More Wealth Inequality in the UK

Following on from my previous post on the subject, I'm adding a further graphic to illustrate the wealth imbalance in the UK (click graphic to enlarge):

The data is drawn from the same source as before. The figures above the percentages represent individual wealth at those points in the spectrum, so readers can gauge their own position (for shadenfreude or covetousness!).

Apart from the occasional half-hearted condemnations of bankers and executive culture, the press in the UK obsesses on welfare claimants and immigrants. The data shows that wealth inequality is the major driver of dysfunction in developed societies:

People in more equal societies live longer, have better mental health and have better chances for a good education regardless of their background. Community life is stronger where the income gap is narrower, children do better at school and they are less likely to become teenage parents. When inequality is reduced people trust each other more, there is less violence and rates of imprisonment are lower.

Rather than restricting welfare for the poorest in society and returning vast sums to the richest, then, we should be voting for politicians who look to redress the imbalance so apparent in the graphic above.

h/t again to Mother Jones for the original article.

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Wealth Inequality in the UK

Watch this excellent video which illustrates something that many people find difficult to picture - the extraordinary inequity of wealth distribution in the developed world. This graphically represents US inequality:

The US is close to the most unequal country in the world, by wealth; here's the key graphic again, this time from Mother Jones:

Now, things aren't so bad in the UK, so I thought I would just re-draw that top graph, the actual distribution of wealth, for the UK*, for comparison:

So we can see that the UK distribution of wealth is not even better than what Americans think their own distribution is, let alone what they think it should be.

EDIT: The UK figures are - Top 20% own 69% of the wealth, next 20% the next 18% (top 40% own 87%), next 20% the next 9% (top 60% own 96%), next 20% the next 3.5%. The bottom 20% own 0.5% (that's half of one percent) of the country's wealth. That's right, the bottom 1 in 5 only own a two-hundredth of the wealth, and the bottom 2 in 5 only own a twenty-fifth of the wealth. Half the population own less than a tenth of the wealth. I think, apart from the measurable bad outcomes that result, everyone with a sense of fairness would concede that is not fair, as the bottom chart shows.

For the reason why this matters, check out the Equality Trust.

* I calculated the figures from this data, which listed the wealth of each percentile except the top 1%, for some reason (ungraphable!). I guestimated the wealth of the top 1% from this article, which cited data saying they owned 25% of the wealth in the UK (it's 40% in the US, according to the video above). Not terribly scientific I agree, but I doubt the actual figures are much different.

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