China’s success in eradicating extreme poverty for nearly a billion people since 1990 forces an uncomfortable re-evaluation of US priorities. While the authoritarian nature of the state is criticized, its deliberate, top-down approach achieved a level of poverty reduction that has utterly failed to materialize in the US.
In democratic America, political choices have engineered a crisis where over four million citizens live on less than $3 a day, a population that has tripled over the last 35 years. The US possesses the wealth but lacks the political will for equitable distribution.
The data shows the poorest 10% of Americans are worse off in terms of national income share (1.8%) than low-income groups in countries like Nigeria and Bangladesh. This illustrates that America’s problem is one of distribution, not production, stemming from policies that favor the rich.