I have written before about the fact that, both in advanced and so-called ’emerging economies’, wealth is significantly more unequally distributed than income.  Moreover, the pro-capitalist World Economic Forum has reported that: “This problem has improved little in recent years, with wealth inequality rising in 49 economies.”

The usual index used for measuring inequality in an economy is the gini index. A Gini coefficient of zero expresses perfect equality, where all values are the same (for example, where everyone has the same income). A Gini coefficient of one (or 100%) expresses maximal inequality among values (e.g., for a large number of people where only one person has all the income or consumption and all others have none, the Gini coefficient will be nearly one).

For the US, the current gini index for income is 37.8 (pretty high by international levels), but the gini index for wealth distribution is 85.9! Or take supposedly…