(Roughly) Daily

Many Americans take pride in having the largest economy in the world… which, per the chart above, by one measure we do.

But then, if we adjust for population– calculate per capita– the picture changes…

And we note both that, on a PP basis, the U.S. would be lower and, more fundamentally, that the standing of the U.S. is slipping over time.

If we dive more deeply still, the picture complicates further…

This last chart illustrates the wealth inequality in the U.S., which drops from 2nd to 28th when wealth is measured by the median instead of the average… a wealth gap that has been growing since 1985 (and that is combined with an income gap that has been growing since 1980). For more, see World Inequality Database.

* James Carville

###

As we search for the source of that smell, we might recall that it was on this date in 1549 that Robert Kett agreed to head a group of rebels in the English county of Norfolk during the reign of Tudor king Edward VI. The rebels were incensed by enclosure (the fencing off of common lands by wealthy landlords, as a product of which many peasants lost access to grazing, fuel, and small plots they had long used), along with rising rents, inflation, unemployment, and declining wages; as a response, they began destroying fences. One of their early targets was yeoman Robert Kett who, instead of resisting the rebels, agreed to their demands and offered to lead them.

Kett and his forces, joined by recruits from the city of Norwich and the surrounding countryside and numbering some 16,000, stormed Norwich and took the city at the end of July. They were besieged by, then routed, a Royal Army detachment led by the Marquess of Northampton who had been sent by the government to suppress the uprising.

But what became known as “Kett’s Rebellion” ended on August 27, when the rebels were defeated by an army under the leadership of the Earl of Warwick at the Battle of Dussindale. Kett was captured, held in the Tower of London, tried for treason, and hanged from the walls of Norwich Castle on December 7.