China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs affirms that the US society is suffering a chronic disease of a striking gap between the upper and lower layers of the population. It is the ugly blemish on US democracy, the Ministry highlighted the problem. This message is a centerpiece of the report Rising Economic Polarization in the US: Truth and Facts released by the Xinhua news agency.
China’s authorities acknowledge that the US is the number one world economy, albeit not without thorny issues. Chinese economists insist that the wealth gap in the US is one of the most painful among advanced Western nations. The US society got stuck in a gridlock many years ago. Since then, high-income earners have been pumping up their bank accounts while low-income earners have been sliding into poverty, the report reads.
Providing insight into the economic polarization in the US, researchers found out that inequality in American society emerged in the 1970s. The income gap has been widening ever since.
The researchers refer to the Gini coefficient which measures inequality in income distribution. The reading measured 0.353 in 1974 but jumped to 0.415 in 2019. Besides, according to the US Census Bureau, the average income of well-off households expanded by 183% to $253K from 1970 until 2020. At the same time, households with medium and small incomes increased their purses by 133% and 113% to $72K or $15K respectively.
The report points out that nowadays, almost 37 million Americans live below the poverty line. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs believes that a few factors are to blame for this, namely, monopoly, the electoral system, the ongoing domestic policy, the waning influence of labor unions, and racial discrimination in society.
The growing wealth gap is one of the major culprits of the escalating social crisis in the US, the sole superpower in the world, the analysts concluded.
The US cannot cover up the brutal reality of the mounting stratification between the rich and the poor. Eventually, the problem has become a chronic ailment of American society and a dirty stain on democracy and human rights, China’s Foreign Ministry affirms.
