We are the 1%.
That's the sobering reality check from the
excellent book The Haves and the Have-Nots by Branko Milanovic.
As it turns out, there are a whole lot
of poor people in the world. And the United States is so very rich.
Even the very poorest Americans living in what we consider to be
abject poverty (and they are significantly poorer than the average
American) is richer than more than two-thirds of the rest of the
world.
For upper middle class Americans
(defined as those who earn $34,000 a year per person, not per
family), we are the 1%. Turns out, that level of income (after-taxes,
per person, in dollars, living in the US) happens to be the line
above which sits the top 1% richest people in the world.
Yikes.
I had thought I was part of the 99%
(and in the US, I am). But in the world, I am part of the 1%.
Bit of a paradigm shift, right?
So just as I believe it is not only a
moral imperative but a practical economic strategy to spend more of
the income of the top 1% on public assets that benefit all Americans
(like education and sewers and high speed trains and police officers
and social workers and parks), I have to extend that logic to spend
more of my income on public assets that benefit everyone in
the world (like education in India and sewers in Cameroon and high
speed trains in Brazil and police officers in Juarez, Mexico and
social workers in Malasia and parks in Libya) as a moral imperative
and as a solid economic development strategy.
Just as charity balls and voluntary
private donations from rich Americans doesn't come close to
substituting for the moral imperative and economic development
strategy of taxing the 1% more to spend it on public assets that
benefit all 100% of us, so too voluntary contributions from we
wealthy Americans to relatively impoverished others does not cut it.
We ought to be taxed. And that money ought to be spent making people
wealthier in poor countries.
It's the same logic. They are the 99%.
And spending some of our income to make them wealthier – whether
all of us like it or not – is the right thing to do.
