“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness…” ‐ Charles Dickens, 1859
Wealth Disparities: West vs. East
Following a dispute with the publisher of the monthly literary magazine Household Words, Dickens launched a new weekly periodical, All the Year Round, with the first installment of A Tale of Two Cities which continued for another 30 issues. The new magazine included both fiction and non‐fiction and covered international affairs as well as cultural topics, science and exploration. The new theories of Charles Darwin found their way into the magazine but curiously, the staff was instructed to avoid the subject of the American Civil War.
A Tale of Two Cities was one of two historical fictions written by Dickens. It juxtaposed events in France and England. While it highlighted the brutality of the French aristocracy on the peasantry, and the subsequent reprisals by the revolutionaries, it served as a warning to the English at the time of the dangers of oppression and inequality. Although staged at the time of the French Revolution, it was aimed at England’s industrialization in the 1800’s.
A Tale of Two Countries
As we enter the mid‐point of the fifth year of this bull market, we thought it might be interesting to compare and contrast income and wealth disparities in the United States with the rising power in the east; China. A statistic that has been commonly used to illustrate the growing economic chasm between the rich and the middle class is real (inflation adjusted) median household income.
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