US/European social inequality as reported in the UK
And why aren’t we getting the straight dope here?
America is the most unequal society in the industrialized West. The richest 20 per cent of Americans earn nine times more than the poorest 20 per cent, a scale of inequality half as great again as in Japan, Germany and France. At the very top of American society, incomes and wealth have reached stupendous proportions. The country boasts some three million millionaires, and the richest 1 per cent of the population hold 38 per cent of its wealth, a concentration more marked than in any comparable country.
This inequality is the most brutal fact of American life. Nor is it excused by more mobility and opportunity than other societies, America’s great conceit. The reality is that US society is polarizing and its social arteries hardening. The sumptuousness and bleakness of the respective lifestyles of rich and poor represent a scale of difference in opportunity and wealth that is almost medieval - and a standing offense to the American expectation that everyone has the opportunity for life, liberty and happiness.