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Income inequality in Russia over the period of the USSR
(hexbear.net)
Source: Piketty's World Inequality Report 2022
I shared this deep in a dunk thread earlier and figured there's probably many comrades who haven't seen this data. I think it's very good rhetorically because a lot of libs have an incredibly vibes-based impression that the Soviet Union was just an Animal Farm old-boss-same-as-the-new-boss situation.
Instead, this demonstrates that Russia underwent one of the most dramatic inversions of income inequality of any country in recorded history.
For comparison here is the US over the same time period:
China:
And the UK:
It'll trickle down!
But it's fair. China is still experiencing massive growth so the inequality is somewhat less noticable than it would be if that growth had stagnated and the inequality continued to rise.
As China's growth slows, dealing with this is going to be the next big crisis that China will have to go through. All the western nations dealt with that crisis in the late 70's and early 80's. Their solution was austerity and neoliberalosm, the gutting of working class rights and consumption of moderately developed socialist states caught up in the crisis.
The CPC is aware of this though. So is America. That's why there's a war footing right now. As China continues into crisis (a crisis that will effect the whole world), America postures to consume whatever nations it can and China is prepared to defend itself and other nations that America is ready to go for.
If income inequality continues after that crisis, it'll be because America won.
Also expanding into the Chinese market, which effectively grew their available labor pool by at the least hundreds of millions of new workers and opened up new markets for industrial capital as well. The US had previously done the same thing with Japan in the 50s, effectively adding the millions of chronically underemployed former soldiers to its labor pool by having them produce commodities for export to the US.
I edited my comment btw, to make it clear that I'm joking and there is nuance