"If current trends continue, US will be as unequal as Brazil in Obama's 2nd term" [View all]

[HiPointDem]

A dozen years ago, Brazil ranked as the world’s most unequal major nation. Brazil’s most affluent 10 percent were grabbing nearly 50 times more income, on average, than the nation’s poorest tenth, over double the U.S. gap.

Amid this intense inequality, affluent Brazilians found themselves spending $2 billion a year on private security. Kidnappings in São Paulo, Brazil’s largest city, became so common that some plastic surgeons started specializing in ear reconstruction. The reason: Kidnappers had taken to including cut-off ears with the ransom notes they sent their wealthy victims.

Over in Brazil’s second-largest city, Rio de Janeiro, carjackings were taking place so often that police were assuring well-heeled drivers they wouldn’t “be fined for running red lights at night.” Thousands of those drivers took no chances. They armored their cars, typically at $35,000 per automobile, or commuted via helicopter from fortified home to fortified office.

Could an inequality this stark ever take root in the United States? Luxury fortress life, suggests new work from the Brazil Center at the University of Texas, may actually be closing in upon us. If current trends continue, Center director Fernando Luiz Lara calculates, the United States will probably “be as unequal as Brazil” before the end of President Obama’s second term.

Two trends are driving this “convergence.” The first: Brazil’s most desperately poor have become less poor. New government social programs have halved the number of Brazilians living in “extreme poverty.” The second: Income in the United States has continued to concentrate. Since 2009, the latest stats show, top 1 percent incomes have jumped an average 11.2 percent. Bottom 99 percent have slipped 0.4 percent.

http://toomuchonline.org/brazil-and-the-united-states-a-shrinking-gap/