Which is the country with the most unequal distribution of personal wealth in the 30 OECD economies? Yes, of course, it is the United States. According to the OECD, the top 10% of US wealth holders have 79% of all personal wealth, while the bottom 60% (the majority!) have only 2%!
But what is interesting is that the so-called ‘social democratic’ Scandinavian countries are hardly better. The top 10% in Denmark have 64% of all personal wealth and the majority (bottom 60%) have no net wealth at all as their debt is larger than their assets (-1%)! Norway is similar.
In the most equal countries, the top 10% still have over 40% of personal wealth and the majority (60%) have less than 20%.
When we want things to improve, the amount that can be done can be very intimidating. It doesn’t all have to happen at once, on day one. You can take as long as you need to incorporate the right steps towards feeling more like yourself. Hope this helps take the pressure off a little, love from the sad ghost club x
ppl are so annoying “you can’t paint ur bedroom pink you’re an adult” i did not spend my entire life waiting to grow up and control my life to paint my bedroom beige
theres like. a line between things that are “ok to enjoy as long as youre critical of it” and things that are “if you were actually critical of this theres literally no way you could enjoy it to begin with because the shitty aspects are fundamental to the story/media”
Brighton Park is a predominantly Latino community on the southwest side of Chicago. It’s a neighborhood threatened by poverty, gang violence, ICE raids, and isolation—in a city where income, race, and zip code can determine access to jobs, schools, healthy food, and essential services. It is against this backdrop that the Chicago teacher Xian Franzinger Barrett arrived at the neighborhood’s elementary school in 2014.
Recognizing the vast economic and racial inequalities his students faced, he chose what some might consider a radical approach for his writing and social-studies classes, weaving in concepts such as racism, classism, oppression, and prejudice. Barrett said it was vital to reject the oft-perpetuated narrative that society is fair and equal to address students’ questions and concerns about their current conditions. And Brighton Elementary’s seventh- and eighth-graders quickly put the lessons to work—confronting the school board over inequitable funding, fighting to install a playground, and creating a classroom library focused on black and Latino authors.
“Students who are told that things are fair implode pretty quickly in middle school as self-doubt hits them,” he said, “and they begin to blame themselves for problems they can’t control.”
Barrett’s personal observation is validated by a newly published study in the peer-reviewed journal Child Development that finds traditionally marginalized youth who grew up believing in the American ideal that hard work and perseverance naturally lead to success show a decline in self-esteem and an increase in risky behaviors during their middle-school years. The research is considered the first evidence linking preteens’ emotional and behavioral outcomes to their belief in meritocracy, the widely held assertion that individual merit is always rewarded.
“If you’re in an advantaged position in society, believing the system is fair and that everyone could just get ahead if they just tried hard enough doesn’t create any conflict for you … [you] can feel good about how [you] made it,” said Erin Godfrey, the study’s lead author and an assistant professor of applied psychology at New York University’s Steinhardt School. But for those marginalized by the system—economically, racially, and ethnically—believing the system is fair puts them in conflict with themselves and can have negative consequences.
“If the system is fair, why am I seeing that everybody who has brown skin is in this kind of job? You’re having to think about that … like you’re not as good, or your social group isn’t as good,” Godfrey said. “That’s the piece … that I was trying to really get at [by studying] these kids.”
The findings build upon a body of literature on “system justification”—a social-psychology theory that believes humans tend to defend, bolster, or rationalize the status quo and see overarching social, economic, and political systems as good, fair, and legitimate. System justification is a distinctively American notion, Godfrey said, built on myths used to justify inequities, like “If you just work hard enough you can pull yourself up by your bootstraps … it’s just a matter of motivation and talent and grit.” Yet, as she and her colleagues discovered, these beliefs can be a liability for disadvantaged adolescents once their identity as a member of a marginalized group begins to gel—and once they become keenly aware of how institutional discrimination disadvantages them and their group.
“If you’re [inclined] to believe that … the system is fair, then you’re maybe going to accept stereotypes about you more easily.”
In modern Euro-American World by defining the system as a Meritocracy, you are practicing Victim Blaming, rather than preparing people to realize that the deck is stacked against.
