CAPITALISM'S ACHILLES HEEL Dirty Money and How to

The Global Divide 229
Inequality Is Narrowing! Inequality Is Widening!
The overall picture is clear: The evidence strongly suggests that
inequality has reduced substantially global income inequality has risen in
during the last 20 years. 27 the last 20 years. The standards of
measuring this change, and the
reasons for it, are contested—but the
trend is clear. 28
The weight of recent evidence The gaps between rich and poor
points to relative stability in world countries, and rich and poor
inequality over the last half-century, people within countries,
and probably a modest decline in have grown. 30
the last two decades. 29
Far from world inequality worsening, In a world of disturbing contrasts,
it actually improved with the gap between rich and poor
globalization. The peak of countries, and between rich and
world inequality occurred in poor people, continues to widen. 32
1973; today, it is at its lowest
in the past 50 years. 31
The current wave of globalization, Gaps between the poorest and the
which started around 1980, richest people and countries have
has actually promoted continued to widen. 34
economic equality. 33
quintile inequality measures and leads Bhalla to conclude that “world individual
inequality has improved significantly since the 1960s,” a conclusion
that he says “is different from all other studies.” 35 Nevertheless, his
estimate showing that more than 70 percent of global income accrues to
the top 20 percent of the world is within the range of figures depicted in
Figure 5.2 of this book.
Bhalla makes a point which is often stressed. Almost all of any lessening
of global inequality, if it exists, stems from the rising income of China. This
vast country, comprising a fifth of the world’s population, has reported annual
growth rates of six percent to nine percent or more for some years.
China itself, as seen in Figure 5.4, has sharply rising internal inequality, but