## In Which I Carry Yet More Water for the Commissars-Turned-Capitalists of Shanghai

Over at TPM Cafe, I respond to the eloquent and dangerous Jeff Faux yet again:

Feb | TPMCafe: Brad missed the point. There are rich people in poor countries and poor people in rich countries. China is not just a society of poor, barefoot, uneducated peasants. At the top, China is a place of immense wealth.... Why is it that it is the responsibility of $40,000 year American working families to sacrifice their future in order to raise up the living standards of poor Chinese, when commissars turned capitalists ride around Shanghai in a different Rolls every day?... I think it's time to put myself seriously in harm's way here... I reply: There aren't many commissars-turned-capitalists. Scratching on the back of my envelope, I find that at current exchange rates, China's GDP per worker--and there are 800 million workers--is$3,000 per year. (In 1990 it was $1,100 of today's dollars per year.) According to Piketty and Qian's guesses, the top 0.1% of China's workers get an average of$30,000 per year at current exchange rates. This elite of some 800,000 do live considerably better in their homes in Shanghai than Americans with $30,000 do--unskilled labor and the services it provides are really cheap in Shanghai because China is still really poor (perhaps at a level equivalent to$100,000 per year if you like being waited on and having a household staff; much less if you don't). Redistribute all the income of the 800,000 commissars-turned-capitalists back to the masses, and you boost median standards of living in China by 1% above current levels.