Seeking common prosperity from a global perspective

Since 1979, the market economy and global free competition has created unprecedented economic development and wealth creation. However, this has also led to massively uneven distribution of income and wealth, a decline in social mobility, and other issues.

Regarding the uneven distribution of income, the United Nations Development Programme’s 2020 report, Human Development Report 2019, revealed that in 1980 the average pre-tax income of the top 10% of US citizens was 11 times greater than that of the bottom 40%. By 2017, this gap had become 27 times bigger. In Europe by 2017, the wealth gap has risen from 10 times greater to 12 times.

According to the World Inequality Database, wealth concentration has become even more pronounced. Between 1980 and 2019, the wealth of the top 1% of the US population rose from 23% to 35%, while the proportion of this group’s income versus the country’s total income increased from 10.5% to 18.8%. During the same period in India, the…