDP produced in China first fell from over 30% to about 5% in 1949, then stabilized (i.e.
grew at least as fast as the rest of the world) and finally began its renewed assent to over
20% of world GDP now. The chart only shows the data for the British empire until 1950, since
that about marks its end of importance. Similarly, the USSR is only shown until its final
collapse around 1991, at which time it was in major economic crisis. The two little red
circles show the moment when the world percentage of U.S. GDP surpassed that of Britain
and the current moment when the world percentage of China’s GDP is surpassing that of the
U.S.
The data points in this graph before 1950
are only rough estimates, and are not actually very accurate. Also the data for the USSR and
China during their socialist periods is downplayed and inaccurate (which is not surprising
since the chart was produced by the Deutsche Bank in Germany). The percentage of world GDP
produced by the U.S. at the end of World War II was actually about 50%, so the fall shown
for the U.S. since then should be much sharper. The data for the USSR is similarly distorted;
during the 1920s and 1930s the growth of GDP in the USSR was much faster than shown, but
there was a huge disruption and initial decline in Soviet GDP at the time of the Nazi attack
in World War II. And much of the expansion of the Chinese economy is on the basis of the
rapid economic advances during the Mao years, which is also downplayed here for bourgeois
ideological reasons. Nevertheless, this graph does show the rough overall changes which
have occurred in these four economies over the past two centuries.
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