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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 is true that renting is still more affordable than in the US, but property prices in Shanghai, Shenzhen and Hong Kong are already higher than LA and NYC, with Beijing just below them (all priced in USD, so take the income disparity into account as well). It is nearly impossible for young people to become a homeowner in Tier 1 cities these days.
I guess the only silver lining is that china puts in a lot of state effort to develop new cities that may exist as alternative options. The fact that massive inequality has gotten worse in china should come as no surprise though. The current success of china is still reliant on allowing their working class to be heavily exploited.
Yes, unfortunately they let the property market run wild (which didn’t exist before the 2009 GFC btw), and only in the last few years did they start to take it seriously. So they are at least doing something, but the results have been mixed so far.
As far as i have seen property prices have been dropng like a rock in Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities and are dropping a bit even in tier 1